Post by Joel Franke

When I was nine, I made a hand-held video camera out of cardboard, electric tape, and checkers. I think my mom may still have it in storage, tucked away next to my green blankie. I made one film about an amputee and a his tall, blonde nurse with a heart of gold. (Dr. Mindbender took home the well-deserved Play Doh Oscar for Best Actor, and I walked away with one for Best Costume Design.) But early the next year, I played my first season of baseball and put away the camera and my cinematic aspirations for good. Fortunately, the future of the film-making industry didn’t rest on my shoulders.

“Happy Birthday, Harris Malden” is a Sweaty Robot film. (Sweaty Robot is a Philly-based production company formed by five Philly guys, most of them Drexel University grads.) In it, we meet Harris Malden, a regular guy on the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday — well, regular except that he wears a fake mustache that makes Groucho Marx’s pre-Love Happy grease-paint whiskers look convincing. Everything is going well until an outsider shows up at Harris’ birthday party, and Harris breaks down. (Also, there may or may not be a dragon, but you’ve got to tell me where it is.)

The film has already been shown at CineVegas, the Austin Film Festival, and Woodstock. Now they’re hosting the Philadelphia premiere of their movie at Drexel University’s Bossone Auditorium — in no-joke HD — October 23, 2008 at 7:30; doors open at 7:00. It’s a free screening. Free. No money. That’s as cheap and as good as it gets, folks.

Check out www.happybirthdayharrismalden.com for the trailer and more info.

Happy Birthday, Harris Malden @ Bossone Auditorium
3128 Market St, Philadephia, PA
www.happybirthdayharrismalden.com