When filmmaker Joe Burke talks about his microbudget indie movie “Burt,” he can’t cease saying the phrase “magic.” He appears to chase that magic, maybe rooted in his days as a teenage magician working at Outback Steakhouse in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio.
“I want to make people laugh, I want to make people cry,” says Burke, 41, who used to carry out tableside card tips. “I love entertaining, and if I’m not doing it, I don’t feel satisfied.”
“Burt,” his second function, was shot over seven days for $7,000, although the venture had been gestating for seven years by the point cameras rolled. The film, which he made with longtime good friend and collaborator Oliver Cooper, was borne of lots of coronary heart and DIY resourcefulness, however they like working that approach.
“Everything is so alive,” Burke says of their no-budget course of, “the electricity of getting in there and finding these magical moments,” ones that remind them of their origins, making motion pictures within the yard.
“Burt” has its Los Angeles premiere on Saturday on the Nice Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. For now, that is the one L.A. screening “Burt” may need — it doesn’t have distribution but. However Burke and Cooper have realized that it’s as much as them to forge the trail for it.
Oliver Cooper, left, and Burt Berger within the film “Burt.”
(The Juice Is Unfastened / Floating Rock Footage)
Burke is jovial and chatty, passionately delivering the story of “Burt” over espresso in West Hollywood, whereas Cooper, 35, is a little more laid-back, although the duo have a simple rapport because of their many years of friendship and collaboration. They grew to become inventive companions when Cooper’s mom employed Burke to direct a video for her son’s bar mitzvah. Years later, Burke set out for the American Movie Institute whereas Cooper, pursuing his performing dream, moved to Los Angeles at 19, rapidly touchdown a task within the 2012 celebration film “Project X” on his first audition. Since then, he’s acted within the Prime Video collection “Red Oaks” and he performed David Berkowitz in David Fincher’s “Mindhunter.”
However regardless of pursuing their very own profession paths, Burke and Cooper are nonetheless one another’s favourite collaborators. In 2011, they shot their first function, “Four Dogs,” directed by Burke, starring Cooper as Oliver (sure, we’re within the realm of autofiction), an aimless aspiring actor who lives along with his aunt and spends his days with an older good friend from performing class (Dan Bakkedahl, later of “Veep”). Ever the resourceful indie filmmakers impressed by actual life, they solid Cooper’s aunt, Rebecca Goldstein, who had by no means acted earlier than, as Oliver’s aunt, and shot the movie in her Encino dwelling, the place Cooper, a struggling younger actor himself, was dwelling on the time.
Each Burke and Cooper are impressed by actual folks — their lives, their dramas, their properties — and search to seize that authenticity of their movies.
“I just love characters,” says Cooper. “All the characters we’ve explored are people that are kind of forgotten, on the outskirts.”
Burke believes that his personal curiosity in these folks, typically performed by nonprofessional actors in his work, can translate to audiences. “If they’re onscreen, people are going to be entertained by this person,” he insists.
It had been greater than a decade since “Four Dogs,” and Burke was itching to make a second movie, sustaining himself by instructing on the New York Movie Academy campus in Burbank and making Instagram sketches and brief movies with Cooper.
There was one one who had caught Burke’s consideration: Burt Berger, a late-60s-ish musician he’d seen enjoying guitar table-to-table on the Outdated Place restaurant in Malibu. Burke was a brunch common there, and he was taken with Berger’s folksy tunes and heat, quirky presence. Coincidentally, Cooper additionally had met Berger individually at an open mic on the Cahuenga Normal Retailer.
It grew to become apparent they’d occurred upon an actual Los Angeles character in Berger, they usually wished to solid him in one thing. Whereas taking pictures a brief in 2016, the duo considered Berger to play a small half. They drove to the Outdated Place the subsequent day, requested him if he had any performing expertise (just some industrial auditions) and solid him. He was a standout, they usually even used one in all his songs, “Improvin’ On,” for the tip of the movie (he additionally performs the music in “Burt”).
Burke and Berger stayed in contact. They ceaselessly frolicked for hours, speaking about Berger’s life and household, their Hollywood goals and mulling methods to make a story movie that might function Berger’s open coronary heart and massive goals. “I wanted it to be about Burt’s essence — his soul, his spirit and his music,” Burke says. “That was so important to me.”
When Burke introduced up the concept of a complete movie about him, Berger says he was shocked.
“I started to cry a little bit,” Berger, 71, says by cellphone, “because here I am, my dreams are slowly unfolding in front of me after all the years of pursuing them.”
“You really don’t need that much to make something great,” says Oliver Cooper, proper, of the duo’s DIY strategy. “If you have the story, if you have the characters, that’s all that matters.”
(JSquared Images / For The Instances)
In 1977, after faculty, Berger drove to Los Angeles in a van along with his finest good friend to chase music stardom. “I’m stupid because I think I’m going to make it big and stubborn because I’m never going to give up,” he says.
The popularity from Burke was gratifying. “At first I couldn’t believe Joe sees that in me,” says Berger, “but then I realized I gotta trust this guy. He knows what he’s talking about.”
Whereas Burke toiled to get different movie initiatives off the bottom, he continued working with Cooper and Berger on what would finally grow to be “Burt,” the fictionalized story of Sammy (Cooper), who involves L.A. searching for his estranged dad, Burt (Berger), thrilled to lastly expertise fatherhood. It quickly turns into clear, although, that Sammy’s intentions aren’t solely virtuous, as Burt shares he has cash from an inheritance stashed away.
The ultimate piece of the “Burt” puzzle was Steve Levy, Berger’s roommate of a decade. They deliberate to shoot the movie at their home, Levy’s childhood dwelling in Solar Valley, and a check shoot revealed Levy and Berger’s display screen chemistry, with Levy bringing a singular supply and sharp comedic fringe of blunt skepticism that gives a foil to the sweetly trusting Burt.
Whereas Cooper scraped collectively the tiny finances from his personal cash, with assist from household, and finessed Levy’s cooperation, Burke promised him they may shoot the movie in every week. He introduced on his faculty pal Daniel Kenji Levin as cinematographer and referred to as on their community of associates to fill supporting roles, together with Cooper’s “Mindhunter” performing coach Catlin Adams, an Actors Studio alum who performs Sammy’s scheming aunt Sylvia.
It wasn’t simply the monetary constraints of indie filmmaking driving Burke’s urgency to get the movie going however Berger’s Parkinson’s illness as effectively. He had been recognized throughout their years of friendship, and Burke seen his good friend’s tremor whereas they have been hanging out. The illness hits near dwelling for Burke, whose father additionally has Parkinson’s; he was caring for him throughout the shoot. In order he was directing his father-son movie, Burke was dwelling a parallel model of the story himself.
The black-and-white “Burt” is an earnest, stripped-down dramedy, stuffed with sly humor and stunning twists that harks to basic indie movies of the early ’90s in its uncooked, low-key magnificence. Burt is solely a personality dwelling with Parkinson’s. The movie is just not about his illness, which is simply part of his actuality.
Nonetheless, within the two years since taking pictures, Berger has moved again to the East Coast to reside with household as his illness has progressed. Burke knew he needed to seize his star precisely on the proper second, when he was nonetheless in a position to play and sing and chase a dream. “I can’t play the guitar as well as I used to,” says Berger, “but I’m still not giving up.” (“Burt and I are both exactly the same in that way,” says Burke. “We never give up on dreams.”)
It’s a problem to make a movie like “Burt”— and fairly one other to carry such a home made movie to audiences. In 2024, Burke went 0 for 28 in movie pageant acceptances, which made him query if “Burt” is likely to be the ultimate chapter of his profession as a substitute of a launching pad. He even thought-about a proposal from his mother to maneuver again to Ohio.
This yr, the movie’s fortunes have modified on the pageant circuit, successful jury awards at Cinequest, the Phoenix Movie Pageant and the Florida Movie Pageant.
“You really don’t need that much to make something great,” says Cooper of their DIY strategy, now starting to yield dividends if not fairly a deal. “If you have the story, if you have the characters, that’s all that matters. We didn’t have anything for this and we were able to make something that’s moving.”
After their success at Cinequest, the duo determined to embrace self-distribution as effectively. “We realized this is a theater movie — the laughter together, the crying together,” says Burke. Impressed by “Hundreds of Beavers” as effectively “Anora” director Sean Baker’s impassioned awards-season speeches about seeing motion pictures in theaters, they determined to pursue a theatrical run on their very own, reserving screenings in L.A., Toledo, Cincinnati and hopefully Denver and New York, renting theaters and promoting tickets themselves.
In an trade that appears in dire straits, is there room for a small, heartfelt movie that includes a basic L.A. character like Burt? For dreamers who nonetheless cling to hope within the Metropolis of Angels, there must be.
“I don’t know why I felt so compelled to make sure this guy was seen before it was too late,” Burke says. “I don’t know why the universe brought me into this guy’s life, but it did. Maybe the movie is why.”
Cooper provides, “We did something good for this guy, and I feel like my heart is fuller as a performer.”
