Less than a week ago when I mentioned we should see a flurry of post-Sundance deals (indie distributors snapping up titles from U.S. Drama and Spectrum sections) I wasn’t necessarily thinking of the smaller projects – THR reports that the Alex Orlovsky and Hunter Gray-produced and Paul Mezey exec produced micro-budgeted writer-director Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man is now a TH!NKFilm property. Jacob’s (pictured above) cast his real-life parents, noted avant-garde filmmakers Ken Jacobs and Flo Jacobs, as the fictional parents.
Sounding like a softer version of the French film (Tanguy) where an adult child does not want to leave the nest – this sees a holiday visit with parents extend itself when Mikey (Matt Boren) is headed to
the airport to return to his wife and newborn baby. Except he doesn’t board the
plane. Instead he returns to his parents’ loft in lower Manhattan, back to his
childhood room that has since been converted to storage. Unsure of his own
motivations, he makes up excuses about why he’s staying – his flight is delayed,
his flight is canceled. A day passes, and then another, and he calls home and
work to say he can’t return just yet – his parents are getting old, his parents
are ill, time is too short. His doting mother is more than happy to enable his
procrastination, while his artist father is suspicious. From afar, his confused
wife grows increasingly unsettled. Meanwhile Mikey moves back into his room,
digging out notebooks and mementos, calling on old friends. As the days go on he
becomes more and more entrenched in his adolescent sanctuary, and comes to a
point where he must choose between life as it is and life as it was.
