About Bret Carr
Bret Carr (born April 29th 1964) is an american film director, actor, author, musician, producer, activist, and monk. He first came to national attention for his film work when the Hollywood Reporter named him “Filmmaker of The Month for April 2004″ with a cover story on his twenty-dollar short spoof “Passion of The Heist“. The article went on to discuss his feature film RevoLOUtion aka “LOU“, which he co-wrote with Oscar Nominee Quinn K. Redeker (The Deer Hunter).
Carr starred in and directed “RevoLOUtion“, which made history as the first “Pay After” movie. Carr’s successful use of viral videos to promote the work in progress, “RevoLOUtion” garnered him national media attention and established him as a pioneer of internet viral distribution. His subsequent politically irreverent short films, “Gay After Tomorrow” and “Farenheit 6911” garnered him articles in Entertainment Weekly and again the cover of the Hollywood Reporter.
Carr and producer Mary Shashy, sent “LOU” to Bill Conti (Oscar Winning composer of ROCKY) whom asked Carr to write lyrics to a theme Conti says, “he had to write.” Conti asked Carr, who had no musical training, to write the lyrics, and Carr was so inspired he began writing music.
Three years later, Carr rose to the #4 musician on YouTube for a week for his song and music video “DREAMERS“. Under the name “WAKE” he performed a protest song at the Mayor’s VIP section of the Olympic Torch Landing in San Francisco. Carr was arrested for streaking onstage while singing this protest of China’s invasion of Tibetan. Carr, a Dream Yoga “Bon” Monk, says, “I had no other choice but to get as radical as possible to protect these completely peaceful monks who carry the lineage of Earth’s oldest spiritual tradition.”
Carr reshot scenes for “LOU” in 2005 adding in Kumar Pallana (Spielberg’s “The Terminal” among others) and retitled it “RevoLOUtion“.
After 7 years of filming and reshoots, Carr released “RevoLOUtion” theatrically in Los Angeles and New York, allowing theatre goers to “Pay After“. The experiment garnered him national coverage, and the film made 5% more at the box office in Los Angeles than if customers had paid the ticket price. Carr, who used to paint images on grains of rice borrow the idea from when he used to allow customers to pay what they felt it was worth.
Carr ‘s interest in Tibetan Dream Yoga, led to his research in the Malaysian jungle with the SENOI Dreamtime aborigines and the development of his film “Convergence”. Bret says, “Just as a fish can’t see the water he’s immersed in, this story explores what happens when we wake up from being a fish. “
Carr is credited by the “Mindhacks” blog as “The World’s Most Passionate Filmmaker”, having given up a 250 million dollar legacy to do make a movie about transformation.
Early Life
At 6 years old, Carr took the Broadcast Camera off of his grandfather’s corporate jet and began shooting videos. His 5th grade sociology report was a stop motion animation of salmon swimming upstream. Carr went to the Dalton School in NYC. When fourteen Carr moved in with his Grandfather, corporate raider Victor Posner. Carr would work everyday after school for Posner, and at 18, Carr was vice president of Posner’s holding company which managed companies with 27 Billion dollars in sales, and owned controlling interest in RC COLA and Arby’s.
Carr says, “I had everything money could buy including an ulcer.” Carr originally left the position to attend NYU film school, where his first short, “Looking Good”, was licensed to HBO and SHOWTIME. He sent a copy of it to Steven Spielberg in a refrigerator box. Speilberg years later financed his short film which he and Brett Ratner co-directed.
Carr also directed a portion of a feature starring Sandra Bullock, while at school, and is credited by NY Times and Fox News as having discovered her and Julia Roberts. He instructed Rattner, whom he supported and put into NYU, to take Sandra and introduce her to Michael Anthony Hall’s father who was managing talent. Ratner (“Rush Hour”) was living in Carr’s closet during Carr’s first year of NYU.
Carr had recruited his Miami friends to join him and ran a commune like apartment which contained 16-year-old Ratner, his mother, Ratner’s future assistant Joey Krutel, Carr’s girlfriend, Carr’s writing partner Ray Haboush, and a runaway friend of Carr’s sister who was being courted by Warren Beatty.
Carr co-directed “Whatever Happened to Mason Reese” with Ratner. When Ratner took Carr’s name off the short film and sent it to Steven Spielberg receiving finishing funds, Carr confronted Ratner on his nefarious deed. Rattner surprised Carr with a publicly promoted 3 round boxing match in Miami. “What a great way to spin it,” says Carr. “Rat taught me my first great lesson in PR.”
Carr left NYU when his Sandra Bullock film was picked up by Howard Goldfarb Distributors who tried to use the footage to sell foreign pre-sales. Howard Goldfarb went to jail and Carr’s film, “Making Time“, was put on a shelf. Carr directd music videos for indie bands Redd Alert, Jazzie Redd, Whitebread and a low-budget film, “Underground“. Carr would edit his projects at Propaganda Films where he would befriend Michael Bay. Carr was enamored with Bay’s visual skill set, but could never get himself signed to the company that would own the MTV generation. “Everything seems so obvious, cause it’s all up onscreen, but the truth is I never got signed at propaganda cause what goes into crafting a frame like Michael was far more complex than I ever imagined.”
Years later when Carr asked Bay to hear his pitch for “Convergence”, he told Bay he would have to enroll at Bay’s art school alma mater if Bay would not give him notes and produce “Convergence”. Carr did in fact enroll in Art Center Pasadena in 2009. Carr says, “Art School not only gave me some Michael’s and Zack Snyder’s chops, but it taught me to work with people far better than me. It was a life changing infusion of appreciation and collaboration.”
During his time at Propaganda in the late 90′s, Carr turned his experience in acting class and the california self-help movement into “Debug Your Brain“, a book detailing his findings of how to debug and reprogram the brain.
He began touring with the regression book at Expos and dinner parties, healing people of lifelong depressions and compulsions. When his sister died of an overdose in 1996 he began to regress trauma survivors pro-buono to alleviate his guilt at not being able to reach her. Carr’s movie “RevoLOUtion” is based on “Debug Your Brain”.
He convinced Quinn Redeker to write “LOU” by promising him it would be his first film to get made since “The Deer Hunter” and he would go into production upon completion of the experimental script. Carr said that he wanted his first film to follow the transformation of a man without traditionally exagerated plot reversals. Carr was quoted in the cover story of “Awareness Magazine” April 2006 saying, “The joy of driving this raw character, my own personal mirror, LOU, to the point where he knows that he has to relive his greatest trauma, with his dead father yet, again and again, not in therapy, which he doesn’t believe in, but actually in the street, in a fight with strangers who want to hurt him; using their anger to help him psycho dramatize the very thing that causes him to stutter — THAT IS THE RIDE I HAD TO TAKE THE AUDIENCE ON! LOU allows people to experience that life is a story which can be changed. Imagine we all had that power before our patterns even started.” Redeker, whose “The Deer Hunter”, was about a man’s ability to use thought over matter, saw eye to eye with Carr. When New York Times reporter Josh Young, a mutual friend who invited Carr to dinner, told Redeker that Carr does what he says, Redeker was in.
Present and Future
Carr is rewriting Convergence with guidance from his Art Center professor, Ron Osborn. He is currently attending the Berkley School of Music Summer program and will be continuing at Art Center in 2013 or until his next film starts.
Carr has started a blog, he says, “To get feedback from strangers and find out if the world is crazy or it’s all me; And help others at 99cents a book and movie, cause that’s all I had in my pocket when I needed help“.
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