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Bubble (film)
Encyclopedia
Bubble is a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh
. It was shot on high-definition video
and was made for a relatively small budget of $1.6 million. It also featured some unusual production aspects.
In traditional terms, the movie has no script
. All lines were improvised according to an outline written by screenwriter
Coleman Hough, who previously teamed with Soderbergh on Full Frontal
. Bubble was also shot and edited by Soderbergh under the pseudonym
s Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard (taken from his father's given name
s and his mother's maiden name
) respectively.
The film utilizes non-professional actors recruited from the Parkersburg, West Virginia
/ Belpre, Ohio
area where the film was shot. Lead Debbie Doebereiner was found working the drive-through
window in a Parkersburg KFC
, for example.
Bubble was released simultaneously in movie theaters and on the cable/satellite TV network HDNet Movies
on January 27, 2006. The DVD
was released a few days later on January 31.
It was nominated for Best Director for Steven Soderbergh at the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards
.
Bubble is the first of six films Soderbergh plans to shoot and release in the same manner.
The score for the movie was composed by Ohio
native Robert Pollard
.
The movie is about three people living along the Ohio River
who are just barely able to make ends meet. The first character is Martha (Debbie Doebereiner), a portly middle-aged woman getting ready for work and taking care of her elderly father. On the way to work at the doll factory she picks up her co-worker, Kyle (Dustin James Ashley). He is probably Martha's only friend as she has to spend most of her time working and taking care of her father. Kyle is a tall, young man who is intensely shy and very quiet, although he does open up to Martha. In order to meet demand, the doll factory hires another worker, Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins), an attractive single mother.
Martha appears to dislike Rose from the beginning, perhaps feeling threatened by Kyle staring at Rose. We learn that Rose has a two-year old daughter and that she used to work in a nursing home
. Rose further irritates Martha when she asks Martha for a ride to her second job. We learn later that Martha found Rose "pushy" from the beginning.
Rose asks Martha if she would like to make a little extra money, as Rose has a date and will need a baby-sitter
. Martha accepts but frames her response as if she is doing Rose the favor. It is not until Kyle arrives to pick Rose up that Martha learns the identity of Rose's date. Martha later confesses to Rose that this surprise made her feel like an idiot.
On the date we learn that both Kyle and Rose dropped out of high school, Kyle because he has social anxiety disorder
and Rose because she wanted to rebel. Later in the date, at Kyle's house, Rose sifts through his drawers and steals some cash while Kyle is grabbing a couple of beers to drink. When Kyle drops Rose off at home, he refuses to go back inside because he felt a "weird vibe" from Martha earlier.
As soon as Rose enters her house, her ex-boyfriend (who is also the father of her child) barges in and accuses her of stealing money from his house. They get in a shouting match and he eventually leaves. Martha was sitting on the couch while they argued and after he leaves she asks Rose if that was her daughter's father. Rose angrily tells her to mind her own business.
The next morning the cops are at Rose's house and say that the neighbors found her dead with her baby crying. There is no sign of forced entry and it is apparently a murder because there are strangulation bruises on her neck. A detective
questions Rose's ex-boyfriend and Kyle, both claiming to know nothing about the murder. During this time, Martha is pawning
some of her family jewelry in order to afford some fishing equipment as a gift for Kyle. When she arrives at Kyle's house to give him the gift, she learns of Rose's murder. She is also surprised and claims to know nothing. Eventually the detective talks to her and she relates the same thing.
During a follow-up interrogation the detective informs Martha that the fingerprints found around Rose's neck are indeed Martha's. The detective tells her to confess, as there is no doubt as to the murderer's identity. Martha maintains her innocence. As the story progresses, the detective visits Martha's father who is in the care of someone else (revealed in the credits to be Martha's niece). The detective informs Martha's shocked father of her arrest.
Kyle visits Martha in prison. As they sit with a glass wall between them, conversing on telephones, Martha pleads with Kyle to help her. She swears that she doesn't know what happened and that she did not murder Rose. Kyle appears wary of Martha and what has occurred. Later on, while in her jail cell, she sees herself in a vision standing over Rose's dead body as she mutters to herself "Oh my God."
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
. It was shot on high-definition video
High-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
and was made for a relatively small budget of $1.6 million. It also featured some unusual production aspects.
In traditional terms, the movie has no script
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
. All lines were improvised according to an outline written by screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
Coleman Hough, who previously teamed with Soderbergh on Full Frontal
Full Frontal (film)
Full Frontal is a 2002 film by Steven Soderbergh, about a day in the life of people in Hollywood. The film, starring Catherine Keener, David Duchovny, Julia Roberts, Mary McCormack and David Hyde Pierce was shot on digital video in under a month using the Canon XL-1s...
. Bubble was also shot and edited by Soderbergh under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
s Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard (taken from his father's given name
Given name
A given name, in Western contexts often referred to as a first name, is a personal name that specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially in a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name...
s and his mother's maiden name
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
) respectively.
The film utilizes non-professional actors recruited from the Parkersburg, West Virginia
Parkersburg, West Virginia
As of the census of 2000, there were 33,099 people, 14,467 households, and 8,767 families residing in the city. In 2006 the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that Parkersburg's population had decreased 4.4% to 31,755. The population density was 2,800.5 people per square mile . There were 16,100 housing...
/ Belpre, Ohio
Belpre, Ohio
Belpre is a city in Washington County, Ohio, United States, along the Ohio River. It is part of the Parkersburg-Marietta-Vienna, WV-OH Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 6,441 at the 2010 census....
area where the film was shot. Lead Debbie Doebereiner was found working the drive-through
Drive-through
A drive-through, or drive-thru, is a type of service provided by a business that allows customers to purchase products without leaving their cars. The format was first pioneered in the United States in the 1930s but has since spread to other countries. The first recorded use of a bank using a drive...
window in a Parkersburg KFC
KFC
KFC, founded and also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, is a chain of fast food restaurants based in Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States. KFC has been a brand and operating segment, termed a concept of Yum! Brands since 1997 when that company was spun off from PepsiCo as Tricon Global...
, for example.
Bubble was released simultaneously in movie theaters and on the cable/satellite TV network HDNet Movies
HDNet Movies
HDNet Movies is a high definition-only cable and satellite television channel dedicated entirely to movies. It is the sister channel of HDNet. Films shown vary in age and category, but all were either transferred from 35mm film to 1080i high definition or shot in the latter format. Many films...
on January 27, 2006. The DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
was released a few days later on January 31.
It was nominated for Best Director for Steven Soderbergh at the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards
Independent Spirit Awards
The Independent Spirit Awards , founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass pyramids containing suspended shoestrings representing the paltry budgets of independent films. In 1986, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit...
.
Bubble is the first of six films Soderbergh plans to shoot and release in the same manner.
The score for the movie was composed by Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
native Robert Pollard
Robert Pollard
Robert Pollard is an American rock musician and singer-songwriter who is the leader and creative force behind indie rock group Guided by Voices, who disbanded in 2004, only to reform in 2010...
.
Plot
According to an Inc. Magazine article in January 2006, the film is a thriller that revolves around the murder of a young single mother who works at the "Lee Middelton" doll factory.The movie is about three people living along the Ohio River
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
who are just barely able to make ends meet. The first character is Martha (Debbie Doebereiner), a portly middle-aged woman getting ready for work and taking care of her elderly father. On the way to work at the doll factory she picks up her co-worker, Kyle (Dustin James Ashley). He is probably Martha's only friend as she has to spend most of her time working and taking care of her father. Kyle is a tall, young man who is intensely shy and very quiet, although he does open up to Martha. In order to meet demand, the doll factory hires another worker, Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins), an attractive single mother.
Martha appears to dislike Rose from the beginning, perhaps feeling threatened by Kyle staring at Rose. We learn that Rose has a two-year old daughter and that she used to work in a nursing home
Nursing home
A nursing home, convalescent home, skilled nursing unit , care home, rest home, or old people's home provides a type of care of residents: it is a place of residence for people who require constant nursing care and have significant deficiencies with activities of daily living...
. Rose further irritates Martha when she asks Martha for a ride to her second job. We learn later that Martha found Rose "pushy" from the beginning.
Rose asks Martha if she would like to make a little extra money, as Rose has a date and will need a baby-sitter
Babysitting
Babysitting is the practice of temporarily caring for a child on behalf of the child's parents. Babysitting is commonly performed as an odd job by teenagers for extra money.-General:...
. Martha accepts but frames her response as if she is doing Rose the favor. It is not until Kyle arrives to pick Rose up that Martha learns the identity of Rose's date. Martha later confesses to Rose that this surprise made her feel like an idiot.
On the date we learn that both Kyle and Rose dropped out of high school, Kyle because he has social anxiety disorder
Social anxiety disorder
Social anxiety disorder , also known as social phobia, is an anxiety disorder characterized by intense fear in social situations causing considerable distress and impaired ability to function in at least some parts of daily life...
and Rose because she wanted to rebel. Later in the date, at Kyle's house, Rose sifts through his drawers and steals some cash while Kyle is grabbing a couple of beers to drink. When Kyle drops Rose off at home, he refuses to go back inside because he felt a "weird vibe" from Martha earlier.
As soon as Rose enters her house, her ex-boyfriend (who is also the father of her child) barges in and accuses her of stealing money from his house. They get in a shouting match and he eventually leaves. Martha was sitting on the couch while they argued and after he leaves she asks Rose if that was her daughter's father. Rose angrily tells her to mind her own business.
The next morning the cops are at Rose's house and say that the neighbors found her dead with her baby crying. There is no sign of forced entry and it is apparently a murder because there are strangulation bruises on her neck. A detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
questions Rose's ex-boyfriend and Kyle, both claiming to know nothing about the murder. During this time, Martha is pawning
Pawnbroker
A pawnbroker is an individual or business that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral...
some of her family jewelry in order to afford some fishing equipment as a gift for Kyle. When she arrives at Kyle's house to give him the gift, she learns of Rose's murder. She is also surprised and claims to know nothing. Eventually the detective talks to her and she relates the same thing.
During a follow-up interrogation the detective informs Martha that the fingerprints found around Rose's neck are indeed Martha's. The detective tells her to confess, as there is no doubt as to the murderer's identity. Martha maintains her innocence. As the story progresses, the detective visits Martha's father who is in the care of someone else (revealed in the credits to be Martha's niece). The detective informs Martha's shocked father of her arrest.
Kyle visits Martha in prison. As they sit with a glass wall between them, conversing on telephones, Martha pleads with Kyle to help her. She swears that she doesn't know what happened and that she did not murder Rose. Kyle appears wary of Martha and what has occurred. Later on, while in her jail cell, she sees herself in a vision standing over Rose's dead body as she mutters to herself "Oh my God."
- In the deleted scenes there is an alternate ending where Martha has a CAT scanComputed tomographyX-ray computed tomography or Computer tomography , is a medical imaging method employing tomography created by computer processing...
that shows a severely malignantMalignantMalignancy is the tendency of a medical condition, especially tumors, to become progressively worse and to potentially result in death. Malignancy in cancers is characterized by anaplasia, invasiveness, and metastasis...
tumorTumorA tumor or tumour is commonly used as a synonym for a neoplasm that appears enlarged in size. Tumor is not synonymous with cancer...
in her brain. The doctor explains that it is possible that the tumor could cause blackouts and very abnormal behavior.
External links
- "Mark Cuban to theater owners rejecting "Bubble" -- get a clue", Boing BoingBoing BoingBoing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...
- Review by Roger Ebert