Director Jeremy Saulnier has followed up 2013’s acclaimed Blue Ruin with Green Room, a tense, gruesome thriller about a punk band who find themselves at the mercy of a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads led by Patrick Stewart. We find out more…
How did you get Patrick Stewart to play a neo-Nazi psychopath in Green Room?
He’s up for an adventure – he was looking for something like this, something dark and unsettling. He really responded to the opportunity to step into a role that would require a downplayed, quiet authority, to be part of an ensemble, in contrast with this very young cast and to take a break from studio franchises or TV shows. He wanted to get his hands dirty on an independent film. It didn’t take much to convince him actually.
Did you have him in mind for the role?
I’m not that presumptuous. I certainly just wrote for authenticity for characters based on research or from my youth. A lot of the band is referring to real life friends I had growing up that were in the punk rock hardcore scene, but I definitely didn’t envision someone of Patrick Stewart’s stature stooping so low as to be in our movie. So I was delighted and he had a really good time playing someone so nasty.
After Blue Ruin’s tremendous critical acclaim did you have actors queuing up to be in your next film?
It certainly helped having Blue Ruin as a reference, as actors can see how much I care about performance, how much weight I put on their shoulders. Blue Ruin is very bare bones, it’s so much based on Macon Blair’s central performance. They say there is a certain amount of loving care that goes into the movies I make and you can’t do that having a toxic relationship with an actor. Blue Ruin also served a very important purpose for Green Room, which is a tonal reference because if you read Green Room on the page and you don’t quite get what I’m going for, this could be discarded as a typical horror/slasher movie. But having Blue Ruin really helped actors understand what I was going for. They felt a lot safer going in.
What was the thinking making your heroes a punk band – it’s not a typical thing is it?
For me it is. I was in a hardcore band in my youth, I was around a lot of punk music, heavy metal so these are the kids I knew growing up. The key was to not get too bogged down in punk ideology and what have you, but to pull from experiences. They’re scavengers, like kids out of a Mad Max movie: the busted van, trying to siphon gas from parking lots. It has nice on-the-road, almost Road Warrior feel to it, of course downscaled into the real world but I thought aesthetically it would be perfect. And I wanted to archive the music, for me and my buddies growing up.
By the end of the film you feel like you’ve been put through the mill – but was it one of those films that it was great fun to make?
The cast and crew had a blast. I think it was exhausting for the cast because of the physical nature of the performances, but as soon as we called cut and wrapped our days it was a lot of fun. Everyone loved each other. Having to do twenty days of non stop crying and mayhem and action – but we all genuinely liked each other, which is very rare, from what I hear… we benefitted from having a tough shoot but with very like-minded, invested individuals who made it more an insulated comfort zone.
Do you have any particular films you watch before you start a project to inspire you?
I certainly watch movies before I start writing movies. I’ll definitely binge on a few movies, more to get excited about cinema, to remember why I make films, to get these feelings back circulating in my system. For Green Room I watched Straw Dogs and Robocop. I watched a bunch of cool Seventies and Eighties movies that had a lot of texture and grit to them. Some Coen Brothers movies.
Have you got a favourite punk movie?
Repo Man. Because it doesn’t try too hard to be punk. It’s just in there. It’s really cool and it’s bizarre and irreverent and lovely.
Green Room screens here at HOME from Fri 13 May. Book tickets and find out more here.
HOME Digital in association with Virgin Media Business
