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Brick (film)

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Brick
A hand in a bleak muddy river with blue bracelets
Sundance release poster
Directed byRian Johnson
Written byRian Johnson
Produced by
Starring
CinematographySteve Yedlin
Edited byRian Johnson
Music byNathan Johnson
Production
company
Bergman Lustig Productions
Distributed byFocus Features
Release dates
  • January 21, 2005 (2005-01-21) (Sundance Film Festival)
  • April 7, 2006 (2006-04-07) (United States)
Running time
110 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
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]

Discover more about Brick (film) related topics

Neo-noir

Neo-noir

Neo-noir is a revival of film noir, a genre that had originally flourished during the post-World War II era in the United States—roughly from 1940 to 1960. The French term, film noir, translates literally to English as "black film", indicating sinister stories often presented in a shadowy cinematographic style. Neo-noir has a similar style but with updated themes, content, style, and visual elements.

Mystery film

Mystery film

A mystery film is a genre of film that revolves around the solution of a problem or a crime. It focuses on the efforts of the detective, private investigator or amateur sleuth to solve the mysterious circumstances of an issue by means of clues, investigation, and clever deduction.

Rian Johnson

Rian Johnson

Rian Craig Johnson is an American filmmaker. He made his directorial debut with the neo-noir mystery film Brick (2005), which received positive reviews and grossed nearly $4 million on a $450,000 budget. Transitioning to higher-profile films, Johnson achieved mainstream recognition for writing and directing the science-fiction thriller Looper (2012) to critical and commercial success. Johnson landed his largest project when he wrote and directed the space opera Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), which grossed over $1 billion. He returned to the mystery genre with Knives Out (2019) and its sequel Glass Onion (2022), both of which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, respectively.

List of directorial debuts

List of directorial debuts

This is a list of film directorial debuts in chronological order. The films and dates referred to are a director's first commercial cinematic release. Many film makers have directed works which were not commercially released, for example early works by Orson Welles such as his filming of his stage production of Twelfth Night in 1933 or his experimental short film The Hearts of Age in 1934. Often these early works were not intended for commercial release either by intent, such as film school projects or inability to find distribution.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor. He has received various accolades, including nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his leading performances in 500 Days of Summer (2009) and 50/50 (2011). He is the founder of the online media platform HitRecord whose projects such as HitRecord on TV (2014–15) and Create Together (2020) won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in the category of Outstanding Interactive Program.

Focus Features

Focus Features

Focus Features LLC is an American film production and distribution company, owned by Comcast as a division of Universal Pictures, which is itself a division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Focus Features distributes independent and foreign films in the United States and internationally.

Hardboiled

Hardboiled

Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.

Detective fiction

Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.

Suburb

Suburb

A suburb, more broadly suburban area, is an area within a metropolitan area that is primarily a residential area, though may also include commercial and mixed-use areas. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate political entity. The name describes an area which is not as densely populated as an inner city, yet more densely populated than a rural area in the countryside. In many metropolitan areas, suburbs exist as separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city Suburbs can have their own political or legal jurisdiction, especially in the United States, but this is not always the case, especially in the United Kingdom, where most suburbs are located within the administrative boundaries of cities. In most English-speaking countries, suburban areas are defined in contrast to central or inner city areas, but in Australian English and South African English, suburb has become largely synonymous with what is called a "neighborhood" in the US, and the term encompasses inner city areas.

Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.

Heroin

Heroin

Heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine and diamorphine among other names, is a potent opioid mainly used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects. Medical grade diamorphine is used as a pure hydrochloride salt. Various white and brown powders sold illegally around the world as heroin are routinely diluted with cutting agents. Black tar heroin is a variable admixture of morphine derivatives—predominantly 6-MAM (6-monoacetylmorphine), which is the result of crude acetylation during clandestine production of street heroin. Heroin is used medically in several countries to relieve pain, such as during childbirth or a heart attack, as well as in opioid replacement therapy.

Cult film

Cult film

A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage in repeated viewings, dialogue-quoting, and audience participation. Inclusive definitions allow for major studio productions, especially box-office bombs, while exclusive definitions focus more on obscure, transgressive films shunned by the mainstream. The difficulty in defining the term and subjectivity of what qualifies as a cult film mirror classificatory disputes about art. The term cult film itself was first used in the 1970s to describe the culture that surrounded underground films and midnight movies, though cult was in common use in film analysis for decades prior to that.

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 drug baron. As Brad is a known drug user, Brendan picks a fight with him, hoping to attract the Pin's attention. Later, a man wearing a beanie attacks Brendan.

On his way home, Brendan sees the black Mustang in a parking lot and tries to break into it, but is caught by the beanie-wearing thug, who turns out to be the car owner. The man attacks Brendan, who repeatedly demands to meet the Pin instead of fighting back. The man is Tug, the Pin's main enforcer, who reluctantly takes Brendan to the Pin's house. Brendan asks the Pin for a job, and the Pin says he will investigate Brendan and either hire him or have him hurt; Brendan will find out which by the next day. Laura reveals that she was at the Pin's house the entire time and drives Brendan back to school. She explains that Emily stole a "brick" of heroin after being rejected by the Pin's operation. Laura offers to help Brendan, but he distrusts her.

The next day, Brendan learns that the Pin has hired him. Dode calls Brendan and says he saw Brendan hide Emily's body. Believing Brendan is the murderer, he threatens to ruin him. Brendan meets the Pin, who suspects that Tug is planning to betray him. At the Pin's house, Tug tells Brendan that the Pin recently bought ten bricks of heroin. Eight were quickly sold off wholesale. The ninth was stolen and later returned contaminated, and the final brick remains to be sold. The Pin arrives and says that someone wants to meet to discuss Emily, revealing that Tug was also romantically involved with her.

Brendan intercepts Dode on the way to the meeting and discovers Emily was pregnant when she died; Dode believes the baby was his. Brendan passes out from his accumulated injuries and arrives at the meeting late to find Dode demanding money to reveal who killed Emily. Tug goes berserk and shoots Dode in the head, then threatens the Pin, who walks away as Brendan faints again. Brendan awakens in Tug's bedroom, and Tug tells him they are at war with the Pin.

Brendan arranges a meeting between the two and waits in Tug's bedroom. Laura comforts him as he grieves for Emily, and they kiss. Brendan recognizes her cigarette as the same brand that was dropped from the Mustang during the call with Emily. At the meeting, chaos erupts when it is discovered that the tenth brick is missing. Tug beats the Pin to death while Brendan flees, escaping just as police arrive. As he goes, he passes the partly-open trunk of Tug's car, where he has placed Emily's body to ensure that police blame her murder on Tug.

The next day, Brendan meets Laura at the school. She reveals that Tug died after a shootout with the police. Brendan explains that he knows Laura set Emily up to take the fall for Laura's theft of the ninth brick, then manipulated Emily into meeting Tug, who panicked and killed her after she told him he was the father of her unborn child. Brendan has written a note to the school administration stating that the tenth brick is in Laura's locker. Laura vindictively tells Brendan that Emily did not want to keep the baby because she did not love the father, and that Emily was three months pregnant when she died, meaning the unborn child was his.

Cast

Discover more about Cast related topics

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt is an American actor. He has received various accolades, including nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his leading performances in 500 Days of Summer (2009) and 50/50 (2011). He is the founder of the online media platform HitRecord whose projects such as HitRecord on TV (2014–15) and Create Together (2020) won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in the category of Outstanding Interactive Program.

Nora Zehetner

Nora Zehetner

Nora Angela Zehetner is an American film and television actress.

Lukas Haas

Lukas Haas

Lukas Daniel Haas is an American actor and musician. His acting career has spanned four decades, during which he has appeared in more than 50 feature films and a number of television shows and stage productions.

Noah Fleiss

Noah Fleiss

Noah Fleiss is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor, making his film debut as the eponymous Sam Whitney in Josh and S.A.M. (1993). Subsequently, he played the title character in Joe the King (1999) and appeared in Brick (2005). Outside of his film roles, Fleiss portrayed one of the eight playable characters in the video game Until Dawn (2015).

Matt O'Leary

Matt O'Leary

Matthew Joseph O'Leary is an American actor. He made his debut in the made-for-television Disney Channel Original film Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire (2000), and would go on to star in the thriller Domestic Disturbance (2001) opposite John Travolta. He also had supporting roles in Frailty (2001), and the independent neo-noir film Brick (2005).

Emilie de Ravin

Emilie de Ravin

Emilie de Ravin is an Australian actress. She starred as Tess Harding on Roswell (2000–2002), Claire Littleton on the ABC drama Lost, and as Belle on the ABC drama Once Upon a Time (2011–2018). De Ravin's film credits include Santa's Slay (2005), The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Ball Don't Lie (2008). She starred as Emily, the heroin-addicted ex-girlfriend of Brendan Frye, in the neo-noir film Brick (2005). She had a cameo in Public Enemies (2009) and starred as Ally in Remember Me (2010).

Noah Segan

Noah Segan

Noah Gideon Segan is an American actor. He is best known for his work in the films Looper, Brick, and Deadgirl. He is known for his many collaborations with filmmaker Rian Johnson.

Richard Roundtree

Richard Roundtree

Richard Roundtree is an American actor. Roundtree is noted as being "the first black action hero" for his portrayal of private detective John Shaft in the 1971 film Shaft, and its four sequels, released between 1972 and 2019. For his performance in the original film, Roundtree was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor in 1972.

Meagan Good

Meagan Good

Meagan Monique Good is an American actress. She first gained critical attention for her role in the film Eve's Bayou (1997), prior to landing the role of Nina in the Nickelodeon sitcom Cousin Skeeter (1998–2001). Good received further prominence after starring in the films Deliver Us from Eva (2003), Roll Bounce (2005), and Stomp the Yard (2007).

Brian J. White

Brian J. White

Brian Joseph White is an American actor. He is best known for his roles in films such as The Family Stone (2005), The Game Plan (2007), 12 Rounds (2009), I Can Do Bad All by Myself (2009), Good Deeds (2012), and The Cabin in the Woods (2012). On television, White had prominent roles in Men of a Certain Age (2009–11), Beauty and the Beast (2012-13), and Ambitions (2019).

Production

Development

Rian Johnson with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in March 2012.
Rian Johnson with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in March 2012.

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 a film called 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 other comedies like 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]

San Clemente High School Football Field
San Clemente High School Football Field

Johnson shot the film in his hometown of San Clemente, California on 35 mm film stock. Much of the film takes place at San Clemente High School, which he attended. He enlisted current students to work on the film, shooting on weekends. The cinematographer was Steve Yedlin, a film school friend who had been involved with the project since the script was written.[1]

Street sign for Del Rio and Sarmentoso
Street sign for Del Rio and Sarmentoso

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.

Drain tunnel under the Pico exit ramp
Drain tunnel under the Pico exit ramp

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 Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns and Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop (1998) as influences on his visualization of the film.[5][6] He used shoes as a design element for his characters and saw them as an "instant snapshot of the essence" of the characters.[7] He has also stated that many of the film's visual cues were taken from the neo-noir Chinatown (1974) with its wide-open flat spaces.

Special effects

The majority of the film's special effects were cheaply and efficiently produced using practical and in-camera effects.[8] Early in the film, for example, de Ravin walks toward the camera out of a tunnel as a garbage bag floats downstream and engulfs the camera, transitioning to Joseph Gordon-Levitt back in his character's bedroom. To achieve this, the desired effect was filmed in reverse order. The garbage bag began over the camera and was pulled away during filming, as de Ravin walked backwards into the tunnel. This footage was then cut into a scene in which a garbage bag was simply pulled over Gordon-Levitt's head.[8]

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 finds himself second-guessing that decision.[9][10]

Music

Main article: Brick (soundtrack)

The score to Brick was composed by Johnson's cousin, Nathan Johnson, with additional support and music from The Cinematic Underground. The score harkens back to the style, feel and overall texture of noir films. It features traditional instruments such as the piano, trumpet and violin, and also contains unique and invented instruments such as the wine-o-phone, metallophone, tack pianos, filing cabinets, and kitchen utensils, all recorded with one microphone on an Apple PowerBook. Since Nathan Johnson was in England during most of the production process, the score was composed almost entirely over Apple iChat, with Rian playing clips of the movie for Nathan, who would then score them. The two met in New York City to mix the soundtrack. The soundtrack CD of the movie was released on March 12, 2006 by Lakeshore Records. In addition to Johnson's score, it contains songs by The Velvet Underground, Anton Karas and Kay Armen as well as the big band version of "Frankie and Johnny" performed by Bunny Berigan and a full unedited performance of "The sun whose rays are all ablaze" by Nora Zehetner. Johnson has confirmed that various elements in the film were influenced by Twin Peaks creator David Lynch.[9]

Discover more about Production related topics

Rian Johnson

Rian Johnson

Rian Craig Johnson is an American filmmaker. He made his directorial debut with the neo-noir mystery film Brick (2005), which received positive reviews and grossed nearly $4 million on a $450,000 budget. Transitioning to higher-profile films, Johnson achieved mainstream recognition for writing and directing the science-fiction thriller Looper (2012) to critical and commercial success. Johnson landed his largest project when he wrote and directed the space opera Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), which grossed over $1 billion. He returned to the mystery genre with Knives Out (2019) and its sequel Glass Onion (2022), both of which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, respectively.

Dashiell Hammett

Dashiell Hammett

Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American writer of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, The Continental Op and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.

Hardboiled

Hardboiled

Hardboiled fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction. The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence of organized crime that flourished during Prohibition (1920–1933) and its aftermath, while dealing with a legal system that has become as corrupt as the organized crime itself. Rendered cynical by this cycle of violence, the detectives of hardboiled fiction are often antiheroes. Notable hardboiled detectives include Dick Tracy, Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Slam Bradley, and The Continental Op.

Detective fiction

Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.

Coen brothers

Coen brothers

Joel Daniel Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen, collectively known as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works include Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). Many of their films are distinctly American, often examining the culture of the American South and American West in both modern and historical contexts.

Miller's Crossing

Miller's Crossing

Miller's Crossing is a 1990 American neo-noir gangster film written, directed and produced by the Coen brothers and starring Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, John Turturro, Jon Polito, J. E. Freeman, and Albert Finney. The plot concerns a power struggle between two rival gangs and how the protagonist, Tom Reagan (Byrne), plays both sides against each other.

Red Harvest

Red Harvest

Red Harvest (1929) is a novel by Dashiell Hammett. The story is narrated by the Continental Op, a frequent character in Hammett's fiction, much of which is drawn from his own experiences as an operative of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The plot follows the Op's investigation of several murders amid a labor dispute in a corrupt Montana mining town. Some of the novel was inspired by the Anaconda Road massacre, a 1920 labor dispute in the mining town of Butte, Montana.

Manic (2001 film)

Manic (2001 film)

Manic is a 2001 American drama film directed by Jordan Melamed and written by Michael Bacall and Blayne Weaver. It was shown at several film festivals in 2001 and 2002, including the Sundance Film Festival. The region 1 DVD was released January 20, 2004. This also marks the first time actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel have worked together as each other's main love interest in a film, the second being (500) Days of Summer.

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder was an Austrian-American filmmaker. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director eight times, winning twice, and for a screenplay Academy Award 13 times, winning three times.

His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday

His Girl Friday is a 1940 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell and featuring Ralph Bellamy and Gene Lockhart. It was released by Columbia Pictures. The plot centers on a newspaper editor named Walter Burns who is about to lose his ace reporter and ex-wife Hildy Johnson, newly engaged to another man. Burns suggests they cover one more story together, getting themselves entangled in the case of murderer Earl Williams as Burns desperately tries to win back his wife. The screenplay was adapted from the 1928 play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. This was the second time the play had been adapted for the screen, the first occasion being the 1931 film which kept the original title The Front Page.

San Clemente, California

San Clemente, California

San Clemente is a city in Orange County, California. Located in the Orange Coast region of the South Coast of California, San Clemente's population was 64,293 in at the 2020 census. Situated roughly midway between Los Angeles and San Diego, San Clemente is a popular tourist destination in Southern California, known for its beaches, Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, and hospitality industry. San Clemente's city slogan is "Spanish Village by the Sea".

Carrows

Carrows

Carrows is a subsidiary of Shari's Cafe & Pies and casual dining restaurant that serve breakfast and lunch/dinner in California, United States. As of March 2023, the company operates 1 location in California.

Home media

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]

Discover more about Home media related topics

DVD

DVD

The DVD is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind of digital data and has been widely used for video programs or formerly for storing software and other computer files as well. DVDs offer significantly higher storage capacity than compact discs (CD) while having the same dimensions. A standard DVD can store up to 4.7 GB of storage, while variants can store up to a maximum of 17.08 GB.

Focus Features

Focus Features

Focus Features LLC is an American film production and distribution company, owned by Comcast as a division of Universal Pictures, which is itself a division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Focus Features distributes independent and foreign films in the United States and internationally.

Deleted scene

Deleted scene

A deleted scene is footage that has been removed from the final version of a film or television show. There are various reasons why these scenes are deleted, which include time constraints, relevance, quality or a dropped story thread, and can also be due to budgetary concerns. A similar occurrence is offscreen, in which the events are unseen.

Audio commentary

Audio commentary

An audio commentary is an additional audio track, usually digital, consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with a video. Commentaries can be serious or entertaining in nature, and can add information which otherwise would not be disclosed to audience members.

Ram Bergman

Ram Bergman

Ram Bergman is an Israeli film producer. He is known for producing Brick (2005), The Brothers Bloom (2008), Looper (2012), Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), and Knives Out (2019), all of which were written and directed by Rian Johnson.

Blu-ray

Blu-ray

The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006. It was designed to supersede the DVD format, capable of storing several hours of high-definition video. The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video material such as feature films and for the physical distribution of video games for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The name "Blu-ray" refers to the blue laser used to read the disc, which allows information to be stored at a greater density than is possible with the longer-wavelength red laser used for DVDs.

Kino Lorber

Kino Lorber

Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company based in New York City. Founded in 1977, it was originally known as Kino International until it was acquired by and merged into Lorber HT Digital in 2009. It specializes in art house films, such as documentary films, classic films from earlier periods in the history of cinema, and world cinema. In addition to theatrical distribution, Kino Lorber releases films in the home entertainment market and has its own streaming services for its digital library.

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 Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.[20]

Accolades

Year Award Category Recipient Result
2005 Sundance Film Festival[21] Special Jury Prize: Dramatic, for Originality of Vision Won
Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic Nominated
2005 Deauville Film Festival Grand Special Prize Won
2006 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards Most Promising Director Rian Johnson Won
2006 Independent Spirit Awards John Cassavetes Award
(best film production with a budget under $500,000 USD)		 Nominated[22]
2006 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards[23] Best Screenplay – Original Rian Johnson Nominated
2006 Satellite Awards Best Original Score Nathan Johnson Nominated
2006 Festival de Cine de Sitges Citizen Kane Award for Best Directorial Revelation Rian Johnson Won
2007 Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards Best Overlooked Film Won
Best Screenplay – Original Rian Johnson Won
2007 Online Film Critics Society Awards Best Breakthrough Filmmaker Rian Johnson Nominated
Empire Awards Best Male Newcomer Rian Johnson Nominated

Discover more about Reception and legacy related topics

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang. Although the name "Rotten Tomatoes" connects to the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes in disapproval of a poor stage performance, the original inspiration comes from a scene featuring tomatoes in the Canadian film Léolo (1992).

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular culture. The magazine debuted on February 16, 1990, in New York City, and ceased print publication in 2022.

Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged. Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999, and is owned by Fandom, Inc. as of 2023.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times said Ebert "was without question the nation's most prominent and influential film critic," and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called him "the best-known film critic in America."

Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the Chicago Tribune. The modern paper grew out of the 1948 merger of the Chicago Sun and the Chicago Daily Times. Journalists at the paper have received eight Pulitzer prizes, mostly in the 1970s; one recipient was film critic Roger Ebert (1975), who worked at the paper from 1967 until his death in 2013. Long owned by the Marshall Field family, since the 1980s ownership of the paper has changed hands numerous times, including twice in the late 2010s.

Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Peter Joseph Travers is an American film critic, journalist, and television presenter. He reviews films for ABC News and previously served as a movie critic for People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts the film interview program Popcorn with Peter Travers for ABC News.

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its coverage of rock music and political reporting by Hunter S. Thompson. In the 1990s, the magazine broadened and shifted its focus to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, and popular music. It has since returned to its traditional mix of content, including music, entertainment, and politics.

Stephen Holden

Stephen Holden

Stephen Holden is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic.

Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 attending in 2016. It takes place each January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres.

Independent Spirit Awards

Independent Spirit Awards

The Independent Spirit Awards, founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass pyramids containing suspended shoestrings representing the bare budgets of independent films. Since 2006, winners have received a metal trophy depicting a bird with its wings spread sitting atop of a pole with the shoestrings from the previous design wrapped around the pole.

Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award

Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award

The Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award is presented to the creative team of a film budgeted at less than $1,000,000 by the Film Independent, a non-profit organization dedicated to independent film and independent filmmakers. It is named after actor/screenwriter/director John Cassavetes, a pioneer of American independent film. The award is given to the directors, writers and producers of a film.

Satellite Awards

Satellite Awards

The Satellite Awards are annual awards given by the International Press Academy that are commonly noted in entertainment industry journals and blogs. The awards were originally known as the Golden Satellite Awards. The award ceremonies take place each year at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles.

Source: "Brick (film)", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 22nd), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_(film).

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Further Reading

Red Harvest

10 Things I Hate About You

Emilie de Ravin

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Rian Johnson

The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)

The Lookout (2007 film)

Brick (soundtrack)

The Brothers Bloom

Budapest Noir

Jonathan Gordon-Davies

Looper (film)

Don Jon

Pierce Gagnon

The Houston Story

Knives Out

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Poker Face (TV series)
References
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Garnett, Daisy (April 30, 2006). "Drugsy Malone". telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph Media Group. Retrieved January 4, 2010.
  2. ^ "Brick (2006) – Box Office Mojo". www.boxofficemojo.com.
  3. ^ Tobias, Scott (May 21, 2009). "The New Cult Canon: Brick". The A.V. Club. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Tobias, Scott (April 19, 2006). "Rian Johnson". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Archived from the original on March 11, 2008. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
  5. ^ "Brick Production Notes". Focus Features. 2006.
  6. ^ Johnson, Rian (April 19, 2006). "The Visuals of Brick". Rian's Forum. rcjohnso.com. Archived from the original on November 3, 2014. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
  7. ^ "Seattlest Interview: Rian Johnson". Seattlest. April 11, 2006. Archived from the original on April 4, 2008. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
  8. ^ a b c d Johnson, Rian (2006). "Brick DVD Commentary track". Focus Features.
  9. ^ a b Johnson, Rian (May 2006). "Deleted Scenes and related questions". Rian's Forum. rcjohnso.com. Archived from the original on February 1, 2014. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
  10. ^ Johnson, Rian (April 3, 2006). "Naked Laura". Rian's Forum. rcjohnso.com. Archived from the original on September 28, 2011. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
  11. ^ Johnson, Rian (October 24, 2019). "At long last, a US blu of Brick is coming. @steveyedlin and I supervised a brand new gorgeous transfer, very very excited that this will be out there". Twitter. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
  12. ^ Evangelista, Chris (March 7, 2019). "Rian Johnson's 'Brick' Being Released on Blu-ray For the First Time in the U.S. This May". /Film. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  13. ^ "Brick". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
  14. ^ "Brick (2006)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
  15. ^ "The 50 Best High School Movies". Entertainment Weekly. September 7, 2006. Retrieved March 9, 2007.
  16. ^ "Brick Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved December 17, 2020.
  17. ^ Ebert, Roger (April 7, 2006). "Brick". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved December 5, 2012.
  18. ^ Travers, Peter (March 21, 2006). "Brick | Movie Reviews". Rolling Stone. Retrieved December 5, 2012.
  19. ^ Stephen, Holden (March 31, 2006). "Brick – Reviews – Movies". The New York Times. Retrieved December 5, 2012.
  20. ^ "489: Brick (2005)". Empire. Bauer Consumer Media. Retrieved January 1, 2010.
  21. ^ "FilmAffinity". FilmAffinity. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
  22. ^ 21st annual Spirit Awards ceremony hosted by Sarah Silverman - full show (2006) | Film Independent on YouTube
  23. ^ Moore, Miles David (January 2007). "The Most Serious Time of Your Life". Scene4 Magazine. Aviar Media. Retrieved February 20, 2008.
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