Scoop Me Up
Director: Tom Levin
United States, 2024, 20 min
Shooting Format:RED
Festival Year:2024
Category:Narrative Short
Genres:Comedy, Sci-fi, Nature, Music
Cast:Zack Poitras, Big Spoon
Crew:Writer: Zack Poitras. Producers: Zack Poitras, S. Molly Dominick, Tom Levin.
Email:zpoitras@gmail.com
Synopsis
SCOOP ME UP finds a musician, alone on a cranberry bog, in desperate pursuit of creative inspiration. Then he spots something odd in the middle of a dirt road: a bent spoon. He takes the spoon back to his makeshift recording studio and fixes it.
The songwriter’s act of cutlerian kindness sparks an increasingly surreal, mysterious, and thrilling journey that just might reward his efforts in ways never before seen or imagined.
Trailer
About the director
Tom Levin is a comedy filmmaker who lives in Astoria, NY. He directed and edited Taste of Luxury created by and starring Justin McElroy (MBMBaM, Sawbones), as well as the improvised web series I’m Too Fragile For This. He also directed Men’s Thanksgiving, which was named “Best Comedy of the Year” by No Budge. He's directed work for FXX, Funny or Die, UCB Comedy, and Nerdist. He most recently made the short film Scoop Me Up, written by and starring Zack Poitras (High Science, The Tonight Show), and the comedy documentary The Easy Way featuring Connor Ratliff (Dead Eyes, The Marvelous Ms. Maisel).
Filmmaker's note
On the surface, this movie is about spoons. On a deeper level, Scoop Me Up is about the creative process. How does an artist push through without forcing it? Internally, they must choose to keep going, while remaining open and willing for help from the external world in whatever form it might come.
We started talking about this film on opposite coasts during the height of COVID, when nobody was making anything in person. Zack’s unique script brought us together on an enormous and beautiful cranberry bog in Cape Cod. There was a small and passionate crew who were all hungry to finally work on something creative, and they helped us bring to life something bigger in scope than our time and resources should’ve allowed. We each felt creatively blocked for much of the year leading up to filming this, not unlike the main character. A mysterious spoon spawns the creative breakthrough he's been looking for, and we think that spoon had the same effect on us, too.
This project “scooped us up,” and reminded us why we love filmmaking so much, and we hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it.