Red Bucket Film Collective Spills It

Red Bucket Films is a collective of writers, directors, cinematographers, art directors, and actors based in New York City that is interested in capturing the beauty of ordinary life. The vision of the collective, according to art director Sam Lisceno, is simply to expand Red Bucket sustainability. They see no need to close-down streets or exceed budgets beyond what they can seemingly scrounge out of their pockets; why should they, when a man reading a newspaper or a woman shopping in a market is easily captured on film and more readily conveys a moving, visceral sense of striking reality. Red Bucket is known as a fearless group of amiable personalities who frequently approach other New Yorkers and ask them questions, challenge them to races, and basically play games in order to capture the poetry of everyday existence. Their first film, The Pleasure of Being Robbed, was originally a short film and premiered at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas and later played at the Cannes film festival - theatrical gold for an industry where indie-flicks are quickly losing their appeal. Be sure to catch their self-curated exhibition of shorts, street observations, and non-narrative pieces aired by OFFscreen on March 15th.

What was the genesis of the Red Bucket collective? How intentional was its creation and growth?

The genesis of Red Bucket is the bedrooms of my own and my buddy Alex's in the tail end of high-school. Then we went off to college, Benny and myself to Boston University and Alex to Bard. At BU, I surrounded myself with some very curious students who treated every idea with the most reification, these people being Brett Jutkiewicz, Sam Lisenco and Zachary Treitz. We took classes together, not just film, mostly unrelated to film courses: Cosmic Evolution, Oceanography, Honor and Shame, Detective Fiction, American Classic, and other niche literature classes. Then, of course, there were our apartments, which acted as head spaces. Spaces to hibernate in and constantly work and rework ideas. Brainstorm, shoot little things here and there-that's in great thanks to Boston, a failed city if you ask me, but a city that is great for education and self exploration. Hermetic. Anyway, after coming back to NYC, we realized what we were missing (being here all the time and not just on random weekends and holidays) and, of course, the availabilty of small, pocket-sized cameras, which became our new pens and paper. We took/take notes with them and are constantly sharing ideas and even making some narratives with them (i.e. BUTTONS and random small written narratives). The real importance of its growth is the studio we all work out of. It is there where books are transferred, verses are read, movies are watched, ideas are shared, cameras are huddled around. It's really quite special, and we thank the walls everyday . . . really.

It seems that for a lot of audiences, your success occurred nearly overnight. What would you cite as the tipping point for Red Bucket's acknowledgement?

I'm not sure. I didn't really know that the success was here. I guess I don't have a day job at the moment.

The lead actor in The Pleasure of Being Robbed, Eléonore Hendricks, is also cited as a co-writer in the credits. Can you describe your collaboration? How much of the dialogue and action were planned before shooting?

Well, I had written a script. A script that existed at a point of my relationship with Eléonore that was in its fetal stages. I knew the gestures, flow, and details of the story . . . the portrait of emotions. Once the movie was dead on the page, the only way it could have lived again was through Eléonore and she did that. . .in fact, she never saw the script. We would sit or lie down, what have you, and talk about the character, discuss what she does, how she does it . . . things like this, then on "set," while filming, Eléonore would add these things that totally changed her character for the better, really made you question some of her actions. She would contradict herself, knowingly. It was beautiful. I love watching her work. She saved my mind many times over during the shooting of the film. The film's structure was very much like a jazz tune, a simple jazz tune. A spared one, not too dissimilar to that of the monk song it borrows. It allows the things to flow and the distractions were almost encouraged.

Obviously, the Red Bucket collective had completed all short films and observations before shooting Pleasure. How would you describe the differences in the challenges of shooting a full-length feature?

Well, with Pleasure, we didn't really think about features or shorts and I think this is very important. The length isn't very important. I am very grateful to all of the sacrifices I made to make a handful of shorts-and on film, at that-as I really figured out how to speak intuitively. But the main challenge I can note is just the sheer length of the fight, journey, ride, mental jog, or sprint. On our newest film, Go Get Some Rosemary, the writing process really was a gestation of ideas culminating over the course of three years, and the shooting process was well over forty days spanning over almost five weeks-with few days off. Granted, a lot of our days were limited to our actors' schedules (first and third grade school weekly from 8 to 3:30), but it's just strenuous. Time blurs, the movie and your life blur. Dreams complicate and overcrowd with shots and gestures and details. . .it's great that it's war, though. Short films sometimes just yield shorter wars-not easier, just shorter.

Pleasure garnered a great deal of attention as the only American film selected for the 2008 Cannes Directors' Fortnight. How would you describe its reception?

At Fortnight, we were young, we still are young, so it was a dream to be there at this time in our life with a film like Robbed. The reception was beautiful - closing night, surrounded by the five programmers that run the festival. I have to admit, it's really all a blur to me. I barely went to one party, I was in a foreign land of "paradise," walking down the street and brushing elbows with Wim Wenders or Dennis Hopper or Jim Jarmusch, having interviews that were live-translated. This all seemed way out of my league; it was beautiful but scary. The seriousness of which I/we were taken was encouraging and scary at the same time. But the company the film was with was all I needed.

What can we look for next from Red Bucket?

Buttons Vol. II (200 more observations from the streets, a natural progression from Vol. I, to screen at U.Va.), a short film or two from one or two of us, a commercial or two that we'll never unveil as we pay our bills, a talk show, a website organizing communities by self-uploading mini-documentaries about individual blocks, Buttons Vol. 1: The Book, and, most importantly, a new feature, Go Get Some Rosemary, about a part-time dad who spends two weeks with his kids for the first time in four months. A very irresponsible guy who sheds experiences onto the kids, gives them laughs, and keeps the audience guessing and wondering if he's a dick, a hero, a lover, or the world's greatest yet saddest dad who loves hot dogs.