I recently spoke with George C. Siougas and Michael Stevenson. Siougas is the writer and director of the short film The One Note Man and Stevenson is one of the producers.
Siougas explained after being asked what drew him to the craft of cinema that escapism was the answer. He always found reality hard to deal with and less interesting than the wonderful world of the dark cinema. Ever since he was a young boy, he remembered being the happiest in the cinema and watching Disney’s The Rescuers. All of the escapist films were a joy for him and he wanted to give that escapist feeling to the audiences and to other people.
Stevenson’s reason for being drawn to the craft stemmed back from watching the old classic actors, as he is an actor by trade. Some of his biggest inspirations were watching movies like The Sting and Midnight Cowboy, for example. As an actor, Stevenson moved to TV but his love for film never failed and he met George as his “kindred spirit”.
Siougas said that he was in lockdown [during COVID] and he was going through a “Hitchcock” phase and was rewatching all of his films and reread the Truffaut book and studied Hitchcock every day and he was listening to an interview and Hitchcock talked about his film The Man that Knew Too Much and the director talked about why he started the film with the crashing of the cymbals and Hitchcock mentioned he got it the idea from a comic strip called The One Note Man by H.M. Bateman, which was about a man who wakes up, gets ready for work, goes to an orchestra and plays one note and leaves.
They made contact with Bateman’s estate and the filmmakers were given the rights to turn it into a short film.
Stevenson claimed that the most difficult problem in making movies is raising the finances and getting that first part of financial incentive. George agrees with him as it is hard to communicate that difficult process.
Siougas also claims that compromising is great for filmmakers because it forces said filmmakers to be more economic in the choices that they make.
