CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERHERO
In pursuit of the Hollywood Dream

What is one interview question you wish an interviewer would ask, but never has?
How hard is it to make an independent film? No one has ever asked me that. It was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. - Matthew Ogens

You drive by them everyday. The people who sell flowers on the streets, the orange-hustler on the corner, and the sign-holders who "God Bless" under the freeway overpass. But what about those amusing film characters on Hollywood Boulevard? You drive by them every day, wondering about their story and how they earn a living, welcoming tourists to photograph them daily in 106 degree California weather. Director Matthew Ogens chronicles the routines and mishaps of four superheroes - Superman (Christopher Dennis), Batman (Maxwell Allen), Wonder Woman (Jennifer Gerht), and The Hulk (Joseph McQueen).

Picking from the Boulevard's Marilyns, the Chaplin, Hellraiser's Pinhead, and Jack Sparrow, Ogens focuses on the Superheroes because of their universality. "It's a metaphor for who these people really are," he explains. "Everybody wants to matter."

The story film with the morning get-ready routines of the crime fighting characters and delves deeply into their personas. Ogens (along with cinematographer-producer Charles Gruet and "Half Nelson" producer Jamie Patricof) reveals every character's heart and pain as they attempt to establish themselves as actors in LA. From The Hulk's homelessness to Wonder Woman's spontaneous marriage and Superman's memorabilia-filled apartment and claim as the son of famous actress, Sandy Dennis (Splendor in the Grass) Ogens, finds the humanity in these supposedly invincible characters. Batman rounds out the team with the need for anger management.

CONFESSIONS does not only reveal these subculture lives through cinema verite; it emphasizes the medium and capability of film, paralleling the look of a fiction piece.

It is the debut feature film for Ogens, who comes from a commercial television directing background. But he doesn't find the switch to film a big deal. "What is a movie? It's moving pictures, so it should look great!"

He hired a professional cinematographer and edited together Super 8mm footage, still portrait shots on HD to introduce the heroes, and verite-style mini DV. Rather than interviewing Batman in his Hollywood street environment, Ogens choses an underground, dark warehouse with piping to parallel Batman's mysterious physique.

As far as the live/work/art balance goes, Ogens continued to direct commercials throughout the two-and-a-half year project. He would take a month off in between his TV jobs to film the doc, a combination of self-financed, producer-financed, and a commercial production company contributed as well.