Feature

The Brothers Pate

For reasons unknown, this pitch failed. Other potential investors were reluctant to fund a pair of first-time directors. The Pates replied with a gambit used by every currently celebrated young director from Andrew Niccol (Gattaca) to James Mangold (Copland) to M. Night Shyamalan (Wide Awake): They refused to turn over the script without a guaranteed directing credit. Even Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, little known at the time their script for Good Will Hunting was sold, were able to extract starring roles from Miramax. “Prior experience is not a huge concern for us,” says Miramax VP Meryl Poster. “The boys walking into my office every day are very invigorating, very charming, very seductive. I often get seduced.”

Even in this field, Team Pate were prodigies. “We had nothing, no reel, just the script,” says Glatzer. “But we created a buzz. People heard it was a short shoot with a hot script, original and unique, and we pushed and spun and manipulated. Put the twins in a room with someone, and they close the deal. Period.”

Before long, the brothers found themselves on their very first movie set. “The day we got there, we were like, ‘What are all these trucks doing here?’” says Jonas. Today they call The Grave, which went straight to video, “rentable,” but it proved enough of a calling card at Sundance that they got five offers to finance their next script, Liar (later switched to Deceiver post-Jim Carrey), which Jonas dashed off before the festival. “Always got to have one in the chamber,” he says.

Tim Roth came onboard after reading the script and being charmed by its authors. Despite speaking a stoner patois, the Pates were well-read enough to woo Roth with their enthusiasm for Cormac McCarthy -- “totally gnarly, the greatest living writer,” says Jonas -- after whom Roth had named his son. His commitment to the film -- in a showy role as a millionaire epileptic murder suspect -- started a domino effect. The cinematographer Bill Butler (Jaws, Deliverance) soon signed on, as did Ellen Burstyn, Rosanna Arquette, Chris Penn, and Zellweger.

Drawing heavily on the sultry moodiness of Charleston, South Carolina, Deceiver works a very trendy version of nineties neo-noir, with sex, truth, and gore front and center -- and a healthy dose of undergrad existentialism. The movie also offers two different endings. “We wanted an intentionally ambiguous ending, for half the audience to be sad, the other half happy,” chirps Jonas. Vertiginous pans, Ferris-wheel swishes, and 45-degree camera angles (“We were totally into Batman as kids”) reveal an imagination unfettered by a comprehensive cinematic vocabulary.

Not that it matters much for the Pates’ career if Deceiver succeeds in the theaters. Three months ago, Interscope made a deal for their next project, a sci-fi thriller with a budget of $50 million. And a couple of weeks ago, Jonas had a dream in which he saved the world. “So I called Josh, and he’s like, ‘Man, that’s totally a TV show.’” A few days later, Disney bought the dream.