Mark Edwards

Director, Screenwriter, Editor, Sound Design, Art Direction
Previous film work includes production, editing and sound design of Still Life with Donuts: Natural History of a Neighborhood (aka The Belmont Documentary).

Director’s Statement
I love the way noise creeps in to everything we do. We build a highway and there’s noise. We soundproof our cars to ride on the highway. It’s too quiet in here! Let’s bring in a cellphone. Let’s turn on the radio. We tune into a classical station – hey let’s get some rock and roll on that thing. We might as well sit on the tarmac. It’s not just us – out there in the fields are bugs chanting. They can’t stand the silence; they want a soundtrack to dance to.

In Mister Angerhead, Francis suffers from such a buzz. Outside his house and inside his head a near constant drone orders him to perform reprehensible actions. Everyone reacts to the voices in their heads – a flinch, grimace, or squint to keep our interior monologue from betraying us – but not everyone resists. Under the pressures of his neighbors’ fighting and the termination of his welfare benefits, Francis snaps and becomes something bigger, smarter, and funnier than he has ever been. For the first time in his life he has a bit of intelligence, a bit of control – so what if it’s borrowed from a second personality? Fat Francis hears and obeys Mister Angerhead.

The visiting welfare agent ends up as Mister Angerhead’s meals. To the modern man it’s so confusing to mix food and violence, but to our ancestors, hunting was the proactive step beyond gathering. Francis makes this transition. The relative richness of hunted food draws us. Overcoming a simple morality is all it takes to get that kind of meal.

The welfare agent also becomes part of Mister Angerhead’s collection. Francis has always needed order. He collects roadkill, rusty parts, flowers. He learns knots, string tricks, and logs his activities in a journal. This systematizing and note taking is much the work of an artist, a documentarian, a filmmaker – plan, capture, edit. Like Francis and Mister Angerhead, I am partial to the non-verbal and preverbal to convey what I need to say. I am easily influenced by directors like Mamet, Lynch, and Guy Maddin – a few terse lines to underscore, but I prefer to let the pictures do the heavy-lifting.

The neighbors continue to fight. Connie has had enough and tosses her wedding ring out the car window. Bye bye. Francis, hunting and gathering (and stalking Connie), finds the ring and cherishes it. Meanwhile Mister Angerhead realizes he needs Connie for his collection.

There are so many things in the world. When you start naming them or counting them, it can become insanity. Dividing and subdividing is the work of scientists, percussionists, and racists (and editors!). We work on putting it back together all the time. If we have too many things or too few filters, it becomes a hum. The hum gets louder and becomes a drone, a blur. At some level of remove it becomes a substrate, a wall color, a personality, a thing. Mister Angerhead is that thing.