Director: Tom Noonan
Screenplay: Tom Noonan
Based on a Play by: Tom Noonan
Starring: Tom Noonan, Karen Sillas
Country: USA
Running Time: 91 min
Year: 1994
BBFC Certificate: 15
Though best known as a distinctive character actor in such films as Manhunter (1986), The Monster Squad (1987), Last Action Hero (1993) and Synecdoche, New York (2008), Tom Noonan has also been a director and writer of independent films. His first, What Happened Was (1994) is based on a stage play Noonan had written. A typical 90s indie, distributed by Samuel Goldwyn, it won the Grand Jury Prize and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. Set in a flat with a picture of Martin Luther King on the wall (notable for a film with an all white cast) and a Cats poster that can’t help but bring to mind Wavey Davey’s jumper in Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out, the film is a two hander between Noonan and Karen Sillas, at the time the star of the CBS series Under Suspicion, a kind of sexier US rip-off of Prime Suspect. Sillas’ Jackie is alone in her flat, who arranges a first date with Michael (Noonan), the meal being nothing too fancy – ‘seafood’ – ‘it gives me the creeps’. Noonan, long cast as monsters and serial killers here plays an insecure, gangly nerd. What results is an introspective film that one doesn’t really know how it will end or what genre it is. Well-directed and acted, the film is a poignant, personal little project that deserves to be seen.
Film: 
Waht Happened Was… is out now on region-free Blu-ray, courtesy of Radiance Films. The transfer has beautifully restored, and the disc features interviews with Noonan, Sillas and critic Charles Bramesco. Below are the full details.
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES
– 4K restoration by Oscilloscope Laboratories
– Uncompressed stereo PCM audio
– Interview with director Tom Noonan and producer Scott Macaulay (2021)
– Interview with star Karen Sillas (2021)
– New interview about the film with critic Charles Bramesco (2024)
– Trailer
– Optional English SDH subtitles
– Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Filippo Di Battista
– Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Adam Nayman
– Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
Disc/Package: 
