In 1996, filmmaker Larry Fessenden was tagged as one to watch by the Independent Features Project. Savvy aficionados of the Downtown NYC scene were already keyed to his talents. A child of privilege, Fessenden was raised in the tony Upper East Side of Manhattan and attended prep school at Andover (although he was expelled). He began experimenting with video and super 8mm movie making and completed the 58-minute "A Face in the Crowd" (1980), about a NYC artist, and several shorts. On the strength of that work, Fessenden was accepted at NYU where he made the first incarnation of "Habit", then an 85-minute video co-written with Brendan Mee. He and Mee collaborated on the eight-episode public access television show "Be Mee TV Presents" in 1982.
Over the next few years, Fessenden perfected his own style of guerrilla filmmaking (not unlike that of Gregg Araki). Shooting with a small crew and often without permits. he produced, directed, shot and edited "Experienced Movers" (1985), the story of a mentally unbalanced man who becomes enmeshed in an art heist, adapted from a play by Evan McHale. Fessenden then established Glass Eye Pix through which he worked as a video editor (for such figures as Richard Avedon and William Hickey) and "guerrilla" producer. Between 1985 and 1989, he collaborated with performance artist David Leslie on a number of video projects that were seen at museums and film festivals around the USA. He also completed the docu-drama "Hollow Venus: Diary of a Go-Go Dancer" (1989). loosely based on the experiences of its star Heather Woodbury. As the 90s dawned, the multi-talented filmmaker created his second feature, "No Telling (or The Frankenstein Complex)", a modern-day version of the Prometheus tale which was both a love story and an indictment of animal experimentation. While it was never released in the USA, "No Telling" did make the festival circuit and garnered critical attention. After a turn as an actor in "River of Grass" (1993), a low-budget outlaws-on-the-run melodrama, Fessenden remade his 1981 video project "Habit", which centered on a drunk and his growing relationship with a mysterious woman who he comes to suspect is a vampire. Its screening at the 1996 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival caught the attention of audiences and reviewers and Fessenden was awarded the "Someone to Watch" award by the IFP. A glossier, recut version of the film, which starred the director, was released theatrically in 1997.