The Sundance Kid

From Newport Mercury, Jan. 20, 2010


The Sundance Kid
Providence screenwriter thinks outside the box about the guy inside the box
BY JENNIFER NICOLE SULLIVAN

In the new thriller “Buried,” Hollywood hottie Ryan Reynolds plays a U.S. civilian contractor buried alive in a box in the Iraqi desert. But during the film’s 94-minutes, he’s the only actor on screen.

That’s it. Nobody else.

So how can a lone beefcake in a box with just a cell phone and lighter be the premise of a $2 million, hold-your-breath thriller worthy to screen at this year’s Sundance Film Festival? The key is the film’s inventive screenplay written by Providence resident Chris Sparling.

“I knew just watching a guy sitting there on the phone is going to get boring if he’s just talking and talking,” said the 32-year-old screenwriter during a recent interview at Empire Tea & Coffee in Newport. “So I knew there had to be constant action, struggle, conflict just like you would in any story. I tried to think of as many possible things that could happen to a guy in this box.”

“Buried” premieres in Park City, Utah, Saturday, Jan. 23, at Sundance — the largest independent film festival in the U.S. — as a selection in the Park City at Midnight line-up, an out-of-competition series.

The idea for Sparling’s pared down story stemmed from lessons learned in his 2005 directorial debut “An Uzi at the Alamo,” (available on Netflix) an independent, feature-length, dark comedy he wrote, produced and starred in that was complicated by a large cast and multiple locations. When he wrote “Buried” in 2007, he kept it as small as possible — one actor and one location — so he could direct it himself on a small budget.

After he began casting for “Buried,” Sparling sent the script on a whim in the summer of 2008 to Aaron Kaplan of Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment in Los Angeles. Kaplan (now Sparling’s manager) loved it and shopped the script around in February 2009, right after the Sundance festival wrapped that year. Producer Peter Safran (“Meet the Spartans” and “Scary Movie”) and Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés took on the script and made it exactly as Sparling (now represented by United Talent Agency) had written it.

The film rapidly went into production last August. Sparling spent two days of the 21-day shoot on the film set in Barcelona, Spain, and hung out with Reynolds (without his wife, Scarlett Johansson), who Sparling describes favorably as a “regular guy.” Sparling said Reynolds — who’s become a sought-after actor since recent success in “The Proposal” and landing the title role in “Green Lantern” — gives a “fantastic performance” despite the tough shoot in a confined location (seven different coffins were used) and lying all day on sand-covered wood that felt like sandpaper, leaving him cut and scraped.

“My wife and I joked,” Sparling said. “I wondered if I was going to show up and he (Reynolds) was going to want to punch me, because it’s like ‘You asshole, you put me in this box for 21 days!’”

Sparling hasn’t seen the completed film, but he viewed a few edited scenes last September and said it’s even better than he envisioned: “I was sitting there with my mouth a little bit open and just staring at the screen like, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me!’”

For Sparling, a 1995 North Providence High School graduate, this is his first major break into the biz. After a two-year stint as a struggling actor in Los Angeles (he had a bit role on “Days of Our Lives”), he returned to Rhode Island and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in criminal justice from Roger Williams University and Bridgewater State College, consecutively — all the while penning screenplays.
He was associate producer on the 2008 documentary “One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur,” did freelance work for Blue Chip Films in Connecticut and teaches screenwriting at Boston University and Emerson College.

Currently, Sparling has two scripts in development — the horror/thriller “Mercy” with Gold Circle Films (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”) and a thriller (title unreleased) with producer Peter Safran.

Sparling, who’s stoked that “Buried” is screening at Sundance just less than a year from when he sold the screenplay, heads out to the festival a day after it begins on Jan. 21 with wife Kerri (pregnant with their first child) and family and friends. The film screens a total of five times and Sparling plans to attend every one.

Before the end of the festival on Jan. 31, the film’s execs should know if “Buried” lands a North American distribution deal. And if it does, the attention will take Sparling’s blooming screenwriting career to the next level.

“I’m just kind of taking it in stride,” said the humble writer. “Just seeing the sort of stuff that’s going on… I’m just kind of a bit overwhelmed… I’m excited.”