“If Blake Edwards wrote a script and then Abel Ferrara directed it, it might look something like Nowhere Man, a scuzzy, oil-black comedy about a guy named Conrad (Michael Rodrick) whose fiancée (B-movie scream queen Debbie Rochon) snips off his penis with a pair of gardening shears and makes a run for it. The rest of the film is consumed by Conrad’s search for his missing member, while flashbacks shed light on the morally murky events leading up to the incident (beginning with Conrad’s discovery that his bride-to-be used to be a porn star). Surely, Nowhere Man is destined to be the only film of 2005 that features scenes of a man painfully urinating through a catheter while crying tears of shame and, later, rummaging through foil-wrapped leftovers in the hope of finding some freeze-dried dick. That said, this third feature by way-independent writer-director Tim McCann isn’t the outré shockfest it may sound like, but rather a carefully considered satire of contemporary sexual mores. If Nowhere Man isn’t as consistent as McCann’s excellent 2001 feature Revolution #9, it further establishes him as an unpredictable, uncompromising talent working well beneath the industry radar.
The guy has balls.”

-- Scott Foundas, LA Weekly
 

“Michael Rodrick gives a performance of relentless intensity!”

-- LA Times


“McCann's tone, perversely comic at first, gradually darkens, transforming Nowhere Man into a savage noir exploration of the war between the sexes… Tim McCann has established himself as a maverick filmmaker -- each of his three features displays a taut, edgy sensibility far beyond the pale of Hollywood.”

-- Joshua Katzmann, Chicago Reader


“May be the best film ever made about a guy who gets his dick cut off…
A sly study of male ego and insecurity…skillfully precise.”

-- Dennis Lim, The Village Voice

 

“Nowhere Man is the ultimate ‘relationship-gone-bad’ film, a twisting narrative that predominantly plays backwards, resulting in a pitch-black dark comedy about the consequences of your actions... An outstanding film – dark, twisted and impressive – that stays with you long after it ends.”

-- Mike Watt, Film Threat

 

“The pulse pounding intensity of Rodrick and Rochon's performances, married with
McCann’s muscular direction, make this film devastatingly shocking and utterly convincing.”

-- B-Critic.com

 

“Unflinching… writer/director Tim McCann wisely concentrates his energy on story and
characterization, pulling off one of the more impressive lo- fi efforts of the year.”

-- Rue Morgue

 

“Why is it so appealing? Not because of the severed penis. There’s a really weird balance of elements at play that just works: The cheap look and the intensity of the actors involved give the movie a darkness that effectively counteracts the juvenile humor and makes it play as disturbing rather than puerile. Michael Rodrick, as the pissed-off husband who loses his member, somehow manages to maintain his dignity despite a urination-via-tube scene, and Debbie Rochon, generally known for Troma movies and direct-to-video erotic horror, stretches her serious acting talents, having a lot of fun playing “untalented” in the porno film-within-the-film… Nowhere Man is a textbook example of how to make the most of the limited resources available.

-- Luke Y. Thompson, Los AngelesCity Beat

 

“In the film within the film, a detective pays a house call to a woman in distress. Just as Julianne Moore as a porn actress in Boogie Nights carefully and consciously utters every word of blue dialogue, Rochon as an aspiring actress gives a similarly hilarious, phonetic performance… Not since Paul Verhoeven’s The Fourth Man has a film produced such castration anxiety. This is a different kind of horror film, where the threatened victim is male vanity. As a spurned woman, Debbie Rochon’s vulnerability and heartfelt performance lifts this no-budget production... Unlike Jennifer’s ill-fated acting career, Rochon comes across as natural… For men, it will be an endurance test to sit still, though the closing credits reassures, tongue-in-cheek, that no penises were harmed in the making of the film.

-- Kent Turner, Film-Forward.com

 

“McCann’s half-serious, half satirical take on tough-guy action films (reminiscent of Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly) is shot in a highly effective, if counter-intuitive style… Nowhere Man may be the best edited film in I-don’t-know-how-long.  The result isn’t an empty-headed virtuosity, but a film that, in scene after scene, elucidates and elaborates on the emotional state of its characters…  McCann is what you might call a natural, or intuitive filmmaker…  What exactly he’s doing at this financially borderline level of filmmaking is a bit mysterious to me.  There’s a hint that (like the great Edgar G. Ulmer) he prefers it there, since it’s at the margins of filmmaking that a writer-director can do skilled, nervy work.  Whatever the reason, with Nowhere Man, he’s come up with an impressive piece of work.

-- Henry Sheehan, HenrySheehan.com

“The term noir gets applied to all manner of candy-assed crap these days (Michael Mann's Collateral? Pfftt!), so a thriller as uncompromisingly dark as Nowhere Man presents a welcome opportunity to reset the benchmark… Indie auteur McCann Desolation Angels, Revolution #9) knows exactly what he's doing, eliciting scalding, tragic performances from his little-known players while maintaining an assured 80/20 balance between straight-faced thriller and pitch-black surrealist farce.

--Cliff Doerksen, Time Out Chicago

 

KING COBRA FILMS in association with OPEN FILMS presents a TIM MCCANN film MICHAEL RODRICK DEBBIE ROCHON FRANK OLIVIER NOWHERE MAN BOB GOSSE LLOYD KAUFMAN STEVE OLIVIERI and MICHAEL RISLEY costume designer NIVES SPALETA music by ROB STRAIT DREW STILES production designer LAURA HYMAN executive producer ADOLFO VARGAS FRANK OLIVIER line producer JIM HARRISON produced by MARK TCHELISTCHEFF LARRY O'NEIL TIM MCCANN

written and directed by TIM MCCANN

DOWNLOAD THE PRESS KIT HERE (.pdf file)  

EMAIL CONTACT:

nowheremanthemovie@yahoo.com