“Our Hero, Balthazar” is not really an elevator-pitch kind of movie. Sure, there’s a log-line: A wealthy New York City teenager ( Jaeden Martell ) who, in a misguided attempt to impress a girl, travels to Texas to try to stop a school shooting. But it’s the describing of it that gets tricky: It’s a black comedy, but also sometimes just a comedy. It’s a thriller and a satire. It’s a commentary on performative activism, gun culture and toxic masculinity. Mostly, it’s just an entertaining ride.
Owen Gleiberman, writing for Variety, called it “a cutting, audacious, and at times astonishing movie.”
Perhaps it makes more sense to understand that “Our Hero, Balthazar,” which is currently in theaters, comes from a filmmaker known for his collaborations with the Safdie brothers. Filmmaker and producer Oscar Boyson has been on the ground making independent films for nearly 20 years, from “Frances Ha” to “Uncut Gems.”
The idea for “Balthazar,” which he co-wrote with Ricky Camilleri, just felt electric, like the movies that made them want to make movies when they were younger. It’s also the kind of that seems to be disappearing from American cinemas and has the makings of a cult classic.
“There’s a trend towards sameness and safety and familiarity that is making the movie industry a really uninteresting world to play and create and collaborate in,” Boyson said. “I felt like because the industry was saying no to it, it was exactly what I should be doing. And that really fired me up.”
Boyson has come up against a lot of obstacles in the industry with “Balthazar,” from festivals to distributors, who told him they loved it but couldn’t market it. That resistance just made him even more emboldened to do it his own way. Besides, he learned long ago not to look for permission from the establishment.
Bringing back the slow burn release
“We don’t have the marketing budget, but we do have tremendous energy,” Boyson said.
And, through their grassroots campaign, involving a fake social media account for Martell’s character Balthazar that has over 84,000 followers (more than most film accounts), and old-fashioned word-of-mouth, audiences are finding the film, which will be in New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Diego, Encino, Santa Cruz and Westbrook, Maine, this weekend. At the Village East in New York, where it’s entering its seventh weekend, there are people who’ve seen it six times. And it’s not just the hard core cinephiles either: It’s younger audiences too.
Boyson wishes the industry could get away from the “big opening weekend” mentality and give movies time to find their place and audience.
“So much of it’s about word-of-mouth, and you need time in order for that to work,” he said. “When it does, it’s actually not that expensive. You just gotta make something good.”
Don’t get hung up on the budget
“Frances Ha” was the first New York City-based feature Boyson got to work on. Their primary location was the apartment he shared with Greta Gerwig and the production designer, and their crew was small enough to fit in a van.
“The thing that really stuck with me was that nobody talked about how small the production model was,” he said.
“Movies are about the emotional response that they get from the audience and that has nothing to do with how expensive or how cheaply they were made. When you feel what it’s like to work on something that felt like you were just making something that felt so intimate and small and you feel it resonate with a big audience of people who could go see a Marvel movie or could go see a hundred million dollar David Fincher movie, that’s so empowering. That really informs everything I do, that belief that that can happen.”
On “Our Hero, Balthazar,” he wanted to surround himself with 20-somethings, like he was on “Frances Ha,” because, he said, “they keep me honest.”
Actors love to work
“Our Hero, Balthazar” is full of up and coming and veteran character actors. Jennifer Ehle is Balthazar’s distracted socialite mother; Noah Centineo is his life coach. In Texas, “Sex Education’s” Asa Butterfield plays Solomon, the struggling kid Balthazar tries to befriend, Becky Ann Baker is his loving grandmother and Chris Bauer (“The Wire”) is his estranged dad.
“Actors love to work, you know? And actors love to be surprised, and actors love to challenge themselves,” Boyson said. “Especially if you’re in New York, ‘Our Hero, Balthazar’ is a testament to the fact that a low budget movie, if you get lucky on the timing, you can have some of the greatest actors in the world popping up in your movie.”
A sense of place is important
Shooting in New York City wasn’t just convenient for its talent pool; It’s also a vital part of the texture of the film, which also shot its Texas portions in Texas.
“All too often the first thing that you’re asked to do when you write a story that takes place in America is shoot it somewhere else,” Boyson said. “It’s what I value as a viewer when I watch movies, but it’s also it comes from the experience of shooting movies in America and feeling what you lose when you pretend that when you play one place for another. I think a sense of place is something that is really missing or fading from American movie culture.”
The audience and the gatekeepers have nothing to do with each other
Perhaps the most important lesson Boyson has learned over the years, and that seems to be playing out with “Balthazar,” is that the gatekeepers aren’t the ones who make your movie into thing: The audience and the fans do.
“The people who are showing up for the movie are young people and people who are who are like ‘this isn’t fringe, this is the reality I’m living,’” he said. “I don’t know that that makes the movie commercial, but we worked really hard to make it fun, entertaining and accessible.”