When Hollywood director Joe Russo visits St Andrews, it’s all about the three Fs – film, family and food.
“Have you had the bread at Rocca’s deli?” demands Joe.
We have been on the phone for all of five minutes when he abandons his celebrity coolness at the mention of the Bell Street restaurant’s prosciutto-mozzarella sandwich.
“Their bread is incredible! And you’ll regularly find me at Little Italy in the heart of St Andrews too, or at Brew Co (St Andrews Brewing Company) for a pint after,” he enthuses.
“Everything I do is based around food!”
It may come as a surprise for movie fans to hear Ohio native Joe speaking like a local about a coastal Fife town.
The Hollywood heavyweight is best known for directing two record-breaking Avengers films (Infinity War and Endgame), the cult TV series Arrested Development and Noughties comedy You, Me and Dupree.
But he has been visiting St Andrews regularly since 2013, when his daughter Sophia enrolled as a film student at the university.
“I’ve got a lot of great memories in St Andrews,” he says warmly.
“My daughter graduated from the university there. I had a nephew and two nieces graduate too, and some of our best friends’ children are there.
“I love the family environment to it, it’s very unique in that regard. For all the prestige and accolades, it still has an incredible tight-knit community.
“And walking those beautiful streets at night after a pint or two… it’s one of the prettiest towns I’ve ever seen.”
Stunning St Andrews inspired Joe Russo
St Andrews’ scenic location coupled with its cutting-edge university moved Joe to found the Sands International Film Festival of St Andrews in 2022.
Since then, it’s hosted big names including Stanley Tucci as well as debut filmmakers.
A boutique film festival featuring screenings, panels and workshops, Sands was inspired by US festival Slamdance (a counter to Sundance), where Joe and his brother Anthony cut their teeth in the late ’80s.
There, they were discovered by Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh, known for Erin Brokovich, Traffic and the Oceans films.
“The only reason the Sands festival exists is because Steven Soderbergh helped my brother and I break into the film business close to 30 years ago,” admits Joe, 52.
“He is one of the absolute greats of the last decade. He’s experimental in his approach to storytelling.”
As college students, the Russo brothers had sunk themselves into more than £30K of credit card debt during the production of their debut indie film Pieces.
And, according to Joe, around half of their audience left during the film’s Slamdance premiere, leaving the pair disheartened, but not discouraged.
Luckily, one of the people who stayed was Soderbergh.
Avengers director in conversation with mentor at festival
The story goes that after a phone call and one lunch, he went on to mentor the Russos and give them their start in the film industry as producer of their next movie, Welcome To Collinwood – which starred George Clooney.
By 2009, legend has it, the credit card debt was paid back.
And now in 2024, as he brings Sands back for its third iteration, he is excited to be talking to his mentor in a public forum for the very first time since the beginning of their journey together.
“It’s incredible because it’ll be the first time my brother and I and Steve have all had a conversation together since he helped us get into the business,” he says.
“Obviously we talk to each other all the time, but never publicly.”
Joe hopes the forum will give aspiring local filmmakers and students the opportunity to receive the same wisdom from Soderbergh that the Russo brothers received all those years ago, before they went on to direct some of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
“I think it’ll be a very educational experience because we were students when we met Steven,” he explains.
“We needed mentorship. And the education that he gave us, the maxims that he handed to us, we still rely on very heavily.
“So I think him getting the opportunity to share those maxims and those philosophies with students is incredible.”
‘You do one for them, and one for you’
One of those lessons which the Russo brothers have carried into their own careers is the art of balancing being creative and making money in filmmaking.
Or, as Soderbergh put it to the Russos: ‘You do one for you, and one for [the studios]’.
By taking on big-money commercial projects, both Soderbergh and the Russo brothers have managed to fund their own experimental filmmaking.
Still, it’s clear to see that even those ‘one for them’ jobs, such as the blockbuster Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame movies are labours of love for Joe, who holds the franchise and its characters close to his heart.
“I’d love to spend a day here in St Andrews with Chris Evans, Captain America!” he jokes. “We’d start on the Old Course. Captain America would make for a terrible round of golf, because he’d absolutely smash me, but still.
“Then we’d head to Rocca for my favourite sandwich, sit outside Brew Co for a pint, head over to Little Italy for some dinner and then finish up at Aikman’s cellar bar.
“I can see it!”
Telling a story ‘is like building a tent’ says Russo
But in the era of streaming, the studio system isn’t so clear cut. So what advice does Russo have for the next generation of avant garde filmmakers who don’t want to starve?
“You cannot tell a story if it’s not a story you really want to tell,” he says. “It just won’t work. It won’t be authentic or have the emotion that’s required.
“But I do think that not everyone needs to pursue the same path as storytellers,” he continues.
“Try thinking of it like this – when you’re telling a story, you’re building a tent. Sometimes it’s a giant tent, there’s no sides on it. And everyone can come underneath and hear the story.
“Other times, it’s going to be a smaller tent. And it may be more particular and more specific, who is going to come and hear that story.
“Your focus or your goal is the scale of the tent you want to build. Speak from your heart and you’ll build the tent you’re meant to build.”
Fortnite creator to return to Sands festival
Another guest speaker at this year’s Sands festival will be Donald Mustard, creator of smash-hit online game Fortnite and now a partner in Joe’s own production company AGBO.
“Fortnite has had a massive impact on popular culture over the last decade. And Donald is one of the more interesting people in the world, in terms of understanding where storytelling and media is going,” says Joe.
For the festival founder, innovation and looking to the future is a hugely important part of the Sands mission.
And though he holds a nostalgic fondness for the days of “appointment viewing” at movie theatres, he has no snobbery about the role of video platforms like TikTok and their content creators within the entertainment industry.
“People don’t like change, but unfortunately, things are changing,” Joe says matter-of-factly.
“You cannot give an entire generation – and now heading into a second generation – tools to tell stories in a very compressed manner, to create celebrity in a new and different way, and that operate outside of the traditional structure of Hollywood storytelling, and expect things not to change.
“I know because I have four children between the ages of 17 and 27, how their brains have been trained by social media,” he observes.
“They have the ability to consume multiple pieces of information, all at the same time. If you walk into any home, while someone is watching something on their television, they’re also on their phone. That is training our brains to receive information in a very different way.
“And I don’t think we should be prejudicial about how audiences receive their stories.”
Artificial intelligence answer to Hollywood ‘rigor mortis’?
On the contrary, the self-described “futurist” is excited by the prospects of developments like artificial intelligence (AI).
“I think rigor mortis can set in when a certain structure becomes dominant for too long,” he explains. “It becomes predictive and then it becomes very difficult to tell fresh stories within it.
“I want to see what these next generations bring, how they evolve storytelling. And I want to see how they use AI to help them create in ways we haven’t seen people express themselves ever.”
Sands: International Film Festival of St Andrews 2024 takes place from Friday April 19 to Sunday April 21 2024 at the Byre Theatre. For more information on the festival line-up, check out our handy guide in Friday’s What’s On supplement, or visit the Sands website.
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