Rating: NR | Runtime: 14 minutes
Director(s): Rob Christopher
Writer(s): Rob Christopher / Barry Gifford (story)

I am happy to wait.

Beginning with a conversation between friends about “techno-feudalism” and the idea that creatives are serfs to the cloud-based system of needing “land owners” to platform their work, you can feel the anti-AI and anti-“content” sentiments at the back of Rob Christopher’s My Last Martini. That’s not to say its goal is to be those things. Just that they are never far away from any rumination on the state of filmmaking and the shifting dynamic between creatives and executives that once felt symbiotic and now can’t help but be parasitic.

I’d like to think I would therefore be forgiven in my thought that Paul (Mickey O’Sullivan) might decide to embrace that reality by the end of Christopher’s adaptation of Barry Gifford’s short story of the same name. When Sharif (Madrid St. Angelo) leaves the table with the sardonic wish that his friend might escape his current bout of writer’s block so his next idea can be exploited by the powers that be, I assumed Anna’s (Wendy Robie) arrival as a storyteller would give him that spark to exploit her. And maybe he still will.

What makes My Last Martini so captivating, however, is that we would never think that way if not for the current state of the industry. We’d label this encounter over the duo’s respective third glasses (they each usually try to never drink more than two) as inspiration. If not for the subject matter of Sharif’s conversation steering us away, we’d still think it because most people don’t treat life as a series of transactions. Capitalism and an exponential growth economy have warped our relationship with art in horrible ways.

So, it becomes a balm for the soul that Anna would simply seek out a stranger to tell her own tale of exploitative transactions without worrying about payment. The same can be said about Paul lending his ear and attention to be engrossed in her dramatic familial history just as he wishes audiences would with whatever film he makes next. She didn’t have to sell it to a streamer. He didn’t have to subscribe to a service. They are ships passing in the night—a foreign concept for a world that’s turned to electronic devices for human connection.

But the short film is also just a lovely two-hander with an air of mystery insofar as where the story being told will go rather than the story of the characters engaged in its telling. O’Sullivan becomes our stand-in—leaning on every word and reacting only enough to ensure she clocks his genuine interest. And Robie becomes an enigmatic reminder that we mustn’t only give into the automated routine of convenience to transport an audience through time and space. We only need a good drink and a willing ear.

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Wendy Robie and Mickey O’Sullivan in MY LAST MARTINI.