Shooting under the gun

Everyone else was jealous, but filmmaker Chris Aaron couldn’t believe his luck, or lack of it. Contestants in the annual New Orleans 48 Hour Film Project must draw their genres out of a hat, literally, and he couldn’t have been less thrilled with the style fate shackled him with. He doesn’t even like C.S.I.

“I hate the cop and detective genre completely,” Aaron says. “It’s just not my thing.”

But it had to become his thing, and fast. The short film was due two days later. His first attempts to sketch a plot with actors Dixie Taylor and Cheryl Singleton came out like jokes: “A cop walks into a bar…” After five hours of brainstorming, nothing solid stuck.

Aaron tried to sleep that night, but with the deadline approaching, he couldn’t. Then his wife Kameron suggested the subjects be former cops and middle-aged women who could comment on the prevalent discrimination of their day.

What resulted is Waiting for the Man, a rambling, Altman-esque black and white film that follows two former policewomen on a very unusual stakeout. Aaron shot the film at Teddy’s Juke Joint in Zachary one evening and stayed up editing all night.

Audiences loved its sly off-the-cuff humor. Waiting for the Man won the audience award and a best acting award before being named runner-up for best overall film out of dozens of other rapid-fire projects.

“We had to throw it all on the line and get it done, no time for rewriting, only a few takes,” Aaron says of the unusual nature of the project. “But I liked being forced into that situation. It was cool and productive, and it’s something—a cop movie—that I never would have done otherwise. I’m always trying to get out of my own head and try new things.”

Since then Aaron has developed two shorts and is prepping a feature-length drama for 2009. To see Waiting for the Man and more of his work, visit treetopmediaonline.com.