Ari and Ethan Gold Put Their Lives on the Line for Their “One-Shot Musical Odyssey” ‘Brother Verses Brother’

Pushing boundaries and creating something wholly unique is always difficult to do, but the Gold Brothers, Ari and Ethan Gold, manage to achieve this in their insightful, self-referential film, Brother Verses Brother. Inspired by Francis Coppola‘s Live Cinema, the film follows two brothers on a foggy evening in San Francisco who are searching for their father as darkness encroaches on them—this is all done through one shot, filled with music and emotions.

They both star as the two leading combative brothers, one who pursues love and excitement while the other wants to dissolve into his music, but Ari Gold also stands in as the director while Ethan Gold writes and composes the music and score. They are also joined by Lara Louise, Brian Bell, Tongo Eisen-Martin (current poet laureate of San Francisco), John Flanigan, and even their real father, Herbert Gold. Featuring multiple debut performances and touching on the roots of Beat poetry in San Francisco, the city becomes the perfect backdrop to the throes of brotherhood, family, and music.

Premiering at South by Southwest (SXSW) 2025, Brother Verses Brother‘s Ari and Ethan Gold, Louise, and Bell sat with Steve Weintraub at Collider’s Media Studio at the Cinema Center in Austin. They talk about the quirks of creating a one-shot film, like nearly being hit by oncoming traffic, including injuries in the story, treating the camera as a character, and capturing the natural atmosphere of a “controlled real life” in San Francisco’s bars. Music is also an instrumental aspect to the story, and Ethan Gold reveals his inspirations for his score. You can hear about the experience of creating a “musical odyssey” straight from the cast and crew in the video above, or you can also follow along via the transcript below.

‘Brother Verses Brother’ Is A “One-Shot Musical Odyssey”

“This movie was done as an improvised, one-shot experience for the audience.”

COLLIDER: No one watching this will have seen the movie yet. So, what do you want to tell people about it?

ARI GOLD: Brother Versus Brother is a one-shot musical odyssey about twin brothers, and we play these brothers, my brother and I. My brother there. My twin brother Ethan and I play dueling musical twins who have an agenda to maybe get a gig, maybe find love in the streets of San Francisco while our father, who is possibly dying, has gone missing.

He is going like this while you’re talking.

ARI GOLD: Oh, he is telling me to shut up?

No, no, no (Laughs). He’s just having fun.

ARI GOLD: We’re doing our Gallagher brothers’ routine. We got in a fight yesterday. Actually, it’s the first time you almost punched me.

Wait, is this true?

ETHAN GOLD: I told him that next time, he was going to get it in the face.

ARI GOLD: Well, Brother Verses Brother is a pun. It’s the combat of brothers and siblings and people who love each other. It’s also the word verses, as in poetry verses and musical verses. This movie was done as an improvised, one-shot experience for the audience in the sense that the movie starts, there are no cuts, and you travel with us through the streets of San Francisco where we encounter Louise, AKA Lara Louise, and Brian and the poet laureate of San Francisco. We did this all in real life in the real city. But it’s not a documentary; it’s a performance in the real world.

‘Brother Verses Brother’ Creates “Controlled Real Life” in San Francisco Bars

“The camera operator has to dance and act with us.”

I have so many questions because I really want to know: what day of the week did you shoot this? What time of the day?

ARI GOLD: (Laughs) It was late afternoon. We wanted to start with a foggy San Francisco day: those days where you have a mix of fog and sun, and then, as night falls, it becomes romantic. As darkness comes and our father is still missing, the darkness and fear about his loss takes over. It takes place at a beautiful time between, let’s say, 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

People are going to watch this and wonder how many are things set up in the bar and other places that you go to. How much is everyone in those establishments aware of what’s happening? How much is it this is really happening?

ARI GOLD: I would say in terms of the street, the street was 100% real. We weren’t scheduling cars to go by, we weren’t blocking traffic, we were just shooting in the street. The bars were a mix, so some people were with us and were aware of the camera. Other people just walked into the bar and if we got the chance to, we’d say, “Hey, there’s a camera on, please don’t look at it.” It’s a mix. One of the bars was fully unaware of what we were about to do. It’s real life. It’s controlled real life.

Each scene had a very clear structure between us that we all understood, and between the camera operator, who I saw as one of the actors in the sense that that’s a character that’s moving through the scene. When you do something without cuts, you can’t have a close-up. You can’t have a wide shot. You can’t cut to somebody holding a pencil. You just have that one thing, so the camera operator has to dance and act with us and create that close-up or move away from us based on what emotionally is happening in the scene. All that was planned as well as we could, but then reality creates a different experience.

Ari Gold and Lara Louise Nearly Get Hit By a Car During Filming

“I think it looks as real as it was.”

One of you almost gets hit by a car in the movie.

LARA LOUISE: It’s us. (Laughs) That was very real, by the way.

That’s what I wanted to know. I’m watching that, and I’m like, “Oh shit, they almost got hit by a car filming this!” How close was that?

ARI GOLD: If you watch it frame by frame, the car was aware of us. We ran into traffic. I dragged her into traffic, I have to confess, but it created a nice moment. It was scripted, and I wanted to do that. I didn’t want to put my co-star at risk, but it worked nicely because it was real. Then the camera knew to go back to Ethan, and Ethan has a real reaction.

ETHAN GOLD: I wouldn’t run into the street.

It’s clear because it was a very good moment in the movie, and then the way the camera goes to you, I was like, “Oh, I don’t know how they’re doing this.”

ARI GOLD: I wanted to plan the run for when a car was coming and ran, just as I saw the car coming, towards the car. In reality, the camera is in a position where we weren’t going to get hit. We weren’t in the car’s lane, but the camera is behind us, so it looks maybe more dangerous than it felt.

LOUISE: I’m not so sure about that. I think it looks as real as it was.

I will say that it plays very well, and it is surprising.

Filming ‘Brother Verses Brother’ Felt Natural For Brian Bell

“We’re playing versions of ourselves.”

For both of you, what is it like being asked to be in something like this? Talk a little bit about the responsibility when you’re trying to do everything in one take and make it as real as it can be, but also about the experience of making this.

BRIAN BELL: I don’t want to say it was easy, but it kind of was easy because Ari made the atmosphere very relaxed, and it felt very real. It was real people of San Francisco, and you couldn’t cast better San Francisco people than they were in this bar at that time. I felt like I was in San Francisco because I was in San Francisco. Ari just guided me through it, and it was improv. He gave me the idea. I kind of knew what it was, the story between him and his brother and their dad and this brother trying to find work and gigs and all this stuff.

It was super easy to talk to her. She was super natural. There was no acting really, because everyone was just so confident in their own bodies and in their own abilities, because maybe there wasn’t this huge camera crew and setups and breaking for the right perfect lighting—none of that mattered. What mattered was the moment of capturing the truth and I like to think that we did that. I like to think that we did that.

There’s a moment where Ari pulls Lara away from me. I’m trying to pick her up, so to speak, just chat her up. I’m doing a good job, I think, then he comes and just steals her from me, and my initial reaction is to be upset, but he had me play against that, where that’s not natural to me, but it actually was very good for the moment for my character of, like, “I don’t care. Let’s just brush it off. It’s just another girl.” That kind of thing. I would very much care, and I would get hurt. I was deeply hurt. It’s my favorite part of the movie, and it’s not just because I’m in it. I just think that the whole scene is so magical when they go to the bathroom and have an emotional moment between the two of them, and the song they play is just freaking hysterical. You can’t help but be in a good mood hearing it. It’s just one of those moments.

LOUISE: I think it really helps that we’re all playing versions of ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have a lot of experience or any experience at all when it comes to acting, but because we’re versions of ourselves, that really helped guide it. I think it went well.

Ethan Gold’s Score Was Inspired By His Father’s Beatnik Lineage

“That element makes it a kind of multi-generational story.”

Ethan, talk a little bit about the music and writing the music. Which songs went where? How much is that a collaboration, how much is that you figuring that stuff out? Because music’s obviously a huge part of this movie.

ETHAN GOLD: I would say it was a collaboration certainly, and there were some songs that were things that we, as the Brothers Gold, would do in the early part of the film. This idea of us playing together was something that shows up in the early part, and then, as the film goes on, it centers a little bit more on my kind of tortured artist character that I’m doing in real life a little bit, but also definitely in the film. We debated it hard.

There’s a key song that shows up at the end, and that was something we went round and around. There were like seven or eight different songs, some that I presented that I really pushed for. We ended up at a song that becomes kind of the theme of the film called “Brothers Keep Going Anyway,” which touches on the theme. The lyrics change in different iterations of where it shows up to reflect where things are in terms of our relationship. Ultimately, for me, the film Brother Verses Brother is about separating from family, actually. So, the song was a reflection of that. Then there was a score, which we talked about a lot as well, but I took elements of the song and really pulled them out and turned it into a very lightly referring to a free-jazz, broken-apart sort of piano statement. It became a very simple underscore that I think tied to the neighborhood for me.

ARI GOLD: You brought in some other elements. He brought in harpsichord and melodica because in North Beach, San Francisco, there’s a heritage of the Beatnik generation that our father was part of, and he really helped bring in that sense of the writers who studied in Paris and got drunk in Paris. Then some of them moved to San Francisco. That tone comes through in his score, that you feel a little bit of Paris and a little bit of New York and that element makes it a kind of multi-generational story. You’re not just seeing the buildings that were the places where Kerouac and Ginsburg used to drink, but you’re feeling that Beatnik lineage through the subtle musical cues that are born out of his songs, but then populated through different instruments.

BELL: I’d like to say something about the soundscape, just being there live. Ethan just created this incredible atmosphere with his piano. Then, watching the movie, how the camera comes in and out of conversation, too. That’s part of the score, as well—the conversation—in my opinion. None of that was in post, right? It’s pretty much that’s what it was.

ARI GOLD: Well, it was a lot of postwork in terms of mixing, and I looked at some of my favorite movies, like Robert Altman’s Nashville does that a lot. So, we’ll have multiple conversations and music going on at once, and they’ve recorded it all, but then in post, you’re deciding. When you and Lara are talking at the bar, there is a really intense song called “The Fogman” that Ethan’s playing. At the beginning, it’s with him, and then it goes to me, and then it goes to you. During the “you guys” section, he kind of drifts away because you guys are talking to each other, but then I come back, and I’m trying to get you to listen to his music, and then the music sort of follows me.

BELL: And that’s probably why it feels natural is because we were actually catching moments of a conversation already in progress. There was already the life before and then continued after, so there was never, like, “Okay, action, now you’re on.” It just caught us in moments and that felt very free and right for this.

‘Brother Verses Brother’ Featured Multiple Debut Performances

“Happy Birthday, Dad.”

One of the parts of the movie is you guys are walking up a huge hill, and then you’re completely out of breath, and you still have to talk and perform and all that. How conscious were you of that when you were filming that?

ARI GOLD: I hurt my ankle during the shoot, and by the end of the film, I’m limping. I mentioned it to my brother on the last hill, and it became part of the story.

ETHAN GOLD: We worked with that; I ended up pushing him.

ARI GOLD: Lara plays shows in this neighborhood. She’s constantly having to carry her guitar up and down that specific famous set of steps, and so we used it.

My last thing, your dad had an apartment in Russian Hill area for 60 years.

ARI GOLD: Rent controlled.

Was his rent at the end, like, $5?

ARI GOLD: It was something like $582.12 because San Francisco had a law that was grandfathered in that they could only put a certain amount of rent raised per year.

The camera goes all the way into the apartment. I’m like, “Oh my god, he’s been there for 60 years.” This is your dad’s essentially last work. I know there are some poems or there’s something else, but last on screen.

ARI GOLD: Well, it’s our father’s birthday today, March 9th, so Happy Birthday, Dad. And it was his first acting role. Brian’s a really great actor who’s been studying the craft. Lara is a great performer as a singer, but this is her first time acting. But my dad, I have to say, I didn’t know because he’s not a singer, he’s not a musician, not a performer. He’s always presented his short stories and would read and would teach, but I didn’t know if he was going to be able to act when the camera was floating into his place, and he’s incredible. I feel very lucky that we were able to get his debut performance on film.

Special thanks to our 2025 partners at SXSW, including presenting partner Rendezvous Films and supporting partners Bloom, Peroni, Hendrick’s Gin, and Roxstar Entertainment.

Brother Verses Brother

Release Date

March 8, 2025

Runtime

91 minutes

Director

Ari Gold

Writers

Ari Gold

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  Tongo Eisen-Martin

  Tongo Eisen-Martin