Big Gold Brick director Brian Petsos on Oscar Isaac, Megan Fox and more (Interview)

This weekend sees the release of writer-director Brian Petsos’ Big Gold Brick, which is getting a simultaneous theatrical, VOD and digital release and boasts an all-star cast including Emory Cohen (Brooklyn), Lucy Hale, Megan Fox, Andy Garcia and Oscar Isaac. While this marks Petsos’ feature directorial debut, he’s been making shorts, writing and producing stuff for years. He also has a lot of history with Kristen Wiig (an executive producer here) and co-star Oscar Isaac, who made the well-received short Lightning Face with Petsos in addition to the film Revenge for Jolly. Indeed, Petsos is a likable, talented guy, and Big Gold Brick is an eccentric midnight movie that’s unlike anything you’ve seen recently, with standout roles for the always great Andy Garcia (who looks like he’s having the time of his life) and Isaac. It’s the story of a would-be writer (played by Emory Cohen) who’s at the end of his rope when he gets hit by a car driven by Andy Garcia’s Floyd Deveraux. Eager to help the young man, he hires him to ghost-write his autobiography, inviting him to come live with his family, including his much younger wife (Megan Fox) and beautiful daughter (Lucy Hale). 

Of course, that’s all just a jumping-off point for this deeply eccentric flick with much strangeness afoot. In a lot of ways it reminds me of eccentric, sprawling epics like Southland Tales or Under the Silver Lake. Granted, it won’t be to everyone’s tastes, with this a wacky, over-the-top tale. Petsos was kind enough to sit with me for a fun Q&A the other day to answer some questions about his movie and the challenges of getting it seen in a post-COVID era. One thing that he mentioned to me, that was interesting, it that his range of influences include everything from screwball comedy, to John Landis, to opera, which he noted was important because he didn’t want the performances to be naturalistic, but rather to evoke an operating style, which he elaborates on below.

On the style of acting he wanted from his cast:

I remember hearing this story-  I guess (Steven) Spielberg had seen Jack Nicholson in The Shining was mortified by the performance.

And apparently he said, it’s like Kabuki theater. And (Stanley) Kubrick was like, YES! And I get that to a degree because from my standpoint, if I can be manipulative to the point where I can create a moment, even if it is quote unquote artificial, but the moment is actually more effective than something that was trying to be realistic – I’m personally happier as the kind of writer- director. 

Well, that’s apparently how Nicolas Cage always presented himself, as a Kubuki actor:

He’s exactly that, and I love it even when he’s in a movie to me that literally nothing else works besides him. Yeah. I will watch him do pretty much anything. Just that the power he has as a performer, I mean, it is performance, you know it’s a movie, man! It’s not real! I have two hours to do a bunch of shit. Let me do it. I kept harping on this thing over and over again, which was, you can make a movie, but what can you make a movie do? And it was constant in my mind as I was writing this screenplay. 

On the lighter side of Oscar Isaac, who shows up here in a small but eccentric part:

In real life, he is a damn funny man. And I think that’s what connected the two of us actually, a huge part of that is our sort of mutual sense of humor. When someone is an excellent actor and also they have really easy access to the humor side, it is the most combustible, incredible thing. And so for me, it’s really fascinating watching Oscar, you know, I’ll write pages of kind of monologue stuff and have him come in and hit every single stammer and ellipses. He has total command over the entire physical realm… and as much as we’re friends, I can be a fan and freak out.

On star Emory Cohen: 

Emory’s another person who’s very funny in his personal life. I think that’s another reason why we really sort of kind of jived. I think Emory was very aware of what Oscar had done in the previous short films. And so that was a sort of mark for him to hit. But I will say as much as I knew there was going to be a lot of fun, Emory was being funnier than I thought he would be. It required no coaxing at all. He’s someone who was just so damn good. When he is accessing the humor and everything’s firing on all cylinders it’s pretty incredible. I’m very, very pleased with what he did in the movie.

On giving Andy Garcia his most substantial part in awhile:

Historically he’s always in my mind has been like the best thing in stuff. And you know, not to harp on The Godfather Part III, which I know a lot of people have revisited, but I really love that movie. 

I put zero faith in awards or anything, like good for you if you care about the Oscars, but the guy got a nomination for that! Cause he’s damn good in that movie. And you know, getting the chance to have him come play with us, I know he’s in smaller things here and there, but Andy, he still does very well for himself. So it’s not like it was like a super easy thing to get Andy to come do this movie. But I’m so thankful they did because I worshiped the guy as a child. 

On casting Megan Fox, who’s often typecast based on her looks:

That’s an unfortunate side of the business is, you know, first impressions can go two ways, but I know obviously Megan is very versatile. I’ve also heard from mutual friends just a little bit more about her. I hadn’t met her prior to this and I mean, she’s a damn pro! I know she’s sort of all over the press and stuff these days and kind of has been for a long time but she’s a total pro…again, very thankful to have her in this.

On releasing his film post COVID:

It’s strange right now. All I know is I got to make my movie and I just need people to see it. And there was a point where I thought this thing would never see an actual theater and it is now, which is wonderful because I made this thing with the theaters very much in mind.

And even though you know, it will see less theaters than I thought it would before the pandemic, it will see them… But if you have a theater nearby, that’s playing it I do beg you to go because, you know, there’s 40 pieces of music in it. There’s a ton of visual effects. I shot at 2:66:1 aspect ratio, with beautiful anamorphic lenses. So let the experience be what the medium wants it to be.

See Big Gold Brick in theaters (and on VOD and On-Demand) now!