By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Brutal realities: distributing Mutual Appreciation
Promoing indieWIRE’s “Undiscovered Gems” series, indieWIRE’s Brian Brooks ekes a squeak or two out of Andrew Bujalski, director of the painfully sly, 16mm b&w pic Mutual Appreciation. [indieWIRE opens the Harvard-spawned filmmaker’s endeavor starting September 1 at NYC’s Cinema Village and LA’s Sunset 5 and Pasadena’s Playhouse 7 on September 8. What lead [sic] you to filmmaking? “I was obsessed with movies as far back as I can remember (Rocky III, Star Trek II, etc), [and] never really considered doing anything else with my life. Wish I could be a musician but lack any apparent talent. Also wish I could be a novelist; same problem. Also painting. Or, I don’t know, even dancing. They all sound good to me.” Bujalski “studied film as an undergrad at Harvard, which has a tremendous program where you really get an opportunity to ‘handmake’ films, which doesn’t make you particularly employable but does give you delusions of autonomous grandeur, which I’ve managed to hang onto since… Distribution is a pain in the ass. Most of the people in that business are very friendly and affable and nice to talk to, but the business itself of course is brutal.” [For an alternative take on Bujalski’s film, sample Becky Ohlsen of Willamette Week: “I wanted to walk right into this movie, like Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo—only with a machine gun. Or maybe a hatchet. Then I’d kill every single character while laughing with glee. The most painful example of gutless, nutless indie-rock awkwardness I’ve ever seen… drifts aimlessly through the lives of an aspiring musician from Boston, his best friend and his best friend’s girl. All three of them are loathesome, inarticulate, self-absorbed, unoriginal, bumbling, insubstantial wastes of skin who can’t even make crippling neurosis mildly interesting.” [Ms. Ohlsen was attacked with a pie earlier this year by a Portland exhibitor for a relatively innocuous mention of his theater.]