J Paul Johnson
Anyone who’s ever been on or around an indie film set, or perhaps even simply pondered making a movie on their own, will find the basic premise of Meta Take One familiar terrain: a would-be auteur finds himself a little too wrapped up in bringing his passion project to completion. That setup hardly begins to describe the wild ride that filmmakers Ryan Dutter and John Dierre have in store for their viewers, though, when a guerrilla project suddenly goes wildly awry.
Now available to rent on streaming platforms after a successful festival run, including the Audience Award at the Atlanta Film Festival, Meta Take One begins with a film-in-progress. John Cuffee (Ej Ezeruo) has three co-conspirators: Damon, his lead actor (Ernest Emmanuel Peeples); Tess, his cinematographer (Amilah Williams); and sound guy Marden (John Romanski). All of them will have to wear multiple hats to pull off John’s plan—to bust into a local liquor store and shoot a robbery scene there, all without permission or permits.
The film’s first scenes of the guerrilla shoot are shot, performed, and edited masterfully, making the most of all the recognizable tropes of rookie filmmakers fumbling about their set: forgotten and flubbed lines, broken props, visible boom mics, and nearly every thing else that could go wrong going way, way wrong. None of it feels clichéd, though: Ezeruo and Peeples in particular bring a ton of energy to the scenes, and the editing perfectly times each joke and surprise. Shot in a low-key, rough grain, camcorder-style aesthetic, the opening of Meta Take One lays out the film’s premise with a well-timed and carefully-coordinated audacity.
As badly as John’s shoot is going, though, a shock accident makes things far, far worse, and from there Meta Take One turns on a dime. Forced to flee the scene of the shoot—now literally an actual crime scene—John finds his pet project suddenly, unalterably aborted. Until, that is, his own determination and hubris get the better of him. So what that a man has been shot, and half his crew is missing? The show must go on. And so, Meta Take One turns from a comic behind-the-scenes look at a filmmaker’s passion project to something far darker, even at times Lynchian, and often disturbing portrait of a man’s descent into madness.
And, I should mention, it’s still comic, if even more darkly so. Increasingly desperate and on the run, John makes one poor decision after another. He’s not venal, nor is he by nature corrupt, but his artistic ambitions simply override any part of his brain that might exercise a modicum of empathy for his fellow human beings. Where that ambition takes him is where Meta Take One‘s plot goes, as no matter what happens next, John remains ever determined to finish his film, one way or another, no matter the cost.
That desperation takes John and Damon all over Atlanta as they seek to evade the law and find a way to complete the shoot, and it gives both lead actors—Peeples, in particular, with some brilliantly funny scenes—plenty of opportunity to play to their respective strengths, with Ezeruo matching Peeples’ manic energy with his own hubristic, self-serious gravitas. Don’t expect sympathetic protagonists or heart-warming happy endings from these guys. John’s arrogance borders on sociopathy, the kind only a nutter like Damon would enable.
While the duo descends into a Lynchian madness, Meta Take One absolutely sells its stuff with an impressive indie aesthetic. Shot predominantly on 16mm Kodak black and white, the film blossoms into color at key moments illustrating John’s passion for cinema, one that far transcends any ability of his to understand or empathize with any of his colleagues. The black and white aesthetic echoes classic rough-and ready noir like Welles’ Touch of Evil or Kubrick’s The Killers while bringing to it an early Spike Lee-like energy and humor. A few wild montages and effects sequences, especially for a film made on a budget of next to nothing, work impressively well.
As impressive as its conceit, performances, and aesthetic are individually, all of these combine to make Meta Take One more than a clever exercise in self-reflexive filmmaking. Like the best movies about movie-making, Meta Take One takes seriously the plight of those closed off from an industry but determined to break in and the desperate lengths to which they might go to succeed. Here, a labor of love becomes a site of exploitation; a creative endeavor costs lives; and a final project might just, indeed, be final.
Following the film’s premiere at the Atlanta Film Festival, Meta Take One also won the John Singleton Award for Best Debut Feature at the American Black Film Festival, along with Best Narrative Feature honors at Oxford Film Festival, Seattle Black Film Festival, and the New York Independent Film Festival.
Meta Take One is available to rent on Apple TV and Prime Video.
