Update: Edie Falco has rejoined the cast of Where to Land. Original story below.
In early 2020 Hal Hartley managed to Kickstarter-finance Where to Land, a feature based on, so he claimed, the best screenplay he’d ever written. Other things––you surely noticed––from early 2020 made small, independent features a difficult prospect. Nearly four years on, however, Hartley’s returning to finance that same film with the same $300,000 price tag in a new Kickstarter campaign.
Regulars Bill Sage and Robert John Burke are expected to star alongside Katelyn Sparks; no word on the once-cast Edie Falco, Parker Posey, and Elina Löwensohn, but any appearing in his film is about the least-surprising thing that might transpire. With an essential, extensive Hartley retrospective now running on the Criterion Channel, one hopes interest in this filmmaker––among the most appreciably sui generis America’s produced the last 40 years––is sufficient to finance a new project.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Joseph Fulton, a well-regarded fifty-eight year-old director of romantic comedies, wants to become assistant groundskeeper at a local cemetery, to work outdoors and be close to nature. He also happens to be having his last will and testament drawn up. But his highly dramatic and excitable actress girlfriend thinks he must be dying and that he is just too brave to tell anyone. The rumor spreads and soon everyone he knows—and some he doesn’t—are crowded into his apartment to say their last farewells.