Brentwood
2018 · 12m · USA
Directed by Sharon Everitt
A washed-up Brent Spiner — playing a parody of himself — has retreated to teaching, but reluctantly returns to Hollywood to one-up his old Star Trek castmate LeVar Burton at an awards show. Conceived as a TV comedy pilot with musical numbers and a hallucination sequence.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A washed-up actor playing himself in a meta sitcom fever dream that refuses to pick a lane—it's absurdist, it's got musical numbers, it's got a hallucination sequence—and somehow that commitment to pure *weirdness* is exactly what makes it work when it shouldn't.
The formal rigor of a TV comedy pilot filtered through short-film constraints creates an interesting tension, though the genre pastiche occasionally overwhelms the precision needed to land each comedic beat with the weight it deserves.
The decision to lean into Spiner's actual diminishment as a performer—making the self-parody genuine rather than winking—is what separates this from a celebrity vanity project and makes the whole thing bite.
Reviews
Great comedic action, a bit of slapstick comedy... a charming musical number.
A must for all TNG fans, as the comedy will hit that much harder for those in the know — I would watch the hell out of this if it were a series.
Festivals
- Mill Valley Film Festival 2018
- Heartland Film Festival 2018
- Cinequest Film Festival 2019
- Calgary International Film Festival 2019
- SeriesFest 2019
- Indy Film Fest 2019
- Traverse City Film Festival 2019
- IFS Film Festival Los Angeles 2019, Best Short Film; Best Supporting Actor (Doug Benson)