When Mark and Michael Polish, twin siblings and indie auteur filmmakers from El Centro, California first broke onto the scene with their 1999 Sundance favorite Twin Falls Idaho, the movie industry looked very different than it does today. PR firms and advertising campaigns got audiences into theaters rather than Twitter and Facebook, the term kickstarter referred to a cup of coffee (or whatever your stimulant of choice was) and The Brothers Weinstein’s Miramax lorded over an independent film scene that actually retained a semblance of independence.
Now with the studios financing most smaller films through their own boutique offshoots (Sony owns Sony Classics, NBC Universal owns Focus Features, etc.), and insisting that they be peppered with A-list talent (just look at two of the Toronto Filmfest’s buzziest pics: 12 Years a Slave stars Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender and August Osage County is fronted by none other than Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts) not to mention demanding budgets that seem small only for a comic tentpole flick (seriously, $20 to $30 million dollars might be chump change to Marvel, but to the aspiring Steven Spielbergs of the world saddled with film school debt, it’s an astronomical number) the world of indie cinema clearly ain’t what it used to be.
The Polish Brothers witnessed these changes first hand. Despite being critically acclaimed festival favorites like their first feature, both of their follow-up films, (2001’s Jackpot and 2003’s Norfolk) failed to connect with audiences, and their most mainstream effort, 2006’s The Astronaut Farmer (made with Warner Independent and starring Billy Bob Thornton) struggled not only with dismal box office but also with the fact that the twins, feeling stifled by the Hollywood system, had hit a creative wall. Then, when back-to-back films, 2008’s The Smell of Success and 2009’s Stay Cool were unable to break the trend, Michael and Mark decided to try something drastically different.
An intimate ode to the French New Wave, For Lovers Only, found the brothers taking a page from their own DIY manifesto (the 2005 how-to guide for low-budget filmmakers, ‘The Declaration Of Independent Filmmaking’) and going completely off the grid. Yet what was most remarkable about this experiment in guerrilla filmmaking wasn’t the reclusive nature of its directors, but rather the fact that the movie cost virtually nothing to make.
Yes, you heard us, virtually nothing! Actually, we take that back… the boys did have to pay for food and recreational travel expenses during the film’s 12-day Parisian shoot, but that’s pretty much it. That’s because their lodging was comped, their actors worked for free (Mark stepped in as the male lead opposite Stana Katic who, because the film secured a classification as experimental with The Screen Actors Guild, was not required to be paid), and as for production costs…
Well, unless you count a Canon EOS 5D Mark II (an ingenious bit of modern engineering that films in high def quality but looks like nothing more than a tourist camera, allowing the filmmakers to shoot all over the city – including it’s fabled churches – without filing for money-wasting permits) an I-phone light (used for a nightclub scene), and some old mixing and editing equipment that they already owned, there weren’t really of those either.
Of course, a small film like this seemed destined to come and go with little fanfare except perhaps from diehard Polish fans, and a few ardent indie purists; at least that’s what most people thought, including the brothers themselves, who were simply happy to have had such a creatively enriching experience.
Yet a little nudge from Video On Demand (easily the new frontier for small scale filmmaking) as well as a leading lady who also happened to be a social media savvy television star (Katic, of ABC’s Castle tweeted about the film to her almost 300,000 followers) helped For Lovers Only open at number 2 on the iTunes Romance chart, number 4 on the independent film chart, and pull in over $200,000 and counting since it’s late early July 2011 release.
Now, even though the brothers are firmly ensconced in Hollywood )Michael is married to actress Kate Bosworth, who stars in his soon to be released film Big Sur, a dreamy reimagining of the classic Kerouac novel, and Mark wrote the screenplay for the comedy Hot Bod, a 2014 film also directed by his brother.) they’ve somehow managed to hold onto that same undeniably indie spirit that first made them the toast of Park City nearly 15 years ago.
CLICK HERE to view “For Lovers Only” on itunes.