As an Emmy-winning writer and producer for television, Alex Russell has worked on some of the most celebrated and creatively ambitious series in recent memory. With credits on shows like The Bear, Beef, and Dave, he has a résumé that could be mistaken for a list of nominees.
But none of that prepared him for “the Wild West” of indie filmmaking. “Anything can happen,” he said during the press day for his feature debut, Lurker, which he wrote and directed. The film stars Théodore Pellerin (On Becoming a God in Central Florida) as the titular hanger-on of an up-and-coming pop star played by Archie Madekwe (Midsommar).
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“Your movie’s falling apart, it’s coming back together,” Russell said, explaining the trials and tribulations of a small production. “Your cast is there, then it’s not. The numbers are so low compared to the TV that it feels so high stakes — and so low budget.”
But pressure wasn’t necessarily all in his head. Russell first conceived of Lurker as a way of testing himself, seeing whether he could tell a complete story — beginning, middle, and end — in his own voice.
“It was my first chance to kind of explore my own style,” he said. “And in TV, in my case, you’re playing a supporting role. You’re coming up with ideas for other people to either incorporate or reject from their own vision. So when you are the one who has to decide at the end of the day what the line is, that’s a different type of creative muscle.”
After actually putting the script to paper and assembling a team to make it, Russell was thrown headfirst into production in a way that many television writers aren’t exposed to anymore.
“As a TV writer, especially during COVID era, I didn’t get much time on set,” he said. “Like [writers who got into the business then] were some of the first people to not be invited to set. So a lot of this was my first real, physical interaction with filmmaking.”
Lurker, which is being distributed by Mubi, is currently in theaters.
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