May 1, 2015 By David Singer 3 min read

Director Garrett Kennell’s dark comedy “Milkman” is a wholesome 10-minute look at a sibling rivalry in an idyllic town straight out of the 1950s.

“I have a fascination with the ’50s and ’60s. A lot of my films are set in modern times, but have the look and feel of those time periods,” said the 22-year-old Point Park University and Upper St. Clair High School graduate, whose film (his senior thesis) won the Grand Jury Prize at the Shot for Shot Student Film Festival and best student film at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.

In the film, the titular milkman is about to retire with an untarnished career as the long-time “best delivery man,” leaving his sister with scores of “second best” plaques on her wall. Things turn sour when the most recent batch of milk turns up contaminated, leaving the townspeople who drank it dropping like cow flies in the street.

“That’s the first conflict, then it goes on about rekindling relationships with his sister and niece,” Kennell said.

Kennell churned out the idea for a milkman film after wrestling with concepts of jobs that have been lost to the past.

“I just had this image, particularly of a milkman, because of his white uniform, and framing him in a dollhouse. So it was this kind of ‘Pleasantville’ setting and his uniform that were concepts I worked with, then Ben Edlemen and I wrote the script,” he said.

Mark Tierno, the actor who plays Leland, the milkman, has a meek and warm presence on screen, and was cast because of his prior work with Kennell, according to producer Megan Kuntz.

As for the shots of green pastures and body-littered cul de sacs, Kuntz said almost all filming was done in South Fayette and McDonald.

“We put a GoPro camera on an aerial drone to capture some of the shots near the end where you get the overhead view of the town,” she said.

For Kennell, filmmaking is his passion turned career because other artistic outlets weren’t viable to tell the stories he wanted to write.

“In the past I tried music, video game development and drawing, but film has been the only medium proven to effectively get my messages and philosophies across,” he said.

No word yet on a wide distribution of “Milkman,” but in the meantime, Kennell is working on making his 30-minute short “Dot” into a 90-minute feature film.

“It’s about a young girl with OCD who compulsively kills anyone she sees making a mess. So after hopefully getting a grant from Steeltown Entertainment, we’ll begin our campaign to raise the full budget for the film.”