He had agreed to attend the wedding of a co-worker, but the wedding was scheduled for the same day and time as a funeral for a childhood friend. Initially, the film-maker – a landmark chronicler of Black working-class lives – decided he’d go to the funeral. But when he tried to break the news to the co-worker, she was so dejected that he couldn’t go through with it.
He tried asking the bride to change the wedding – which was “ridiculous to think of trying to do”, he says decades later – but that didn’t work either. He decided he’d go to both events. But when the day came, he got trapped at the wedding.
He “suffered through that” and, in the process, missed the funeral. This dilemma is at the heart of My Brother’s Wedding, Burnett’s tragicomic 1983 film. Like Burnett, character Pierce Mundy has committed to going to a wedding when a childhood friend suddenly dies.
Like Burnett, Pierce feels an obligation to be at both places, though the wedding and funeral were scheduled for the same time. Like Burnett, Pierce even, unsuccessfully, tries to change the wedding. If you’re going to be responsible for someone, you have to have a certain amount of maturity.
It means making just decisions, proper decisions in your life.” My Brother’s Wedding was beset with production problems that limited the film’s release. The main actor disappeared from set after demanding more pay (when Burnett tracked the actor down, he had reinvented himself as a pastor). In post-production, a German broadcaster asked Burnett for a finished cut of the film.
He rushed through a rough cut, which the production company accepted as the final cut against his wishes. That longer, unfinished version of the film was shown to mixed reviews at the New Directors/NewFilms festival in New York City in 1983, and was essentially impossible to view for many years. Rather than re-edit the film, I had to make terms with the material I had.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
