Rivkah Beth Medow and Greg O’Toole’s Sons of a Gun follows three non-related schizophrenic adults who live as a family (in a single motel room) under the care of Larry, a drunk with a background in hostage negotiation who took the men in when they had nowhere else to go. After a few work-in-progress screenings last year at True/False, the doc will have its official World Premiere in competition at SXSW. Watch the trailer and read Rivkah and Greg’s answers to The 5 Questions We Ask Everyone after the jump.

Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.

Rivkah: Sons of a Gun is 3 schizophrenics, 1 alcoholic, 1 motel room, 8 months. It’s like Brothers Keeper meets Best Boy meets Grey Gardens meets Three’s Company. I know that’s really bold to describe our movie with these icons of film and television. It feels strange to do the reductive logline pitch because we worked so hard to accurately represent the complexity of our subjects. Even calling them “subjects” sounds weird, but we certainly did spend a lot of time thinking about them, so maybe it is an accurate word.

Sons of a Gun is a documentary about an extraordinary family who has chosen to live together for the past 20 odd years but aren’t related by blood. Actually, we were looking to do a documentary about eviction & gentrification when we met Larry, Lance, Craig and Ubaldo. They were the last holdouts in a 690-apartment eviction. The film chronicles their search for a new home while living in a one-room residential motel, trying not to implode. Or explode. Tensions rose & fell in the motel and we captured lots of humor, lots of anger, and a few heart crushing moments. The guys were surprisingly at ease in front of the camera and gave us phenomenal access to their thoughts and lives. Very generous. They weren’t the scattered, unpredictable, multiple-personality stereotypes of schizophrenic people we had previously encountered - Lance, Craig and Ubaldo had serious integrity. As in they were always the same people no matter what circumstances they found themselves in, whereas most of us - including “Dad” Larry - adjusted our personalities to suit circumstance and agenda. We wanted to represent each of these men accurately - to let them come through as unfiltered as possible.

Do you have a day job/a non-filmmaking occupation that raises money for your filmmaking efforts? Tell us about it.

Rivkah: I do a lot of production work for other people, everything from researching b-roll of particle accelerators in action to sourcing realistic fake beards for Food Network stars to get green mussels caught up in.

Greg: I’m an editor by day, and then put on my cape and mask at night to be a director/editor. I sit in front of the computer a lot for both.

Have you been to SXSW before? If so, tell us about your funniest story from the experience. If not, what are you looking forward to re: the festival and/or the city of Austin?

Rivkah: Never been before. BBQ will be a big deal since I recently fell off the vegetarian wagon. Really though, I’m super excited to see tons of smart films - so many look just amazing. Can’t wait to see some filmmakers we know who will be there and to meet many more.

Greg: I’ve always wanted to go to Austin, but for years I have been holding out in order to go there with a film. Now I get to and I’ve heard the swimming holes are something not to be missed. Plus, everyone seems to want to tell me about their favorite secret barbeque spot.

Let’s get hypothetical: You’re on death row. The night of your execution, you’re allowed to watch any two films of your choice. What would you pick for your last-night-on-Earth double feature?

Rivkah: You can never know how you’ll actually feel the night before your electrocution, but I’d probably be in the mood for something epic that took me far away, like In the Mood For Love or Born Free, anything by Wim Wenders, The Sweet Hereafter, George Washington, The Deerhunter…now I’m going down a dark road.

Greg: A little known film called Doing Time Doing Vipassana, about meditation. And The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

There’s been some criticism that the only way to get into SXSW is by being a part of an “incestuous scene where everybody knows everybody.” So who did *you* have to sleep with to get in? (Metaphorically or literally: are there any SXSW filmmaker(s) past or present that you’re close with personally and/or professionally, and how have those relationships helped or hurt the process of producing your film and getting it seen?)

Rivkah: We were really fortunate that Janet Pierson saw our work-in-progress screening last year at the True/False Film Festival. I was pregnant though, so nobody wanted to sleep with me.

Greg: Rivkah was pregnant, so she has an excuse; I don;t have any good reason why people don’t want to sleep with me. At least sleeping with someone didn’t hurt the film - that would be embarrassing. Amanda Micheli is a good friend of mine and has been a huge help in guiding us through this maze, but I don’t do the friends with benefits thing so we’ve kept our friendship purely platonic.