Interview with the Polish Brothers

Billy Bob Thorton entered the Film Row Cinema at 1104 S. Wabash last Tuesday, and was greeted the wildly enthusiastic cheers of a crowd who had finished screening his new film The Astronaut Farmer. Large groups of people begin rising to give the beloved star a suitable standing ovation. Thorton’s amused gaze surveyed the crowd, before pausing on a few students clapping while contentedly seated in their chairs. Flashing a smile carrying his now-immortalized brand of manly mischievousness, Thorton pointed at the crowd of seated attendants and barked, “Stand up!” The students complied to the superstar’s sarcastic demands, making the moment a glorious illustration of the star’s inherent appeal: his screen persona may be unapologetically rude and crude, yet it holds an undercurrent of nonconformist rage that resonates with hilarity in the hearts of his admirers. He has made a career out of playing characters that preserve their individuality, and this latest role is no exception.

In The Astronaut Farmer, the latest work from filmmaking brothers Mark and Michael Polish, Thorton plays Charles Farmer, a NASA astronaut forced into retirement while saving his family farm. With his eyes forever pointed toward the stars, he decides to build his own rocket ship, and later enlists the help of his three children, much to the chagrin of wife Audrey, played by Virginia Madsen. Although the government threatens to stop him in his path, Farmer forges ahead to realize his dream, now shared by his family. Despite the film’s status as a PG-rated family pic, the predominantly college-age audience at the screening was completely engaged in it, even laughing uproariously at some scenes. This is partly due to the fact that Thorton was never forced to compromise his crowd-pleasing persona, while the Polish brothers’ script was laced with surprisingly topical political satire.

During the lively Q&A afterward, Thorton stressed that in order to be a successful actor, one must learn how to intensively read scripts. “Through writing, you learn how to read better,” said Thorton, who wrote the screenplays for some of his most acclaimed films like One False Move and Sling Blade. He also emphasized the importance of “knowing who you are,” in order to have the confidence to play different types of characters, instead of just one stereotypical role. Virginia Madsen, the Chicago-bred Oscar nominee for Sideways, received an equally warm reception upon entering the Film Row Cinema, and was also on hand to discuss the film, along with the Polish brothers. Madsen, who has agreed to be on Columbia President Warrick Carter’s advisory board, argued how Chicago could be a more prosperous home to filmmaking if it offered “better tax incentives and a bigger studio.” Moments of unexpected humor peppered the night, such as when a student did a blatant impression of Chris Farley’s talk show host on SNL, awkwardly reciting one of Thorton’s lines from Armageddon, before concluding with, “That was really cool!” When a woman in the audience stood to identify herself as one of Madsen’s long-lost childhood friends, Thorton admitted, “When you stood up, I thought you were a lady named Erica I knew from Houston. You scared the hell out of me!”

The next morning, I got the opportunity to speak personally with the Polish brothers, a pair of vibrantly passionate twins whose last three films—Twin Falls Idaho, Jackpot, Northfork—have garnered great critical acclaim, but little mainstream attention. Both of them gushed about how much they loved Columbia and how polite everyone was to them. “We’ve been in situations where we’ve walked into film schools, and they’ve been rude as hell,” said Mark, while Michael added that the experience Columbia gave them was the kind “that filmmakers want, and they’ll continue to come back when they get that experience.” Like their previous films, Astronaut was written and produced by both brothers, while Michael took the director’s chair and Mark acted in a supporting role. Although I spoke with both of them, I felt like I was listening to one distinct artistic voice, an invaluable trait to have when producing such unified artwork as their films.

“Every time you make a movie, it’s like launching a rocket,” described Mark, “You’ve got to get your family involved, you’ve got to get financial stability, people think you’re nuts and say that you’re never gonna do it.” This was a key reason the brothers cited as to why Astronaut is more personal to them than their other work. “Charlie Farmer is us,” Mark concluded. Like Farmer building a rocket in his barn, the brothers made their first film completely outside of Hollywood, thus creating a work that was organic, homegrown, and a true result of their artistic individuality. “We didn’t go to the business,” said Michael, “we made our first movie, and the business came to us.” The brothers see this as the ideal way to grow in the film industry since, as Michael elaborated, “You have a vantage point when you’re at home because everyone wants to help you. When you’re in LA, everyone wants to help themselves.” The Polish Brothers wrote an entire book about their unique filmmaking philosophy entitled, The Declaration of Independent Filmmaking: An Insider’s Guide to Making Movies Outside of Hollywood. Is the goal of making successful films outside of the studio system idealistic and far-fetched? No more than the dreams of Charlie Farmer, or a boy from Hot Springs, Arkansas named Billy Bob, or anyone aspiring to make a living as a professional artist at Columbia. And as the fiercely individualistic Farmer put it, “If we don’t have our dreams, we have nothing.”