Susan Emshwiller

Movies

Nietzermann
Susan
In an attempt to launch their careers, two young actors investigate a disturbing viral video of a French psychic's prophecy. As they shed light on the mysterious footage, their journey will test their friendship, threaten their lives and reveal a most troubling secret.
Spartan
Set Decoration
U.S. government agent Scott is assigned to rescue the daughter of a high-ranking government official. As willing as he is to bend the rules to get things done, though, Scott is shocked to find that others are willing to go even further to protect a political career.
In the Land of Milk and Money
Director
Idyllic Suburbia. Mom 'n' Apple Pie. Or not. This outrageous comedy turns suburban America on its head. Mad cow disease, Corporate Greed, Mob Mentality, the Cult of Motherhood, propaganda, discrimination, and dangerous kitchen utensils all find a home in this wild social satire.
The Good Girl
Set Decoration
A discount store clerk strikes up an affair with a stock boy who considers himself the incarnation of Holden Caulfield.
Pollock
Screenplay
In August of 1949, Life Magazine ran a banner headline that begged the question: "Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" The film is a look back into the life of an extraordinary man, a man who has fittingly been called "an artist dedicated to concealment, a celebrity who nobody knew." As he struggled with self-doubt, engaging in a lonely tug-of-war between needing to express himself and wanting to shut the world out, Pollock began a downward spiral.
Kansas City
Set Decoration
A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.
Short Cuts
Set Decoration
Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.
The Player
Detective Broom
A Hollywood studio executive is being sent death threats by a writer whose script he rejected - but which one?
The Player
Set Decoration
A Hollywood studio executive is being sent death threats by a writer whose script he rejected - but which one?
Heart Condition
Set Decoration
Racist police officer Jack Moony has a vendetta against Napoleon Stone, a charismatic black lawyer who is sleeping with Jack's old flame Crystal Gerrity. Jack has a heart attack, but his life is saved when he receives Stone's heart, since Stone died mysteriously the same night as Jack was stricken. Stone is not completely gone, however, and as a ghost he is all too happy to give Jack advice on how he should do his job and live his life.
Wired
Set Decoration
The ghost of John Belushi looks back on his troubled life and career.
Gleaming the Cube
Set Decoration
An Orange County teenager's carefree life of ditching class and skateboarding abandoned pools comes to a screeching halt when someone close to him dies. The cops rule the death a suicide, but the bereaved skater believes he was murdered. It's up to him to solve the case, with a skateboard.
Russkies
Set Decoration
A group of American boys discovers a Russian sailor washed up on the coast of Florida and decide to befriend him, assuming that he is friendly and will bring them no danger and thus go against the ideas of their parents, as well as the government.
The Kindred
Set Decoration
Amanda's deathbed request to her son, John, was for him to destroy all the lab notes etc. from her last experiment. She also blurts out he had a brother. At the funeral John meets Melissa, who claims to be his mother's biggest fan. Together with some of John's friends they go to Amanda's house, but none are prepared for what they find there.
Sorority House Massacre
Art Direction
College student Beth and her sorority sisters are stalked by an escaped psychopathic killer who shares a strange telepathic link with her.
Tuff Turf
Set Dresser
The new guy in a Los Angeles high school, Morgan, does some singing and fights hotshot Nick over disco dancer Frankie.
Relativity
Flower girl
Emshwiller made this film on a Ford Foundation grant, and in his original proposal to the Ford Foundation, he outlined the film as "something that deals with subjective reality, the emotional sense of what one's perception of the total environment is -- sexual, physical, social, time, space, life, death."
Hallelujah the Hills
Girl Child
Jack and Leo vie for the affections of Vera- who appears a little differently to each man- over the course of a series of energetic sketches, flashbacks and homages.