Leon (writer/director Roger Majkowski) is a ferociously bitter 30-year-old paperboy (he prefers the term "circulation manager") still living at home with his nagging mother and dope-addled man-boy brother, Anthony. When a doddering customer gives him a cryptic letter before blowing his own brains out, Leon enlists the help of his twisted siblings to solve the mystery. After older brother Gary, a demented cross between Buddha and Machiavelli, translates the letter (it's in Polish), it sends the trio on a hunt for a fortune. Their search leads them to a family of women even more bizarre than themselves. Head of this other household is the hard-edged Sheila. Sheila's sister Meredith seeks relief from the barking and uncontrollable swearing of her Tourettes through a crack pipe. Their mother, Eve, lies in a catatonic stupor, yet locked within her brain are past secrets that may lead to a buried treasure. Buried treasure! Only a movie as frenzied and funny as this one could get away with an old saw like that. Filled with one-of-a-kind characters (Roger Majkowski, especially, is simply amazing as the lunatic Leon) and pitched at a delirious pace, this is an indie version of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World."

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In Attendance Director Roger Majkowski & Producer Elizabeth Helpern

Abandoned Dolls
Karl Staven
1999, 5 min, 16mm

Contact staven@erols.com

After months of delays, your lead actor pulls out the morning of the first day of photography. You have no choice but to step in and play it yourself. Later, when you screen the film for distributors, it is denounced as a vanity project and rejected. Two years go by, you're working at McDonald's. A girl orders a burger and tells you that she saw your movie at a festival and loved it. You smile.

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