The conjoined twins genre

Let me go on record now and say that if this film gets released on DVD before the end of the semester, then I'm changing our syllabus! Again, think genre expectations when (if) you read this.

Ever heard of Tom and Barry Howe, conjoined twin frontmen from seminal seventies punk rock band Bang Bang? Remember “Two Way Romeo,” their signature live hit, when Barry would pull up his shirt and display the shared flesh-band that forever connected them at the midsection? No recollection? Then what about the British band “Spinal Tap,” with the exploding drummer?
Brothers of the Head creates a “fake documentary” mythology like no film since – well, Spinal Tap. Co-directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (Lost in La Mancha), the film builds an entire universe around the supposed existence of the Howe Brothers (played by real-life identical twins Luke and Harry Treadaway) and their raucous, angry punk group. Like Rob Reiner’s Spinal Tap, Brothers of the Head is pure fiction. And like those English metalheads whose amplifiers went to eleven, the brothers and their band are presented in an all-too-real documentary format.
But that’s where the comparison ends.
In fact, a funny thing happened during a Seattle International Film Festival screening of Brothers of the Head. During its first few minutes of densely packed data, jammed into talking head interviews, grainy film footage, and even scenes from a phony feature film (Two Way Romeo, supposedly directed by veteran filmmaking eccentric Ken Russell), nervous laughter accented the theater. Fed on a diet of Spinal Tap and fodder from Christopher Guest (Best in Show, Waiting For Guffman), filmgoers assumed that Brothers of the Head would be another laugh-fest of broad humor. Later in the film, however, the crowd became silent, drawn into a disturbing story of pain, identity crisis, and tragedy.

... The bottom line is that Fulton has created a fictional work of art posing as a documentary. About conjoined twins. Who happen to be the semi-insane musicians of an ear-damaging punk-rock ensemble. In an age when even Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and Michael Bay have difficulty financing mass-appeal blockbusters, Fulton admits that he’s the luckiest S.O.B. in contemporary cinema.
“Brothers of the Head was a weird idea,” he confesses. “It was a fairly experimental film with totally absurd subject matter, but we wanted to take it dead seriously. So everything about it suggested that it was not a financial venture. We got the best people working on the film, and the most patient financiers. I felt like, ‘All right – you’re spoiled from the start. You get to make a five million dollar art movie, and no one’s really looking over your shoulder.’
“Now I’m trying to get other projects off the ground, and it’s a complete uphill battle. You’re expected to have a crystal clear pitch and a ‘three-x’ structure for everything. And if you’re gonna spend more than $500,000 dollars, you had damn well better have bankable celebrities in your movie. Once you hit that stuff, it really starts to make me lose my optimism. I need to figure out a path through this. You have to find a way to express yourself, while being financially responsible. It’s a tough compromise.”
Yes, indeed. But Brothers of the Head is now a reality. It’s that rarity – a truly original movie that snuck into the time capsule, despite decidedly dicey commercial appeal.
“We’re part of a very small genre,” admits Fulton with a laugh. “The conjoined twins genre. It consists of Twin Falls, Idaho, Stuck on You, and Brothers of the Head.”

Read the full story from Filmmaker here.