Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont internship, for the Times Argus
MONTPELIER — Nathaniel Swyer grew up in Montpelier, and now he’s drawing on that experience to write the coming-of-age heist comedy, “Echoes of the Goose Club.”
The film is a 15-minute short film about three college-aged kids who come home to their town after the death of their high school friend, and through, in Swyer’s words, “a series of kind of silly happenings,” they end up plotting to steal their dead friend’s ashes.
“The movie has this kind of nostalgia and sadness, but it’s also a lot of fun watching these kids try to pull off this ridiculous plot, which is really just a way for them to process their grief,” Swyer said.
Swyer is pursuing a master’s degree in film production at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Swyer said he hopes to get the film into festivals and to use it as a launch off point for his career.
Even though he’s living on the other side of the country, he said he hasn’t forgotten where he came from.
Montpelier is “really supportive, wonderful and close-knit community. It’s also a place where it’s very small, so everybody knows everything about each other,” Swyer said. “It would be fun to set up this crime they’re doing in a world where everybody you’re going to walk by on the street is your middle school math teacher or your friend’s mom.”
Vermont’s small, close-knit nature also adds another dimension to the film.
“Small towns are very economically diverse,” Swyer said. “When I went off to college, I realized a lot of people I knew there grew up with people who were in the same economic class as them. In a small town in Vermont, you grow up knowing everybody, and you don’t have the numbers to make classic high school movie cliques — everybody’s kind of a mash-up. Everybody’s friends, like the jocks and the nerds and the druggies are all kind of mashed up, and you have really interesting friend groups with a lot of different backgrounds and perspectives.”
In relation to “Echoes of the Goose Club,” Swyer said, “These characters are kind of at a point in their life where those differences are starting to be realized a little bit. Some have stayed in the town, some have gone off to college, some people have stayed in the state, and their relationships are starting to show signs of fraying.”
While the film is primarily a comedy, there is a darker edge to it, one the Swyer also experienced growing up in Vermont.
“There’s a lot of mental health problems in Vermont. I lost a few friends in or after high school. It’s inspired by how young people — late teens, early 20s, especially guys — deal with grief, and often in insane and unhealthy ways, so there’s a certain kind of sadness in the story, but I’ve always been more of a comedy guy.”
While the story is set in New England, Swyer is filming in California, which has added some difficulties.
“There have been the challenges trying to find trees and a forest that’s dense enough and doesn’t scream ‘West Coast,’” Swyer said. “Even neighborhood streets. In (Los Angeles), there’s a lot of palm trees lining streets; can’t do one of those.”
Swyer’s interest in filmmaking began when he was about 8 years old. He recalled going to his best friend’s house across the street to use his mom’s camcorder.
“We just started making little movies just at our houses, and that kind of just kept going,” he said.
As a teenager, Swyer attended a movie camp hosted by the School of Creative and Performing Arts in Burlington one summer. He then studied film as an undergrad at Johns Hopkins University before moving to New York, where he worked for Hatched, a sketch comedy production company. Eventually, he decided to move to Los Angeles.
“I didn’t know a lot of people in the film industry, so I thought film school was a good way to go. It took me a couple times to get in, but I eventually did, and here we are,” he said.