Behind the Scenes

Even More Confessions: Mr. Bastard Steps Out represents both an escalation and a breakdown. By the time of its production, the Confessions series had fully abandoned any remaining attachment to structure. What began as a behind-the-scenes documentary had already evolved into something looser, more performative, and increasingly self-aware. With the third installment, even that loose framework begins to fracture.

Memory itself becomes unreliable. Unlike the earlier entries, which still carry some recollection of what the group thought they were making, large portions of Mr. Bastard Steps Out remain mysterious even to the people who made it. Scenes appear without anyone remembering why they were filmed. Locations have to be identified after the fact. Entire sequences survive as fragments of afternoons whose larger purpose has disappeared.

Daryl’s most common recollection of the production is also the simplest: “I don’t remember anything about shooting this.”

The method, however, remained familiar. There was no script and very little plan beyond going somewhere with Ray and turning on the camera. Conversations with strangers became scenes. Passing interactions became set pieces. A walk through South San Francisco could continue for as long as Ray kept finding people, places, or ideas worth reacting to.

By this point, the distinction between Ray Revello and the character he had originally been playing had almost completely collapsed. The first Confessions still carried traces of Mr. Revolver, an exaggerated persona with at least a loose connection to an existing character. Here, Ray simply behaves and the camera records the consequences.

“I just fuck with people,” Ray explained. It's less a joke than a reasonably accurate description of the filmmaking strategy.

The movie still makes occasional attempts at continuity. Earlier adventures are referenced. Old stories resurface. Ray makes increasingly elaborate claims involving vampires, time travel, organized crime, and American history. Bits of mythology accumulate without much concern for whether any of them agree with what came before.

A larger narrative seems to exist somewhere in Ray’s head, but the details change faster than anyone can document them. Dates contradict each other. Stories expand in the telling. Characters and events from previous films drift into conversations that have little apparent connection to them. The continuity matters just enough for everyone to keep invoking it, but never enough for anyone to actually protect it.

Encounters with strangers become increasingly important to the footage. One extended sequence involves a man remembered as a longtime airport janitor, whose casual conversation is treated with exactly the same importance as anything the filmmakers might have intentionally staged. Elsewhere, pedestrians and bystanders are briefly pulled into Ray’s orbit before the movie wanders somewhere else.

Beneath all of the improvisation is a growing awareness that something has changed. The first Confessions had been made almost accidentally, before anyone had enough experience to become self-conscious about what they were doing. Only a short time later, the group was already trying to understand why reproducing that same energy felt more difficult.

Ray put it more dramatically: “This is back when I was funny.”

There are still plenty of flashes of the earlier films. A spontaneous reaction lands perfectly. A ridiculous story appears from nowhere. Someone says something that could never have been improved by writing it first. But those moments now exist alongside hesitation and self-awareness. The group is no longer merely filming whatever happens. They have started thinking about whether what happens is good enough to become a movie.

The technical limitations are also becoming harder to ignore. The Sharp Viewcam struggles with movement. Color shifts from shot to shot. Framing wanders. None of this equipment was new to the group, but their expectations were changing faster than the tools they were using.

Earlier films could simply look like camcorder movies because nobody expected much more from them. By 2005, Daryl was beginning to recognize what an image could look like, even when the available camera could not produce it. The filmmaking was advancing just enough to make its limitations more obvious.

None of that stopped anyone from wanting to continue. Even while discussing what had changed, the solution remained characteristically simple: make another one. There was already talk of a fourth Confessions, another attempt to get everyone together, go somewhere, and see whether the old chemistry would return.

Nate summarized the strategy in four words: “Go back to the well.”

Even More Confessions: Mr. Bastard Steps Out is the point where the series stops pretending to be anything else. It is no longer a documentary in any meaningful sense, barely a parody, and only occasionally a character piece. The subject has become the group itself: Ray performing, Daryl filming, strangers drifting through the frame, and everyone trying to recapture something they had stumbled into before they understood it.

That uncertainty is ultimately more interesting than any attempt to impose a clean explanation on the film. The group had changed. The filmmaking had changed. Their expectations had changed. What they had not lost was the impulse to turn the camera on and see what happened.

For the moment, that was still enough.