Next week, Theater 80 will fire up its film projectors for the first time in 15 years, when comic caper film The Brooklyn Heist begins its two-week run at the famed revival house. We asked The Brooklyn Heist director Julian Mark Kheel about how this unique booking came about, and why Theater 80 is the perfect venue for his satiric tale of three very different sets of New Yorkers all plotting to rob the same pawnshop owner…on the same night. The Brooklyn Heist is the first film to be screened at Theater 80 in fifteen years. How did the booking come about? What drew you to screen the film there?
Sometimes small problems lead you to great solutions. A few months ago, we were looking for a theater just to hold a private screening of The Brooklyn Heist for our New York cast and crew who hadn’t had a chance to see the film yet. Our producer Michael Cecchi was looking at theaters, but most movie theaters in New York have no character—they’re too big and commercial and impersonal. We knew we wanted somewhere special to debut this film, not just a giant multiplex.
One day, Mike was walking by Theater 80, which he knew very well from their time with the Pearl Theatre Company, and decides on a whim to stop in and see what they’re up to with the space. That’s when we first found out that Lorcan [Otway], who is the son of the original owners of Theater 80, was considering turning Theater 80 back into a movie house. He had begun researching the high definition projection system that would be needed, but it was an expensive endeavor. But once Lorcan saw the trailer for The Brooklyn Heist, he loved it, the projection system was ordered, and suddenly we were booked not just for a cast and crew screening but an entire run of the film.
Why set your film in New York? Were you inspired by certain aspects of the city and/or other films set here?
Co-writer Brett Halsey and I both spent our post-college years living in New York, writing together and struggling as artists, and one of the greatest things we discovered about the city is the huge variety of people from all walks of life who live here. Since The Brooklyn Heist is all about people from different worlds colliding, it seemed only logical that New York—and specifically Brooklyn—would be the place they’d all be.
When we decided to write a caper film, one of our big inspirations was Dog Day Afternoon, the 1975 film directed by Sidney Lumet. It feels like the robbery in that film is an event that could only happen in New York, from the characters played by Al Pacino and John Cazale to the mobs of people witnessing the hold-up from outside the bank. I feel the same way about The Brooklyn Heist—a heist like this one with characters like these could only happen in New York.
The film seems interested in challenging stereotypes perpetuated in mainstream cinema. Why use the caper genre to do this?
Caper and heist films are such an established part of the history of cinema. Filmmakers have been making them forever and audiences have been watching them forever, probably because they’re fun to make and fun to watch. So when we wanted to “play” with a genre and explore long established stereotypes for laughs, we knew that a heist film would give us a ton of material to work with.
Having previously directed two shorts, this is your first feature film. What is the single biggest difference between the two, in terms of the filmmaking process?
I love the old cliché about filmmaking that it’s like trying to eat an elephant a spoonful at a time. That rings very true to me because the toughest part of directing is being able to see the ‘big picture’ while you’re working on just one specific shot, maybe even one specific moment. In a short film that task is easier because the “big picture” is only 10 minutes long, but in a feature, seeing the whole thing in your mind while still staying in the moment is a much bigger challenge. And because of the different genres within The Brooklyn Heist, making this film was like trying to eat five elephants of varying colors, shapes, and sizes, and keeping track of which elephant you were supposed to be eating on any given day and how it would mix together with the other elephants. So this feature presented its own special mix of problems, as well.
The other difference between making a feature versus a short is simply time, and by that I mean time on the set. The pressure to get everything done on time is much more intense on a feature. On a short film you’re usually working with a cast and crew who is donating their time, or at least providing it at a very low cost for one or two days. But of course no one can afford to donate their time for weeks and weeks on end—everyone’s gotta eat somehow. So on a feature it quickly becomes apparent that every minute on set is costing a lot of money and you’ve got to stay on track, especially on an independent film where’s there’s no studio to cover the costs if you go over budget. But at the same time, you can’t let the costs distract you from the artistic side of the endeavor. So it’s a balancing act that changes every day.
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