Double the pleasure: twin actors, 2 directors
Casting a movie about conjoined twins can produce a special kind of headache.
"Brothers of the Head," in which look-alike actors are also required to be British rock musicians, seemed impossible until the filmmakers located Luke and Harry Treadaway, teenage identical twins with musical ambitions. And even when they found them, they had their doubts.
"We saw about 50 unrelated actors, trying to find people who looked enough alike," said the film's co-director, Keith Fulton, when he brought it to the Seattle International Film Festival in June. (It opens Friday at the Varsity.)
"Harry and Luke came early in the process, but we held off because we thought that would be lazy casting," he said. But it quickly became apparent that the actors had to be real-life twins in order for the concept to work.
"When you have identical twins, you already have these intense jealousies," said Fulton. "Twin actors have often been trying out for the same parts, and they're just naturally intimate with each other's behavior."
Fulton and his co-director, Louis Pepe, did have to fake the conjoined part. The Treadaways were never physically joined, so they had to find a way to suggest that connection (the twins they play are connected at the chest). The filmmakers looked around for a harness at S&M shops, then found what they wanted at a rock-climbing store.
"We looked at other movies about conjoined twins — 'Stuck on You,' 'Twin Falls, Idaho' — but they don't quite get the movement down. We didn't want the audience to feel they're watching people playing at being twins. Harry and Luke worked quite a bit with the harness to pull it off."
Since playing Tom and Barry Howe in "Brothers of the Head," the Treadaways are now in demand in England, where they're doing television and stage work.
"Brothers of the Head" is based on a science-fiction novel by Brian Aldiss, which the screenwriter, Tony Grisoni, had tried to option in 1980. When Grisoni worked with Fulton and Pepe on the couple's first feature, "Lost in La Mancha," they became intrigued with the material.
"The book is totally bizarre and deeply absurd," said Fulton. The movie seems to begin as a "mockumentary" in the "Spinal Tap" style, with 1970s rock music as the chief satirical target, but it quickly takes a serious turn.
"There are lots of mockumentaries," he said. "We wanted to take a different approach. During the first five minutes, you get this barrage of information. We wanted to give the audience an uncomfortable closeness to the material — a feeling that you're looking at things you really don't want to see."
Some of the in-jokes seem quite plausible, including a cameo appearance by director Ken Russell, who claims to be making a film about the twins, to be called "Two-Way Romeo."
In the late 1980s, Fulton worked in Seattle, installing shows at the Foster White Gallery and the Seattle Art Museum. He moved away and made several short films in college, then worked with Pepe on "The Hamster Factor," a film about the making of Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys" that was released on the "12 Monkeys" DVD.
That led to "Lost in La Mancha," which tells the story of how Gilliam was not able to complete his movie version of "Don Quixote." Fulton says he and Pepe never guessed that Gilliam would never finish the picture, "though we knew it was sadly underbudgeted."
" 'La Mancha' is a film about a film, like 'Brothers of the Head,' " he said. "We always seem to be reflecting our own situation."
Fulton finds the idea of two directors working with twin actors "an interesting dynamic. Harry and Luke have this incredible intimacy, and when we're directing them there's a doubling of duos. They learned from the dynamic between me and Lou.
"And the conflict between Tom and Barry, who are a unit, is something Lou and I struggle with. Lou and I are a couple, but we're not twins. When I go to have a meeting [about making a film], they expect the two of us, which can be frustrating. But this doesn't mean we're going to break up."
John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com