DROP OUT is a true bizarre underground thriller which focuses on a woman called Nippelsuse (Beatrice Manowski) who suddenly finds herself out on the street after breaking up with her hopeless alcoholic painter boyfriend. Broke and alone she sets out on a new career as a private detective, a move that takes in body builders, drugs, murder, sex, prostitution and some ingenious manipulation with a particularly large and offensive looking strap-on…
DROP OUT is available in the UK from Salvation Films
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After working several years successfully in mainstream film and television I got pissed off with family entertainment and comedies about young men in souped up cars. The other fact was that I did not like the large amount of technical equipment and the large number of people involved with the shooting. In 1995 I directed a film shot on Super 35; it took always hours to move the camera and I was standing around getting more and more bored.
The possibility of working fast and cheap on video exited me.
So together with the actress Beatrice Manowski, who I knew from previous work on ‘Manta, Manta’ and the TV-series ‘Und tschüss’, I developed the idea for a low-budget film about a female private detective. Because video was not that advanced at that time we decided to make it the subject of the movie and not to try to make it look like it had been shot on film footage.
In a few weeks we wrote down the plot of sex, coke and sperm, all the things we were not allowed to touch in big-budget mainstream productions.
Beatrice introduced me to Uwe Bohrer, the DOP she knew from their underground classic ‘Nekromantic’ and together we developed the visual style mixing Betacam, DV and Hi 8.
I invested all my savings, borrowed money and to our surprise even the Hamburg Film Council invested something. We persuaded cast and crew to work on deferred fees.
So we were able to start with a small crew and an even smaller budget 4 months after we first had the idea.
I have been asked if the drugs are consumed in the film are real – they are not (because we could not afford them.)
Although we worked very long hours we had a lot of fun and Beatrice enjoyed running naked through the streets of Hamburg wearing nothing but a strap-on. We could break all the rules; nobody was there to stop us.
Because I was busy raising more and more money, producer became my main job and Beatrice took over directing too.
After the shooting I was nearly bankrupt and the postproduction companies had to wait quite a while for their money. This did not stop us from producing the soundtrack under chaotic circumstances on Ibiza.
DROP OUT premiered at the well-known HOF FILMFESTIVAL and we immediately found a large distributor. I later got to know that this company is owned mainly by the church. After we were awarded an over-18 certification they stopped being so supportive.
The film was well received on several festivals and cinemas all over Germany.
Since my experience with DROP OUT, I have been working as an independent writer, producer and director in the UK.
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