The Fix: A Short Film with a Crucial Story

I first met Amanda Greer nearly a decade ago, in 2017, after I saw her performance as Marilyn Monroe in Anthony Marinelli's play, Max & Domino, which was playing at The Duke on 42nd Street in Manhattan.  I had first gotten to know Anthony some years before, when he asked me if I thought he got Marshall McLuhan's concept of "acoustic space" right in the play Anthony wrote (later made into a movie) of the same name (Anthony did get it right).  And I first got to see Denise Reed, with Amanda, in Marinelli's production of Sartre's No Exit in 2020, and I saw the two again in Anthony's wise and hilarious Why I Had to Kill You While You Slept in 2023.  Denise also played an important role in an episode of FBI on CBS in 2024, and joined Amanda and Anthony and me in a dramatic reading taken from my 2024 novel It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles at Big Red Books in Nyack, NY in 2025 (Anthony and Amanda are real-life characters in the novel).

I tell you all this because when I heard that Amanda and Denise had formed a production company -- The Abbey, Stories Worth Telling By Women, For Women -- I couldn't wait to see one of their movies.  And The Fix, an 18-minute short (co-written by Chelsea Hattan and Anthony Marinelli, from a story by Amanda Greer), is one powerhouse of a film -- a brutal,  scathing, heartbreaking, hopeful, all-too-real portrait of what it means to be a woman addicted to heroin.

The heartbreak and horror of heroin addiction has been depicted in feature-length films like Trainspotting (1996) which also tried to leaven its message with dark humor.  The Fix has no time for that.  There's nothing funny about its smiles.   Anyone who thinks there's an easy exit out of this kind of hell will be quickly disabused.  Indeed, the creative work that comes closest to the The Fix in tone and message is something even shorter than this movie, John Lennon's "Cold Turkey", a song 5 minutes and 1 second long.

Speaking of cold turkey, of course in reality there are ways out of heroin addiction.  But all are life shaking.  Is The Fix wrong to vividly portray such a painful situation?  No, because it's also a testament to sheer human willpower, how the part of us that strives to save our lives can triumph over the part that seeks to blissfully self-destruct -- they're two sides of the same human coin.  Anything that shows people this reality is eminently worth seeing.  The Fix been making the film festival rounds -- garnering 16 nominations and 9 wins -- and will be at the 32nd Annual San Antonio Film Festival later this month of July.

Here's the trailer.

Video of Unique Dramatic Reading from It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles at Big Red Books

 

This reading took place on 23 February 2025 at Big Red Books in Nyack, NY, and features Anthony Marinelli and Amanda Greer -- real life characters from the novel who voiced what they say in the novel -- as well Denise Reed, Frank LoBuono, and me.

More about the novel here. 

Anthony Marinelli, Amanda Greer, Paul Levinson, Denise Reed,

Frank LoBuono, and Richie Fulco (owner of Big Red Books)

Why I Had to Kill You While You Slept: Husbands -- Make Sure You See It Before You Go To Sleep

Nah, I think I'm probably kidding.  If you're a husband and you see Anthony Marinelli's hilarious new short, Why I Had to Kill You While You Slept, before you go to sleep, you may not be able to fall asleep.  Ok, I'm probably kidding about that, too.  But you likely will feel a little guilty.  And you'll certainly be laughing.  And note that I'm not saying I'm kidding about that and that.

This 15-minute comedy and tutorial about what not to do if you're a husband provides a vivid little catalogue of what wives get upset about around bedtime -- snoring, not cutting your toenails so you accidentally gash your wife's thigh, going to sleep after you're satisfied but she's not, and you're... well, doing something that requires a powerful air-freshener to at most partially remedy.  And then there's what men shouldn't do before they leave the bathroom -- leaving the seat up and not flushing.

Now, just to be clear, I've been married to the same woman for almost fifty years, and I've done none of that -- I'm innocent, your Honor, innocent!   Ok, maybe I snore a litte, at least according to my wife.

But forget about me, and back to the movie.  Marinelli wrote (with Bradley Griffiths and Lisa Riva) and directed, and the dialogue is barbed and funny.  So is the rendition.  Amanda Greer is perfect as Donna the long-suffering wife, as she's been in everything I've seen her do on stage and screen.  So is Denise Reed as Lisa, Donna's friend, who manages to be both rational and receptive as Donna spills out her story.  And Peter Argento was fine as Jim, the horrible husband, as was Jackie Kuczinski as his sexy sister, Michael Yadvish as her boyfriend, and Joseph Casesse as Lisa's not so horrible husband.

The movie was shown yesterday at the Chelsea Film Festival in Manhattan.  It's 15 minutes you'll no doubt enjoy, unless you're like Matt, in which case you should see the movie and maybe learn a thing or two. 

science fiction/fantasy novelette

Review of Anthony Marinelli's Virtual Production of Sartre's No Exit

Just saw Anthony Marinelli's virtual production of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit.  A scorchingly brilliant two hours.

First, seeing this play on a screen was in many ways better than in person.  The close-ups of the faces lent an additional dimension to the performances.  Jeff Musillo's facial expressions in the relatively minor role of The Valet at the beginning of the play, for example, were just perfect, at once powerful and subtle, and would have been not quite as effective when seen from a seat in a physical theater, unless that seat was in a very close front row.  (The virtual rather than physical presentation also made this seem like a full-fledged play, not a "reading," which it is technically billed as being.)

The three performances of the major characters were stellar.  I saw Amanda Greer as a kick-ass Marilyn Monroe a few years ago in a play Marinelli not only directed but wrote,  Max & Domino.   She plays the caustic, vulnerable, gay postal worker Inèz in No Exit, and her delivery will leave singe marks on your fingers.  Heat of course is a major component of this story, because all three people are not only dead but in some kind of hell.  I suppose this also makes them vulnerable, though being dead could also make them invulnerable, and you never quite know with Sartre.

Thomas Gipson plays Garcin, a pacifist journalist who is shot down by a firing squad for his troubles.  The two other characters call him "garçon" -- French for waiter -- I have no idea if that's the way you pronounce Garcin, or Marinelli instructed the other two to call Garcin that as a indication of their contempt for him, but either way, it worked.  And Gipson worked very effectively, too, sincere, logical, and highly aggrieved.

Inèz certainly has contempt for Garcin.  Denise Reed's Estelle mostly wants to seduce him, and though that's not quite an indication of contempt, it's certainly treating Garcin as an object.  Inèz true to form is infuriated by all that, and Reed does a fine job shuttling between vamping and anger, with the undertone of desperate vulnerability that everyone accept The Valet understandably has, though he has a touch of it too when Garcin says something about his looks.

In case you didn't already know, the essence of this play is "hell is other people".  Marinelli does an especially strong job of conveying this, given that this production is not only virtual but the actors are each in separate rooms in their separate real dwellings.  Marinelli intersperses with appropriate filmic footage, which brings to our eyes the backstories that the characters tell us and one another.

A memorable rendition of an eternally classic play, and never more relevant in its story conveyed via literally separate rooms in these our Covid times.

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If you'd like to see this in an in-person theatre, here's where you can make a tax-deductible donation.

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