Joel Potrykus
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“We Had a Real Permit For Once in Our Lives”: Joel Potrykus on His Tribeca-Premiering Vulcanizadora
Vulcanizadora, the latest film from Grand Rapids-based guerilla filmmaker Joel Potrykus, is predicated on a conceit that’s faithful to his overarching artistic interests. Two volatile buddies (Potrykus muse Joshua Burge and Potrykus himself) embark on an extended hike to a remote beach, where they plan to execute a plan fit for a Faces of Deathsequel (indeed, the film’s newly-released poster even emphasizes this parallel). While the complicated lives they’ve seemingly fled—a pending jail sentence and the crushing weight of having lost child custody—suggest warranted comeuppance, the men nevertheless retreat into childishness. They set off snake fireworks, gorge themselves on convenience […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jun 8, 2024 -
Dos Estaciones, Charm Circle, a New Joel Potrykus Short and More to Debut on the Criterion Channel in August
Alongside programming celebrating hip-hop, actress Kay Frances, Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations and “eurothrillers,” this August’s streaming selections on the Criterion Channel heavily feature filmmakers who’ve appeared in this publication, including in our recent Summer 2023 print issue. First up, Juan Pablo González’s highly-recommended Dos Estaciones will have its exclusive streaming premiere on the platform. González made our 25 New Faces of Film list back in 2015, and Dos Estaciones is the director’s sophomore feature. Described by Criterion as blending a “fictional character study and documentary-like observation,” the film follows tequila ranch owner María (Teresa Sánchez, winner of a Special Jury […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jul 19, 2023 -
“You Staying Healthy?”: Joel Potrykus Pandemic-Calls Indie Film Dudes
Writer/director Joel Potrykus, who broke down the anxieties of the filmmaking process recently for Filmmaker, is doing what a lot of us are doing in this time of quarantine: checking in to see how our friends are doing. Here, in a video by Ashley Young, he lets us eavesdrop as he finds out how folks like director Dustin Guy Defa, Oscilloscope’s Dan Berger, Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo, Indiewire’s Eric Kohn and the harder-to-get writer/director Alex Ross Perry are handling the isolation.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 23, 2020 -
Fear and Loathing in Grand Rapids: Joel Potrykus on Managing Anxiety While Making Relaxer
We were a week away from principal photography on my fourth feature film, Relaxer, and I wanted to run away. Production designer Mike Saunders and I had been building our apartment set inside his parents’ two-car garage, and things were taking too long. The entire shoot was to happen in that garage, so it had to be perfect. It didn’t look like it’d ever be ready, and I was stressing hard. My stomach burned. I couldn’t keep anything down. I’d been losing weight. I just wanted to sleep for three weeks and wake up with a finished film, but I […]
by Joel Potrykus on Mar 14, 2019 -
Alex Ross Perry on Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard
Editor’s note: with Joel Potrykus’ new film The Alchemist Cookbook now available for purchase, we’re unlocking writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s appreciation of his work from our Summer 2015 issue. Joel Potrykus’s Buzzard is either an extremely difficult or very simple movie to embrace. On the one hand, it contains enough juvenile/dumb/low humor to elicit honest guffaws alongside of-the-moment ’90s nostalgia to appeal to those of us raised on horror VHS tapes and Nintendo. Insults are clever and land with precision. The characterization of idiot manchild culture is somehow at once both obvious and insightful. More challenging to embrace, notice or even appreciate are the […]
by Alex Ross Perry on Oct 13, 2016 -
Why Director Joel Potrykus is Releasing His New Movie as “Pay What You Wish”
Along with the debut of a brand new trailer (above) for Joel Potrykus’ The Alchemist Cookbook, distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories has announced that the film will be released via BitTorrent Now for pay-what-you-wish on October 7th. The Alchemist Cookbook is a portrait of a Sean, a young hermit in the woods who sets out to solve an old mystery, and loses his mind along the way. Starring Ty Hickson and Amari Cheatom, the film premiered at SXSW and screened at various other festivals including BAMcinemaFest and Fantasia. Potrykus, who previously directed Ape and Buzzard, recently penned an Op-Ed about why he’s a fan […]
by Paula Bernstein on Sep 20, 2016 -
Summer Festivaling, Part 1: On Seattle, BAMCinemaFEST, Oak Cliff
By the time most of the prominent guests, critics and industry hangers-on arrive at the Seattle International Film Festival every year, the show is almost over. The red carpet is rolled out for “gala” screenings during each of its four weekends, but the well-orchestrated influx of movie business types occurs only at the end of the affair. To say, as a visiting film critic — one who might enjoy the luxury of the Kimpton hotel guest lodging, or the effortless springtime beauty of the Emerald City — that you have any handle on the entirety of programming director Beth Barrett’s […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 24, 2016 -
Load and Play: Killers, Wage Slaves and Varda in the Sun
Agnès Varda in California Several directors of or related to the French New Wave flirted with Hollywood, from those who actually completed studio pictures (François Truffaut, Jacques Demy) to those whose efforts crashed and burned (most famously Jean-Luc Godard, whose proposed gangster picture with Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton remains one of the most tantalizing unmade films of all time). None of them managed to turn their detours in Los Angeles into as singular a cycle of films as Agnès Varda, whose two periods in the city (in the late ’60s and early ’80s) yielded five highly personal works […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 23, 2015 -
Short Film: Joel Potrykus’s Coyote
Far more whimsical than his down-the-middle abrasive character sagas Ape and Buzzard, Joel Potrykus’s 2010 short Coyote relates an outward manifestation of inner demons. Played by regular collaborator Joshua Burge, the Coyote in question is a heroin addict who trolls downtown Grand Rapids in between binges at his rundown compound. Replacing tirades with tunes, and low-grade digital with Super 8, Coyote presents a more curious Potrykus, whose character is guided by circumstance as much as his malcontent.
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 24, 2014
