After spending the better part of a decade trying to get his
first feature film produced, Rian Johnson has some advice for
aspiring filmmakers.
“It’s just a matter of sticking around,” he
said. “If you can stick around for seven years, and
you’ve got something that you keep pushing, eventually people
will let you make it just so you’ll go away.”
As a first-time filmmaker, Johnson went back to his roots,
financing the film with money borrowed from his parents and
shooting at his old high school. After going through seven years of
writing and directing, “Brick” went from the idea of a
cinema graduate of the USC School of Film to being picked up at
Sundance by reputed production and distribution company Focus
Features.
“Brick” will be shown as a free sneak in Ackerman
Grand Ballroom by the Campus Events Commission on Monday.
Despite Johnson’s choice of shooting location,
“Brick” more closely resembles a gritty film noir than
a high school dramedy. The film follows Brendan (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt), a brooding, intelligent outsider who investigates
the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin). He
probes the underbelly of his high school, coming in contact with
such noir staples as the beautiful girl with disguised motives
(Nora Zehetner) and the eccentric drug dealer (Lukas Haas) in an
effort to uncover the mystery.
“Brick” is a result, in part, of Johnson’s
love of the detective genre.
“It all started with the books of Dashiell Hammett,”
he said. “Once I read them ““ I had been into film noir
my whole life ““ something in the world he created in those
books really inspired me to want to make a detective movie and to
capture some of what I personally got from that.”
Indeed, “Brick” definitely looks and sounds like a
descendant of classic film noir. The lighting is low-key and
expressive throughout; it’s not unusual for sizable portions
of the frame to be shown in almost total darkness.
“Because the movie’s so weird, we had to create a
very rich visual world for people to get lost in,” Johnson
said. “A lot of the lighting concepts were in there from the
script phase. I like using lighting as an element of the
storytelling as opposed to lighting everything up so you could see
it.”
Aside from the mise-en-scene, the aspect of “Brick”
that immediately jumps out is its dialogue: a unique mix of 1940s
detective speak, 1990s slang and even terms drawn from hip-hop. For
Johnson, the nature of the language was equally important in
advancing the narrative and individualizing “Brick” in
terms of genre.
“It was almost purposeful that I didn’t want to have
(the dialogue) evoke any specific period,” Johnson said.
“The total effect of it is that it’s a different
language, and the narrative purpose of that for me is to establish
at the very start for people how elevated the style of the movie
is.”
Lead actor Gordon-Levitt (“3rd Rock From The Sun,”
“10 Things I Hate About You”) says the language of
“Brick” sets it apart not just from a viewer’s
perspective, but also from an actor’s perspective.
“While we were shooting, I had Rian Johnson speaking these
gorgeously composed, almost-lyrics to me and they were such a
pleasure to say. It’s not an opportunity I’ve really
ever had before, because acting these days is all about being
realistic,” Gordon-Levitt said.
“The language in “˜Brick’ is much more
entertaining than a real conversation could ever be. It’s
faster, it’s smarter, it’s snappier, it’s
funnier, it’s scarier than reality could ever be,” he
said.
The crux of “Brick’s” strategy is ultimately
to take two frequently used contexts (high school and film noir)
and forge something new out of both.
Johnson’s decision to tell a dark tale in a typically
light setting allowed him to portray internal reality by altering
external reality.
“High school movies or TV shows, even really good ones,
have a slightly flippant tone to them. There’s inherently a
sense that this is a less serious world than the adult
world,” he said.
“That’s the exact opposite, for me at least, of what
the high school experience is like. When you’re in high
school, it’s mythic in proportion (to everything else).
It’s the most serious time of your life, in a way, because
your head is completely encased in this fish bowl.”
Gordon-Levitt agrees that the fresh take is crucial in
separating “Brick” from other films.
“What “˜Brick’ takes from high school is
different from what most movies take from high school. I always
picture some 50-year-old writer thinking back on his high school
days and thinking, “˜Oh, I was so silly; who really cares who
eats where?'” Gordon-Levitt said.
“(“˜Brick’) is maybe not the most accurate
portrayal of how high school really is, but it’s a really
accurate portrayal of how high school feels.”
Kathy Kim, the films director for Campus Events, hoped the
film’s uniqueness would bring out a different kind of
audience.
“We try to show movies that appeal to as much of the
campus as possible. I hope (“Brick”) appeals to people
who don’t come to the bigger-budget movies. It’s
something a little different,” she said.
According to Johnson, it is “Brick’s”
willingness to separate itself from conventional genre distinctions
that makes the film worth seeing, especially for a viewer that
wants a more direct engagement with the story.
“From the first time we were showing the script to people,
it was very obvious that this thing wasn’t going to be
everybody’s cup of tea. For me personally, that’s part
of what makes it appealing,” he said.
“You’ve got to take some risks and do something a
little more inaccessible in order to make something a little more
exciting.”