I thought about my brother a lot throughout Alden Ehrenreich’s directorial debut, Shadow Brother Sunday. The film centers on two brothers whose lives are in totally different places, and many viewers will see themselves in the characters played by Ehrenreich and Nick Robinson. With his directorial debut, Ehrenreich proves himself to be a director of great empathy and intelligence.
In Ehrenreich’s film, he plays Cole, the down-on-his-luck older brother to Robinson’s Jacob, a celebrity quickly gaining popularity. Their family has gathered together as they anticipate Jacob’s appearance on television as Cole tries to get out of everyone’s way. Desperate to get his life back on track financially, Cole waffles between asking his brother for cash and stealing his laptop to sell it to the paparazzi. The older brother is supposed to be a leader in the family–Jacob should look up to him. When did Cole fall so far?
While not autobiographical in any sense, Shadow feels very personal. Even if it is not based on anyone’s life in particular, Ehrenreich taps into something familiar and intimate. Ehrenreich always makes bold choices as an actor, so it’s no surprise that he brings that to the script and direction as well.
“I was working on a longer piece about brothers for a long time, and then I started hearing this conversation that became the conversation about them asking for the money,” Ehrenreich began. “These characters felt real to me. I wrote this relatively quickly, and that is unlike other projects for me. Once it was done and I saw what it was, we could go back and retroactively talk about theme and people who fell through the cracks in a world where success is almost a religion. The way that functions in LA sometimes and people who I grew up with didn’t have a spot at the table–and I think there is something wrong with that. It came from an interior place of who these characters wanted to be.”
“Once I read the script, I sobbed for a very long time,” producer Natalie Metzger says. “It really hit me with a gut punch. I had a complicated relationship with my sister, and I had lost her a few years before reading this. It just really impacted me with hos Alden drew these characters. You feel so deeply for both of them by the end, and I have had people who had watched this multiple times tell me that they side with different people. I think that speaks to the amount of texture and complexity that Alden has instilled in these two young men.”
Cole feels like the black sheep of the family because he views himself as a failure, but Jacob needs his space to center himself. Early in the film, Cole steps out back for a cigarette and a phone call, and it feels like the may houseguests are watching him–he can’t escape. When he sees Jacob for the first time, Jacob is alone in his room. You can see on Robinson’s face that Jacob has been caught off-guard. Is there a similarity in how these young men value and need their privacy?
“We built out a lot of backstory in the rehearsal,” Ehrenreich says. “Seeing the characters alone speaks to what we are talking about in terms of how you can be surrounded by your family–even if there is little conflict–there is often a public face. Both of those scenes give us a little bit of a feeling for what’s going on when no one else is in the room, particularly for Jacob. He is thrust into the middle of this frenzied situation where everyone thinks that they want. We are taught to believe that they are just dreams come true. They are, in a way, but it’s more complex than that. Both brothers are unseen in different ways. Cole is in the shadows and Jacob’s spotlight washes out the details of who he actually is. Those things happening were meant to come out when they were alone.”
Metzger mentions a few times how amazed she was at Ehrenreich’s commitment to not just directing this piece but also to leading the cast as an actor. He is almost unrecognizable with a scraggly, scruffy beard and an oversized Army jacket that is the ire of his father, played by Nick Searcy.
“[Alden] gained twenty pounds for the role, and he even joked with me that he shouldn’t shower for the whole week,” she says with a laugh. “I told him that he can shower, but he shouldn’t wash his face. That was our compromise. Not only did he delve on an emotional level, but he was just as committed to the role physically. It’s very rare for a short. Alden being unrecognizable is something we should be talking about more.”
When you watch Shadow, you might notice that it doesn’t feel like actors thrown into a space. Ehrenreich reveals that he wanted to rehearse in order to strengthen the bond between his actors if they were to play a family that bounces off one another.
“In this case, Nick Robinson is who I wanted from the beginning,” he says. “He’s such a good actor, and he exudes a lostness, vulnerability and intelligence all at the same time that we need to pick up on very quickly. If you don’t read that way, it won’t communicate, and it’s hard to play that. I got very lucky with the ensemble cast. With a short film, the casting can go very quickly. I wanted the details of that family to be as vivid as possible. Jayne Taini plays a character named Lulu, and she has these little moments–maybe three lines–where we would cut because when my dad grabs my jacket…her reaction would make us want to do that. The entire ensemble shapes what the piece ends up being. I wanted those actors to feel like a family, so we did a rehearsal process with me, Nick, Lisa [Edelstein, and Nick [Searcy] for the end. We also did a day for the entire ensemble where they were discuss the day the first met and reveal something in their house that was meaningful to them. And then we did a big group ensemble improv of everyone getting ready. That seeped its way into the material and let everyone feel like they brought it more to life. If you just keep it in a tent until it’s time to go, you’re going to get a bunch of bullshit.”
“That was so important to Alden from the very beginning,” Metzger adds.” Being an actor himself, he knows how to hone in on the chemistry and how to make those interactions realistic. He wanted rehearsals for multiple days or he wanted everyone to cook together so everyone could feel like a family. No character was too small. Even characters that didn’t have lines were part of this rehearsal process. That’s rare on feature films let alone a short. To prioritize that process was so unique to this experience to get those dynamics and eccentricities.”
“I was drawing off of the experience that I had working with Francis Ford Coppola who EPed this movie,” Ehrenreich says. “When you get these actors in the ensemble, if interacting all at once is your first time together, you spend days getting used to that. You spend days being self-conscious about how your peers might think of you creatively or personally. We spent so much time together, so that can only benefit us. It’s more about getting on the same rhythm so they can feel free to make a fool of themselves a lot quicker.”
When we spoke about the ambiguous ending, Ehrenreich gets a glint in his eye. I didn’t need to know what happens next, but it’s clear that he has an idea of how the next conversation between these two brothers go. It’s better that he keeps it to himself. We ended, though, on a conversation about masculinity. Shadow Brother Sunday dives into what young men feel like they can present to the world and their comfort levels. It’s interesting how some men, like Cole, were brought up to think they will always be on top of the world when people like Jacob will come into their own after being so introverted all of their life.
“There is a sub-theme of a changing look of masculinity,” Ehrenreich says, thoughtfully. “Cole and Jacob aren’t far apart age-wise, but they fall on different sides of a generational divide to where the sensitivity that Jacob suffered with has now become more widely accepted. Cole’s bravado or toughness that he aspired to as a teenager has landed with the privileged assumption that he would do well or be well-received. Cole was probably more popular in high school than Jacob was, and, I suspect, that is falling apart for Cole now. Something as small as Jacob wearing nail polish indicates that he is in a world that is much more emotionally open and intelligent, but that dynamic with Cole goes back to when they were kids. When you are near your family, you become kind of like a kid again in some ways.”
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