Days of Trailers Day 26

Day number 26 brings you Rian Johnson's 2006 neo-noir, murder mystery Brick.

The lonely teenager Brendan finds his former girlfriend Emily dead in the entrance of a tunnel of sewage and recalls her phone call two days ago, when she said to him that she was in trouble. Brendan, who still loved Emily, met bad elements of his high-school trying to contact her, and when he succeeded, she told him that she was OK. He hides her body in the tunnel and decides to investigate the meaning and connection of four words, including "brick" and "pin", that Emily told him to find who killed her. Using the support of his nerd friend Brain, he successively meets the small time drug dealers Kara, Dode, Brad Bramish, Laura and Tugger, to reach the teenager powerful drug dealer The Pin. Slowly, Brendan unravels the motives why Emily was killed and plots a revenge. -IMDB


It was Johnson's directorial debut and won the Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Brick was distributed by Focus Features, opening in New York and Los Angeles on April 7, 2006.

The origins of Brick were Rian Johnson's obsession with the writing of Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961), an author known for hardboiled detective novels, and his desire to make a straightforward American detective story. He had discovered Hammett's work through an interview the Coen brothers did around the time of the release of 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 Coen's Miller's Crossing. Johnson had grown up watching detective films and film noir, and reading Hammett's novels inspired him to make a film that created the same kind of world. He realized that this would result in a mere imitation and came up with high school as the setting 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 preconceptions that came from the film noir genre but once he started making Brick, he found it "very much about the experience of being a teenager to me". Despite this admission, Johnson maintained that the film was not autobiographical.

Johnson wrote the first draft of Brick in 1997 after graduating from USC School of Cinematic Arts a year earlier. He spent the next seven years pitching his script but none of the Hollywood studios or production companies were 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. His family were in the construction industry, and came into a significant amount of money which they devoted to the project, thereby encouraging others to contribute funds. After Johnson had acquired about $450,000 for the film's budget, Brick finally began production in 2003.

Brick has, to me, a very similar tone as Donnie Darko. It's a film that keeps me thinking, and I notice something new with each viewing. So many tiny nuances to pick up on. Hopefully you all enjoy as much as I do!



Brick IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0393109/
Rian Johnson IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0426059/