Plastic Breakfast

About the Film

Plastic Breakfast is an experimental feature-length comedy currently being produced at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, California.

The story of the film centers around a group of five struggling artists who take up residence in an abandoned sitcom set.

These characters are:

    1.  Richard, a highly analytical and self-absorbed writer.

    2.  Virginia, a jaded and cynical photographer.

    3.  Donald, a drug-addled, unstable, and nihilistic painter.

    4.  Alice, a somewhat melodramatic actress.

    5.  Luke, an aloof street musician. 

After meeting one of the laid-off employees from the studio which owns the set where they are residing, the group decides to begin filming their own series of underground films on the set, using themselves as actors and their friends as crew.
Each film depicts the five artists eating breakfast together.

Why Breakfast?

We are taught in school that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day," and we grow up watching ideal versions of happy families on sitcoms and television commercials share breakfast together before the day gets started.  With the perfect breakfast, it seems, one can have a perfect day.  But what is the 'perfect breakfast' ? 

The characters in this film are particularly obsessed with a time in their lives when it seemed as if a glorious future was in front of them and they could all do and be whatever they put their minds to.  It's the "what will you be when you grow up?" scenario.  That's what they were taught as children, that's what they experienced watching TV shows, and the irony now is that they're literally living on the discarded set from one of these shows, broke, with a lot of real-life pressures to deal with.  But within the films they're making, they're all still free to use their imagination to do and become whatever they wish.  

What's unique about this film is that it contains equal portions of experimental and traditional narrative filmmaking.  On the one hand, there is the ongoing story of the group of artists moving on to the set, living there day-to-day, and struggling to keep their film projects afloat.  On the other hand,  there are the projects themselves, nine short films embedded within the film as a whole that vary widely in style, expressing a range of acting methods, set design, and editing that might normally not be seen outside of arthouse cinema, music videos, or even gallery installations.  In effect, Plastic Breakfast forms a kind of bridge between the narrative and experimental film traditions. 

About the Writer/Director

Zane J.S. Johnson studied English literature and music composition at the University of Virginia, where he received grants to shoot his first feature-length film in southern India.  Entitled Mrigendrah, this was an experimental documentary and travelogue, and was completed in 2006. 

After graduating, Zane moved to Kyoto, Japan, where he lived for the next three years, and where he completed his first narrative feature The Olden Days Are Now, a suspense drama based on Japanese folklore and ghost stories.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL7HGaKbIX4)

Returning to the United States in 2009, Zane moved to New York, where he produced a number of music videos and experimental shorts before enrolling as a graduate student at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, where he currently resides.

You can see some of Zane's work at https://vimeo.com/user2280469/videos

Plastic Breakfast will be his third feature-length film.