‘Palm Springs’ Director Max Barbakow Interviewed

One thing to know about the deliciously eccentric, faux mainstream film Palm Springs is that it throws us for a loop. And then another and another. The film begins innocently enough, with Judd Apatow-esque comic ribaldry as a wedding in Palm Springs begins to go wrong in various ways. Star power is in the house, with SNL’s Andy Samberg and love interest Cristin Milioti (How I Met Your Mother, FX’s Fargo) circling around the scent of forbidden love.

Lest we get too comfortable in the embrace of a rom-com formula, however, the plot quickly thickens — in ways that anti-plot spoilers among us are hesitant to get into. Suffice it to say, the story’s time-space continuum goes awry, sci-fi sauce mixes with bravura genre-mashing, and dollops of subversive cinematic ideas are tossed into the stew. Et voilà: We have a thinking person’s feel-good summer hit. “Sensation” might be a better description, as the film garnered a record acquisition prize (more than $17.5 million, from Hulu and Neon distribution) when it premiered at Sundance Festival earlier this year, and the film had a record-breaking bonanza of streamers on its recent opening weekend on Hulu.

Adding to the buzz is a matter of civic pride — homegrown Santa Barbaran Max Barbakow directed and created the winning film with screenwriter Andy Siara, his friend from the American Film Institute (AFI). Barbakow is a familiar name in Santa Barbara’s film-culture scene thanks to his family’s deep involvement with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF); his father, Jeffrey Barbakow, was SBIFF president for six years, and the family name adorns the organization’s Barbakow Family Center for Film Studies. Prior to Palm Springs, the 31-year-old filmmaker made a documentary about his life as an adoptee called Mommy, I’m a Bastard!, which premiered at the 2013 SBIFF.