Rochester Director Unveils Sophomore Effort

From pizza delivery drivers to a bunch of tenth graders. That's essentially the feature film comedic narrative trajectory so far for Rochester, New York writer-director T. Lee Beideck, whose debut Drivers Wanted is available on DVD and very appropriately named follow-up Sophomore premieres tomorrow night near the shores of Lake Ontario.

Beideck filmed most of his new film in Irondequoit, a suburb of Rochester abutting the water. The big difference this time around is that Beideck was able to wrangle a couple of “name” actors to go along with his group of young local performers. Christopher Plummer's daughter Amanda plays a teacher at Helen Keller High School, while Seinfeld straight man Patrick Warburton is a janitor with a son in the sophomore lead group.

 

It was something of a slow roll for Sophomore, wrapped back in 2009 but then followed by two years of fine-tuning. For Drivers Wanted, Beideck landed blurb quotes from skateboarder Tony Hawk and director John Landis, so there's no telling who might wind up on the DVD box of movie number two.

[Sophomore]