Film Fanatic

Todd Sklar embraces his slacker style in his first full-length feature.

Written by Meagan Savage
Todd Sklar is like any other 20-something dude you see on the street. He wears jeans and sneakers, his speech is casual and conversational, he loves eating, and he’s been to more than a dozen cities in the course of six weeks promoting a movie he wrote, directed, and starred in. Okay, that last part probably threw you a bit.

“Box Elder” premiered March 3, 2008 in Columbia, Missouri as Sklar’s first full-length feature film. “It was interesting because it was a first for everybody who worked on the film,” Sklar says. Most of the cast had acting experience in the form of walk-on roles on TV shows, but they had never played a prominent character before. The crew had some technical experience, but everybody had to take on additional responsibilities. “We were under-staffed, and under-resourced,” Sklar says, “but we went through it together.”

Sklar says the moving-making experience brought those involved closer together. “We really were like a family,” Sklar says. “We were all there for each other, and just having a blast with it.”

The movie follows “four dudes in college on the road to nowhere.” They are four best friends who break-up, mess up, and eat loads of sandwiches. Sklar, a recent college grad and sandwich lover, says it was good to make a movie about a subject he was still so close to, particularly for his first full-length movie. “I wanted to make something I could make,” he says. “It was a lot of fun pulling it off and getting away with it.”

As if it’s not challenging enough to write, direct, and star in your own movie, Sklar also had to figure out how to distribute and promote the film. Distribution wasn’t too big of a challenge since “the film was practically conceived around the concept of touring it like this,” Sklar says. That’s not to mention it’s far cheaper to distribute and tour with the film yourself than to pass it off to the distributor, who may also take creative liberties with the final product.

Publicizing the film is what Sklar found to be the most difficult part of the process. “We started out by just cold calling people and asking favors, but then that got way too out of hand and we started having massive inaccuracies in stuff that was coming out about us,” he says. Sklar and his crew didn’t know how to fix things like that and made the decision to bring on a publicist. “He’s a machine,” Sklar says.

Sklar isn’t totally new to the filmmaking biz, though. He made a smaller, shorter film called “Caught Naked in a Public Place” in 2005. “It kinda sucked,” he says. “I just wanted to see what I could make. It was more of an experiment.” That may be, but Sklar’s little “experiment” was an Official Selection at the 2006 South by Southwest Film Festival, an Official Selection at the 2006 Canadian World Film Festival, and an Official Selection at the 2006 DMC Film Festival.

Despite graduating from the University of Missouri with a degree in theater, Sklar discovered the world of motion pictures through a combination of stimulating English and film courses, and an inspiring professor. Sklar found the French New Wave films particularly appealing, his favorite of which is French film pioneer Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows.” He says he tries to utilize that style of filmmaking along with humanist comedy for his projects.

Sklar views filmmaking as the ultimate act of self-expression and communication. “It’s really about making people smile,” he says. As for future projects, Sklar is hoping to finish a project he started before “Box Elder,” but aside from that and the tour, “eating the next sandwich. That’s basically it for me.”

Check out Boxeldermovie.com for more on Sklar and his crew.

Copyright ©Drake Magazine Online 2008