January 23, 2004 Print this page

Recent La Salle University Graduate Todd Henderson
Wins Prize at New York International Independent Film Festival

Todd Henderson kept getting phone messages from the New York International Independent Film Festival, and figured it was bad news about the student film he submitted. His work, a 14-minute movie, called A Quick One, was made while he was a student at La Salle University. It turns out the festival's director was trying to reach him to say his movie had won in the thriller category from 30 entrants.

Unfortunately, he couldn't be in New York to accept the prize as he was working on his next project, an ambitious 60-to-90-minute film in which he's using professional actors willing to work for free. He calls it The Space Between, and says it's about five present-day American soldiers who wake up one morning to find the rest of their platoon gone.

He wrote, directed and acted in A Quick One, which he tried to shoot entirely in one take.

"It follows the main character around until he dies, then there's 10 seconds of silence. Then you hear applause and you see a film crew standing around the main character, who gets up. That's when you see it's a film within a film and ties everything together," said Henderson. "The film plays very ironically, and it is subtle in its depiction of a student film, seeing that every student film has guns and death. I just tried to work around it."

Henderson, who was graduated from La Salle in December, recruited friends, classmates and even a neighbor to act in the project. His cinematographer was a high school buddy. Another friend from high school played a supporting role in the film. Henderson says that character was inspired by characters from Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, and Nebraska was inspired by Terrence Mallick's film Badlands. ("Mallick happens to be my favorite director," says Henderson, a double major in Communication and English at La Salle.)

One day Henderson saw his neighbor, Wendel Toland, Jr., waiting for the elevator in their apartment building, and Henderson says he was inspired to cast Toland in the film.

"He plays the messenger of death," says Henderson. "He was really cool and did a fantastic job. He's a big guy, dark with a beard, and when I saw him waiting for the elevator he was wearing a suit and I got the idea to cast him right there."

Henderson received second-place honors in La Salle's Communication Department for best student film. For entering the New York festival, Henderson says he "tinkered with the sound, re-shot the opening scene featuring me and the 'director' Tim MacAtteer. I also reshuffled one sequence featuring the main characters and the one I play in the film."

Brother Gerry Molyneaux, chair of La Salle's Communication department, says "His film includes a film within a film, and that revelation comes as a jolt for the audience. He also includes a long continuous shot that took hours of setting up, and it comes off very well."

"Henderson pushes his performers, gives them room to develop and then uses very tight shots of their faces," says Molyneaux. " That's really demanding a lot of the amateur talents."