An old man that he saw reading The Odyssey in a café set the ball rolling for Richard Cohen. “It was, for me, a striking image,” Cohen says. “The rest just came from wondering.”
Writer-director Cohen landed Chicago actor Daniel J. Travanti to play a fictional version of the Odyssey reader in Cicero in Winter, now shooting through March 4 in Chicago, Oak Park and Franklin Park.
The 23-minute Cicero in Winter is the fourth short for Cohen and his Three Color Films. Cohen plans to take the short on the festival circuit and use it to secure investment for a $1-2 million feature based on the same story that he aims to shoot next year
Travanti plays a 75-year-old recent widower who stumbles on a book club at his local library. “Through books like The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, and Don Quixote, where he imagines himself in these stories, he rediscovers the importance of life and family,” Cohen says.
A friend introduced Cohen to Travanti six years ago for another project that never went into production.
For Cicero in Winter, “I needed a really great actor to carry the film, both visually, from a performance perspective,” Cohen says, and “especially since much of the film is voiceover and so we experience the film through watching the main character’s life without talking too much… we needed someone with the appropriate voice. Daniel makes the film.”
Cicero in Winter also features A Red Orchid Theatre company members Norm Woodel, who plays a book club member, and Larry Grimm, who plays Travanti’s son.
DP Scott Thiele, who also shot Cohen’s 2011 silent short Song for Pluto, is shooting on the Red.
Cohen and producer Angie Gaffney raised the under-$50,000 budget from private donations and out-of-pocket.
With 15 speaking roles and 12 locations including Shedd Aquarium and Brookfield Zoo, Cohen calls the short “pretty ambitious.” It already “feels as though we are shooting a feature.”
