Neil Breen, filmmaker

We watched Twisted Pair this weekend, and I didn’t enjoy it as much as FF. It felt more padded out, or maybe it was just because the reused footage was more noticeable. Or maybe my familiarity with Decker made it seem less fresh.

but maybe in Breen's mind it all does make sense??

I always wonder this. Like, with many MST3k films, you can tell the producers were just cranking out a cheapie and didn’t care. But Breen’s films are clearly labors of love. I mean, I figure Green knows the explosions and "stunts" look goofy but he has little control over that, for DIY/budget reasons. Does he really see the final cut of his films and believe he successfully communicated the plot in a clear way, though?

He just tells stories the way kids do, where you kinda start from the middle and omit most of the important details in favor of long asides about how cool everyone thinks you are.

This rings true in the way that all the details are so generic. There’s never any proper names or nouns. Characters will just check "the international database" rather than a specific one, the evildoers just work for "the banks", and I don’t think he even mentions what organization he works for in Twisted Pair.

As someone who's written/directed/edited/starred in a few short films myself I can understand how this happens. You envision a scene by scene breakdown that makes sense in your head but you also have to make a lot of decisions on the fly, especially if you have no budget and no time so you just kinda have to work with what you have. By the time you put it together the narrative still flows okay to you, but only because you've spent so much time thinking about it. You can't really put yourself in the headspace of someone who is just watching it from scratch. And I get the impression that Neil Breen does not exactly have a lot of people to bounce ideas off of.

So to me the best bits of his movies are usually the ones that feature other actors, because you get the sense that nobody in his movies really understands what kind of movie they're in or what the plot even is. I mean look at the variety of gangsters in I Am Here...Now - one is pretty convincing as a tough guy, one seems to think he's in a farce, another is actually trying hard but comes off like he's doing a high school play. The long-haired European gangster seems like he's ripped right from the set of Tim and Eric. And then the businessmen and senators, every single line read they do as if they just asked 15 seconds before "do you really want me to say that?". And because he frames and edits things so strangely, these scenes somehow come off even more bizarre than the ones where he's got circuit boards taped to himself. In some sense Twisted Pair is his wildest & most insane film, in another sense it's just way too much Neil Breen.

also it occurs to me that in the same way some people have speculated Double Down as an inspiration for Decker, I Am Here...Now might have been a big influence on Xavier: Renegade Angel

he follows me on Twitter

...

isn't that corrupt?

hahahaha

i think i need to watch pass through tonight, literally had a dream about the probable scene of neil breen delivering a speech condemning millions of people to death while he's posed in front of a badly done green screen with stock sfx of cheering

the posters all have kind of a “pamphlet a crazy person hands you” flair to em but pass thru really REALLY does

https://bingeddata.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/12/pass-thru.jpg

the posters all have kind of a “pamphlet a crazy person hands you” flair to em but pass thru really REALLY does

https://bingeddata.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/12/pass-thru.jpg

oops

well, it is the neil breen thread at least

Can’t wait to see the new one at the neighborhood theater later this summer

i think i need to watch pass through tonight, literally had a dream about the probable scene of neil breen delivering a speech condemning millions of people to death while he's posed in front of a badly done green screen with stock sfx of cheering

― global tetrahedron, Wednesday, May 17, 2023 2:38 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

good lord this movie rules. i am/ was (?) a big wiseauhead but now i think i’m becoming a full breenhead

while he's posed in front of a badly done green Breen screen

fixed it

oh by the way on second watch of I Am Here...Now I noticed a subtle goof - there's a scene where someone on the Vegas strip pushes over the wheelchair guy and Breen blinds him, causing him to run away. while he's running you can hear Breen (as director) in the background yell "slow down!". I am pretty sure there are episodes of Decker where the same thing happens.

also this time I stuck around for the credits just to see what Breen's character's name is supposed to be....and it's just "The Being". I almost wonder if it doesn't actually occur to Breen that his characters should have names. the only reason they do in Twisted Pair is so you can tell them apart, though this does not make sense since in the Breeniverse, someone with a fake beard is completely unrecognizable to everyone else.

Maybe its already been mentioned but did anyone feel certain parts of Twin Peaks The Return were Breenesque such as the clunky jarring CGI and the stilted dialogue

i was wondering if y'all have seen after last season. there is a thread about it but it's barely posted in. movie's on the internet archive and is for me the peak of this surreality-through-likely-ineptitude-but-who-can-tell-how-intentional-any-of-it-is kind of filmmaking

I have not but I've now watched the trailer and yeah it definitely fits the vibe. though it looks more like a student film, what with all the cardboard boxes and paper signs everywhere. amusingly IMDB lists the budget as $5,000,000, either they're committing tax fraud or someone on IMDB is trolling

after last season is great as far as this sort of thing goes yeah. the whole thing feels like an inscrutable dream.

the director has repeatedly claimed that the budget was 5 million yeah, but has clarified that the budget for the main shoot was only 30-40k, after which he was able to secure money from investors which was then used for the extremely primitive 3d animation which made up the vast majority of the supposed budget. none of that really makes any sense except that they didn't have any money for the main shoot. surely some sort of tax fraud was involved?

people thought that about The Room too, until the Disaster Artist book came out and detailed exactly how Tommy Wiseau blew $6m filming it. this movie does not appear to have the production qualities of The Room however.

the claim is $5 million was pretty much all spent on the extremely primitive 3d animation which is an order of magnitude weirder than the room's budget

oh no!!

https://people.com/tv/storage-wars-gunter-nezhoda-dead-67/

I had no idea that this guy became vaguely famous! of all the people in his movies, this was the one I assumed had to be a friend of his somehow...even by Breen's standards this was a strange, out of place, and pointless character, who nevertheless delivered one of the funniest lines in cinematic history

https://imgur.com/L4qBU8y

I am still baffled by the last 40 minutes of this movie. what does it mean when he finds Emily overdosed in her bed (whose last words before passing out were..."I'm sorry Dylan"?) and keeps saying "Emily...I knew it was you" ??? as usual he barely reacts to what should be a tragic moment, only to finally let out his emotions at the end of the scene, but he cranks up the music so you can't hear him yell what is clearly "OHHHH NOOOOO!"

― frogbs, Monday, May 1, 2023 6:29 AM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is the best scene in fateful findings that doesn’t occur in the shiny black garbage bag interzone

liminality made of loose black plastic…. neil breen’s fortress of solinude

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-dqkGB5GUg

isn't that corrupt?

Cade screening at 60 theaters. in typical Breen fashion he doesn't post a list, rather this 7 minute YouTube video in which he reads them off in random order. he gives no link to buy tickets just "keep checking the website and eventually they will come up".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuWXFm10624

one of them is in Milwaukee...you bet your ass I will be there

alright I think it's finally time to watch Pass Thru. I see someone just uploaded it to YouTube. just gotta wait for this edible to kick in.

Ok I was not ready for this

hell yeah

I kinda knew what was coming thanks to this thread but wow not really prepared for how fast things ramp up. every movie he does brings to mind the Garth Marenghi "I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards" clip but wow, this is next level

I thought the blonde lady from Fateful Findings was the worst actor to ever appear in a Breen film (Jim's wife/murderer, not Breen's long lost love), but the lady who takes refuge in Breen's bean van is somehow even worse. honorable mention to the cartel thugs whose only direction must've been "BE AS LOUD AND MEAN AS POSSIBLE!!!!"

follow up - I was not at the screening because I had somewhere I had to be that day, unfortunately. but I did get the DVD - perhaps the last DVD I will ever buy - and I will be watching it tonight

I am so fucking confused right now

Sounds like he delivered once more!

Like Lynch or Tarkovsky, Breen's films are quite subtle and complex so you need to rewatch them again and again.

I guess we'll never know what goes on in the mind of Breen but this really did feel like he filmed two different versions of the same movie and just put all the footage together - it's not really clear if these actors are supposed to be playing the same character throughout the movie. like one of them appears to die three times and other times is in a wheelchair, but then is doing karate moves five minutes later?? even for Neil Breen it's incomprehensible. still very entertaining, though I hope his future movies aren't all green screened like this

what in god’s name

all the green screen gave me something like zoom fatigue

as usual, really can’t tell how in on it breen is

“holy shit… it’s a castle!”