Matthew Kadish has been a filmmaker ever since he can remember,
whether it was using his dad’s camera to film the neighborhood
kids or while basically taking over the A/V department in his
high school to produce his own shows and short films. But it
became his profession when he wrote a script for the Project
Greenlight contest called THE OUTSIDEMAN. Deciding to go for
it a week before the deadline, he skipped all his senior year
classes, locked himself in his apartment for 5 days straight,
working from six in the morning almost around the clock until
to two in the morning, finishing just in time to beat the deadline,
only to be rejected in the first round.
However, it was that rejection that spurred Kadish on to do
a re-write, which he submitted to the Nicholl Fellowship Screenwriting
Contest. In August 2001, he received word that his script had
finished in the top 15% of entries. Although he thought that
branded him as a loser that year, he was surprised to receive
a piece of mail inviting him to apply to the Los Angeles Film
School’s Feature Development program. They had gotten
his name from the Nicholl’s committee and were seeking
talented writers to apply to their new program. Rather than
return to his job as a pizza delivery man, he went to Los Angeles
to check out the school, which is a beehive of activity, where
the program has much in common with workshops like the Sundance
Institute. Once in L.A. he met with Amadeo D’Adamo and
Daniele Suissa, the president and dean of the school respectively.
He knew that’s where he wanted to be, and applied to their
program.
In many ways, it was during this trip that things started to
come together for THE OUTSIDEMAN. While in Los Angeles, a friend
of Kadish’s, who was a writer’s assistant on FIRST
MONDAY, arranged for him to visit the set, where he met the
stars of the show, Joe Mantegna, James Garner, and James McEachin.
Hanging out with McEachin, they talked for about 20 minutes,
and Kadish left determined to work with the veteran actor someday.
When he returned to Pennsylvania, he put together a reel of
his films, along with the script application package and mailed
it to the school. He moved home with his parents in Washington,
D.C. while waiting to hear if he had been accepted. At the same
time, producer Rosalee Mayeux was told by the Los Angeles Film
School that they would scholarship her into the program if she
could find a few scripts to develop. One of the scripts she
read and liked was THE OUTSIDEMAN, so she called Kadish, who
said no other producers from the school had called him, so he
didn’t think he’d get picked for the program. Mayeux
said she was picking him, and after joking that no crew he’d
worked with wanted to work with him again, Mayeux said they
must have been nuts. Liking his drive and his spirit, she knew
they’d be working together.
Although he had been about to give up, he was called at midnight
on a Sunday, 5 days before classes were to start, and told that
he’d been accepted. The following morning, he packed his
car and made the 3,000 mile trek to Los Angeles. During the
journey, Kadish and Mayeux talked on the phone at each stop
on his journey. In fact, she was the only person who knew exactly
where he was as he traveled to Los Angeles. It was an odd situation,
because everyone else had a chance to sit down and interview
one another face to face before deciding to work together. With
Kadish and Mayeux, they didn’t meet face to face until
the first day of workshops, their relationship at that point
consisting of their cross-country phone calls.
He got into town the night before classes were set to start,
and spent the next week living out of his car and sleeping on
his friend’s hardwood floor before he was able to find
a cheap apartment in Highland Park, an L.A. neighborhood not
yet gentrified.
As the program started, the family atmosphere soon grew. Kadish
loved working with the mentors who are key to the program’s
success. He worked closely with Linda Cowgill, his screenwriting
mentor, whose books he learned screenwriting from in college,
and Daniele Suissa became his personal directing guru.
As the rewriting progressed, he found himself learning more
in a matter of months than he had in 4 years at Penn State University.
Soon, his attention was devoted solely to the short film he
was required to make. Kadish made the decision to do a stand-alone
short based on his feature script, THE OUTSIDEMAN. This way
he could showcase his ability to direct actors, sell aspects
of his feature, and have an accomplished work to submit to film
festivals - in short, he crafted a calling card piece.
Kadish and Mayeux went about selecting a crew for the short.
They pulled from the many industry professionals available to
them through the Los Angeles Film School and Mayeux’s
many connections, established through her career as an actress.
In a nice coincidence, the cinematographer, Marco Fargnoli,
actually grew up in Kadish’s hometown of Dayton, Ohio.
Things were starting to gel.
Then began the arduous process of casting and location scouting.
As Mayeux started tracking down the best actors, Kadish was
driving all around Hollywood, Pasadena, and Santa Monica looking
for the ideal locations, finally finding the club Sugar in Santa
Monica, the restaurant Joseph’s in Hollywood, and one
location they all knew well – the parking garage at the
Los Angeles Film School.
While Kadish found the ideal locations, Mayeux found the ideal
actor in Jeremy Renner, a young up-and-comer whose work knocked
Kadish off his feet. They then cast John Gallucci as the bad
guy Bully Malone. But the other main character, Conrad Coleman,
was a tougher nut to crack.
They sent the script out to many older, well-established black
actors - all of whom passed. That’s when Charles Durning
came to their rescue. Durning had worked with Mayeux at the
Coronet Theatre and on the television drama, FIRST MONDAY, and
also is a favorite actor of Kadish (in fact, he is an inspiration
for the character of Craven in Kadish’s feature script,
THE OUTSIDEMAN, inspired, to a great degree, by THE STING, a
movie in which Charles Durning had a major part). Durning was
working in Mayeux’s production THE NAKED RUN, and when
she mentioned she was looking for an actor to play the heavy,
he suggested Billy Drago. He also told Mayeux to use his name
when she called James McEachin, and that was the reason he met
with the filmmakers. McEachin also remembered Kadish from their
first informal meeting many months ago, and agreed to do it
without even reading the script.
The last piece of casting was pure serendipity. Billy Drago,
Durning’s suggestion to play one of the heavies in the
film, hadn’t responded, so thinking him unavailable, Kadish
and Mayeux moved forward, their cast in place to begin shooting.
However, one day before shooting began, Drago called and said
he’d love to be part of the film. So Kadish wrote in a
new character, and the one character of Mr. Big became two characters,
the Bazarian Brothers, played by Drago and Tylo.
There was a very important piece of the puzzle that Kadish
didn’t need any help with. Listening to a tape of music
his brother, Paul, had written and played guitar on, Kadish
was inspired and knew it had to be his brother who would compose
the score. With the full cast and crew ready to go, there was
only one thing left to do - shoot the film. Now that production
is done, Kadish is already gearing up to finish the development
of the feature script, THE OUTSIDEMAN.