How the “Brian and Charles” team managed to handle the film’s unexpectedly good feeling

brian and charles It could have been a lot darker.

The British comedy, which was released in the US by Focus Features over the weekend, was hailed as a beautiful piece of weirdness that combines the weird and eccentric Brian Gaitin (David Earl) with the invention of his quirky, innocent robot Charles 7ft. . Petrescu (Chris Hayward, mostly hidden cardboard boxes, cardigan stretched from above).

Inside hollywood reporterIn reviews, the two were described as a “charming and awkward duo” playing the film “terribly sweet and heartfelt”. Despite its unreliable characters, the film, which won the Audience Award at the just-concluded Sundance Film Festival in London, seems to lift most cinematographers.

But it could have been completely different, admit director Jim Archer and producer Rupert Magent.

“In one edition version, Charles dies within 10 minutes,” says Archer. “We had a lot of things that we cut that would definitely change the tone.”

According to Majende, who also provided the voice of Charles’ comic robot (made with a camera using a very basic sound computer program), it was the film’s early supporters, Film4 and the British Film Institute, who helped with its management. After seeing the 2017 short the film is loosely based on and the early incarnations of Brian and Charles in the UK stand-up comedy circle, they offered a lighter tone.

“They thought, ‘I can imagine people watching this with their families,’” he said.

In the early days of stand-up, both Brian Gittins and Charles Petrescu had significantly different personalities, more aggressive, confrontational, and essentially more adult than those seen in the film. Archer argues that Charles was essentially “reflecting on how drunk” Majid was at the time. “In a way, I feel like it’s their version of the movie, they look alike, but they don’t have the same story. They are almost different characters, but they have sound and glasses”.

Even the 2017 short, in establishing the film’s foundation and premise, had much darker moments, especially when Charles was evicted from Brian’s farm alone in the cold hills of rural Wales, only to return home. the next day. He looks more confused than usual.

“The short film forces us to rely more on the emotion in the film because of how people react, and in the end, I think the unity leads to the fact that it’s going to be a fun film,” says Majend. “It’s a bonding feeling for them – we almost wanted to release it and make it into a movie.”

Given that Gittens and Petrescu’s first appearances on the big screen were very well received, with a particular focus on the relationship between the two characters, there is more room for opportunity. And while much may depend on the film’s box office success, Majende admits that’s what they were thinking.

“Talk later What do we do in the shadows And how did it start as a feature and if you can replicate that standard to a TV feature,” he says. and why the world brian and charles It’s so rich, there’s something to it if you do it right short circuit 2 something?”

Archer adds: “Yes, short circuit 2It’s a family sequence.”