New movie 'Wrong Numbers' launches Chicago man's feature directing career — at 62
At an age when many are winding down their careers or already have given up on their dreams, Chicagoan and first-time feature filmmaker Duane Edwards believes he is just getting started.
Edwards, 62, who is an IT professional by day, recently released "Wrong Numbers," his first full-length feature film, and will bring it on Sept. 23 to Facets, where a Chicago audience will get the chance to see it on the big screen for the first time.
The 90-minute film, shot in four Chicago-area locations over six days in 2023, features actors David Kelsey as Jack and Emily Hall as Emma who, seated a couple tables apart from each other in a restaurant, meet after Emma has a disastrous blind date. The movie focuses solely on the two characters and their May-September one-night stand. Without giving spoilers, it is safe to say that it is a twist on most stories involving an older married man and younger, single woman — and something that Edwards could relate to.
"I've been married for 31 years but have seen so many of my friends who are not together with their wives for whatever reason. This was just real life. I wanted to keep it very minimal, but very realistic," Edwards said.
Using relatively unknown actors — Kelsey and Hall were both previously in a few television series — and few locations (Rosebud Steakhouse on Walton Street among them) allowed Edwards to finance the movie himself, for about $400,000.
"I didn't want to be like some people who I know who begged, bored and stole money to make their passion project that had no other outlet except to show their friends," he said. "I wanted to be business-conscientious."
Edwards said he earned the money to finance his movies through hard work and using his magnetic personality to rise to great heights in the IT industry. Despite the lack of a college degree, he entered the business on the ground floor in 1995 after a recommendation from a cousin and said he became a sponge, learning from co-workers until he was confident enough to bring in business on his own.
Before that, Edwards, who was born in San Antonio and grew up in Houston, moved to New York City after high school and took a familiar path for someone aspiring to be in movies: working in the restaurant industry. However, Edwards said the restaurants he worked at — including Tavern on the Green in New York, where he rose to captain, and then later as an assistant maitre'd at The Ivy in Los Angeles, a hotspot for Hollywood movers and shakers — were a deliberate attempt to be close to people who worked in a world he aspired to enter. His goal was to get to know them and ask advice rather than to squeeze them for jobs or funding.
Telling a story about a time in 1991 that he waited on Bruce Willis, Edwards said he bluntly asked the star, "How do I get from where I'm at to where you're at?" He said he was told that there is no "yellow brick road" — that to just make the plunge, advice he said he followed and has stayed with him.
Initially Edwards attempted to break into movies as an actor, and although he did get some work, after moving to Chicago in 1993 he soon discovered that directing was more to his liking. He would make several short films and in 2005 was one of the Top 10 directors on season three of "Project Greenlight" with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Then, he hooked up with screenwriter Frederick Mensh, best known for writing HBO's 2015 David Oyelowo film "Nightingale," for "Wrong Numbers."
Edwards said he got validation that he was on the right path from producer Eric Woods, a friend who initially was skeptical about "Wrong Numbers" after reading the script.
"He said, 'Your first scene is almost 30 pages, two actors at a table. If you don't hook the audience in the first minute, your movie is going to die,' " Edwards recalled. "Then, to have him sit next to me at a screening after it was finished and say 'I get it' — that's the type of validation I live for."
While the film is starting to be seen by more audiences — it's available to rent or buy on Amazon, or stream on Tubi — Edwards said it's more of a beginning than a culmination of a dream.
"It's been a gradual process," Edwards said. "I have three projects that I want to do which may take the next 10 years. There's still so much more that I want to attain as a filmmaker and artist."
