Swampscott High grad scores at Sundance

The first time Bryan Buckley recalled being written up in The Item, he had been involved in a chase with Swampscott Police.”I went into Lynn (District) Court, and the judge said, ?the next time I read something about you, I want to read something good,'” Buckley recalled Thursday.Hopefully, that judge is reading today, as Buckley’s first feature-length film debuted on the opening night of Sundance Film Festival and was quickly snatched up by investors.”We actually hand-delivered the film to Sundance,” Buckley admitted. “We were working up to the last second to get it to that point. The timeline is tight, and that’s the way it is, trying to make it as good as it can be.””The Bronze” is a comedy about gymnast Hope Ann Greggory, played by “Big Bang Theory” star Melissa Rauch, who returned to her small hometown as a hero after winning the bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics. Now Greggory is washed-up, largely forgotten, embittered and living in her father’s basement. A promising gymnast ingenue who idolizes Greggory soon provides her with a threat, an opportunity, and a chance to reassess her life.The film debuted and was selected to open the Sundance Film Festival, something Buckley said was a huge honor. Within 24 hours of its debut, Relativity Media purchased the rights to distribute the movie for a reported $3 million, and it could be in theaters as early as this summer.But just as his path through Swampscott wasn’t exactly smooth, Buckley’s path to becoming a director was also rather circuitous.Buckley said he has never taken a film class, always wanting to have a career in advertising. His parents were both in advertising, and Buckley studied advertising and design at Syracuse University. After starting his own agency at age 24, Buckley said he realized advertising was “a terrible business.””The bigger I built it, the less you were actually doing work, there was more time going to meetings and dealing with the bureaucracy,” Buckley said. “Also, if you did one thing really well, you can’t do (another company) that is competitive with it. If you had a strength, you couldn’t do anything for it.”So he moved over to the production side, overseeing short commercials for small clients with limited money and often advising the inexperienced director the client could afford to hire.His first job as a “director” was for ESPN, doing short black-and-white spots for hockey coverage.”I didn’t really think that I was a director,” Buckley said. “We’d show up and shoot the scene, and a lot of guys would be injured, or wouldn’t show up, and we’d have to make up something funny for them to say.”Then people started asking him to do other jobs. He eventually became known for his Super Bowl commercials, directing more than 50 over the years, including the “Football on your Phone” ad with the Manning brothers and the Yankees New Era Commercial where Alec Baldwin lights Red Sox tickets aflame while on Skype with John Krasinski.Buckley first arrived at Sundance in 2004 with a short film named “Krug.” He was nominated for an Academy Award in 2012 for the short live-action film “Asad.”Throughout his life, Buckley has relied on comedy and a sense of humor.”My family moved a lot, so comedy was the way in which we broke into new places,” Buckley said.Buckley, his sister, and mother moved to Swampscott when he was in eighth grade and he found that practical jokes and “stupidness” won him friends … and a few enemies.He recalled egging his English teacher’s house and not understanding for years why all the English teachers in high school seemed to think he was a troublemaker.”I was too stupid to figure out that they might go into a room together and talk,” Buckley said.But he also put his humor to good use, contributing comics to The Item, as well as the Salem News and Swampscott Reporter.Now his goal is to put that humor to good use with filmmaking. “Asad” was about a luckless Somalian fisher boy who is beginning to consider piracy until a chance encounter