Love on the fast track rarely makes it to the home stretch.

Russell and Genevieve fall in with each other at the racetrack, but their circuitous journey leads them further and further from home.

“Covariance” is inspired by the 1938 John Cheever story “Saratoga”, which is now in the public domain. I say “inspired by” because although Cheever’s story is also about two gambling addicts, I added many surreal visuals; comparing and contrasting the couple to horses, and using shot composition to make completely unrelated locations echo back to the characters’ obsession with the racetrack. I also changed the dialogue and landscape to reflect a couple in Southern California, instead of in Upstate NY. In addition, at the end, the viewer realizes that s/he’s been lead down a false path. From the beginning of the writing process, I decided that the couple was homeless and just fantasizing about their successes at the track, where in Cheever’s story they are not homeless. I also gave the story a positive, although precarious, finality. Cheever’s ending was just ambiguous.
This is the fourth film in a series I’m doing called “Over a Cheever”. The first film was produced in 2008. It’s called “Project Ion” and stars David Razowsky. While not based on any Cheever stories, the main character in that film, HE, is an homage to Cheever’s “real” self with its secrets, quirks, and personality projections, as revealed in his published journals and his daughter Susan’s biography of him. The second film, produced in 2009, is “The Catalyst”, inspired by Cheever’s 1944 story, “Family Dinner”. It also features David Razowsky and Joey D’Auria, who plays Wilbur in the third film in the series, “A.L.I.C.E., inspired by Cheever’s 1938 story “His Young Wife”.