American Cinematographer - March 1997 - 55

and agreed
ag
the sho
short.

registered and hail from the DYC.
All three have backgrounds similar
to that of the characters they por¬
tray: Cutanda and Duong were for¬
merly gang members, while Bur¬
ton was jacking cars and selling
drugs at age 12. At the time of film¬
ing, Patton-Spruill had trained the
trio for three months; they lived at
his house throughout the entire
shoot,
ous

as

well

as

of working in
New York
Y
casting and writing
scripts, Patton-Spruill joined forces
with V
Moos' company, Cathartic
Filmw<
Filmworks,

conventions of the "new

Boston

genre was over by turning
side down: the
best friend doesn't

enrolled in

docu¬
strip¬
per) an
and The Gaming Table (Amiri
Baraka's Dutchman transposed in
Baraka
a rave bar) tied for first place at
B.U.'s 'Sumner Redstone Awards
in 1993
1993.

ematic

up¬

Describing the pair's cin¬
style, Moos offers, "We're

word

'nigger' appears in
the movie only six

tration

school where the

concen¬

mainly the Sixties
avant-garde movement. Rob came
was

out of Mel Howard's instruction

in

classic film structure at B.U., so at
the time he was really into the
French New Wave. We had

slightly

different educations, but overall I
think we were both influenced by
the same directors: Scorsese,

Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg,
who through our schooling we
realized were influenced by
Kurosawa, Godard and Truffaut."

"By the time we shot
Squeeze, we had developed a sys¬
tem of communication that really
precluded any need to sit down
and refer [to any films or paint¬
ings]. We talked about the scenes in
of concepts, feelings and
movement. We didn't just say that
we wanted something to be like a
scene in GoodFellas. The only
film that we did reference was
The 400 Blows, for a scene in
terms

which Tyson runs [after he's wit¬
nessed Tommy's murder at the
hands of rival gang leader Derek]."
The first portion of the

times; and the char¬
acter of the youth

provides

Squeeze was shot in six days (over

sort of

hope."
Squeeze had its
world premiere
screening last April

three weekends) in November of
1994. With startup funds of $35,000

personal funds and credit-card
charges, the director and crew shot
the first 25 pages of the script. Afin

at the Los

Angeles
Independent Film
Festival,

was

University's graduate film

tions, Interior
I
Monologue (a
mental
mentary about a Mexican

jack"

it

on sev¬

school. Two of the duo's collabora¬
school,

genre of black cinema. "I thought
that I could make a movie
which would truly say that the

some

and worked

while Ithe latter

scious decision to counteract the

worker

year

production
company. Moos then served as
compa
cineiru
cinematographer on the short
films ]Patton-Spruill directed

Despite the rough up¬
bringing of his three leads, the di¬
rector sought to lend the film a
somewhat positive spin. While
scripting Squeeze, he made a con¬

the

a

eral sh
shorts for the

for the four previ¬

really products of our time. I went
to an art

After

months.

die;

to clandestinely cast

Center: Patton-

Spruill (holding
cup of coffee)
observes

cinematographer
Richard Moos
as

he sets

a

the
Arriflex 35-111
lens

on

camera

manned

being
by

Steadicam

operator Chuck

Papert. Below:
The silhouetted
"PG-13 crew"
make their way
down the

fictional Lime
Street to hawk
rocks of crack

cocaine. Moos

that the
deep emerald
shading is
says

meant to

metaphorically
infer "drugs,
greed, money
and crime."

where

Miramax Films acquired world¬
wide rights to the picture. Accord¬

ing to Patton-Spruill, the film is
slated to be the debut release of
Miramax's urban films division,
Flava Films. The upcoming New

England Film and Video Festival
plans to honor Squeeze with
awards for Best Picture and Best

Cinematography.
Patton-Spruill first made
the acquaintance of his director of

photography/editor, Richard
Moos, while

working

as a

casting

agent at Collinge-Pickman. Moos,
then

a

§

student at the Massachusetts *§

College of Art, had sent a package £
for his first short film, Endocrine £

Secrets, to the agency - without %
success. However, Patton-Spruill |
had overhead Moos' script being £
read

by his superiors, and later J

fished the rejected screenplay out
of the garbage. He loved the story |
so much that he called up Moos £

March 1997

American

Cinematographer

53
American Cinematographer - March 1997

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