Eight Lessons

Roger and Tatum have just moved in together and they have some lessons to learn about living together.

We first met Roger and Tatum in The Longest 3 Minutes when they were sweating out waiting for the results of the pregnancy test. It was negative, and they rejoiced, kind of. But things were getting serious between them, so when they graduated and moved to Raleigh, they decided to live together... Except they didn't know that they had a lot to learn.

Produced by Turnip, Eight Lessons was a creative collaboration between Darrell Parker and Jim McQuaid. Darrell created these slightly wacky characters and perfectly portrayed Roger. Some of the eight episodes were written by Roger, some were written by Jim and several are collaborative. This was the first project Turnip took on after Jim quit the day job to focus on film and video full-time.

The 48-minute running time of the full version of Eight Lessons In Living Together is, alas, a pretty big challenge for most film festivals. It's too long to be a snappy little short and only about half the expected length for a feature. So, the film only played at three festivals. However, it won awards at all three!

We won "Best Narrative Feature" at the Columbia Gorge International Film Festival, "Best Screenplay" at the Ava Gardner Film Festival and "Best Director" and "Best Actress (Kendall Rileigh)" at the Sixth New Bern Filmmakers Conference.

Some of the individual "lessons" have appeared in other festivals as well.