SXSW 2025: Director Ari Gold Tell Us About One-Shot Musical BROTHER VERSES BROTHER

Cinema Scholars interviews Brother Verses Brother director and star Ari Gold at SXSW 2025. The one-shot musical, executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola, premiered at the festival on March 9, 2025.

Introduction

Gimmick filmmaking is nothing new. From Smell-o-Vision to D-BOX technology, filmmakers have always pushed the boundaries of the art form. More current movie-making dogma, such as found footage or one-shot films, capture a similar innovative spirit. Sometimes, setting and sticking with a certain credo provides inspiration in spite of the rules. Other times, the terms of the project are self-imposed in an effort to make something wholly unique.

In Ari Gold’s latest project Brother Verses Brother, the filmmaking innovator crafts a lovely story from the one-shot musical meanderings of he and his brother.

The film sets off with a gray and gloomy 360 shot of San Francisco in all its foggy glory. Opening titles promise a film with players portraying versions of themselves on a musical mission for a “live cinema” experience. Zooming down to street level, we meet ukulele-wielding Ari sneaking up on his brother Ethan who is playing guitar on the street. As Ari seamlessly joins the busking and is promptly scolded for being late, the stage is set for a delightful parade of musical interludes within a day in the life of a brotherhood dramedy.

Synopsis

The story slowly unfolds as the guys chase gigs across the neighborhood, rehearsing the song Ethan wrote for their elderly father along the way. As the brothers traverse from bar to bar, their charming banter fills in the blanks of the loose narrative. Each new location comes with charming and sometimes powerful performances from the Golds and others, culminating in their eventual visit with their ailing patriarch.

Gold matches his fascinating directing style with his onscreen talent and charisma. This perfectly complements Ethan’s more reserved demeanor and incredible musical prowess. Little dramas that play out as they meet people on their trek keep the lackadaisical story moving along nicely. While the style and substance may be unorthodox, the end result is a touching and entertaining examination of brotherhood.

Discussion

Brother Verses Brother feels totally organic and not at all smug in its uniqueness. The film feels almost like a play with sets stretched out across the city. Cinephiles will no doubt beg questions of strategy and set up. Is the film really a “oner?” If so, how many times did they have to rehearse and/or perform the script in its entirety? How much of the sound is live? Does any of it really matter if the end result is so good?

Despite the technical wizardry that must have gone into crafting such a “live cinematic experience,” it’s easy to forget the whys and hows with the charming spontaneity. As the perfectly choreographed camera placement encapsulates the gist of each scene, you get a very intimate, real-time take on the various interactions.

And then there’s the songs! Strong melodies and thoughtful lyrics give each song its own singular gravitas. While some are more contemplative, the brothers also rock their acoustic instruments in several rousing sequences. Ironically, Brian Bell of Weezer fame makes a brief, somewhat villainous appearance, but makes zero music. Go figure.

The backdrop of San Francisco’s North Beach and Russian Hill provides a rich, vibrant context for the film. Each establishment the brothers enter feels like a character itself with the city’s history peaking out of every dark corner. By the time Ari and Ethan climb a steep, iconic street to meet their father, the exhaustiveness of their tour de force journey resonates both literally and figuratively.

Cinema Scholars’ Rebecca Elliott had the chance to sit down with director and star Ari Gold at SXSW 2025, where the film celebrated its world premiere. They discuss the challenges in pulling off a oner, working with people who can improvise, and the shirt Elliott still has from Gold’s 1999 short film Culture.

Interview

Rebecca Elliott:

Thank you so much for joining me today.

Ari Gold:

Since we just started the recording, I have to say this was a wonderfully shocking moment that Rebecca is wearing a shirt I made for my short film Culture. And I mean, I haven’t seen one of these shirts in literally decades.

Rebecca Elliott:

Yeah, like 26 years.

Ari Gold:

And you have one and you’re wearing it. I mean, that’s truly amazing. And actually related in a sense. It was a 60 second no cuts movie. Now I have a 90 minute no cuts movie. And yeah, I’m so excited to see that shirt.

Rebecca Elliott:

It’s crazy. I was writing for Ain’t it Cool News at the time and we covered it and then we met you. And you were like, you have to have a shirt. And this has been one of my favorite shirts of all time. I’ve kept very good care of it, obviously. 26 years.

Ari Gold:

So we have friendship bracelets for Brother Versus Brother. So we should get you one.

One Shot

Rebecca Elliott:

Okay! And then I can wear it and we’ll visit 26 years from now, will we? Okay, we’ll see. Well, your comment actually brings me to my first question about the film being a oner, which is incredible. Going from a 1 minute oner to a feature length oner. Tell me about pulling that off and directing and appearing on-camera and doing it all in one shot with camera choreography. I’m fascinated.

Ari Gold:

The concept came out of inspiration from a Belarusian filmmaker, as well as Francis Coppola, and a German filmmaker I know. In their different ways, they wanted to explore the way that the human response to a cut-less movie is so different than a movie with cuts. I was aware that I had no opportunities to cut to a close-up. No opportunities to fix the performance. And no opportunities to switch between wide and close through cutting. So it was very clear to me that the camera operator was essentially a character or the narrator of a novel. So it would come in close, you know, to get into one person’s head or sometimes become observational by stepping away.

How that dance happens between the characters was pretty well blocked in advance. Of course, then, you know, when you’re improvising, certain things happen and it doesn’t go exactly as you planned. But when I think through the whole movie, it was pretty meticulously blocked in advance. And the idea was to tell a story where it’s about me and my brother, who are having trouble separating, and sort of our co-dependence of our musical twin relationship.

So to have no cuts as we’re trying to cut the cord to some degree seemed like a nice little metaphor. At the very end of the movie, as we walk away from each other and the credits start, it starts cutting. So that was a choice of like, okay, now that. Then it becomes like a “movie” movie, but only in the last few seconds. It also meant working with people who could improvise.

So pretty much everyone in the movie is a performer of some sort. You know, Lara Louise is a singer, Tongo [Eisen-Martin] is a poet, and Brian Bell is the guitarist for Weezer. I mean, these are all people who know how to perform. I also knew them well enough to know that they could perform naturally and really bring a sense of real life into their characters. At the same time, there’s humor and there’s stuff that’s where the slight exaggeration of the characters makes everyone a little bit funny.

The Songs

Rebecca Elliott:

Did the songs already exist or were they written specifically for the film?

Ari Gold:

Well, there’s a mix. There’s one song that was written as a theme song for the movie, and that’s “Brothers Keep Going” which he’s trying to teach me through the whole movie because we’re hoping our dad is gonna show up at a gig so we can play it for him. And then, you know, our dad just keeps not showing up. So that song was written as a theme song for the movie. Then a lot of the other ones were ones he finished the writing for the movie, and then broke apart pieces of the songs to create the musical themes for the score. So, you know, the music is definitely tailor made for the movie, but with some stuff that had existed in previous forms.

Rebecca Elliott:

You mentioned the narrative thread with your dad, which of course I love. And I feel like we’re all, no matter what age we’re at, we’re still trying to get parental approval. But also your dad is a writer and a beat generation luminary in San Francisco. So I can’t imagine all the amazing stories you grew up hearing and probably experienced yourself. And the film itself is also a love letter to San Francisco in a way. Can you tell me about all those influences and any special significance with the locations?

Ari Gold:

I mean, I think having traveled a fair amount and had experiences in life, I was realizing that there was something special, that San Francisco is a really special place. North beach is a really special neighborhood. And my 99-year-old father with, with all his charms and his flaws is a special individual. I also know that in order to get to the heart where an audience is moved by story, you need to be as specific as possible. It’s like the idea, oh, tell a universal story. Tell an everyman story. No, no, make a very unusual story about identical twin brothers playing music in the streets of North Beach and not, oh, I can’t relate to that.

But the audience last night at our premiere was laughing, they were crying. Then afterwards saying, you know, I was thinking so much about my mother or my sister, my ex-boyfriend or whatever. There was just so much emotion in the audience because the hyper-specificness of beautiful North Beach, San Francisco, and 99-year-old Herbert Gold living in his one-bedroom apartment in Russian Hill. Those specifics that I know and love so well because I grew up there become universal for the audience. Even if they have no connection to North Beach.

Celebrity Cameo

Rebecca Elliott:

I could tell you knew every nook and cranny of that area and that I’m sure every spot has a special significance to you. You probably couldn’t show everything! You mentioned Brian Bell from Weezer being in the film. Which is ironic in two ways. One, he plays no music in this film filled with music. And two, he plays sort of a villain character- a hilarious villain. Could you talk about how he came into the project?

Ari Gold:

I had written this scene. I mean, whenever I say “write it,” you know, I sewed the paragraph and then didn’t write lines. Mostly didn’t write lines. But I knew that my brother and I met this wonderful Dutch woman, and she’s helping us to maybe find a gig. And we go to another bar, and I had written in that someone shows up who is famous, and I try to get that famous person to help my brother’s career in music. Then he starts hitting on the woman that I’ve brought in and potentially stealing her away from me. So that was loosely the structure of the scene.

And so I pretty quickly started thinking that I wanted Brian, who I knew, and I knew also was a great actor. He’s been studying very diligently and seriously studying acting for a few years now. I knew that about him. We’re always talking about acting, talking about how to make a scene work. It’s. It’s what we connect on. And so I really wanted him to be that person because he has everything that scene needed. The charm, the humor, the self, the sort of ability to play himself in a way that is just slightly turned up.

So it’s funny, you know, and yet it’s totally real. It’s not like he’s doing a shtick at all. It’s, like, super real. But the audience was laughing their heads off at it because he just snakes right in there with the woman. Shuts me out of the conversation. It worked really nicely.

And there was pretty complicated choreography, too. Because it’s a scene in a bar and the camera’s moving in and out. The perspective is changing because it starts with my brother, and he’s getting ready to play a song, and then it goes to me. There’s really a lot of choreography that had to happen. And so to have everyone be on point and still improvising and forgetting that the camera’s here. He did a great job.

An Old Connection

Rebecca Elliott:

It was really hilarious! Well, shoot, our time is up!

Ari Gold:

But, you know, thank you so much for watching. From Culture to Brother, I’ve got to get you a friendship bracelet. There’s a book, Father Verses Sons, a poetry book that we wrote. So Brother Verses Brother is my brother and me with my dad. And Father Verses Sons is me and my dad with my brother.

Rebecca Elliott:

Oh, that’s so cool.

Ari Gold:

I’ll get you a copy of it and a friendship bracelet. So you have more gifts.

Rebecca Elliott:

I would be honored! Well, thank you so much for taking your time today. And good luck with the rest of the fest.

Ari Gold:

Thank you.

Stay tuned for a distribution announcement for Brother Verses Brother!

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