Chris Messina Makes Directorial Debut with “Alex of Venice” - East Idaho News
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Chris Messina Makes Directorial Debut with “Alex of Venice”

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min 02 chris grey 0237DJ1 hires1?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1429267281337Emily Shur/FOX(NEW YORK) — Chris Messina is making his directorial debut with Alex of Venice, in which he also stars. So what’s the film all about?

Alex of Venice is about a woman, Alex, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and she’s left by her husband with their 10-year-old son and kind of forced to put the pieces of her life back together again,” he tells ABC Radio.

“It’s a slice-of-life film. It’s definitely inspired by films that I love, ’70s movies, that kind of made me want to be an actor, so that’s why I wanted to do it,” Messina adds.

“All the characters are going through some sort of change,” he continues. “Some of them are choosing it and some of them are not. But change is obviously inevitable and it is often really painful even when it’s good.”

The Mindy Project star says he was more than prepared to step behind the camera.

“I liked going behind the camera. I’ve had the great fortune of working with some great directors that I have stolen from for this movie and then some bad directors that I’ve also kind of stolen from in terms of what not to do,” he admits. “One of my favorite things about acting is collaborating. This time as a director you get to collaborate with everybody, but at the end of the day you’re the final voice in it. It’s refreshing and it’s nice and it’s nerve-wrecking because if people don’t like it, there’s only one director.”

Not only is Messina the director, but he also portrays the fleeing husband, George, in the film. The actor warns that his character isn’t completely a bad guy.

“In truth he might be doing a sh**ty thing or he might be doing it sh**ty, but I actually think in this particular situation they are inevitably going to break up and actually he’s calling attention to the problems,” he explains.

Alex of Venice
, which also stars Don Johnson and Derek Luke, is out Friday.


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