It's their scene at Cannes
BU film grads become the darlings of festival
CANNES, France - Most of the moviemakers in the Red Bucket Films collective graduated from Boston University two years ago. The youngest got his diploma this month. Today, two of their movies are playing at the Cannes International Film Festival.
Some people just work faster than others.
"The Pleasure of Being Robbed" follows a few days in the life of a free-spirited New York City kleptomaniac. It's a lo-fi production noticeably short on plot, yet here it is as part of the prestigious Director's Fortnight, a sidebar series founded 40 years ago to spotlight filmmakers' visions at their most uncompromising. It's the only US film to be so honored this year and one of the few American entries in this, the most prestigious film festival of all.
Says "Pleasure" director Josh Safdie with a measure of awe, "When they show the intro reel to the Fortnight movies that lists great directors like Robert Bresson - it makes me cry. These are all of our idols."
Safdie, raised in New York, is 24. His brother, Benny, 22, made the short film that precedes "The Pleasure of Being Robbed," a wry bit of Boston slacker-comedy called "The Acquaintances of a Lonely John." (Benny plays Lonely John.) With the brothers at Cannes are other members of Red Bucket Films, who, like them, relocated to Manhattan after BU: Sam Lisenco, Zachary Treitz, Brett Jutkiewicz, and Christopher Messina. They're all 23 except for the 28-year-old Messina ("I lingered a little," he says.) Also along for the festival ride is "Pleasure" star Eléonore Hendricks, 27, a Smith graduate.
They belong to a larger, partly Boston-bred movement in filmmaking that has little to do with Hollywood and everything to do with the new tools moviemakers have at their disposal. Digital cameras and editing software, YouTube, and personal websites have lowered the barriers of entry to production and distribution, letting a thousand small films bloom. Not only Cannes is noticing.
Boston can serve as a Red Bucket location - "The Acquaintances of a Lonely John" was shot at the Shell station next to Fenway Park, and costars employee Firas al-Ramahi - or it can be a road trip away. For anyone who knows the drive between Boston and New York, one of the unexpected sights in "The Pleasure of Being Robbed" is the Country Pride restaurant and travel center off Interstate 84's exit 71 in Connecticut.
Go to redbucketfilms.com and you'll find dozens of short movies made by the collective's members, churned out like smart, funny diary entries. "The Pleasure of Being Robbed" is the group's first feature, shot on old-school 16mm. Josh Safdie directed it but everyone else chipped in. The soft-spoken Jutkiewicz served as cinematographer, while Lisenco was production designer and plays three different roles. "BU's strength," Lisenco says, "is that we all learned to be proficient enough in making movies to do a little bit of everything. So when someone needed to pick up the sound kit, anybody could do it."
Agrees Benny Safdie, "I ran sound, you ran sound. Eléonore . . ."
". . . I never ran sound," Hendricks interrupts.
The Red Bucket members talk like this a lot, stepping on each other's sentences with happy enthusiasm. Their camaraderie has been forged over endless late nights obsessing about movies at BU, where they say they felt like black sheep cinephiles among the university's careerists and party monsters.
Walk around the College of Communication, says Josh Safdie, "and the ones who are talking about life and not about some bar are usually the film students. They're the kids who look like they haven't slept in a couple of days. Who look a little bitter and are getting into interesting arguments."
They created an unsanctioned movie lounge under a stairwell at 640 Commonwealth and soaked up movies by their gods: French filmmakers like Jean Vigo and Jean-Luc Godard and Werner Herzog, the Iranian new wave. They studied under and venerated Ted Barron, Ray Carney, and Mary Jane Doherty. "If you had passion to work on your own," says Lisenco, "you could get away with what you wanted to. We were flying under the radar."
At Cannes, they're on the map, and to a young, idealistic movie fanatic, it's as if the gates of paradise have been entered. Says Josh Safdie, "You mention any film that you love and appreciate, everybody in the festival office has seen it and can talk about it." Lisenco simply marvels, "People here dress up to go to the movies."
Whatever the future holds, it will involve a theatrical release for "The Pleasure of Being Robbed" (independent distributor IFC has picked it up). It probably won't involve Red Bucket doing the Hollywood dance. Says Josh Safdie, "There have been a few weird cologne-scented e-mails that have been coming in since we've had shorts at the L.A. Film Festival . . ."
"We like a free lunch," admits Lisenco.
"We love a free lunch," says Josh Safdie. "But I personally have no desire to go into that system. At all."
"They want to meddle," says Lisenco.
"That's happened," Josh acknowledges. "I wrote a script and started going around with it, and the first thing they said is, 'We're not giving you money to use nonactors.' "
"They think you need at least one famous person in it," says his brother.
"You don't need money to make movies," scoffs Lisenco. "You need people who believe. And a little bit of money."
They're getting a little, mostly from businessman-designer Andy Spade, who's Red Bucket's chief investment angel. For now the Bucketeers are content to do what other creative types do after college: rent squalid apartments, slave at video stores, sponge off mom and dad, live for the work.
The Safdie brothers and a filmmaking friend, Ronald Bronstein, are writing a script called "Go Get Some Rosemary," and Lisenco is working on a story about a young public school teacher. Jutkiewicz just finished shooting a short in Boston. Says Treitz, "If somebody has a project, everybody else falls in line and does what they can to make that happen."
"I don't think any of us have any expectations of getting rich," says Lisenco. "But making movies almost pays the bills, you know?" Josh Safdie says with the ardor of the committed, "I'm still trying to grasp the idea of making money for doing something that I'd do regardless." 