Filmmaker Hammill Does Everything but Sell Popcorn

Anyone picking up tickets to the Laguna Beach Film Festival, or who has a question about it once there, probably will end up talking to Craig Hammill, the fest’s unofficial jack-of-all-trades.

The 22-year-old from Laguna Beach graduated last spring from the USC film school. His short film, “Foot in the Mouth,” will premiere Sunday at the festival. He’ll also present two seminars, advising how to get a short film in the can.

All in all, Hammill’s one busy young man.

“I’ll be there to assist the filmmakers. Or if food needs to be delivered, I’ll deliver food. Or if tickets need taking, I’ll be taking tickets,” he said with a laugh.

Hammill doesn’t mind. He’s just happy to contribute and for the chance to have his film screened beyond the walls of USC. So when anyone calls, he jumps.

That can-do attitude was largely what got “Foot in the Mouth” produced during his senior year at USC.

“It’s very, very low budget,” Hammill said. “I had to make every penny count.”

He got the money for his 28-minute short through tutoring jobs, working as a waiter, borrowing $1,000 from a great-aunt, even painting the doors of classrooms on campus.

“Listen,” Hammill said, “anything you’ve got to do to get it done.”

The film--which Hammill says is “personalized,” not autobiographical--focuses on the tension and internal trauma that occurs at a college dance. Interracial attractions and relationship entanglements are explored. Everybody’s good intentions, it seems, are spoiled by a dreaded slip of the tongue.

People just want to communicate, Hammill says, but mix-ups and faux pas keep getting in the way. “It’s when you’re in the thick of a romantic relationship that you’re always saying something you wish you could take back,” he said.

The film follows today’s social scene through the eyes of a white male, a black female, a foreign-exchange student and an introverted Asian girl one evening until what he calls the film’s “train-wreck climax.”

It doesn’t offer a solution to the question of race and communication, Hammill said. “That can’t be solved in just one film.” Rather, Hammill said, he hopes to get people talking.

“I didn’t want to make a movie,” he said, “that’s like cotton candy: sweet in your mouth but one that immediately dissolves away when it’s over.”

Hammill plans to enter his film for consideration at next year’s Sundance Film Festival. But for the moment, he is pleased about his involvement with the charity-driven Laguna event--created to raise money for child-abuse prevention.

“Sometimes I wonder if my pictures will ever make a difference,” he said. “But here it does. This festival has a very pragmatic approach of helping other people . . . while still celebrating the love of the medium.”