SJSU associate professor's creativity on display at Cinequest

By: Stephanie Vallejo

Posted: 3/4/09

Steven had the brilliant idea to write a play based on his close friends. The only problem is, the actors don't want to cooperate and a killer is on the loose.

Steven is the main character in "Generic Thriller," a movie written and directed by SJSU Associate Professor Scott Sublett. It premieres at the San Jose Cinequest Film Festival this week.

"Generic Thriller is a farce about the inner-life of a writer cracking up," he said.

Sublett said it first started out as "a real, straight-forward sincere thriller," but became "a finished, straight-forward murder thriller."

The idea for the script came to Sublett in the early '90s, when he was in graduate school at UCLA. He said he didn't go back to it until he re-wrote it five years ago as a "modernist self-reflexive film about a film."

Brad Kranich, who graduated from SJSU in 2005, acted in "Generic Thriller," playing Peter.He describes Peter as "the frat boy in a strange world that Sublett had created."

This was the first feature film he was involved in. He said he's glad he was able to work with Sublett.

"Every day we worked on set it was fun," Kranich said. "(Sublett) had such a great attitude about everything and everybody felt that."

The film takes place in an empty theater, which represents the mind of the writer. Backgrounds constantly transform because the writer is always inventing new locations, he said. Sets appear, sets disappear, sets are right next to each other, Sublett said.

Sublett used the television, radio, film and theatre department's facilities to film his movie. He said that the department supported his efforts.

"Generic Thriller" is not the only movie Sublett is involved in at this year's Cinequest. He was also executive producer for "All About Dad," a film written and directed by SJSU alumnus Mark Tran.

Tran, who graduated in 2007, wrote the script in Sublett's screenwriting class when he was a sophomore at SJSU.

"All About Dad" is a comedy-drama about a Vietnamese-American family.

"I helped him develop the script, urged him to finish the script when he wasn't sure," Sublett said. "I had complete confidence not only in the script, but in Mark Tran as a director."

The long process of writing, producing and delivering a film takes most filmmakers about five years, he said. Although Sublett said he is thrilled about being a part of Cinequest, his intention was to make a professional-caliber film that would get national distribution, and at least on DVD.He said he achieved that goal.

"The film has indeed been picked up for distribution, so you'll be able to rent it on Netflix, you'll see it at Blockbuster," Sublett said. "We hope to get television sales as well. The distributor is very optimistic about that."

If Cinequest audiences have good reactions to "Generic Thriller," it could get theatrical distribution, he said.

Sublett said that "All About Dad" may not have to wait too long to get to that point.

"They're talking about theatrical distribution for (the movie) already, because it's so appealing to such a wide range of people," he said. "Especially the Vietnamese-American community who have not seen themselves in film very much."

A majority of the actors for "Generic Thriller" were cast from auditions, but some of the college-age characters were from students at the television, radio, film and theatre department.

A well-known actress he cast for the film is Shirley Jones, from the film "Grandma's Boy" and the television series "The Partridge Family."

Currently, Sublett has organized a campuswide conjunction with the school of art and design, the school of music and dance and some actors from the theatre program to produce "Bye bye bin Laden." It is an animated musical about religious extremism, Americans and the war in Iraq.

"It's never been done before," he said. "It is the world's first animated feature film ever made at a university, anywhere."

"Generic Thriller" will be featured tonight at the San Jose Repertory Theatre at 7:30 p.m. and at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday at the California Theatre on First Street. Sublett will be at both screenings for a question and answer session at the end of the movie.