Written and Directed by Jeph Porter
Based on the short story of the same name by Mike Krath

Wife – Nora Lahey
Husband – Mike Fagin
Police Officer – Colin Durbin (voiced by Jamison Acker)
Banker – Jim Speers
Banker’s Assistant – Chris Blough

Shot by Ryan Speers
Production Design – Andy Patch
Grip/PA – Adam Kolegas
Sound – Jamison Acker

One of the first things I did at Columbia.

Written and Directed by Jeronimo and Jeph

Jeph Porter – George
Ali Barnes – Girl

Filmed in the Fox Hole attic in Decatur, among various other places.

If you’re interested you can buy the novelist version of this movie over at Andrew’s page. Its quite a different take on the concept, but worth the read.

Written and Directed by Jeronimo and Jeph

Jeph Porter – Stranger 1
Andrew Johner – Stranger 2

It get’s a whole lot stranger then that

Written and Directed by Jeronimo and Jeph

Jeph Porter – George
Andrew Johner – Friend/Alien
Mary Bhnkey – Mother
Brandon Williams – Father
Rachelle Diggs – Alien

An early piece I did with Andrew while he was drugged up after surgery.

2003
Singularity
Meet George
Stanley’s Day

2004
A Most Ambitious Experiment

2005
The Oldest Bottle

2006
The Kitchen Trilogy – Part I – TOld U So!
The Kitchen Trilogy – Part II – The Cat’s in the Box
The Kitchen Trilogy – Part III – Take a Bullet

New York Times: A Nation of Christian’s is not a Christian Nation

Often times people ask me where I got the name Dirty Cricket. And I respond, “it’s a short and boring story”. At least that’s how it started.

Way back in the mid-nineties my long time friend Andrew Johner and I had been making short stop motion animation movies; one day we were making a particularly epic film that required credits! This involved recording a Power Point display with the camcorder propped up on a pile of books. In all those early years (5?) we never once managed to get a tripod or a working battery for Andrew’s parents High8 camera, thus tethering us to the longest extension cords we could find and within range of a table or chair to set the camera on. Anyhow in typing the credits I went to write down the name of our production company and I turned to Andrew and said, “We need a production company name” and Andrew touched by a muse, or perhaps recalling some collection of word he had heard said, “How about Dirty Cricket?” I nodded my head and said, “Okay.” And that is the origin of Dirty Cricket.

The name anyway

As time went on I moved away from Decatur, IL and went to Columbia College Chicago to study filmmaking. Every effort that I did there was a Dirty Cricket film in whatever incarnation it turned out to be. Many of those are here on this site and there are still more that will be put on here.

The biggest advancement in Dirty Cricket however came in 2004 when my freshmen year roommate Jamison Acker and I decided we wanted to make a feature film. I wrote the script with a few close friends and we amassed a group of people that where willing to help us make it happen. Under the newly established Dirty Cricket Films LLC we planned a fundraiser, “Cricket Fest” and mailed out over 500 letters and request for donations. The party happened and we raised over $5000 in profit. It was a startling success.

However, after the momentum of the party things began to dwindle. People who had more pressing things dropped out of the effort and as script problems delayed everyone the idea of a small group of sophomore college students producing a massive post-apocalyptic feature length film became truly daunting until finally I was the last one left. And eventually I too saw the folly of such a rush and gave it up.

The lessons learned however, made the whole thing worth it. And in a certain way that was my goal in stimulating this event. I knew that if anything where to be done it had to be forced and I, as I often do, chose the hardest path. My father didn’t tell me many things when I was growing up but the one thing he did say was “Aim high” illustrating the idea that if you aim high and if you miss your mark you will still fall higher then if you had aimed low. So with this in mind I advanced the unimaginable idea of producing what would otherwise be a multimillion-dollar film. I convinced myself it could be done and I’m pretty sure I convinced several other people it could be done as well. And there was a lot of let down when we fell.