A real un-romantic comedy

Partner wheel: Ken (Adam Goldstein) joins an eating-disorder therapy group in an attempt to pick up a girl in “The Snake,” which premieres locally Friday at the Roxie. (Courtesy photo)

Bulimia, for the most part, isn’t used as fodder for most romantic comedies, but “The Snake,” a San Francisco-set, no-budget comedy that proudly embraces its lack of romance, presents themes that are fairly realistic — and totally unapologetic.

As creators Adam Goldstein and Eric Kutner put it, “The Snake” is about “a desperate cad who fixates on a troubled young woman, joins her support group, and enables her eating disorder.” Talk about a laugh riot, right?

“Touchy subjects are among the easiest things to turn into comedy. It’s the court jester approach,” says Goldstein, who also stars as Ken, the aforementioned creep.

The indie film, which premieres locally Friday at the Roxie as part of the Frozen Film Festival (it screened this year at South by Southwest), is more dark comedy than romantic comedy as it steers clear of trite cinematic conventions of the he-she romantic onscreen interplay.
Basically, Goldstein and Kutner aren’t about to fall victim to the pitfalls of true love a la
Hollywood.

“Love, the basic human emotion responsible for altruism, family bonds and social cohesion is a wonderful and important thing. ‘True love,’ the magical, transcendent panacea that implicitly nods to concepts of destiny, souls and nirvana ... is as make-believe as Jesus resurrected. Almost all Hollywood films address true love in some way, shape, or form. We thought, well, we don’t believe in that idea, so let’s make sure we don’t propagate it — even if our film is, in part, a romantic comedy,” says Goldstein, whose day job is as a camera man.

With a modest budget — zero — Goldstein and Kutner did their best to create a film that they had always wanted to make on a scale that they could afford.
“Given complete freedom, I suspect we would have made basically the same film ... on a space station,” says Kutner, a Web designer.

Not surprisingly, the pair encountered their share of challenges making “The Snake.”

“We were careful about writing in locations that we could realistically secure, but there were a couple of surprises. Getting a school was hard. Getting a grocery store was nearly impossible,” Kutner says. “That was one scene we ended up shooting truly guerilla, showing up with a camera and asking, ‘Can we shoot here for 15 minutes?’”

Besides the monetary issues, Goldstein points out that making a feature-length movie around day jobs, with a full-time crew of two, and paying for it out of pocket wasn’t necessarily the easiest endeavor for the duo.

“We couldn’t have done it without a lot of help,” he says.

Note: The pair even got Margaret Cho to do a cameo.

IF YOU GO

The Snake

Where: The Roxie, 3117 16th St., S.F.
When: 9 p.m. Friday
Tickets: $10
Contact: www.ticketweb.com
Note: The Frozen Film Festival runs Friday-Saturday at the Roxie.