D.C. Cousins, Swimming in Film's Big Pool
'Radical' Arrives in Cannes With High Hopes and Low Flash

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 21, 2008

CANNES, France, May 20 -- There are big films and little films here; documentary films and animated films; films with movie stars and films from Belgium. But by far the most numerous are the many, many films that no one will ever see. This is the story of Dan and Guy, who came to the Cannes Film Festival with one of the latter.

Deep in the convention center, which is called the Palais here, there is a sprawling supermarket, where distribution deals are negotiated in 17 different languages, and in one corner -- as far away as psychodemographically possible from lobster lunches on the terrace at the Hotels Martinez or Majestic with Woody or Clint -- is the place called the "Short Film Corner."

The corner is where young and inexperienced filmmakers come to present their abbreviated labors of love. There are 2,148 shorts this year. Assuming a 10-minute running time for each, this is 358 hours of film. So you see: It is impossible. The big films of Cannes are shown in the 2,300-seat Grand Théâtre Lumière to an audience dressed in formal attire. At the Short Film Corner, you watch films in a cubicle, alone, like at work, on a computer.

We find Dan Boylan and Guy Taylor at the film supermarket, beneath the stairs. "We're in the basement," Boylan says. "Charging our phones." The two, who live in Washington, are here with "A Free Radical," a 24-minute movie, directed, produced, written by and starring Boylan and Taylor, as a pair of Middle East terrorists.

"It's outrageously funny slapstick," says Taylor, 31.

"Like Voltaire," says Boylan, 37. "There's that kind of poetry."

"But like a mockumentary."

"But about terrorism."

Who is the terrorist? "Nib Nedal," says Boylan. He spells the name two or three times, and we're like, Ned? Medal? Then we see it: Nib Nedal? Bin Laden.

"There are no references to Islam in the film," says Boylan.

"We're not trying to stir them up," says Taylor.

"We're from Boston."

We're now walking across the street from the Palais to get them some cigarettes. Dan and Guy are the sons of two mothers who are twins. They grew up together, like brothers, in a double-decker house in Medfield, outside Boston.

They filmed their movie in Buenos Aires, Washington and Cape Cod. They spent their own money. In the Cape Cod scene, Nib Nedal draws in the sand the eternal question: "Does Mommy Love Me?"

"So there's a sexual element," he says.

Taylor is puffing on a cigarette and we're trying to get a table at a chaotic pizza restaurant. "We know at Cannes that we're small fish in a sea of whales," Boylan says. Actually, more like plankton. A small fish would be a $5 million film from Flanders.

They don't appear to have slept much. Boylan mentions that Gabriel García Márquez once said the ultimate bad luck comes from having sex with your shoes on. "That's why I put that in the film," he says.

"We want foreigners to see it," Taylor says. "So they know Americans have a sense of humor."

"Not to say that Arabs don't have an excellent sense of humor," adds Boylan.

No big surprise, they are self-trained in the film arts. "I did a little bit of video for a Web site," says Taylor, who worked as a journalist for the Washington Times. "I did a commercial in Azerbaijan," says Boylan, who worked abroad for news wire services and won a Fulbright scholarship. They borrowed a camera from Taylor's wife, who works for C-SPAN.

Why? Why are they here?

"Guy was turning 30 and flipped out," says Boylan. "Guy said, 'Why don't we write a screenplay together?' and I said, 'Forget that, let's make a movie.' "

Their friends raised $6,000 to send them to Cannes by hosting a silent auction at somebody's place in Dupont Circle. They raffled away tickets to the Nationals, a weekend in Shenandoah, a case of wine.

Boylan explains, "Orson Welles said film is the most expensive box of paints you can get your hands on. So that's the reason Guy and I are in the film." Boylan plays Nib Nedal and Taylor is Young Coconut, his protege. Trained actors? Neither. "It's not that hard because the characters are knuckleheads," says Boylan. "We saved our money for the look of the film," Taylor says, a film that includes a scene in which the two attack a pile of fruit with machetes. In another, they behead bananas.

The cousins appear dehydrated, discombobulated, they are speed-talking. The pizzas arrive. What do they hope to accomplish? "They gave us a badge for Cannes," Taylor says. "It's like we got a ticket to the Olympics. Maybe we could sub for someone running the 50-yard dash."

"Or push the bobsled," says Boylan, who adds, "Look, I'm not here to see Brad Pitt. I'm here to push my press releases to the Arab media." Indeed, they are international in scope. Their trailer for "A Free Radical" and their two other shorts is available in French, Spanish, English, Arabic and Turkish.

Why Turkish? "You never know," says Boylan, who met Tommy Lee Jones at the airport in Nice and pressed a film flier into his hand. "I invited him to see the short. He thanked me and told me good luck."

Their mission: Getting a molecule of attention. "Our thought is we use Cannes to learn the ritual," Taylor says. Do people ever buy short films? "No," he says. They have a cousin who sells insurance for racehorses. He may have an interest in financing future projects.

In Cannes, the cousins are introducing themselves to distributors in regional overseas markets. "We have spent time with some Bosnians," Boylan says. "We're going to talk to people over at the Dubai tent." Their immediate dream would be to make a movie for $100,000 that would go straight to DVD. They are doing this full time. They work out of Boylan's studio apartment in Washington.

The official Cannes world premiere of "A Free Radical" is scheduled for Thursday at 3 in the afternoon. "We want to fill the room," Boylan says. How many seats are in the room? Boylan thinks there are nine seats. "Our feeling is we can get more than nine people," Boylan says. They'd like 15 people to come, so some would be turned away. That might generate additional buzz.

Their film? We watched it, alone, in a cubicle. We won't spoil it for you. You need to come to Cannes like everybody else and not see it for yourself.