Movie shot in Forest Hills, Kew Gardens opens Queens fi lm festival
BY GABRIELE HOLTERMANN
Queens World Film Festival
is returning for the 11th
season, from June 23 to July
3, and is opening the festival
with two narrative films at
the Museum of the Moving Image
as well as online via Film
Festival Flix.
One of the films, “Mouse,”
shot entirely in Forest Hills
and Kew Gardens by an all
Queens-based crew, tells the
story of lonely groundskeeper
Michael (played by Joel Bernard
Michael) who deals with
the crushing guilt of a local
murder. Eventually, he loses
himself as he desperately tries
to keep an innocence he never
truly lost.
“Mouse” explores what can
happen to a person consumed
by guilt even though they
haven’t done anything wrong,
but believe their inactions led
to a tragic event.
QNS met up with the crew
at Ateaz, a cozy coffee shop at
116-29 Metropolitan Ave. in
Kew Gardens, to discuss the
film.
Director and producer
Adam Engel, who co-wrote the
script for “Mouse” with Jase
Egan, shared that the “germ
for the film” was based on a
former neighbor, described by
Engel as a sweet, small-statured
woman, who was convinced
that her downstairs
neighbors were shocking her
through the floor.
One day she claimed she
found a screwdriver in her
house that didn’t belong to
her and had Engel’s uncle
stay with her for two days,
who didn’t observe anything
unusual.
Engel gave writer and actor
Egan, with whom he had
co-written the 2014 thriller
“On a Country Road,” the
gist of his idea and then they
began collaborating.
Below, hear more from
the crew about their process.
Some answers have been
edited for clarity and space.
Engel: “As usual, he
Egan starts plugging in his
segments. He helps flush out
and fill in the story.”
Egan: “Usually, what we
work from is Adam’s concept,
and he brought me two things:
He brought me this crazy story
and then he brought me another
concept, which was just
a word, ‘guilt.’ He said, ‘I want
to make a movie about guilt.
How when you feel guilty
about something, you can’t
eat. Your food tastes gray. It
doesn’t taste good. You can’t
sleep. What happens to you?'”
Caption: (From left) Adam Engel, Derek Mindler and Cristina Andrade on location for their film, “Mouse,” in Kew Gardens.
QNS: While developing the
story, you both realized that
the film wasn’t about Engel’s
former neighbor but about
someone else watching this
person?
Egan: “When you’re in the
grip of going through something,
you don’t necessarily
see it. But the person who’s
coming from their life sees
it. And what’s interesting is
when they start to slip and
maybe start to take on certain
characteristics or traits.
We started to play with that.
We played with guilt and how
TIMESLEDGER | Q 12 NS.COM | JULY 2-JULY 8, 2021
it that can lead to things like
paranoia and loneliness.”
QNS: So, Michael witnesses
a murder?
Engel: “He doesn’t witness
a murder. Iris, played by
Caroline Ryburn, calls him
in, very much like my uncle,
and she’s like, ‘Can you please
stay here with me tonight?’
It gets too weird for him, and
he leaves. Then when we see
him, he doesn’t sleep, as he
doesn’t throughout the entire
film. And that morning, he
gets a call from her saying
that the next-door neighbors
— the neighbors she claimed
tormented her — were killed
with a gun, very much like the
one he had seen in her apartment
the day before. Even
though he didn’t do anything,
he feels such tremendous guilt
for not saying anything and
for not doing anything. And
he’s just walking around with
that.”
QNS: How would you describe
your main characters?
Egan: “The main character
is a good person. But also
inactive and always trying to
avoid things, in a way. One of
Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
the things that Engel and I
stumbled across as we started
to do it more was that paranoia
can be a form of narcissism
because you think that
you’re so important, that
some people have it out for
you, that you did something.
And that can be borne out of
something like guilt of not doing
something when you knew
you should have done something,
and it cost someone
else dearly and affected the
world that you live in a very
interesting way.”
Read more on QNS.com.
Costume designer Cristina Andrade shows the overalls worn by
groundskeeper Michael in the film “Mouse.”
Adam Engel, Cristina Andrade, Derek Mindler and Jase Egan brainstorm
at Ateaz.
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