“Self Custody,” a smart and hilariously tense new thriller from co-director and star Garrett Patten, neatly lays out the good thing and bad thing about Bitcoin.
The good thing about Bitcoin is that it is decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency, untraceable and unregulated by any government.
The bad thing about Bitcoin is that it is decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency, untraceable and unregulated by any government.
“Self Custody” investigates both the good and bad — but mostly the bad. It’s inspired by the fact that millions of dollars in Bitcoin are lost each year to fraud, or simple forgetfulness. The title refers to the fact that Bitcoin owners bear sole responsibility for it.
The film played at a special SXSW screening Saturday night, where Patten was joined in a post-film Q&A by Entourage veteran Adrien Grenier, who makes a crucial, effective appearance in “Self Custody” as a distant and aloof chaos agent, as well as two-time UFC champion Henry Cejudo, who shows up late in the film to prove he’s as tenacious an opponent onscreen as he is in the ring. Odette Annable also gives a strong, persuasive performance.
The 31-minute film, which Patten describes as more of a micro-feature than a short, is also out on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Plex. Patten is empathetic and compelling in the lead role of Scott, a dad and business owner with money troubles. He thinks he’s saved when a friend and adviser (Michael Monks) tells him that he’s sitting on a Bitcoin fortune, thanks to a signing bonus he received more than a decade ago.
But of course there’s a catch: To access the money, Scott needs to remember both his old PIN code, and something called a seed phrase. Things quickly go downhill.
Grenier and Cejudo both said Saturday that they happily signed on to the film because Patten is a good friend. But Grenier also has another personal reason: He’s a Bitcoin maxi, or true believer, who sees its advantages as far outweighing its negatives.
When Saturday’s audience called out for him to define a “maxi,” Grenier gamely explained: “It’s someone who believes in Bitcoin above all other crypto, or s— coins. That’s a technical term, you know. There are two sides of the coin, or Bitcoin.”
Diving back in, after the audience’s laughter, he elaborated: “It’s a pure technology that actually is like digital gold, whereas all these other coins, they have a lot of back doors. You can’t actually access Bitcoin, and that’s a feature, because it has all these checks and balances. Whereas all these other cryptocurrencies are essentially a fancy app, a fancy website.”
Sound good? Here’s the bad part again. Patten explained that there are drawbacks to all those checks and balances: He was sparked to make “Self Custody” by a friend’s experience losing millions in Bitcoin because he couldn’t figure out how to access it.
“A friend that had lost his job learned that in the past, he was gifted crypto, and he actually went on this journey to try to recover it,” Patten said.
While researching the film, which he co-directed with Fernando Ferro, Patten learned of many other cases of people losing hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin.
Garrett Patten on Shooting ‘Self Custody’ in Austin
Saturday’s screening in Austin, held at the gorgeous Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Mueller, marked a homecoming for the film, which shot in the home of SXSW. The film has exceptionally high production values, which Patten credited to his Austin crew.
“For an indie film, you felt like you watched a feature, and that’s all the crew,” he said. “I mean, you can’t do that in every city. I’ve shot in a lot of different cities, and Austin’s got a lot to offer.”
(He also discussed the benefits of filming in Austin during our recent Sundance panel on the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker.)
Grenier, who lives locally, was happy to get to film close to home.
“I’m a big proponent of the Austin film market and Texas in general,” he said. “I want to start making projects that are within this region. You know, for selfish reasons, I want to be able to go home to my family at the end of the day, and with that $1.5 billion incentive now coming down from Texas government, I think that we’re going to start making more projects.”
The Stars of ‘Self-Custody’
Patten has previously worked mostly behind the camera, producing projects including 2022’s Bandit, with Josh Duhamel, Elisha Cuthbert and Mel Gibson, and last year’s The Hand of Dante, with Oscar Isaac and Al Pacino.
He took acting classes in preparation for his leading role in “Self Custody,” and enlisted his acting teacher, Monks, to play a key role in the film.
“We just had a great chemistry right from the beginning, and became very good friends, and being able to support him in something that he was doing, which is something I love to do, just became this great little symbiotic thing,” Monk said. “His commitment to it was inspiring, and I wanted to be a part of it.”
At one point (spoilers ahead), Monks’ role required him to square off his Cejudo’s character — a case of an expert in acting and an expert in competitive fighting meeting in the middle.
Cejudo said Monk coached him on how to make his punches look more convincing on camera, where faster isn’t necessarily better.
“He was able to kind of coach me on the spot, because there’s a lot of times where I would do a certain kick or certain punch, and it was just too fast,” Cejudo explained. “You’ve got to be able to sell it, to kind of bring a little more that theatrical stuff to it.”
The Q&A moderator, The Hollywood Reporter senior entertainment reporter Mia Galuppo, observed that the fight scene features “a master of a craft and a master of a craft coming together — and that filmmaking, baby.”
You may be hearing much more about “Self Custody” in the future. Patten noted in the Q&A that he’s gotten a lot of interest from Hollywood in turning the film into a feature or show.
Grenier polled the audience on which would be better, and the vote was almost unanimous: “Self Custody” should be a show.
Main image: (L-R) “Self Custody” stars Michael Monks, Garrett Patten, Henry Cejudo and Adrian Grenier
“Self Custody” is now streaming on Prime, Tubi and Plex.
