When It’s Gray in L.A.

[August 27th, 2008]

Fledgling Portland filmmakers thinking about bolting for the big time in Los Angeles, take heed: Alex Holdridge’s life could happen to you.

Holdridge, a 32-year-old director from Austin, Texas, moved to L.A. in 2004, and watched his life turn into a bad country song. He lost his car, he lost his girlfriend, he lost his job, and he lost his laptop—which meant he also lost his latest screenplay. When he started making the movie he traveled West to film, he funded it with the last $2,000 on his final credit card.

Photos of Holdridge’s car—where he last saw it, wrecked on the side of Interstate 10—are included in his movie. In Search of a Midnight Kiss, which follows the dating adventures of a struggling would-be filmmaker, has become a hit on the international festival circuit (it has proved especially popular in Greece) and is receiving some of the best reviews of any independent movie this year. It’s not quite as good as the hype suggests, but it is a beautifully shot and ferociously acerbic comedy, a black-and-white study of gray romantic territory in the age of Facebook hook-ups (see review, page 65).

As he arrived at the Austin airport for the hometown premiere of Midnight Kiss at the Alamo Draft House, the loquacious Holdridge talked with WW about the perils of showstring-budget filmmaking—and the necessary evil of working at Starbucks.

WW: How much of your movie is autobiographical?

Alex Holdridge: Unfortunately, too much. I’ve had a really bizarre, bad streak of luck. It was like, “All right, I’m gonna move to L.A. and I’m gonna do my due diligence in getting that first project set up,” and then my life fell apart. I crashed my car on the drive from Austin to L.A., and that was it. The photo is the real photo of my car upside down on the drive from Austin to L.A. out in the middle of the Arizona desert…. And then, y’know, my girlfriend left, moved to Japan, so I ended up having a little floor apartment in Hollywood with no car and no job. It’s kinda funny: [I’d] go to Starbucks to, like, load up on sugar in my coffee so that I can…go out and do that painful and awful experience of like, “You guys hiring? You guys hiring?” So when you’re single, broke and have no car, at that point I lost it—and got a hernia from that car crash.

Los Angeles sounds a little hellish for you.

It was just of those streaks where you’re just like, “Oh my God, I don’t know.” I had these unpleasant breakdowns, like I refused to apply at Starbucks, I went to one place and I was like, “Fuck that place, man, I’m not gonna apply there, that’s the one place I refuse to apply.” And then I just [had] one of these meltdowns outside, I’m like, “Just don’t be proud, baby, no one’s hiring, just go in there.”

Did you get the job?

No. [It] was soul crushing, it was like the end of 1984 when Winston turns over his girlfriend. It was that exact moment, like, they let him go, right? “You’re done, we don’t have to worry about you now, you’re destroyed. Anything that you were an idealist about is done with. And that’s all we wanted to do, was crack your spirit.” That’s exactly what I felt like, ’cause I went up and was like, “Here you go, here’s my application,” and they go, “Oh no, you gotta go to the job fair downtown and hand it in,” and I was, “I don’t have a car.”

Are you healed up from your car accident?

I’m feeling great now. One of the things as an indie filmmaker, there’s the accident and you’re standing there by the side, and you find a little camera. You’re like, “Well, I may as well take a picture of this, because maybe I could put this in a film sometime.” It’s so hard to stage a car crash and make it look good.