Fast drugs, fast traffic, fast technology, fast pace of life: these are some of the overwhelming factors that frustrate the lead characters as they try to improve their place in the social order in Kevin Speckmaier’s 100-minute feature Middlemen.

It’s the debut feature from Speckmaier, a Vancouver director and renaissance man who began moving away from his paying career as a first assistant director with a 27-minute short called August Winds. The short tells the story of a Canadian military photographer working the camera as the Canadian army helps liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After the war, this same photographer meets up with one of the inmates from the camp and agrees to help preserve the stories of those who suffered there.

Middlemen, by contrast, is described by the director as ‘an urban cautionary tale’ very much set in the present day, a ‘neo-noir’ about how ‘one quick decision can lead to a life fulfilled or a life ruined.’

The ‘quick decision’ in this film’s plot occurs after lead character Farley (James Hutson), who thinks he has steered himself clear of substance abuse and the traps of the fast life, finds himself facing great temptation. Farley is in his apartment with Alison (Kirsten Robek), a woman he’s trying to save from a low-life boyfriend she’s been fighting with. Following the requisite intimacy, and in an odd bit of scripting from cowriters Speckmaier and Robert Petrovicz, Alison sleeps but Farley doesn’t.

When her pager warbles yet again, he hacks in and intercepts her messages. Turns out Alison had been fighting with her boyfriend because he wanted her to drive him to Shantytown, a locale notorious for drug deals. Farley makes a ‘quick decision’ to try to get a piece of the action in Shantytown.

Taking his friend Andy (Byron Lucas) with him, Farley heads off. The pair double-crosses some heavy-duty dealers, ending up with a ‘briefcase full of u.s. cash and four kilos of stolen cocaine.’ Their lives are speeding up. When they decide against making a bulk sale to get rid of the coke in favor of maximizing profit by selling it piecemeal, they are hurtling out of control.

Speckmaier and crew shot over 12 days in Vancouver, beginning in May of 1999, on the proverbial shoestring budget – the cast, crew and equipment were all free. Speckmaier and coproducer Petrovicz, both familiar around Vancouver with credits on several major productions (Speckmaier worked as first ad on Poltergeist [the series] and The Outer Limits), called in lots of favors. They found, as the director says, that ‘the kindness, the breaks and the deals, and the people going out of their way to do this, is mind-numbing.’

Post shoot, costs for lab work, editing, sound mix and so on brought the budget to $200,000. Middlemen’s dop is Todd Elyzen, its editor is Carmen Pollard and its composer is Shane Harvey. The search is on for a distributor. *