story
Imagine you found yourself disillusioned with the choices you made in your life.
Thus begins the journey of F. Timothy Herbert, a man with all the trappings of success, who has chosen to kill himself…
On a gray, rainy day while driving through the rural countryside, he encounters a Man hitchhiking with his Dog. Shortly after passing them and nearly avoiding a head-on collision with an oncoming semi-truck, Tim’s car loses power and comes to a stop on the side of the road.
While stranded in his car, the Man and the Dog come along and ask to take shelter from the rain. Tim reluctantly agrees but soon suspects that he’s let a lunatic in his car after the Man makes him an offer to change the outcome of his life.
Will Tim take the stranger up on this seemingly ludicrous offer, or not?
This is the basic premise for two separate yet interconnected films. Tim is at the proverbial “fork-in-the-road.” The direction he takes will forever alter his own life, the life of the hitchhiker and the wife he has left behind.
Film 1: GRAY IN WHITE (TRT 102 minutes)
Tim’s car comes to a stop on a bridge, at which point, feeling desperate, Tim accepts the Man’s offer. He inherits the Dog and hitchhikes to a nearby town where he finds work acting in a play at a local theater. He soon finds his new life fraught with measures of newfound freedom, self-introspection and loneliness. Struggling to make ends meet, Tim answers an ad placed on the theater’s message board by a mysterious young woman, which leads him to participate in a private play that will change the course of his life once more.
Film 2: GRAY IN BLACK (TRT 93 minutes)
In this film, Tim refuses to take the hitchhiker’s offer and leaves him behind on the bridge.
A completely different reality emerges…
Vera is a proprietor of a trendy French restaurant and Jazz club in Chicago. Late one evening, just before closing, Vera meets Paul, who alleges to be a Jazz saxophone player. He claims her husband, F. Timothy Herbert, owes him a large sum of money. After Vera explains that Tim died in a car accident a year ago, Paul leads Vera back in time where she confronts the mystery of her husband’s death. For Vera, however, a suspicion lurks: is Paul’s story true, or is it just a convincing performance by a sinister con artist?
GRAY IN WHITE AND BLACK explores the space in between life and death, a space we occupy without any knowledge of what the consequences of the choices we make will be. In these two films, the characters discover that life is an ambiguous place where the difference between what is “real” and what is “make-believe” disappears. The starting point in each film is the life-altering event on the bridge, where either decision by Tim leads to two entirely different outcomes and consequences. The two films stand on their own; yet, when viewed together, these films evoke a third reality and deeper understanding of the events that unfold.
Is there a final resolution on that rainy day on the bridge in the middle of nowhere, or are the things involving life and death not as they seem at all?
Read the DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT on the inspiration for making this duology.
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