Hollywood Filmmaking Comes to Budapest
Leaving the nest to find one’s self, to perform one’s miracles, has been the fate, if not the quest, of many expatriates. Such is the plot of a current film, Mix, now playing at festivals and select theaters worldwide. It is also the story of its chief creators, The Lovy Brothers, Robert and Steven.
Born the sons of a Hungarian Jew who weathered the Holocaust in Hungary as a hidden child, the brothers grew up in California, each cast in their father’s eyes as artists in the pure sense of the word. Both strayed. Robert abandoned photography to study advertising and Steven left a promising career as a classical pianist to learn filmmaking. That each attended leading schools in his field was no redemption.
Never mind that Steven’s award-winning student effort drew studio funding to produce the feature-length Circuitry Man, today a cult classic along with its sequel, Plughead Rewired. Or that Robert soared as creative director at major ad firms in the US, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Hungary. A smile on their father’s aged face had to wait for the fictive reconciliation of family differences portrayed in Mix – a film directed by Steven, produced by Robert and co-written by both brothers.
“We wanted to create a film we could make in Hungary,” Robert recently told me, “a film anyone with family separation issues could relate to.” A year-and-a-half earlier, brother Steven revealed a more heartfelt motivation, “The film I’m making now is about my father.”
Mr. Lovy the Elder flew into the country of his birth for the film’s release and was present at the opening party at Budapest’s FÃ?©szek Klub. His expression was closely watched by Steven’s girlfriend, Fanny. “I was really concerned about how he would react to the film,” she told a friend, “you know this film is about Steven’s life and his relationship to his father.”
The chief character in Mix is a gifted young musician named Mitch who is torn between studying classical piano at the Julliard School of Music – his father’s hope – and following his own passion of scratching out dance mixes behind a pair of old-fashioned record turntables.
Mitch is awaiting a second audition for Julliard when a call comes from Budapest announcing the death of his grandfather, thence prompting a trip to the old country with his dad, played by veteran Hungarian actor Janos Kulka. Once there, Mitch finds himself broke and stranded at his grandmother’s after a calamitous night, which many expatriate males may find familiar. Mitch’s journey of self-discovery in a foreign world and liberation from life with his father play out the rest of the film.
One memorable scene that finds father and son at the site of an abandoned movie house bespeaks more of the issues involving the filmmakers and their real life father as well as their chosen art than the relationship between the onscreen father and son.
“Every writer writes about his own experiences,” says Steven from the editing lab of his Buda Castle flat, “some of the film relates to me, but most is fiction or fiction based on observations.”
Are there parallels between the chief character and him?
“I studied classical piano for 10 years,” Steven confesses, “my parents were hoping for a career in music, but I opted for film and music for film.”
Mitch’s journey is one that many expats could relate to, adds Robert, reflecting on his own years of life abroad. “The people who’ve taken the time to live and work in another country are more complex; their minds have had to make more connections as they’ve moved from one reality to another. Most any expat experiences the same cycle Mitch goes through: fascination, paranoia, then respect and maturity or coming of age, even.”
Mitch’s infatuation and brief involvement with BÃ?©a, an Internet porn diva, his musical pursuits and those matters of the heart surrounding the relationships explored in the film are captured in the tagline, “Music, Love, Porn.” Hollywood trade journal Variety finds the concept better suited to “European auds,” than what it likely regards as more prudish American viewers. But the Lovys are counting on an interested response from the hometown crowd as they negotiate for American distribution.
Back in Hollywood, Steven co-wrote the music for the 1992 film, A Weekend with Barbara und Ingrid, directed by Gregory Neri. In addition to the Circuitry Man films, which involved the efforts of both brothers, Robert and Steven spent much of the 90s being paid to write screenplays that never made it to the screen. The middle of the decade saw Robert embark on his four-country tour of the advertising industry and Steven channeled his energies to expanding the Internet bubble, project managing the development of online video games. The pair reunited in Budapest in 2001 with the specific aim of making Mix.
Early plans for a lower-budget version of the film were upgraded with the involvement of a co-producer, Jozsef CirkÃ?³, owner and director of Happy Crew Company, a film production firm. “CirkÃ?³’s contributions helped elevate the film to a much higher production value,” says Steven, adding that sponsors also helped finance the project’s improvements.
In addition, music videos were culled from the film’s footage and are now being aired on local TV stations.
The film’s two male leads, Mitch (Alex Weed) and his ex-pat street hustler friend Lou (Jeffrey Schechter) are Hollywood imports. Other characters such as Bea (Dorka Gryllus) and heavy handed porn producer Zoltan (PÃ?©ter Rudolf) along with other cast members were recruited from local talent.
Awards for best editing and best first film (made in Hungary) were recently bestowed upon Mix by Hungarian juries.
The Lovy Brothers speak confidently about future projects, which include more films to be shot in Budapest involving music and some non-Hungarian characters. Tony Curtis, the celebrated American actor of Hungarian descent, has expressed an interest. Meanwhile, Robert has taken the wheel of VIP Communications, a “mid-sized ad firm” with a glitzy new office in Budapest’s fifth district. May expatriate wonders never cease.
