LOCAL BOYS MAKING GOOD

Liars Club gets an extension

By Sam Pfeifle

PACK Oê LIARS: Bob Marley, Johnny Clark, and Amy Jo Johnson.

For a movie made in a total of 21 days, Liars Club is getting a pretty good reception. Though it’s an indie film, made on an indie budget, with no-name actors (other than Bob Marley, of course) Maine-native, director, and co-writer Bruce Cacho-Negrete was able to convince Hoyts Cinemas’ New England booker to take a flier on it and give it one of the South Portland Clarks Pond screens. People seem to like it. The Press Herald’s Marty Meltz sure did, but, then again, he liked Pearl Harbor.

Perhaps the best indication of how the film’s doing, however, is its record at the box office. Outgrossing every new release in its second week except Shallow Hal — which has the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow — it’s done so well that Hoyts has agreed to extend the film’s run for a previously unagreed upon third week. That’s big stuff.

“It’s doing the business,” says Clarks Pond manager Dave Goodwin. “It’s staying because it improved its business from first week to second week. It actually went up.”

“We exceeded everyone’s expectations,” says Cacho-Negrete. “We built an audience. The second week was bigger than the first week, and that essentially never happens with films.” He attributes the film’s success to word of mouth. “People think it’s funny.”

But the third week has portents beyond a good buzz. It has created coveted industry interest in the flick. “A few large distribution firms have asked to screen the film,” says Cacho-Negrete, though he can’t reveal which ones. “The way independent films get sold is through producer’s reps. There are basically three that are the best in the business, and one of them expressed interest in representing the film.” That’s a big deal.

And all of this is the more impressive when you consider that “What wound up on film is radically different from what we scripted because we ran out time,” says Cacho-Negrete, “and I had to think of things off the top of my head just to fill gaps.”

For example, “There’s a scene toward the end, it’s really a linchpin, with Bob Marley and Johnny Clark. Bob is sort of Johnny’s misogynistic, advice-giving friend. Johnny has just gone through this run of bad luck, and we were supposed to have this big scene with his friends consoling him, but we ran out of time. So I just scribbled out 30 seconds of dialogue and put them out on the street and just had them talking and walking. And it turned out great. Thank God they could memorize the lines in like five minutes.”

How long will Liars Club stick around? Well, with Thanksgiving weekend just around the corner, it’s going to really have to smoke the box office this weekend. If that happens, don’t be surprised if there’s a regional or national release in the not too distant future.