I’m going to kill you…
Main Cast: Beth Grant, Sharon Lawrence
Director: Gabriel Olsen
Whenever I watch a short film and see faces I recognize, it takes me out of the film.
I go to the Alter YouTube channel and click on the next short on the list, in this case 2015’s THE BRIDGE PARTNER, and I see Beth Grant (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN), and I wonder what’s she doing here? Then I see Sharon Lawrence, (NYPD Blue) and I think what’s SHE doing here? Then later I see Robert Forster (MULHOLLAND DRIVE) and I think WHAT’S HE DOING HERE, and it all keeps taking me out of the film!
How writer/director Gabriel Olsen got these names and faces in his 12 and a half minute short horror film with almost no previous credits—at least none worth mentioning—I’ll never know.
But the whole time I’m watching this thing, all I can do is imagine what the set was like, and wondering did they keep coming over to each other and asking, “What are you doing here?”
When this happens, it often makes me want to go directly to IMDb and see what else these actors were doing around the same time. Maybe they were on a break during some bigger production and they’re helping out a friend. Maybe they haven’t worked in a while and they need to buy a new fridge (according to IMDb trivia, Ashley Laurence was only paid enough for HELLRAISER: HELLSEEKER to make a down payment toward a new refrigerator). Maybe they’re just really bored and are taking any role they can get. I don’t know, but I always wonder. And it always, always, always yanks me out of the movie and keeps me distracted.
So anyway, in THE BRIDGE PARTNER, Mattie (Grant) is given a new partner in her bridge club, Olivia (Lawrence) and, after losing their first game, Olivia tells Mattie she’s looking forward to playing with her some more. Then she leans in and whispers into Mattie’s ear that she’s going to kill her. This obviously sets Mattie on a path to paranoia until they get to sit once more across the table from each other. Olivia tells Mattie a story about wolves and sheep in her country (Lawrence is putting on some vaguely Russian accent) while I kept wondering what was the name of that sitcom I used to watch that Sharon Lawrence was in. I watched it on USA during a re-run block that included Wings and Boston Common (it was Fired Up which ran for two seasons in 1996-1997 and starred a young Leah Remini one year before she starred in King of Queens).
Olivia is mildly threatening as she slices a pastry in half with a knife that is way too much for this job, but is just enough to intimidate the mild-mannered Mattie until Mattie looks down and realizes she has a knife of her own, sticking out of the plastic wrap she put over the loaf of whatever it was she baked to bring to bridge club with her. And then the credits roll and I had to go to IMDb to see what was the last thing I saw Beth Grant in (WILLY’S WONDERLAND with Nicholas Cage. She played Sheriff Lund).
Olsen wrote the script based on a short story by Peter S. Beagle, a Hugo and Nebula Award winner and the recipient of the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, and author of THE LAST UNICORN. I’m going to assume THE BRIDGE PARTNER is one of his lesser-known works.
And it’s going to be one of Gabriel Olsen’s lesser-known works, as well as one of the lesser-known works of its stars Grant and Laurence who have both been in way bigger projects and could have left these roles to unknowns as neither really brought anything memorable to this short, but surely weren’t big enough names to draw audiences. I honestly don’t know why this is out there in the world. It wasn’t bad, it was just pointless. Just from a PLOT perspective, I can’t imagine reading this as a short story and coming away with the desire to film it.
Robert Forster plays Mattie’s golf-loving husband, and every time I see him in anything, all I can think of is the very first thing I ever saw him in, the made-for-TV movie THE DARKER SIDE OF TERROR from 1979 in which he plays a scientist named Paul Corwin, as well as his own murderous clone, Adam. Every single time, without fail.
As for THE BRIDGE PARTNER, skip this one.
Or if you must, you can watch it here:
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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