Spotlight on... Alexander Poe

Author: Colin Foss

If you happened to be in downtown Manhattan recently, you might have noticed some chatter about a new filmmaker and his work currently screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. Among four other finalists in MTV's "Best Filmmaker on Campus" competition, Alexander Poe '03 had the pleasure of seeing his eerily existential short film "Please Forget I Exist" projected alongside a selection of some of the best new films from around the world. The Campus had the opportunity to talk to the Midd alumnus about his recent success.


TC: Give us a brief glimpse into your professional life. What have you been up to lately?

AP: I've been in New York for four years since graduating in 2003, writing and directing plays and films with Redux Productions, the company I formed back at Middlebury my sophomore year with Joe Varca '02 and Ben Correale '03.5.

Last summer a play I wrote (and co-directed with Varca) won 'Outstanding Play' at the New York International Fringe Festival and this summer (as part of the Potomac Theatre Project run by the Middlebury Theater Department) we're re-mounting our adaptation of Paul Auster's novel, "City of Glass," which was our first production back at Midd in 2000, at the Atlantic Theater in New York in July.

After graduating I worked in film for a few years as an assistant to various directors on projects like "War of the Worlds," and a Lindsay Lohan movie. I then decided to go to Columbia University Film School to work on my own scripts.


TC: Tell us a bit about your film and what it means to be the "best filmmaker on campus."

AP: The MTV Movie Award nomination is for my overall work as a student filmmaker, but the featured film on the MTV website is 'Please Forget I Exist,' a Japanese ghost story about a girl trying to move on from her ghost ex-boyfriend. It's a drama but hopefully it also has some of the bittersweet comedy of a Wong Kar-Wai movie. I wanted to make a film about a relationship but in a unique way, so I used the conventions of the Japanese horror genre as a framework. Telling a ghost story gave me license to create a visual metaphor to describe the end of a relationship.

Now I'm in the top five nominees. If I win the audience vote I'll receive the golden popcorn statuette at the MTV Movie Awards and a development deal at MTV Films.


TC: You've screened films on campus as a student and elsewhere, but how does a full house at Tribeca stack up to a full house at Dana Auditorium?

AP: The Tribeca Film Festival screening was amazing. There's something unique about seeing your work on a large screen with a big crowd. Seeing a film on DVD or on the Internet is one thing, but when you're surrounded by a group of strangers all feeling the same thing as a group it's an exciting experience. My best screening experience is still the time we screened "FEBRUARY," our first film at Midd, to a packed house at Dana Auditorium. It was fun because the film is a comedy about college relationships and everyone in the audience could identify - or at least they got the Midd jokes.

At Tribeca we also screened "DAVID," a short horror film that we made for the NYC Midnight Short Film Competition - you get a genre, a subject and two weeks to make a short film. The prompt we received was "a horror film about an imaginary friend" and in the end we took home Best Direction, Best Horror Film and Second Best Overall Film.


TC: Any current projects or ideas on the docket?

AP: At the moment I'm shooting a pilot for an episodic comedy titled "Theatre is Dead," getting ready to produce "City of Glass" in July and hopefully going to the MTV Movie Awards at the beginning of June. You can see all the redux films and vote online at . You can actually vote over and over, so I totally recommend you click at least 100 times a day. If I win, I'll come up there with the rest of the Midd redux alums and throw a party in the Hepburn Zoo.


TC: Now that you're out of rural Vermont, how does your experience at Midd translate to your current work?

AP: Midd was definitely a great place to start. The theater program gave us support to produce our projects and we're still using the skills we learned there. Cheryl, Richard, Doug, Dana, Mark, Hallie and Claudio were great mentors and really inspired us to take the next step in New York. There's a really close group of Midd theater and film alums here and we're excited and honored to be a part of Cheryl and Richard's Potomac Theatre Project as it moves to New York this year. Plus we're looking forward to the MTV after party in the Hepburn Zoo.