Christopher Livingston’s genre-bending Hit and Runway pairs a neurotic gay playwright with a straight Italian naif some ten years his junior. Michael Parducci (Gravesend) plays Alex, a would-be writer who's stuck working in his family’s Greenwich Village café following his dad’s death. Unexpectedly, Alex sells a movie pitch about a tough cop who goes undercover as a male runway model. But Alex can’t really write, so when he realizes that the stranger cruising the café’s sexy new waiter (Dawson’s Creek’s Kerr Smith) is a bona fide playwright, he enlists him as his writing partner. Of course, an unlikely friendship blossoms between the two as they coach each other through a dizzying set of romantic quandaries. But will they make their deadline?

Livingston is a ’94 NYU film grad with something of a Hollywood pedigree: his mother’s Nancy Olson, the ingenue in Sunset Boulevard; his dad ran Capitol Records in the ’60s; and an uncle wrote the theme songs for Bonanza and Mr Ed. Livingston co-wrote Runway with standup comic Jaffe Cohen, an NYU alum who later founded the comedy trio Funny Gay Males. His 55-minute NYU thesis film, Chicken of the Sea, won several school awards including the Eagle Award from the CINE festival in Washington, D.C. He raised the cash to shoot Runway in 35mm by hosting invitation-only readings of the script in New York and L.A. and sold investor units at $10,000 apiece; his family also put in money.

In November ’97 Livingston swapped the L.A. apartment he'd been renting for the past year for one in New York and returned East for production. With experienced New York low-budget veterans Andrew Charas and Chris d’Annibale (The Definite Maybe) on board as producers, Runway shot throughout downtown New York for 44 days into January ’98. At press time the film had been accepted for an LAIFF premiere; all rights are available.

Cast: Michael Parducci, Peter Jacobson, Kerr Smith, Judy Prescott, John Fiore, Hoyt Richards, J.K. Simmons, Jonthan Hogan, Teresa De Priest, Bill Cohen. Crew: Producers, Chris D’Annibale, Andrew Charas, Christopher Livingston; Screenwriters, Jaffe Cohen & Christopher Livingston; Director, Christopher Livingston; Cinematographer, David Tumblety; Production Design, Mark Helmuth; Costumes, Jory Adam; Casting, Eve Battaglia. Contact: Bob Aaronson, Producer’s Rep, 1013 S. Curson Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90019. Tel: (323) 937-9704, Fax: (323) 857-1241.

Adios, East Los - William Douglas Lansford
Adventures of a Catholic Atheist - John Mendoza
Bullfighter - Rune Bendixen
The Citizen - Jay Anania
Hit and Runway - Christopher Livingston
Jesus’ Son - Alison Maclean
The Photographer - Jeremy Stein
Wang Dang - Tom Noonan
The Young Unknowns - Catherine Jelski