When I premiered my film The Brothers McMullen at Sundance in 1995 and then sold it to Fox Searchlight, much of the story centered on the budget, which in that case was $25,000. The fact that such a low-budget film became successful was a calling card for aspiring filmmakers who had big visions but few resources. Over the years, a number of filmmakers have told me that McMullen inspired them to scrape together $25,000—or something close to it—to make their own film.
There is something about that youthful determination that I have always tried to stay mindful of. Often, when I am struggling to get one of my bigger-budget films made, I look back to that ambitious, scrappy, penniless 23 year-old kid and ask myself: How can I make a movie for nothing?
Since then, I’ve gone on to make 15 more films, 6 of which I would describe as “micro budget,” under $150 thousand.
I have been fortunate that all of them have been profitable and found distribution.
Well, all except for one…
The film is called Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies, which we shot in 2018 for $35,000 to get in the can. I think its journey is a perfect case study for anyone interested in NonDē filmmaking.
Back then, after reading so many headlines and articles about the American Dream becoming increasingly out of reach for the working-class, I knew I wanted to make a film about a blue-collar family from a neighborhood like the one on Long Island where I grew up.
I wanted to return to those streets and houses I called home and look at what happens to a family when the promise of a better tomorrow begins to feel elusive—when parents who worked hard believing their children would have opportunities they never had are forced to confront the possibility that things haven’t turned out the way they’d hoped.
Given the subject matter, I wanted the film to be a quiet, intimate portrait. Rather than focus on the larger forces at work outside the house, I wanted to explore the small traumas, old wounds and accumulating resentments inside it. We don’t necessarily see the events that created those pressures, but we feel their ripples in the relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and brothers and sisters.
Around that time, I had read filmmaker Paul Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, which he originally wrote in 1972 and updated in 2018. I was particularly interested in Schrader’s examination of the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu.
Ozu was certainly an influence on me. I loved his quiet, subtle approach to filmmaking, and he told stories about families, a subject I have explored in most of my films as well. My favorite Ozu film is Tokyo Story (1953), the quiet and heartbreaking story of an elderly couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to discover that the children are too busy and self-absorbed to spend much time with them.
One of Ozu’s trademarks was that much of the action took place in the home. We often don’t witness the important events that happen outside of it; instead, we feel their impact when the characters return to their apartments, homes, etc.
Not only was this an interesting storytelling technique, but as an independent filmmaker who is always conscious of budget, I saw another advantage: fewer locations, which makes for a tighter schedule and a lower budget. This was the perfect approach for the story I wanted to tell.
At the same time, I had been hearing about the phenomenon known as “deaths of despair,” a phrase coined by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton and written about extensively by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. It described the crisis facing struggling working-class Americans dealing with higher rates of addiction, poor health and suicide.
Like I said, I grew up in a working-class community and was immediately compelled to tell the story of a family facing a slow-moving crisis.
With the Ozu model in mind, I fleshed out an idea about a working-class family whose matriarch, an alcoholic, was slowly unraveling. She was particularly consumed by her two aimless adult children, both still living in their small, cramped home.
The screenplay flowed out of me. I wanted to tap into something some parents experience but don’t always admit: the fear and judgment they can feel toward their adult children when those kids seem to be heading toward a future with little hope.
By July 2018, I had a script. I called it Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies, an ironic nod to a lyric in the Beatles classic “Penny Lane.”
Now came the question: How were we going to make it?
My long time producing partner Aaron Lubin and I knew from experience when these are the types of films you want to make, you have to forego the traditional means of indie filmmaking. That meant we would take the McMullen route. But with that, we knew we would have to make a number of compromises.
PICK YOUR COMPROMISES
If we chose to take the typical path for a film of this size, we might look at a budget from anywhere between $1-8 million. But whenever anyone cuts a seven figure check, you better be prepared to make certain concessions.
First, you would need to spend the time and energy required to find an investor or company with the resources to finance the movie. Even when that process goes well, it can take years. More often, it involves false starts, flaky investors and dashed hopes. It tests your patience and can be soul-crushing.
If you do secure the money, the people providing it will understandably have input into the screenplay, casting and virtually every aspect of the filmmaking, even as the budget inevitably gets whittled down.
You would probably need to find a movie star to play the lead and round out the supporting roles with other bold faced names. Then you have to make their deals and work around their availability, which itself can change while you’re scheduling the film.
You would need to be collaborative with these investors, and probably deferential at times, not only during production but through the edit, postproduction, music, marketing, trailer and release.
And often, that experience can be great. Lubin and I have been fortunate to make movies and television series at bigger budgets with other people’s money. I have often enjoyed working with those partners, and at times their contributions genuinely help me realize my vision. The upside can also be much greater: the film gets marketed and promoted, more people see it, it can lead to other opportunities, everyone gets paid more, and I can employ a much larger cast and crew.
But make no mistake: there will be compromises.
However, there is another list of compromises that comes if you choose to make a microbudget movie.
That version looks a lot more like McMullen: a bare bones crew, which for us typically included one camera person, one sound person, a couple of PAs and maybe a camera assistant. Free locations. No trailers. No art department. No hair and makeup. Actors wearing their own clothes. Which means you need actors who are completely down with the program.
There probably won’t be a big distribution deal or a substantial P&A spend given the small scope of the movie. And you’ll likely be the one doing most of the work to get the finished film in front of an audience.
For Blue Skies, we knew which list of compromises we were going to embrace.
TURN THE LIMITATIONS INTO THE STYLE
So, we embraced our McMullen style and rules, and with a bare bones crew and just a couple of locations, we did a budget where we thought we could get the movie in the can for $35 thousand (we would need to invest another $25 thousand for delivery to a buyer, once we had one.) We looked at this as an experiment, with as small a financial downside as possible.
Obviously, there would be no cranes or specialized equipment, no dollies or steady-cam, no extras or special locations. But I’ve found that sometimes not having the toys you want forces you to turn the lack of resources into a stylistic choice: austere and studied instead of slick and sprawling.
It would be an enormous amount of work, and Lubin and I would each be wearing multiple hats. It might be grueling and uncomfortable at times, and it may just end up being an experiment that never quite worked. Would it be worth it?
Absolutely.
Why?
Making movies is fun.
Years earlier, I had written a book called Independent Ed, my guide to the highs and lows of independent filmmaking. The subtitle was Inside a Career of Big Dreams, Little Movies, and the Twelve Best Days of My Life, a reference to the 12-day shoot of The Brothers McMullen.
That idea has remained a touchstone for me. I am often happiest and most fulfilled when I am actually in the act of creating, regardless of budget.
One of the greatest gifts I’ve had as a filmmaker was getting to watch Steven Spielberg direct Saving Private Ryan. The Normandy sequence, of course, stands as one of the most memorable passages in any film. His use of handheld cameras and available light created an immediacy that was visceral and gave the movie an almost documentary quality.
Steven was working on a grand scale, but the principle could work at the opposite end of the budget spectrum.
I embraced a version of that approach on my fourth film, Sidewalks of New York, using a pseudo-documentary style—handheld cameras, minimal lighting—to tell the story. We shot that movie in 17 days for $1 million.
The lack of money didn’t restrict the movie. It helped give the movie its style.
That became the guiding principle for Blue Skies: if I could marry a visual style to a budgetary limitation, then the limitation itself could become part of the language of the film.
And the Ozu model was perfect for that.
We sent the script to my DP, William Rexer, who had a two-week window when he could work with us. Rex loved the Ozu influence. He understood that we could make the film experimental, small and inexpensive, while still making it artistic, beautiful and true to the story.
We came up with some rules.
Like Ozu, we would shoot the entire film with one lens—a 40mm.
Like Ozu, we would never move the camera. (We broke that rule exactly once, on the very last shot of the movie, with a small, subtle pan.)
Our coverage would consist almost entirely of isolated singles. No traditional close-ups. No over-the-shoulder shots (another Ozu rule.)
We also fell in love with Ozu’s use of doorways and hallways, creating a frame-within-a-frame aesthetic.
Because we were using static wide shots, we could let the actors move in real time—in and out of rooms, making beds, cooking breakfast, simply living.
Rex could essentially photograph the film himself, almost like a stills photographer, while we approached the performances as if we were workshopping a play.
And we would shoot in only a handful of locations, with the family home as the primary setting. When important—and expensive—events happened outside the home, we wouldn’t see them. We would feel their aftermath when the characters came back. Again, just like Ozu.
The creative approach and the economic approach had become the same thing.
Rex and I had always wanted to make a film in black and white. And given the Ozu influence (many of his films were in black and white), we thought this would be the perfect film to embrace that aesthetic, and allow us to explore the use of stark lighting and shadows as a way to explore mood and character, and pay homage to some of my favorite quiet dramas, including Marty, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Last Picture Show, Umberto D and Hud, which is referenced in the film.
FIND PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN THE SAME MOVIE
The biggest production challenge was finding a small, working-class home in Queens or Long Island that we could shoot in for little or no money for two weeks.
I put out feelers. A friend knew of a house in Queens Village owned by an elderly woman who had recently passed away. She had raised her large family there, in a small three-bedroom home.
It was perfect, lived in and authentic.
Even better, the family was happy to let us use it for free. In return, we promised to pay for a complete cleaning when we finished.
Our friend Scott Ramsey, an experienced gaffer, provided an additional set of hands on deck. We hired three PAs to help with coffee, lunch and errands, and depending on who available, our sound mixer changed from day to day.
And that was essentially our crew.
As for catering, cast and crew could easily sit together at the nearby Italian restaurant, loading up on chicken parm and the occasional glass of wine.
Now I needed a cast—specifically, a special actress to play the lead, Tina, the alcoholic mother.
I reached out to Jennifer Ehle, a multiple Tony and BAFTA winning actress whom I had acted opposite in a small film called The River King.
It was critical that we find someone who understood what we were doing: an actor excited to explore a woman coming apart at the seams, but also willing to embrace the realities of a $35,000 production.
Thankfully, Jen was game.
She dove into playing this raw, exposed woman while foregoing all the creature comforts she would have enjoyed on a larger film. She would provide her own wardrobe—and sometimes keep track of her own continuity—do her own hair and makeup, and even use one of the homes’ bedrooms as her dressing room, which unfortunately, like the rest of the house, didn’t have any air conditioning (and we shot during a heat wave in August.)
But Jen trusted that Lubin, Rexer and I would make up for what we lacked in resources by creating an exciting, warm and supportive environment in which she could explore the character.
As an actor myself, I’ve always valued sets that are positive —places where actors feel comfortable trying things, taking chances and knowing they’ll be supported.
I would play Jen’s husband. I cast two actors I loved, Brian Wiles, who had been in my series Public Morals, and Hannah Dunne, whom Rex recommended, having known her since she was a kid. They would play our adult children.
With our cast, budget and location secured, we gave ourselves two weeks of preproduction which primarily involved buying props, set dressing and wardrobe, Lubin getting our paperwork organized and up and running, and the two of us cleaning the house.
As we mopped and vacuumed the house on a scorching hot day, I was discovering the set and identifying the shots I wanted. We were going to shoot every inch of that place.
Believing that we could shoot about 8 pages a day, Lubin and I broke down the 100 page script and worked with Rex to create a 12 day shooting schedule — and there it was again, like the subtitle of my book “the 12 best days of our life.”
And in this case, that proved to be true. Of course the shoot was challenging. But most importantly, it was a blast. When everyone is there for the love of the work, you realize how lucky you are just to get to make a movie.
And, fortunately, we stayed on budget.
After a few months in the editing room, we submitted the film to the major prestige festivals.
And in July 2019, the good news came.
Cameron Bailey, the head programmer of the Toronto International Film Festival, and his team loved the movie and wanted to program it.
We had a great early slot at the festival, and Cameron introduced the film himself to a packed screening at the Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto. Cameron said that he and his team had been deeply affected by the film, that it had generated conversation about the way people think about their families, and that some of its themes had touched raw nerves among the selection committee.
Our sales rep and my longtime friend John Sloss, along with his team, had assembled a strong group of buyers for the screening.
John had cautioned me to manage my expectations, given the marketplace and the subject matter.
But as the movie played to a rapt audience and we had a fantastic Q&A afterward, I could feel my confidence growing.
A big sale was coming.
Or so I thought.
NEVER GIVE UP ON THE MOVIE
In the days following the screening, John pushed for engagement. We received plenty of compliments.
But no bites.
One distributor had asked if we would consider converting the film to color. That would make it easier to sell to their foreign buyers. Obviously, we did not make a deal with them.
We hoped a strong review from one of the trades might move the needle. At this delicate stage, a negative review—or even a mixed one—can condemn a film’s prospects.
So it was a thrill when Variety critic Tomris Laffly published her review about a week after the screening. It was glowing.
More importantly, she seemed to understand exactly what I had been trying to do as a filmmaker. And yes, I am certainly not immune to the disappointment of a bad review. I’ve had my share of those on other movies.
Now, with the Variety review and the Toronto imprimatur, I was optimistic again. Surely an exciting distribution deal would follow.
But the weeks went by. Then we drifted into the holidays of 2019.
Instead of buyers fighting over the movie, we were looking at the prospect of sending Vimeo links to distracted executives—not exactly a filmmaker’s dream.
We decided to restart our sales effort after Sundance in early 2020 with a more curated approach.
I couldn’t help thinking about Sloss’ warning to manage expectations. The longer the process went on, the less likely it seemed that we would make a deal.
As 2020 began, I still had a glimmer of hope. I thought the movie was simply too good to disappear, and Jennifer Ehle’s performance deserved to be seen.
Then March arrived.
COVID hit.
We were all confined to our homes, and my little movie about four adults trapped together in a small house was not exactly what audiences were clamoring for at that time.
Our little experiment—one of the most enjoyable and creatively satisfying filmmaking experiences I’d ever had—seemed to be over.
Lubin and I did what we traditionally do at moments like these: we met for a postmortem.
We had a socially distanced drink at Walker’s Tavern in Tribeca and, over a few pints of Guinness, talked about the life cycle of Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies and the challenges of making microbudget films.
Yes, it’s an unorthodox way to make a movie.
And yet almost every time we do it, members of the cast and crew tell us it’s the most fun they’ve had in the film business in years. Maybe there was some solace in that.
We had 12 amazing days making the movie. We worked with wonderful people. And to top it off, we premiered to a sold-out crowd at the Toronto Film Festival.
But finishing and delivering the movie would require another influx of cash—with no guarantee that anyone would buy it.
So we toasted the film.
And put it on the shelf.
I moved on.
One year became two.
Two became four.
Eventually, almost seven years passed.
The movie hadn’t failed exactly.
It had simply stopped. Until now.
Because we’ve decided to resurrect the film.
One constant throughout my career has been my relationship with film festivals.
Big and small, festivals are the lifeblood of the independent-film ecosystem. They launch careers—Sundance certainly did that for me in 1995—, they put small and sometimes challenging films in front of distributors, they nurture and help grow the film lovers community, and they provide a venue for audiences and filmmakers to share the experience of watching the film in a movie theater.
But I think the role of the festival has become even more important today for the specialized film audience, as art-house theaters have shuttered across the country, high-definition televisions have gotten bigger and cheaper, and streaming has absorbed much of the casual specialty-film audience.
Given these changes, we have now embraced the festival run as our theatrical release.
The festival circuit has given us many of the things an art-house release once provided: a real screen, a real audience, word of mouth, local press, reviews, buzz and—perhaps most importantly—a reason for people to leave their homes and go to the movies!
There are thousands of film festivals in the United States today. Obviously they vary enormously in size and significance. But collectively, they represent something important: an alternative theatrical network for independent film.
For a filmmaker like me, there is another benefit that can’t be measured in box-office grosses.
You get to be there.
You sit in the back of the theater and feel the audience respond. You discover which moments make them laugh and which ones make the room go quiet. Then the lights come up, and you talk to that audience about what they just saw.
After spending years writing, financing, shooting, editing and worrying about a movie, there is something incredibly gratifying about finally meeting the people you made it for.
Which brings me back to Beneath the Blue Suburban Skies.
Eight years after we made it, we’ve pulled the film off the shelf. We’ve given it a technical polish, and this fall we’re taking it back out into the world through film festivals.
The marketplace may be tougher now. There are fewer specialized film distributors, fewer art-house theaters and a more fragmented audience.
But perhaps that makes the festival experience more valuable, not less.
When we made The Brothers McMullen, I couldn’t possibly have known what was going to happen to it. I only knew that I had to make the movie.
Thirty years later, that is still true.
— Edward Burns and Aaron Lubin
