Bernard and Huey
When Dan Mirvish, a director and a founder of a Slamdance Festival www.slamdance.com/festival/ in America and an independent US filmmaker invited me to be a jury at his festival a few years ago, I really couldn’t believe my eyes. I have never been to America before and for me, this was a great honor. When we have met, on a fantastic Spanish The Gijon International Film Festival https://www.facebook.com/FICXixon/ a few years back, he represented the US independent film Between Us. The film that I liked a lot but could not make any decision about the award, because I was in a different jury. A journalist FIPRESCI jury usually does not give awards to an American independent film. Too bad! But yet, later on in the coming years, we stayed friends. Dan actually managed to stay friends with all of us in Gijon and his Facebook posts keep on reminding us on a great time we had on the International Gijon Film Festival.
And now he is doing a hard job presenting his latest film in the impossible circumstance of Covid 19. The latest Dan Mirvish’s score would be Bernard and Huey. BERNARD AND HUEY http://bernardandhueymovie.com/?fbclid=IwAR09YXwLCkRCDWoP-LdJn6cQz5rMCBo4L9V8u9wCakXv_dpBIAK3A-x1710
is one real independent US film. It is a brilliant comedy with a screenplay written by legendary Pulitzer/Oscar/Obie-winner Jules Feiffer (CARNAL KNOWLEDGE), based on characters from his long-running comic strip in the Village Voice. The story is based on the work of Pulitzer Prize winner Jules Feiffer and it is about the reunion of the two friends twenty years after the beginning of their friendship in youth. But, there are women involved here. The approach of a story is intelligent, human, and elegant. Each of 2 friends relates to the women of their lives: ex-wife, daughter, girlfriends, etc and the film shows what changed with age and that is how to see women and how to relate to them. In general, a really nice discussion about relationships here can be reviewed as some sort of Woody Allen film, but without the usual Allen’s psychoanalysis of himself in.
So how to make an independent American film today? There is a long struggle for finances, of course, that need to be done first and then everything else comes in. After an award-winning run at 30 film festivals (on 5 continent) and a 20-city theatrical release in cities as Los Angeles, or New York, Bernard and Huey were finally released on the big screen. And here are some short reviews written and published by now for you to see.
Simply magnificent!
– Tom Percival, BBC Radio
As you might hope for a film with a script from the great Jules Feiffer, Dan Mirvish’s Bernard and Huey bristles with anxious, circuitous, hilarious talk. Feiffer, Rash, and Koechner is a potent combination.
– Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice/LA Weekly
This portrait of two old friends and their hapless negotiations with their erotic and professional lives, and with each other, bristles with Mr. Feiffer’s inimitable wit. Few writers have been able to lampoon straight, white male insecurity while simultaneously speaking to it more sincerely than this one. Devoted Feifferites, not to mention fans of Mr. Rash and Mr. Koechner, who get to flex their muscles nicely here, will be well sated.
– Glenn Kenney, The New York Times
From the beginning, I was mesmerized. I saw Feiffer up on the screen in a way I hadn’t before. The cartoon characters seemed unexpectedly real to me, and it felt like a tribute to all my years of doing the strip in the Voice and later in Playboy. My work has been transformed, but it’s still me. This film gives me great joy.
– Jules Feiffer, San Francisco Chronicle