- Now, should I just go here? - Yeah, that's great, sure.
- Yeah, I'm gonna go to the zoo though,
after this. - Oh, that's awesome.
[Mellow, upbeat music]
- What did you think? - What did I learn,
while making this film?
- Learned how to keep
an iPhone warm
with a foot-warmer.
- Yeah, well, I embraced them dying.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I like it when phones die, so.
- Yeah. - Other than that,
it's hard to process what you learn.
It takes a while to come out of a movie, out of that fog.
But, I'll tell you this:
it was, you know, flexing a whole lot of new muscles.
I had no idea what I was doing,
and I had to fake it till I made it.
- Hm, hm. [Saulnier chuckles.]
- Well, I was pretty worn out after this film.
I guess I'd finished Westworld
maybe six months before
and I went straight from Westworld to a film
that we shot in an actual, working, maximum-security prison.
I went back to New York, I did another film,
and then went to Cincinnati [on the] first of the year
to do an Emilio Estevez's film, which just played here [at TIFF],
and then, shortly after that, came up to Alberta —
and pretty rugged terrain out there,
which we explored pretty, you know, relatively extensively.
[Branches breaking]
[Wolf barking]
So when I got back,
I was done.
- That's interesting, - Yeah.
- 'Cause I was sitting there prepping for months and months
- Yeah.
- and singularly focused on this one film
- Yeah.
- for the better part of a year and a half,
and I had no idea you'd just done five other projects.
- Yeah. - That was switching gears.
- Yeah, and it was a great culmination, though, this piece,
but the elements are so much a part
of the storytelling by design
and we threw ourselves inside of them,
and I loved it. I loved it,
but I did feel pretty beat up at the end,
which was a good feeling. It's a good feeling to have,
and, again, the amount of effort that it took
for us to pull this thing off
was really made easier, to some extent —
as easy as it could have been — by the crew,
by our Canadian colleagues out in Calgary,
who just busted their asses to facilitate our work.
So yeah, it was great, it was great.
It's just so beautiful too. - It is.
- That part of the world, - Amazing.
- It's so incredibly beautiful,
and, again, I could just continue to talk
about the beauty of those mountains. It was just beautiful,
beautiful country to be in. - Yeah, it's true.
And in that same vein,
I remember one of the few things I did learn...
Because I dare not ask you for feedback on camera
about the process. I'm still learning what my process is.
I don't know what I'm doing.
I'm finding my legs as I progress throughout my career.
But one thing I wasn't doing between my last three films
was having any fun,
or having the presence of mind to recognize and be grateful,
And what Hold the Dark did — and the environment around us —
sometimes I had to actually stop
and look at the mountainside
and the quiet, insulated air
sort of encircled by snow,
and force myself.
'Cause it's so stressful, and it's all logistics,
and a certain part of your brain
is being depleted as you make a movie.
I said, no, I'm gonna — you know, amidst all this tumult
and "Oh, we can't get the snow can up here.
We can't bring a techno crane to this area.
Well, how are we scouting it then?
If I can't shoot here, why am I here?"
I would just flop back in the snow
and look up at the sky
and the cliffs you're talking about, the mountains,
and actually take a minute - Yeah.
- and breathe the fresh air and be grateful.
- Yeah. - And then get back
to pissing and moaning, but hey, it was good.
- Yeah, but the thing that struck me most
about working with you was...
Well, several things, but I think the overriding thing
was your obvious deep,
joyous love of film - Hmmm.
- and love for the process and the frame.
And I remember, at one point,
when we shot that piece
walking across that frozen river
— I guess it was a river valley —
looking at that huge vista, and you were like,
"Dude, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever shot,
I've ever photographed." [Both laughing]
And it was just, you know,
it was just infectious, you know, that spirit.
- Yeah, I still haven't learned how to work with actors. [Wright laughing]
I'll get some— - We had our moments,
you know. - Well no, it's matter of...
It's a language that I don't quite know.
I mean, I know story. - Yeah.
- I know beats, I know how to find, as you say, the music.
When I hear it, I'm very much in tune
and I think I can help guide,
but I should read one of those, like, how-to-talk-to-actor books,
right? - Nah.
- Just don't line read, that's the main one.
- Yeah. - Yeah, you know,
which I never try.
- But you have a very specific eye, a very specific frame,
and that's fantastic, you know.
You have, like, a totally clear, cinematic vision in your head
about what you're getting now
and how that slots into the overall narrative,
but it's all determined.
The footsteps along that narrative journey
are determined by each frame
and you, you know, you've got it dialed in.
And the thing that I found sometimes
is I'd show up on set and it'd be like, "What?
We're doing what?"
But 99.9% of the time, it all made sense
and it all served the interests of the,
you know, of what I needed to do.
And so I had to figure out a couple of times
to bitch about something though,
- Well, yeah. - It can't all be perfect,
you know. That makes me feel uncomfortable.
- Well, no, but I think any small friction we had
was — and I welcome it, because it's — because you care,
- Well, that's, you know. - and for me,
that's the big thing, - Yeah.
- is having input
and having a real stake in the story we're telling.
- Yeah. - That's, you know...
- Yeah, well, it was a big monster
that we were pushing up that snowy hill,
- Yeah. - you know, so...
And it was fun, and it was — and I think, again,
you know, we go back to the book
and to making the script,
which was just so well crafted,
and the architecture of the thing was so well considered,
and it was like, let's do justice to this thing.
And, as well,
you know, the character of Core...
There was such a kind of humanity
written into him - Hmmm.
- and such an odd,
unwitting heroicism, - Hmmm.
- written into him.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I dug being there, yeah.
- Well, it was awesome to have you.
- [Interviewer] Thank you so much
for being here. - Oh, whoa, wow!
- That was it? - We did the run.
- [Interviewer] One question,
and you guys just killed it.
- Cool! - Thank you so much
for doing this. - Awesome, cool.
[Mellow upbeat music]
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