Finding Love in Anti-Romance
Interview with Eric Byler, director of Tre

“Tre” opened in LA on Feb 1, 2008, Chicago on Feb 8, and San Francisco on Feb 15.

Eric Byler graduated from Wesleyan University where his senior thesis film, Kenji's Faith, went on to be selected for the Sundance Film Festival in 1995.  His first feature film, Charlotte Sometimes was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards in 2003.  The film was called "fascinating and illuminating" by film critic Roger Ebert and won numerous festival awards, including the Audience Award at the South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW).

Byler's second feature Tre won a Special Jury Award at the 2007 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.  His third feature AMERICANese won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at SXSW, in addition to a Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Ensemble Cast.

EntToday: Eric, a term that comes up a lot when reviewers write about your films; is "anti-romantic."  Is that a fair characterization?

Eric Byler: Well, yes, but only if I get a chance to clarify—does that sound like a politician?—I don't mean that I'm against romance and I hope that's not what people mean when they say that the films are anti-romantic; but, in the sense that a hero can be an anti-hero—not necessarily because he's the villain but because he has the same flaws, the same doubts, the same challenges that people have in real life and, in that way, is different than the way heroes are depicted typically in movies—then, yes, that's how I approach romance: with all the flaws and the doubts, the pitfalls and the disappointments and not typically the way romance is depicted in movies.

EntToday: Which filmmakers have influenced you in your own cinematic renderings of relationship?

Byler: The goal is to have the influence come from real life and not from movies.  Too many movies are inspired from other movies and that's how the genres become so repetitive and why so many of us are just in-and-out with the studio fare.  But the movies that really made me aware that it was okay to tell the stories that were inspired by life as opposed to other people's movies were films like Carnal Knowledge, Five Easy Pieces, Sex, Lies & Videotape, Midnight Cowboy and The Graduate; films where the relationships are so complex.

When I rediscovered that era of American cinema when American studios were making art films, and the best and most talented directors and actors were collaborating on art films, that was when I said, "I can do that."  The main difference is that I would say I'm influenced by films that were made longer ago than, say, most of the people making films modeled after last year's crop of festival darlings.

EntToday: The films you reference as influential were the films I was watching as a teenager.

Byler: I wouldn't recommend those films for a 15-16 year old and I don't recommend my films to anyone who hasn't had their heart broken.  You need to have been there once to understand Charlotte Sometimes and Tre.  You need to have committed crimes in the arena of love that you're ashamed of and wish you could take back.  Heartbreak is really the only thing that brings people there and—if you notice in both of those films—it's heartbreak that causes the most shameful betrayals.  You could say that in Tre the betrayals allow the characters to escape their cycle of loneliness and disenchantment.  Not that they find anyone, but that they finally break the circuit and are able to grow up.

EntToday: Your films rebel against commodified notions of love, even as your characters accept the daunting task of continuing to look for love.  Since the task is so daunting, who are your films for?  Who is your audience?

Byler: I honestly don't make the movies with that in mind.  The best answer—in terms of when I'm conceiving the film—is me.  I'm making films that I would like to see.

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