“50 Kisses” was a low-budget independent movie and didn’t receive a major release. Although most of the shorts are brief love stories, some of them are terse dramas or horror stories. To give full credit (something the Guinness website doesn’t do), the film’s 51 screenwriters are include:
Marc Lockier, Lloyd Morgan, Lawrence Diamond, Tina Lowe, Ross Aitken, Sarah Page, Rhys Howell, Phil Berard, Louise McCooey, Nathan Gower, Oliver Morran, Arron Ferguson, Anne-Marie Draycott, Charity Trimm, Kirsty McConnell, Jennifer Leigh Allen, Stephen O’Brien, John Thornton, Christopher Mueller, Emily Sinclair, Karina Satchwell, Jess Smith, Nick Grills, Mark Jones, Robert J. Burke Jr., Sue Whitting, Phil Charles, Nigel Karikari, Peter Carruthers, Nina Haerland, Andrew Turvil, Gabriella Apicella, Tracey Flynn, Mark Pallis, Vanessa Yardley, Jesco Puluj, Ryan La Via, Kulvinder Gill, Honor Flaherty, Jim Howard, Mac McSharry, Kenneth Lemm, David Griffith, Nathanael Bauer, Richard Green, Stephen Cooper, Sam Heydon, Rachel McAdam, Christopher Bacon, and Nick Luddington.
Other similar anthology projects have attracted huge numbers of screenwriters and directors by mere dint of their structure. For example, there are three films in the “ABCs of Death” franchise, each one featuring 26 shorts fashioned after the letters of the alphabet and gruesome deaths. The first film (from 2012) has 28 writer/directors, while 2014’s “The ABCs of Death 2” had 29.
2016 saw the release of a spin-off anthology, “ABCs of Death 2½,” that, like “50 Kisses,” was composed of shorts by amateur contest winners. You see, the creatives on “The ABCs of Death 2” had accepted short films from freelance filmmakers, hoping to find a newcomer to fulfill their “M” slot. 500 films were submitted, and Robert Boocheck’s “M is for Masticate” ultimately won. 26 of the finalists had their shorts featured in “2½,” a film that ultimately had 30 credited writers.
Still, “50 Kisses” beats them all. It’s hard to see its record being surpassed anytime soon.
