Like many young directors searching for their big break, Nathaniel Nose's youth was filled with dreams of moving to New York City.
Now the theater senior and aspiring filmmaker has traded in his Manhattan reveries for the gritty realism of our own state capital.
Nose said he's one among a growing movement of filmmakers who are choosing to produce their films right here in Michigan.
His first production, "Unruly Nights," will premiere at 9 p.m. Friday at NCG Cinemas, 2500 Showtime Drive in Lansing, with free screenings every night at 9 p.m. through Thursday.
The film is a retelling of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" that takes place in the seedy 1970s underground bar scene. The homegrown flick was shot for $1,000 entirely on location in Lansing and East Lansing.
Nose, 21, said shooting the film at home was a practical choice.
"Why go somewhere else when I can do it in my homeland?" he said. "Instead of bringing Hollywood productions here, we should start them here."
Nose said the "kid-with-a-camera" era could leave big-time movie studio executives shaking in their boots.
"Hollywood is terrified of this kind of thing," said Nose, who shot "Unruly Nights" entirely on digital media. "A kid with a camera, an editor and a story can make a full-length feature.
"It can give people something different than this industry garbage that is being pumped at us nowadays."
Nose's penchant for film started when he was a student at DeWitt High School. There, he acted in a 1970s gangster version of the play "Macbeth," a production that would become the inspiration for "Unruly Nights."
It was also at DeWitt where Nose met Jeff Croley, his theater instructor and mentor.
"Nate always wanted to have a project in his hands," said Croley, a 1991 MSU graduate. "That 'it's all about me' thing - he never fell victim to that."
After arriving at MSU to pursue a degree in theater, Nose began dabbling in short films. His shorts have been featured at the East Lansing Film Festival and some even earned top honors.
Despite his local successes with short film, Nose said he couldn't get "Macbeth" off his mind.
"I felt like there was more to say with this story and it kept haunting me," he said. "I felt it would almost work better as a film, at least with this interpretation."
Nose's first step in making his vision a reality was contacting Croley. Weeks of scheming topped off the years of brainstorming that took place between Nose and Croley during their acquaintance at DeWitt. Croley soon began writing a screenplay that would time-warp Shakespeare's Elizabethan-age story into the scruffy 1970s.
That means characters dressed in bell-bottoms and grooving to classic disco hits speak iambic pentameter mumbo-jumbo throughout the film.
The choice to use an adapted screenplay is a move Nose said doesn't equate as being a cop-out.
"A lot of films come out nowadays that they say are based on 'The Taming of the Shrew' or 'Othello,'" Nose said. "That's pretty much a bunch of malarkey. They're just stealing Shakespeare's ideas.
"The brilliance is using his language and keeping it refreshed and keeping it relevant."
Finding actors to commit to the tricky language proved less of a challenge than Nose, who plays MacDuff in the film, and Croley originally thought. The duo amassed a cast of 80 actors and actresses, 30 of them principal players and all but two from the Lansing area.
"A lot of people were new to film acting and a lot of people were new to Shakespeare," Croley said. "But it was never an issue in regard to what needed to happen."
Croley, who plays Macbeth, said every cast member was completely dedicated to the shoot, which took place during three weeks in the summer of 2003.
"I knew it was going to be a comfortable set, knowing that Nate and I had the same approach in mind," he said. "The approach to the entire process was improv."
Croley said much of Nose's camera work and the extras' performances were decided on the spot.
Such a technique proved taxing for the cast and crew, who worked under tough time constraints. Eighty percent of the film was shot inside Omar's, 316 E. Michigan Ave., and The Exchange, 314 E. Michigan Ave., both in Lansing.
"We had to start shooting when the club closed at 2 a.m.," Nose said. "We shot from 2 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon the next day."
The grueling schedule made it especially demanding for Croley, a teacher with two kids who is used to having his summers off. On most days, the shoot lasted 18 hours for Croley, who often would scout for new locations after shooting wrapped.
"It was really a family approach," Croley said. "It never would have happened if I didn't have a spouse who was so welcoming to the idea."
Now, more than a year after the original shoot, Croley and Nose are anticipating their film's world premiere Friday night.
Kristy Smith, day manager at NCG Eastwood Cinemas, said the theater is eager for the film's premiere as well.
"This isn't anything we've done before," she said. "We thought, 'These are local people. It would help them out a lot and the community would really like to see a film that was made here.'"
Nose said he plans to take "Unruly Nights" on the film festival circuit, with stops planned at the East Lansing Film Festival and possibly the Ann Arbor Film Festival.
Ultimately, he said he'll use "Unruly Nights" as a "calling card" to make bigger and better films. His next directing project, "Sometime Sunday," is slated to start shooting in 2006 and has a potential budget of $500,000.
"There are rich people in Michigan that want to finance films," Nose said. "I've chosen to make a good movie that I can take to people and say, 'Look what I can do for nothing. Imagine what I can do for something.'"
