Dave’s (Paul Zies) got an attitude problem. Almost everyone annoys the aging surfer. When we see Dave in Salty, a new comedy written and co-directed by Josh Martin, he’s on his way to his court-ordered anger management appointment with therapist Dahlia Two Rivers (Jenny Gosnell), who asks about his “triggers.” So begins this very funny locally made 15-minute short.
Drop into Salty and support the MBHS surf team
Morro Bay’s Bay Theatre will screen the locally made short comedy, Salty, with the 1987 surf coming-of-age story, North Shore, followed by a fundraising raffle for the Morro Bay High School Surf Team, on Sunday, Sept. 21 (doors at 3:30 p.m.; films start at 4, with the raffle to follow). Tickets are $10 at the door. Learn more and link to the trailer at saltythemovie.com.
Martin, co-director Alex Raban, and Gosnell—the latter two of the local production company Room for Cream Films—convened in Top Dog Coffee Bar’s back patio to explain how the short came to be. It’s connected to a full-length screenplay Martin hopes to produce in the future.
“The feature length is [also] about Dave,” Martin began. “As you know, during COVID, a lot of weird things happened, and one of the things that happened in a lot of coastal towns was van-lifers started coming in, and people were camping on the beach.”
“Van-lifers,” as Martin calls them, are people in fancy converted Sprinter vans who move from one desirable spot to another. As the film’s poster says, “He came for the waves. They came for the Wi-Fi and oat milk.” In a flashback during his counseling session, Dave tells Dahlia about his encounter with a man he calls Chin Muff (Olaf Saul-Behrend), a German tech bro who parked in front of Dave’s house.
“There were a lot of surfers in the community that were pissed,” Martin recalled. “They were an easy target of humiliation, jokes, humor. In the feature, Dave lives in a coastal community, van-lifers start infiltrating his town, and as his anger increases, he starts a social media page to combat these van-lifers, to ridicule them, and it spirals, and his anger increases, and his family starts getting pissed off as he starts going off the tracks.”
Martin, an ICU RN at French Hospital, hopes to find backers to produce the full-length.
“Initially it was recommended for me to do a preview, and I couldn’t really figure out how to shorten it that much to showcase the feature, so I decided on a short that’s in the aftermath of the destruction that Dave has caused in the feature-length story,” Martin explained. “He’s court ordered to attend anger management. She’s kind of a kooky, New Age, rebirthing therapist, so he goes to his first appointment. As he begins to open up, we get a glimpse of Dave’s head and a glimpse of the feature-length story.”
Dave’s triggers? One-wheelers—those self-balancing one-wheeled vehicles. Hydrofoilers—those self-propelled surfboards with foils that lift the board out of the water. Dave’s also annoyed by stand-up paddleboarders and surfers who pull position and snake all the set waves.
The short is laugh-out-loud funny as we watch Dave, who’s a gruff but sympathetic character, navigate his changing world. While almost all the actors are locals, the lead, Zies, has credits that go back to a 2002 Star Trek: Enterprise episode as well as episodes of Calfiornication, House, Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds, Days of Our Lives, NCIS: Los Angeles, Animal Kingdom, Mayans M.C., The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, and most recently NCIS. He also did voice work in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004) and was as in Jonah Hex (2010).
“When we were doing the casting call, I knew I wanted to try to cast a wide net,” Martin explained. “I was, like, how am I going to do that? My Instagram page didn’t have a ton of followers. I knew Mike [Jones] from [the surf shop] AZHIAZIAM does. He’s got a global following. So, I hit up Mike and I said, ‘Hey, would you put this in your stories?’
“When [Jones] put it up, within two hours I got an email from Paul saying he wanted to submit for that role. I was like, ‘What?’”
The actress playing Dave’s wife also brings pro experience to the film.
“Angelina Barbieri lives in Arroyo Grande,” Martin explained, and it just so happens that his wife—also a nurse but at Central Coast Surgical in Arroyo Grande—works with Barbieri’s husband.
“We were lying in bed, and she showed me her IMDb page, and I said, ‘Text him!’ And my wife said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll talk to him tomorrow,’ and I said, ‘No. Text him right now.’”
By the next day, Barbieri was on board. Her credit list is also impressive, appearing in films like Marley & Me (2008), Repo Men (2010), and Short Term 12 (2013), and acting opposite Dwayne Johnson in the TV series Ballers and in episodes of Fringe, How to Make It in America, Anger Management, The Night Shift, Rosewood, and NCIS: Los Angeles.
So why benefit the Morro High surf team?
“In all honesty, surfing saved my life,” Martin said. “I had a rough upbringing and have been sober for many years. Surfing helped me recover from a very dark place, and anything I can give back—especially to the kids that love the ocean like I do—I’m all about it. I know a lot of people with kids on the team, so it’s just a way for us to give back.”
Co-screening is North Shore (PG; 96 min.), about Rick, an Arizona teen who uses prize money from winning a wave tank competition to travel to Hawaii and tackle the big waves.
“It’s a classic surf movie, and the pairing is perfect,” Martin explained. “Afterwards is the raffle. We’ve got a ton of people that donated—pretty much all the local shops including Wavelengths Surf Shop, Central Coast Surfboards, AZHIAZIAM, Kurt Roberts Surfboards—a bunch of other places. Local artist Gemi Donae, who owns Urban Desert, painted a custom Promer surfboard shaped by Ray Promer.”
What’s clear watching the short film is that everyone had a blast making it, and Martin, Raban, and Gosnell coaxed great performances out of their amateur actors.
“It’s fun because they’re just playing themselves,” Gosnell said. “We wanted them to be in it as themselves.”
“Even the foilers scene, for example,” Raban added, “they wouldn’t stop. We were like, ‘Cut,’ and they were still going. We were like, ‘No, cut, you’re good, you’re good.’”
“Those guys came out of left field,” Gosnell laughed. “Aren’t they all doctors?”
“Yeah, I work with them all,” Martin added.
“I think everyone who didn’t have acting experience understood the assignment and was 110 percent into it, and they were open to direction too,” Raban said. “They were seeing what we were trying to do. And then you have people like Paul and Angelina that understand blocking and understanding camera movement, where the camera’s going to be, timing, improvisation, and things like that. But sometimes it’s fun to see someone’s first time in front of the camera. My smile was ear to ear.”
“At the end of the day, my cheeks hurt from laughing,” Gosnell said.
“The goal of shooting the short was to promote it in a way that we can garner attention and support, whether that be financial [or otherwise], to do the feature,” Martin added. “It’s a huge project, beyond my financial scope.”
Martin recommends people arrive a little early to the one-time screening: “I honestly don’t know how many people are going to be there because there’s no way to buy tickets in advance.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Student Guide 2025.