World premiere at the AFI Fest 2003 in Los Angeles

Writer-director Steve Anderson's feature THE BIG EMPTY is a dark comedy which pays homage to the pulpy, fatalistic film noirs of the 1940s and 50s. Artisan Entertainment released the film in select theaters this past fall.

Anderson is a veteran cameraman who has shot seven national documentaries for PBS and thousands of hours of broadcast television. He has won both a Cable Ace Award (for CNN coverage of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake) and a Peabody Award (for his PBS Documentary Safe Haven). Working for numerous clients, including CNN, Anderson has traveled the world capturing hard news and entertainment stories for network broadcast. In addition to THE BIG EMPTY, Anderson has several feature length screenplays under option, and has written and directed several stage plays in New York. THE BIG EMPTY is Anderson's feature film directing debut.

Echo Lake produced the film with Aura Entertainment, Rainstorm Entertainment, and North by Northwest Productions. The film is represented by Paul Mayersohn.
To learn more about the film, visit the official website


CAST

Jon Favreau
(Daredevil; Made; Very Bad Things; Deep Impact; Swingers)

Rachael Leigh Cook
(Josie and the Pussycats; Antitrust; Get Carter; She's All That)

Joey Lauren Adams
(Big Daddy; Chasing Amy; Michael; Mallrats)

Kelsey Grammer
(Fifteen Minutes; Toy Story 2; The Pentagon Wars; “Frasier”)

Sean Bean
(Lord of the Rings; Don't Say a Word; Ronin; Goldeneye)

Daryl Hannah
(Kill Bill; Jackpot; Dancing at the Blue Iguana)

Adam Beach
(Windtalkers; Mystery, Alaska; Smoke Signals)

Melora Walters
(The Runaway Jury; Cold Mountain; Magnolia; Boogie Nights)


THE BIG EMPTY synopsis

John Person is a struggling actor in Hollywood . Working part-time as a messenger, he delivers scripts he'll never star in to producers for whom he'll never work. Behind on his rent and heavily in debt, he accepts an unsolicited offer from a strange neighbor to courier a blue suitcase up to the desert truckstop of Baker, California. There, in the middle of nowhere, at a seedy motel in the shadow of The World's Largest Thermometer, he'll simply deliver the locked suitcase to a trucker called Cowboy and be paid twenty-seven thousand dollars in cold, hard cash. John's given a loaded gun and told he must defend the blue suitcase with his life. It's easy money.

But on arrival he discovers he's already missed the mysterious man, and soon he's reluctantly mixed up with a young local vixen, her jealous boyfriend, and paranoid, alien-obsessed locals. When the FBI arrives at the local watering hole to question him about the murder and decapitation of his strange neighbor and hundreds of people recently gone missing, John realizes that he might be mixed up in something much more dangerous and bizarre than he ever imagined. Later that dark night, Cowboy violently appears, and John is faced with a choice that might change his life forever.

THE BIG EMPTY is a strangely twisted journey that transports John Person to another world, in more ways than one.