The Astronaut Farmer

The Polish Brothers are two filmmakers named Mark Polish and Michael Polish. They began their film career with the 1999 Sundance debut of their first feature, Twin Falls Idaho. The identical twin siblings wrote, directed and starred in the tale of conjoined twins. Sony Pictures Classics bought the rights for theatrical distribution of the film, which Janet Maslin of The New York Times said had “style, gravity and originality to spare.”

In 2000, the Polish Brothers followed up Twin Falls with Jackpot. The story of a deluded karaoke singer (Jonathan Gries) on a tour of American dive-bars. It won the 2001 Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award and the 2001 Seattle International Film Festival New American Cinema Award. The film was distributed theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics.

In 2002, the brothers were offered the opportunity to make a mainstream film. Instead, they began to put together the independent film Northfork. When financing collapsed days before principal photography, the filmmakers signed their house to creditors, and paid for their movie with personal credit cards. Starring James Woods and Nick Nolte, Northfork was chosen as an early selection by the Sundance Film Festival, and when the movie premiered at Sundance in 2003, Roger Ebert called it “a masterpiece.”

In 2005, the Polish Brothers, along with producing partner Jonathan Sheldon wrote and released The Declaration of Independent Filmmaking. The book, a how-to guide for first-time, do-it-yourself filmmakers, follows the filmmaking process and gives firsthand accounts of the Polish Brothers’ travails in making their films. The Library Journal said the Polish Brothers “write in a way that illuminates the details more clearly than most technical scribes.”

In 2006, the brothers would team with Warner Independent for their fourth film, The Astronaut Farmer. The Astronaut Farmer is about a former NASA astronaut, Charles Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton), who has been obsessively building a rocket in his barn. Warner Bros. released it wide throughout North America in 2007.

Recently, the brothers shot two films back-to-back, just days apart while launching their new production company, Prohibition Pictures along with partners Ken Johnson, Janet DuBois, and Jonathan Sheldon. —Wikipedia