about
Ralph is a young, up and coming director, writer and producer from New York City.
After directing a national ASICS spot and working in freelance video for clients like Savion Glover and Vivienne Tam, Ralph wrote and directed his first feature length film, WORST FRIENDS, starring Kathryn Erbe (LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT, OZ), Larry Fessenden (BROKEN FLOWERS, THE LAST WINTER), Kristen Connolly (MONA LISA SMILE, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD) and his older brother, Geoffrey Arend (500 DAYS OF SUMMER, DEVIL). This film is currently in post-production.
This past year, Ralph directed Allison Williams, daughter of legendary news anchor Brian Williams, in a music video for 'A Beautiful Mine' by RJD2, more commonly known as the MAD MEN theme song. The music video went viral and was featured on a host of popular media outlets including: The Today Show, Daily Variety, The Huffington Post, Gawker and MSN. Additionally, Ralph founded Red Girl LLC, a New York City based production company, with CollegeHumor's Vincent Peone and Josh Ruben.
Ralph can next be found in pre-production on his second feature length film, A STUDY IN DECLINE, which he wrote and will also direct. Already committed to the cast include a selection of laudable actors including Gabriel Byrne (HBO's IN TREATMENT), Jennifer Esposito (CRASH, SUMMER OF SAM), Mark-Paul Gosselaar (SAVED BY THE BELL, RAISING THE BAR) and Christina Hendricks (AMC's MAD MEN, LIFE AS WE KNOW IT).
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WORST FRIENDS - narrative feature - tbd 2011
writing/editing/direction
password: worstfriends
POPTARTS & WINE/VINCENT KARTHEISER - comedy web short - fall 2009
editing/direction
press
resume
Posts
Correction: everyone with Netflix should watch restrepo and exit through the gift shop
i’m forgetting what it feels like to have lived in the house I grew up in. which is both heartbreaking and exhilarating.
The big-deal aesthetic disasters include the tiresome, flat, and repetitive “Alice in Wonderland”; the absurdly overelaborate and empty “Inception,” which is like a giant clock that displays its gears and wheels but forgets to tell the time; and “Black Swan,” an example of the higher trash, and a movie perfect, I’m afraid, for young women who never recovered from reading Sylvia Plath. “Black Swan” asks the least appealing question of the year: “Am I good enough—to die?
This is the trailer for the feature I shot. Check it out, and if you are feeling generous, you can donate to help us finish it.
I directed this. its in whole parts not a piece of shit.
Heath Ledger and half-face
‘the wrestler’ seems to have rejuvenated darren aronofsky’s career. although it was never dead, it seemed like his established future was in question after ‘the fountain’ because of it’s inability to recoup it’s cost and it’s long production history.
although i didn’t love ‘the wrestler’, i thought it was an interesting film for darren aronofsky in that it didn’t look like any of his other films. it was a weird choice of script for him, and instead of making it look like an aronofsky film, he made it look like ‘the wrestler’, which is awesome.
so it’s weird, to me, that ‘black swan’ looks like ‘the wrestler’. there are some moments of clarity of vision, an obvious director’s hand at play. but for the most part, with the handheld closeups following a subject, and the jerky, gritty coverage, it just looks like ‘the wrestler’. that the the script for that film had nothing to do with the way he shot that film, and this is just his style, all of a sudden.
which is too bad, because one of the most profound things about ‘the wrestler’ was an established director showing range, the ability to adjust the way he sees the world to the subject matter. the trouble is ‘black swan’ even looks like it was filmed on the same film stock as ‘the wrestler’.
now the obvious reason that comes to mind is incredibly simple, and not altogether realistic. but i’ll mention it here anyway. aronofsky directed a few movies and received praise. then he directs ‘the fountain’ which takes him years to get off the ground. it’s considered a failure, a grand display of self-indulgence. he takes a step back, maybe re-evaluates his career. he decides to do something much smaller. a personal film. a film he hasn’t written. that’s ‘the wrestler’. it’s a huge success and he’s back on top (or at least his farthest from the bottom), so to speak. you get the idea from here. i’m a big fan of weezer, as in the first two albums. and any weezer fan will tell you the same story here.
well, as someone who was never such a huge fan of aronofsky, i would say i’m not going to see the sequel to wolverine because it’s grainy and handheld. i’m gonna see it because is has wolverine in it. and i saw ‘black swan’ because you directed it. not because you directed ‘the wrestler’.
i expect sometime in the future i’ll go into this in detail. but i owe just as much of my story-telling inspiration as a filmmaker to half life 2 and bioshock, as i do to some of my favorite movies.
if you don’t play video games or like them or whatever you still owe it to yourself to experience either of these games.
you really see the spectrum of people you know when half your friend’s posts are about the fucking world cup and the other half are about something else stupid and completely inconsequential.
by the way nasa just announced they found life elsewhere made up of things completely different then anything on our planet. have fun everybody.
Everyone has gotta stop using the music from ‘Sunshine’. It wasn’t a song used in ‘Sunshine’, it was part of the fucking score. I’d say the same for the theme for ‘Requiem for a Dream’ but I didn’t like that movie so I don’t give a shit.
Ya know why I’d settle for being a Brett Ratner or a Paul WS Anderson? They get to make movies. And other people pay for them.
i need to hurry up and do real well for myself before i blow my brains out.
Thanks, Sarah!
A director with serious range re-directs The Social Network as various legendary directors would have. But they didn’t. So he did. Video inside.
peone could direct the socks off of any of these one note hacks.
