From Coyote to The Revenant, Joshua Burge reflects on his central roles in Joel Potrykus films and beyond

An isolated man, effectively left for dead, contends with extreme weather, stomachs revolting meals, and winds up smeared in all manner of filth in his near-suicidal attempt to defeat his rival. By the film’s end, he’s debased himself a hundred times over, but ultimately proves victorious following a final, bloody confrontation. The director often favors lengthy shots, savoring grimy detail. Interviews around the film’s release often focus on those details; some of them become the stuff of memes.

That description applies to one film, starring Joshua Burge, that’s among my favorites of the last decade, and another, featuring Burge in a small role, that I’m decidedly less fond of (though at least one Split Tooth contributor considers it a favorite). The latter won an Oscar for its lead, the former features a performance of equal endurance and (I’d argue) considerably more pathos from Burge. I spoke to Burge earlier this month about Relaxer, The Revenant, and the rest of his collaborations with longtime friend Joel Potrykus.

Split Tooth Media: Chance Jones sounds like an actor or a character, The Incident at Primrose and West sounds like the name of a noir movie, and the cover for that album lists you and your bandmates as ‘stars.’ To what extent has your work in music informed your work in cinema and vice versa?

Joshua Burge: Well, the name of the band comes from two of my favorite characters: Chance the gardener from Being There and Indiana Jones. I went to school initially as a Film major, hoping to write and work behind the camera. I caught the music bug a little bit before that, around 15 or 16. When I was at Grand Valley State University, I started to deviate from the film program and ended up leaving school to pursue music. Music and film have always intertwined for me. I can’t imagine one without the other. It’s all entertainment, characters, performance, storytelling, and that’s why I love both mediums and love working in both. 

How’d you meet Joel Potrykus? 

Joel and I went to the same college and we had some of the same friends. We kind of knew of each other. Through those mutual friends, we stayed in touch. I got to know Joel a little better in the mid aughts when I started to settle into Grand Rapids more. Joel was around and he was taking videos of the band’s performances and posting them on, I guess it was MySpace in those days? Eventually, he was making a short film and he needed an actor. The keyboardist for my band, Mike Saunders, was good friends with Joel and had worked with him. So, he recommended me to Joel and we ended up talking at a party about what movies we liked. We had a lot of the same sensibilities and Joel said, ‘Hey man, do you want to make this movie? Let’s do this.’ And that was Coyote. We shot it on Super 8 and it was a blast. We had a great time working together and we just kept going. 

Related: Joel Potrykus: The Split Tooth Interview by Bennett Glace

Sob Noisse is credited on all of your collaborations with Joel as a ‘film band.’ How does a film band differ from a production company? 

That’s Joel’s term that he came up with and I like it because I come from a background of being in bands. It comes back to how music and film intertwine. Joel is kind of the engineer and the producer as well as the songwriter; I’m the frontman; Adam Minnick, the cinematographer, would maybe be the guitar player. He’s got the cool licks; we’ve all got a role to play. We can go off and do our own thing, our own side projects, but when we get back together, we kind of naturally fit back into these roles.

Coyote was shot silent. Did you take any cues from silent-era actors in developing your first movie performance? 

I’ve been a huge fan of silent films since I was a little kid. I got to Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd very early. There’s a scene in Richard Attenborough’s biopic of Charlie Chaplin with Robert Downey Jr., when Chaplin first goes to the Mack Sennett studios that reminds me of shooting Coyote. They’re shooting a scene and Mack Sennett, I think Dan Aykroyd plays him, is shouting, ‘Run! Jump! Dive!’ Because it’s silent, he can literally shout out direction on set as the cameras are rolling. Chaplin, of course, goes off and does his own thing and Sennett can barely keep up with him. That’s very much how we shot Coyote. We rehearsed, but it was shot on film and we hardly had any money. We had no idea how things were gonna turn out once they went to the lab, which was in Kansas City or something like that. We didn’t have multiple takes to burn, so Joel would just shout out directions like Mack Sennett on set. ‘Pick up the needle! Now, pick up the spoon!’ Whatever it was. We got into that rhythm on the spot rather than in the editing booth. 

Coyote takes place in a pretty similar milieu to all the features you and Joel have made together. In a sense you’ve created a cinematic universe. How much do you do to build the world around your characters when you’re developing them or bringing them to life on screen? 

A great deal. Art design and art direction play a huge role in all these films, the characters have their own dwellings, and it’s important to get those right. The Coyote guy’s place, for example, is horrendous. That was actually Joel’s apartment. I don’t even remember if he got the deposit back, he went to town on that place. Ape was similar. It was a friend’s apartment and we brought in the Steve Martin posters and all the other little details. That stuff is so important to Joel and me, and Mike and whomever else is involved in the art direction. 

One thing the settings all have in common is an abundance of anachronistic technology. Is there a deeper meaning behind that, or is it more a matter of you and Joel adorning the films in a way that reflects your own interests and experiences? 

I think it’s a little of both. Joel rejects a lot of modern technology. He doesn’t like when there are cell phones in films, so we always have landlines and pay phones. That helps add a sense of ambiguity. Nobody knows when these movies take place, including us. It’s just in this weird part of the universe, we don’t really know when or where. Even though we use cities as backdrops, they’re not necessarily supposed to take place in Grand Rapids, or Detroit, or wherever. It’s also all technology that we’re old enough to have grown up with. 

A major difference between Coyote and the features is its emphasis on drug use. The features have an addled feel and the characters obviously share culinary tastes with the stereotypical ‘stoner,’ but drugs are conspicuously absent. Has that ever been a conscious choice?

It has. In fact, in Ape there’s not even any swearing. Joel wanted to see if he could make a film about a stand-up comic with no drugs, alcohol, or swearing. It surprises people to hear that because there’s so much rage and other stuff going on in Ape, but we went out of our way to avoid swearing in particular. There’s one drug reference in Relaxer, the counter behind Abbie’s head is covered in used whippet cartridges. 

I’ve never noticed that. 

It’s a subtle reference and it’s probably Cam (David Dastmalchian)’s doing. Other than that, there aren’t any drugs in the films. After Coyote, people kept asking, ‘Was it the drugs that made him become a werewolf?’ In our minds, it was the opposite. He was doing drugs to try and deal with being a werewolf. If we’re doing these psychological studies and throw in drug use, people will be tempted to chalk everything up to that factor. It could get in the way of whatever other ideas we’re hoping to experiment with for the characters. 

Read Pt. 1 of Bennett’s series on Joel Potrykus’ Midwestern Monsters: Ape and Buzzard

In interviews, Joel has described Ape’s reception at the Locarno Film Festival as a really major moment, signaling the potential to shift from being a ‘Michigan filmmaker’ to an ‘international filmmaker.’ What was it like for you to see the film not just accepted, but awarded at a major film festival?

It was surreal, man. I hate to use that term. It’s a cliche, but it really was. It was my first time in Europe. Locarno’s in Tucino, which is the one Italian state in Switzerland and I just loved experiencing a different culture, the food, the architecture, everything. I was getting an espresso with Mike Saunders and the head of programming saw us and sat down. He said, ‘You can tell Joel, but you guys got to keep a lid on it. Joel’s going to win Best Emerging Director.’ I went from sipping my espresso to my hand shaking. It was just unbelievable news. Joel was napping at the time. Mike and I got a bottle of Moet, I think they were sponsoring the festival, and ran back to the hotel. We ran into Joel’s room and popped the bottle. He had his eye mask on and everything. We said, ‘you’re not gonna believe what we just heard.’ It was already unbelievable and it got better from there. It was the first big film festival for all of us and you just couldn’t write it any better. If we had written it, nobody would believe it went that well. Joel got to give a speech that was broadcast worldwide. We were so grateful too because we knew this would mean we’d have momentum going into the next film. With Ape we struggled for money. In Michigan, you can return bottles and cans for 10 cents and we were doing bottle and can drives to raise money for Ape. As honored as we were — and, obviously, we were — we immediately started thinking pragmatically about how this would help us get the money and support for what would become Buzzard, which it did. One of the highlights of my life. From the moment we left to the moment we got back, just the best two weeks of my life. 

You’re obviously no stranger to performing on stage. How did you go about performing a lack of stage presence in Ape? 

Well, it wasn’t that hard, even though I have performed. I’ve done music, a little theater, I’ve given a speech, but stand-up is a really difficult thing and my hat is off. I watch comics all the time, I listen to comics on podcasts, I’m fascinated by stand-up comedy in general. That was something I had a lot of reverence for, but it’s definitely out of my wheelhouse. It wasn’t difficult to look or feel like I was drowning up there. That came pretty quickly. I went out and did a few open mics with the jokes from the film and they’re such off-kilter jokes that it was easy to become this awkward character. Even though he bombs, Trevor’s pretty confident in his material. That part came naturally too because, as an actor, you always want to defend your character. 

I read that you rehearsed Buzzard for eight months. Is that typical of your approach with Joel? 

With Ape, not so much. We both had regular jobs and we could only really get together on the weekend. We had a script and we would have to plan it out based on things like whose house we could borrow, what props we could borrow, stuff like that. It ended up being around 15 weekends, a 30-day shoot, but it lasted all summer and into the fall. Joel started writing Buzzard while Ape was on the festival circuit, so by the time that ended we had a script and we were lucky enough to have a multi-month rehearsal and audition process. We just needed to make sure that we weren’t flying people in and wasting their time. 

It’s striking how much you’re not like the guys you’ve played in Joel’s films. To what extent do you think they reflect your experiences and attitudes? 

They definitely reflect things about me from when I was shooting those films, some of which are still a part of me. I’ve felt a lot of frustration as an artist, like Trevor. I did time in New York. I wasn’t a comic passing out fliers, but I was going to open mics and I didn’t know anybody. Or trying to find stage time in Grand Rapids. I can remember handing out mixtapes to local coffee shops, ‘What do you guys have to lose?’ It felt like trying to defend your own existence half the time and that creates a lot of frustration and anger. So, there are parts of me that relate to the struggling artist that I could tap into for Trevor. Same thing with Marty. I don’t have the same trouble with my parents that Marty has with his, but my parents were split up when I was young and there’s frustration there. Where I come from in the midwest, it’s very much expected that you’re going to go to college and start a career and a family or something like that. That wasn’t a path I thought I could take, so it’s easy to feel that sense of isolation and disillusionment from it, which can turn into anger when you’re not careful. 

So, whenever anybody talks or writes about Buzzard, the first thing they want to talk about is the spaghetti scene. I think that does a great disservice to an earlier, much more disgusting scene involving Italian food. How did you come up with the Totino’s Party Pizza sandwich? Was that a similar moment of on-set inspiration? 

No. No, Joel knew about that. I don’t know. I think he actually used to eat that or ate that as a challenge. I know he must have told me. He knew the rules and everything, ‘No, no. It has to be a layer of Cool Ranch Doritos and then the ranch dressing.’ It wasn’t just me who ate it. He got the whole crew to try a piece. You know the following shot where he’s in the devil mask?

And it’s half eaten.

Yeah, it’s half eaten because everybody on the crew had taken a bite. I’m so thankful Joel didn’t make me eat half the thing. I would’ve, but it was very nice having everybody else there to take a bite. 

Joel has said his diet is pretty closely aligned to that of your characters. How does your diet compare? 

I wish mine was better. It was better when I first went out to California. My diet was great. This pandemic has caused me to go back into my old ways which I can hopefully get out of pretty soon. Lots of frozen burritos this year. When I was younger my diet was absolutely terrible. One of the movies playing at the drive-in tonight is Reservoir Dogs and I’ve seen that movie countless times. I was telling my girlfriend that when I used to play baseball in high school, my regimen after practice was to stop at Arby’s and get a Big Montana and then go home and watch Reservoir Dogs. It was terrible. I was a teenager, but I still think it’s a miracle that I never got colitis or something.

Could you describe the culture shock of going from working with friends to working on The Revenant? 

The chasm doesn’t get much bigger, does it? I mean, it’s hard to imagine two more diametrically opposed ways to go about filming. We literally rehearsed in my living room for Buzzard. It was my friends, my hometown, on a small budget. To go from that to working with big names, on a huge budget, in another country, it was like a dream. Bill Burr has a line about feeling like he won a radio contest and that’s really what it felt like. I’ve wanted to make movies my whole life, I don’t know how I got here, but here I am. It was unreal. I didn’t even know how to talk about it. I’d call home like, ‘Joel, you’re not gonna believe what I saw on the set today!’ It was so exciting. There was no gradual increase or anything either, it was head-spinning. 

Scope-wise, Relaxer is as different from The Revenant as can be, but I’m only half-joking when I call it ‘your Revenant.‘

Yeah, it’s very harrowing for Abbie — though in a different way than it’s harrowing for Hugh Glass. He’s got a goal he’s trying to achieve. There’s an undercurrent of revenge. I don’t think Joel had it in mind, but now that you mention it, there are a lot of parallels. The cold, the snow, the growing the beard. It’s uncanny. 

Like its predecessors, Relaxer is pretty tough to characterize genre-wise. How do you describe it? 

I have a tough time with that too. Going in, I tell people that they’ve really seen nothing like it and to turn off their expectations. Joel and I both like to defy genre conventions, so when we have a hard time describing a film it feels like we’re on the right track. 

Read Pt. 2 of Bennett’s series on Joel Potrykus’ Midwestern Monsters: The Alchemist Cookbook and Relaxer

How do you go about finding new shades in characters with superficial similarities? 

It often comes down to thinking about the minutiae, what’s going on with these individuals. Again, backstory is a huge part of it. Once I start learning about the characters, their families, who they are, where they come from, they can start to become distinct people. And then it all falls into place. That’s kind of the magic of it. Magic may be a strong word, but to me it kind of is magic. We’re the same group of people working together on these films and we get such unique results every time. 

Relaxer’s scenes between you and Andre Hyland are uproariously funny and reminiscent of your scenes with Joel in Buzzard. Did you take a similar improv-heavy approach? 

Yeah, we did. It was the kind of shoot where we had to fit this in and fit that in, but the stuff with me and Andre is just a whirlwind. I crack up when I watch those scenes, too. I don’t know what it takes to develop that kind of improvisational quickness. There are two rules I had in my scenes with him (which also applied for my scenes with Joel). The first was, don’t get in the way. All my lines are unscripted, but they’re just one or two words. The other rule was, don’t break. Don’t do it. Those were my two rules and I knew if I could stick to them then the scene would work.

Is there a technique for avoiding breaking or does it just come to practice? 

It’s really about getting into the mindset that you hate the motherfucker. Just remember, you hate this guy. He annoys you, he’s the bane of your existence, he’s in your way right now. You’ve just gotta keep that in your brain. ‘I want this guy out of here, I want this guy away from me.’ If you do that enough, usually, you can get to a place where at least you’re not laughing. Other than a fork in the leg, there’s not much else you can do. 

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