Moose Dreams

Now the film project has mushroomed to 35 cities, where Ruppert and Langston contract with local producers to handle the organizing. Winners from each city compete for a grand prize, which can be a career booster. In 2002, Atlanta filmmaker Richard Sampson and his team, the Boondogglers, won that city's 48 Hour competition with a mystery called "White Bitch Down," which went on to win the grand prize and was aired on the Independent Film Channel.

" 'White Bitch Down' became a calling card for us, saying, hey, look what we can do in two days," says Sampson. The film helped Sampson win the Atlanta Film Festival's Southeastern Media Award, which included a production package worth about $100,000 toward making a feature-length movie. He's at work on the feature now.

Kirk is drooling for the same kind of opportunity. "We've seen the exposure of other teams that have done well" in the 48 Hour Film Project, he says. "And we want that."

Kirk has installed himself in front of his computer, and screenwriter Eric Wargo is gnawing the cap of his pen on the couch in Kirk's apartment. An esoteric German film is flickering on Kirk's pull-down movie screen. For inspiration, Kirk explains.

Kirk has an idea involving a "woman whose husband got killed in the [Iraq] war. Her 40-year-old sergeant husband got re-upped for the fifth time and got shipped off by these wack jobs" called politicians.

If the movie's going to deliver a message, Eric says, there's got to be a plot.

"Okay, you want a message and story. I can do that," says Kirk. But soon his antiwar flick morphs into a tale about a woman whose dog dies. The death of a pet can pack real emotional punch, Kirk explains, petting Daphne, his 2-year-old English setter.

After two hours of discussion, no real story line appears to be emerging. Kirk's latest brainstorm revolves around three characters: a sculptor of gay glass, an avant-garde photographer and a sad woman who sits outside the Hirshhorn Museum. "I'm seeing this clearly now," he says.

Eric throws up his arms. He wants Kirk to embrace a more concrete plot. He points out that there's no linkage among the characters. Eric has some authority in this debate; he studied film at the University of Colorado. Later he got a PhD in anthropology from Emory University.

"I thought I was going to make ethnographic documentaries," says Eric, an editor for a psychology journal in Washington. It's his third year working on a 48 Hour film with Kirk. They met four years ago while collaborating on a documentary called "An Archaeological Search for Jesus." It was the start of both a friendship and a combative working relationship. Kirk continually scolds Eric for not jotting down the torrent of ideas being bandied. Pick up the pen, Kirk sputters. "You're a writer. You're supposed to write."

Eric has learned to shrug off Kirk's outbursts: "Kirk is a brilliant director, but he's got the attention span of a gnat."

Now he turns to Kirk and says: "I'm having a problem with this scene you want to do at the Hirshhorn. What's going on with this woman?"