Last month the four Fingerhut siblings–Benjamin, Geoffrey, David, and Astrid–made their first feature together. That wasn’t the original plan.
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The feature had to be at least 70 minutes long, and the brothers had proposed a trio of comic short stories about characters with obsessions. “Amy” is about a celebrity-obsessed dog walker with illusions of being discovered at the corner of Clark and Roscoe. “Gerry” focuses on an advertising copywriter morbidly obsessed with his parents’ death. “Heath” concerns a driver’s ed instructor who escapes his mundane routine by becoming a champion ketchup drinker. The title Benjamin came up with for the feature was Down Into Happiness, from a song by the local Irish band the Muck Brothers.
Geoffrey had a BA in film from Columbia College and had helped Benjamin make his earlier films, including one in which their father plays a bum who takes $50 to get kicked in the testicles. Geoffrey had already signed on as a cameraman, but he agreed to direct the “Gerry” segment too.
Benjamin had borrowed Geoffrey’s Edgewater dining room as a set for “Heath.” Seventy or so drained ketchup bottles lay soaking in the bathtub–he wanted the labels off so the bottles would look generic. The five needed for this scene had already been refilled with a palatable facsimile of ketchup made of applesauce, chocolate syrup, and red food coloring.
All three crews made their deadline. When Geoffrey dropped off the finished film at the post office on Monday morning, the receipt read 9:46 AM.
