Thursday June 9, 6:45pm Broadway Performance Hall & Saturday June 11, 1:45pm Broadway Performance Hall<br /><br />Bless the independent filmmaker. Without them we'd see nothing but Spielberg the Farrelly brothers and films based on old sitcoms. They are the risk takers. They reap the rewards of success and suffer the failures. Max and Grace is most definitely a failure. Credit is deserved by Michael Parness for getting out there and making his first feature which he claims drove him to bankruptcy. He might be better off sticking to the stage if this film is any indication of what to expect in the future. Even though everyone warned me I went to see Max and Grace anyway, hoping I might discover something they did not. It starts off well enough, a party for Max in his parent's house shot in warm subdued light, the camera floating into interesting angles. As soon as we see Max has hung himself, an obvious rip-off of Harold and Maude, the whole thing goes right in the tank. How could he do this unnoticed in the middle of a birthday party? For that matter how could two mentally ill and committed psychiatric patients decide to get married and do it with the blessings of all parties concerned? In the Q&A after the film David Krumholtz suggested the entire story was the surrealist dream of his character Max. This story is so badly written the comment sounded more like an excuse. The film doesn't look as though it was made on a shoestring, all the more reason to be so disappointed with the results. What's intended as funny isn't but instead is offensively bad. The continuity is sloppy the lighting is dreadful and the effects look cheap and forced. BPH seats under three hundred and was surprisingly full but I saw at least thirty or forty walkouts within the first half-hour. At one point Grace, played by Natasha Lyonne, laments her inability to die. I found myself thinking the same thing since I never walk out before the credits. If Krumholtz really thinks this is "one of the best scripts" he has ever read it sounds like he needs to catch up on his reading. A terrible waste of talent and resources, this is the worst independent I've seen since Bubba-Ho-tep.