With only a small handful of films to his credit as writer-director (he’s also a prolific indie cinematographer), Jeremy Saulnier has established himself as a powerful filmmaker, beginning with MURDER PARTY and nailing it down with his previous film BLUE RUIN, the deconstructed story of a would-be assassin who has no idea what he’s doing yet still manages to straight-up murder a whole lot of bad people.
But when the reviews started coming in for his latest film, GREEN ROOM, almost a year ago from the Cannes Film Festival, it became clear that Saulnier was becoming great at telling intriguing stories in unconventional ways. He’s managed to slip a few familiar names into his cast with this film, including Patrick Stewart in full-blown villain mode; Anton Yelchin; Imogen Poots; Alia Shawkat; Mark Webber; and even BLUE RUIN star (and one of Saulnier’s oldest friends) Macon Blair. It’s an incredible and brutal work set in the world of punk rock music, which occasionally intersects with white supremacists. I caught the film at Sundance in January, and it immediately became one of my favorite movies of the year so far.
After I recovered from the film’s particular brand of brutality, I sat down with Saulnier in Park City. I’d first me him doing an opening night Q&A for BLUE RUIN. Little did I know he’d already begun plotting GREEN ROOM. Please enjoy my talk with Jeremy Saulnier…
Capone: I have to imagine that BLUE RUIN got you some attention from on high, and I’m guessing you either opted not to look at bigger-budget productions, or you didn’t find anything you liked.
Jeremy Saulnier: I was certainly looking for bigger projects after BLUE RUIN. For someone who just broke through, I didn’t trust my environment at all. There’s a paranoia involved and a fear that you’ll be discovered as a fraud and lose momentum. I had some good friends that had broken through years prior, and the lesson I learned from that is, do not take the development bait. Do not take a studio writing job. That could very well work out for the best, but the likelihood is that every movie that gets developed will not get made. If you start writing, you can easily lose momentum, and if that project doesn't go, you might have lost years—sometimes two or three.
So I was frantically looking for new scripts. I found a couple of really exciting ones, but I didn’t feel like I was the best candidate to direct them. I have tried and failed before to make movies, and I really want to make sure when I go again, because this is going to be on the radar. BLUE RUIN snuck in underneath the radar, which is a much safer thing to do. It was a big bet but had a big payoff. But if BLUE RUIN failed, it would have been obscure. No one would have ever heard about that failure.
But when I was looking to do my next project, the one thing I had to do was try and get up a level to make filmmaking a sustainable career. As the scripts came in, I panicked. This was completely back-to-back with BLUE RUIN. I was going to AFI; I actually remember the date—November 10, 2013—toward the tail end of our festival run, I started to write GREEN ROOM as an insurance policy. I said, I better have something, because when we premiere BLUE RUIN, I’ve got to have a movie ready. So I started writing GREEN ROOM, which was an idea that had been floating around in my head for almost a decade prior. It actually predates BLUE RUIN.
Capone: So the idea about having that script in your back pocket, ready to go, was in case a great script didn’t land in your lap from outside?
JS: If an awesome script came my way for a $30 milliont-$40 million budget that I really just wanted to do, I would do it. The dream is someone’s going to hand you a silver platter and reveal “This is the prefect script1” But those scripts go to a select few directors, and a lot of stuff gets passed around for people who are just entering that tier of exposure.
Capone: Lately though, guys with just two or three movies have been getting JURASSIC WORLD and STAR WARS.
JS: Yeah. And more power to them.
Capone: It’s a bizarre trend.
JS: It is. I’m not sure of their ages, but I’m a little bit older than a lot of those younger gentlemen. Unfortunately, it’s mostly gentlemen.
Capone: True enough.
JS: But I absolutely do not want to be governed by anyone creatively. If you go to those great big franchises, that’s absolutely what happens. You can certainly put a stamp on it. You can direct the hell out of those movies, but I wanted something that would still help me carve out my space. I just hope at a gut level when you sign on for a movie, there’s a paycheck element which is attractive, but it’s just, “Do you want to invest a year or two? Do you want to forgo time with your family?” I have three kids and a wife. The choice to make a movie is not just like when you take a gig; it’s like “What does the opportunity cost? What am I going to give up? How hard is it going to be on my wife when I leave on location?” The other thing was, despite these bigger movies, when would I ever get the chance to make a film like GREEN ROOM? And the answer was, never again. Possibly, I might move past that stage.
Capone: It’s hard to step back, isn’t it?
JS: Yeah. There was a hilarious Vanity Fair thing at Cannes when GREEN ROOM premiered. It wasn’t that disparaging, but it was a profound disappointment, because I didn’t step up [from BLUE RUIN]. I didn’t do a super-classy ensemble chamber piece or an epic studio film. I love that. The adventure of “Yeah, let’s go back to my filmmaking roots. Let’s go back to what inspired me to become a filmmaker and really make a film for a select group, which is my 19-year-old friends in 1994.”
Capone: Made by your 19-year-old self, I’m guessing.
JS: Absolutely. And make a film that I think only I could make at that time. This movie, it’s such an anomaly. It’s a full union feature that has an amazing cast, yet is in some ways very esoteric by not being filtered through the studio system or having to receive notes by a committee of people. It’s another pure vision that’s very odd, but because it embraces that esoteric nature fully, I hope that it becomes more universal, in that it’s an experiential thing that you could only execute if you have control.
That’s why I did not want to go big with the committees, with the risk of losing control of my next movie. That would have been a brick wall, so I wanted to make sure I slowly but surely could keep building a fan base and earning my keep and earning trust from my colleagues so I could retain control of my material in my bid. I’m happy to have to earn my way up the ladder, but I don't want to find myself losing control of my stories.
Capone: You realize an article like that, audiences don’t care about that. It’s just industry people that are like, “What’s he waiting for?” They think you’re not ambitious, but this is almost more ambitious.
JS: Oddly, I get where they’re coming from, because BLUE RUIN for me is a bit more mature work, because it’s more contemporary to what I was doing. But again, I just turned that part of myself off and said, “I have to double down on the stark, emotional nature. Also, I was exhausted by BLUE RUIN emotionally. It was a very personal movie. It had my best friend in it. He just broke through. When you’re having fun and you’re an outsider, when you get a peak in and you get a foot in the door, you sneak in, you bring your friends through the back door and you steel the silverware. You do something that you’re not supposed to do, and it’s more fun to fuck with expectations like that, and I felt like “Absolutely, if you’re disappointed that I didn’t go all adult on you, I love it.” The article also said “It’s also kind of fun.” That’s the point.
While everyone’s shifting to TV or trying to win Oscars, let’s make a movie that’s entirely built around the audience’s experience and try to elicit at physical, emotional response, which I think is a rare thing to be able to achieve, and something that’s exhilarating for audiences to experience. For me as a filmmaker too, I want to ratchet up tension and embrace that part of BLUE RUIN that people responded—that inept protagonist, in over his head. And that super-grounded, realistic approach caused a lot of audience members to have that supercharged tension. I was like, “I want to build on that and increase it by tenfold and see what happens.”
Capone: So, you’re at the end of your GREEN ROOM festival run right now. Does that mean you’ve got a little something tucked away just in case?
JS: [laughs] This one was a much harder film to finish. It was emotionally exhausting. Professionally, it was the biggest challenge of my life because so much politics and pitching and selling things through. I have not started writing. I have an idea that I want to explore, but this time around I lucked into having another-level access to scripts. Some are very exciting, and I have those in development. But another great collaborator, Macon Blair is my lead in BLUE RUIN and has a major role in GREEN ROOM and is my creative partner, he just adapted a novel, and it’s really up my alley. I’ve been involved in developing that with him since last February. So there’s a nice amount of overlap, and he just cranked out a beautiful script, so I’m hoping that will be my next thing, but it’s currently in development.
Capone: I love that this story is set in the cutthroat world of the entertainment industry. I almost thought there was a metaphor hidden here?
JS: [laughs] Not quite yet. I have not reached that level in the entertainment industry.
Capone: You’re not quite that clinical yet?
JS: I’ve been able to surround myself with really great crew and personal, so I have not experienced that. But I was in the music scene a very long time ago…
Capone: The punk scene?
JS: Yeah, I was in a hardcore band. I had a lot of friends in the punk scene. So there’s an early performance by The Ain’t Rights, which is the fictional band that our protagonists are part of, where they play a Plan B gig in a Mexican restaurant when one gig falls through. I have played that gig in a Mexican restaurant to a crowd of 12 with two people dancing and the others ordering rice and beans. It was really fun, because when you’re young and you’re so passionate, you can do these really sad things. What a lame show that was, but we’re all there and we will do whatever we can to just play a show. It gets pretty desperate. So that part I was familiar with. I also pulled together stories from my friends, who had been in touring bands. My band, we didn’t last too long. I was just the singer. I was just yelling into a microphone, but the friends I grew up with were very talented musicians. They wrote a lot of songs that ended up being performed in GREEN ROOM. It’s cool for me, 20 years after the fact, to have songs performed on screen that my buddies wrote.
Capone: The germ of the story, did it involve that time in your life, and were there that hardcore skinhead elements when you were a part of it?
JS: Yeah. I believe the height of the skinhead movement, certainly in the punk scene was in the ’90s. My friends and I would drive from suburban Virginia across the bridge to Washington, D.C.
Capone: I didn’t know that’s where you’re from. That’s where I’m from too, but on the other side of D.C., in Maryland.
JS: Yeah, I grew up in the mid-'90s there. You’d go to shows, and more often than not there’s a Nazi skinhead presence at the shows. So I was there, I was involved in the scene. I wasn’t a guru or anything, but I really was attracted to it. I was a sheltered suburban kid from outside. I had a band. We played a few shows in D.C., but I was there as an observer. It got really rough often. They didn’t pull punches there. I’ve gotten attacked a few times in the pit. But there was that edge there. When you walk outside the show because your friends are having a smoke break, there’s a Nazi skinhead wearing a swastika—it’s just odd. You don’t see that often in Washington, D.C., anymore. There are still pockets here and there. I definitely wanted to set this movie not in the rural South. I thought that was played out.
But I had this experience, and it always stuck with me. The germ of the story was basically utilizing this amazing scene, this visual and textured environment that to me had this MAD MAX aesthetic and had aggressive music. It was just so kinetic and lent itself to the film so easily. I was surprised that no one had done it like this before, and I thought “Wow, what a great location for a genre movie—in the green room of a concert venue during a show.” I’ve had this idea for 10 years. Many filmmakers get paranoid about it like “Someone might do it first.” So the premise was there, but it wasn’t really fleshed out at all until I sat down to write it. It’s very procedural, and I did it beat by beat. I didn’t quite know where it was going or should have gone, which is part of the fun.
Capone: That’s exactly how it feels for the audience too. There is no formula for this sort of thing, but it moves very organically. It doesn't feel like you’re trying to hit a certain plot points; you’re just going to let it go where it goes.
JS: The funnest part was writing it, because I didn’t know. I knew a few overarching things and where it had to end up to satisfy the narrative requirements that I had, but I would write myself into a corner without any way out, and if I couldn’t figure out a smart way out, I had to figure out a dumb way, or the wrong way, or someone would have to die. There were always consequences, and to let it evolve organically like that was really exciting and created that tension. Letting myself break rules, but not just to break them; it was to adhere to the rules of gravity and reason and pragmatism and human behavior, and like you mentioned before, not having a skill set or a certain trade craft that characters could lean on to get them out of that situation. They had no idea what to do, and they fumbled their way through it like I think many of us would do. That’s why I think audiences would react to these types of movies, because they are the ones on screen.
Capone: You can’t help but ask “What would I do?” What’s so funny about it is, both sides make plans, and they never goes right. That would be boring if it did.
JS: There are definitely points along the way where they find things or uncover things, which usually would lead to escape or some kind of air duct. And it was fun in this movie, air shafts are actually six inches [in diameter], and you can’t fit though them. Again, things you don’t see but should be in all movies. They always make things convenient for the narrative or for the perfect timing. Oh, here comes the second-act finale, on page 30 they have to do this, and to intro characters, you have to do this. I got to just throw it all away and do a very intuitive approach to the story.
Capone: I wanna talk about Anton’s paintball speech, because it’s at that moment that people are going to realize that they’re watching a war movie. They’re not in a regular action film. They’re in a war movie. This is your ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. Were there particular films that you looked to for the vibe?
JS: Yeah, I always reference, to my collaborators, I’m a big fan of early Michael Mann, the Coen Brothers, John Carpenter. Those are great influences. When it’s out in marketplace or when audiences or critics refer to it, I don’t mind it being categorized as horror, but I approached it as a war movie. That was the directive for the filmmakers and the actors: “This is a siege film, this is a war film.” I referenced PLATOON and APOCALYPSE NOW.
Capone: That scene with Anton, that’s the big speech before the final battle.
JS: It is. It’s based on a real-life experience, and the premise of that speech, it really happened, and it was fascinating to me about real military personnel taking part in paintball. So you have real warriors taking part in a fake battle, and there is a way to defeat them.
Capone: There’s so much I could ask about Patrick Stewart being in this, because he’s so critical. But what was it like having a guy like that who has played every Shakespeare character, who is classically trained, to throw him in a role like this in which he’s by far the smartest guy in the movie. Talk about what he brought to this.
JS: I think actors like working with me because I don’t care about where they came from or their credits. They are invited because of two things: The merits of their acting, and their enthusiasm for the project, because that creates an environment that everyone can feed off of. I actually could easily discard his amazing filmography and his stature. There’s an obvious respect by everyone on the crew, but the respect only increased when he came on set and was incredibly humble and just melted into the set with his lines ready to go, with very targeted questions about his character, and he just made sure that his dedication to the role was present on screen. He’s a constant professional and a kind gentleman. Be wasn’t disruptive; he didn’t bring an entourage.
He also, peripherally, added so much enthusiasm to the cast and the crew. We had local extras who were playing the parts of skinheads in the movie, and they came behind the scenes for a wardrobe fitting, and they saw my cast. I had headshots posted on a bulletin board of the people we reached out to and had offers to, and we had finally locked in the cast, and this sweetheart, his name was Samuel Summer, he plays a skinhead, he came back and said, “Oh, are these the references for your cast?” I said, “No, those aren’t references; those are actually my cast.” And he said, “No, not Patrick Stewart.” And I said “Yes, Patrick Stewart.” And the smile on his face…
I do get lost in trying to make the movie and vetting people, but this kid was so excited. I was like, “This is fucking amazing. I’m going to have this wonderful cast. I’m going to have Patrick Stewart along side my childhood best friend, Macon Blair, marching through a death metal concert in an insane genre film that should have never been made, and we get to make it.” And I think because of that, it’s going to fill a void for people, and I’m hoping it will explode in the marketplace, because it was a film that was targeted for just a few film lovers back in the ’90s, and it’s become this really exciting experience for me. It’s just amazing. And the cast classed up the whole movie. This could have been some gutter genre film, but with the best performances, it’s elevated to like a legitimate thriller.
