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Rubinek's Cube
November 14, 2008

Okay, there’s no such game or movie out there with this name (not to my knowledge, at least), but I can tell you that actor/filmmaker Saul Rubinek wasn’t playing around when he set out in 2005 to make the independent film Cruel But Necessary, which was just released on DVD by Somerville House/Koch.

 

“It’s very satisfying to see that the movie is now very real,” director Rubinek told me at a recent screening of the film at New York’s Tribeca Film Center. “All in, the whole movie came in at under $70,000—it was just a matter of all of us putting our forces together for what was a very personal project.”

 

Written by and starring Wendel Meldrum, follows suburban housewife Betty’s strange, stirring and bordering-on-the-solipsistic years following videotaped revelation of her husband’s infidelity. The break-up of her marriage in such a fashion prompts her to secretly videotape every aspect of her life (and the lives of those around her) as her life enters its bumpiest period. The entire feature-length film is comprised of Betty’s videotaped segments. 
 

“I wanted the director to be invisible for this film,” Rubinek said. “I wanted to make it feel like it’s not scripted or improvised, particularly with the one-camera set-ups. And for that, I also needed professional actors.”

 

As Rubinek is best known as an actor (some of his more memorable supporting turns were in such films Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, Tony Scott’s True Romance and Taylor Hackford’s Against All Odds), so it’s no surprise he would stress the importance of his performers, particularly in a film that, though scripted, occasionally has an improvisatory feel.

 

“You need actors—I’m not saying anything about famous actors, but trained actors,” Rubinek said. “Experienced filmmakers know what real actors can bring to the table—it’s immeasurable.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on November 14, 2008 | Comments (0)