Shoplifting From American Apparel

Director Pirooz Kalayeh enters negotiations with Tao Lin and Melville House publisher to adapt the popular novella for film. The aim is to translate the work to cinema and launch the project for production.

The project begins with ambitions of a lavish budget and a high-profile producer, Mark Parsia (co-producer, THE HUMAN WAR). The financial downturn later forces a shift in strategy.

The downturn catalyzes a new approach that blends documentary and narrative techniques. The film aims to highlight writers within a virtual world and incorporate new media and animation.

The project becomes part absurdist documentary and part cinematic realism, moving between the life of the actual writer and the crew's trials. This approach mirrors the film's meta structure.

Tao Lin is depicted as a typical New York City literary whiz kid, smart and streetwise, but financially strapped. He splits his time between working occasionally in a vegan restaurant, meeting random girls, and instant messaging friends on the Internet.

He lives a dual life, balancing writing, casual work, and his online social interactions. The film uses his online presence to illustrate how he communicates with friends while pursuing a difficult financial path.

To make ends meet, he begins shoplifting and selling items on the Internet. This turn shows how desperation pushes him into illegal activity in a city full of temptations.

He is soon caught and arrested while stealing from American Apparel. The incident becomes a catalyst for his subsequent reflections and online writings.

While in jail, he witnesses a near fight between a drunken business executive and a drug dealer. The tense moment underscores the peril and social dynamics surrounding ambition in the city.

He goes home to write about his experience on the Internet. This act of storytelling connects his personal misadventure to a wider audience online.

Kalayeh decides that showing the final product while documenting the process is the best way to adapt the novella. The choice embeds the film in a meta-narrative about making a movie.

The film is deconstructed and reassembled several times as the crew confronts budget, weather, and other unforeseen constraints. The iterative process reveals multiple ways of constructing a feature film under independent cinema pressures.