NewEnglandFilm.com

Let’s start with the truth. Boston is not the mecca of cinematic dreams. It’s a truck stop during the pilgrimage to film fame beckoning from beyond New England’s borders. The Hub boasts a thriving creative community seduced by the silver screen, but short on green, filmmaking remains more hobbyhorse than profession. Here, guerrilla filmmaking is the norm. However, Kevin Anderton, founder of Midnight Chimes Productions, is not. And that’s the way he likes it: "We don’t even call it guerrilla. We call it orangutan. We take it up a notch."

Since he hung up his hammer in 1997, Anderton has been doing just that. A stint as a production assistant on "The Good Son" inspired more than a career change — it sparked a metamorphosis. After eight years of building a successful contracting business, he applied to Boston University’s film school. He recalls: "I was always attracted to film but thought it was unattainable. I thought like nine people in the world were doing it and those nine people made every film, and that you had to live in a certain zip code. Home video changed that."

The admissions board rejected him. After all, he had "no film, no portfolio, no nothing — just a desire." This intangible trait, along with sub-par GREs (attributed to uncomfortably tiny desks at the Lowell test site he actually got decertified), underwhelmed the board. Anderton retook the test at Suffolk University, where his wife Eunmi (then his girlfriend of three months) was a law student, and logged a near-perfect score. Shortly after, the couple relocated from the North Shore to Beacon Hill, and he enrolled part-time at BU. When he reapplied, "BU was so impressed that I’d improved so much — and gone part-time for a year and aced my classes — that they were practically compelled to take me." Chalk one up to drive, kids.

A millennium graduate with a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production and two shorts — "Parting Shots" and "First, Last and Security" — where a tool belt had once been, Anderton thought big. Like 19,340 feet big. For the next year and a half, he worked as a production manager for the IMAX documentary, "Kilimanjaro: To The Roof of Africa," gaining experience on an international film that prepped him to "be ready for anything." When the production wrapped, the Andertons were expecting their first child and he was ready. With his wife’s legal practice flourishing, he volunteered to stay home and work nights and weekends. He adds, "But I needed to do something for me."

Enter "Midnight Shorts Collection," a project now nearly two years and more than 20 films in the making. Its beginnings were humble: "I wanted to amass experience, build my reel, and show people that I could write without having to fund a feature." With the longest short a scant five minutes, the rest are "Saturday Night Live"-style parodies, with one exception: "I actually cut it at three minutes." Though the project has grown from one man’s concept to the dedication of an ensemble of over 200, it’s still highly orangutan.

On the eve of the shoot for "Condumb," a phonetic ad spoof, his Assistant Director suffered a death in the family. Having taught a friend’s son the process working on another short film, he invited novice David Cain to fill in. Drawing on his knowledge from the other short, Cain assisted with storyboarding, setting up the camera, gaffing, and script supervision. Anderton was thrilled with his professionalism on set and grateful for the hand. "[Cain] is the smartest 12-year-old kid I’ve ever seen. If he decides to pursue film, he’ll do really well."

When Anderton was a lad of twelve, he was also screening mature films. "My mom didn’t know the meaning of ‘inappropriate for children,’ so I remember going to the Gloucester drive-in and seeing Mel Brooks’ ‘Blazing Saddles’ and making my way through the protesting nuns during ‘Life of Brian.’ You’d see all the penguins outside and this little 12-year-old pleading, ‘Let me through!’" Needless to say, he acquired his taste for the borderline tasteless before he hit puberty. Decades later, he continues to push the limits of taste, challenging traditional conceptions of funny.

Take his headlining short "Celebrity Cheeters," a hilariously offensive inbreeding of the television program "Cheaters" (which documents infidelity and then shows it to the betrayed in the hopes of a massive confrontation) with the infamous story of O.J. Simpson’s wild ride. It’s shameless. It’s murderous. But it gets the biggest laugh. Of all his shorts, Anderton was most concerned about how the over-the-top content of "Cheeters" would be received—and you know when he’s worried, there’s cause. "I had apprehension on ‘Cheeters’ like you couldn’t imagine. I thought it would be like the surrealist movement all over again. I thought, they’re going to go in, rip the screen down and burn down the theater and I’ll be fleeing in exile from filmmaking forever."

That’s exactly what happened to Luis Buñuel, a Spanish filmmaker banished by Franco’s regime. Pardoned for Spain’s centennial celebration, Buñuel was invited to participate. He made 1961’s "Viridiana," the story of a nun who abandons the convent, bunks with her lecherous uncle, and falls in love with him — reading between the lines, a critique of the Catholic church and government. The censors insisted Buñuel reshoot the ending and show them playing a game of cards, not consummating their relationship. He obeyed, but his eleventh-hour submission wasn’t reviewed before the public screening. After the film, "the audience wanted to burn down the theater, because it didn’t matter what they were doing in the end—they knew." He was banned again, never to return.

Daring films like Buñuel’s and Anderton’s ape the world’s absurdity, a source of limitless commentary. His collection skewers everything from courtesy calls to twisted stalker songs. He forces his viewers to rethink their reality, borrowing a page from Jonathan Swift’s "A Modest Proposal," which he paraphrases: "The way to stop overpopulation is essentially to eat babies." He continues, "It’s ridiculous. It’s ludicrous. But the way Swift presents it makes perfect sense. He tells you how you can manipulate the decision process and lobby it enough so that people will rationalize it."

Like Swift, Anderton finds satire in all aspects of life, particularly politics: "Congress passed an anti-spam bill. They’re also putting through a child pornography bill, which states that if you receive child pornography — even if you don’t want it — they could arrest you. So in one year, Congress passed a bill that fails to reduce unsolicited emails and one to punish you for the unsolicited emails you receive. I could eliminate all of Congress tomorrow. I could take $20,000 and go to Russia with Congress’ publicly available email addresses and have them deluged with child pornography. And they’ll all be out of office. Under their law." 

This notion of questioning the world through humor is the "Midnight Shorts Collection," distilled. And while Anderton’s funny bone is a bit fractured, a small army backs him. He raves about the collaboration between cast and crew. In particular, he looks for what actors can add: "Some directors just want actors to be their little monkey, but I respect the collaboration. When actors contribute, I think, ‘This person really does get the joke, they really understand my style, my madness.’" Anderton’s cast makes his production work on its shoestring budget: "The big money I have is all in the talent. Cameras are cameras, lights are lights, but the value is in the actors."

Given his belief in "taking people with you," this project has been a yearlong audition: "If people will work for me for free, those are the people I want to pay." The moment he raises capital, it’ll be all systems go for the feature he’s developed. The film follows a family in shambles, to the point of hating one another, as they erroneously get invited to compete in a show called "American Family" (also the film’s working title). They must come together to win, a dicey prospect for this dysfunctional troupe. Thanks to his current project, he already has 90 percent of his cast.

For now, Anderton’s wrapping post-production for the screening this month. He reflects: "In the end, when everything’s up on the screen, I can’t say it’s mine. It’s all of ours. And we’re not going to change lives with our comedy, but we are going to make people laugh." Including, he hopes, the reason he found the time to devote to this project in the first place — his two-year-old son, Taylor. If it were up to Anderton, "I’d say he could see it whenever, but I have 49 percent of the say. I have to listen to the majority stockholders on that one." My money’s on age 12.