Broken Vessels
| Broken Vessels | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Scott Ziehl |
| Produced by | Scott Ziehl Roxana Zal |
| Written by | Scott Ziehl David Baer John McMahon |
| Starring |
Todd Field Jason London Roxana Zal Susan Traylor James Hong |
| Music by | Martin Blasick Todd Field Brent David Fraser Bill Laswell |
| Cinematography | Antonio Calvache |
| Edited by | Chris Figler David Moritz |
| Distributed by | Unapix Entertainment Productions |
|
Release date
|
April 18, 1998 |
|
Running time
|
90 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $600,000 |
| Box office | $13,493 |
Broken Vessels is a 1998 medical drama film directed by Scott Ziehl and written by Ziehl along with David Baer and John McMahon. The film debuted at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and marked Ziehl's directorial debut. It stars Todd Field, Jason London, Roxana Zal, Susan Traylor, and James Hong. The film follows a rookie paramedic and his hardened drug-addicted partner as they take calls and cruise L.A. in their ambulance. Although it shares the same name as the book, it has nothing to do with the Andre Dubus essay collection of the same name.
The film tells the story of Tom, a young man from Pennsylvania who travels to Los Angeles to start working for an ambulance company. There, he is paired with an utterly self-assured veteran named Jimmy who has apparently gone through many partners in his time. In the beginning, Tom is overwhelmed by Jimmy's competence to deal with the high-pressure job, but slowly but surely he discovers that Jimmy is not the cool and collected man he thought he was. While Jimmy seems to have everything under control on the surface, he gets through the traumatic effects of the job by heavy use of drugs and avoiding commitments. Before long Tom finds himself pulled into the same world and has to come to a decision about what direction he wants to take in his life.
Made on a non-union shoestring budget of $600,000, it was nominated for several awards when it was shown at film festivals in 1998., Though it failed to find a legitimate theatrical distributor, eventually, the film was self-released in just two theaters over the holiday weekend of July 4, 1999 and brought in $3,722.
The film received no small amount of notice from major critics including Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times who gave it three stars out of four, saying "What makes the movie special is the way both lead actors find the right quiet notes for their performances."
At the British Independent Film Awards, the film was nominated for Best Foreign Independent Film - English Language, at the Gijón International Film Festival director Scott Ziehl was nominated for the Grand Prix Asturias award in the category of Best Feature. Ziehl and co-producer Roxana Zal won the Audience Award in the category of Best Feature Film at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in 1998.
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