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The first Sundance acquisition deal wasn’t Happy Christmas, it wasn’t even close. Back in December, the 90-second short Tim and Susan Have Matching Handguns was bought by Oscilloscope Laboratories.
The film’s description is “love is swapping clips with your spouse in the middle of a three-gun problem.” It premiered this afternoon and plays again this evening in Salt Lake City as part of the Short Competition line up. The best part, though, is you don’t have to be at Sundance to see it. It was one of 15 Sundance shorts selected to also screen on the festival’s YouTube Channel.
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So why did Oscilloscope, which releases approximately ten feature films a year, buy a 90-second film? The company doesn’t have any immediate plans for Tim and Susan, but here’s its co-head David Laub on the reasoning for the purchase:
“We bought it purely out of passion — we thought it was completely unique and very entertaining, and even at its brief running time, it showed a clear and exciting filmmaking voice. We wanted to support and work with the filmmaker, Joe Callander (who has made other shorts we admire and is currently working on a feature), and thought it would be fun and interesting to find a way to get the movie out into the world.”
Three films in Dramatic Competition this year are based on shorts that played at Sundance, including opening night breakout Whiplash. Meanwhile many of the directors with hot features at Sundance 2014 first came on the scene with Sundance shorts, so if Oscilloscope is truly hot on Callander’s potential as a filmmaker, starting a relationship with him now might not be the craziest move.
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