By Amanda Rae Busch. Berkshire Living, November 18, 2009
Bravo to Berkshire filmmaker Michael Dowling!
The carpenter-by-day, screenwriter-by-night from Hinsdale, Massachusetts, is on a roll:
last summer he won a $10,000 playwriting fellowship from the Mass Cultural Council for his play Speck’s Last, and on Thursday he’ll be honored, along with 54 other artists in various disciplines, at the third annual Artists Under the Dome event at the Massachusetts State House. Oh, and let the record state: only four other artists are repping the Berkshires. Sort of a big deal.
Speck’s Last—a comedic drama examining the tempestuous dynamic between three siblings who must decide whether or not to open an envelope left by their jerk of an older brother who has just died under mysterious circumstances—earned a staged reading at the Berkshire Playwrights Lab premiere evening in 2008, and has since been adapted into a short film, still in production.
I saw an advance screening of a rough cut of the film at the Triplex Cinema back in September. At the time, Dowling, in conjunction with Hilltown Pictures, a collective of professional writers, directors, and actors that produces films both inspired by and shot within our bucolic region, was seeking an executive producer to make the final tweaks necessary to push the movie to film festivals. In fact, he still is.
I hope he finds one, because, to me, a proper ending is everything. Fair or not, I tend to judge a movie largely by the feeling (or lack thereof) I get as the credits roll, and with Speck’s Last I enjoyed a sense of surprise satisfaction at the finale. I thought the story might turn out differently...and I found myself glad to have been mistaken.
Which is why I’ve got my fingers crossed for a fully finished Speck's Last and maybe even a screening at the fifth annual Berkshire International Film Festival….