Ravil Isyanov, right, plays a mob boss. On the left is Jack Mackie, filmmaker Peter Mackie's brother.
This time last year, aspiring filmmakers Peter Mackie and Nick Vitale were dreaming of their big breaks. Now the Sconnie natives are fielding calls from A-list actors and producers interested in their short film, Sergey’s Fortune.
The plot centers on Sergey (played by Yorgos Karamihos), a hitman working for the Ukranian mob whose car breaks down in the middle of a deserted highway after he’s stuffed a body inside the trunk. Sergey treks to a roadside rest stop to ask for help; unfortunately, the only people around are the D.G.A.F. Bros., a group of internet-famous vloggers obnoxious enough to make the remorseless assassin seem downright sympathetic.
The rough cut of the film is just over 13 minutes long, but Mackie, the director, and Vitale, the screenwriter, manage to pack plenty of comedy and pathos into that tight runtime — more, maybe, than they initially expected.
“When we started working on the film, our expectations were a lot lower,” Mackie says. “The film grew from a $5,000 project to a $30,000 one.”
Though Sergey’s Fortune is the first (relatively) big-budget film they’ve made together, Mackie and Vitale have been friends and collaborators for more than a decade, since they served as co-editors of their high school newspaper in Middleton, and they stayed in touch through their college years.
Mackie moved to Los Angeles immediately after graduating from UW-Madison in 2010. “But I would come back to Madison several times each year and would usually meet up with Nick,” he says. “At some point we started working on scripts together.”
Vitale returned to Madison after a stint at the University of Washington, in Seattle. And though he’s occasionally considered moving westward to pursue a career as a screenwriter, he’s always found a reason to stay. “I spent about six weeks on the road last year,” he says. “I was sleeping out of my car, visiting other cities, trying to get a sense of how they compared to Madison. The city is so livable in so many ways, and the people here are so friendly — I’ve been able to forgive the relative lack of opportunities.” And, thanks in part to the connections Mackie has made in L.A., Vitale has found a way to work in Hollywood without leaving Madison.
Mackie and Vitale have begun working on a feature-length film, tentatively titled Blue Whale, and hope to raise $3 to $5 million to fund it. In the meantime, they’ll be launching a crowdfunding campaign this summer to raise the rest of the money needed to finish Sergey’s Fortune. They intend to submit the short to several regional film festivals, including the Wisconsin Film Festival.