SANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2024 REVIEW! No matter how hard we fight it, human beings are social creatures. We need human contact in one form or another. In Kanin Guntzelman’s short film, Two Cents & A Footlong, Lenny (Saul Trujillo) covers the graveyard shift at a 24-hour sandwich shop called the Subclub. Hungry for a sandwich is a depressed, insomniac Rodger (George Russo).
What starts off as a cold transaction soon takes a very real turn when Lenny asks, “How are you doing?” Here, Rodger unloads about his lonely life, how Lenny was the first person that day to wish him a happy birthday, and how maybe life isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
“…how Lenny was the first person that day to wish him a happy birthday…”
As a film, Two Cents & A Footlong is a simple two-hander with its lead character communicating across a fast-food counter. The drama is all in the script. Writer/director Guntzelman describes this moment as akin to Howard Beale’s famous on-camera tirade from Sidney Lument’s classic Network.
Two Cents & A Footlong is about the random nature of life as we run into complete strangers, resulting in unexpected moments of empathy and human connection. As Rodger, George Russo brings the intensity countered by Saul Trujillo’s subtle play as the everyman. Gunztelman’s story brings a third character to play the perfect foil to Rodger’s tirade.
Two Cents & A Footlong screened at the 2024 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.