Ever stay up all night tripping on shrooms, having deep, insightful conversations until the sun rises and said "I wish we had made a movie of all this"? Don't bother, Wendy Morrison has done it for you.
This Is Not Dying is a ninety minute movie described by Wendy, a well known Los Angeles musician and songwriter, as being without a genre or category. But having spent as much time as I have around filmmakers, there is definitely a category for her film and it's the Art/Experimental/Student category. Okay, I guess it's not that easy to pin down but my impressions of it that I got while watching the recent screening held at the California Institute Of Abnormal Arts is that its stream of consciousness, psychedelic minimalist plot is in the same basic mode of Easy Rider, Two Lane Blacktop, The Trip and long form music video. One of the things that makes this film seem the work of slumming professionals rather than students or tripping old hippies is that the production quality is relatively high. It was shot in HD by a real cinematographer and the main actors all seem confident and experienced in front of the camera.
Outside of maybe some of her band's music videos, I don't know how much time Wendy herself has spent in front of the camera but her screen presence and confident acting chops can't be denied. Whatever aspirations she has as a filmmaker, she should really consider a professional acting career. I'll be even more impressed if I could be allowed to read the script from which she was working. It's in the nature of the story that much of the dialogue may have been ad libbed and if that is the case then I am much impressed with her acting ability. If, however, the actors were speaking the lines from the script verbatim, then This Is Not Dying could be viewed as a great actor's demo reel. Everyone involved should be proud, I know how difficult it is to produce a 90 minute film that actually looks like a real movie.
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