<\/p>\n
Mark Kassen might be best known as Chris Evans\u2019 partner in the \u201cStarting Point\u201d website, which presents both Democratic and Republican points of view on various issues.<\/p>\n
But Kassen is also the actor-producer who dreamed up \u201cPH-1,\u201d a thriller about one terrible day in the life of a besieged political figure.<\/p>\n
Not quite a one-man show,\u00a0Kassen\u00a0directs, co-writes and stars as Payton Burnham, a politician whose luxe Suite 1 penthouse becomes an involuntary prison as he sees his life and career suddenly in ruins as he becomes a social media target and TV news headline.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to do, let\u2019s just say, an entertaining thriller, akin to the thrillers of the 70s,\u201d\u00a0Kassen, 54, said in a Zoom interview. \u201cOne which mimics the cultural moment that we\u2019re in right now with a mistrust in media, in government.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to use my perspective from having created a non-partisan political website and watching how the media interacts with government officials. How the government officials oftentimes change, based on how they either react to, or want to get involved with, or be heard from the media.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the title stands for Penthouse 1, \u201cIf you get into it,\u201d Kassen revealed, \u201cit\u2019s a bit of a double entendre. The crux of the movie is the senator is trying to pass a clean water bill. And pH1 is on the chart in terms of gauging the health of water. Let\u2019s just say it\u2019s a clean water ranking.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Payton\u2019s dramatic day evolves, he\u2019s asked to appear live on a newscast. The film pointedly doesn\u2019t flag his televised inquisition as being from either celebrity.land or Fox News.\u00a0\u00a0But it is pointing at how it all works.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe media in general does request of its elected officials \u2014 and of all of us \u2014 to do things that can help get them noticed. So they can stay on the air, right?<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if you ask me, the question really is, Who am I really taking a shot at?<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously we know something isn\u2019t going to go well \u2014 it\u2019s a thriller. In the beginning, Payton is obsessed with his own self in the media, in social media, in the paper. He\u2019s on TV.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s thinking he\u2019s gaming the system towards what he believes is a good end. His goals are lofty. He is thinking he\u2019s got this whole media winning thing down.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil something changes. As soon as that happens, he starts to slowly realize he is not in control.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really what I\u2019m talking about! It\u2019s more in terms of the dance between those two entities. And how it\u2019s everyone\u2019s responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPH-1\u201d is available on digital and streaming platforms Friday<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bostonherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mark Kassen might be best known as Chris Evans\u2019 partner in the \u201cStarting Point\u201d website, which presents both Democratic and Republican points of view on various issues. But Kassen is also the actor-producer who dreamed up \u201cPH-1,\u201d a thriller about one terrible day in the life of a besieged political figure. Not quite a one-man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2401070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[468809,468808],"class_list":["post-2401069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ph-1","tag-mark-kassen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Marc-Kassen-checks-into-political-thriller-PH-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2401069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2401071,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2401069\/revisions\/2401071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2401070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2401069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2401069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2401069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}