Hard Hearted One

Produced by: 
Written & Directed by Elisabeth Doyle; Produced & Edited by Deborah Rudman
Year: 
1996
Duration: 
9 min

This collaborative road movie traverses the areas of friendship, family, love, and mysticism in a funky "what did you do on your summer vacation?" visual essay. When Hard Hearted Hannah, the Pride of Savannah -- Hard Hearted One for short -- takes her best friend Annie on a cross country road trip to help calm her recently broken heart, the most engaging, lean forward in your seat kind of highjinks ensue. Annie dabbles in tarot cards and the more practical realities of her uterine cancer treatment, but doesn't know how to drive. Our "hard hearted" narrator breaks her leg a day or so into the trip, UFOs are sighted, camping grounds are foresaken for expensive but broken leg-friendly hotels, their car is towed in New Orleans, and there are more boxes of hummus mix around than any two women should have to confront, meal after meal after meal. But excessive hummus consumption aside, the road trip makes a wonderful Band-Aid for a broken heart. And a charming treat for the viewer.

Elisabeth Doyle studied fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and at the State University of New York at Albany. At Albany, Elisabeth was awarded the University’s Lovenheim Prize for best short fiction and won a journalism assistantship with the University Relations Department. On the strength of her writing samples, she was admitted as the only undergraduate into Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s graduate level fiction course. Elisabeth was also admitted into the English honors program and graduated Magna Cum Laude. She has had fiction published in the literary journal Nadir and in a Hughes Henshaw anthology of work by young writers.

Elisabeth recently completed work on a mid-length film project entitled Good, which she also wrote and directed. Good is currently being prepared for festival submission, and Elisabeth is preparing to begin production on her first feature film, Let Them Wait. Elisabeth Doyle also earned a law degree from Temple University School of Law in 1997, and served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of New Jersey - representing the New Jersey Departments of Education, Health, and Human Services - until 2006. Elisabeth now lives in Washington, D.C., where she works in the field of education and health policy.

Deborah Rudman is the program manager for DUTV's cable channel 54, an educational channel operated by Drexel University under agreement with The City of Philadelphia's Department of Public Property. She also works as an editor, a producer of several cable access shows, and as a production facilitator for many Scribe Video Center programs, including its Documentary History Project for Youth.

Public Screenings, Broadcasts and Festivals: 

May 9, 1996 - Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema's Festival of Independents (Philadelphia, PA)

August 1996 - Broadcast on Unquote Television, DUTV Channel 54 (Philadelphia, PA)

1997 - Broadcast on Free Speech TV

Fall 2003 - Part of Scribe Video Center Screening at Philadelphia Fringe Festival