Brick (film)

Brick
Sundance release poster
Directed by	Rian Johnson
Written by	Rian Johnson
Produced by	Ram Bergman Mark G. Mathis
Starring	Joseph Gordon-Levitt Nora Zehetner Noah Fleiss Matt O'Leary Noah Segan Meagan Good Emilie de Ravin Richard Roundtree Lukas Haas
Cinematography	Steve Yedlin
Edited by	Rian Johnson
Music by	Nathan Johnson
Production company	Bergman Lustig Productions
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release dates	January 21, 2005 (2005-01-21) (Sundance) April 7, 2006 (2006-04-07) (United States)
Running time	110 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$450,000[1]
Box office	$3.9 million[2]

Brick is a 2005 American neo-noir mystery thriller film written and directed by Rian Johnson in his directorial debut, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Brick was distributed by Focus Features, and opened in New York and Los Angeles on April 7, 2006. The film's narrative centers on a hardboiled detective story set in a California suburb. Most of the main characters are high school students. The film draws heavily in plot, characterization, and dialogue from hardboiled classics, especially those by Dashiell Hammett. The title refers to a block of heroin, compressed roughly to the size and shape of a brick.

The film won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival,^[1] and received positive reviews from critics. It has come to be regarded as a cult classic.^[3]

Plot

High school student Brendan Frye discovers a note directing him to a pay phone, where he receives a call from his ex-girlfriend Emily Kostich, begging him for help. She mentions a "bad brick", "the Pin", and "Tug" before abruptly hanging up, apparently afraid of a passing black Ford Mustang, from which a distinctively-branded cigarette is thrown. Unable to locate Emily, Brendan enlists his friend Brain for help. An encounter with another ex-girlfriend, Kara, leads him to a party held by flirtatious upper-class girl Laura Dannon and her boyfriend, Brad Bramish. Laura points Brendan to Dode, Emily's drug-addicted new boyfriend, who arranges a meeting with Emily.

Emily dismisses the phone call as a mistake and tells Brendan to let her go. Brendan steals her notepad and finds a note that leads him to her dead body in a tunnel the following morning. Distraught, Brendan decides to investigate her murder, hiding the body to avoid police involvement. Brendan discovers that "the Pin" refers to a secretive local

Production

Development

The origins of Brick were Rian Johnson's obsessions with Dashiell Hammett's novels.^[1] Hammett was known for hardboiled detective novels, and Johnson wanted to make a straightforward American detective story. He had discovered Hammett's work through an interview of the Coen brothers about their 1990 gangster film, Miller's Crossing. He read Red Harvest (1929) and then moved on to The Maltese Falcon (1930) and The Glass Key (1931), the latter of which had been the main influence for the Coens' film.^[4] Johnson had grown up watching detective films and film noir. Reading Hammett's novels inspired him to make his own contribution.^[4] He realized that this would result in a mere imitation and set his piece in high school to keep things fresh. Of the initial writing process he remarked "it was really amazing how all the archetypes from that detective world slid perfectly over the high school types". He also wanted to disrupt the visual traditions that came from the genre. Once he started making Brick, he found it "very much about the experience of being a teenager to me".^[4] Johnson maintained that the film was not autobiographical.^[1]

Johnson wrote the first draft in 1997 after graduating from USC School of Cinematic Arts a year earlier.^[4] He spent the next seven years pitching his script, but no one was interested, because the material was too unusual to make with a first-time director. Johnson estimated the minimal amount of money for which he could make the film, and asked friends and family for backing.^[4] His family were in the construction industry, and contributed enough to encourage others to contribute.^[1] After Johnson had acquired about $450,000 for the film's budget,^[1] Brick began production in 2003.

Filming

Although the film was shot in 20 days, Johnson spent a great deal of time beforehand refining the script and three months rehearsing with the cast.^[1] He had seen Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Manic (2001), met with him, and knew that he wanted to cast the young actor.^[4] He encouraged the cast to read Hammett but not to watch any noir films, because he did not want them influencing their performances. Instead, he had them watch Billy Wilder comedies like The Apartment (1960) and His Girl Friday (1940). He was initially nervous working with a professional cast and crew for the first time but as soon as he started filming, this feeling went away and he had a good experience.^[4]

Johnson shot the film in his hometown of

For the telephone booth scenes, Johnson and crew filmed deep in the San Clemente suburbia. The same sign for the cross streets of Sarmentoso and Camino del Rio still stands. However, the phone booth itself was a prop the production department added in for the film.

Coffee and Pie Oh My! was a Carrows restaurant, but it has since been abandoned.

The drain tunnel from the film is located just down the street from the San Clemente High School football field and goes under the freeway by the Pico exit off-ramp.

Johnson had difficulty finding a run-down house for the Pin's base of operations. The production found an appropriate house, but only had a week until it was demolished to rebuild on its lot. The basement was a set that they built, but the Pin's kitchen and living room still exists at the Blarney Castle bed and breakfast. Johnson also had difficulty finding a mansion for the party scene until, with one day left to find the location, a former Telecom executive and eccentric millionaire allowed them to shoot in his place which was still under construction. The big mansion was packed from floor to ceiling with pay phones dating back to the 1950s.

Johnson cited

Filming a car driving slowly in reverse, then playing the footage backwards at a higher speed gives the illusion of a car quickly approaching as the camera darts in front of it stylishly.[8] Clever fades give the impression of time changes while smash cuts add tension to a scene in which the protagonist wakes up after passing out. Certain edits were also introduced to the film to time footage to different dialogue, adding certain information and leaving other information out. These edits are noticeable, as the actors' mouths are not always moving in sync with their dialogue. One particular scene, in which de Ravin's character floated toward the camera, used a green screen, but it was edited out of the film before its completion.^[8]

Editing

The original cut of the film ran over two hours, although it was edited down to 117 minutes for the Sundance Film Festival. An additional 7 minutes were cut before the theatrical release, including a shot of Zehetner's naked back as she put her shirt back on after she and Gordon-Levitt's character had sex. According to a post by Johnson on his own forums, he felt that the nudity felt wrong in the context of the film, and that he preferred to leave the degree of intimacy ambiguous, although he occasionally found himself second-guessing that decision.^[9][10]

Music

The

The Region 1 DVD release of Brick was released on August 8, 2006, as part of the Focus Features Spotlight Series. Special features include: selection of deleted and extended scenes with introductions by Johnson; audition footage featuring Nora Zehetner and Noah Segan; and feature audio commentary with Rian Johnson, Nora Zehetner, Noah Segen, producer Ram Bergman, production designer Jodie Tillen, and costume designer Michele Posch.

The Region 2 DVD was released on September 18, 2006.

The Blu-ray for Brick was released on January 7, 2020, by Kino Lorber, which was supervised by Johnson and Yedlin.^[11] It was previously scheduled to be released on May 7, 2019.^[12]

Reception and legacy

Box office

Brick premiered in the United States on April 7, 2006, in two theaters. It opened to United Kingdom audiences on May 12, 2006, on a limited number of screens. According to the DVD commentary track, the film was made for $450,000. The film grossed US$2.07 million in North America and a total of $3.9 million worldwide.^[13]

Critical response

Brick has an approval rating of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 142 reviews and an average score of 7.03/10. The consensus states: "This entertaining homage to noirs past has been slickly and compellingly updated to a contemporary high school setting."^[14] and ranked #35 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Best High School Movies".^[15] Based on 34 critic reviews, Metacritic gave it an average score of 72 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[16]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, stating "[It works] in the sense that the classic Hollywood noirs worked: The story is never clear while it unfolds, but it provides a rich source of dialogue, behavior and incidents."^[17] The film's only serious flaw, thought Ebert, was that the characters were not entirely believable and thus it was difficult to care about the outcome of events for the characters. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also gave the film a positive review, explaining "A spoof would have been easy. Instead, Johnson plunges off the deep end, risking ridicule by shaping this spellbinder with grit and gravitas."^[18]

Stephen Holden of The New York Times commented, "Mr. Haas and Mr. Gordon-Levitt at least succeed in evoking the outlines of their characters. But the film's ham-handed reliance on period argot not only wears thin; it keeps the characters, such as they are, at a chilly distance."^[19]

Brick ranks 489th on

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Brick.

• Brick at
  IMDb
• Brick at AllMovie
• Brick at Rotten Tomatoes
• Brick at Box Office Mojo
• Brick at Metacritic
• Photos from the film set
• In-depth analysis of Brick at Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir
• Brick Review from
  JoBlo
• "The Young Man and the Screenplay" – Writers Guild of America interview