Ben Briand

Here’s my chat with Australian Film Director Ben Briand, who not only has facial hair I’d kill for, but has recently made the extremely impressive short film Apricot, which you can watch below…

SBW. So I hear you were recently swimming in a pool in Brazil with Beyonce… does she have a nice booty?
BB. She has a very well protected booty! It took her nearly an hour to get out of the pool because the circling helicopters and guys hiding in bushes were trying to get a snap of it.

SBW. Where did the idea for Apricot come from?
BB. I am very interested in memory and personal identity. Personality is made up of their responses to certain formulative experiences. So I was struck by the idea of someone who didn’t know how to feel about those important moments. So he became a detective or an old school journalist, hunting down people who could fill in those blanks for him. I also don’t particularly like short film as a format of telling stories and enjoyed the challenge of make a film where little actually happens, but the emotion was vast.

SBW. Is it easy setting the feel/mood in different scenes? For instance, setting different moods between the flashback sequences and the restaurants scenes in Apricot?
BB. I always arrive at a mood first, either through a piece of music or a texture or the light in a certain space. For me, If that mood feels right, then it drives the scene to the right place very easily and all the other elements such as camera and performance and casting fall into place. Getting the tone right on the first 2 minutes of Apricot was the most difficult as I had to try and find the right entry point into the mood of the memory fragments.

SBW. Tell us a little about the actors involved…
BB. I had seen Ewen Leslie (adult Marcel) in Jewboy and was struck by his sensitivity and strength. There is a classic quality in the way that he comes across on camera, making him feel like he could be a private detective or old school journalist, which is what his character is in many ways. His younger self, Joshua Rozzi, also had a quite intelligence that makes him observe the world in a way that perfectly reflects Marcel. Laura Gordon (adult Madeline) has a beautiful mystery about her. Her range in the film Em4Jay was very strong and she brought real depth to Apricot, having the hardest role. Alice Zahalka (young Madeline) is on that cusp of moving out of being a naïve girl to becoming an aware girl. Her strength was something that you could imaging this boy having an attachment to. I was very lucky that the cast all came onboard an brought it to life.

SBW. What was Cannes like last year?
BB. I was there by myself, as I was heading to a shoot in London right after, and so I hardly said a word all week. Plus I had heat stroke. It was unique.

SBW. Who would you most like to be from this list…

a) Michel Gondry
b) Francis Ford Coppola
c) Marty Scorcese
d) Wes Anderson
e) Lars Von Trier

BB. They are all pretty tortured artists in some way or another. Can I take bits from each and leave the rest?

SBW. What have you got planned for the rest of 2010?
BB. Polishing up two feature scripts that I have been developing. And my partner Brenda and I are getting ready to having our first child. Much excitement!

SBW. Best thing about living in Sydney?
BB. Can I use this an a forum to state that the worst thing is the lack of decent Hollandaise sauce on poached eggs?

SBW. Finish the sentence: Master Mouse Patrol…
BB. Master Mouse Patrol – seams to be everywhere…

For more on Ben check out http://www.benbriand.com/

APRICOT – Short Film by Ben Briand (sponsored by his incredible actors and crew) from Moonwalk Films on Vimeo.