The Summers Brothers

The Summers Brothers are twin independent filmmakers Rob and Russell Summers based out of Austin, Texas. Their short films SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE, THE BENCH, I’LL BE BACK TOMORROW and COUPLES NIGHT have screened at prestigious film festivals around the world and been honored with awards for directing, cinematography, editing, and audience favorites. The Summers Brothers’ production company Grand Scheme Productions has created commercial work and content for various national brands. Currently, they are developing several narrative feature films when they aren’t battling intergalactic martian armies and secret ninja societies.

[This interview has been edited for time and clarity]

Brett: What were some of your favorite films growing up and how did they influence you?

Russ Summers: You have the obvious. Star Wars or the Indiana Jones movies. Watching those over and over again. I think it's hard to dismiss how influential they are because they're so internalized into us and how we think about movies.

Rob Summers: They open the world for you. The biggest reason a movie sticks with you is you start to see something's possible that you didn’t before. A door is kicked open. Star Wars in particular because it led to things like Hero of a 1,000 Faces. So not just those movies themselves but us realizing there was a way to tell a story. I don't think we knew we wanted to be storytellers but we started to discover the mechanics.

Russ: And there were movies that were not necessarily huge hits or part of the cultural lexicon. But you just adored them so you’d watch them over and over again. Something like True Believer, Joseph Reuben's movie, which has amazing dialogue, great performances and is really watchable and exciting.

Rob: Certainly seeing Reservoir Dogs for the first time. 

Brett: How old were you at that time when you saw that?

Rob: I’d have to think about it, but young enough that it made an impression. Especially the novelistic thing that Tarantino was jumping around in time. I remember I had missed the first five minutes or something, and my girlfriend at the time explained:  “Oh, it was cool. They talked about the tip for the waitress. That's how you knew what their personalities were.” She'd analyzed the technique. It intrigued me. Then it has this crazy ending. It just stops and it doesn’t feel complete. It was stuck in our subconscious after that. 

Russ: There was one in particular I was thinking of. It was almost kind of a proto-Tarantino movie called The Blue Iguana that was directed by John Lafia, who eventually worked on the Child's Play series. It was this mashup of Spaghetti Westerns and Film Noir. Very funny and very self-aware. Great plot and these really interesting, crazy characters. Flea is in it at one point as this henchmen of the bad guy.

Brett: He did a lot of that in the nineties, like he just pops up a bunch right? He's in Back to the Future Part 3. He’s in The Chase.

Rob: Yeah. He did. 

Russ: That was one that I remember watching over and over again. Later you see that someone like Tarantino takes what The Blue Iguana did and supercharges it. Movies in conversation with movies. 

Rob: Did you have one? Do you have any particular movie that jumps out of you?

Brett: Probably Back to the Future. That was something that I watched all the time. We lived somewhat near the highway, and my mother would not let me like play outside and I was an only child, but I could go in our basement and just watch all three Back to the Futures every Saturday, you know, so that would be a six hour chunk was just, the education of just watching all three of those there's actually a Back in the Future Part III poster above me over there.

Russ: Oh, wow! You have an affection for the whole trilogy?

Brett: I do. And I have a particular affection for part three, because nobody else loves part three. I love the role reversal of Doc and Marty. I like the depth of Marty compared to part one. I like how this experience seems to have really clicked and changed, and almost made him an adult in the span of six hours but you know what I was talking about how I was watching those over and over and over again…I didn't see any of those films in the theater. I never saw 1, 2, or 3 in the theater until I was living in LA, and I caught  a rep screening. But I want to ask you what was your access to films like growing up like you guys talked about, watching things over and over and over again. Did you see Star Wars, or Indiana Jones ever in a theater? Or was that video mostly?

Rob:  We saw everything we could in the theater. We were big on that. And our parents were pretty good about letting us go. Probably also letting us see inappropriate stuff we shouldn't see. The theater was a big deal growing up. But there was VHS and eventually DVD. I remember Dad showing us Chinatown. He really liked Chinatown. I knew that it was something special. But I didn't understand it, plot wise or anything like that.

Brett: I was the same way with Kubrick. My Uncle Erik would show me Kubrick films and I would watch it and be like I understand that this is operating above me, right? Now, you know, I'm like 12, 13 years old, watching Full Metal Jacket or something, or The Shining with him. And I'm like, "How's he in the picture at the end?” I don't understand.

Rob: That’s a thing that I've really grown more interested in: the ambiguity of films. As a kid when you start to experience what Harold Bloom called “the strangeness of art” in movies, a space where art doesn't conform to your understanding of a beginning, middle and end or Good is rewarded, Evil is punished, it’s striking. And I don't think people always prepare you for it. It's a weird thing to explain ambiguity to a kid and weirder to experience. But as you grow older the idea of a space for you to fill in yourself and to live with brings you back to things more and more. Back to the Future is great because there's an ambiguity to it as well. You can question what happened there. Has the whole universe been changed in some way?

Russ: And you realize how subversive something like Back to the Future is when you watch it again. It gives you a little bit of glee to realize that it got past you but now you understand it.

Brett: How did you guys start to realize that you wanted to make films? When did that happen? And then was one of you more interested than the other? Or was it something that you both kind of realized around the same time?

Rob: I think we always wanted to do it. But only recently I feel the access and ability to make a movie been as easy as now. We didn't have a video camera growing up or anything.

Russ: When we would go over to someone's house and their parents had a video camera sitting in the corner, we were anxious to try and commandeer it and work on it. Whereas usually the person we were visiting couldn't be less interested in it.

Rob: When I got to UT Austin, I was gonna be an English major because we were interested in writing and we’d done a lot of theater in high school. But I had a teacher at orientation say: “This is your time, so live your life for yourself.” I remember thinking there's a film school here. I'm gonna go sign up for it. That was probably the moment where I thought I’m actually gonna do this thing.

Russ: I stuck with English, but I remained incredibly interested in films and helped Rob with everything he was doing with film school.  So it's like we went to film school together.

Rob: It was always apparent Russ was going to be a part of it. 

Russ: So yeah, it was definitely at the same time.

Rob: Our parents were thrilled. English, philosophy, and film. They thought that was a great idea. Good use of time.

Brett: So correct me if I'm wrong…Isn’t that exactly what the Coen Brothers did? Joel went to Film school, and Ethan has, like a philosophy or English Major?

Rob: I can't say for sure. But let's say that it is. Let's just agree to agree that.

Brett: I'm pretty sure that's like the exact road.

{Joel Coen attended NYU film school and Ethan Coen studied philosophy at Princeton. In an interesting coincidence, for a period of nine months, Joel attended grad school at UT Austin}

Rob: Wow! Well, it worked out well for them!

Brett: From what I can observe on Instagram of you guys, you seem to have a pretty rigid writing schedule and habit which I'm insanely jealous of because I am very much a fits and spurts kind of writing person, or if I have a deadline where I meant to deliver something it's the only time I can do it otherwise I'm like "Fuck off. I'm gonna be on the couch.” What is that process like? How do you start a project? What is that writing schedule like?

Rob:  Well, neither of us particularly like writing. I maybe like having written. But I don't like the process. It’s not our favorite part of filmmaking.

Brett:  What is? What's your favorite part of filmmaking?

Rob: We really like editing.  

Russ: Editing. No question. 

Brett: Oh, God, editing is the best. Yeah.

Rob: That’s where that's where the movie comes to life. Also, you've made it. You can start to fix it and see it come together. Akira Kurosawa said: “When I'm writing, I want to be making it. And when I'm making it, I want to be editing. And when I'm editing, I want to be writing my next movie.” But writing is the only way you can make a movie every day. So you have to embrace that part of it. It's definitely eating your vegetables. I don't know that we're rigid, but consistency is the only way we're going to get anything done. In the last year or two, I have switched to quantity over quality. Russ told me Tom Wolfe said: “When I force myself to write is as good as when I'm inspired to write.” The result is the same. It's just how you got there changes. I guess the way we start is one of us will pitch an idea and the other guy will say: “Okay, what if there was X?” And we'll kind of go back and forth on the idea. Outlining is the most important part for us. You really will get lost in the weeds if you don't have an outline.

Russ: It's where you answer most of the big questions. 

Rob: Outlining is the true dreaded blank page. Writing dialogue and slug lines? That's just fine. But making it go from zero to one is difficult.

Russ: To take whatever this idea we have and give it a structure and a container, to make it really come alive, I think that's usually where people bog down and hate writing.

Rob: I’ve really realized that the difference between an amateur and a professional is the rigorous application of structure. People love to do the thing where they throw out the book. But you still have some kind of process that must be applied to your art. I can tell when people don't really understand what they're gonna do when you start to question them about structure  Because structure is where the rubber meets the road. Movies are setups and payoffs. Maybe you're Terrance Malick. But that guy still writes a script. He has ideas. And he has books he's read, and he has a process to make that movie. So he does apply structure to that. 

Russ: We used to sit down and really bang out an outline together. But now we write individually on different projects. Then you can see what the other guy did and begin to fix that. So it's almost like you're the guy brought in to rewrite yourself.

Rob: I think what we really realized…once you have the idea, and you're excited about it because the idea is always the best part. “What if it was this kind of a movie? What if it was The Taking of Pelham 123, but it's in space?” Then the other guy feeds on that. But when one guy says “Well, I was thinking it would be this.” and “I don't think that's gonna work.” That's when you realize the best thing to do is just go write that movie yourself. Come back and the other guy will probably hate it. But the idea now exists. You didn't strangle it, and then you can say, “Okay, this is kind of the movie”…and then you say, “Well, okay, it's Taking of Pelham 123, but what if there's like H.P. Lovecraft monsters?” You start to go from there. So that'll be our process. And after that really sit down and rewrite and talk about:“I think this would work.” “This needs to go.” And then it's the business of rewriting, 

Russ: It really is discipline over motivation. And I think the funny thing that you noted. (Russ Laughs) We’re on Instagram a lot when we write.

Rob: Which is bad. That's not a good thing but it—

Russ: But it speaks to the process. Even within that sacred writing time. I let myself off the hook for that, because I do think that is your subconscious starting to cook somewhere.

Brett: Yeah, definitely definitely.

Russ: I love that idea that watching this movie that you're influenced by again or going on Instagram is writing too. It's all kind of part of the process. I think we're attached to this idea that it's pen to paper, and that's so little of it.

Rob: We love Save the Cat, which I know a lot of people love to ding on. I guarantee you If you're writing anything that resembles a Hollywood movie, you're probably doing it, even if you're not giving it those names.

Russ: I think asking those questions that a Save-The-Cat type structure adheres to helps you really figure out how to take the shapeless thing and make it into a movie.

Rob: Because then you have a set of questions. A lot of people have an idea, a first act, or a couple of the fun and games parts, but once you apply a structure then you really have to say: This is the movie. “What is the guy gonna do? How is he gonna go X? How is this person gonna do Y?” We read up on it. We try to find hacks. We do all that stuff.

Brett: Once you finish a project, how do you figure out your festival strategy? Do you look at it project by project? Do you work with the distributor before festival stuff, what's been your experience with that?

Rob: I mean for us festivals were… it's been a learning curve. I think that what we realized is, you have to think about what festivals to take. You can't just make a movie and submit it to any festival. It's just not like that. We've realized genre is the best and actually specifically horror’s the best. There's just a lot of horror festivals out there, and those people are really excited about horror. The people that go to those fests are really excited about them. Of course you want to get into South by Southwest or Sundance, or something like that, or Cannes. Because you only hear about 10 festivals in the news.

Brett: Do you still apply for those? Like I know for me like I've kind of given up on applying to something like Sundance, and I just go for genre festivals that I've had a good time at, like I'll try and stretch a little bit, but some of those I've just given up on and I'm not even gonna spend the money, I'll save X amount and spend it on something else. Do you still send out to a bigger fast?

Rob: Russ, you pick most of our fests…

Russ: I still look at them. Yeah. But obviously you have to think whether or not the film has a shot, as you were saying. I was surprised by, there’s some that are not necessarily on the tips of everyone's tongue, but they are very influential, and people at other festivals are looking at those so when we just had our our short film Couples Night and it played at Fantasia and I'm ashamed to admit…I did not realize how influential Fantasia was when we got into it.

Brett: Yeah, very big, very big.

Russ: The amount of festivals that came to us, and just asked us to see the movie after that. That was very helpful. I do think the other thing to think about with some of these genre fests, particularly horror, is that they're pretty diverse. They take a lot of different kinds of movies. Many are just kind of horror adjacent. So that gives your movie a shot.

Rob:  I think also we really try and get involved with the festival as much as we can. If we can go, we want to go. If we go to every fest we were in, it doesn't matter how big, how small, where it is, we would go. We would go to all of them. We just played at the Highland Park Independent Film Festival in Los Angeles. It was the first year they had done a horror and sci-fi short film block. They saw us in Portland. I guess their programmer lives in Portland and he was just looking to have a block like that. So we were shocked to get in there. That was really terrific. And then we won best sci-fi, which is awesome. Choosing fests you should be judicious. You should do your research. We really read the reviews. We ask all our filmmaker friends what they recommend, what their experience was, do they think it was worth it? 

Russ: I think you should judge the festival, especially if you plan on possibly going, on whether or not you think it'll be fun, because even if you don't win an award or get some sort of traction with your film, “Did you have a good time? Did you get to go to a city you wouldn't necessarily go to?” We've been really excited to find these towns that you wouldn't necessarily expect to have amazing film festivals like Columbus, Ohio for Nightmares or Kansas City for Panic Fest, and those festivals were just amazing, and the presentation was great, and the crowd was great, and so just that alone was worth it.

Brett: So you get to the end of  a festival run with a short film, what do you do with it after that?

Rob: I don't know that we have as big an online presence as we would love. But I think yeah, I'm just gonna put it out there. We've looked for different Youtube channels to take them. Not all art is for all people. So some of them we want to show it, they don't necessarily want it. So we'll see. I think it goes online now. That's where stuff lives. We're gonna try and probably find a place or a venue that wants it and maybe already has an audience. But if not, it goes online and that's fine. I hope that it reaches some people once you put it out there. You want to get it to as wide an audience as you can. The reaction to what you make is not up to you anymore. We try not to live in that and let it go. What we'd like is to have traction to make more things. I think that would be valuable.

Brett: But that's a whole other column  because I'm not getting that same kind of one-on-one feedback of really seeing it, or even if it played in the theater to be able to sneak in on people talking about it afterward. You don't get that with streaming. I feel like it’s a lost thing. There's so many films that I watch, I finish, and I never talk to anybody about it. I've had thoughts about it, but it never comes up in conversation or it might be years before it comes up in conversation. It feels like something's lost.

Rob: I remember actually at Other Worlds, our home base, the first year we showed a short. We showed before a feature with our short The Bench. And then the next day we were in line for another movie, and this woman was talking about our short. It was amazing…like I totally did the backup “Wait. What's going on?” I think I called my mom afterwards. It was such a neat experience. It was an incredibly affirmative moment. You know you can't make that up. You can't write it. You just know someone liked your thing, and they were talking unvarnished, not knowing you were near them about the short. That was really great. So, yeah, If you're doing the calculus:  was it really worth making the short just for the one person to like it…I don't know if it was that, but it was pretty great.

Brett: I mean nowadays I find the value in making a film has more to do with actually getting to make the film, instead of worrying about any sort of reaction or anything else. Audiences are so splintered in some ways.

Rob: Yeah.

Brett: Most likely you will only reach a certain amount of an audience. No matter what there's just so much out there. I just take great joy in getting to make something these days. I think that's kind of wonderful. 

Rob: If we could just get paid to make it at a certain level. We don't have to get rich. That would be fine. You didn't have to get the 9 to 5 job, and you just got to do the thing. You're not making the next Marvel movie. But that would be fine. 

Russ: But I do agree with you Brett, that it is a very rewarding thing to be in the process. I think that as much as you tear your hair out or you're depressed for days at a time, there's those moments when Rob and I fix something in editing or something works, or that shot just looks exactly right. There really is nothing else like it. 

Rob: Yeah, it's hard to believe you sort of willed something into existence.