NFF Accountant Explores Car Crash Culture in Debut Short

BY MARIANNE R. STANTON

I&M Editor

Hang around the film industry long enough in any capacity and the urge to produce a film of your own eventually begins to gnaw away at you. Take the case of John Finn, the accountant for the Nantucket Film Festival for the past nine years. This year his first film, the 23-minute short “4-Cylinder 400,” is one of the films showing in NFF9. And it’s a film well worth seeing.

Co-directed with Garret Savage—an actor, filmmaker, editor, and NFF veteran for the past seven years—and Harlo Bray, the film is a slice of rural America that is rapidly disappearing. While the film centers around a sort of barnyard stock car race, the action of the film takes a back sear to the people we meet.

Finn, from Bovina, N.Y., was familiar with a demo-derby kind of race that took place in his hometown on the farm of the LaFever family. He bounced the idea off Savage a few years ago and the idea for a film began to take shape. Like all films, it was a true collaboration in every sense of the word.

“If Garret had not been involved, the film would have never gotten past the idea stage,” said Finn.

“I had the means to help John makes this film at a professional level,” said Savage, who has been editing commercials and working in film since he graduated from the film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara some years ago.

Bray, also from Bovina, had the friendship and trust of the people in his hometown, along with Finn’s help, which opened doors for the filmmakers and ultimately gives the film the authenticity required.

“People let us in to their insular society and we knew where to go to find them,” Finn said.

Jonathan LaFever, the organizer of the race, is the affable owner of a construction company. The fact that he owns a couple of bulldozers and acres of land provide the basic ingredients for a racetrack. Plenty of friends “who won’t sue me” provide the participants. They in turn must find their chariot. But there are restrictions: It must be four cylinders, it can’t cost more than $300 and you can’t smash into the driver’s side door—though every other part of the vehicle is fair game for smashing and bashing. The rest is all local color.

Bovina, apparently, has its share of characters and we get to meet a few of them in “4 Cylinder 400.” There is LaFever’s uncle, whose body language speaks louder than words. There are the fresh-faced 20-somethings who gear up for the race, painting their car in a red, white and blue theme—not in concert with any patriot act—save for acknowledging their bicentennial birth year, 1976. There’s LaFever’s mom and an assortment of neighbors and others.

Behind the images of cars tearing up a dirt track and men in bad baseball hats tipping beer cans is the driving beat of the Disciples of Agriculture, a now defunct alternative country rock band in which Finn’s brother played. The music moves the film along, taking us back to a time and place and economic strata that have long left places like Nantucket.

Finn and Savage have directed a film that will appeal to those who appreciate the rituals and small-town events that connect community and define it.

The World Premiere of “4 Cylinder 400” is part of the Shorts 2 Program, playing Thursday at noon at the American Legion and Friday at noon at the Sconset Casino.

Also playing in Shorts 2 is “For Food,” a clever and charming eight-minute piece directed and co-written by Garret Savage all about the premise that people will work, act, sing, play, whatever—for food. Well worth seeing.