It was a rare wholesome moment at what’s typically known as Hollywood’s biggest and booziest party.
Brady Corbet, accepting a Golden Globe last month for directing “The Brutalist,” made it clear just how important his family was to the making of the epic film. As he spoke, the camera cut to three women who helped Corbet build it: “the incomparable” Mary Corbet, who raised him as a single mother; Mona Fastvold, his longtime “muse” and co-writer of the film; and 10-year-old Ada, Corbet and Fastvold’s child.
“I love you so much, Ada James,” Corbet said, looking toward his daughter as she cried tears of joy and relief.
After all, the movie has been part of her life in one way or another since she was 3 years old, Corbet and Fastvold told NBC News in a recent interview at the Breuer Building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The brutalist-style structure, designed by the Hungarian-German modernist architect Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966 to house the Whitney Museum of American Art, will soon become the home of Sotheby’s auction house.
“She’s our partner in crime,” Corbet said of Ada James. “She’s on these film sets, and she’s, you know, with us every step of the way. She’s there with us at the monitor 90% of the time.”
“The Brutalist” is the fifth film collaboration between Corbet and Fastvold. It tells the story of fictional Hungarian architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) and his writer wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), Holocaust survivors who struggle to adapt to American life and grapple with the demands of wealthy industrialist Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce).
It’s a heavyweight contender at this Sunday’s Academy Awards, where it’s nominated for 10 Oscars, including best picture. Corbet is nominated for best director, while he and Fastvold are up for best original screenplay.
The partners take turns in the director’s chair from project to project. Their previous collaborations include 2018’s “Vox Lux” starring Natalie Portman and the 2020 release “The World to Come” featuring Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby. The dynamic will continue this year with their latest film, “Ann Lee,” a historical musical drama starring Amanda Seyfried. Fastvold directed, and Corbet co-wrote it with her.
“Brady likes to write at night, and I write early in the morning,” Fastvold, 38, said. “And then we write together in the middle of the day.”
They’ve got it down to a routine, quite literally finishing each other’s sentences.
“We’re not very dogmatic about it, and I think that writing in general, even if you’re writing something on your own, which we both occasionally do as well, it’s an improvisational process where, you know, the first rule of improv is, you know, never say no,” Corbet said. “And I think that chasing a story, chasing an idea, it’s about riffing and building on each other’s proposals.”
A long road to awards season
The duo’s hard work paved the way for critical acclaim and awards buzz. Corbet has already racked up best director honors at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs, the U.K.’s equivalent of the Academy Awards. Brody, Jones and Pearce are all nominated for acting Oscars.
But it was a tough road to the Academy Awards for “The Brutalist,” which is three hours and 35 minutes (including an intermission that's reminiscent of Hollywood’s Golden Age epics).
As he promoted the film, Corbet made headlines for underscoring how tough it is to make a living as a filmmaker. In a recent interview on the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast, Corbet said he and Fastvold “made zero dollars on the last two films we made,” noting that they “had to just live off of a paycheck from three years ago.”
Lining up financing for “The Brutalist” was tough, too. Corbet and Fastvold said they were turned down by multiple potential investors.
“If I were in their position, I probably would have passed, too,” Corbet said. “It was following a global pandemic. People were not going to the movies.”
Eventually, along with some of their own savings, Corbet and Fastvold scraped together enough financing to make the movie for about $10 million. That’s a fraction of what large-scale Hollywood movies typically cost. For comparison, last year’s best picture Oscar winner, the three-hour historical drama “Oppenheimer,” reportedly was budgeted at $100 million. (Universal Pictures, which released “Oppenheimer” and whose international arm distributed “The Brutalist” outside North America, shares a parent company with NBC News.)
“The Brutalist” wrapped filming in May 2023 and then premiered last year at the Venice Film Festival, where it earned rave reviews. It was scooped up by prestigious studio and distributor A24, which positioned the movie in the thick of the Oscar race.
The film generated some controversy, as well, after editor Dávid Jancsó said filmmakers used artificial intelligence to enhance Brody’s and Jones’ Hungarian accents. Corbet and Fastvold told NBC News their use of the technology was minimal, ethical — and necessary.
“I wanted Hungarians to be able to watch the film and have it ring true for them,” Corbet said.
Home again
Beyond the accolades, “The Brutalist” is a major personal milestone for Corbet, 36, who was raised by a single mom, dropped out of high school and started acting in films such as 2003’s “Thirteen” before settling into the director’s chair.
“I did not go to film school at all. I did grow up on film sets, and so, of course, there’s probably no better education than that,” he said.
The success of “The Brutalist” is also gratifying for Corbet’s mother, Mary. “She’s very, very touched by it,” the director said.
As awards season comes to a crescendo, Corbet and Fastvold are looking forward to some family time — away from the set. The morning after the Oscars, it’s back to their life in Brooklyn, New York.
“You just gotta go home and, you know, pack lunch and make dinner and then … we go back into a dark room and keep on trying to make another movie,” Fastvold said.
Corbet, meanwhile, said he’s eager to “be just dad” again after months of hopping on planes every few days and visiting more than a dozen countries.
“I’ve been away too much,” he said. “I think that when we finally sort of slow down, we’ll really, really be able to appreciate it.”
