‘Burt’ shows you don’t need big bucks or big stars to tell a compelling, hilarious story

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — You are the father!

Synopsis

Burt (Burton Berger) is a single, elderly man with Parkinson’s disease who lives with his roommate and landlord Steve (Steven Levy). One day, a man named Sammy (Oliver Cooper) introduces himself to Burt, claiming to be his son. While surprised, Burt is ecstatic about this news, particularly because Sammy’s mother is a woman he is quite fond of. However, Steve doesn’t trust Sammy, believing he has nefarious intentions.

My thoughts

I love being transported to other worlds when watching a movie. It’s one of the many reasons why I watch them in the first place. Filmmaking is an art form that unlocks the imagination like no other medium, bringing strangers as close as they possibly can be to somebody’s vision. There’s nothing quite like seeing immense technical and artistic craft all come together to completely take you somewhere else.

But real life matters too, and so do the films that explore something we’re all intimately familiar with: ourselves. Fantastical movies have their purpose in transporting us to worlds we would never be able to realistically experience, but sometimes all one needs to tell their story is a few actors and a camera. You may be watching a movie that takes place in a world like our own, but sincere filmmaking can allow you to vividly walk in the shoes of complete strangers.

In the spotlight

From executive producer David Gordon Green, Burt is written and directed by Joe Burke, who co-wrote the script with star Oliver Cooper. It played at the 25th Phoenix Film Festival, winning the festival’s Copper Wing Award for Best Picture. Shot in 7 days on a microscopic $7,000 budget, Burke and Cooper show that money doesn’t always talk when making a movie. If your voice is that strong and you truly believe in what you’re saying, money shouldn’t be an issue. Burt is a film with sparse locations and only a handful of actors, but Burke’s direction, and his and Cooper’s script, take all the advantages they can.

Right off the bat, Burke’s direction is personal and intimate with the opening scene showing Burt singing and playing his guitar in a coffee shop. Burton Berger plays a slightly fictionalized version of himself here, but this is a movie for Burton Berger that’s all about Burton Berger. Burke said when he met Berger and became friends with him, he knew he had to share his story, music, and personality with the entire world.

“I met Burt 15 years ago at a restaurant,” Burke told me after winning the Phoenix Film Festival’s Copper Wing Award for Best Picture. “He was playing music at a restaurant in Malibu, walking table to table with his guitar. Ever since then, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. We’ve become good friends. He told me his life story. We’ve hung out many times over the years and I was just like, I have to make a movie with this guy. I have to make sure this world knows who this person is. He’s special, his music is special, his soul is awesome.”

What we get is a peek into the life of a unique, talented man who has had plenty of struggles, yet he always manages to keep an optimistic attitude through it all. He may be suffering from Parkinson’s or enduring verbal abuse and people trying to take advantage of him, but he always keeps his head held high. His heart is huge, maybe to a fault, but he’s an honest, decent person with strong convictions.

In fact, he’s so honest and comfortably himself that he has the power to change others’ points of view just by being kind to them. This rubs off on Sammy, who Oliver Cooper thoughtfully plays as he has to juggle all sorts of different emotions. He’s conflicted about his relationship with Burt and the certain dilemma that’s made him reach out for contact in the first place. Cooper also has excellent chemistry with Berger, which forms the film’s emotional and comical backbone.

Shades of gray humor

The writing for Burt is consistently hilarious, with dry dialogue and even dryer performances. It’s not just dry, but also quite solemn. It’s all done in an amusing manner, though, such as the running joke of Steve and Burt’s washer-dryer combo taking up space in the living room for months as they wait for a repairman to come take it away. Burke and his cast were able to mine some hysterical bits out of the most mundane scenarios.

Brief, little bits like that were what allowed Burke and Cooper to finely craft characters with depth and realism, all having their little arcs and defining character moments within the span of the succinct 78-minute runtime. You have to love seeing a character just bluntly say to somebody who screwed them over, “I hope you feel bad about this forever and never get over it.” Perhaps a more substantial budget would have allowed them to add even more meat to the bone, but there’s an art to a movie simply getting in, telling its story, and getting out.

Shooting the movie in black and white perfectly complements the somber tone, so much to the point where trying to imagine any of it with vivid color simply doesn’t compute. There may not be a whole lot of action happening on camera, but Burke and cinematographer Daniel Kenji Levin make the shot compositions and lighting simple, yet striking. The camera work and Burke’s editing gets more frantic when the film occasionally gets a bit tense, but the overall comic dryness still remains.

While I enjoyed composer Tim Rutli‘s slow-tempo jazz score, with the sad, droning trumpet accompanying the movie’s mood well, it would have been interesting to have Burt himself score the film with his acoustic guitar playing. However, it seems evident Burke wanted Burt and his music to speak for themselves and not simply be used as background music. When we see and hear Burt playing his music, all the attention is meant to be on him.

Real people, real performances

The cast is what really struck me about Burt. Of the four principal actors, Oliver Cooper and Caitlin Adams (who is also Cooper’s acting coach) have decent-sized resumes, but this is the feature film debut of both Burton Berger and Steven Levy. You wouldn’t know that right away, though, as they’re both phenomenal, each with a strong screen presence. Above all, it was refreshing to have actors here who look and act like regular people without any sort of Hollywood sheen.

Since the actors are basically playing themselves (and I don’t mean that as a negative), they immediately come off as fully developed people with natural on-screen chemistry. Just because you’re acting as yourself doesn’t mean acting is an easy job; however, everybody here has more than it takes to make their characters really feel alive. With their performances being so natural and the direction so subdued, it’s almost as if you’re peering into these people’s lives. I mean, some of this was filmed in Steven Levy’s actual house he’s lived in for decades, so literally are in a way.

Speaking of Steven Levy, I swear I’ve seen him in something else before, but this is his only IMDb credit. It must have been some other actor on my mind, but I still don’t believe it, as Levy’s personality and voice sound so familiar to me. Regardless, his performance was amazing and my favorite of the film. Not only did his cantankerous demeanor crack me up, but he perfectly embodied that vibe of being a surly old man with a heart of gold underneath all the salt. Let’s just say if Burke and Cooper decide to make a movie called Steve, I wouldn’t be complaining.

Burton Berger is the star, though. The movie wouldn’t exist without him, and since Burke was so taken aback by Berger’s personality to make a movie about him, it makes sense that Burke would let Berger be himself. That was the right call, as we may be watching a performance, but it’s one filled with honesty and earnestness. He comes off as one of those guys who’s never met a stranger and is willing to make friends with anybody. It’s pretty much impossible to not instantly fall in love with his personality and admire his passion and outlook on life.

Final verdict

Burt is a terrific micro-budget film that shows you don’t need big bucks or big stars to tell a compelling, hilarious story. Even further, Joe Burke shows how forming unexpected relationships can be life-changing in more ways than one. That applies to Burt and Sammy in the movie, but also to Burton Berger, Joe Burke, and Oliver Cooper in real life. They were able to create art together and bring it all the way to the Phoenix Film Festival to win Best Picture, all because they happened to randomly cross paths.

I know when people say, “Maybe the real treasure is the friends we made along the way,” it’s often in a joking manner, but that honestly applies here. Burton Berger was able to form a friendship with Joe Burke and Oliver Cooper that will last a lifetime, it’s just now their friendship is immortalized on film. No matter what, their bond will always live on.

My rating: 8/10

Burt is currently touring the 2025 film festival circuit, where it recently played at the 25th Phoenix Film Festival. I will keep this review updated with information on how to watch Burt as it approaches an official release.

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