by Nathan Gelgud
Jason Giampietro and I are old pals: we met over a decade ago through a mutual friend, and we hit it off when we started talking about filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder because he had a VHS of
In a Year of 13 Moons on his coffee table. We stayed friends through a shared love of movies and the New York Knicks.
This is the second year in a row that BAMcinemaFest has featured a short by Giampietro. Last year we screened
The Sun Thief, in which I had a very small part. (
Watch it here.)
Whiffed Out is a funny short movie about a guy who gets stuck watching a bike for his neighbor, who never returns to take it off his hands. Giampietro follows the bike as it changes hands and a small group of East Village eccentrics clash over its true ownership. It’s a great snapshot of a downtown New York summer and the few people left over from the bygone era of the neighborhood’s edgy glory.
I interviewed Giampietro through an on-line chat. After telling me a funny story about having seen Knicks owner James Dolan leaving Lincoln Center the night before (Giampietro shouted at him to do fans a favor and sell the team), we talked about his new short, other good bike movies, and Warren Oates.
Nathan Gelgud: For the purposes of this chat, I was thinking about other bike movies. And of course the big one,
Bicycle Thief.
Jason Giampietro: Yes, there was also the Dardenne brothers movie,
The Kid with a Bike. And Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s
Three Times. The first shot in that is a long shot of a guy riding a bike. What other bike movies are there?
NG: It’s not really a bike movie, but there's Mars Blackmon in
She's Gotta Have It.
JG: Yeah, he appears with the bike in Nora Darling’s apartment, and I was thinking about that—if she would have been worried that his bike would be filthy. I think that’s my favorite Spike movie because it's got an openness to all the characters. Except maybe the actor guy.