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Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz + Academy Award winner Adrien Brody + Academy Award nominee Rinko Kikuchi + Mark Ruffalo + writer/director Rian Johnson (the mastermind behind Brick) = The Brothers Bloom, a con-man comedy with a little romance thrown in. Haven't heard much about this Summit Entertainment release yet? You soon will as Johnson's second feature film marches toward its October 24, 2008 release date with buzz building – for a good reason. Based on about 30 minutes worth of screened footage, The Brothers Bloom moved way up on my personal list of end of the year films I can't wait to see.
Summit Entertainment and writer/director Johnson invited About.com to a special edit bay visit where Johnson was hard at work putting the finishing touches on The Brothers Bloom. The first bit of footage Johnson offered up was the opening six minutes of the film, which sets up the backstory of brothers Steven (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody). Narrated by Ricky Jay, the scene shows the beginnings of the brothers' lifelong fascination with cons. Steven's really the instigator, mapping out detailed stories of how each con will go down, with Bloom simply going along with his brother and playing out his role in Steven's plans.

Fast-forward 30 years or so and Bloom's in the middle of a mid-life crisis and ready to call it quits. But, like Brett Favre, retirement is slightly out of Bloom's reach as Steven drags him back in for just one more con. The target for this 'final' con: Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a wealthy but introverted beauty whose hobby is collecting hobbies and who's incapable of carring on a simple conversation when Bloom first meets her.

Now what's really interesting about the Brothers Bloom is that their cons aren't sinister. It's not about greed and their victims always get something in return. Shy, introverted Penelope is given the chance to be part of a grand adventure that takes her away from the safety of her home and lets her actually experience life. In a sweet yet twisted way, the brother are actually bettering her life by selecting her as their victim.

'Sweet' does seem to be the appropriate word to use to describe the tone of the scenes Johnson played during our edit bay visit. Writer/director Johnson describes his film as more light than The Grifters or House of Games, and more in the vein of Paper Moon. "It's a character-based con man movie," explained Johnson. "For me, it's about taking the con man as a storyteller and a kind of fable fairy tale around that. The whole thing is about Adrien's character through this last con that they do on Rachel Weisz' character, Penelope, kind of striving to want a real life. He's striving to want something that isn't written for him, something that isn't a story. And, for me, ultimately what it's about is that our lives are not escaping the story but just grabbing it and telling our own story. That, in a cheesy way, that kind of sums up the whole point."

Johnson shot his first movie, the critically acclaimed independent film Brick, in 19 days for just under $500,000. Although he's not able to confirm the budget for The Brothers Bloom - "I'm not allowed to say or an arrow will shoot through [the window]. It'll be like Wanted," joked Johnson - it's considerably more than Brick's budget, but still small considering the cast and the different set-ups.

The Brothers Bloom was shot in four different countries, with Serbia chosen for economic reasons to stand in for a lot of European countries. The production also traveled to Prague. "Prague is the one place where we actually shot Prague for Prague," revealed Johnson who also disclosed that most of the film's builds were done in Serbia, as well as some of the street scenes. The cast and crew also traveled to Montenegro for coastal scenes before moving on to Romania for some of the more hillside shots. "We actually faked New Jersey in Romania, which I think is the first time that's ever been even said out loud," said Johnson, laughing.

"It made a lot of sense economically to [shoot in Serbia]. It ended up being a great choice actually. Serbia ended up being a really good spot for us. The local people that we hooked up with there – we brought all of our keys in from the States and from London – but the local crew once we got over the communication barrier and just kind of the cultural stuff, they ended up being great. We ended up having a great experience shooting there actually, except they didn't have a sound stage built yet. And so we ended up shooting all of our build stuff in this cold storage locker which was this massive [building]."

The end of the movie takes place in a big rotted out theater which had to be built in the cold storage locker. That special set ended up being tagged with an interesting name. "We ended up referring [it] to as our 'What the Hell was That Sound? Stage' because if someone dropped a toothpick on the other end of this place, you would hear it."

While the film's leads, Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody, do not physically resemble brothers, their chemistry onscreen completely sells the family bond. Johnson was happy when I told him I bought into Ruffalo and Brody as siblings. "I'm glad to hear that. It does. You know, you cast them both separately and really the first time you see them together is the first week of rehearsal. You know that they're both great actors and you cross your fingers. But I think they really ended up, as actors, also complimenting each other really well."

Johnson describes the character of Steve on the page as being like a George Clooney, a guy who's got it all together. "I was actually really, really excited to get Mark in the part because he's such like a down-to-earth, charming guy. He brings kind of his lopsidedness to it that makes it a little bit more interesting. I thought that he and Adrien looked pretty well together."

"All of the leads have really different approaches to acting," said Rian Johnson. "And it was, especially for me, it was just my second feature and I know definitely coming into my first one, one of the things that I was really terrified of was working of actors. That was the element of it that I had the least experience with. I was scared that there was this secret language that you had to know. And one of the joys of Brick was kind of that one of my favorite parts of the whole process – it was my favorite part of the whole process – was working with those guys and realizing that you're all on the same page."

"It's gaining each other's trust and then it's playing, telling the story. And then of course all that comfortableness went out the window coming into this because these guys have much more recognizable names – 'Academy Award Winner' – and so I was terrified again. But it's the exact same thing happened. You start working with them and they're so goddamned good at what they do, it ends up making it really, really easy, actually."

"Rachel [Weisz] was the first one we cast, which God bless her because it's the hardest thing in the world getting the first person to jump into the pool, and she really believed in the project from the beginning," said Johnson, explaining how he got this A-list cast to sign on to The Brothers Bloom. "To her credit [she] came on board before anyone else had been cast. Once we had her, our journey became a lot easier. And then after that I cast Mark [Ruffalo] and then Adrien [Brody]. I think Rinko [Kikuchi] was the last person I cast."

"But the casting process, I mean honestly, it's horrible. It's a horrible process, especially when you're making a film independently because we actually financed the film – Summit's doing the distribution of it – but we actually financed the film with his company called Endgame who financed I'm Not There, the Todd Haynes movie, and a couple other indie movies. So when we were working we weren't under a studio or anything, and when you're financing independently it's all about foreign presales. And so it's all about these lists of values that each of these actors have on this horrible, horrible piece of paper, you know? And you have to constantly be kind of balancing against that while trying to get the right person in the role. You're dealing with schedules and everybody in town is going after the same 20 people. You really have to work hard to find the joy in the process, but there is joy there because when you find the right person and you connect and it works out – or when you find someone who you weren't quite thinking of for the part and then something flips around and all of a sudden the part becomes interesting, you know? Like with Mark…exactly with Mark."

"I think when I first sat down with [Mark] it was actually about the part of Bloom. But when I was talking to him and just seeing… And I knew him from his roles where he plays the heavy and he plays somber and he's got that kind of [attitude], which he does so well. But you meet him in real life and he's much more like this. He's a big, open, friendly guy," said Johnson.

Johnson's dialogue has a very specific, playful rhythm to it and his actors stuck to the script for the most part. "When they did [alter a line] it was really a specific thing and they would always come to me and talk about it. But, no, overall there wasn't any [changes]. But at the same time is one of the fun things for me is, especially with Rachel, her style of acting is so free. She likes to come and she likes to experiment and play and find stuff. And it was great for me because I realized part way through the shoot that I'm kind of like Bloom. I like to have my flow chart, you know? And so it's actually a really great thing for me, just in terms of growing, to not only be open to that but to start taking joy in it. To start kind of loosening up my head a little bit about playing on set. Obviously, that can only happen if you have a strong hand on the wheel and know where your ship's going. But in that context, once you both trust that you're both heading in the same direction, we got some pretty nice stuff actually by just kind of playing."

And speaking of playing and letting things take shape, Johnson had actually set out to make an R-rated comedy with The Brothers Bloom but wound up with a PG-13 rated film. "The script was R. I actually did some editing during the course of it to get to a PG-13 because I started showing it," explained Johnson. "The thing that kind of pushed it over the edge for me, I took it down to Orange County actually and showed it to a group of my mom's friends and their kids. It was good for me to see how well younger people [react]. Also, in the test screening that we did that was something that, I think, we did two tests screenings and I think that was something that took everyone a little bit by surprise. I think they expected older audiences to be more into this and the degree to which younger audiences, like teenagers actually, were really into it… And I don't know, just getting out of LA and realizing the extent to which it actually does make a big difference to a lot of people, realizing that I was around 13 when I first saw The Sting and remembering the impact that that had on me. I'm like, 'You know what? It's worth it.' And we didn't have to do anything too painful to it. We just had to maneuver around a couple 'f--ks' here and there. We got it down to two and they gave us a PG-13 with two, which took some working with them."