The Gunfighter
2013 · 9m · USA
Directed by Eric Kissack
Tones: darkly comic, humorous
A lone gunslinger walks into a saloon, but everyone inside can inexplicably hear the film’s omniscient narrator — who turns out to be petty, bloodthirsty, and determined to cause chaos by revealing every character’s innermost secrets aloud.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A western where every character can hear the snarky narrator — it's the most chaotic deconstruction of genre convention I've seen in eight minutes, and Nick Offerman's deadpan god-voice makes it transcendent.
Kissack's meta-western with Offerman narrating is a pitch-perfect one-joke film that knows exactly its length — Blazing Saddles via Stranger Than Fiction, perfectly executed within its modest ambit. The Vimeo view count tells the truth.
Nick Offerman as a petty, secret-spilling omniscient narrator the characters can hear — 1.4M views and a cabinet of festival audience awards for a reason. Nine minutes of one perfectly executed structural joke.
Festivals
- LA Film Fest 2014, Audience Award for Best Short Film
- Napa Valley Film Festival 2014, Audience Award for Best Short Film
- Sidewalk Film Festival 2014, Audience Award for Best Narrative Short
- LA Shorts Fest 2014, Jury Award