“Samuel L. Jackson.”

“An actor who always looks creepy.”

I’m thinking Ghost World, Filmmaker Magazine interview with Tom DiCillo, Armageddon. Armageddon?

“I have this image of him, but I can’t remember his name,” I say.

“Steve Buscemi.”

“Oh. Well, that’s who I was thinking of,” I pause, “I’m really bad with crosswords.”

“This one I haven’t figured out yet,” Brune says. “Starts with an R, an actress who always looks like she’s sucking on lemons. I was thinking Reece Witherspoon because she’s always got that odd expression, but it doesn’t fit. ”

“No, you need someone whose face is more puckered. More like Rene Zellweiger.”

Brune checks in with his letter count. “That’s it,” he says. With that minor redemption, I feel we're on our way to a solid interview about his short The Adventure after all.

Over at Hammer to Nail, filmmaker-critic Michael Tully classified the short as a European art film dropped in the realm of the American comedy, also "an existentialist mystery/comedy/thriller." As odd a hybrid as they come, The Adventure is aptly described here. As a an aloof couple (John Curran and Deborah Childs) drive through a state park, nonchalantly chit-chatting about property prices and other mundanities, an unexpected encounter involving mimes and mortality shakes their complacent privilege. The film is at once humorous and unsettling, playing with the trivial to hit notes of the profound and then much more than that, it's a film truly memorable, a cogent work that nods to the masters while illuminating an original, thoughtful perspective.

As actor-improv comic Brune is quick remind, however, for all the seriousness of the deserved praise, there are always notes of levity to any of his work.

“I have a joke,” he says. “I want to do for mimes what Jaws did for sharks. I just came up with that today.”

I laugh, putting my recorder in my bag and then later, as I walk to my car, reflect upon our conversation.

SM: To start with a solid groundwork, where did you start with the short? How did it develop?

MB: I used to go to where we shot the film. It’s a park up near Lake Allatoona, and I just stumbled on it one day last winter. I wanted to get out of the city for a little while. So, I thought, "I'll just drive and find somewhere to hang out."

I was driving around aimlessly, and I found this little park tucked away right next to the Allatoona dam... You can hike up this semi-mountain and overlook the dam. It's really cool. So I would just go back there repeatedly.

I really fell in love with this place, and I knew I wanted to shoot something there. So it started with the environment there, and you can kind of see that [in the film.] It's a really beautiful place that doesn't scream of being any particular place, so to speak. It's just the woods; it's just this beautiful park. That's where I started,...in this fortress of solitude so to speak, a sanctuary so to speak.

SM: Then the interesting thing you do with the space is to make it theatrical, and it's funny to think of this naturalistic space as being more or less made into a stage.

MB: [Cinematographer Adam Pinney] and I toyed around with how to shoot that. We couldn't get that creative shooting the mimes because the point is to watch the story of the mime, what he's trying to say. So, yeah, there really wasn't any other way to shoot that mime other than just on lock-down. I didn't really know if that would work. We didn't really know if that would work. It's a long mime...It works, but you have to see the whole mime. And, it's from [the couple's] point of view, so you're seeing what they are seeing more or less.

SM: Talking about this couple, how did you go about casting John and Deborah? What were you looking for when you were doing that?

MB: I had a casting director; a friend of mine Janel [Bersabal] does a lot of extras casting. I wanted an older couple, and a lot of the actors I know are younger actors, people I do improv with, people I go on auditions with because we're auditioning for the same parts. So I didn't know any older actors and had to go through a casting process.

I was looking for--and, I feel weird saying this--a Haneke couple. Michael Haneke is my favorite filmmaker right now; I just think he's incredible. So, I was looking for a couple like that. Even though that's not the couple that really ended up in the film, I was looking for a vanilla family, early 40s, late 30s, a regular old married couple, middle class. I saw a couple of actors that were along those lines.

SM: In terms of the stylism of John & Deborah's performances, there's a distinct deadpan, and at first it's a bit odd; you have to get into the rhythm of what they're doing and saying. After a while it becomes an almost monotone, ongoing commentary that's both really funny and contrasts well against the overblown notion of reality with the mimes. Was that intentional?

MB: At the very beginning of the casting process, when I was reading the first people, I was like, "Just read it deadpan." It's a situation that's not going to happen to anyone, a mime coming out of the woods in a park. It just doesn't happen, especially in a deserted park that seems like it's secluded and far away...So that was one of my words, "deadpan," and then I wanted the contrast between reality and "Oh, you see this kind of thing everyday." That's one of the ideas of the film, that there's this couple that's so desensitized to everything that's around them that even this extraordinary thing that's happening right before their eyes is just very ordinary to them, and they're a little indifferent to it. It's more something to deal with and move on with their lives, even though it's this extraordinary event that most people would think, "What is going on?" and would be completely shocked and confused by it. So that was the angle I was going in. I wanted them to be very desensitized to everything around them. Does that make sense?

SM: I felt a bit of the opposite actually. The fact that the couple stops to watch, the fact that Deborah's character has such a visceral reaction to the mime and what happens to him ultimately, it doesn't necessarily make me think desensitization. When I think that, I think of someone just passing by.

MB: There was a change there. At the beginning, when they first see the mime, I wanted that to be just very bland, very deadpan, but then when the mime gets shot, that needed to be a huge moment. So my direction for that was, and I used this throughout the audition process as well, "Pretend you're in a foreign country driving around, and you see someone get gunned down in the street in front of you, right before your eyes." That's how I wanted it to seem when the mime gets shot. So there is a dramatic shift there. Even though the violence is fake, I wanted them to react to something as if it was very real.

SM: Rolling over now to talk about Tim Stoltenberg and Dave Quay, how did you work with the two of them during the rehearsal process? Like you said, that action is covered in essentially one long shot. How did you deal with the work on that, actually choreographing that segment?

MB: It was one of the most fun things about the whole project. I hadn't really done a lot of mime before, but I had a mime advisor, someone who use to tour as a professional mime, come in for most of the rehearsals at the very beginning and at the end to coach Tim along and give him pointers. He has a background in mime, but he's not a professional mime.

We had the whole story of the mime, and basically we just talked it out...There are beats to it--when he's bird watching, he hears something, he sees someone, he's running away and then he gets shot. So we approached it like that; we made a rough outline of a sequence of events. Then we just workshopped each point farther and farther. We rehearsed on and off once a week for a month to a month and a half, sometimes more, to get it to that point.

Mime is very cinematic in a way because you're trying to convey things very concisely and very simply so that people can understand you. Each little movement is almost like a shot. For example, one of the things that we read about mime is that if you have something in your hand, you don't have to put it in something; you can just put it behind your back. When you come back, your hands are clean again; there's nothing in them, which is kind of interesting. So there are all these little details to mime that were really interesting to explore.

Then we had to create different characters because the mime is playing another character too. There are different ways a mime can switch [from one character to another] because mimes do that sometimes. So, it was like, "How do we make him switch characters?" I saw some mime performance on YouTube.com, some traditional mime and one of them just did this (Brune whips his hand in front of his face) and turned around. I thought that was an interesting way to become a different character.

I didn't ever rehearse with Dave. I had a mime that I was going to use for the part, and he bailed on me the Thursday before the Monday shoot. So I had to rush around to find someone. I called Dave, got in touch with him, and he was available.

(Dave) went to Emory [University], and there's a teacher there named John Ammerman, who studied under Marcel Marceau. He teaches mime, movement and all sorts of things at Emory. So I wasn't worried if he had training...Then I met him, didn't rehearse with him at all, just worked with him the day of. I told him what I wanted, and I videotaped all of Tim's rehearsals, all of his mimes. He watched those, and he understood the style of mime we were doing. Tim is portraying (Dave's) character in the mime, and so he wanted to see that as well. So he watched those, came to set, and he's only in there briefly, but he had all this great material. It just worked perfectly.

SM: Now when it comes to the relationship between the couple and the mimes, there's something interesting in that our sense of metaphysics is completely shifted. It could be--and, we don't really know that this isn't true--that this is an actual occurrence, or it could also be a manifestation of what's going on emotionally with the couple.

We don't know too much about what the couple's relationship to one another is anymore, although there is a half snide, backhanded comment that she levels at him when he's talking about wanting to buy real estate, kind of joking whether or not they'll be able to buy it from the state. She makes the snide comment that he doesn't make enough money to do that. So, we get the impression that perhaps these two aren't on the best of terms, and this expedition is their attempt to reconcile with one another. So in that way the mimes could be representative of whatever emotional state they're in.

Considering that [Michelangelo] Antonioni and [Ingmar] Bergman has just passed away--was it before production?

MB: No, it was during. It was really amazing. We shot on July 30 and 31 [2007], a Monday and a Tuesday. When I got to set in the morning--and it was dark out--Katie Rowlett, who was the production manager, she walked up, and she was like, "Did you hear Bergman died? It was on NPR today." I was just like, "What? Are you kidding?" It bummed me...At the end of the day we had a little moment of silence for him.

Antonioni died on Monday, but his death wasn't really reported until the next day for whatever reason. Adam came up to me the next morning and was just like, "You know Michelangelo Antonioni died." I thought he was just bullshitting me. I adore Antonioni. He's pretty much the reason I appreciate film. He's the reason I think film is an art form. I just admire him so much, and so I was just like, "You're bullshitting me. That's just not true." But, then later on, when I got home, I was like, "Oh my god, he did die." It was really bizarre.

So the point is: I am the reincarnation of Michelangelo Antonioni.

SM laughs.

MB: I'm just kidding.

SM: No, but it's interesting considering you carve out that malleable metaphysical space, and what so much of what Bergman and Antonioni dealt with quite overtly depended on creating messages or situations that communicated a double significance like that. So that for me, when applied to this greater situation with the couple and the mime, I found interesting.

MB: For Antonioni, with a lot of his films, environment and location is so tied in. I've read that a lot of times he'll find a location and take inspiration from that. Since that's sort of how the film came about--it's not how some of the shorts I've made come about--that has elements of how Antonioni worked at various times in his career. That was really special, and so there are echoes of that in there. Then there are the superficial visual [cues]. I wasn't trying to make it like Blow-Up, which has some mimes in it and has a very green palette in parts. It wasn't a conscious effort on my part to make it like that.

So with Antonioni specifically, and with Bergman too because I'm a big fan--when you watch a lot of movies, you just absorb everything, and even though it's not intentional a lot of that is refracted through what you shoot and what you write.

SM: I suppose what I'm trying to understand is if when you create something you just create and then find the messages afterward or if you have a conscious intention of having a particular message to structure around.

MB: A lot of the questions and ideas raised in the film are things that maybe I don't understand fully, but I want to understand. Just in life, I live vicariously through movies, and so it's like I understand, or I figure a lot of things out, by watching movies. They answer questions for me about life.

So I wanted to explore an idea like the difference between an audience and a performer, a piece of artwork and the viewer. I wanted to explore the difference between what is reality and what is not, the difference between the reality of artwork and the reality of life. Fact and fiction. Also violence. A lot of these ideas are inspired by watching Michael Haneke films. He delves into a lot of this.

Also I think it's really important to engage your audience. Film is so important. Some people just go to the movies, and it's a really passive experience. They are just there for entertainment, which is totally fine, and I do that too. But, cinema is such a treasure, and I like films that force the viewer to be engaged in what's going on. They don't let the viewer off. You're going to have to pay attention to what's going on. You can't just sit there. You have to think about what's going on. People do that anyway, but I wanted to put a little bit more emphasis on that, on engaging the audience more, on getting them to think about what's going on.

Which is what the mimes do for the couple. They tried to sit there and watch it and talk about it, just like, "Let's pay this guy and leave," but then that violent act happens, and they can't anymore. They become involved. They are part of it. They are accomplices to this thing now, or they feel like they might be. Or, maybe they feel like they are responsible for it. This mime is pleading for their help, and they just sit in their car, lock the door and try and wait for it to be over. They're brought into this, and so they have to deal with it on a more physical level.

SM: You could extrapolate from there and ask about the nature of performance,...whose reality is more real...Maybe what is more real in the scenerio of the film is the imagination of the mimes rather than the couples' [life].

MB: Yeah, yeah. At the outset they don't take the mime seriously. They just think it's a street performance. It's like if you were just walking around San Francisco, and you see a bunch of people doing street performances. You just pass by, and it's part of the background.

But, that's what I was trying to go for: Here's this performance that really is more real than a "performance." When he gets shot, (the couple) react as if it's real. I don't know if normal people would react like that. They might get shocked that, "Oh, this person fell on my car. What do we do?," but I think it's a little greater than that. It's a little more exaggerated. It's like they're witnessing someone dying so to speak.

SM: I see that. I think reality is based on what you believe at any given moment. Now whether the outside world is going to validate your belief system is a totally different story. But, you know, all of reality could be some sort of suspension of disbelief.

That's what film people do. They're constantly putting themselves back in a situation where they can suspend their disbelief. It's almost as if they are masochistically thrusting themselves back into a state where--I don't want to call it escapism--but where they can live elsewhere.

SM: Everyone has their own emotional conduit...It's funny; whenever I think of people understanding their own lives, I can't imagine it, like you just pointed out, without some very direct conduit. It's as if we can't understand our emotions without the conduit.

MB: I completely agree because I do that. When I watch John Cassavetes Husbands, that's how I learn, "Oh, it's okay to..." It really helped me to understand men more; even though I should be able to understand them because I am one. A lot of my male friends go out and drink, gamble, go on trips, and it's like, "I guess I should figure that out from my own experience," but I really learn about that in a movie. I feel like it's distilled, and in film, these emotions and these ideas that we've all experienced in our own lives, they are distilled and up there for us to watch. It helps me understand.

SM: Getting back on track with The Adventure, I want to talk about Adam Pinney's cinematography, which I think is genius, particularly the opening shot. I know you followed behind the couple's car with a crane, but in my head, I still couldn't figure out how you did it.

MB: Yeah, we had a crane, and we strapped it to the back of my brother's pick-up truck. It's a heavy-duty pick-up truck; it's not some dinky thing. So we put the base of the crane in the bed of the truck, strapped it in and had the arm angled out over the front of the truck. It was like twelve, fifteen feet out, just over the front of the truck. We had a couple of guys steadying the crane, and then Adam and I were in the cab of the truck. He's doing the controls to make sure it stays framed up properly.

Luckily we picked a road at a location in a secluded place, so we didn't have to get the police to shut down the road, anything like that, and, we just drove really slowly, like fifteen miles an hour up to the park. So it was just a crane and a truck.

We didn't know that it would work. We were just like, "Bring a crane. Bring a truck. Let's see if it works." And, it did luckily.

SM: Now the series of three juxtaposed suburban feeling shots--the sweep around the soccer field, the interior shot of the pavilion--what was the significance of those shots? There's a certain loneliness and sadness to them because they're marks that there is a greater society that lives in the area that this couple is removed from,...a community that goes unseen.

MB: Once (the couple) gets into the park, I wanted it to start to feel differently, like they are coming into a completely different space, I don't know if it's a hallowed space...It's the beginning, let's say, of them being jarred out of this deadpan attitude they have in their conversation and their existence so to speak.

SM: It's interesting. Those shots are full, but they're empty, if that makes any sense.

MB: (laughs) Yeah.

SM: I see that now too, that they serve that function of being a reprieve between one state of existence and another.

MB: That's an example of something that wasn't imbued with a lot of meaning at the outset. It was something that was more functional at the beginning, but then in the world of the film it has more weight once the shots are cut together.

SM: And, oh, of course, I want to talk about the closing shot. First of all, how long does that shot run?

MB: It's maybe two minutes long, but even though it's two minutes long I feel like having seen a lot of films recently with eight-minute shots, I'm like, "Ah, two minutes is not that long."

SM: The reason I ask about the shot length is that the mime performance continues throughout that two minutes, and ostensibly we as viewers don't know how the performance actually ends.

MB: Well, the thing I like about long shots is: With a long shot, people can either get really bored, just leave the room and that's it. Some people are going to have that reaction to this, "There's nothing else for me to see here. I've seen it. I get it. I don't need to see anymore." On the other side of the coin, the people who sit there to watch the rest, there's a progression to how their mind works. Here's this shot that you understand the facts of really quickly, "Okay, there's a mime in the middle of the road. He got shot. He's dead? But, is he really dead? Is he going to get back up or not? Is the performance going to end?" There's that progression in the thought process during that long shot, and it's a good way to engage someone. They are constantly thinking, "Well, what is going on? Why is this shot going on so long?" You're like, "Okay, I understand what's going on. Okay, why is it going on? I'm getting a little bored." Then the boredom wears off, and you'll be like, "Okay, it's this long for a reason. What am I missing here?" You start to search, to become more engaged and look for details, or think about what is going on, what is happening with this mime in the middle of the road.

It's something a lot of filmmakers have done. I'll mention Antonioni just because I adore his films. Some of his shots are long, and he's just giving the viewer time to look at everything because everything has meaning.

SM: Long shots also force the awareness of cinema as an art...It's a bit like looking at a painting, and then when it comes to looking at a painting, your imagination will always change the meaning of the painting over time. So, you see people, when you go to a musuem, who just sit and stare for hours at a Monet.

It'll also makes me wonder if we've become so immune in a fast-paced society that we forget to look that long at anything with wonderment.

MB: I completely agree. People don't sit and experience things when they should. So sometimes if I get, and someone will make fun of me for this, food at a restaurant, sometimes I will smell my food first before I eat it. Most people will just eat it, put in in their mouths; I don't have any evidence for that, but I think most people do. It's a very functional act, like, "Oh, this food, I need to eat it." But, sometimes I'll just smell it, stick my face in it, just so I can experience it more.

There's this one really amazing shot in Haneke's 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. It's just this guy playing ping-pong for like nine minutes. He's not playing with another person; he's playing with some sort of ping-pong machine, and he's hitting the ping-pong ball the same way every time. He's not practicing a backhand, he's just practicing his overhand. He's just sweating, and (Brune breaths rhythmically, heavily). It's eight to nine minutes long, the same action, over and over again, and it's really gripping. For some people that might bore them to tears, but for me it's really gripping within the context of the film.

It's an amazing thing when you can hold a static shot like that, and I feel like with shots like that you can still interest people. People think you have to have 100 cuts in a minute to keep people interested, that if you're not cutting, you're not keeping people interested. It's just that you're keeping them interested in a different way.

SM: As a wrap-up question: Is there anything you wanted to add that I've neglected to ask so far?

MB: This film made me realize that I'm not wasting my time pursuing filmmaking. I look at it, and I'm very proud of it, and I'm constantly surprised that this came from me.

I had some trouble with my last short. I just couldn't figure it out. It was just a nightmare. And, I was in this place, and every filmmaker goes through it, like, "Do I really have the ability to make films? Am I any good at this? Can I excel at this? Do I have anything to say?" And, this film really cemented that.

Another thing is that since I love movies so much, and I just think they are the most wonderful things we have, I feel somewhat indebted to movies, like I need to give back to them because they've given me so much. I really feel like I've made the first step to doing that.

The film next screens for Dailies First Sundays at the PushPush Theater in Decatur, GA at 7:30pm July 6. For more information on the film visit www.theadventurefilm.com.