Andrew Bujalski’s first three features — Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation and Beeswax — were all more or less of a piece: illusorily casual 16mm portraits of young people in ambiguously comfortable stasis in, respectively, Boston, Brooklyn and Austin. Computer Chess, released in 2013, was a total UFO both in relation to his work and in relation to just about everything else. Film was out, but instead of clean digital, Bujalski shot on three 1969 SONY AVC-3260 cameras, its unfamiliar type of black-and-white grain making even denser a complicated comedy about a computer chess conference happening sometime in the late […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 28, 2015Still one of my Sundance highlights, Andrew Bujalski’s Results is nearing theaters on May 29. An off-kilter, comedic take on the love triangle, Results concerns two trainers (Cobie Smulders and Guy Pearce) and their wealthy new client (Kevin Corrigan). You can check out my take from Sundance here, and Vadim Rizov will have an interview with Bujalski in the Spring issue.
by Sarah Salovaara on Apr 15, 2015What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I confronted plenty of fears, don’t know that I *conquered* any of them per se. On this movie I was taking most of the ideas & philosophies I’d developed over the last 15 years of work and tossing them out, trying to play instead, more or less, “by the book.” Of course I still made plenty of unconventional decisions and I suspect the movie is as idiosyncratic as anything […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? As a director, there are stages when it comes to what your fears are while making a film. In Reversal I experienced the same fears I had previously dealt with in prior features. I think fear can be easily defined as insecurity and every person — in this case every director — experiences it in a different manner. Yet, we all share a common denominator in that we’re all […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 29, 2015He may not be your bag, but it’s tough to deny that Andrew Bujalski is one of the most distinctive American independent filmmakers working today. So distinctive that even when he sets his sights on the pseudo-pedestrian genre of the romantic comedy, he finds a way to completely reconfigure the shape of its central love triangle. In Results, Trevor (Guy Pearce) is an Australian in Austin who owns the Power 4 Life fitness studio, living and breathing his own advertising mantras about self-improvement. The recently divorced, suddenly rich Danny (Kevin Corrigan, brilliant) is new in town and eager to buy […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 29, 2015Austrian-born cinematographer Matthias Grunsky has been a steady collaborator of director Andrew Bujalski from his 2001 debut, Funny Ha Ha to the more recent Computer Chess, for which Grunsky was nominated for Best Cinematography at the Independent Spirit Awards. From grainy black-and-white to what appears to be a slicker look for their latest, Results, Grunsky has adapted his technique to Bujalski’s desire for small crews and low-key environments. Below, Grunsky discusses that process as well as the detailed testing process he undertakes on his pictures. Results premieres Tuesday, January 27 in the Dramatic Competition of the Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 27, 2015“Even when you’re falling in love with somebody, even when you’re having a beautiful kiss that you’ll remember for the rest of your life, something could still be terribly wrong.” That’s Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Computer Chess) in this brief video teasing his fifth feature Results, which premieres later this month at the Sundance Film Festival. We still don’t have all that much detail on Bujalski’s first film to feature honest to goodness name actors: Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders topline, with Anthony Michael Hall and Giovanni Ribisi also part of the improbable cast. We know it’s a drama about gyms, working out, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 9, 2015