Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman–directors of American Splendor for which they earned a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination in 2004–begin a new short-form chapter in their career with their involvement in a project for Adidas.
The husband-and-wife team–whose many credentials include earning a Primetime Emmy nomination for their directing of the HBO telefilm Cinema Verite in 2011–recently secured representation in the advertising arena via independent feature production house Process’ new commercialmaking/original branded content shop.
At press time, Pulcini and Berman had just embarked on the Adidas job, just weeks after they debuted Ten Thousand Saints at the Sundance Film Festival. This marked their third film to premiere at Sundance, a track record which included American Splendor winning the festival’s Grand Jury Prize.
As for the appeal of diversifying into the ad/branded content sector, Pulcini noted, “The wide range of styles and stories associated with branded content is very appealing to filmmakers like us. Nurturing a feature script, packaging, casting and financing is quite a lengthy process, so it’s exciting that these new opportunities have opened up for actually getting behind the camera and telling stories. We suppose the challenges lie in matching stories with brands, but luckily we have help in that department.”
Berman confirmed that she and Pulcini are “currently conceiving a short film for Adidas, although it’s premature to talk [publicly] about the experience. We are thrilled with the way our concept has been embraced by the company. It’s a short New York City-set doc that we hope will be both nostalgic and inspirational.”
Regarding what their long-form filmmaking experience enables them to bring to branded fare, Pulcini related, “When we were starting out in the film business–as screenwriters and documentary directors [The Young and the Dead, Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s]–we also made a living by working in “real people” casting for commercials: testimonials, unusual stories and people matched with brands, etc. It was always an adventure finding real people to fill out a concept. On one occasion we were asked to find a group of Sherpas in Manhattan, and we actually did! Now that we have a number of narrative features under our belt, we have a greater understanding of storytelling through image making, in a way that documentary work rarely affords you. We see the diversity of all these skillsets as an asset in the branded content world.”
The connection with Process as the directing duo’s ad roost evolved naturally. “Tim Perell, a producer we’ve known and long admired from our film circles, approached us with this new division of his company,” recalled Berman. “The wonderful thing about Process is that they really understand the life experience of a filmmaker, which gives them the ability to effectively guide those experiences toward the needs of an ad agency. They help make a director’s transition from the film world to the ad world seamless. They see the craft from our perspective, and we have a shorthand as we speak the same language.”
Sundance
Pulcini and Berman’s Ten Thousand Saints screened as part of Sundance’s Premieres lineup, a showcase of world premieres of some of the most highly anticipated narrative films of the coming year. Based on the novel of the same title, Ten Thousand Saints follows three lost kids and their equally lost parents as they come of age in New York’s East Village in the era of the CBGB (country, bluegrass, blues) music club, yuppies and the tinderbox of gentrification that exploded into the Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988.
The movie’s cast includes Ethan Hawke, Asa Butterfield, Emily Mortimer, Julianne Nicholson, Hailee Steinfeld and Emile Hirsch.
Both Pulcini and Berman were drawn to the book Ten Thousand Saints. Berman related, “I read the book and became obsessed. It was so cinematic that I could actually envision the movie as I was reading. The writing was beautiful and the characters were all so complex and flawed. I am also a child of New York in the 1980s and so it is an era that I really wanted to revisit. I even wandered into the actual Tompkins Square Park riots in the summer of 1988. Thematically, I was extremely moved by how it illustrates the cosmic nature of family.”
Pulcini recalled, “Shari read the book and fell in love with it and urged me to do the same. The writing was not only beautiful, but constantly surprising. The characters really spoke to us, as did the world. For some time we had discussed setting a movie during that time period in New York. For me personally, it was quite an exciting era. The film is set the year I moved here.”
As for the biggest creative challenge that Ten Thousand Saints posed to them as filmmakers, Pulcini said, “It’s a period film on an indie budget, so we had to really think about how to control everything appearing in the frame without the resources to really do so. And we needed to accomplish this in a way that didn’t make the film feel small and overly contained. New York has changed so, so much. You don’t realize it until you go back and look at footage of the East Village in the ‘80s. Even if you find an amazingly preserved location, everywhere you point the camera, there’s these bright blue clusters of Citi bikes!”
Berman concurred, “I grew up in New York and making this film really made me realize just how glossy and basically unrecognizable the East Village has become. It was nearly impossible to make the ‘new’ New York look gritty and dilapidated on any budget, but on an indie budget it was a massive undertaking.
“Luckily our production designer, Stephen Beatrice, and his team were inventive, a little bit insane and a lot brilliant! Also, we shot this movie during the coldest winter in New York history. There were like four polar vortexes and endless snowstorms. The snow looks great on film but it was a huge challenge just to walk to set without falling. I still shiver thinking about it.”
Regarding their latest Sundance experience, Pulcini shared, “It was great to return to Sundance. It was our third time there with a feature, so it felt a bit odd to be constantly referred to as ‘indie royalty.’ But this time around we vowed to have fun and we succeeded. It helped to be traveling with such a lovely cast and crew, led by Ethan Hawke. We were all collectively pleased with how warmly the film was received, and we ended up selling the film for theatrical distribution at a very nice price. It will be opening late this summer.”
As for what’s next on their filmmaking agenda, Berman said, “We have several projects bubbling, but we’re not certain which we’ll end up going with–pretty much the daily condition of writers/directors. It’s also been nice to consider shorter, branded content material for a change of pace.”
