EDINBURGH, Scotland — "I'll have a beer," says Robert Byington — "Bob," as he introduces himself to strangers — in a voice that slides from the recesses of his nasal cavities and out past his lips in a lazy drone. "That one," says the Austin-based filmmaker, pointing to a red label in a glass case behind the counter, and the barman plucks out a bottle of beer, snapping off the cap in one seamless motion.
"I don't know what you're supposed to drink here," Byington says, in thick horn-rimmed glasses and a fuzzy gray sweater.
The writer-director is referring to Edinburgh, home to the annual Edinburgh International Film Festival and host to the European premiere of his most recent film, "Harmony and Me."
The film, which was shot in Austin over the spring of 2008, is a follow-up to the critically acclaimed "RSO: Registered Sex Offender" and stars Bishop Allen frontman and Andrew Bujalski-favorite Justin Rice ("Mutual Appreciation," "Funny Ha Ha"). The film debuted to international audiences on June 19.
"Let's not talk about Bujalski," Byington quips over the loudening chatter of the Lounge, a backroom bar in the belly of the festival headquarters. "He gets enough press."
Facetious requests aside, it's difficult not to notice the Bujalskiesque similarities in "Harmony and Me." Even Byington concedes that the film is a "begrudgingly authorized sequel" to "Mutual Appreciation," and although he marches on in the mumblecore tradition of his filmmaking contemporary, the quirky and often farcical details of "Harmony and Me," most of which are based on events from the director's personal life, outshine its influences.
"Somebody walked up to me," Byington recalls, "and asked me to sign a card and said that this guy had a day to live." This incident is replayed in one of the initial scenes of "Harmony," in which a co-worker approaches Rice's character and asks him to sign a card for their terminally ill boss. "What do you write?" he asks rhetorically. "So I just signed my name."
Byington then says that he was at the Spider House Cafe around the same time and overheard an acquaintance shouting at someone on the telephone. "They were yelling about one of those vacuum cleaners that you rent at H-E-B. He hung up the phone and was like, 'Yeah, that was my wife and she doesn't know how to use the vacuum.' Those two events were the springboard for the movie."
Well, that and the undying pain of heartbreak. "It was the definite overlay," Byington says, although he's unsure about how much of himself he actually fused into the lovelorn and melancholic title character.
According to Byington, most of "Harmony," at least in the final days of the script, was written with Rice in mind. The casting, along with cameos from other Austin live music stalwarts such as Bob Schneider and Jerm Pollet, underscores the film's thematic elements of music as a means to work through pain.
Beyond the film, Byington says, much of his professional success has been based on the ability to harness creativity in times of grief, even at the start of his career.
In 1993, he traveled to Australia to visit his mother and a friend. A week before, his friend had been killed in a drunken-driving accident, and Byington wasn't told until after he landed in Australia. "I was sort of despondent and a little out of it, so I just wrote a script instead of doing anything else."
He concedes that he hadn't done much writing before the tragedy, although, in retrospect, the situation "turned out to be ideal because it forced me to write ... I didn't come out of a room for three weeks."
Byington says he sees himself today at a crossroads in his career. "I can either make a movie for low budget ... or I can try and make a movie with bigger actors and more money."
Byington's speaking of his newest project, "Seven Chinese Brothers," which is set to start filming in Austin in the fall. The film is loosely based on the second track of the 1984 REM album "Reckoning" and would be the final addition to what he calls his "Austin trilogy."
"That's pretentious, to use the word 'trilogy' in your own work," Byington says. "Uh, I'm making a trilogy ... Yes, I'm working on a trilogy."
In the meantime, he says he's enjoying the festival screenings of "Harmony and Me."
Before arriving in Edinburgh, "Harmony and Me" screened to warm
receptions at the CineVegas Film Festival in Las Vegas, Nev., and the
New Directors/New Films festival in Manhattan. Over the weekend,
Byington was in L.A. for more screenings at the Los Angeles Film
Festival.
— Originally featured in the Austin American-Statesman and on Austin360.com
