SHATTER THE GLASS, a short film featuring an original song, won BEST DRAMA at its 1st film festival! It plays at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on Sept. 12.
After a troubling social media interaction, a talented young musician must choose between being liked and being authentic.
Synopsis: Alex Therien proudly posts her new status as 1st chair in her school band but is quickly mocked with cruel online comments. Continued hits to her social standing drive her to post a sexy selfie which she soon realizes won’t solve her problems. After arguments with her mom and boyfriend she finally decides to express her true self through her music and discovers that sometimes it’s better to shatter the glass than let others dictate who you are.
The award-winning director, Patrick Hogan, was born and raised on the island of Guam, attended Northwestern University in Chicago and then received his MFA from USC film school. His thesis film “The Business Card” was an award-winning short that had the distinction of being the first student film ever sold to an airline for in-flight entertainment.
Pope Dreams – Patrick’s feature directorial debut – screened at over 26 festivals around the world, won 11 Best Film awards, and was picked up for distribution by Porchlight Entertainment. It aired on Lifetime Network, was distributed in over 40 countries, and was released on home video and streaming through Netflix and Amazon. His short films Virtually and Killing Time have, to date, screened at over 100 film festivals and won 21 best film awards.
Along with working as a writer/director, Patrick is a highly accomplished supervising sound editor with more than 100 television shows and movies to his credit. He’s earned 9 Emmy nominations and 3 Golden Reel Awards for his work on such shows as HBO’s “Six Feet Under” Fox’s “Family Guy” and the Netflix hits “Cobra Kai” and “Umbrella Academy.”
Director’s statement:
SHATTER THE GLASS was a wonderful project from writer Syd Blue, a friend who came to me with a very timely and thought-provoking script and honored me with the opportunity to visualize this story and bring Alex, her mom Aggie and her boyfriend Caleb to life.
As someone who grew up before the rise of social media, I have been both fascinated and mortified to see how quickly and how powerfully social media has taken over our society. While at the same time keeping the same prejudices and biases that have existed in our society long before social media or the internet existed. This story of a young woman dealing with societal pressures to be a certain way and conform to narrow conceptions of success and popularity and even femininity, amplied through social media interactions, presented an opportunity to not only talk about how young people deal with these pressures, but also to look at prior generations and to understand that these pressures aren’t new and unique to this generation, but something that women have dealt with since time immemorial.
I loved his concept of a mother trying to help her daughter deal with these issues, and in return having those same words brought back around to confront her own challenges of facing the expectations of women as they age. And the universal truths of being your authentic self and the healing properties of mother nature. It presented a very fertile field to plow as a director, and I hope the finished film lives up to the promise of the script.
And, of course, to have another opportunity to direct such fantastic actors as Maggie McCollester and McKinley Warren was a huge draw for this project, and especially a chance to give McKinley a bigger role and canvas to work with than our last collaboration, KILLING TIME. Working with talented people on stories with such compelling characters is really the dream for any director. And this film was indeed a dream project.
We hope that the film raises many questions about our perceptions as it relates to gender roles and the influence of social media on our youth. And while it doesn’t attempt to solve those issues, the goal with SHATTER THE GLASS is that in bringing them up, the dialogs arising from the film will help improve our understanding of these issues and how best to move forward as a society where social media is now a fact of life and something that all young people must learn to navigate in a healthy, productive way. Sometimes you need to shatter the glass and not be afraid to be you.
“Shatter the Glass” will premiere at the historic rooftop Montalban Theatre in Hollywood on Sept 4.
Listen to the original song at Apple Music or anywhere that sells music.
