Mark Webber has built a career beyond the confines of Hollywood. His formative years, during which the actor, writer and director grew up in what he calls “extreme poverty” and sometimes squatted in cars and abandoned buildings, fostered in Webber an independent spirit that resides throughout his work. Now, he’s made a semi-autobiographical movie that dramatizes the familial struggles he has spent his life processing.
Webber, who recently appeared in “Green Room,” “Laggies” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” poured his own story into “Flesh and Blood,” his fourth directorial endeavor in less than a decade. HuffPost has the exclusive trailer, which follows one man (Webber) working to stay sober and piece together a future. Meanwhile, he’s repairing an uneasy relationship with his mother (Cheri Honkala, Webber’s real mom, who ran as vice president under Jill Stein in 2012) and preparing to meet his estranged father for the first time in more than 30 years. “Flesh and Blood” blends qualities of narrative features and documentary filmmaking to create something wholly personal.
“It’s the journey I’ve been on as a director over the years,” Webber told HuffPost by email. “The second film I made was a movie called ‘The End of Love,’ about a father and son dealing with loss, and I made it with my real son Isaac when he was just 2 years old. I’ve always been fascinated with how to achieve realism in film, and I wanted to make a film about family in a way that hadn’t been done before. The process is definitely therapeutic and cathartic, but overall challenging, and I like to push myself. In the sea of independent films, I wanted to make something unique, something that feels different.”
“Flesh and Blood” premiered to strong reviews at South by Southwest earlier this year. It opens Oct. 27 in Los Angeles and Nov. 10 in New York.
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