Blair Community Collaborates on Film Venture

Faculty members Steven and Judith Kampmann, recent graduate Ryder Sturt ’07 and Blair librarian Holly Newcomb combined their many talents this summer; Steven directed an independent film, BuzzKill, right here in New Jersey before moving on to film in Southern California. Judith and Holly both played roles, while Ryder served as an intern. The exploits of Steven and company are explained by Herald News (Bergen County, N.J.) writer Karen Keller in her August 1 article, “On Location in Clifton.” The Star-Ledger (New Jersey’s largest daily) also carried an article about the film on August 30. (The Ledger article is available on-line for several days.)

Keller wrote, “In an independent film shot this week, it’s a Route 46 pizzeria – not a trendy coffee shop, where writers often go – that provides the setting for a struggling writer trying to jumpstart his creative juices. Forty film crew members taped scenes of the film, BuzzKill, at Bruno’s Restaurant and Pizzeria on Monday and Tuesday. The restaurant…was selected because it was perfect for the ‘strip mall/urban setting’ the crew was going for, said director Steven Kampmann. ‘That off-(Route) 46 feel,’ he said.”

Director Steven Kampmann and lead actor Daniel Raymont.

Keller added, “In one scene, the English-accented writer, played by American actor Daniel Raymont, sits in the pizzeria’s bright orange booths to write. ‘It’s his Starbucks,’ said Matt Smollon, co-writer of the film script. The dark comedy involves a British screenwriter who meets a serial killer while on a cross-country trip, he said. Other local filming locations for BuzzKill include a Totowa gas station on Union Boulevard [where Holly spent the day before the cameras]…Then the crew moves to Warren County, which doubles for parts of the film that are set in Ohio and other parts of the Midwest. The film ends in an L.A. desert. That’s a hard setting to fake, so filming will be done in Southern California, producer Thomas Hanna said.”

The article concluded, “Hanna aims for the film to hit the independent film festival circuits – domestically and internationally – and he will begin searching for domestic distributors in January, he said. Director Kampmann was a writer for the television series WKRP in Cincinnati. Kampmann directed the movies Stealing Home (1988) and The Couch Trip (1988). Also starring in BuzzKill is Saturday Night Live actor Darrell Hammond, said Hanna.”

By the end of August, Steven had “wrapped” in Los Angeles and was due to begin the editing process in New York.

Posted 8/30/07

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