SXSW: Adrien Brody on Finding Home in Stone Barn Castle

Blending his personal life with his creative output, Adrien Brody brought to this years SXSW the documentary feature Stone Barn Castle, co-directed with Kevin Ford. Filmed over nearly a decade, the film follows the Academy Award-winning actor as he buys a dilapidatedproperty in upstate New York with the goal of restoring it to its full glory and, ultimately, finding a place to call home. Check out Brodys thoughts on the film, the painstaking restoration and on his plans for the future!

CS: Tell me about how this project began, both as a restoration and as a documentary.

Adrien Brody: It was a lifetime dream to get a country house and to try and make that home. In the years that finally led up to me acquiring the place, I had experienced a degree of increased awareness of myself and my work. That was a beautiful thing, but I had been working quite a bit so I felt the need to find something that was very honest and real and in touch with nature. I wanted to retreat a bit from Hollywood in a way. To do my work, but to have a place to come home to. I also loved the idea of renovating something that was old and in a state of disrepair. That also obviously made it more affordable. I found it when I was away doing a movie in Belgrade. I found the structure online and fell in love with it. I have many friends who live upstate and my parents used to have a place when I was younger. I went home, bought it and began to rennovate. I thought it would be interesting to chronicle that journey. I brought on a friend of mine who is a fellow filmmaker, Kevin Ford. He has a wonderful, creative eye and similar sensibilities. I think we gravitate towards the same aesthetic and appreciation of a style of storytelling that is both very natural and authentic, like the Maysles. My mother, Sylvia Plachy, was a photographer in New York. She really captures moments as they occur and find the magic. If you missed it, you missed it, you know? It cant be created in a studio setting.

CS: Did you find that magic?

Brody: We got a lot of magic! It was almost a decade of my life. There were a lot of changes in my life. Somehow we managed to find the narrative structure where the Castle is the protagonist and I, perhaps, am the co-lead in the film. We told a story that I think is quite universal, this desire to find home.

CS: What was it about the property that immediately spoke to you?

Brody: It captured a lot the aesthetic qualities that Ive always been attracted to. I love period, turn of the century architecture. It was a barn and, for a long time, I had considered rennovating a barn, because its this big, cavernous creative space. I can paint. I can restore an old car. I can do grand things within that. I also love open living, loft-like spaces. I had been searching barns and spent a lot of time in Europe filming castles. I think that gave me a taste of how beautiful they all are. Those ones are far too remote, though. There are decent deals, still, but you have to be in the most remote part of the world to imagine rennovating something like that. To be a foreigner, too, makes it feel less like home. So I had been looking in the States and then this thing popped up and it was just remarkable.

CS: Were you specifically targeting a property that would require some extra love?

Brody: I guess so, but I wasnt looking for something on that level. Im very much of a dreamer, I guess. Even when I bought the place, my first instinct was to not do a rennovation of the barn structure. Theres a log house on the property and I was going to rennovate that. I lived in that for awhile while I was rennovating the main house. I was fine with that. It was a beautiful little one-bedroom house with a stove. I would get up every morning and light the fire. It was wonderful. I thought perhaps Id just do a superficial rennovation of the main structure to keep it structurally together. I thought it would be a folly. A work of art. I mean, it was built by an engineer who was ahead of his time. There are tunnel structures and lots of other elements that arent really elaborated on in the film but that fascinated me when I went to explore. There used to be a dairy barn, so he devised these underground flues that would extract the foul air from the cows and the manure. Theyd bring it up through these 60 foot chimneys. This thing was fully functioning sending butter and cream to New York City. There was an ice house where they brought these big blocks of ice from the lake. The whole history of it all is just so fantastic. Theres something also about bringing something back to life that took so much love. The family that had lived there before me had spent 30 years trying to rehabilitate it. They built up some of the outer buildings, but they never got to the main place. They didnt have the resources. It was an enormous task. I kind of took over where they left of.

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SXSW: Adrien Brody on Finding Home in Stone Barn Castle