'Girl Walks Into a Bar' Walks Straight Onto the Web

Writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez has announced that his forthcoming film, Girl Walks Into a Bar, will be released directly to the Web. The film wrapped production this past Friday, according to the press release from its production company, Shangri-La Entertainment.

Girl Walks Into a Bar stars Carla Gugino and Zachary Quinto. You'll recognize Quinto as the bad guy from NBC's "Heroes" and also as Spock in JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot. Gugino has collaborated with Gutierrez before: see the recent Women in Trouble, Elektra Luxx, and Tell-Tale. She's also had roles in Sin City, where you can see a whole lot of her, Watchmen, Mike's Fantasies, and Zach Snyder's upcoming Sucker Punch.

The cast for this movie sounds phenomenal, especially if you consider the claim that it's been aimed at the Web from the get-go. It also features Danny DeVito as a gangster, Emmanuelle Chriqui ("Entourage") and Alexis Bledel ("Gilmore Girls") as strippers, Rosario Dawson as "the odd hatcheck girl," Robert Forster as an ex-con, and Josh Hartnett as a cop. (Maybe I should've stopped one actor sooner if I wanted to justify my "phenomenal cast" claim...)

The film connects this group of characters across 10 Los Angeles bars over the course of one night.

But back to that distribution method. "We want to prove that Web distribution is a viable medium for theatrical quality movies which rely on story, characters and dialogue as opposed to special effects," Gutierrez says. "For many reasons the theatrical indie landscape has changed drastically in the last few years, leaving many potential breakout hits without an audience." One of those reasons, of course, is the fact that people have found ways to watch movies for free online whether their producers like it or not. One-upping the piracy game certainly seems to me to be the best option for beating it, so I commend Gutierrez for taking this plunge.

Girl Walks Into a Bar sounds like the first really legitimate attempt at bringing a genuinely professional, independent, feature-length film to online distribution. It'll be very interesting to see how it goes. Personally, I don't have much interest in watching a movie on my laptop's 15" screen; although the home theater experience has come a long way in recent years—especially in terms of affordable quality—that's still a far cry from your run-of-the-mill online streaming. If you can watch it on a game console (or other device) hooked up to your HDTV, though, that'd potentially make me change my mind. For now we'll just have to sit back and wait to see how the specifics shape up, but I'm very intrigued to say the least.

Comments

[Tom]

Wow strippers and assassins how original. It actually sounds kind of desperate for money if you ask me. This movie includes everything including the kitchen sink. p.s. please buy the sink some of the cast needs cab fare home.