A very personal film, 'starring' a 2-year-old

PARK CITY, Utah - The Sundance Film Festival prides itself on independent and personal filmmaking, but no movie in this year's lineup felt as intimate as Mark Webber's The End of Love.

His second feature as a director was shot in his Los Angeles home with several friends playing versions of themselves. It presents Webber as the single father of a 2-year-old boy portrayed by Webber's own son, Isaac Love. There is, however, one small difference between the real-life Webber and "Mark" in this film: His son's mother is still alive.

In The End of Love, which still needs a distributor, Webber's character is struggling with the death of his partner played, naturally, by Isaac's mother, actress Frankie Shaw. Shaw and Webber are separated, but amicably enough that she joined the lineup of cast members onstage after the film's Sundance premiere.

But that doesn't mean her participation was an easy sell. "I pitched it to her really well," Webber, 31, said the day after the Jan. 21 premiere.

"I said, 'Listen, I've got a great idea to make a film, to really honor our son and this moment in time, and to do something that hasn't been done before.' Her being an artist, she was able to appreciate that, and I think take one for the team. She was maybe a little resistant at first, but she came around."

The son of homeless-rights advocate Cheri Honkala, the Green Party's candidate for Philadelphia sheriff in the November elections, Webber spent part of his childhood living on the street, an experience that fed into his politicized first feature, Explicit Ills (2008). That movie offered four interconnecting stories of love, drugs, and poverty in Philadelphia.

The End of Love focuses on Webber more as actor than activist. Unlike Webber, who has acted in dozens of films - including three shown before Sundance ended Sunday - his character is still struggling. In the new film, he blows an audition with Amanda Seyfried and sneaks onto a set to borrow money from pal Jason Ritter. At a party thrown by Michael Cera (who starred with Webber in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), Mark is surrounded by young stars such as Aubrey Plaza and Alia Shawkat, doubly alienated by his lack of success and the fact that he has a babysitter waiting at home.

With Shaw, the stumbling block wasn't her fictional death so much as the mechanics of shooting with a 2-year-old child. The goal during filming with their son was to be as unobtrusive as possible, using Canon 5Ds that look like ordinary still cameras.