Synopsis

Rose is a woman in her early thirties that lives an unenviable life. We are introduced to her husband, Mick and eight-year-old son,Josh. Mick is an unemployed and abusive alcoholic. He hates that he can’t provide for his family and takes out his rage on Rose. Josh is a shy, quiet kid that is clearly affected by his surroundings but chooses to say nothing. He wants to cut school for the day because he’s embarrassed of speaking in front of the class. Rose convinces him to go and they leave home together; Rose to her job at a shipping warehouse and Josh to school. Rose finds out from her boss David that the promotion she thought was hers has been given to someone else and that her day is going to be spent doing a menial task with another worker instead. This other worker is Janice, a sympathetic elderly employee that realizes Rose is the victim of abuse. Janice comforts Rose and encourages her to stand-up for herself more. Rose checks in with Mick at home only to find out that he brought back Josh from school because her son feigned sickness. She attempts to tell Mick this but it only angers him, as he thinks Rose is just trying to assert her superiority. He tells her that they need to have a“serious talk” when they get home. On her walk home through the rundown town,Rose is confronted by an angry homeless man that screams Bible passages at her in between begging for change. As she runs away in tears, he yells at her that they’re both stuck in a purgatory and that she should be more sympathetic to him. When Rose returns to her home, already shaken up, she’s confronted by Mick. He throws her to the ground and accuses her looking down on him just because she has a job and he doesn’t. In a moment of rage, Rose stabs him with a box cutter and he collapses on the ground. She realizes what she’s done and tries to help him just as Josh walks in and sees the grisly scene. Rose tries to comfort Josh with words that she used earlier and believed in but they’re now empty and false.

Directors Statement

 Every minute of every day, somebody, somewhere caves in to despair and loses all hope entirely. The specifics are never the same and every person is different but the fundamentals are constant: one person realizes that they’re a prisoner, chained to a life of dejection. They realize there’s no key;the only way to escape is by gnawing off their arm.  This tragic trajectory haunts me constantly and The Motor Kings is a short film that captures the end of this downward spiral over the course of a day. 

In this story, our prisoner is Rose, holding on to a job and the faith that things will get better. She lives in an unnamed town that has fallen into the grips of poverty and unemployment. It used to be a thriving community where the money came from car factories that inevitably shut down after being unable to keep up with foreign competition. Rose’s husband, Mick, was one of the many people that lost his job because of this. His male ego bruised, unable to provide for his family, he turns to the bottle and lashes out at Rose verbally and physically. They have a son, Josh, and we can see how he’s affected by Mick’s wrath and Rose’s response. Rose’s strength is also her weakness: an unwavering optimism. She still sees the best in her husband and situation. She thinks she has a chance of a better life in her job, her town and her family.This film takes place over a day as this belief is brutally shattered. Rose realizes this and something dies inside her; in a fit of rage and sadness, she lashes out, with tragic consequences. 

My intention of The Motor Kings is to show how Rose slowly realizes that she can never get out or rise above where she is now. I wanted audiences to understand why she’s still with Mick and appears to love him without explaining it through exposition-like dialogue. One could almost see The Motor Kings as the third act of a longer film, as it’s the culmination of many years of events the viewers don’t witness. My biggest challenge was to portray how this one day leads to Rose’s downfall, by her interactions with four different personalities in this town of broken dreams. To really emphasize the oppression of her life, I want to shoot this film in a letterbox aspect ratio and Super 16 film, the roughness of which corresponds to her surroundings.

 I had an incredible cast and crew that worked hard to bring this production to life and I couldn’t be more grateful for their efforts. I am thrilled with how it all turned out and am grateful for the ride.