More on Erika Hampson and a new film....

Providence Journal, 2.28.10
By Michael Janusonis

Cumberland producer delighted by Oscar nod

Is there something about Cumberland?

The town’s most famous exports — directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly — went to Hollywood and became famous for their wacky comedies, most notably “There’s Something About Mary . . .”

Now former Cumberlandite Erika Hampson, who went to New York in hopes of getting into film production, has an Academy Award nomination for the short live-action film she co-produced, “The New Tenants.”

Reached on her cell phone while she was walking down Sixth Avenue to her apartment, Hampson said she was surprised and delighted by the nomination for the quirky film, which she co-produced with Sam Bisbee and which was directed by Joachim Back. She and producing partner Sam Bisbee are heading for Hollywood Monday to attend the Academy Awards on March 7.

“The New Tenants” follows the funny and unexpected travails of an unlikely gay couple: one a chain-smoking pessimist; the other a nonsmoking optimist, who discover that three murders took place in their apartment before they moved in, and that the man who had lived there left something behind. Soon their doorbell is ringing with a comical array of characters and there are more murders to follow. It all might seem gruesome if one weren’t laughing so hard.

Hampson calls it “a dark comedy, but people laugh. Even things I didn’t think were especially funny, the audiences find hilarious.”

“The New Tenants” has been received very well at film festivals from Colorado to Texas to Arizona, she said. “There’s been a lot of good positive feedback. It’s a movie I can watch over and over.”

She said it was shot over three days in December 2008 at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, which doubles for the apartment building, with a half day of filming under the elevated train tracks at Broadway and 125th Street for the movie’s closing sequence.

“We made it for under $100,000. The actors only got paid union scale of about $100 a day.” And those actors include such bold-face names as Vincent D’Onofrio and Kevin Corrigan.

That came about because the 32-year-old Hampson, a 1999 graduate of Boston College in communications, has had a long working relationship with D’Onofrio on his “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” TV show. She was hired in 2005 as a production assistant to “get my foot in the door” of the TV business.

D’Onofrio has asked her to join his new production company and she plans to work with him on his first production, which just got financing — a feature film called “Johnny and Me,” about a young woman seeking to form a bond with her estranged father, but discovering that it’s impossible because he’s incapable of social interaction due to Asperger’s syndrome.
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