The Russo brothers are huge Hollywood directors and responsible for one of the highest-grossing movies of all time in Avengers: Endgame. What a lot of people don’t know is their first movie was an indie about a fake wig shop called Pieces. A word from a famous Hollywood director changed the course of their careers.
The duo made Pieces when they were in college and broke. The film cost $30,000 to make, most of which was put on credit cards. They also used incredibly expensive music that would’ve cost millions to license, according to Slashfilm.
The movie was only shown at the Slamdance Film School and never got a wide release. However, there was one person with some Hollywood heft that did see it: director Steven Soderbergh. Anthony Russo said Soderbergh was the only one who reached out about the film.
“We made our first movie, a small little credit card movie, that went to the Slamdance Film Festival, and Steven Soderbergh saw our movie there. Nobody else responded to that movie. Nobody. Nobody but Steven did.”
“For some reason, he saw something in it he found creatively exciting and reached out to us, offered to help us make another movie. Our whole road forward, literally, manifested itself at that moment. Literally, no one else was interested. We think it’s amazing opportunity and responsibility to provide that for other people [as producers].”
While that was a huge thrill, Soderbergh’s other comments to the brothers were a bit more sobering, according to Variety. They were expecting the famous director to tell them to continue to follow their own unique path, but that wasn’t the case.
Instead, he told them that if they kept making movies like Pieces they would “never make another movie.” The Brothers said that “was devastating to hear.” But once they got over the initial shock, the brothers realized Soderbergh was right.
If they wanted to have successful careers in Hollywood they were going to have to make things that appealed to the public and not necessarily just do whatever they wanted. So they listened to the director’s advice and did a movie with George Clooney called Welcome to Collinwood, produced by Soderbergh.
The next big break came when they were offered the pilot to Arrested Development. After that – 34 episodes of Community, which caught the attention of Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. The rest is history.
Without Soderbergh not only seeing something special in the movie Pieces but also having the wherewithal to shoot straight with the brothers, there might not even be an Endgame, at least not the way it is now.
And when it comes to Pieces, the brothers said they do want to release it eventually but they want to improve on it first.