A native New Yorker, Howe originally set out to be a fiction writer, but during his freshman year at Harvard, he stumbled upon a documentary film class and fell in love with the medium. In his sophomore and junior years, he tried his hand at fictional filmmaking under visiting professor Hal Hartley, who was his first “narrative mentor.” Returning to New York after graduation, he worked the usual odd production jobs, briefly serving as Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler’s assistant at Killer Films.
Gabriel didn’t come to Howe until his tenure at AFI, where he graduated with a master’s degree in directing in 2010. “It was always about the character,” Howe says of the script process, which he began by penning first-person journal entries from Gabe’s perspective. “From there, I collected scenes that I liked and thought about the world around him and how I could give it an arch and narrative momentum.” Citing Mike Leigh’s Naked and David Thewlis’s performance as major touchstones, Howe admits that he’s never been much interested in creating a character that strives for the audience’s sympathy. Gabe is selfish, mentally unstable, unwilling to take his medications and prone to violent outbursts, but he also desperately longs for salvation and normalcy in love and a lasting connection, which can elicit varying degrees of both frustration and pity.
While making his thesis short My First Claire, which was eventually nominated for a Student Academy Award, Howe steadily developed Gabriel with his brother, the producer Ben Howe. Luca Borghese soon boarded the project as its second producer, offering substantial input as the script continued to evolve. There were six months of drafts before the creation of another character, Alice, who represents Gabe’s driving desire for the nuclear household, finally “cracked” the script, giving it “the spine it needed to be as engaging as it could,” Howe says. Soon after, the Sundance Institute and Cinereach lent their support, and this June saw the almost-finished product’s participation in the IFP Narrative Labs. “It was really helpful for getting the lay of the land in the upcoming months,” Howe affirms. Regardless of where it first surfaces in the public sphere, chances are you can expect to see Gabriel all over the circuit come next year. — S.S.