Andrew Bujalski Discusses His New Project Computer Chess (and How You Can Help)

Eight years after Andrew Bujalski’s shoestring-budget feature debut Funny Ha Ha emerged to significant critical acclaim (no less than The New York Times declared it one of the most influential films of the decade, due in large part to Bujalski’s follow-up Mutual Appreciation and the Mumblecore movement that sprung up around it), the filmmaker is back in development mode with his shoestring-budget fourth feature, Computer Chess. And this time around, you can help. Bujalski and his producers are more than halfway to their crowdsourced fundraising goal forComputer Chess, a tale about a tournament of chess players and computer programmers in the early 1980s. As Bujalski writes at the fundraising campaign’s Web site at United States Artists, more than just bragging rights were at stake: “As computers were exploding into the public sphere, and regular folks were just getting used to seeing them in the workplace, or home, a group of geniuses at the vanguard of the technology were trying to teach it what seemed like an almost unimaginable skill—could these machines, these glorified calculators, ever conquer the human world champion in chess? Obviously a human being would have to be a genius to be the world chess champ, so if they could get a computer to do it, the computer would have to acquire a kind of genius, right?” In his customarily wry accompanying video, Bujalski depicts the unlikelihood of finding mainstream funding for Computer Chess: Which is where the public comes in. Movieline caught up with Bujalski this week for a chat about Computer Chess (which commences shooting Aug. 19), the art-science divide, the inexorable march of technology and dinner dates for cash. What have you been up to since Beeswax in 2009? I got married and had a kid and bought a house. Congratulations! Thanks. That’s quite a big and… consuming project. Indeed. And then there’s Computer Chess. What can you tell me about it? Actually, I’m struggling with how to talk about it right now because we’re in this funny situation where we’re doing the crowd-sourcing thing, and we want to whip up as much excitement and enthusiasm as we can But I also have this terrible ambivalence because I also really want to retain some of the surprise for the movie. I don’t want to give everything away, especially before we’ve even made it. I’m terribly superstitious, too. But in broad strokes, it’s certainly a fascinating subject. It’s a real oddball project for me, or for anyone. It was kind of my fantasy, back-of-the-mind project for a few years now. I’ve spent so much of the last several years trying to figure out how to be a responsible adult and earn a living and that kind of stuff — especially now that I have a family and a mortgage and those kinds of things. So I spend a lot of time sitting around thinking: “How can I earn a living?” I’m very bad at, and I don’t enjoy it. So I think my fantasy refuge would be to run off and think, “Well, let’s put that aside for a moment. What’s a cockamamie project that doesn’t stand a chance in the commercial marketplace?” So my idea of fun for years was to contemplate this totally peculiar movie about computer chess programmers. And I don’t quite recall how that got stuck in my head in the first place, because I’m not a computer guy, and I’m not a chess guy. But for some reason, I think I read something somewhere about computer chess, and images started to accumulate. You’ve said you could have gone either way as a young person — into film or into computers and technology. What compelled one versus the other? Maybe I could have. In truth, I think my destiny was set. Early on in this project, I had reason to contact an engineer I found through the Internet to ask some technical questions. He wrote back a very nice, helpful e-mail — answered all my questions, and as an addendum wrote, “Sounds like an interesting project, and good luck to you. I’ve got to admit to you I often don’t understand what you artist guys are doing. But it sounds ambitious.” I wrote back on behalf of “artist guys” that we don’t necessarily understand what we’re doing or why we’re doing it, either! There’s something similar in a way. I think going to make a movie is not totally unlike going and writing a computer program. The processes have a lot in common, the major difference being that when you’re dealing with something a little more scientific or engineering-based, on some level you know if your program works or not. If there’s some major problem, then you de-bug it and try to get it fully functional again. When all is said and done, maybe you wish you’d written a better program. But basically either it worked or it didn’t. And with movies, it’s so much harder to know. The only thing that’s actually measurable is commercial success, and obviously that’s how the business works, and that’s how Hollywood works. They look at those numbers, and they’ll tell you: “This is a success,” or “This is a failure.” But I don’t think most of us who make films really think about it quite that way. So you never know. The thing goes out into the world, and it has a life. You can go to the grave not knowing if you succeeded or not. But to go back to your question of whether I could be a computer nerd, as much as that stuff is all very interesting to me, there’s something about this strange uncertainty of moviemaking that I’m addicted to. Also, as is evident from every film I’ve made, I’m much more interested in questions than answers. I don’t know if I would have hacked it as a computer guy.

Lifetime, Gurwitch ink development deal

Lifetime has inked a script development deal with Annabelle Gurwitch for "You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story" a book she wrote with her husband Jeff Kahn.Gurwitch hosted TBS's "Dinner and a Movie" for six years, and currently works on Planet Green's "Wa$sted!" The "You Say Tomato" scripted comedy is in the early stages. "You Say Tomato" is Gurwitch and Kahn's memoir of marriage and childrearing -- the couple's son, Ezra, was born with a medical condition called VACTERL association. The book alternates perspectives between Kahn and Gurwitch. Contact Sam Thielman at sam.thielman@variety.com

Bleach: Fade to Black

In Soul Society, Mayuri Kurotsuchi is attacked in his laboratory by a pair of mysterious siblings wielding a scythe that erases his memories. In a frightened panic, Kurotsuchi damages a machine, which causes a massive reiatsu explosion that covers much of Soul Society in a milky layer of reiatsu in the form of a giant rampaging river of serpents, killing and freezing many Soul Reapers, including Kenpachi Zaraki. Rukia Kuchiki is confronted and attacked by the siblings, erasing her memories and everybody that has memories of her, and is carried away to a rundown area of Rukongai by the siblings. Seemingly everyone in Soul Society has their memories of Rukia erased.

In the real world, Ichigo Kurosaki briefly forgets Rukia but in a dream recalls her. Troubled, he and Kon go to Kisuke Urahara for information. He tells Urahara of the situation, but he does not remember Rukia despite having her listed as a customer at his shop. Ichigo and Kon go to Soul Society, where they are attacked by people who they knew, including Shuhei Hisagi, Renji Abarai and Sajin Komamura, after Ichigo is forced to use his Hollow powers, but no one remembers Ichigo. While attempting to flee, he is struck by Komamura's Bankai. Ichigo is branded an intruder by the captains of the Gotei 13. Rukia finds herself in Rukongai with no memory of being a Soul Reaper. The nameless siblings, a sister and a brother, remind Rukia that they used to be close friends living in Rukongai and Rukia was to give them names, although she has forgotten them. Ichigo is healed of his injuries by Hanataro Yamada, who seems to have recalled healing him before. Ichigo then goes to Byakuya Kuchiki, Rukia's brother, for help, but he does not remember Rukia either. After a direct confrontation with Renji Abarai again, Byakuya directs Ichigo to his wife, Hisana Kuchiki's, birthplace in Rukongai, where they are briefly reunited with Rukia before the siblings flee with her from Ichigo and Kon.

Ichigo and Kon are attacked again by captain-class Soul Reapers Tōshirō Hitsugaya, Ikkaku Madarame and Yumichika Ayasegawa but are saved by Renji Abarai, who follows his gut instinct to trust Ichigo. Commander-Captain Shigekuni Yamamoto-Genryūsai and other captains arrive to capture Ichigo, but Urahara arrives dressed in his old uniform when he was a captain prior to his exile. He sends Ichigo, Renji and Kon off to save Rukia, and explains to the captains that he studied a parasitic Hollow which could erase memories with its scythe-like tentacle, but it escaped and appears to be influencing the siblings' actions to an extent. The siblings go to Kurotsuchi's lab in order to fully destroy the Soul Reapers with the reiatsu weapon they had used previously, under the belief that the Soul Reapers were responsible for taking Rukia away from them. Rukia objects to this, and Ichigo and Renji's arrival prompts Rukia to remember them. The female sibling succumbs to rage, and she forces herself, her brother and Rukia to all fuse into one, creating "Dark Rukia". Dark Rukia, seemingly hollowified, unleashes the reiatsu weapon upon Soul Society before battling Ichigo.

The reiatsu weapon takes the form of a giant, deformed monster, and the Soul Reapers fight against it, including Yoruichi Shihoin who had arrived with Urahara, and a freed Kenpachi. Ichigo fights Dark Rukia and holds back initially to refrain from injuring her. Byakuya arrives and claims that he should be the one to finish this, but Ichigo intervenes and manages to free her with his own similar reiatsu, destroying the Hollow, while Byakuya and Renji destroy the reiatsu monster. Rukia regains her memories, but the siblings are left mortally wounded, but are regretful for their actions. Urahara arrives and explains that the Hollow attacked Rukia and the siblings while controlling a Soul Reaper's body, but when the body was destroyed, the siblings trapped the Hollow in their bodies and were sent to Hueco Mundo for a time, managing to escape after a hundred years to reunite with Rukia because of their strong desire to be with her. Rukia tells the siblings their names, Homura and Shizuku, but the two die from their wounds, much to Rukia's despair.

The film ends with Ichigo visiting Rukia at the hill shrine where she previously visited before during the movie (the shrines were made in remembrance of her childhood friends who died during adolescence due to poverty), reminding her that her memories of the siblings will not fade. Kon, who was frozen during the climactic battle, breaks free and cries out to not be forgotten by everyone, especially Rukia.