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| Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories |
A shoestring minimalist production consisting of only two characters,
Michael (Tom Noonan) and Jackie (Karen Sillas), the film is a scratchy, grainy
16mm piece simply focused on a blind date these two characters have in Jackie’s
apartment. Soon we learn these two are
co-workers frequently making small talk who awkwardly nervously embark on their
first date which Noonan and his cinematographer Joe DeSalvo shoot like a horror
film, building an aura that never quite breaks into a scare but maintains a
sense of dread. Told simply over wine
drinking and polite dinner table conversation as their hidden personalities gradually
come to light, the film plays into that nebulous fear of either a date going
poorly or that the person sitting across from you may not be who you think they
are.
A lean-mean indie with shades of talky mumblecore ala James
Toback’s Two Girls and a Guy while channeling a measure of existential
dread that invariably landed Tom Noonan in not one but two Charlie Kaufman
films, What Happened Was… begins ominously before becoming more
claustrophobic as the blind date’s conversation carries on. One of the film’s strengths is how it seems
to shift sides, beginning by fearing the man before eventually trading places
and so forth as the tension continues to awkwardly ratchet itself up. This is accentuated by the film’s editing as
well as the soft score, both rendered by Noonan under pseudonyms, gradually
giving way to scenes that feel like they could burst into horror almost like
waving fresh meat before a wild animal.
While not exactly overtly “horror”, this 1994 Sundance Film
Festival winner of the Grand Jury Prize is cited as one of Ti West’s (X;
Pearl) favorite movies as covered in his Trailers from Hell video. A film that’s simultaneously deceptive and
brutally honest, Noonan’s first stab at mounting a film production remains one
of the most treasured “dark” romcoms ever made.
A film that seems minimal but takes on a vastness as it unfolds, the
film speaks volumes to the working relationship Noonan would eventually forge
with Kaufman (starring in Synecdoche, New York and voicing Anomalisa),
almost functioning as a progenitor to Kaufman.
One of the tensest date movies of all time and one that
seeks to try and put onscreen the frail uneasiness acquainted strangers have
when meeting one another, What Happened Was… is a wonder of stage-to-film
moviemaking that flirts freely with elements of terror and romantic comedy to
give us a truly one-of-a-kind original underrated gem. A movie that could go anywhere and manages to maintain a level of suspense without much of any action, it invariably fostered what would or would not become the working relationship of Kaufman and Noonan. If nothing else, like Kaufman’s works, here
is a film about what people are really afraid of.
--Andrew Kotwicki
