New Comedy Short "AIRWAY" To Launch From Award-winning Filmmaker Featured on "FUNNY OR DIE"

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. - Dec. 17, 2020 - PRLog -- Filmmaker Jessica Redish's short film, Airway, fuels a thriller format with deadpan comedy. It's a stirring blend that recalls Alfred Hitchcock's mordant humor. In this effervescent entertainment, Airway zeroes in on a woman's fear of air travel, certainly an identifiable experience. Under Redish's well-modulated direction, this stellar short-form navigates smoothly between hilarity and knuckle-gripping tension.

"Airway is about a woman who envisions the worst, who is terrorized by the smallest misconduct, who fears for her life constantly and the lives of others, and whose doomsday thinking is likely limiting her life," filmmaker Jessica Redish says.

With a theater background, filmmaker, Redish collaborates skillfully with actress Jenna Rossman, who plays the agitated passenger. In this inspired situation, we feel empathy for the character, even as we laugh at her paranoid peccadilloes.  It's funny because, as in the best comedies, the character takes the situation seriously and does not see it as funny -- but the audience does.

Redish was inspired to make Airway based on the acclaim she received from her previous short, The Last Croissant, which played on Funny or Die. Described by the comedy film website as having "more tension than a Martin Scorsese movie," The Last Croissant recently won enthusiastic praise at the Portland Comedy Film Festival, where it made its big-screen debut at a drive-in.

Buoyed by that positive reception, The Last Croissant was presented online and in-person at The Atlanta Comedy Film Festival the first week of December 2020, where Redish garnered the Best Director award. Additionally, it will be presented in the HollyShorts Film Festival Screening Series in 2021.

Following its debut success, The Last Croissant provided an accelerant for Airway. "Some big players in Hollywood were asking what else I had. I wanted to show I could do more and do more consistently. So, I wrote Airway because it had been on my mind, having traveled and crossed the country eight times between October and December of 2019," Redish says.

Buoyed by the enthusiastic reception for The Last Croissant, Redish wrote and directed Airway. Told tighter than a middle seat in Coach, Airway is invigorated by Redish's deadpan sense of the absurd.  With Airway, filmmaker Redish clearly milks the most out of tight situations and "small" things. Concisely modulated, including a nightmarish sequence, Airway lands perfectly, touching down with a comic monologue wafting over the closing credits.

Redish's film-making skills invite comparison to feature filmmakers: In addition to Hitchcock, Airway evinces Pedro Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Her mastery of the short-form augurs potential for bigger things, including multiple-camera TV, series comedy, feature films, as well as TV commercials.  A literature professor or philosopher could wax existential that Airway is a spry absurdist metaphor for mankind's powerless place in the universe. But higher praise could be booked for Jessica Redish's Airway -- it's involving, funny, and universal. With its appealing, fearful-of-flight lead character, perfectly played by actress Jenna Rossman, Airway could ultimately reach its natural destination, as a TV series.

At present, Redish is currently in pre-production on another comedy Love Solutions. It's a balmy romance about a woman who signs up for a dating coaching service in search of her soul mate only to end up marrying a cat.

Airway

Cast: Jenna Rossman, Andrew Carter, Clayton Farris

Writer/director: Jessica Redish

Producer: Kira Leinonen

Director of photography: Rachael Kliman

Editor: Lea Vrabelova

Costume designer: Anne M. Robinson

Running time: 3 minutes, 44 seconds