ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Brothers director Max Barbakow about the original comedy movie. Barbakow discussed his lessons learned from Palm Springs, his stacked cast, and more. Starring Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin, Brothers is now streaming on Prime Video.
“Brothers tells the story of a reformed criminal (Josh Brolin) whose attempt at going straight is derailed when he reunites with his sanity-testing twin brother (Peter Dinklage) on a cross-country road trip for the score of a lifetime. Dodging bullets, the law, and an overbearing mother along the way, they must heal their severed family bond before they end up killing each other,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Let’s start with your two leads here because they just have such great chemistry. It’s so fun watching them do anything, and you put them in some really fun scenarios. Was that chemistry between them there instantly when you got them on set, or is that something they had to work on? Because it seems so seamless.
Max Barbakow: [The chemistry on Brothers] was instant. They didn’t know each other before working together, which was surprising to me because they are so good together, and they just fit together seamlessly. I will say, the respect and the affection, I think, got deeper as we progressed, which was really cool to see as well. But I mean, they were doing insane bits between setups that I wish we could have captured. They were really good together.
Another real highlight of this film is Brendan Fraser, and I love just every performance lately he’s just putting it to 100. He is going out all out here. He is this dirty cop in this. I loved when he screamed, “I am justice!” That had me cracking up. He quoting The Warriors. How was it just seeing that energy he brought?
We had the luxury of rehearsal on this film, and we were sitting around working through a scene, and he did Farful for the first time, and Peter and Josh and I looked at each other kind of blown away by the sheer force of what he was doing. He never looked back. I think films like this are only as entertaining and interesting as their antagonist, so we got really lucky with Brendan.
Brothers just has a great pace to it, and so did Palm Springs. There’s a lot going on here and plenty of stops on this road trip heist movie that we’re on. So how is it kind of keeping that pace on the edit? Because I could see wanting to linger a bit more, but you really found a good balance.
Thank you, man. That’s definitely a process. There’s definitely shaggier versions of this movie. There’s definitely a shorter version of this movie too, but we always wanted it to feel kind of like a romp, like a subversive holiday romp of a film, and it’s this combination of anarchic comedy and some surprising emotions. So you want to give room to each, but it’s a process. You could put it up in front of an audience and kind of feel where it’s dragging and also feel where we need to give a little more space for things to hit. It’s just part of the process, but I’m glad that you felt like it felt right.
I was reading that you like to kind of be loose on set and let the actors experiment. This cast is incredible and it’s so many celebrated dramatic actors that you don’t get to see really let loose and be quite as wild as they do in this film. So how was it just seeing them really just get to go all out there, throw ego aside, and just get captured in these really crazy situations?
I mean, I had to keep up with them. There were definitely times where I had to kind of bring us down a little bit to make sure both feet were on the ground, but I think that’s what makes the movie exciting, different, and fresh. Not only is it an original comedy of this size and shape, but it has these amazing actors trying things that they haven’t really done before in a really fun way. Everybody just feels like they’re kind of spiraling towards insanity in some way, which is sometimes what it feels like to be around your family too. So it all seemed to help matters.
Palm Springs was so celebrated, and it was such a hit with so many people. What were the biggest lessons you learned from that film that you were able to implement this time around?
You know, we did that movie on the sly and really had the space to just kind of get weird. I had a mentor once who always kind of preached, “You have to have the courage of your peculiarities.” I was like, that’s it. Protect the stuff that you really care about, that amuses you and makes you laugh. So it applies to this movie as well.
It’s kind of just making room for the emotional pockets but always trying things and embellishing them. Brolin said something really inspiring when we first started working on it. He would always ask, “Are we doing something dangerous or not?” It’s like, “Yeah. Let’s push it.” So, we did that with Palm Springs within the bounds of that genre, and I think we did that here too.
Josh does such a great job anchoring the film because he wants to move on with his life and be a more reserved person with his family. How was it using him as the straight man? He really excels there.
That was really exciting to me, and that was kind of my way into the movie too. Like, I’m definitely a Moke in my family dynamic. Josh has such a huge heart as a person and had such kind of an intuitive understanding of not necessarily being the straight guy but just being kind of like the audience’s way in, in a sense, and through this madness. It’s his journey from being disconnected to connecting again with a family, to kind of chaos ensuing to finding harmony and that chaos that I think really takes us on this wild ride. In front of the camera, between setups, behind the camera, he was such a stable presence. I’m very thankful for that.
Peter’s character is definitely the source of a lot of that chaos. First off, he has one hell of a ‘stache in this film. I love that. He is this wild ladies’ man as well. I know Peter’s very creative himself and he has a lot of ideas, so how was it really honing in with him on this character?
He just showed up with that facial hair, and it was Jady. It was really interesting ’cause we shot one scene on the last day of the movie where he shaved, we were taking some mugshot photos, and it was the scene at the top of the movie before he went to prison that took place in the past. Peter came to the set, but he didn’t have the fu manchu. I was like, “Whoa, there’s Peter.” He was Jady before.
He’s just so naturally gifted, funny, smart, and quick that he’ll do three takes of something. You’ll watch dailies and you will have missed what he was actually doing with his face in these. He is always doing something different. He’s really, really impressive. He’s telling the story. It is almost like if Moke is kind of the emotional way and Peter’s telling the story, the Jady character of this movie, that’s the POV. Only somebody as naturally gifted and kind of thrifty as Peter could have pulled off that character.
Thanks to Max Barbakow for talking about Brothers, which is now streaming on Prime Video.