THREE WOMEN AND A POSSIBLE FIRE NEXT DOOR

MARCUS BAKER

Writer/Director

Three Women and a Possible Fire Next Door was born out of an incident that happened to me several years ago. It was sharpened into story form by the desire to make a short film with a compact running time that followed its throughline all the way to its natural end. It was also informed by my desire to make a film that felt fun, joyful, and would be fun to watch with an audience after having taken my short family drama One Hundred to film festivals in 2023.

I’ve always viewed filmmaking as a means of both personal expression and era documentation. As I developed this project, I found myself drawn to how modern the concept felt in its setup: three characters steeped in varying degrees of the same information yet unable to translate that information into a simple, concrete response. Instead, the characters ping pong off each other as they intermittently assess, reassess, ignore, and panic. 

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Pairing these wide-ranging responses with my love for Screwball comedies felt like a natural next step. Stylistically, I took my primary inspiration from Noah Baumbach’s 2015 film Mistress America, which brilliantly reformats the screwball comedy into a forum for characters who love to talk but have no capacity to listen. I was also heavily inspired by the emotionally involving comedy of Preston Sturges The Palm Beach Story, the hare-brained energy of Howard Hawks Bringing Up Baby, and the blithe barbs of Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip.

As a director, I saw this film as an opportunity to fuse all of these ideas and influences into a project that felt like a thrilling expansion of my work. Moreover,  I set out to make a film that would be fun to watch with a crowd; one that incorporated the lessons and experiences I gained across my first festival run. Making Three Women and a Possible Fire Next Door has been a hoot from start to finish. I sincerely hope you enjoy watching as much as we enjoyed making it.