EXCLUSIVE: Francis Ford Coppola has boarded Brother Verses Brother as executive producer. The Ari Gold-directed drama has its world premiere today at SXSW.
Inspired by Coppola’s concept of Live Cinema, Gold embarked on a radically personal musical odyssey alongside real-life twin, Ethan Gold. As their characters search for their father across the great and troubled city of San Francisco, they paint a vision of Bohemian culture, blending cinema with reality to create a dream of the comedy and pathos of modern America. The actors around them, all playing fictionalized versions of themselves, engage in improv as the narrative feature follows combative and co-dependent twin musicians as they hunt for their dying poet father in and around San Francisco.
“When I read Francis Ford Coppola’s book Live Cinema and Its Techniques, one paragraph struck me like a thunderbolt: ‘I have always loved when art works are what they are about. To me that is the holy grail of art, but perhaps I’ve only touched on it briefly.’ I took Coppola’s book as a call to arms, and set out to make a ‘live cinema’ musical film in the North Beach neighborhood we know and love, and using his principles – with my brother and father and friends playing versions of ourselves, and where the invented story and our real lives blur,” Ari Gold said. “We all ‘play ourselves,’ even in real life – this was an opportunity to find the truth hiding in that game.”
Ethan Gold also provided the original music and songs in the film. Pic co-stars local jazz legend Lara Louise, Brian Bell (of the band Weezer), and San Francisco’s Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin, bringing the Live Cinema-inspired film to life. Herbert Gold, the real dad of the twins, also stars. Pic was produced by Michelle Stratton, Starr Sutherland, Ari Gold and Maya Browne, and Visit Films is handling the acquisition title.