|
Argus Courier Online
http://go.arguscourier.com/archives/gabe040804.html Recent grad finds success as filmmaker Gabriel Sunday's two short videos will premiere Sunday at Wine Country Film Festival August 3, 2004 By LOIS PEARLMAN
Just two short months after graduation from Petaluma High School, Gabriel Sunday is finding success in the super-charged world of Hollywood filmmaking. On Aug. 7, Sunday will appear at the Wine Country Film Festival in Sonoma for the premiere of two short teen safety videos which feature him as director, cameraman and actor. The Cinnabar Theater veteran is also in the middle of shooting a full length film in which he stars as a boy considering suicide, and last week he was engaged in the final round of auditions for a Disney Channel movie. "Things have really happened fast," Sunday said in a telephone interview. "I'm doing all sorts of stuff. It's all so different from Petaluma." But the young man, described by his manager as "the next Robin Williams," might still be in Petaluma trying to figure out how to break into show business if he hadn't gone to a local film conference with his mother, Laura Sunday. That was where he met Eric Adams, a Penngrove-based freelance writer, and a member of the Sonoma County Juvenile Justice Commission. Sunday told Adams about the Halloween haunted house events he had created at Little Hills farm for the past few years, and Adams hired him to direct a 30-second public service announcement with a group of at-risk teens in Sebastopol. The result is 'Isolation," written, shot and performed by youngsters from Journey High School, directed by Sunday, and sponsored by the Sonoma County Juvenile Justice Commission. Without a word of dialogue, it depicts the tragic results of teen suicide, and provides a hotline number for help. The Journey High students chose the topic because there is little information about teen suicide in the mass media. A Petaluma family who had experienced a suicide let the group use their house to shoot the video, and the teen production company employed such innovative measures as blocking out the sun with a blanket to compensate for its small budget. Adams, who oversaw the project, said it will be broadcast on greater Bay Area television stations as a public service announcement, and may be distributed nationally by the Los Angeles-based non-profit organization, Regener-ate. But that's only the beginning of Sunday's lucky break. The head of Regenerate, David Miller, was so taken with Sunday's multiple talents as performer and filmmaker, that he decided to cast him in the leading role of a feature length film Miller is making called "My Suicide." Faster than Sunday -- who is also a magician, juggler, singer, dancer and comic -- could pull a rabbit out of a hat, the young man found himself in L.A., working on "My Suicide" and a 14-minute film about teen drunk driving called ".08". "I had been casting for a few months. We needed a very specific lead (for 'My Suicide')," Miller said. "Gabe was perfect." Sunday described "My Suicide" as a 'mockumentary" about a teenager who is bored with school and announces that he is going to commit suicide on camera. He said the place where he is living in L.A., a guest house owned by one of Miller's friends, is also the set for the film in which he is both an actor and a cameraman. "So every time I have an idea, I can just get up and film myself," Sunday said. When he is not working on the film, Sunday is honing his stand-up comic skills at such places as L.A. Connection and the Ice House. He also spent last weekend auditioning for the lead in a made-for-TV movie called "The World's Greatest Kid Magician," and is on the short list for the part. While all of this good fortune is enough to send any young man into fantasies of a glorious future, Sunday is matter-of-fact about his new life in Tinsel Town. "I knew after a while I had to leave Petaluma. There's only so much you can do there." (Contact Lois Pearlman at lpearlman@arguscourier.com)
|