STICKY WICKET (71 min.), a Croquet Comedy written/directed by Rick Schmidt, ©2015 Sandy Entertainment & Feature Workshops.TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/stickywicket

My 26th indie feature: FULL. SEE MOVIE: <https://filmfreeway.com/projects/30361>

SEE STICKY: TRAILER: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/stickywicket, 71 min:<https://filmfreeway.com/projects/30361> , or surf other “Rick Schmidt” titles: <https://vimeo.com/rickschmidt>.

In the small town of Brunswick, Maine, the Women-Only Croquet Club is the only organized resistance to a corporate takeover by an invading cineplex movie chain. In its direct path is a 100 seat, hippie-built theater called the Eveningstar Cinema, crunched into a tiny, jewelry-store-sized space at the local mall. The owner, Barry Norman, is barely holding on. He’s too tall for the 6’ high upstairs projection booth (at 6’5”), and too old (over 50) to be carting around the heavy reels back and forth between projectors. As the cineplex ground-breaking approaches, future plans are made for a big croquet showdown at city hall. With croquet balls smacked to the tune of ‘Drive That Fast' by legendary UK band Kitchens of Distinction, it begins to dawn on us that maybe these mallet-wielding women can get the job done. And they do.

Julian Swales, guitarist/member of the noted UK band KITCHENS OF DISTINCTION, did the music score for STICKY WICKET. Here’s his music and fantasy footage of Barry Norman, imagining his NEW theatre, the “Eveningstar Cineplex!”

Song DRIVE THAT FAST by kitchens of Distinction is featured in croquet sequence of STICKY: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=231093528072030

“Thirty-five plus years after his 1975 feature filmmaking debut, American Independent Rick Schmidt remains a free-wheeling derring-do filmmaker holding fast to the notion that people’s real lives are more truly dramatic, hilarious, exciting and as exasperating as those manufactured by Hollywood’s minions. Most everyone falls in and out of love, rejects and gets rejected, contends with failure and success, hatred, ambition, the death of loved ones...It’s all there.

Sarah Childress, DP, 2nd Unit director, and LEAD ACTRESS in STICKY WICKET. (Becomes Vice President of the Women’s Only Croquet Club of Brunswick, ME).

To capture real life on film, Schmidt fashions a creative weave out of the threads of narrative, documentary, and docu-drama film forms. His actors draw on their own experience enabling him to create a unique blend of fact and fiction. In the end, Schmidt makes art and life intermingle and imitate each other.

Aware that the American Dream factory financiers would never fund his films, Schmidt, undeterred, remains the maven of low, low-budget feature filmmaking.”
— Vic Skolnick, CINEMA ARTS CENTRE

RICK SCHMIDT FEATURES ALSO NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE AT AMAZON PRIME: https://www.amazon.com/Sticky-Wicket-Rick-Schmidt/dp/B01LWT340U

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2796196/

https://mubi.com/en/cast/rick-schmidt

https://www.blurb.com/b/11653852-the-films-of-rick-schmidt-1975-2015-he-wrote-feat

Gracia Babbidge and Barry Norman, at Eveningstar cinema, Brunswick, Maine.

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PRAISE FOR SCHMIDT’S BOOKS & MOVIES

“Schmidt’s Morgan’s Cake is a deadpan, unpretentious delight. The title character, played by the film maker’s son, Morgan Schmidt-Feng, is no less comically out of sync with the world around him than the gorilla-suited David Warner character in the 1966 movie for which Morgan was named. Morgan’s Cake adopts his point of view and reflects his bewilderment in sly, fresh, unexpectedly comic ways. One of the most promising films of this year’s New Directors/New Films series.”
— Janet Maslin, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“At last there’s a film (MORGAN'S CAKE) about adolescence that resounds with truth and humor.”
— DENVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

“This is Schmidt’s personal attempt to answer his son’s and other young people’s questions: to understand what these kids really want out of life and what motivates them.”
— BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

“Rick Schmidt’s approach to independent filmmaking doesn’t aim to beat down the doors to Hollywood. His latest “no-budget” film (Morgan’s Cake) has a refreshingly personal point of view and captures sympathetically and with quiet humor the life of a late-’80s California teenager.” (Nominated for GRAND JURY PRIZE, DRAMATIC COMPETITION, DRAMATIC COMPETITION)
— Lawrence Smith, SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

“Rick Schmidt, whose Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices is the undisputed champ of low-budget bibles, was the guru of choice for many of today’s top indie moviemakers long before this new trend (DV) began.” — MOVIEMAKER MAGAZINE

Barry Norman, Lead Actor, Co-Producer, contemplates losing his EVENNGSTAR CINEMA.