"Alas, poor Hollywood! I knew it, Horatio: a source of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. And now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it."
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are face to face with the remarkable fact that Hollywood
doesn’t exist anymore. Like so many of our institutions, it’s gone.
But the market for movies and streaming series is starving.
Here in Athens there is robust activity—production companies,
studio space, talent, crew, and a 40% cash rebate on everything shot here.
My own circle includes Andreas Tsilifonis,
head of Central Athens Film Productions;
Anglo-Greek Chiltern Media; and my
crew:
Cinematographer: Panos Golfis
AD: Stella Manola
Line Producer: Andreas Tsilifonis
Camera: Yiannis Lascaris
Camera: Peter Salapatas
Camera: Adam Petritsis
Steadicam: Michael Tsimperopoulos
Sound recordist: Nikos Bougioukos
Film editor: Kant Pan
Hair/makeup: Maro Kokkoni
Sound design: Valia Tserou
Sound mixer: Kostas Varympopiotis
CGI: Harold Herbert
We can do anything. For example, entirely in Athens, we can make tiny-budget—
Faust: the movie
Woody Allen’s audience—older, educated, sophisticated—has been abandoned.
They need us.
In the tiny Balkan country of Panurgia, wedged between Italy and Slovenia—
(See it? You really have to zoom.)
—German hacker Heinrich Faust, under contract to the Kremlin, has removed Pentagon files and is waiting in a bar he won in a card game for his money to be delivered digitally.
In the same game he lost his soul to Mephistopheles—and won it back again, and now the two are dueling over who exists and who doesn't.
Sister St. Helen, vivacious, callow, naïve, a Candide of a girl, believes anything. The other sisters are so in love with her that they think she's an instrument of the Devil, and subject her to a cruel exorcism.
Faust's mistress, Sasha the Assassin, is also a mistress of disguise. You never know who's coming for you.
CIA asset Priapo Smegman’s foot fetish leads him into Faust’s bar, into the clutches of the CIA, and into abducting Sister St. Helen—
—with whom Father Rosario is also in love, and he must witness the sadistic casting out of the Devil, until Sasha takes a hand. He finds his sense of direction in Faust, who teaches him about life, not to say murder.
A radiant angel has Mephisto in her cross hairs, but he refuses to be drawn in.
Panurgia’s Queen Delicia, much to the king’s distress, is having an affair with Faust, and in her official capacity is able to help him with the disposal of the bodies. She can get anything done.
Question: When you rescue a kidnapped nun
and she falls in love with you, what
do you tell your mistresses?
Pretentious Pictures Presents
Faust: the movie
Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains but an intellectual snob.
The Light Touch on Amazon Prime
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