Ted Leo is playing a priest in the new short film Main Blessings
Indie rock legend Ted Leo has taken up acting, and will appear in a forthcoming short film by Philly filmmaker Abigail Bruley. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as such a surprise, as the film evidently has music at its heart — Main Blessings promises to showcase some Tom Petty appreciation alongside its dark comedy, drawing on Petty’s “You Don’t Know How It Feels” for some lyrical inspiration. Leo appears as “Father Ted,” a jaded priest who is visited by the film’s recovering alcoholic protagonist Lars, played by fellow musician and R5 Productions founding member Josh Agran.
Main Blessings serves as a proof-of-concept sampling a feature-length film Bruley wrote and hopes to have produced. Bruley, known for the cult web series Down the Show, studied film and screenwriting at Drexel University before honing her comedic writing skills at New York’s famous Upright Citizens’ Brigade. The filmmaker suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2013 and began conceptualizing Main Blessings while in recovery, taking her experience of having to start life anew to thematically inform her latest project.
Find more information on Main Blessings here. Philadelphians are invited to attend a Friends and Family screening of the film on Nov. 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Warehouse on Watts. The event will be hosted by comedian Doogie Horner and will include performances by Emily and Micah McGraw and an all-Petty set from Settled Arrows.