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TRUMPED
TV

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TRUMPED: A SHORT FILM
 
TRUMPED


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AWARDS

Ivy Film Festival Award
Best Drama

FirstGlance SOC & Philadelphia Award
Best Short & Premiere

Action/Cut SFC Award
Best Short Semi-Finalist

Aired on TBAE Network
Trumped is a short thriller written and directed by Michael Whitton. The film is focused around a demented scare game that the three desensitized players think is harmless and the random victims believe is real; but when an accident blurs the two, the players are forced to face a consequence that trumps all the rest.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT


I believe a person can grow up by choice or chance, the latter usually in the form of a tragedy.  Such is the case in Trumped: an accident sparked by an adolescent prank triggers a defining moment for the desensitized main character, Greg, when he realizes that what he's doing is hurting others and himself.  What he does with that realization separates the boy from the man—a turning point Greg comes to when his cohort Anthony grossly misinterprets the tragedy as an opportunity.

Robert McNamara, who was the Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, once said "To do good you have to be willing to do evil."  I disagree.  "Have to" and "want to" are not the same.  Doing evil is a decision, which ultimately affects and defines your character.

Do you have to kill to know that you don't want to be a killer?  For some, the answer is in the action: get a gun, shoot a man, go to jail.  The action has a consequence.  And the consequence, one that could have been avoided, is what inspired me to write and direct Trumped.

So in this short film I hope you'll be able to see that it doesn't have to take a tragedy to change.  You can grow up by choice.  Nothing trumps the truth.

Michael Whitton
Los Angeles

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