Written and directed by ELI Speigel
Produced by Joshua Rosen, Dan Feldman Green, & Zack Khan
A disgruntled film production assistant, Sam, carries out menial tasks handed down to him from his out-of-touch production manager. His final task of the day? To drive home the unusually young and abrasive producer, Sarah. During the car ride, Sam reveals his dreams and aspirations, but he is confused and frustrated with the unclear career paths in Hollywood. Enviously, he asks Sarah to reveal the secret is to her success. Sarah agrees to reveal her secret, but in exchange Sam must first fulfil a strange request.
ABOUT THE FILM
Mayonnaise premiered at the Naked Mountain Independent Film Festival in New York, and had its Canadian premiere at the Toronto Shorts International Film Festival. It was also Semi-Finalist at Hollyshorts & Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival, both of which are Academy Award qualifying. Mayonnaise was nominated for Best Comedy at the Lonely Wolf Film Festival and the Climax Critics Awards. Veronika Slowikowska was Nominated for Best Actress at Film In Focus for her role as the sadistic producer. It also screened at the Pendance Film Festival.
ABOUT THE FILMmaker
Eli Speigel is a freelance director and editor born and raised in Toronto. His work spans from comedy shorts to sizzles for global toy companies, documentaries to music videos, talk-shows to advertisements and so on & on… & on.
Eli studied theatre and philosophy at the University of Guelph, but after being told that no one would be interested in the stories he wanted to create, he soon left the world of theatre behind him to pursue film.
In 2015-2017, Eli ran around with a camera and some friends and made some short films that he's a little embarrassed of now, but it lead to him creating the web series talkshow, Liver Than Live, which NOW magazine said "thrives on spontaneity by putting live performances at the forefront" and that's... pretty good! In 2018/2019, Eli directed and edited the web series, Blood, which premiered at the New York City Web Fest.
In 2020, his short film, Stain, participated in the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival, and later won Best Concept at the Lonely Wolf London Intl Film Festival, as well as being included in the IMDb Top 10 Nominees for Best Short Film. We’ve previously featured Stain in our Kino Short of the Week series.
Currently Eli has been editing for the YouTube channel, Dan and Riya and shooting for How to Cake it. This year Eli’s also released his feature-length cinéma-vérité film, Plains.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH ELI
Q: Welcome back to our Short of the Week series. What have you been up to since we last featured your film Stain?
A: Good to be back. Around the time Stain was shot, I shot a feature-length quasi-documentary called Plains with Romanne Walker. That will hopefully be streamable later this year. During COVID/lockdown-ish times, I made a short documentary called Tarana Ding Dong. Since then I’ve been gigging as an editor, director and videographer, and was able to save up some money to make Mayonnaise. And then in June, I hope to shoot a very short short, and then hopefully get approved for a grant to shoot a bigger short in the fall.
Q: Tell us about the genesis of Mayonnaise. What inspired this film?
A: Mayonnaise is an amalgamation of experiences from my time working as a production assistant in the strange and busy world of commercial film sets in Toronto. Some of these experiences come from as far back as 2015, so I wrote the script based on how these things felt rather than trying to recreate the situations verbatim. I let the fallibility of my memory and some of "what-if" daydreams dictate the action and warp the stories into something more absurd, but also more involving for the viewer.
Q: Mayonnaise appears to be birthed out of the very real struggle of people trying to break into the creative industry, searching for answers or their big break, and instead always finding people who want to take advantage of them, so... What’s the secret? What the fuck am I missing here? What ass am I not kissing? What inbox am I not stuffing with pathetic solicitations?
A: HA! The response to those questions lies in the conclusion of the film! The only commentary I can give is that the search and pursuit of the “big break” typically places value in the wrong places and makes yourself vulnerable to be taken advantage of by people faking auspiciousness. Or worse, you take a job believing it will provide you with the means for upward mobility despite the fact there is little evidence of such a thing. I stayed in shitty jobs (like being a production assistant) because I told myself I was working towards something greater, when in reality I was just in denial about having a dead-end job. It feels odd to say this as a person without a “big break” but I’ve felt real value in sticking to my guns and creating art that I want to see, and cultivating a community of energized and likeminded others that want to see and make weird videos and movies.
Q: You have a very unique sense of humour, and clear voice and style as an artist. How have you worked to develop your voice in an authentic way that helps your work stand out in a crowd?
A: Thank you. I guess I try to embrace the thoughts and ideas that scare me or freak me out. Creatively though, that kind of sounds like I’m embracing being possessed or something. When I have a weird dream/daydream, intrusive thought, or just a memory of something strange happening to me, I try to write it down, visualize it, and then format it into a script. Once it’s written down, there’s an opportunity for me to start putting together bigger ideas that pertain to psychology or philosophy… or just something that makes me laugh. Fleshing these things out is a way I can come to terms with any kind of darkness in my life or beyond… and using comedy to laugh at darkness is the best way I know to have catharsis.
Q: What obstacles did you overcome while in the making of this film?
A: TIME AND MONEY! It’s the killer of creativity in film (and probably most things). Being on set is stressful because it’s hard to push past these glaring worries and just focus on making the film the best it can be. I would have liked to spend more time shooting this movie, an extra day even… but it was simply WAY out of the budget, and I was mostly spending my own money. I overcame this by doing what I could with what I had and asking a (great) crew of people to work a little harder and longer in those two days than they had probably anticipated. After we finished filming, I had to work a bunch of extra jobs so I wouldn't go into debt.
Q: Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences. Did you do the festival route? If so, how did Mayonnaise fair on the circuit? Any highlights? Or have you taken an alternate approach to getting your work seen?
A: Much like my other short, Stain, the festival circuit yielded some pretty disappointing results and more money spent than I care to admit. I could rant a whole documentary’s worth of material on how terrible it is to be an independent filmmaker with a short film trying to get into festivals, but I’ll spare you. That being said, I do have a lot of appreciation for programmers such as yourself that showcase short films publicly and tastefully. It’s a great alternate route to the traditional festival circuit. The highlights would be watching Mayonnaise at a few local festivals in Toronto and seeing the positive reaction of audiences. It’s also been great meeting other local filmmakers at those events.
Q: You recently premiered your debut feature this year, a cinéma-vérité style film called "Plains". What can you tell us about it and how have you found making the leap from shorts to features?
A. It's more my collaborative partner's project than mine. I was the DoP and the two of us went out to a small fishing town in South Shore, Nova Scotia to document the lives of our two friends that were living there. My partner, Romanne, saw an interesting premise in that our friends are these two 28 year old art school graduates designing political MORPG games in a small fishing town where the prevailing occupation is lobster fishing with families whose presence there dates back to pioneer times. It was very bare bones, very cinema-verite. Just two people running around with a camera. We shot it in the summer of 2019. The COVID lockdowns in early 2020 saw everyone involved moving to different parts of the country and world (except for me lol) and the post-produciton process got put on hold for a long time. We were able to finish in 2022, premiered in Toronto this February, and it will play again at the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival in June. Hopefully after it will be available to stream. I left it out of my previous answers because this isn't REALLY how I would make the jump from shorts to feature. If I were to do a feature, it would be narrative and require a lot more than just two friends filming two other friends. It was a very cool opportunity ,and I'm glad we seized it and were able to churn out an hour of really visually interesting stuff.
Q: What do you think is the biggest challenge short filmmakers face trying to break into the industry?
A: TIme and money again. I was listening to a local filmmaker and artist named Isaac Roberts talk about his process, and he said something along the lines of: meet yourself where you’re at rather than shelling out for the best equipment. He might not have said it like that but it’s how I've internalized it and remember it. I used to think that I had to shoot on an expensive camera with great lenses, have a big grip and lighting package and lots of crew in order to be taken seriously by the gatekeepers of film festivals and the industry… but I did all that with two short films and they still didn’t take me seriously! And now I’m just missing a lot of money. So for my next short, I’m shooting it on my Sony A7s iii with my G series lens, the crew is going to be me, and sound recordist and an assistant, and the locations are in friend’s houses and places where they work. I'm spending my time and efforts these days trying to figure out how to get the best quality out of what I already own.
Q: Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
A: Lately I've seen some great shorts from local/Torontonian filmmakers Ralphael Elkabas-Besnard, Shelby Wilson, Sophy Romavari, Nate Wilson, Kunsang Kyirong, Adrian Patterson, and Matthew Lippman.