LOGLINE Someone knows about the 25 million, someone knows about the plane to Mexico, someone killed their getaway pilot. As loyalty turns to suspicion and friends become enemies, four criminals try to uncover the rat and escape their past... if they can survive the night. SYNOPSIS 25 million dollars, 8 safety deposit boxes, and months before anyone will know it’s gone. But Harrison’s (Gil Bellows) perfect heist turns deadly when his safe-cracker, Mack (Mi- chael Eklund), discovers their getaway pilot brutally murdered. Someone knew about the job, someone set them up. Stranded in a frozen hangar, held hostage by someone outside, loyalty turns to suspicion and friends turn to enemies. Now it’s a race against time as the band of thieves try to uncover the rat and escape their troubled pasts… if they can survive the night. A dark and intricately structured genre film,Dead Draw is a story where every motive is questioned, every moment is critical, and every secret could prove fatal. 2 DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT In September of 2013, I decided to forget time travel, forget pitched some more. And somehow we raised every penny post apocalyptic wastelands, forget sci-fi epics, and write for this SAG Ultra-Low Budget feature. A heist film something small, intimate. A film I could make with my about what happens after the perfect bank robbery, we friends and the help from a handful of investors. shot Dead Draw in two locations: the heart of Chicago and a small town airplane hangar in downstate Illinois – In one month I wrote Dead Draw on my train ride to and in brutal weather, ice, sleet, snow, ice, snow and sleet. from work, 30 minutes in the morning, 30 at night. I finished the script 2 days before I was hopping a flight to LA to court I wanted this film to be brutal, to look like the arctic, to some actors and investors for a different film. feel cold. I kept talking about the breath, I wanted to see it, and I was obsessed and worried it would be too warm… On a whim, I sent Dead Draw to my casting director for her Enter the polar vortex and one of the coldest winters in thoughts on character, but unbeknownst to me, she sent Chicago history. Dead Draw to all the talent I was meeting in LA. And just like that, 30 days after writing this screenplay, I was having Eighteen shooting days but only at night: 6 in Chicago coffee, beer, and burgers with Hollywood actors who loved and 12 spent in an unheated airplane hangar. The cast Dead Draw a script I hadn’t even spell checked. and crew endured a cold hell to make Dead Draw the unrelenting tale that it is. Within 3 days I had verbal commitments from Gil Bellows (The Shawshank Redemption), Bitsie Tulloch (Grimm and There were a few complaints, but no hypothermia. And The Artist), and Slaine Carrol (The Town and Killing Them lots and lots of bourbon. Softly). My head still spinning not a week after I got back to Chicago, I got a call from Gil Bellows, who told me that Thousands were spent on hot hands, the famous hand his buddy Michael Eklund (The Call and Bates Motel) was warmers. Surrounding towns lost power, the wind chill interested in coming on board as well. dipped below negative 40 and winds howled at the speed of 50 MPH, but our cast and crew powered on. They The only catch? I had to make the film happen in the month carried this film, my film, on their backs. Braving the of January 2014, or I would lose my actors to other projects. impossible to make my dream a reality. I wrote Dead Draw in a month, had talent attached the following week, and now had just 4 months to raise the It is theirs as much as mine, and it is to them that I owe money to make it happen. this labor of love. We begged. We pleaded. We pitched and pitched and - Brian Klemesrud, September 2015 3 BIOGRAPHIES - CREW BRIAN KLEMESRUD WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, EDITOR Brian Klemesrud is an award-winning writer/director out of Chicago, Illinois. While Dead Draw is Klemesrud’s first feature, two of his other screenplays Recursion and The Mushroom Man are in various stages of pre-production. A true independent, Klemesrud has worked in production and post-production. Cutting his teeth as a grip, Klemesrud moved onto Set Builder, 2nd AC, 1st AC, 1st AD, Assistant Editor, and Editor, Writer, Director and Producer. Currently Klemesrud is represented by Lena Roklin of Luber/Roklin Entertainment, and he works as Creative Director at AL Media, earning 18 Reed awards and 10 Pollie awards for excellence in directing, writing, and producing. JIM TIMPERMAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, PRODUCER At age 11, Jim Timperman discovered his life calling while watching a movie at the Indiana theater in Bloomington. But being unable to procure a Spaceship or a Wookie co-pilot, Timperman decided to go with his fallback career: Cinematography. Probably a good choice. Timperman has shot hundreds of commercials and over 30 feature films on 35mm, 16mm, Super 16, HD, Alexa, Red One, Epic and Dragon, and Canon C500. Shooting in a studio or on location in cities as far flung as London, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Florence, Prague, Warsaw, Mumbai, Tokyo, Lima, and many others, Timperman’s work has won awards at film festivals and in the ad agency world. Timperman is currently in pre-production with Zack Parker (Proxy, Scalene) on his next film that will shoot in Chi- cago in 2016. FAUST CHECHO PRODUCER, ACTOR Faust Checho began producing feature films in 2009 with the award-winning psychological thriller, The Fields. Checho oversaw all aspects of production and starred in the film with Academy-Award Winner Cloris Leachman. Checho’s second feature (Proxy, directed by Zack Parker) was critically acclaimed (“A Hitchcockian Mindf**k of a movie,” - SF Bay Guard- ian) and premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. Proxy was acquired for distribution by IFC Midnight and went on to garner a multitude of accolades and awards on the festival circuit. Dead Draw is Checho’s third feature film as actor/producer and his first collaboration with writer/director/friend, Brian Klemesrud. In between acting and producing Faust also works as a Development Executive with Evergreen Media Group (The Conjuring). 4 DAN KOLEN PRODUCER A Chicago-based producer, Kolen has coordinated undercover shoots in Tijuana, Mexico for CNBC’s Crime Inc., managed hundreds of cast and crew in multiple cities for The Onion’s VICE-parody EDGE, and is now creating a documentary in a medium-security prison in Iowa. Kolen has produced a range of work from PBS shows, to award-winning ads for U.S. Senators and Congressmen, to more than a hundred educational videos for W.W. Norton, along with making experimental art films in his off time. Dead Draw is his first narrative feature. KATIE BRYAN PRODUCER Katie Bryan has had more than a decade of experience in production spanning reality television to documentaries to na- tional advertisements. She began her career working for legendary documentarian and news journalist Bill Kurtis, making hard-hitting documentaries such as Cold Case Files. She has worked as a writer, producer and occasional set designer on projects with high profile clients including Meow Mix and Kmart to major networks like the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. Katie’s love for production led her to working on her first scripted featureDead Draw. MARK YAEGER COMPOSER Born into a musical family, Yaeger developed a passion for music at an early age, influenced by classical composers such as Beethoven and Chopin. His musical education began with piano lessons at age 4, followed by the violin. Yaeger’s ability to convey emotion through music to pictures ultimately led him to Klaus Badelt studios (Pirates of the Caribbean, Gladiator, Olympics 2008) where he collaborated with Badelt on several projects. Yaeger has composed orig- inal music, written songs, played solo instruments, and produced the score for more than 30 Hollywood and independent films. He currently resides in Los Angeles. GUEORGUI LINEV COMPOSER Linev is better known by his stage name Crooked Waters and is a Bulgarian-American musician, producer, and composer of minimalist chamber, orchestral, and film music. He is also the founder, composer and producer of LA-based band Kan Wakan, which rose to prominence in 2014 with the release of its debut album Moving On. The album earned high praise from the editors at Rolling Stone, who called it ”Dreamy, intricate stuff worth repeated rehearing’s,” The Fader dubbed them, “One of the most exciting acts of the year,” and Buzzbands LA listed it as their #1 album of the year. An artist who pushes himself out of his musical comfort zone, Crooked Waters incorporates orchestral, r&b, trip hop, electronica, jazz, folk and psychedelia. Named under Yahoo Music’s ’11 Best New Artists of the Year’ and LA Weekly’s ‘10 best songwriters in Los Angeles in 2014,’ he is currently writing and producing Kan Wakan’s sophomore album. PHILIPPE THIBAULT DIGITAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR Philippe Thibault got his start with Anthem VFX in Vancouver in the early 2000s. He was nominated for a VES Award by his peers for Outstanding Compositing in 2007 (Tin Man), and was nominated twice and won a Gemini Award for Best Visual Effects for his work on Sanctuary (2009). He was also nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstand- ing Special Visual Effects for Tin Man in 2008 and Sanctuary in 2009.