Neil Breen, filmmaker

He did this:

http://www.worstmoviesevermade.com/double-down-neil-breen/

http://insidepulse.com/2011/09/29/from-the-inside-outsider-filmmaker-neil-breen/

Then he did this:

http://vimeo.com/19918051

http://conjugalfelicity.com/i-am-here-now/one/

He now presents to the world, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRI2Izu8Od0

http://io9.com/fateful-findings-is-the-new-best-worst-movie-youve-eve-1510958649

Let us honor this man...accordingly.

I've been trying to acquire his movies forever but can't seem to find copies anywhere, just trailers and clips. Anyway, he seems like a very strange dude. Have you watched these?

Not in full yet, no.

What do you think Neil Breen's philosophy is as a filmmaker?

well i watched myself some double down tonight

Was your mind expanded.

in that it felt at least twice as long as it actually was, sure

Got plans to watch Double Down next week with a pal. Will report back.

good luck man

What do you think Neil Breen's philosophy is as a filmmaker?

Avant-garde Mary Sue?

Flophouse podcast did a great episode on Fateful findings

All three of his movies feature the magic space rock. They're all on youtube.

Redlettermedia liked Double Down a lot. Main part starts at 45:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-3wkbqmgxs

I saw Fateful Findings at a screening in 2013 with Breen sitting across the aisle from me. It was charming to see the looks of delight that flickered across his face when people laughed at weird bits of incompetence, distracting from the gaze of rapturous involvement that otherwise occupied his fizzog as he viewed his own creation.

There was an audience Q&A afterwards, in which every ironic twentysomething who put their hand up tried really hard to phrase questions in a way that wouldn't seem like mockery, to engage him on the level of an auteur who happened to have made this particular film on purpose, as opposed to the gawping amazement in which we had all viewed it. Only one guy fell foul of riding this knife-edge, when he was earnestly and carefully trying to ask about whether the utterly bemusing use of long takes of inanimate objects was intended to imbue these with any significance. I can only assume that this was one element of Breen's work that he actually perceives as a result of his budgetary or conceptual limitations, as he responded - sharply, dropping the beatific geniality that had suffused the rest of his appearance - that he is doing the best that he can, and learning with every film, and will continue to develop his skills.

Great experience. I can't imagine watching one of his films alone, without an audience.

Watched Double Down recently. Surprisingly um, "artsy"

that's the best flophouse. they're all so delighted to have finally watched a really enjoyably bad and crazy movie .

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

NEW BREEN IS COMING!

Looks like a remake of I Am Here....Now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHwKPErsSt8

http://worstmoviesevermade.com/wp-content/media/2013/01/neil-breen-vegas-realtor.jpg

Watched I Am Here...Now with friends and girlfriend.

Wow.

Holy shit, this is his version of John Carpenter's Starman, isn't it?

http://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/why-fateful-findings-deserves-cult-status/

Nathan Rabin weighs in on why Fateful Findings should be added to the pantheon.

Nothing destroys a great bad movie like an excess of winking self-consciousness, by a need to let the audience know you’re in on the joke. Not only is Fateful Findings not in on the joke, it inhabits a world where jokes do not exist, only trembling sincerity and tone-deaf earnestness. It is this earnestness that makes Fateful Findings something special. A movie that does everything right is an absolute miracle, but so is a movie that gets everything wrong, and now that I have been introduced to Breen’s surreal world, I can’t wait to delve back into it again and again.

JD found this, and this is what happens when Breen characters bleed over into our universe:

I'm a Former Green Beret and Here’s How I Would Bring Down Bitcoin

http://media.insidepulse.com/zones/insidepulse/uploads/2011/09/double-down-2-300x164.png

He's been screening his new film here and there, and did so in North Hollywood tonight.

https://www.facebook.com/neil.breen.12/posts/1313634581997084

Holy SHIT, you guys! His latest is some next-level shit, apparently going for genocide at one point!

And the tiger gets 2nd billing on IMDB!

Neil bought a 2nd lens for his camera! And a 4K quadracopter, which is a helluva lot cheaper than a crane shot.

No tasteful side-boob, tho, only q shot of a woman revealing her plot-relevany(sorta) tramp stamp.

Only a shot, rather

Good news, everyone!

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1768883703390895&id=1557797961166138

Pass-Thru and Fateful Findings on DVD "in about a month."

I recently lost my fateful findings virginity and I can tell you - watch this movie as soon as possible.

I was stunned and amazed.

Of course I like this sort of thing but either way its gold

wait till you see "You Know? ABOUT it?" what a great line delivery

Doubel Down seems to be even better than Fateful findings!

Best part of Fateful Findings is Breen's rage towards his laptops, books, and desks

Also this is almost Lynchian

https://youtu.be/Gz1xPx_K6Do

hahaha stealing that joke

IT IS Lynchian! The only sdifference is I think LYnch is wawre of the strangeness when he does it

breen calls his films surreal in interviews, but it's hard to find the line between what's intentionally surreal and what's not.

I wonder how (un)successful his latest crowdfunding attempt is

https://media.tenor.com/images/7d729190069af8ea5e8049dfcd75434a/tenor.gif

let's all fund it!

https://www.gofundme.com/Twisted-Neil-Breen-Film

Something tells me it woul d be better if less funded tho

there is a subtle difference between surrealism and failure

"no deserts, hackers or laptops"... no way i'm funding that garbage

Attack of the Laptops

some crazy joker made this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMpIM7BEJUw&feature=youtu.be

Aw yeah

Post production on my 5th theatrical feature film TWISTED looks Amazing !!!! Very excited . It's soooo much bigger and better than my previous 4 features , that I Prod, Wrote and Directed . You all will love it !!!! Can't wait to show it to you .

— Neil Breen (@NeilBreen) March 29, 2018

i have no idea what is going on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2BfsbZOuTI&feature=youtu.be

wait, try this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2BfsbZOuTI

The mullet years.

thank you for bringing this to my attnetion

aw hell yeah

Oh jesus Twisted Pair is just.... i don't know... it makes The Room seem fairly normal. It was a totally packed screening and people were really into it - there's no stopping him becoming a weird cult sensation.

Twisted Pair somehow features him getting _worse_ as a filmmaker

neil breen is a genius

what films are you watching and where are you watching them

a couple of my friends and I have been planning to get real baked and watch Fateful Findings as soon as these vaccines kick in

i watch the films that my great pal (also named Zach - Zach's with H's are inherently good) shares with me. I've only watched a few. I'm pretty sure I watched Fateful Findings. other than Inland Empire, it's the only movie that has induced a feeling of total amnesia the next day, just like, what the hell did i watch, what happened. after watching IE several times, i started to figure it out, and now it makes a lot of sense to me. i think Neil Breen films may be the same

took me years to build up the momentum, and most importantly, to get friends to actually watch past double down with me but I recently went through all the rest and holy moley!

pass thru really does take his, uh, politics to their logical endpoint! watch it!!

he also has this almost 6hr (!!!) "retrospective" (NOT a documentary!) of his films:
https://neilbreen-5films.com/

Haven't checked out Double Pair yet but I noticed yesterday that you can stream it on a few of the big video apps. Much easier than when you had to buy directly from him.

xp have you seen the retrospective??

honestly, the retrospective is what drew me in, in the first first place. i saw a promo for it and thought it was just...fucking incredible. but before watching it i thought i should watch the films discussed

Inland Empire is a great comparison. Like, what is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz1xPx_K6Do

it's incredible. the sound design

listen on headphones

xp have you seen the retrospective??

the first 40mins or so, yes. it's pretty weird and not unlike his movies in that his advice and commentary is kinda inscrutable, he repeats himself over and over, and brags about strange things like how he's "visited over 85% of all the major cities in the world"

this calendar was my favorite discovery so far:

https://i.imgur.com/nYqutjC.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/TRbIvWg.jpg

"I being with you...I love you...will you marry me??"

*girlfriend gets shot*

"Oh, jeez..."

10 hours later I am still laughing at "oh, jeez"

genuinely the thing that twin peaks: the return reminded me the most of was breen's i am here... now

Ozu, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Bresson, Breen, Ray, Bunuel

I Am Here...Now might be the most insane movie I've ever seen

so beautyfyuil

He's back!

https://cade-crossing.com/trailer/

(He appears to have both more and less of a budget now.)

fateful findings has one of the most satisfying ending involving 6 global elites profusely apologizing and then killing themselves that i've ever seen

https://i.imgur.com/qq8G8cb.png

https://i.imgur.com/6YIp8xe.png

I've never seen any of this dude's films, but want something that scratches that The Room itch--what movie would be the best introduction?

Fateful Findings I think. Just packed from start to finish with hilariously terrible moments. A lot of zone out with Double Down especially the first 30 mins which mainly consist of him in the desert typing on clapped out laptops

yea the thing with these movies is if you're a bad enough filmmaker to create something so truly awful that it's actually hilarious then chances are you're making a lot of basic mistakes which renders parts of your movie unwatchable. Birdemic is a good example of this, iirc it begins with a 6 minute credits scene which just shows a guy driving up a hill, the mic work is so horrible you can barely tell what anyone is saying, and the shots are framed so bad sometimes you don't even know what you should be looking at. that stuff is all funny in its own way but it also makes big chunks of the movie really boring. The Room is special because it's shot and paced like an actual film (maybe closer to Hallmark than Hollywood but still), so the weirdness of everything really shines through.

Breen I think threads the needle pretty well but yeah Double Down has a lot of filler sections. some of them are wonderfully bizarre though, like a minute-long bit where he's just unloading 300 cans of tuna out of his trunk

Yeah I have heard a lot of stuff about the tuna in that movie, I can’t wait. It’s like a tuna /road trip film, I hope

i think he’s mentioned that he used multiple takes of the same scenes and edited them into different sections of double down, which i might (only partially tbh) explain why the movie feels like its going in circles. possibly mentioned in his insane almost 6hr movie about making “indie films” that i got about 90mins into but i’m not ruling out finishing one day.

anyway, double down is my personal favorite. it’s an endurance test but it’s also some real pure fever dream of a madman stuff. and i love the public domain ambient cop show music and stock footage.

right in a lot of ways it's more interesting to see a weird dude try to do a normal film than it is to see a weird dude try to do a weird film

in fact my working theory is that both Wiseau and Breen misunderstood what is was about them that people were fascinated with; Wiseau thought people found him to be a funny dialogue writer, Breen thought people were obsessed with his weird plot devices

hmm, im a little more charitable with breen, feel like there’s a pretty consistent through line. childlike morality, uncanny 90s PC game aesthetics, genocide (but in a good way), hacking… it’s all there from the start. i think he’s making what he wants to make, personally

wiseau seems like more of a lost soul to me, chasing after something he found by mistake but can no longer recreate…

I guess I'm referring to how his films just get consistently stranger and more incoherent, perhaps because people focused a lot more on Breen's own odd ideas than the plot and scene elements he ripped off. though I suppose it's more plausible that Double Down Breen didn't really have the know how to manifest any of the bizarre sci-fi plots pinging around in his head

will say though that compared to Wiseau the brilliant bits of Breen's movies seem a lot more deliberate, like he's legitimately a very interesting filmmaker, while Wiseau's is more down to convincing professionals that what he was doing was genuinely a movie and holding his ground whenever someone pointed out that his figures of speech made no sense. Breen I think would be more receptive if someone told him "there's a blatant continuity error in this shot" or "you should replace the pictures in those photo frames". on the other hand if someone filmed a long documentary where Wiseau explains his creative process it would be 98% bullshit

well, i didnt get get the sense that too many other people that might challenge the absurdity were involved with breens “five film retrospective” - def came off more like a “put a camcorder on the table and ride it out” type of affair to me

but yeah, “deliberate” is a good way to out. id agree that hes a genuinely interesting filmmaker and the way he consistently sticks to his peculiar guns is a big part of that. maybe its just me buying into the narrative but id like to think hes a legitimately weird person that is writing, directing, and acting out his weird fantasies. (also catering etc…)

i get get you mean about the sci-fi gimmicks tho. i might chalk it up to comparatively bugger budgets and using tech hes learning as he goes, notably green screen. but who can really say. weird guy!

btw I think "I Am Here...Now" might be a good dip into the Breeniverse, though there are scenes in it which make me think he perhaps is a little too self-aware. that bit where someone is tied up and getting beat up by a bunch of gangsters, with a sudden cut to a guy in a suit throwing up his hands and saying "I don't want any part of this"...I mean that could've been directly lifted from Tim and Eric

and then the long haired dude going "I like what I see"...if Breen wasn't trying to be funny there then he is indeed one of the strangest filmmakers Planet Earth has ever produced

i am here... now genuinely has a similar feeling to twin peaks: the return

ok so I decided to watch Fateful Findings again and you know what, it really is a lot like The Room. they are both utterly baffling in a lot of the same ways, stuffed to the gills with continuity errors and insanely bad acting. they also both feature the director inserting himself into the film as someone who is, not to be mean about this, someone who's 20 years younger and a lot more sexually appealing. also I think both movies are ones where just watching the more famous scenes doesn't really do it justice. you really need to see the whole thing. and like The Room all of Breen's films seem even stranger the second or third time you watch them.

one thing I find hilarious about his movies is the thing I referenced above...the man really doesn't know how to shoot busy scenes with more than a couple people in them. in Wiseau's stuff this comes across as a bunch of actors just kinda laughing and not knowing what to say. for Breen it's all these cutaways from the action to get a close-up on someone delivering their line. it's a really weird and unique thing which kinda makes some scenes feel like 90's RPG dialogue. his whole way of filming things is bizarre. this movie has so many extreme closeups on someone's face or feet. presumably there's an 'artistic' reason for why he's doing this but it really does make his films seem unlike anything else. there's no space anywhere.

also there's the uh...sexual overtones here. like The Room this movie has some sex scenes between him and someone much younger than him, in which the woman clearly seems uncomfortable. there is also the fact that nobody in his movies seem to be allowed to wear bras. the sexual chemistry between him and the Polish actress who plays his wife is, on a scale of 10, like a -5. but Breen looks super uncomfortable too! it is almost as if he has no idea what sex is! he has like, a 11 year old's understanding of it....you just get naked and touch each other.

some other observations...1) the woman who plays Amy, Jim's wife (who "suicides" him) is maybe the single worst actress I have ever seen. it's like SNL doing a parody of a porn film. she can't deliver a full sentence! 2) those scenes where Breen is naked in a dark room, embracing some woman who I assume is supposed to be his long lost childhood love? that woman's breasts are huge!! much unlike the actress that actually plays her! 3) is it just me or does the movie have two different psychologists used in two consecutive scenes that are played by the same person?? I'm not imagining that right?

actually, I think this movie might be even funnier than The Room. in part because Breen aims for a story that's so much stranger. yes, "The results are in...I definitely have breast cancer" is an amazing line. but it's got nothing on how the first half of this movie is like...90% about marital problems, only to have Breen randomly pepper in stuff like "I'm going to continue hacking into government systems to see what I can find out.....about the national AND international corruption that I definitely know is going on!!" and the ending is just like...what the fuck??

god, amazing movie, I'm not really much into film but honestly I enjoy this shit so much more than pretty much anything else

and yes to his stuff having a David Lynch vibe, though it kind of feels like he's just accidentally doing the stuff that Lynch does on purpose

Also, the Room only had like, one theme or subject more or less, and Breen regularly stuffs like 6-8 into every movie.

The Bob Pollard of bad filmmaking

I mean yeah how would you even describe the plot to this movie? it would come off like you're badly recounting the plots to at least 3 very different films, and if you think "wow how does he connect that all together" the answer is he doesn't even really try, because it probably all makes perfect sense in his head

it's very simple, it's just a story involving a double, there's a global secret and everyone's in on it, several people want to have sex with neil breen, and only neil breen can save everyone, also neil breen is going to deliver a huge speech that is VERY well received

I like how Breen’s end-of-film speeches get increasingly genocidal as he goes on, and this is even after the subplot in the first movie where he threatened to poison the water supply because he’s That Damn Good a special operator.

for Breen it's all these cutaways from the action to get a close-up on someone delivering their line.

i really, REALLY wanted him to mention ozu in his five film retrospective. of course, from what i watched, he said stuff like, “i like all movies, i'm inspired by all of them” instead

here's some trivia: the woman who plays Emily was one of the models in Zoolander!!

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!"

The worst thing about that spinach clip from Fateful Findings is you can literally hear the sound of Breen's lips parting as he smiles

I did watch this on the thread's recommendation, and was not disappointed. (My girlfriend gave it five stars, and immediately asked me to look for more of his films.) frogbs OTM about the sudden cuts/transitions making it seem like video game cutscenes where the player is hitting "skip". I've been re-watching The Larry Sanders Show and thought Breen resembled Gary Shandling a little bit. Didn't like it quite as much as The Room, mostly because the slow panning shots dragged it down a bit, but that's a minor quibble.

the room's equivalent of that are the slow panning shots of the bridge (which, if i remember, are accompanied by people shouting "go! go! go! go!")

a lot of these kinds of movies have that problem, one because the directors have no sense of pacing, two because people are watching as comedies and not drama

I actually don't think the long shots are a big problem here (at least not after the first 5-10 minutes), imo the "drag" of the movie is how many scenes feel like repeats, sometimes in a literal sense. not just "didn't that already happen?" but also "isn't this the exact same scene from before?". if there was a storyboard it would resemble a Moebius strip. just kidding, I know there was no storyboard

Speaking of lynch, there’s that famous quote from Isabella Rossellini “if David weren’t making films he’d be out murdering women” — sorta feels like if breen weren’t making films he’d have shot up a school or place of worship years ago

15 minutes into Twisted Pair and I think this is already the most insane movie I have ever seen

What the fuck is happening in this boardroom

Ahahahahah the two rubber mice by the hobo. They even move around from shot to shot. This man is a genius.

Ok no this is fucking psychotic

have you watched pass thru yet? probably his most genocidal film, which is really saying something.

no, that's the one I'm missing, but I will rectify that soon

all of his films are available in a zip file at archive.org, by the way. pretty easy to search for.

had to go to sleep so I've still got half of Twisted Pair left. if I know Breen it's gonna get even wilder than it already is.

one thing this movie really does remind me of is Decker, particularly the "high budget" episodes with a lot of green screen and special effects. the fact that he's learning new tricks gives him so many more opportunities to screw things up. the scene where he's blowing up an abandoned building with a SWAT team (??) is jaw dropping stuff

oh yeah, that first season of decker seems to be directly inspired by double down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA-EqQhF_9o

could it be a coincidence? (I don't believe in coincidences)

Yo, we got Breen update!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVnrjVvIG1k

He’s worldwide, with festival screenings in the UK and Sweden!

Also, content warning: this is just Neil talking directly to camera for like 7+ minutes, so best viewed at 1.25x or more.

The quadracopter shots from Pass-Thru had the audience all going “whooaaaaaAAhHHHHH” when it would pull high

Also the tiger from Pass-Thru(named “Vlad the Tiger”) is second-billed

could it be a coincidence? (I don't believe in coincidences)

― (⊙_⊙?) (original bgm), Wednesday, May 3, 2023 10:08 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I think I've actually heard that brought up before. I don't know if he's ever talked about him on Office Hours or something, but Tim has to know about Neil Breen. and yes looking back the first Decker series is clearly inspired by Double Down. I thought Decker: Mindwipe had to be influenced by Twisted Pair, but it turns out it actually came out a year prior. so I think the reality is more that Neil Breen is just a real life On Cinema character, part Tim and part Gregg. I mean in that retrospective he says something like "I've seen so many films and am inspired by them all", but it's not really clear at all what inspiration he's actually took from anything. if you watch Deck of Cards it's got one half directed by Gregg and one half Tim and somehow they BOTH resemble Breen films in very different ways.

Relevant to On Cinema, I laughed when Breen made sure to mention the running time of the new film (in either that or the last update).

hahaha

similarly, in his five film retro thing, he spends some time talking about if you make something that’s under 90 minutes, you don’t have a movie. and he makes sure that his films are all at least 90 minutes for that reason.

sorry lynch, bergman, cronenberg, ozu, etc. turns out you haven’t made real movies!

https://boxd.it/H7xe

It's strange to me to hear Breen talking like a somewhat normal person, because to me mentally he is about 8. when kids that age play they always imagine themselves as characters who are some combination of Goku, Spiderman, and Mario, they have every single super power they need, and they are the most well liked and righteous people on the planet. which is the sort of character who Breen plays in every film. secondary just in Breen's storytelling, the way all these things just happen with no context, I know it's all very Lynchian but maybe in Breen's mind it all does make sense?? 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.

anyway, I finished Twisted Pair. it's fun to watch these before bed because you wake up and wonder if you just hallucinated the entire ending. It's simultaneously his best movie, his worst movie, and his best worst movie

something I really appreciate about Breen is how his movies are always just utterly unpredictable, despite them all being fairly similar. like in the first 25 minutes of Double Down you think you have a good idea of what he's gonna do and the exact ways he's gonna mess it up but no it goes so far off the rails that you actually forget he's a Super Secret Government Agent 15 minutes later. in fact all of his movies have a point where I go "okay, this has got to be the craziest one", it's usually always around the 50-55 minute mark too

i watched Pass Thru the other day, my second full breen feature. wow, it got extremely mass murder there. it wasn't even mass murderesque, it was just neil breen announcing that 300 million of the worst people were dead, and that after he was gone, the good people of the world should continue on the work of identifying the bad people and making sure they die. i believe he called it the Cleansing, as well.

but somehow, all of this was forgotten when he edited together 6 or 7 scenes with the elites of society - the ceos, the stock brokers, the politicians - all standing alone at various dinner parties bragging about how easy it was to cheat at life and win, while neil breen only answered with "isn't that corrupt?", which hung in the air in silence every time. then he left, and all of the elites said they didn't know who he was, neil breen, the guy who had been standing next to them at several different completely empty dinner parties. neil breen is brilliant

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!”

can only describe this music video as having extreme Neil Breen energy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPrek1oAjG0

This truth.

loll as you can see by my FB post when I saw this my immediate thought was "Ned has to see this"

Among other things it has helped me to realize 'oh wait so THAT'S who you are'

https://i.imgur.com/kvWSEx1.png

The duality of man

this is an all-time imdb cast credit though

https://i.imgur.com/00c03CU.png

i will be passing this on to my local breen-heads, thank u frogbs. would be excellent material at a breen-a-thon, as an intermission

even the rhythm is very Breen-like, I didn't know it was possible to mess it up that bad

Yeah the rhythm is making me feel insane.

But not in the 90s club banger meaning of that sentence.

wow just wow

amazing

oh my god check out his website

https://www.astariamusic.com/joshuamichael-realm111.html

Guardian 2: Eyes of Fire is everything I wanted it to be - and then a whole lot more. I fell in love with Josh's previous album, Guardian of Secret Dreams, upon its release in 2007. I have spent countless hours listening to it, singing it in the shower or the car, obsessing over it. Guardian 2 is the rare album that exceeds the promise of its predecessor. I don't hesitate to make the comparison to The Godfather/The Godfather Part II, or Toy Story/Toy Story 2. This is a sequel that is every bit as good as the first...
- David Ham

"I was talking with Bram Stoker
Only known as a crazy coker..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Jx3dFRCf8

lmao I lost it when the beat dropped

well, i just watched my new favorite music video!

kind of sounds like the magnetic fields

so I took Neil Breen's speech from Pass Thru (the "I have killed them all" one), added a bunch of reverb and pitched it down like 5%, then dropped it into a DJ set, holy fuck it sounds sick

lmao, put that on bandcamp and i'll give you $1 for it

I'll second that!

hah alright, I mocked it up in Audacity and it came out pretty good

https://soundcloud.com/billjartz/dds-breen

haunting

He's back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0DGnxayGFM

'For your Oscar consideration...'

at 1:05 in, after he says "stay the f*** away from me!" and before "i'm not the one you should be followin", does he...kiss the wall?

sure he's unhinged, but also the best agent we have

was expecting this to be 90% genAI as the inevitable next step after the excessive breenscreen in his last two or so, but at a glance, this trailer does seem to mostly be using the more conventional independent filmmaking techniques that neil taught us all about in his 5 feature retrospective dvd?