The Baluzy Brothers’ Efforts Return

To The Big Screen This Weekend

By Shannon Hicks

A savagely funny, ultra-dark comedy-thriller directed by George and Mike Baluzy, the owners of Baluzy Media Group of Newtown, will premiere at 9:30 pm Friday, June 23, at Bethel Cinema. Blackmale is the second full-length feature film directed by the Baluzy brothers, who reside in Brookfield.

The film was directed by George and Mike Baluzy and produced by Michael Delfay through Force of Nature Filmworks in association with Circle Films. The movie’s roller coaster plot combines elements of fights, gambling, murder, extortion, drugs, necrophilia, love, seduction, even ritual execution by a golfball.

Blackmale, which is rated R, opens Friday at Bethel Cinema and will remain at the Greenwood Avenue movie theatre through Thursday, June 29. Evening screenings will begin at 9:15 pm. Matinees will also be screened on Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday at 3:45 pm. The movie has a running time of approximately 90 minutes. 

The film stars Bokeem Woodbine (Life, Jason’s Lyric, The Big Hit, and Dead Presidents), Justin Pierce (Kids, A Brother’s Kiss), Erik Todd Dellums (Luther Mahoney on Homicide: Life on the Street, and a featured actor in Do The Right Thing and The Doors), and Sascha Knoph (Love Is Blind and Die Hard III).

Blackmale also features Roger Rees in a lead role. Mr Rees may be best known for his work on the NBC sitcom Cheers, playing the role of Robin Colcourt. He is also a Tony Award winner for his work in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby and appeared in the MTV series My So-Called Life. Mr Rees is expected to attend the premiere in Bethel Friday night. A few dozen members of the cast and crew are also expected to be attending the premiere, Bethel Cinema manager Paul Schuyler said Wednesday afternoon.

“It should be a lot of fun, I would imagine,” Mr Schuyler said. “There will be a gathering after the screening, and I’m sure there will be a lot of story-swapping then.” Reservations are not needed for the event; the public is welcome.

Blackmale follows the misadventures of two con men, Jimmy Best (Woodbine) and Luther Wright (Pierce), who lost big betting on one of Luther’s “sure thing” boxing matches. Forced to pay up or face the wrath of an eccentric loan shark, Jimmy and Luther devise a plan to blackmail Bill Fontaine (Rees), a wealthy English doctor they meet in a strip club.

Using the kittenish Heather (Knopf) as bait, Jimmy and Luther trail Dr Fontaine to his secluded estate, where they secretly videotape Heather seducing him. The two con artists-turned-blackmailers demand cash in exchange for the tape, but quickly discover Dr Fontaine is not the pushover he appears to be.

Baluzy Media Group is at 11 Mile Hill Road in Newtown, in the Flintrock Ridge Office Group building. The company regularly handles film and video for commercials and corporate promotions. The business was formed about three years ago. While shooting for Blackmale took six weeks, wrapping up in October 1997, George Baluzi said this week that “technicalities, legalities, and shopping the project around took some time.

“The post-production work alone took over a year to complete,” he said. A distribution deal is already in the works, he added.

The Baluzy brothers not only co-directed the film, they also wrote its original script. (A look through the film’s credits also indicates the brothers handled producing and editing the soundtrack’s original music. Another familiar name also appears in the credits: Newtown’s Harvey Hubbell, V, served as supervising producer and assistant director.)

“There were a lot of rewrites on the film,” George Baluzy said between phone calls Tuesday afternoon. He and one of the film’s assistant directors, Rema Sayge, were handling a number of details concerning Friday night’s big premiere screening and subsequent celebration. “There was a lot of give and take, no doubt about it.”

While Mr Baluzy admits the final script is “a distant cousin” to the original story he and his brother wrote, the Baluzys are both happy with the final product, said George.

Movie making, George Baluzy said, is “the ultimate pursuit for us.” George and Mike are already looking to shoot their third feature length project in the fall.

The first feature released by the Baluzy brothers was Memoirs of a Madman, which came out in 1992. In a slight loss of translation, the foreign release of the film was called Natural Born Crazies, echoing a release around the same time, Natural Born Killers.

“I thought it was kind of funny,” George Baluzy said this week. Memoirs concerned a group of mental patients that escape from an institution, then go on what Mr Baluzy described as “a bizarre journey that just spirals out of control.”

Paul Schuyler, who remembered the Baluzys’ first effort of a decade ago, said this week he is looking forward to presenting Blackmale as a regular release at his theatre this week. “They have some names in Blackmale, which they did not have in Memoirs. I think there’s no doubt this will be a better picture.”