WATCH TRAILER
An Honest Film About Bullsh**t
In 2023, after seeing my fifteenth straight self-produced celebrity autobiographical documentary, I had had enough. There was something about watching a famous person making a self-curated documentary, in which they had complete creative control over their own story, that felt profoundly weird to me. In many ways, though, this media phenomenon was a further extension of a pandemic of self-curated content flooding social media. What does it mean to be the one telling your own story with no objectivity? What does the viewer lose when the subject presents themselves in a flawless, idealized manner? And why do we all feel compelled to do this? I decided the best way to answer these questions was to make the most grandiose representation of my own life I knew how to make. Thus came: The Genius, my first feature film. The film exists in two spaces: a fictitious documentary about a more accomplished version of myself and a behind-the-scenes look at what happens to an artist when they invest this hard in self-promotion. Though it started with a simple premise, the film took several unexpected turns, while profiling other artists, losing loved ones, and becoming a father. All of this is baked into the final product: a delicious postmodern experimental documentary that is guaranteed not only to entertain you, but to leave you thinking as well.
For more email: spidertrevor@gmail.com
The Characters
Adam Conover
Adam Conover is an American actor, writer, comedian, and television host. He created and hosted the half-hour truTV show Adam Ruins Everything, based on the CollegeHumor series of the same name. He was also the host of the American version of The Crystal Maze on Nickelodeon.
Scott Rogowsky
is an American comedian and television personality. He is best known for his time hosting HQ Trivia, a mobile game show.
Simone Dinnerstien
American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has a distinctive musical voice. She first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. The New York Times described her as “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.” The Washington Post has called her “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity.”
Adam Newman
Adam Newman is a comedian who has performed stand-up on the Late Show with David Letterman, the Late Late Show with James Corden, John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show, Gotham Comedy Live, Comedy Central's The Half Hour, and his one hour Amazon special Fuzzies. He's appeared on Showtime's I'm Dying Up Here, HBO's Last Week Tonight and Silicon Valley, TruTV's Adam Ruins Everything, the Tyra Banks Show (weird!), Animal Planet's We Love Puppies, Comics Unleashed, MTV's The CollegeHumor Show, and as a regular contestant on Comedy Central's @midnight.
Masha Cima
Brandy Crawford
Brandy Crawford-Uriu worked as a programming and development executive at History, where she oversaw series hits including History’s Greatest Mysteries, Pawn Stars and Swamp People: Serpent Invasion, as well premium documentaries including The Great War and Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre.
Miriam Gottfried
Miriam Gottfried is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where she writes about how individuals build and manage their wealth. She has previously covered private equity and private markets for the Journal’s Finance bureau and wrote commentary about investing in media, telecommunications and retail for WSJ’s Heard on the Street column. She also host’s the WSJ’s hit podcast: “Heard on the Street”. She also happens to be the wife of acclaimed filmmaker, Trevor Williams.
SYNOPSIS (CONT.)
Inside the movement, however, there is a power struggle among Breton, the group’s idealist founder, Dalí, the unmistakable star of the movement, and Guggenheim, the business savvy king-maker who puts them on the map. Max Ernst and Peggy are also steering their way though a bumpy, polyamorous relationship. Magritte struggles to navigate his newfound fame with crippling social anxiety. And everyone must deal with the paradox of trying to carry out a “revolution of consciousness” while also getting rich and famous. The group will go viral, get paid, get arrested, travel to Mexico, get hypnotized, throw orgies, take mushrooms, fake their own deaths, overcome the Spanish Flu, endure group therapy, prank Nazis, and even put each other on trial in Surrealist Tribunal. (This actually happened in real life!) In the season finale, the premiere party of the gang’s own Surrealist television series will be interrupted by news of the onset of World War II, forcing them to scurry to America and setting up a season two in diaspora.
GALLERY
But…why?
As the son of a modern artist, people like Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Peggy Guggenheim were like the Beatles. I loved their art; I loved their ideas; but most of all, I loved their carefree boundless lifestyles. When I later found out that these surreal lives were lived in accordance with a rigid philosophy professed by their cult-like leader, André Breton, I became obsessed with telling their story. However, telling the story of the Surrealist movement as a period piece didn’t make any sense to me, especially since the times we are in now seem more surreal than ever. Instead, I became consumed with the question of what the Surrealists would be doing in 2022. What would their Instagram feeds look like? How would they get rich? Would they stay true to their ideals? Would they self-destruct? And what could be more fun to watch? I had to find out.
-Trevor Williams, Creator