Photo credit: Courtesy of Dan Mirvish
Dan Mirvish is a man of many talents – American filmmaker, author and co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival.
He is also the co-creator of the Martin Eisenstadt hoax during the 2008 Presidential election. In 2009 he co-authored the satirical novel I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man’s (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans.
We first met Mirvish at the home of Joe Lockhart – former press secretary to the Clinton adminstration – at his Kalorama home where he hosted a book party for the authors.
“Mirvish made headlines around the world in 2008 as the co-creator (with Eitan Gorlin) of the faux McCain adviser and pundit Martin Eisenstadt, who was the self-admitted leak for the story that Sarah Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent. In the wake of the international publicity, Mirvish and Gorlin got a book deal from Farrar, Straus, Giroux (Faber & Faber) and wrote the novel I am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man’s (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans, which received rave reviews landing on The Washington Monthly’s list of the Top 8 Books of the 2009. A quintessential “transmedia” project that started as a series of short films, webisodes, blogs and tweets, the Eisenstadt character is currently being developed as a TV series by Mirvish and Gorlin.” From the pages of Alex Ago who hosted a screening of Between Us at USC.
We also caught up later with his co-author Eitan Gorlin
Currently, Mirvish is on the Q and A fast track promoting his latest creative output: Between Us. “In this darkly comedic drama, two couples reunite over two incendiary evenings where anything can happen. Grace and Carlo are a newly married New York couple who visit their old friends Sharyl and Joel in their huge Midwestern home. Despite their wealth, the hosts are in a bitterly destructive marriage. A few years later, the couples reunite in New York, only to find tables turned.” Production Notes.
Hollywood on the Potomac sat down with Mirvish:
We were curious about the interaction between the couples. Because of the contentious relationship between them, it seemed as if they never had a friendly past.
“I think they probably did,” said Mirvish, “but it’s a bit more complicated than that. The two guys were always friends and then Grace – Julia Styles character – was kind of their muse. You see little hints that she had been Joel’s model back in photography school at first and then became Carlos’ model and then they started a relationship. But the two women were never really friends. They were just sort of the two girlfriends of the two guys, but never really got along with each other and that was kind of the back story.”
When we asked if he had ever interacted with any couples in such a way, he did hint that there was a time in grad school where he was at an event that was not dissimilar. Without naming names he said there were two couples bitterly going at with each other and then with another couple. “Thankfully, it doesn’t happen very much,” he added. “That’s why we go to movies. If it was real life, it would be boring. I have had one or two experiences like that. Thankfully, my own marriage is not nearly so public.”
The film stars Julia Stiles, Taye Diggs, Melissa George and David Harbour.
“Between Us is a powerful, brilliantly acted character piece…. The four-person cast…give the sense of breathing in their parts so deeply that they are at every move haunted by their characters’ secrets and torn by rival pulls of love and contempt toward the other characters. No corner of intimacy or secrets is left unexposed in the film that is at once hilarious and devastating.” Richard Rushfield, BuzzFeed
The Trailer:
