How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
The meandering heroes of "Bummer Summer" — 2008 Tisch grad Zach Weintraub's first feature film, which previewed at Cantor Film Center last Thursday — are part of a great literary and cinematic tradition: the road movie. This genre includes everything from Huck Finn to "Stranger than Paradise" — another film by a Tisch alumnus (Jim Jarmusch) to which Weintraub definitely owes a debt.
Both "Paradise" and "Bummer Summer" focus on the episodic travels and romantic ordeals of three habitually idle, existentially adrift youths. The release of "Paradise" back in 1984 set off a tsunami of independent film production, birthing an entire mode of filmmaking filled with quirkier-than-life characters, mumbling protagonists and cheerfully strange soundtracks. "Bummer Summer" shares many of these characteristics while still doing things in its own unique way.
Unlike the American indie model associated with Jarmusch — a model co-opted by the major studios — this is a production made and distributed, so far, without the help or interference of any big names or corresponding wallets. "Bummer Summer" is more comparable to the mumblecore movies of Joe Swanberg or Andrew Bujalski, but with less mumbling — less talking, period. As the film's main characters Ben, Lila and Isaac drive between their friends' houses in search of the world's largest hedge maze, dialogue is improvised and sparse, peaking during brief emotional episodes. In bed, Lila and Ben (played by a sympathetic, convincingly guileless Weintraub) recite lines from "The Graduate." Strangely, at this moment, when the characters are so far away from their real selves, they seem the most honest.
Weintraub's film is the first full-length feature to be shot on the Canon EOS 5D, a camera usually used for photography. Co-producer and director of photography Nandan Rao had some very specific ideas about how he wanted "Bummer Summer" to look. The camera spends most of its time staring the protagonists in the face — sometimes frankly, sometimes nonchalantly. But the most interesting shots reveal the effortlessly epic backgrounds of Washington, Weintraub's home state: grassy expanses, classic childhood rope swings and playgrounds, cliffs hurtling into the sea.
In spite or because of its shoestring budget, ambivalent characters and natural lighting, "Bummer Summer" is slowly but surely finding an audience. At the Q and A session that followed the preview, Weintraub pegged the final cost of the film at $7,000, though the price of submitting "Bummer Summer" to festivals has ironically become a constant and unpleasant surprise. The fees and shipping charges seem well-spent, however, since "Bummer Summer" is set to premiere later this month in San Jose, Calif. at the 20th Annual Cinequest Film Festival.
