The School of Cinematic Arts and Wolfe Releasing
invite you and a guest to a special screening of

THE NEW TWENTY

Written by Chris Mason Johnson
and Ishmael Chawla
Directed Chris Mason Johnson

Followed by a Q&A with Chris Mason Johnson

  8:15 P.M. on Wednesday, November 11th

SCA 112, George Lucas Building
School of Cinematic Arts Complex
900 W. 34th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90007


FREE ADMISSION. OPEN TO ALL.

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ABOUT THE NEW TWENTY

Writer-director Chris Mason Johnson's award-winning first feature charts the lives of five New Yorkers, a mix of gay and straight best friends about to turn thirty. Bound together since college, the group's tight relationship is threatened when an older, charismatic man joins their ranks and lures the alpha of the pack into a new business venture. With emotionally vivid performances and nuanced characters, The New Twenty paints the portrait of a generation living the highs and lows of a Wall Street world destined to disappear overnight.

The year is 2006 and prosperity seems unending: two of the five are investment bankers, another works in advertising, another does freelance database design, and only one of the five might be called a slacker. But they all suffer from, as loner Felix puts it, "a touch of existential malaise courtesy of late capitalism. You know, the usual." So if money isn't the root of their discontent, what is? Whatever they're searching for - love, meaning in work - they may not find it in each other. On TV, friendship lasts forever. But in real life...? Starring Bill Sage (Mysterious Skin), Terry Serpico (Michael Clayton), Nicole Bilderback (Bring It On), Colin Fickes (Transformers), Ryan Locke (American Gun), Thomas Sadoski (Tony nominee,  Reasons To Be Pretty), Karen Olivo (Tony winner, West Side Story).
 

Provided courtesy of Wolfe Releasing. Running Time: 92 minutes.

Now available on DVD, Netflix and iTunes.

To learn more about the film and to view the trailer, click here.


ABOUT CHRIS MASON JOHNSON (Writer, Director, Producer)

Chris began his career as a dancer: he was a soloist with the Frankfurt Ballet in Germany, a member of the Feld Ballet and Lar Lubovitch Dance Companies, and performed alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov in the White Oak Dance Project. Chris then attended Amherst College where he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Film and Video studies. While at Amherst he created a series of experimental videos (Michael's Dance, Letter to Tennessee) that drew on his dance background and screened at festivals nationwide. He also studied acting at the HB Studio in New York and performed Off-Broadway and in sketch comedy improv at the original Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.

Chris went on to work as Head of Development at Open City Films in New York (Three Seasons, Chuck & Buck, Lovely and Amazing), and as a Script Editor and Analyst for Miramax, Dimension, Disney, ABC Family and Fine Line Features. He wrote, directed and edited the short film Do You Love Me? He then co-wrote, produced, directed and co-edited (under the pseudonym "Adam Raponi") his award-winning first feature, The New Twenty, which was released theatrically in March 2009, on DVD through Wolfe Video in June 2009, and will have a broadcast debut on MTV Logo in fall 2009. Chris' second feature, Skirt, a comedy about gay marriage that he co-wrote with former screenwriting student Kate Stayman-London, is currently in development. Chris has taught dance at UCLA and screenwriting at Amherst College and Rutgers University. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

On the gay/straight mix:

In The New Twenty, I depict gay/straight friendships between young men that are free of the homosexual panic jokes and unrequited love conflicts that usually dominate the screen. The fact is, gay/straight friendships (minus the drama) are more and more common for young adults, especially the urban and educated. We may not have reached a "post-gay" moment yet (Prop 8, anyone?) but we're getting there. The casual attitude toward gay/straight bonding for characters like those in The New Twenty might be summed up as: what's the big deal?

And yet, despite my insistence on the easy-going nature of this mix, I knew homophobia had to play into my story, since our brave new world does have its share of it. Something that runs so deep must leave a trace, but what kind of trace? The answer came in two ways: first through my antagonist, "Louie," the older venture capitalist who helps young alpha-male "Andrew" launch his new career, and who is blatantly if amusingly homophobic; the second through the more subtle discomfort my male characters express without necessarily knowing it, through humor. In other words, homosexual panic used to lead to violence, now it leads to jokes.

On topical relevance:

The characters in The New Twenty are ready to move on and grow up, even if they don't know it yet. As it happens, their ironic and somewhat tortured self-involvement coincides with what we now see as a particularly ugly chapter in America's financial markets history (two of the principal characters are bankers). For quite a while our country has encouraged its best and brightest to go into banking, and that hasn't turned out so well, to say the least. In The New Twenty, my characters struggle with life choices that feel empty or cynical, but they either don't have the courage to make a change or don't realize they need to. Perhaps luckily for them (in their fictional future), the whole financial edifice comes tumbling down just a couple short years after the story ends. A title at the head of the film - "2006" - locates this narrative in the very recent, but very different, past.

On the ensemble form:

I've always been drawn to ensemble or multi-protagonist films. For me, stories with a cross-section of characters and multiple viewpoints have a kind of existential poignancy that strikes a nerve. Good ensemble stories suggest how small, how mortal, how interdependent we all are. They contextualize characters more fully within a social reality, and show how they're controlled by environment as much as driven by individual will. The New Twenty is an ensemble drama about five friends nearing thirty who've remained close since college. Their extended family has outlived its usefulness. It's time to move on. Leaving that first circle of friends is like leaving family. It's not always easy. The New Twenty is what the title suggests: a rather late coming-of-age (ensemble) story.

-- Chris Mason Johnson