Like Brothers Read online

  Now it’s time to write the script. This part sucks. It’s hard. It’s grueling. But we are always encouraged to finish because we already have a scene-by-scene outline that has been pretty well vetted by some of our smartest peers. And when that draft is done, we ping-pong it between just the two of us until it’s at that terrible place where you ask yourself “Are we making it better? Worse? Same?” When you get here, you’re probably close to eighty percent again, and it’s time to bring in the big guns. This is when we call in one or two great writers and one more smart, nonindustry person to read the draft. It’s a big ask, so you should always be prepared to return the favor. But in our opinion this is the most critical part of the process. You will be feeling defensive of your script. Because you have worked so hard on it. But you have to check your ego at the door and listen to what is landing and what is not landing. We have had our egos beaten out of us because we now realize that we don’t always know what’s best for our movie at every step of the creative process. And this is where the auteur gets into trouble. In our opinion, if you hear a consistent note or complaint about your script and ignore it, you are likely headed for heartbreak. You are likely ignoring something you missed and that could quite possibly sink your movie. All because you are afraid to admit you don’t know everything about making movies? Who the fuck does? Okay, fine, the Coen Brothers. But still. Who else? We’ve come to believe, right or wrong, that it doesn’t make us any less valuable as filmmakers to admit we get stuck, we need help, we’re not as smart as we want to be, and our friends help us become better.

  And this process holds true for shooting the film and editing it as well. We often hold screenings for up to forty people to watch rough cuts of our projects. And we ask extremely difficult questions about what they like and don’t like. And it can be very unpleasant, but our movies and TV shows always improve when we invite other people into the process.

  This is not to say that we are celebrating our own mediocrity. We occasionally get truly inspired and are able to take a movie much further than that eighty percent level on our own, but we feel it’s important to know that just because you aren’t the Coen Brothers doesn’t mean you can’t put together a fantastic film. You just need to drop your ego sometimes and let everyone stomp all over it for a little bit. They’ll inevitably pick you back up and dust you off when your film is great. And it will all be worth it. Trust us on this one.

  (Seated directly across from us in the Austin-Bergstrom Airport is a man in his late forties to early fifties. He wears tan slacks and a muted-patterned, short-sleeved button-down. His hair is neatly combed and cut short. He is balding up the middle but not yet fully gray. He holds a small briefcase in his lap. He looks off to his left at nothing in particular. He feels like a Midwesterner, maybe. His face is kind. His hands are small. He doesn’t look like he could hurt a fly.)

  JAY: So the movie is called The Murderer.

  MARK: Yep. Starring him.

  JAY: One hundred percent.

  (The man does not flinch. For some reason his utter stillness makes us giggle.)

  MARK: I mean, this still frame from right here could literally be the poster.

  JAY: Make it black and white. Big-ass thick font underneath him.

  MARK: Like The Pawnbroker.

  JAY: But more real.

  (We watch him for a moment, both of us trying to think of an interesting plot.)

  MARK: It’s like he’s one of those guys who has more patience than you could possibly imagine having.

  JAY: He has like six highly opinionated daughters and one son, who hates him for no apparent reason.

  (Giggling.)

  JAY: And they and his wife just rule his ass.

  MARK: And he takes it. Lovingly. Almost as if he…really enjoys it.

  JAY: Everyone who knows him is just, like, “How does Gene do it? Salt of the earth.”

  MARK: “He’s just one of those guys that was born a pure heart.”

  (Pause.)

  JAY: (smiling) But not everybody sees him that way. Some people say there’s no way anyone is that nice.

  MARK: Right. Like…he has to have some kind of…secret outlet.

  JAY: In the middle of the night.

  MARK: Ha! Yes. Gene gets up in the middle of the night, goes into his backyard when everyone else is asleep, and just fuckin’…

  JAY: Strangles a bunch of squirrels.

  (Here, Mark bursts out laughing. I love that I can still make him laugh like that. But I realize I must keep it down, lest “Gene” turn his murderous instincts upon us in this very airport.)

  MARK: He’s in the Squirrel Killers Club.

  JAY: He’s the fucking president!

  (We laugh a bit more at this. Then it fades.)

  MARK: Love this character.

  JAY: But what’s the story?

  (Thinking. As this happens, “Gene” fiddles with his nose a bit. Not a booger pick. Just an itch. But something about it is a touch darker. Subtle. But there.)

  MARK: Everything was fine for Gene until he took his family to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

  JAY: Which was a big mistake?

  MARK: Cuz the six girls were all growing up. And getting gorgeous. And that city during Mardi Gras is just…

  JAY: It can be dangerous for out-of-towners.

  MARK: Right. But Gene is used to letting the family lead him around. And, sure enough, they ended up in a shady part of town where tourists just shouldn’t go.

  JAY: This is really good, by the way. I’m gonna shut up. You keep going.

  MARK: Thanks. So this somewhat unhinged lady walks up to them and asks for some money. And when they try to keep walking, she reaches out for one of Gene’s middle daughters. And something just…snaps.

  JAY: In Gene?

  MARK: In Gene. And he pummels the ever-living shit out of this woman. Right in front of his family.

  JAY: Oh shit. Like…the most violent thing you’ve ever seen.

  MARK: Uh-huh. Smashing her face into the sidewalk, over and over again.

  JAY: Blood everywhere.

  MARK: And before Gene knows it, she is no longer resisting.

  JAY: And the family is utterly quiet.

  MARK: He’s sweating. Breathless. Staring down at the somewhat frail drug addict at his feet.

  JAY: And she is…

  (We both look at each other. Do we want to take it here?)

  MARK: She’s dead.

  (We both look at “Gene” now and watch him, thinking of him as a man who has killed someone. Everything changes. His entire context and vibe. It’s eerie. But exciting too.)

  JAY: It was technically self-defense.

  MARK: Yep. The cops come. They tell the story….

  JAY: Luckily there was a knife in her pocket—

  MARK: Ooh, that’s good. Justifiable homicide and self-defense. So he doesn’t even get arrested.

  JAY: And they go back home the next day to return to life as normal.

  MARK: But they can’t. Everything has changed.

  JAY: Because they are living with a man who is capable of murder.

  MARK: And they can’t just order him around anymore. They are almost…scared of him.

  JAY: And he misses his old life. He misses being ruled by his insensitive family. And his ability to be patient starts to wane.

  MARK: Oh shit.

  JAY: Uh-huh. And he starts to take kickboxing classes.

  MARK: Dude, I wanna make this movie.

  JAY: I do too!

  MARK: It’s like…all the great stuff from A History of Violence and then it spins out into some sort of weird, like…

  JAY: Scandinavian character study.

  MARK: Yes! Pulpy Lars von Trier!

  JAY: So go
od.

  (We laugh for a bit and then get quiet. Thinking.)

  MARK: How does it end?

  JAY: I don’t know.

  MARK: Me neither.

  (And now we watch him a bit more just staring off into space. Wondering what he could be thinking about. Projecting deep, dark things onto his formerly sweet disposition.)

  IN LATE 2000 we pulled together $65,000 from our corporate documentary salary (almost all of our savings) and launched into the script for Vince Del Rio, our first feature film. We decided on a story about a former standout high school cross-country runner (played by Mark) from the Texas border town of Del Rio. This runner, Vince, cheats in an Olympic Trials qualifying race and lands a spot in the actual Olympic Trials. It was inspired by our deep love of the original Rocky film. About a man who gets a fluke shot at redemption and greatness.

  Mark, who was working primarily as a touring musician at the time, came off the road to get into fantastic running shape for the film and, along with me and our other close collaborator and editor, Jay Deuby, wrote the script that I would direct. In a few months, we had a draft that we felt was in good shape and set a date to shoot the film in early summer 2001.

  During the Christmas holidays of 2000, we went back to our parents’ home in New Orleans and made a practice short film for fun. It was about a guy (again, Mark) who breaks up with his girlfriend and travels across the country to get her back. It was made for no money with a cast and crew of three people, most of whom had never worked on a movie before. It was improvised, goofy, a little funny, and definitely felt more like “us” than a film about a runner from the Texas border. But we weren’t thinking about that at the time. We put that little short film away without editing it and turned back to prep for Vince Del Rio. Our magnum opus.

  The next day we went into a densely wooded levee area near our childhood home and shot some test footage of Mark running around as the character of Vince Del Rio. It was a pure white cloudy winter day, and my camera lost Mark quite a bit in the fog, zooming in and out to find him. I shot it on our parents’ lo-fi one-chip DV camera, which is technical jargon for “a piece of shit.” The shoot felt like a bust.

  When we got home and watched the footage, however, there was a certain magic to it. The grain, the fog, the zooms. It felt raw, inspired, and unique. We got so excited we could barely contain ourselves.

  “If it looks this good with just the two of us shooting it on a crappy camera, just think how awesome it will be when we shoot this movie with pro cameras and a full professional crew, with that great Texas summer light and heat!”

  When summer rolled around, we lucked out by getting a more experienced crew than the meager salaries we could afford actually deserved. These were veteran players who had been on pro film sets, and we were blessed to have them. We hired all the right positions and headed to South Texas for our four-week shoot.

  Before we left, we read as many books on filmmaking as we could get our hands on. We wanted to get all the terminology and lingo right. We wanted to make sure we knew all the union rules so we’d appear experienced and in charge. We were obsessed with leading a tightly run, professional shoot despite our relatively small budget and extreme inexperience.

  And, as it turned out, we were very good at that aspect of filmmaking. Being good Catholic boys, we listened to our producers and assistant directors and we perfectly followed the schedule and protocol. We never went over our allotted shoot hours. Not once. We came in on time and on budget every day. People were loving how efficient and confident we were. Whenever they asked us “Did you get it?” regarding a particular take, we turned with a confident thumbs-up and moved on so we could “make our day,” as they call it. It was hard work, but we felt great and everyone loved us so much. We never knew making a film could be so much fun and, honestly, so easy.

  When the shoot was done, word spread around Austin how nice, awesome, and professional The Boys were. We went into the editing suite immediately and started putting it together. And that is when we started to get a growing feeling of trouble.

  The first thing we noticed was that there wasn’t much of that “magic” we were hoping for in the footage. This realization didn’t rock us to our core, but we couldn’t help remembering the feeling we’d had that previous Christmas when we watched the aborted test running footage from the levee in New Orleans. The rawness, the life in it. But we powered ahead and waited to watch a full cut before making any judgments.

  And that’s when we started to panic. When we watched the first cut together, we realized that something was deeply wrong with the movie. And the worst part was that we couldn’t define the problem. It was beautifully shot. The production design was elegant. The performances were not stellar, but they were fine. And the story itself was being conveyed in a clear manner. Yet the whole movie was just kind of…blah. Being inexperienced filmmakers, we wondered if we were just sick of our movie and maybe this thing really was great! (NOTE: If you are ever wondering this same thing, chances are your movie isn’t great. Sorry.)

  So we decided to hold a test screening for about fifty friends and local filmmakers to see how it played. And that’s when we knew. Even before the film ended. Vince Del Rio was dead. We could feel it in the room. See it on people’s faces. They were all sitting there thinking the same thing: “It’s not bad, it’s just not really anything.” Our friends stayed and gave us their most polite feedback, and we dragged ourselves back to the office to decide what to do.

  We could try to salvage the film with rewrites and reshoots. Really dig in and see what we could do to make it better. But how? We’d thought what we were shooting last time was good. Who was to say that we wouldn’t go back and just shoot more bad footage? We felt lost and incapable of understanding why the movie wasn’t working, much less what would actually improve the film. The more we talked about it, the more we realized that Vince Del Rio was endemically flawed to its core and we were in no position to be able to save it. Not wanting to throw good money and effort after bad, we decided to bury the film. We had to call everyone who had worked on it and explain what had happened. We watched our bank accounts drain of all the money we had made on our big corporate documentary six months earlier. We were now twenty-four and twenty-eight. We were pretty much broke. And we were beginning to realize that our dreams were probably not going to happen for us.

  THERE IS NO way to avoid arguing. It seems to be something most people just accept and spend very little time working on ways to improve. Arguing can be a good thing (in the long run). However, we all tend to suck at it to varying degrees, depending on our current level of insecurity, history of the subject matter, lack of sleep, etc. While we by no means have the answers for arguing successfully with our spouses, we have found a few tricks that can be helpful while navigating the confusing jungle of trying to win an argument and also trying to continue a healthy relationship with your partner.

  1) There is one magic bullet that can nip any argument in the bud. If used successfully, this tactic can tell you whether this argument contains an actual issue that needs discussing or whether it’s just a fleeting moment of fussiness that should simply be pushed aside. It’s called the Porky Principle. One of you (usually the one who is less pissed off) needs to scream “Porky Pig!” as quickly as possible when the argument starts. When this is called out, you both need to take your pants off. And your underwear. But leave your tops on (i.e., the Porky Pig look). If you have a hard time taking the argument seriously with this new look of yours and your partner’s, that’s a good thing. If you laugh, that’s even better. That usually means this was a fleeting moment of fussiness. Enjoy the laughter. Let the issue go. And put your pants back on. Or, if so inclined, take your tops off and go for the makeup sex. If, however, one (or both) of you is too angry or stubborn to let go of the argument, that’s cool too. It just means you have to get into it.

  2) For fuck�
�s sake learn how to validate the other one’s opinion before you shut them down with your own. This took us about thirty-five years to learn. It’s so simple. Yet people rarely do this. Yes, we all want to win the argument and get our way. Or defend ourselves from an attack. Whatever the case may be, listening to someone’s argument and letting them know you understand their position does nothing to diminish your own position. In fact, it only makes your position stronger. Because, if you don’t let that person know that you’ve heard them, they will continue to blast you with their argument and won’t even be able to hear yours until they have felt heard. So even if you are feeling wronged and that your significant other is in a crazed state of stupidity…hear their side, don’t interrupt, and let them know that you have heard them and understood them. Then make your case. We promise you (from years of doing this poorly) that this will expedite and improve the argument’s outcome. We all just want to be heard and understood.

  3) Simple, but effective: IMPOSE A CURFEW. No serious arguments about long-term ongoing issues after bedtime. If it’s a small and timely issue, sometimes you have to get it out of the way and break this rule. But if it’s big and recurring, table that sucker until daytime when both of you are less tired and more generous with your affection. This one has saved us some major heartache.

  4) This one is a little ridiculous, but it kinda works. If you’re approaching DEFCON 4 (that point where you are gridlocked and all the loving energy has left the building), it’s time for Cancer Mode. Super simple: Your significant other is dying of cancer. Not really, but imagine it. Seriously. Look them in the eyes, and before you launch your next shit-eating, passive-aggressive attack, imagine that they are on death’s door and you won’t get to be with them next week. If your imagination is halfway decent, this should provide an interesting context. The context could be as simple and terrifying as “You’re dying? Good!” If that’s the case, great! Get the divorce that is inevitable! If not (and in most cases, it is not the feeling you’ll get) this awareness may soften your urge to win the argument at all costs. It may even contextualize how important you are to each other and how much you would miss the good things about them and your relationship if they were gone. And, not to be corny, but aren’t we all going to die? Isn’t our time with the ones we love limited anyway? This isn’t a magic bullet, but it’s a nice bit of context to consider.