Alden Ehrenreich Interview: How Francis Ford Coppola Inspired His Short Shadow Brother Sunday
0- Alden Ehrenreich's directorial debut, Shadow Brother Sunday, is a 15-minute drama that explores the relationships between loved ones when success and ego come into play.
- Ehrenreich shares the directors and films that inspired his short.
- The actor also discusses his first feature as a writer-director he's currently working on.
If you’ve been to the movies in 2023, chances are you’ve seen Alden Ehrenreich. Though the actor has been working since he was discovered by Steven Spielberg at 14 (more on that later), this has been a banner year for Ehrenreich. He co-starred in Chloe Domont’s Netflix original erotic thriller Fair Play, was a scene-stealer in Elizabeth Banks’ horror-comedy Cocaine Bear, and worked with Christopher Nolan on the blockbuster of the year, Oppenheimer. So where do you go from there? Well, Ehrenreich’s stepping behind the camera for his directorial debut on his short Shadow Brother Sunday.
Penned, directed, and acted by Ehrenreich, Shadow Brother Sunday comes in at a tight 15 minutes, but the drama wasn’t always so concise. In an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, he tells us this heavily researched tale of two brothers was once double that runtime and that paring it down was a particularly difficult challenge. In his own words, Shadow Brother Sunday is about “the relationships between people who love each other when success and ego get in the way.” It focuses on an older brother, Cole (Ehrenreich), whos a failed musician returning home to ask for help from his rising star actor brother, Jacob (played by Nick Robinson). Realizing he can profit on his brother’s newfound fame, Cole sets out to steal and sell Jacob’s personal laptop to sell to paparazzi.
During their conversation, Ehrenreich explains the unique obstacles a short presents versus a feature-length production, how he worked with his editors to pinpoint the high emotions and high tensions and trim the excess, and all the lessons he’s learned from the iconic directors he’s collaborated with such as Shadow Brother Sunday producer Francis Ford Coppola. He shares the surprising facts his short is based on, why he chose to shoot on 35mm film, the feature-length script he’s working on currently, and how Spielberg had a hand in Ehrenreich’s eventual feature debut role in Coppola’s Tetro.
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