Jesse Eisenberg has red hair in the first look at a new movie shot in Syracuse. Deadline released a teaser video from “Manodrome” on Thursday, showing the Oscar-nominated actor in a local restaurant with Adrien Brody (”Blonde”), Ethan Suplee (“My Name is Earl”), and Evan Jonigkeit (“X-Men: Days of Future Past”).
Eisenberg plays Ralphie, a troubled factory worker with a pregnant girlfriend (Odessa Young) when he meets “a mysterious family of men.”
“Like, trying to stay positive right now, of course,” Ralphie tells the other men in the clip. “I’m just trying to keep my options open in that blank slate.”
The scene was shot last winter with South African filmmaker John Tengrove, who wrote and directed the new movie. Tengrove told Deadline that the script was partially inspired by the U.S. culture wars that led to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, though he avoids comparing the film’s fictional group to alt-right organizations like the Proud Boys.
The film is not explicitly set in Syracuse, which Tengrove said was intentional.
“There are one or two tiny hints, that we are somewhere in Upstate New York, but it was very much intended not to be representative of a specific place,” he told Deadline. “For me, it’s a kind of fever dream. That was the word that I’ve always used. We’re inside Ralphie’s head, inside a version of America that is projected and imagined. His experiences aren’t always reliable in the sense that we don’t always know what’s real and what’s not. All of that was part of reaching for this feeling that I talked about before, that the world was kind of insane and there was a kind of madness, percolating under the surface.”
“Manodrome” will premiere at the Berlin film festival this month, competing in the International Competition.
The film is produced by Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s Felix Culpa. Gerry Pass, who was part of the local Lou Ferrigno horror movie, “The Hermit,” that shut down last summer, is also listed as a co-producer.
It’s at least the third production Brody has been a part of in Central New York, along with the recent thriller “Clean” and the documentary “Stone Barn Castle.” He bought the 19th century Stone Barn Castle, located 30 miles west of Utica in Vienna, N.Y., more than a decade ago and chronicled the project in 2015.
Jonigkeit previously appeared in “The Night House” with Rebecca Hall, which also filmed in the Syracuse area.
A widespread release date for “Manodrome” has not yet been announced. Click here to watch the teaser video.
Source : Syracuse
