One thing that indie films will always have as an edge over the studio system is the amount of weird that is allowed to go into productions. Without the pressure of a $100 million budget and the need to appeal to every single paying movie-goer on the planet, filmmakers have a bit more creative freedom, and sometimes that results are just plain bizarre. Take, for example, director Lenny Abrahamson's Frank, which saw it's world premiere this past weekend at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. How many movies can you name where an A-list star like Michael Fassbender wears a giant paper mache head and starts a weirdo band?
In celebration of the indie's debut, The Playlist has launched the first clip from the film, which features a bit of narration from Domhnall Gleeson as he helps introduce exactly what kind of world the movie exists in and a few of the strange characters audiences can expect to meet in the story. The matter-of-factness in Gleeson's delivery is fantastic, and does a great job of showing the character's comfortably with the odd life that he chosen to live.
Based on a script by Jon Ronson ( the novel The Men Who Stare At Goats) and Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Solider Spy), Frank follows a young man named Jon (Gleeson) who dreams of becoming a musician. His path is forged when he meets up with the titular character (Michael Fassbender) and is invited to be a part of his new eccentric pop band that lives by its own set of rules. It doesn't take long before Jon discovers that he may be in a little over his head dealing with the pack of weirdos. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scoot McNairy co-star in the film.
The movie has already been earning quite a good deal of buzz, with Sundance critics over at sites like Screen Crush, The Playlist and The Film Stage giving the movie high ratings following its first screening. The bad news, however, is that at this time it's not entirely clear when audiences in the United States might be able to see the movie for ourselves. Frank will be coming out the first weekend of May in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but has not yet landed U.S. distribution. Given all of the positive buzz and three notable names in the cast (even if one has his face totally obscured), it probably won't be too long before it gets picked up by a studio and lands a release date.
