The Turducken of a Movie: Inside the Meta Thriller ‘Bravado’
The filmmakers and cast of the meta thriller ‘Bravado’ have accomplished something truly remarkable – creating a film within a film, or rather, several versions of a film within a film. At the West Coast premiere of the feature at Dances With Films: LA, festival director Lindsey Smith-Sands called it a ‘turducken of a movie.’
The scenario is this: aspiring screenwriter Amy Erickson (Caitlin Morris) shows promise, her latest script earning her a fellowship, yet she’s anxiety-ridden and underconfident. At a screenwriting workshop, Patrick Lombardi (Luca Malacrino), a once-successful director who’s had a string of flops, gives a seminar and spots Amy’s talent. He offers to help her develop her script, a fresh take on the mafia genre, set in the UK.
As Amy and Patrick’s one-on-one sessions progress, a darker side of Patrick emerges, browbeating Amy into improving her screenplay. The relationship between the borderline abusive Patrick and the neophyte Amy evokes Whiplash, with its contest of wills between a jazz bandleader and his gifted student.
Before any actual scene work began, Malacrino and Morris did improvised work together, with scenes not even in the script. Director Alex Hanno would direct them, and they’d find a room to live in the character and do moments that weren’t in the screenplay. This helped Malacrino ‘drop into the character’ and massively aided his performance.
The mentor-mentee dynamic is just one layer of ‘Bravado.’ The action cuts from the one-on-one meetings in Patrick’s office to a critical scene in the movie Amy has written. The audience gets to see the screenplay come to life and evolve under the mentor’s badgering. We see Amy’s original version, then a better subsequent version, then a still better version.
Malacrino’s villainy, as the Patrick character, is complicated because he’s mostly right. The three versions of Amy’s mafioso scene were shot in Cardiff, Wales. ‘Bravado’ hinges on whether viewers can truly see how the scene has improved because of Patrick’s relentless pressure on his mentee.
Director Alex Hanno observed, ‘The first scene has to work on its own. It has to be good enough in terms of the structure of it… It has to be good because Amy has been accepted into a fellowship because of this script. So, it has to stand on its own, but then you need to be able to one up it, right?’ The filmmakers wanted to create a sense of escalation, where each version of the scene proves to be better than the last.
Malacrino not only plays the screenwriting mentor Patrick but in the movie within the movie, he portrays the mafioso Giovanni – in the second and third iterations of the scene. The versions of mafioso Giovanni that Malacrino plays – versions 2 and 3, if you’re counting – are quite distinct. They need to be, to show the progression of the screenplay Amy is revising.
For Morris, who ‘only’ plays one character – the screenwriter – among her biggest acting challenges was filming the montage sequence showing Amy as she struggles to rework her screenplay based on Patrick’s endless ‘notes.’ ‘Montages are so fun to watch and so painful to do,’ Morris noted mordantly. ‘Doing the montage stuff was so challenging because it was just an exercise in quick changes.’
Bravado includes interstitial moments where screenwriters discuss the agonies and occasional satisfactions of their craft. The filmmakers wanted to hammer down the idea of passion and the idea that if you have something that drives you and you wake up determined to do it, whether you’re getting paid or otherwise, this is a film that you can relate to.
The relationship between the borderline abusive Patrick and the neophyte Amy is a complex and nuanced one. The film raises questions about the nature of creativity, the role of mentorship, and the blurred lines between reality and fiction.
With its unique structure, complex characters, and thought-provoking themes, ‘Bravado’ is a film that will keep you guessing until the very end.
The film’s director, Alex Hanno, observed, ‘We always had a version of some direct-to-camera interview documentary-style thing. It evolved, like initially it was going to be just talking to people about their passions and then there was a version where Luca and I were going to be talking and we’re like, ‘Nah, let’s not do that.’ And then we landed on, we should be interviewing writers.’
There’s a lot of inside baseball in here for sure,’ Hanno said of the screenwriting travails elucidated in the direct-to-camera segments. ‘A ton of you in the audience are already laughing at very specific jokes, which we appreciate, but if it doesn’t translate and transcend that, then it doesn’t live, right? It’s not going to have a long life.’
The filmmakers have created a film that is both a tribute to the art of screenwriting and a commentary on the industry itself. With its unique structure, complex characters, and thought-provoking themes, ‘Bravado’ is a film that will keep you guessing until the very end.
