Martinez Tribune The website of the Martinez Tribune.
BY TYLER HENSON
The logline for Spilled Milk asks, “what really happened to all those deadbeat dads who went to the store to get milk?” Writer/directed Jared Leaf imagines a sinister answer in this twelve-minute horror short, which had a special screening at the Contra Costa Cinema on August 29th.
J. Alphonse Nicholson plays Trey, a young man who discovers his estranged father (Rodney Van Johnson) working at a late-night convenience store. But something isn’t right about this place, and there’s an unnaturally cheerful figure calling himself The Milk Man (Jerry O’Connell) that may be behind it all. Like an episode of The Twilight Zone, where normalcy gives way to the surreal, Trey soon finds himself helplessly ensnared within a nightmare.
The short builds an effectively eerie atmosphere. Nicholson brings a naturalistic reality to his lead performance, grounding the emotion, and O’Connell adds a fun comic dimension as the absurd and ominous villain. During its spookiest moments, the film provoked an appreciative wave of “oohs” and “ahhs” from the audience.
There’s still plenty more to explore within the concept, and according to Leaf, who gave a Q&A after the screening, there are plans to turn it into a feature. The short is what’s called a “proof-of-concept,” a common method of selling potential feature films. If filmmakers can successfully demonstrate how their idea might work in shorter form, they have a better chance of raising the funding for a longer version. Spilled Milk appears to have done its job; Leaf has proven he knows what he’s doing behind the camera, and that the idea plays in front of a crowd.
Leaf, who was born and raised in Martinez, is a former football player turned filmmaker. Today he lives in Portland, Oregon, where his company, Ninety Third Story Films is based. Coming back to Martinez and showing his film at the Contra Costa Cinema holds a special meaning for him. This was the theater where he saw his first movie at two years old. The year was 1995 and the movie was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Leaf says with a smile, “I sat through the whole thing.”
Spilled Milk was developed as part of the No Drama Initiative launched by Jordon Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions in 2024. Leaf said the idea was sparked by his own experiences growing up with a largely absent father. If a visiting day had to be called off, Leaf explained, his young mind would imagine some horrible disaster as the only possible reason. He’s quick to clarify, “I’m close with him today. I love my dad.” But those thoughts stayed with him, and only intensified after Leaf became a father himself.
As soon as he came up with the story, Leaf said to himself, “this is a Jordan Peele movie.” He cites Peele’s combination of social commentary and high-concept horror as a major influence on his work. Spilled Milk was one of thousands of submissions to Monkeypaw’s No Drama open call. After putting together a detailed pitch, and surviving a “rigorous” and “competitive” interview process, it was selected as one of the finalists.
The last zoom call went well, with Leaf joking “I was Serena Williams that day,” lobbing just the right answers to every question served at him. When it came time to submit his previous work, he had a harder time. “I was self-conscious,” he admitted. Nothing he’d made up to that point seemed good enough. After going back and forth on what to send, he finally made a choice. The decision did not give him confidence. Leaf says, “I cried in the shower.”
Anyone can guess how it turned out. One person in the audience asked Leaf, “Who was the first person you told once you knew you’d been selected?” “My wife,” Leaf responded.
The hard work continued. Leaf called the development process at Monkeypaw a “cheese grater,” meant to pull apart his script and put it back together again with fully realized intent. This helped him simplify and unlock the story. Leaf had actually shot an earlier version of Spilled Milk in Portland in 2023, spending $15,000 of his own money to make it happen. It didn’t work. Leaf confesses, “It wasn’t good enough, and that was my fault.” The team at Monkeypaw pushed him into figuring out how he could make it better.
Leaf cites that collaborative process as his favorite part of the job. “Left to my own devices, this film would not be what it is.” He points out ways the team around him improved the vision. The film was shot in two days at a liquor store in Santa Clarita, and the Digital Imagining Technician, a person who helps build the look of a film, created a filter that would allow them to shoot with available light. His cinematographer, Justin Dickson, who worked as a gaffer (or lighting technician) on Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning One Battle After Another (2025), used a special camera attachment to film from impossibly tight angles.
A striking makeup effect, where lead actor Nicholson appears to cry tears made of milk, was modeled after a similar effect in a Billie Eilish video. The makeup artist watched a tutorial on the effect and recreated it on set, hiding tubes under the actor’s beanie. The complicated shot also involves a trick called a dolly-zoom, where the camera physically moves closer to the actor and zooms out at the same time, creating a disorienting ‘stretching’ effect in the image. “One take,” Leaf said proudly.
Some people on the film had worked with Leaf before. He met his lead actor, Nicholson, while directing the second season of Churchy. Many others were connections Leaf made through the course of production, like Kid Cudi, who composed the score and plays a small role as a janitor. Leaf referred to Cudi as “a genius,” and said that the musician told him at their first meeting, “I work fast.” The very next evening, Leaf was amazed to have four complete songs delivered to him. They were all used in the final cut.
The moderator of the Q&A also asked Leaf about his unique approach to pre-visualization. Leaf explained that he prepared his camera angles by buying a toy grocery store and LEGO figurines, which allowed him to assemble a rough version of the movie with dubbed dialogue over photos of the toys. Naming his single biggest inspiration while preparing the film, Leaf said with reverence, “Season three, episode one of Atlanta. It’s called ‘Three Slaps.’ If you haven’t seen it, go home and watch it.”
Leaf has more plans for the future. In addition to the Spilled Milk feature, he’s also working on a football comedy called 37u. I asked him if he’d ever consider filming a movie in Martinez. “That’d be a dream. It’s so picturesque and photogenic. Shooting something in downtown would be amazing.”
Summing up his goals, Leaf told the audience, “I want to entertain people.” He hoped to make work that would stay true to “the three H’s – horror, humor, and heart. I want anyone who watches one of my films to leave feeling really good.” Spilled Milk illustrates that mission statement well. Whenever Leaf’s first feature hits theaters (and hopefully the Contra Costa Cinema will be one of them), I’ll definitely be seated for it.
