Local film series Uncomfortable Brunch celebrates 10 years of unnerving cinema with Gaspar Noe's debut, 'I Stand Alone'
*originally posted on the Orlando Weekly site in 2024 here.
Gateway, not gatekeeper
By Kyle Eagle on Fri, Jan 5, 2024
When an event has been happening on a regular basis for 10 years, it’s no longer just a thing to check out; it morphs into an institution. As an active part of the Orlando landscape, Uncomfortable Brunch is just that. The long-running showcase for all things unnerving and confrontational in the art of cinema — and all things savory for breakfast — has a loyal following to back it up.
Series founder Josh Martin and Enzian Theater celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Uncomfortable Brunch at noon Sunday, Jan. 7. In keeping with the series’ commitment to subject matter, Sunday’s event presents a filmmaker with a penchant for brutal intimacy, a practitioner of the New Extreme, Gaspar Noe, and his underseen debut, I Stand Alone. The film is a psychological drama that focuses on several key moments in the life of a butcher facing abandonment, isolation, rejection and unemployment with tragic and traumatic results.
Like all great things, Uncomfortable Brunch wasn’t born out of a void. It blossomed from Central Florida’s long-storied taste for the unusual and the offbeat. (In other words, we like weird stuff.) Testament to this: the musicians that come here, and the music that’s created here; our writers and our artists, unique in their vision. From the food we eat to the movies we seek, Uncomfortable Brunch is a wholly home-grown thing.
Orlando Weekly reached out to the key masterminds behind the series — Joshua Martin, Kat Whitacre and Tim Anderson — to reflect and comment.
Orlando Weekly: As an outsider looking in, it’s interesting to see how this program has served the community. Late Sunday morning when you roll up to the Enzian there’s always a line to get in that stretches the length of the parking lot! And the people are dressed up and ready to get their heads scrambled by some of film’s most notorious and jarring works, while eating scrambled eggs!
Joshua Martin: An institution is a really kind way of putting it. I don’t know how to view it because it’s evolved. It’s become something I’ve become very proud of. Where it’s at now, not in the sense of, “Oh look how big we’ve gotten,” it’s really evolved into something more socially conscious than I ever thought it would be and again, I’m really proud of this.
There’s got to be a good origin story to this. As hard-core as this series is, there’s certainly a tongue-in-cheek vibe to the whole thing, if not the textbook definition of a surreal experience.
JM: Uncomfortable Brunch was conceived by accident in the summer of 2011. I had Alex Cooper — formerly of Park Ave CDs, now killing it running Smartpunk’s Record Shop near UCF — over to watch Nagisa Ōshima’s In the Realm of the Senses one weekday afternoon when we were both off work. We thought it would be fun to make blueberry pancakes and mimosas while watching a Criterion Bluray of a movie neither of us had ever seen. Then the non-simulated sex started. Almost immediately we made a joke out of it.
Fast-forward two and a half years, I’ve moved back from living in Austin and Los Angeles, and Alex is my roommate (along with The Pauses’ lead singer, Tierney Tough), and we get chatting: “Maybe it is time to try this Uncomfortable Brunch thing out for real.” So, Sunday, January 5th, 2014, I invited around eight people over for a Sunday morning potluck to watch Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. I truly thought this stupid, gross novelty would burn itself out with my movie-nerd friends within a few months. But instead, within a few months the program was growing too big for my living room.
The DIY roots make it even sweeter. So then on to Will’s Pub for a number of years, correct?
JM: Luckily some friends through Will’s Pub pushed me to chat with Will Walker. His response was amazing: “I am not using the bar on Sundays … buy yourself a screen and projector and you can use the space for free.” Thanks to him, on Sunday, January 4th, 2015 we had a real venue and we used it to show Todd Solondz’s modern classic, Happiness. We built an audience, crafted the series, and generally figured out what exactly the point of our curation was that first year or so.
So that was the pivot point, to the refined curation and then the next phase.
JM: In the 10 years since I’ve started this, something that has become worse is that theaters are unfortunately dying. By that I mean the cinematic experience, the thing we grew up with and have an affinity for. I think there’s value in that — culturally, in a community — to have a bunch of people, hopefully strangers, in a closed place to have an emotional experience. And that can be going and watching Jurassic Park or Dancer in the Dark. I think both have value. Our niche is we show fucked stuff and that’s kind of fun. Not that the movies are funny — sometimes [they are], darkly so — but the fun is in the audience coming to see this kind of content while eating eggs.
Over the time-honored tradition of “brunch.” So out of that audience comes a new collaborator and venue?
JM: Summer 2017 I was kicking around the idea of moving on personally. I didn’t love the idea of giving the series to someone else to run, but Kat Whitacre came to me. I didn’t know her very well, but I knew she had a dog named Taylor Swift and she took off singing in her church choir to watch these fucked-up movies once a month. These pieces of information were enough for me to take a meeting. Kat coming on to program the series the last six years has been the best thing that could have happened. She brings a smart perspective that I never had. Collaborating with her has been very rewarding. In addition to a fruitful collaboration, I now count her as one of the best friends I have ever had.
Kat Whitacre: Josh probably won’t agree because he’s not good at giving himself any ounce of credit. But he really did think up this wonderfully offbeat program that challenges the filmgoer to go back and revisit some important films they may have missed or overlooked. I think Brunch is a unique experience that has evolved over the years, but the mission remains: to expose Orlandoans to socially or culturally important films that make them shift uncomfortably in their seats a bit as they dig into some breakfast tacos. And maybe take a depression nap afterwards.
From the living room to Will’s Pub, a hub for the counterculture and barflies alike, then to the current home, Enzian Theater, which gives Uncomfortable Brunch some valid artistic prestige.
JM: In 2019 it was time to grow again, and programming coordinator for Enzian and Florida Film Festival Tim Anderson came to me with the suggestion that we bring Uncomfortable Brunch to Enzian. September 8th, 2019, we brought Michael Haneke’s Funny Games to a sold-out crowd.
Tim Anderson: What is that old phrase — “in old age, prostitutes and politicians all become respectable”? Well, there is a lot to unpack in that terrible outdated adage. But what I would agree to say is that Brunch has built a stellar reputation over the years for always upending expectations and delivering brilliant films that push buttons in the best way possible.
KW: I think Uncomfortable Brunch brings people out of their comfort zone. We all have these fringe art films that we plan to watch but never quite get around to. … Bringing those culturally important misfits into the public space gives people an opportunity to see these films they always meant to watch, but may have been putting off for years. And they get to watch it in the best place possible: at the Enzian, eating brunch, next to strangers.
TA: I think what Uncomfortable Brunch does is aspirational programming. It has a very specific standard and even though it flexes inside those specifics, it always intends to provoke thought and feeling. To that end, I think it remains unique. I am honestly unaware, outside of this event’s existence, of any other theater in the country that is programming a series [like this]. So, in many ways it stands alone.
Speaking of standing alone, at the 10-year mark you’re screening I Stand Alone by Gaspar Noe. It’s one of the few films to have a “Warning” title card that counts down 30 seconds to give the audience an opportunity to stop and avoid the remainder of the film. And the real treat is how rare it is to get to see this.
JM: Yeah, we really had to pull some strings to get it. It’s his debut feature-length and the most hard to find, and his cult audience really scampers to this when it does screen.
All the more reason to get up a little earlier on Sunday morning. What’s next for Uncomfortable Brunch, post-decade celebration?
KW: The program will be expanding to nine months in 2024 versus the six we had previously. We’ll be able to take some chances when it comes to films that may not bring in as large of an audience, but are important to show nonetheless.
TA: I think there is a certain segment of the film-going public that will always be drawn to darker or more unsettling themes. It’s very easy to meander through life watching nothing but feel-good films. But that ignores that the kind of subject matter most films in this series highlights exist to shine a light on: real-world issues. What is more remarkable as we navigate an ever-changing cultural and political landscape is how perception of these films, content and context, changes with the newer generations of viewers who bring their own lived-in experiences to the films.
With the 1,000 new residents Central Florida gains per week, things like Uncomfortable Brunch will attract the curious and the deep divers, making it all the more necessary. Martin shares a relevant recent anecdote from the Florida Film Festival. During the hustle and bustle, as a few notable filmmakers were expressing their appreciation for the efforts made by the organizers, they mentioned Uncomfortable Brunch, saying that they were impressed with the quality of the selections and talented vision behind them, calling them “a gateway, and not gatekeepers.” Sharing their love for cinema by trying to reach public at large, not snobbishly programming for themselves and their circle of friends.
This is the kind of authentic experience that is so often sought-after and written about. Here’s hoping that in the next 10 years, Uncomfortable Brunch keeps scrambling eggs and minds alike.