Matt Szymanowski

Cupertino is a vivid tale of troubled adolescents and misfits - a harrowing and perceptive fiction debut from a promising new literary voice. This raw portrait of a lost generation traces the lives of teenagers and their experiments with vices of all kinds, struggles with family and one another, as they succumb to passivity, self destructive and often heartless nihilism.

Stevo lives in a world of casual privilege, acute moral entropy and reckless abandon. The weight of his older brother’s mysterious disappearance begins to permeate through his everyday life. After writing a disturbing school essay he’s put into therapy and given anti depressants. He’s continuously entranced by a mysterious new girl at school named Holly who may or may not be a high class call girl. His best friend Drake’s repressed homosexual bent becomes more evident with their drug induced adventures. The dizzying whirlwind of desperation takes Stevo through relentless parties in dot com villas, seedy bars, Santa Cruz bonfires, and also into the lesser known world of Silicon Valley after dark.

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Taylor Hess’s article “Disclosed: Producers and Therapists on Dealing with the Stress of a Demanding Profession” struck deep with me, so much so that I was compelled to write this response. I’m not a producer by choice. I’m a writer/director, and out of necessity, I produced my first feature film, The Purple Onion. I didn’t wait around for anyone or for the perfect conditions.

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"Last November I wrote a piece for Filmmaker about walking away from my debut film. “Just Let Go Already! 12 Takeaways After Making the Microbudget Feature, The Purple Onion” chronicles the five-year process of making my first feature film and sums up whatever wisdom I can impart to anyone making a film."

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"After four years of working on my first feature film, The Purple Onion, it’s now ready and available online. You can read two earlier articles on Filmmaker..."

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This is my second article written for Filmmaker Magazine, chronicling my documented experience in showing a work-in-progress rough cut of my feature film The Purple Onion where I gauged audience reactions with targeted questionnaires. 

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"When I was a doorman at San Francisco’s Punchline and Cobbs comedy clubs, I never would've thought that three years later, I'd be making my first feature film about a comedian..."

This is my first published articled on Filmmaker Magazine, released during the time I was running my crowdfunding campaign to for

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Before deciding to crowdfund my feature film I spent nearly half a year attempting to angle it for all different kinds of investment. This article was written for Film Courage. 

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"Starkey had heard about The Fungi from the 19-year-old lab intern who coincidentally was also at the concert on the day of the earthquake and stated that they (The Fungi) 'played Beatles songs better than the Beatles'...."

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