In the News: ‘The Wrong Road’ Screening Event Featured on WGRZ-TV 2
Buffalo State University was featured on WGRZ-TV 2 for the May 12 screening of The Wrong Road at the North Park Theatre.
Hundreds of people came to see an exclusive preview cut of the 30-minute film written by Emmy Award–winning writer and Buffalo State alumnus Tom Fontana, ’73, (Oz, Borgia, Homicide: Life on the Street). The film follows a young man on a cross-state drive who gets lost and finds himself at a mansion where two strangers seem to know all the details of his life. The production crew, which largely comprised Buffalo State undergraduate students—many enrolled in the spring 2024 course TFA 480: Advanced Directing/Producing I—wrapped up filming in mid-March.
The WGRZ article, “New Film Involving Tom Fontana, Buffalo State Students Hits Big Screen,” and video coverage featured interviews with Fontana; Aaron Daniel Annas, Buffalo State associate professor and director of the television and film arts (TFA) program; and Summer Faye Harris, a senior TFA and theater double major who served as student production designer.
“I thought it would be fun to do a whole adventure of shooting a film with the students and with professionals,” Fontana said. “For me, it was less about the questions they asked than the experience they gain by doing a professional production.”
“I got a lot of insight on how these bigger films work,” Harris said, “like in terms of collaborating with the director, and the writer, and other people. I’ve done post-production stuff before, but this was a lot more serious.”
The film stars actors Kathryn Erbe, who played detective Alexandra Eames in Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Lee Tergesen, who played Tobias Beecher in Oz, and Mark Ryder, who played Cesare Borgia in Borgia. It was directed by Metin Hüseyin (The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling).
“It was great for [the students] to see industry professionals as real people and this as an attainable career,” Annas said. “They learned so much.”
The cast and crew of The Wrong Road.
Lead image by Nathan Koss; group on stage photo by Connor Greczyn
