In Pratfall — Alex Andre’s offbeat, slice-of-life, New York City-set tale of modern woe — two listless strangers (played by Joshua Burge and Chloé Groussard) spend the day wandering the streets bickering about life, love and everything in between. It’s a curious little oddity (shot with a tense, ADD energy and tough to love at times) but anchored by two fully committed lead performances and a palpable sense of place, thanks to the writer-director’s guerrilla-style filmmaking techniques. 

I caught up with Burge following Pratfall’s impressive showing at the 2024 Manchester Film Festival to discuss his purposely irritating lead character, the pros and cons of filming in a bustling city like New York and what he hopes viewers will take away from the indie movie.

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Joey Keogh: The first thing I want to ask, just right off the bat, is what attracted you to this project? It’s a little bit of a weird one!

Joshua Burge: Sure, sure! The director and writer, Alex [Andre], he got a hold of me somehow, and he sent me a little bundle, if you will — a little package of stuff — and one of them was the first page of the treatment, which was the story of these two characters in New York, just written out in a few paragraphs on one or two pages. And then he sent me his short film that he done, called Sada, which he had shot a year or two earlier. I watched that and it was brilliant, and I saw how Paris was kind of the third character in the film, similar to how there are two characters walking through Paris, and Paris very much acts as the third character. So, then I re-read the treatment he’d sent me, and I could see how New York was also intended to be the third character. These types of films that were done in the 60s and 70s were always very appealing to me, and [Alex] also remarked in his message that he’s a fan of [John] Cassavetes, the Dardenne Brothers and all these types of people, and I just thought “well, that’s fantastic” — I never thought that I’d get the chance to work on a film like this… this is amazing. And he also sent me a screen test with Chloé [Groussard], the other actor in the film, the lead, and she was absolutely brilliant in the screen test. And I just really liked this group of people. [Chloé] was also in Sada, so I was familiar with her performance from that, and it was just a very exciting, very appealing adventure to go on. 

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JK: How did you approach getting into this character’s headspace for Pratfall? Did you come up with a backstory for him?

JB: Some of that was very much in the treatment, such as him losing his girlfriend, Tina. So, that was well established. And then otherwise I just talked with Alex, and he had the idea that [Eli] would be at sort of a very misanthropic moment in his life, so that was a lot of the character development right there. And then, just the concept of him doing these routines of just walking around New York — that’s how he’s dealing with either grief or just his general mistrust of and anger with society. So, that was just a ton; there was a wealth of information right there, and that all came from Alex. So, once I knew that, we could determine where to go as far his headspace after that. 

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JK: Do you consider Eli to be a likable character? I feel like there are definitely going to be people who find him intensely irritating.

JB: I think most people will, and rightfully so! I, for one, wouldn’t want to spend time with him, but that’s part of the film, and the [point] is that this other person, Joelle, finds some sort of strange beauty or connection in him. And throughout the film, it begins to melt away somewhat at least, so I think there’s a lesson in there, perhaps that even [with] the most horrendous, vile, relentless human beings, there’s probably something else going on there beyond the surface.  

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JK: Do you feel like there’s a throughline with these Pratfall characters — something that connects all of them? 

JB: I think the need for human connection. That’s something that Alex felt strongly about, and I feel strongly about, and Chloé felt very strongly about. That’s something that the three of us really talked about a great deal, and having a city like New York be the third character overseeing all of this was that need for human connection on some level, whether it’s being a complete stranger in the city like Joelle or having lost the human who’s most important to you in the world like Eli had. So, it was that need, that necessity, that brought them together. 

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JK: Why do you think we always go back to New York for these kind of slice-of-life stories? 

JB: Being from the United States, it is a symbol of enterprise, it’s a symbol of humanity, it’s a symbol of the entire world coming to the country. And, bias or not, in the United States, New York is just the hub that was the entry port for immigrants and people from all over the world — from all social classes, all religions — and it’s just the mecca of certainly 20th century America. [As for] 21st century America, [New York] still looks like it’s on top, [but] there’s still 35 years left in this century. But it’s always captured my imagination, and I’m assuming that on some level that’s probably the same for other people too.

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JK: Certainly. As someone living in Europe, it definitely does. Absolutely. 

JB: It’s just an amazing place. The first time I ever went was when I was, I think, 19, 20 years old maybe, and I didn’t bring anything with me. I just didn’t even really believe it existed. I had never been there before, but it had been in so much literature, music, film throughout my life that I just had to go see that it actually existed, if that makes any sense? It’s weird. I had no ambition or attempt to want to do anything other than to see for myself that it was actually real. It was just so mythical in my mind growing up in the Midwest, in Michigan.  

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JK: On a similar note, what are the challenges for you working on a movie like this that’s shot almost guerrilla-style — or it certainly looks like it was anyway. You’re interacting with what look like regular people on the street, so what are the challenges for you as an actor working in that environment? 

JB: You have to shut a lot of it off because you don’t want to be self-conscious in your performance at all. Luckily, in a city like New York, everyone is doing wild things all the time, so no one really cares. So, in a lot of ways, it’s really easy to get away with, whereas in a smaller town, perhaps, where it’s not so common for people to have their cameras out or their musical instruments out or whatever, that would turn heads more. That’s the kind of the benefit of being in a city like New York — nobody gave us a second glance. But yes, there are real things happening in this environment. We didn’t disrupt the city at all. So, if you hear people in the background, that’s there — it’s diegetic and it’s there. We tried to embrace it all as much as possible because that’s kind of the feel and the vibe that we wanted. Hopefully, it does feel very lived in and the city feels very real and authentic because that was it — it was run-and-gun, no doubt about it. You nailed it with the “guerrilla-style.”

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JK: It absolutely does feel that way. I liked that when it was noisy, you guys leaned into it. They didn’t get you to do the scene again — it was just part of it. 

JB: Right. If some things were too disruptive, of course we would do another take, but there were some parts where it just worked out so brilliantly. Oh my gosh, we just did a screening in Manchester and I still just couldn’t believe that — even after six or seven... however many… half a dozen times I’ve seen the film — there’s a scene towards the end when [Joelle] brings a shell out of her bag, a seashell, and [Eli] says, “Put it up to your ear, you can hear the ocean.” Then, she hands it back to him, he puts it up to his ear and there’s this cacophony of street noise, just banging and clanging away, and that all just coincidentally did happen at that moment. We didn’t put that in the movie — that all just happened right when I put it up to my ear. In the edit, Alex saw that, and he couldn’t believe it, so we just left it in. To me, it’s just one of the most hilarious, sort of unpredictable, rewarding moments of shooting a film that way. 

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JK: What do you hope people take away from Pratfall? 

JB: The importance of human connection, even in the midst of anger, hostility and pain. I feel like even in the darkest, most misanthropic moments in life, you can still change and find beauty, and there’s conflict and there’s still horror involved in that, and the lack of perfection. Sometimes we seek picturesque, idealist results and outcomes and they’re not there. And that’s life. So, I hope people take away a little bit of that. Also, just enjoy the people that you’re with and the moment you’re with them. 

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JK: Don’t take anything for granted. Even the bad stuff. 

JB: Absolutely. 

Pratfall screens Friday, April 26 at Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles. The film will be available on all major VOD platforms (including Apple TV) the same day via Freestyle Digital Media. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Joey Keogh (@JoeyLDG) is a writer from Dublin, Ireland with an unhealthy appetite for horror movies and Judge Judy. In stark contrast with every other Irish person ever, she’s straight edge. Hello to Jason Isaacs.

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