Max and Ted’s Excellent Cinematic Adventure

By Cynthia Hochswender

Photos by Eli Hill & Colin Bazzano

When talking about “community theater,” people usually think of earnest amateurs performing song and script from beloved 20th-century musicals. A new generation of Litchfield County artists has given those words a fresh meaning, with a homegrown film called The Salesman.

The 30-minute feature was written by North Canaan native Max Vadakin, and filmed by Vadakin and his friend Ted Perotti—with the help of their extended circle of family and friends. 

The group included Vadakin’s mother, artist and actress Beth Miller; his grandmother, Pat Miller, who owns the Falls Village Package Store, where the film is set; and his brother, Dylan Vadakin, who did the musical score.

Perotti and Vadakin are close friends with Salisbury resident Liam Grimaldi, who has a small part in the film as a policeman. They all graduated from Housatonic Valley Regional High School in 2016, as did Josh Johanessen and Eli Hill, both of whom appear in the film. Johanessen also contributed to the film by assisting in sound recording. In school, the three were friends with Malcolm Scott of Sharon, son of actor Campbell Scott (an accomplished film and television actor). They called on Malcolm to see if his father would play the role of a traveling salesman who is murderously obsessed with selling a floor mat to the manager of a small-town package store.

“When Max sent me his script for The Salesman it was an easy decision,” Scott says. “It was funny and unique and, I thought, sophisticated in a dry kind of way.”

Scott’s wife is actress Kathleen McElfresh. Her brother, Justin McElfresh, has done several acting projects before with his brother-in-law. He was called on to play the pivotal role of the package store manager. 

The film was shot in Falls Village, in and around the package store, in October 2022. It then took Vadakin and Perotti about a year to edit the film.

Both young men, aged 25, were trained in shooting and editing while at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, not only in the school’s film classes but also in the Civic Life Project, led by filmmakers Dominique Lasseur and Catherine Tatge.

The film was ready by autumn 2023; Vadakin decided to show it in the recently revived Colonial Theatre in downtown North Canaan. He and his friends had seen films at the Colonial as youngsters, before it closed in the early 2000s (it opened again in April 2023). Vadakin and Perotti rented the space for one night in November, expecting 20 people to show up. To their surprise, about 100 turned out, including some they’d never met before.

Best of all, everyone seemed to understand what Vadakin was trying to communicate.

“I got all the reactions I was hoping for: Laughs where I wanted laughs, silence where I wanted stillness,” he says.

To see The Salesman go to vimeo.com/pigironfilms.