Brick (2005) on Netflix
Brendan Frye, an outsider at his Southern California high school, gets a panicked call from his ex-girlfriend Emily, then she vanishes. He pushes into the student crime ring to find her.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.1/10114,626 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes80%
Trailer
Plot summary
Brendan Frye keeps to himself at his Southern California high school, until Emily Kostich, his ex-girlfriend, calls him from a pay phone asking for help. She drops a few names and a phrase about a bad brick, then hangs up, and he cannot find her anywhere. He turns to his friend Brain, and Kara, another girl he once dated, sends him to a party at Laura Dannon's house. Laura and her boyfriend Brad Bramish are there; Laura steers him toward Dode, Emily's new boyfriend, who sets up a meeting. Emily tells Brendan the call was a mistake and asks him to leave her alone. Brendan learns that a local kingpin called the Pin runs a drug operation, and he sets out to get inside it.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Brick (2005)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- With one day left to find a mansion for the party scene, an eccentric millionaire and former Telecom executive let the crew shoot in his house, still under construction and packed from floor to ceiling with pay phones dating back to the 1950s.
- Early in the film a garbage bag floats downstream and engulfs the camera. The effect was shot in reverse order: the bag began over the camera and was pulled away while Emilie de Ravin walked backwards into the tunnel, then cut into a scene where a bag was pulled over Joseph Gordon-Levitt's head.
- Johnson spent seven years pitching his script, but no one was interested because the material was too unusual to make with a first-time director. He asked friends and family for backing, and his family, who were in the construction industry, contributed enough to encourage others. Brick went into production in 2003 on about $450,000.
- Johnson struggled to find a run-down house for the Pin's base of operations, and the one he found had only a week left before it was demolished. The basement was a set the crew built, while the Pin's kitchen and living room still exist at the Blarney Castle bed and breakfast.
- Johnson encouraged his cast to read Hammett but not to watch any noir films, because he did not want those performances influencing theirs; instead he had them watch Billy Wilder comedies such as The Apartment (1960) and His Girl Friday (1940).
- The score was composed by Johnson's cousin, Nathan Johnson, and mixes piano, trumpet and violin with invented instruments such as the wine-o-phone, tack pianos, filing cabinets and kitchen utensils, all recorded with one microphone into an Apple PowerBook. With Nathan in England for most of production, it was written almost entirely over Apple iChat.
- For a shot of a car rushing at the camera, the crew filmed a car driving slowly in reverse and then played the footage backwards at a higher speed, giving the illusion of a car quickly approaching as the camera darts stylishly in front of it.
SPOILER
Seven minutes were cut before the theatrical release, including a shot of Zehetner's naked back as she dressed after her character and Gordon-Levitt's had sex. Johnson wrote on his own forums that the nudity felt wrong for the film and that he preferred to leave the degree of intimacy ambiguous, though he sometimes second-guessed it.
