Four Stories
(2004)

Writer/Director: Mike Lazorwitz


Cast (in order of appearance):

  • Jonathan Fedors (Bart)
  • Mike Jiran (Allen)
  • Ryan Grusenski (Jason)
  • Mike Lazorwitz (Tyson)
  • Laryssa Wirstiuk (Girlfriend)

 


Four Stories is really one story, told from four different perspectives. Bourgeois part-time musician Bart moves into a rather bohemian house in the midst of a rather Goodbye, Columbus-ish neighborhood. There he meets the other three residents, all full-time artists: Allen, a quirky, relatively quiet photographer; Jason, a very friendly actor and committed vegetarian; and Tyson, a chainsmoking, hard-drinking painter full of rage at the world and contempt for poseurs like Bart.

The events transpire over the course of just two or three days, beginning when Bart arrives with his suitcase and guitar. Each man deals with his tribulations—Allen's faulty enlarger, Jason's audition ruined by an invitation to a beefy lunch, and Bart's inability to practice any of his favorite songs for his upcoming set without Tyson threatening him and his guitar with assorted violence.

Nobody wants to buy Tyson's latest crop of paintings, but that's the least of his worries. What's really bothering him isn't Bart (although Bart is rather obnoxious). It's his unnamed ex-lover, who we meet only in flashbacks, and who never speaks.


Trivia:

  • If it looks like the four artists' house is under construction, that's because it is. Four Stories was filmed in Maplewood, New Jersey, in and around the house Mike Lazorwitz' mother grew up in, which the family was having thoroughly refurbished.
  • The watercolor paintings Tyson makes on the walls of his room, to no one's surprise, were painted over. The crew made sure the construction workers painted that room last.
  • Mike Lazorwitz actually took up residence in the unfinished house before and during the filming of Four Stories, during his winter break from Ithaca College.
  • Bart's favorite song is Paul McCartney's 2001 debacle "Freedom." The song, and its awfulness, was (and to an extent still is) a running joke among the Waste of Time crew. See The Life and Times of Marcus Walker for more on this.

©2006 Waste of Time Productions. Site by Mike Jiran. Contact Waste of Time Productions.
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