shagwong631

My name is Shaun Costello and I wrote and directed this movie back in 1975. This was the first film I shot in 35MM film. All my previous efforts had been shot in 16MM. I saw this film recently, along with 18 or 19 other pictures that I made in the Seventies, as part of the process of revisiting the work I did back then. Some of the films I watched were dreadful. Some were acceptable on some level, especially considering their budgets, and some were quite watchable. Midnight Desires was by far the best of this group. Because of budgetary constraints I liked working with scripts that contained vignettes tied together by a central core. Shooting to this structure was much more cost effective than a linear story line where you moved from a to b to c to d, all the way to z, each scene depending on it's preceding and following scenes in order to make sense. In Midnight Desires four well dressed adults gather around the fire place in a Long Island mansion and each one reveals a long hidden, and as yet untold sexual fantasy. Each vignette takes us to a remote location where that fantasy is dramatized. At the end of each fantasy episode we return to the mansion where the complexities of the fantasy are discussed by the participants. Four stories. Four totally different sexual fantasies. Four explanations. At dawn a limo picks up one of the couples for the drive back to Manhattan and the film comes to its end. This picture was nicely shot by Bill Markle in his first 35MM effort. The locations are tangy. The dialogue is crisp and intelligent. The actors provide acceptable performances. The music, all stolen of course, is delicious. This is a clean, nimble, tidy, watchable movie. Very good of its kind.

My name is Shaun Costello and I wrote and directed this movie. This was the very first hard core XXX adult film to open in a straight theater. It opened at the Quad Cinemas in 1975 to empty seats. My first flop. It was big, it was noisy, it was colorful, it was funny, but there was one thing it wasn't; it wasn't sexy. It was shot in 16MM film with a budget of $14,000. which wound up at about $18,000. after overages. I had never worked on a sound stage before, and had to keep the production going 24 hours a day to complete it anywhere near it's original budget. It was shot at what became Mother's Sound Stage in New York's East Village. My wonderful neighbors, who lived in my rent controlled apartment building on East 21st Street, built the sets, sewed the costumes, and in general just made it all happen. My friend David Wool created the skyline of Manhattan that is seen from Carol Scrooge's window, and built it out of corrugated cardboard. To David, and Harriett, and Shelly, and the rest; I could never have done this without you. This is an odd movie that does have some hilarious moments.

My name is Shaun Costello and I did not make this movie, which is really a bottom of the barrel one day wonder, but considering that it's a 60 minute feature made for five thousand bucks I guess it's OK. As far as I remember Ron Dorfman made this one. Ron was a friend and asked me to be in most of the movies he made. His films were darker and murkier than mine, which tended to be brighter and livelier. That's not criticism, it's simply a question of style. This movie is one of the fifteen films in the ridiculous Alpha Blue Shaun Costello Collection. Out of the 15 films in their collection I think I made ten. I have tried to correct discrepancies in the IMDb list of films they have attached my name to, many of which are incorrect, but have gotten no response from them. So I'm trying this method of correction. If anyone out there knows how to get a hold of the IMDb people, tell them to listen to the directors which, in my case, they have not done.