By Natan Edelsburg
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After finishing my turkey, stuffing and cranberries, I took Lily’s advice and I went to check out Fix, which is playing at City Cinemas Village East through Thursday. This independent film was shot for a mere $300,000 with one camera and a production team of about eight people. One of the producers, Nat Dinga, is an NYU grad and Rebecca Vineyard, currently a drama major at Tisch, is an intern at Mangusta Productions (who passed along info about the movie to Local). Walking out of the theatre after the movie, I was hit by the sincerity of the story: it revolves around dealing with a brother who has an addiction that you hopelessly try to help even though he continues to fail at cleaning up his act. The details of Leo (the brother with the addiction) that the creators captured tap into a world of addiction that I hadn’t seen since Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream .
I had the chance to interview director Tao Ruspoli (who also plays Milo) via email. He shared some of his feelings about the picture, which is based on real experiences with his own brother (you can read them under the Director’s statement on the film’s website). He also gave some explanations to some of the coolest parts about his film.
1. I loved the music, do you have a soundtrack list? In particular I loved the “Paint the Town Red” song and the rap song.
“fixthemovie.com/downloads has a bunch of the soundtrack available for free download.
[The two songs you liked were] “Paint the town Red” by Ima Robot and “Which Way to the Mondrian” by Andre Legacy. Music supervisor [was] Bryan Ling and original music [was] composed by Isaac Sprintis.
2. Andrew Fiscella [who plays the lawyer, Harry Rothstein] was really great. How did you find him for the role?
Andrew was cast along with Shawn Andrews and everyone else in the film, but Olivia and Megalyn Echikunwoke (Carmen) with the incredible help of casting directors David Rapaport and Lindsey Kroeger.
3. How did you find Olivia Wilde and Shawn Andrews for their parts?
I am married to Olivia and the role was written for her. We looked at dozens of actors to play Leo before we found Shawn.
4. What did the carrots symbolize to Tao? I noticed they appeared a bunch of times.
One of the quirks I borrowed from my real life brother — a love of carrots and carrot juice (which I share). I thought it was a good way to show the endearing, eccentric side of Leo early on. I liked the juxtaposition of his anger at not finding his drugs in the car as he expected with his need to bring the carrots with him.
5. Who was the actress who played the artist who was Leo’s lover? Is it her artwork in real life? If not, whose is it?
Leo’s lover Carmen is played by Megalyn Echikunwoke; paintings by a painter named Katinka Vankerrwijk.
I would definitely check out the movie by Thursday and for all the art lovers, Katinka’s work really stood out to me. It’s a beautifully sad tale of Los Angeles and a fraternal bond that’s worth seeing. You can follow Tao on Twitter here.
