Guerrilla Filmmaking Hits the Hamptons
By Ellen Keohane
 Morgan McGivern
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(09/07/2007) Needing extras for a fight scene at T&B Auto in Amagansett on a recent Sunday afternoon, Randall Krongard asked his director of photography to round up two guys working at Luz’s Deli next door.
A few minutes later, Alex Jimenez returned with two men who entered the garage tentatively, took off their aprons, and joined six other extras on the set. The director, Robert Frank, advised the group to shout at the two fighters and wave money once the action started.
Mr. Krongard, the star, writer, and producer of the film, took a deep breath as he prepared to get into character before the cameras started to roll on his first feature film, “Override.” Wearing a T-shirt and jeans, Mr. Krongard looked in need of a shave and some sleep as he got ready to punch and kick the actor facing him.
“I’m just a down-and-out street fighter who has a lot issues — like pills and stuff like that,” Mr. Krongard said of his role. He was sitting at his dining room table in the Northwest section of East Hampton on a Friday night in early August. Behind him, the rain made ripples in his swimming pool. “My character is not a good guy. He has to become a better person.”
With a “dental floss” (as opposed to shoestring) budget of $12,000, most of the actors in Mr. Krongard’s film double as crew members to keep costs down. When not acting, Mr. Krongard has scouted locations, designed sets, and choreographed fight scenes. He has also provided lunch and makeup services, utilizing Clinique blush for blood. “I’ve done the whole film with it,” he said. “I just bruise myself up and I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I mean, the other actors seem to think it’s okay.”
Mr. Krongard described his film as a mix between “Goodfellas” and “Enter the Dragon.” A fan of Bruce Lee, he has incorporated a lot of references to the martial arts legend in “Override.”
The script, which Mr. Krongard started writing about a year ago, is from the vantage point of an “everyday man” who finds himself on the “front lines” after his daughter dies in a terrorist attack, he said. After his daughter’s death, the man’s life falls apart. Hitting rock bottom, he ends up working in a garage, fighting for cash.
One day, his friend, who runs the garage, asks him to repossess a car to make some more money. “There turns out to be a link to that car and the terrorists who in fact took his daughter in the explosion,” Mr. Krongard said. The name of the movie refers to overriding necessity, he explained.
A former public school teacher and Defense Daily journalist, Mr. Krongard has studied martial arts since his mid-20s. While living in Los Angeles, he did some acting and camera work. In 2001, he moved to New York, where he met his wife, Allison. When the couple moved to East Hampton three years ago, Mr. Krongard continued to take the bus into the city to meet with casting agents.
But then he became frustrated with his stagnant acting career. Pushing 40 with two children under the age of 3, Mr. Krongard said he knew it was now or never if he wanted to pursue his own project. With his wife’s support, he decided to move forward with his first feature film.
The first step was finding a director. Mr. Krongard met Mr. Frank through Reed’s Photo Shop in Amagansett. Mr. Frank, the production director at LTV in Wainscott, had done camera work and sound for documentaries, corporate videos, and television shows, but had never worked on a feature-length film as a director, he said. Once shooting ends, they hope by mid-September, Mr. Frank will also be editing and composing most of the music for the film.
After Mr. Frank came on board, the project seemed to take on a life of its own, Mr. Krongard said. The two men took several trips into New York for casting sessions. At first, they had trouble finding someone for the main cop character in the film. Then, a young actor who wasn’t quite right for the part offered to send the script to a friend who turned out to be Samrat Chakroabarti, a Los Angeles-based actor who has appeared on “Law and Order” and “The Sopranos.”
“I was like, ‘Holy cow, this is fantastic,’ ” Mr. Krongard said of the news that Mr. Chakroabarti wanted the role.
Another challenging part to fill was that of the female F.B.I. agent. Mr. Krongard had met with some actresses, but no one had the look he wanted. Then, late one night he spotted Eileen Shanahan interviewing a marine colonel on a Cablevision show called “Neighborhood Journal.”
The next morning, Mr. Krongard called the station looking for Ms. Shanahan. When Mr. Krongard first approached her about acting in his film, she expressed skepticism. Mr. Krongard told her he was looking for a “ball-busting bitch,” she said. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ ”
Then Ms. Shanahan read the script and met with Mr. Krongard (her husband insisted on coming with her). “I’ve been having a blast,” she said of the experience. Until this film, she had never acted before. At Cablevision, she is the operation supervisor of local programming and rarely appears on camera, she said.
For the most part, Mr. Krongard and his all-volunteer crew have been shooting on weekends, except for a 10-day period when Mr. Chakroabarti flew out from Los Angeles. In addition to T&B Auto, they have shot at East Hampton Fuel Oil in East Hampton, the Montauk Airport, Bistrian Gravel in East Hampton, and Saracen restaurant in Wainscott, among other locations.
“The Hamptons is such a great character, especially in summer,” Mr. Krongard said. “You have all the beautiful people, the beautiful cars.” So far, he and his crew have received a lot of support from the community, he said.
“I feel confident that this movie may be good, it may be bad, but it will get people talking. You can’t ignore it,” Mr. Krongard said. The subject matter of the film is something Mr. Krongard feels comfortable with, as his father is a former executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency, its third-ranking position, and his brother is in Naval Special Warfare.
Having taught English in China, Mr. Krongard would like to film his next movie there. “Things that are happening there are just ripe for the picking,” he said, referring to the relationship between the Chinese and Muslim populations in far western China. “That is just a subject that I’m ready to devour.”