About
the project
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Set in a cramped New York apartment, this 10-minute film captures a quietly absurd standoff between two roommates who probably if not definitely shouldn’t be living together. A mouse writhes on a glue trap. One roommate finds it. The other is woken up and asked to deal with it. What follows is a passive-aggressive negotiation, full of sideways logic, invisible boundaries, and familiar contradictions.
A dark comedy about hazards of introspection and rituals of avoidance.
Matthew J Thomas (director) and Daniel Pearle (Director/Writer) met in Toronto, Canada while shooting Season 1 Series ‘Accused’ at Legacy Studios. Daniel was a showrunner/producer and writer and Matthew was an actor in the season. Between takes, Matthew and Daniel got to discussing idea’s based on a short Play Daniel had written called Mousetrap. During the Strike in 2024 and with permissions from the union, they embarked on co-directing a new short piece “Stuck”.
NOTES FROM
THE CREATIVES
While working on the TV show Accused together, Daniel and I quickly became aware that we shared an interest in the way the smallest choices and most seemingly trivial conflicts reflect the deepest rifts in our psyches. Daniel had been an amateur dabbler in Tibetan Buddhism for years and he would often wonder how habitual decisions made on a daily basis “mostly without thinking” might be setting him on the wrong path.“This leads to a lot of over-thinking, second-guessing, and mental paralysis - none of which feels very enlightened."
Having read Daniel’s script, I knew immediately it was something I wanted to dive into. That eternal messiness of our human energies—grappling with loneliness on multiple levels—is something we all face. How it puppeteers our narcissism amidst the ever-burgeoning, ever-reframing contradictions of modern life. All while we live in these ridiculous major cities, taking ourselves oh so seriously. Stuck is an attempt to play in that headspace, to explore the tension between the macro and the micro. “Ultimately, it’s a snapshot of a friendship—a silly two-hander about the hazards of introspection and our primal lust for violence. No big deal.”
Set in a cramped New York apartment, this 10-minute film captures a quietly absurd standoff between two roommates who probably if not definitely shouldn’t be living together.A mouse writhes on a glue trap. One roommate finds it. The other is woken up and asked to deal with it. What follows is a passive-aggressive negotiation, full of sideways logic, invisible boundaries, and familiar contradictions.
A dark comedy about hazards of introspection and rituals of avoidance.
Matthew J Thomas (director) and Daniel Pearle (Director/Writer) met in Toronto, Canada while shooting Season 1 Series ‘Accused’ at Legacy Studios. Daniel was a showrunner/producer and writer and Matthew was an actor in the season. Between takes, Matthew and Daniel got to discussing idea’s based on a short Play Daniel had written called Mousetrap. During the Strike in 2024 and with permissions from the union, they embarked on co-directing a new short piece “Stuck”.
NOTES FROM
THE CREATIVES
While working on the TV show Accused together, Daniel and I quickly became aware that we shared an interest in the way the smallest choices and most seemingly trivial conflicts reflect the deepest rifts in our psyches. Daniel had been an amateur dabbler in Tibetan Buddhism for years and he would often wonder how habitual decisions made on a daily basis “mostly without thinking” might be setting him on the wrong path.“This leads to a lot of over-thinking, second-guessing, and mental paralysis - none of which feels very enlightened.”
Having read Daniel’s script, I knew immediately it was something I wanted to dive into. That eternal messiness of our human energies—grappling with loneliness on multiple levels—is something we all face. How it puppeteers our narcissism amidst the ever-burgeoning, ever-reframing contradictions of modern life. All while we live in these ridiculous major cities, taking ourselves oh so seriously. Stuck is an attempt to play in that headspace, to explore the tension between the macro and the micro. “Ultimately, it’s a snapshot of a friendship—a silly two-hander about the hazards of introspection and our primal lust for violence. No big deal.”
