Al Warren crafts a dizzying ode to filmmaking with Dogleg

Creating art is one of the most fulfilling yet frustrating hobbies or careers anyone can have. Like many of my fellow creatives, I definitely have imposter syndrome when it comes to calling myself a creative or an artist–perhaps that’s just the territory that comes with funneling most of my energy into something that often provides no real financial gain or recognition. So, I fall into ruts where I feel like a fraud and creativity just isn’t flowing and oftentimes the only thing that can pull me out of that is a flash of inspiration and for me, I often find that in a good movie. The perfect movie is like amphetamines to me–my hands get clammy, everything becomes clear, I’m focused, and all I want to do for the next however many hours or days is make something. Al Warren’s 2023 feature-length Dogleg had me leaving the theater energized with a fire in my gut, burning to get home and get to work on something new. Coming from a background in mostly commercial work, shorts, and only one other feature length, Al Warren manages to take the spirit, fun, and headaches of indie filmmaking and puts them on the big screen. The film is a testament to trusting: The process, the people you create with, and that bad days don’t last forever.

Dogleg follows amateur director Alan (Warren) through one absurdly bonkers and stressful day. Alan’s fiancée goes out of town and puts him in charge of caring for her medically dependent dog, Roo, as well as tending to their (her) friends by attending their gender reveal party. After a confetti cannon scares Roo off, Alan has to scour the streets of Los Angeles to find the dog all while balancing the prep and execution of a planned shoot for his film 5-years-in-the-making. Poor Alan is stress personified, the embodiment of loss of control, and from where he sits, L.A. looks less like the City of Angels and more like the Seventh Circle of Hell. The film contains a series of vignettes all strung together by Alan’s excursion, which acts as the sort of spine of it all, keeping things connected and moving together. Warren and fellow writer Michael Bible crafted this piece that is so clever and wry and at its simplest, just relatable. Not just to creatives or those in the industry, but really, to anyone who’s had a day where things felt more like a bad dream than reality, as if their world was unraveling before them.

In an interview with fellow Hyperrealist Marie Ketring, Warren discusses his many inspirations for the film, one of which being transcendental cinema. Now, Dogleg is a comedy, after all, so this transcendental concept isn’t accompanied by a glowing red neon sign, but rest assured, it’s there. According to Paul Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film, transcendental cinema stylizes reality and seeks to “maximize the mystery of existence [...] striving towards the ineffable and invisible.” Dogleg diverts away from a traditional narrative by using these vignettes, though the lack of linear progression itself isn’t what embodies that transcendental style. Rather, it’s the way we jump from vignette to vignette almost rhythmically and rather quickly, then we sit with some really long borderline monotonous scenes before Warren takes reality and turns it on its head. Through this, the audience is lead into that “ineffable” space where the reality we see is off from the one that we really know so there’s a lack of expectations and preconceptions–viewers are left to sit with the unknowingness and silliness in front of them and hopefully–they choose to laugh!

What makes Dogleg standout is not technical prowess or big name actors or what have you (though don’t be fooled—this is both beautifully shot and incredibly well-cast), but rather that this film is so warm and unapologetically human that it has a pulse to it. It’s alive, it’s breathing, and for about 84 minutes, it pulses through you, too. Warren has found this perfect little pocket where the relationships fostered on set—their comfort, their trust, their energy—can be felt through the course of the film. There are moments throughout Dogleg that in any other context would be disconcerting, but the cast finds a way to make us smile; to ease us past the discomfort, to see the absurdity of the moment, and they sort of give us permission to laugh along. We know that these moments can only exist like this via the chemistry shared by these actors off-screen.

Simmering underneath the surface of Dogleg lies an ode to filmmaking and the creative process. Warren’s on-screen character— like himself—has poured years of blood sweat and tears into this film. He’s fighting tooth and nail to maintain control of what, at the end of the day, is an uncontrollable beast. It’s true when making art that even when the idea has been dissected, everything is planned and prepped, and the stars are aligned, the outcome is always up to fate. More often than not, what finally lands is almost never exactly how we’ve pictured it, if we could even picture it all in the first place. Dogleg works as a sort of metaphor for this phenomenon. Alan has an idea of how this day is going to go–gender reveal, setup, shoot, cooldown, fin. However, once the day starts rolling, the ball has left his court and Alan can’t begin to predict what’s around the next corner. The movie that is Alan’s reality has taken on a life of its own and as he grasps at control at each encounter, he ultimately lands at the feet of hope and luck. It isn’t until Alan relinquishes himself to the Unknowing that he lands on two feet, and that’s what creating art really comes down to; just giving in. Creating something, anything, without having to know what the end will look like. 

Warren’s hilariously unforgiving excursion through LA—though hellish for him—is a pure delight from start to finish and is sure to give a morale boost to indie filmmakers. Though sardonic in nature, there’s a charm to its humanity and it manages to resonate where it needs to. It’s so easy to walk alongside Alan through the city streets, to sit with him in frustration and confusion, and to laugh at the absurdity of each of his encounters. Like Alan, we learn it’s okay to lose control a little bit, it’s okay to give in—the sun will set, the party will end, the dog will find its way home.