His Relaxing Massage Takes a Disturbing Turn... | Deep Tish | Dark Comedy Short Film

A.J.'s massage could have been better. Deep Tish by Dave Paige https://www.davewebpaige.com/ "A few years back I had a newborn in the house and hadn’t slept in months. I finally had just enough time to get a massage – my shoulders were fucked up from holding the baby – so I snuck out for a few hours, looking for some deep tissue work. A few minutes into the massage, I had this awkward interaction with the therapist and suddenly the idea for this movie just unfurled in my brain, fully-formed. For the remaining 78 minutes I was trying so hard to not laugh that I was basically shaking. It was torture! I drove home from that massage cracking up, opened my laptop and wrote the film, still cracking up and just laughed through both production and the edit. It may have begun as an extremely uncomfortable massage, but it mutated into the most joyous film experience of my life, so IMO it was well worth it! The production came together pretty quickly thanks to my good friend Josh Cohen, who came on board to produce. It was the dead of the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes (we had waivers to shoot) so we lucked out with a lot of the best of the best in terms of the crew. Slumming it on my short was, for some, more interesting than hanging around bingeing Love Island or whatever we were doing back then." Read our full interview with Dave https://directorsnotes.com/2025/03/20... SUBMIT YOUR FILM https://directorsnotes.com/submit/ Website: http://www.directorsnotes.com/ Sign up to the DN newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dvnj45 Follow DN on Instagram:   / directorsnotes   Follow DN on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/DirectorsNotes/ Follow DN on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/directorsnot... // Credits // Writer / Director: Dave Paige Producer: Joshua Cohen Casting by: Angela Demo Casting by: Meghan Apostoles DP: Eric Bader Editor: Kirsten Zastrow Production Designer: Rachael Ferrara Costume Designer: Laura Wheeler Original Music: Nate Heller Script Supervisor: Marilyn Miller Hair & MU Stylist: Katie Machaeik Hair & MU Stylist: Nayari Navas Sound Mixer: John Maynard 2nd AC: Kyle Deven CLT: Eric Clark Key Grip: Joshua George Visual FX Artist: Ethan Feldbau Graphic Design: Melanie Kwan Graphic Design: Lexi Langil Colorist: Marco Cordero Title Design: Hailey Ruffner Supervising Sound Editor: John Chamberlin Cast: Zack Fox Corey Podell Zolee Griggs Sierra Fujita Tim Simek Kate Hollowell Elena Campbell-Martinez Tyler Jenich Uylsses Randolph III Brian Ramisch ABOUT DIRECTORS NOTES Since 2006 Directors Notes has curated the world's best independent films alongside exclusive daily deep dive interviews which provide behind the scenes insights into the inspirations and production stories of the most talented filmmakers on the planet. #shortfilm #comedy #massage