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‘Velvet Buzzsaw’ | Anatomy of a Scene
The writer and director Dan Gilroy narrates a sequence from his film.
I’m Dan Gilroy. I’m the writer/director of “Velvet Buzzsaw.” [playful music] This sequence is the gallery opening of the deceased outsider artist Vitril Dease, who inhabits and — and lurks through our film. We started with the split screen. And we come to our split screen, Jake Gyllenhaal is our protagonist. He’s there. All of our characters are there in a Robert Altman-like way. And now, the reason we came through a champagne glass was we were trying to sort of show this — this world out of balance and maybe slightly supernatural. “He came from nowhere, knew no one” And Rene Russo is the foremost gallery owner in Los Angeles. The wonderful Zawe Ashton is her protégée who’s found all this outsider art and kept it for herself. “I spotted it by streetlight over a dumpster.” And what you’ll notice if you start to watch is that we’re going to stay in this tracking shot for quite a while. Robert Elswood, our cinematographer, did an amazing job with this, and we had a great Steadicam operator named Colin Anderson. “There’s one we’re very interested in.” “Just know demand has people ready to kill.” “Ah.” Toni Collette plays a museum curator who’s become an advisor. She’s sold out. And from a camera standpoint, we’re doing something which I think is interesting. We’re sort of — we’re staying with them, but were pinballing back and forth, which we decided to do on the day, and I thought conveyed the scene really well. “Well, how hilarious for you.” What they’re talking about is the shenanigans economically in the contemporary art world, how a curator for a museum can become an advisor and advise people with money to buy things that they might not be inclined to buy in order to establish a relationship with the gallery owner. “I’ll sell you two Dease if you buy three pieces at Damrish’s opening next month.” “What if my client doesn’t respond to Damrish?” “Well, you’re the advisor. Advise.” John Malkovich plays the foremost contemporary art in the world who has stopped drinking and is now utterly creatively blocked. He’s come to see this outsider artist because he’s represented by Rene’s character. And he’s walking this space, and he comes upon Daveed Diggs, wonderful, wonderful actor. He’s a street artist who’s up and coming, and they are both now looking at this outsider artist’s piece of work, which has to deal with childhood trauma. In our film, artists see something in the paintings that other people do not see, and are deeply affected and touched by it, which is what’s happened now. John Malkovich, after two years now, has decided he’s going to have a drink. And I love Marco Beltrami’s ascendant score as he raises the glass to his lips.
- Velvet Buzzsaw
- NYT Critic’s Pick
- Directed by Dan Gilroy
- Horror, Mystery, Thriller
- R
- 1h 52m
By Glenn Kenny
If you want to see a clever actor having a great time, watch Jake Gyllenhaal in the opening minutes of “Velvet Buzzsaw.”
He plays Morf Vendewalt — just one of several eyebrow-raising character names — an intimidatingly influential and improbably affluent art critic, in his element as he half-strides, half-minces his way through an exhibition hall at Art Basel Miami Beach. He trades his designer shades for boldly framed eyeglasses, turns his gimlet eye on various sculptures and paintings and drops depth-charged bons mots.
The writer-director Dan Gilroy makes the film’s contempt for the contemporary art world crystal clear from the outset, but puts Morf in an interesting position: As insufferable and pompous as he is, he has his own can’t-be-bought integrity.
He also has ambition, and is quick to exercise it. When Josephina (Zawe Ashton), the humiliated protégée of a powerful gallery owner, discovers a cache of striking “outsider art” in the apartment of a dead neighbor, she enlists Morf, now her lover, to be the artist’s biographer.
It’s here that “Velvet Buzzsaw” itself morphs. Initially a sour satire, it starts to play as if it were an expanded vignette from one of those ’70s British horror anthology films like “Asylum” and “Tales That Witness Madness.”
Artwork turns murderous: As the grim back story of the neighbor comes to light (he killed a man! he painted with his own blood!), people pushing his work start meeting nasty deaths. Unfazed is the powerhouse dealer Rhodora Haze (Rene Russo) — see what I mean about those character names? — who imperiously stage-manages the buzz as bodies pile up.
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