“Joe and I have always thrived on working with complicated tones. We like shifting gears a lot in our storytelling,” admits Anthony Russo, who directed “Cherry” with brother Joe Russo.
“It is about heavy subject matter and because it touches on important human experiences, we wanted the movie to be seen by people,” he explains. “We didn’t want the movie to feel like ‘here, take your medicine,’ so we wanted to make the film entertaining and fun and engaging and thrilling and exhilarating and give the audience a reason to be there and reason to want to watch.”
We talked with the Russo Brothers as part of Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with key 2021 guild and Oscar contenders. Watch our interview above.
SEE ‘Cherry’ star Tom Holland on playing a heroin addict: ‘I felt a level of responsibility’
“Cherry” was adapted by writers Jessica Goldberg and Angela Russo-Otstot (the Russos’ sister) from Nico Walker‘s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. It follows a young former army medic (Tom Holland) suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, who becomes a serial bank robber after an addiction to drugs puts him in debt. The film is set to debut in theaters on February 26, 2021 and on Apple TV+ on March 12, 2021.
The Russo Brothers were keen to explore different tonal shifts in “Cherry,” particularly because over the last couple of years, audiences have moved to consuming entertainment in a more immediate way, especially through streaming and social media platforms. “The movie is very cutting edge with its presentation. It’s stylistically adventurous, it’s broken into six chapters, in an attempt to appeal to a generation that absorbs visual information at unprecedented levels,” Joe explains. “The volume of segregated information that teenagers can consume on TikTok is staggering to me. And all of its is different in tone. You’re going from TikTok to TikTok or Instagram post to Instagram post and someone’s arguing politics and someone’s trying to tell you how to cook an hamburger and someone else is talking about bitcoin and so it’s a relentless stream of information that shifts constantly. We find that fascinating,” he says. “The movie is really an experiment in those shifts and trying to appeal a new form of visual language.”
They are Emmy winners for the pilot episode of “Arrested Development” in 2004. After breaking through in 2002 with their acclaimed crime comedy “Welcome to Collinwood” and well-received work in TV comedy, they have become best known for helming Marvel blockbusters “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014).
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