Jeremy Saulnier Q&A.
“Sloppy, disturbing and awkward violence is naturally what I gravitate towards.”
High fives to Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier not only for getting through most of the more than 400 questions you submitted, but for taking the time to really consider his answers. He’s covered a number of questions regarding inspirational and favorite films in the six lists that accompany this article, and his answers to the remainder are below (including some mild spoilers for his films). Questions that were asked by several people are uncredited.
Jeremy Saulnier on the Green Room set
ON GREEN ROOM…
I saw your film on opening night and loved it. How did you perfectly visualise the crowd and concert scenes of the film? Did you do some research by going to concerts? Do you play in a band? —Darren Fx Thanks! The concert scenes were among the very few in Green Room where we employed two cameras. To technically pull that off we had to wrangle almost 100 people and capture as rowdy a show as we could (which is very difficult on a union film in North America!). And yes, I had grown up in the punk/hardcore scene in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and had been in a band in high school. Many of my friends are still in bands and have toured the States, so I went to a few of their shows and interviewed them about being on the road and dynamics between band members.
Is there anything innately political about Green Room? —garyshannon Yes. Lots of political undertones when I wrote it in 2013/14, but I couldn’t predict how relevant it would become in 2016. Ugh. My statement wasn’t the obvious ‘Nazis are bad’, it was more about loosely paralleling mainstream American conservative power structure in Darcy’s gang. The elite few at the top give marching orders to those beneath them, using ideology and misinformation to cause division and animosity between those who are ‘fighting the fight’ but unwittingly are serving interests other than their own. But that’s all underneath. It’s really just a tragic hyper violent punk rock shit show and an exercise in tension building.
What amazed me the most about Green Room was how authentic the members of the band felt. I bought all of them as punk kids. Did you put the actors through some form of “punk rock education” period before shooting? —B. McGee The characters were mostly based on people I knew growing up in the punk/hardcore scene. There’s a real Sam, Tiger, and Tad. Luckily, Anton (Pat) and Alia (Sam) had experience playing in bands. But Callum (Tiger) and Joe (Reece) had zero experience. We pre-recorded the Ain’t Rights songs and let them listen to it across the Atlantic (Callum and Joe were UK based). Once on set in Portland, Oregon we had a crash-course for the band so they could play live and come off as authentic. It was trial by fire for Callum, who had to perform his first on-camera show (at the Mexican restaurant) nine hours after he arrived in the States!
Green Room very much resonated with me and many others in the punk/hardcore community who have toured. The film had such a sincere authenticity to its source material. I have seen pictures of you on set in a Sheer Terror shirt, so I must ask if the story for Green Room (even small portions) was at all inspired by experiences on the road by either yourself or others you know in the punk/hardcore scene? —Nick Holland Absolutely. My band never toured, but lots of my friends’ bands did. I used a lot of their stories for the film, including the opening scene where the driver dozed off behind the wheel and woke up on the side of the road. I was in the scene in the ’90s, so there were Nazi skinheads at most of the shows. Lots of parallels to my personal experience, including the soundtrack—many of the songs I grew up listening to made it into the film, including two Ain’t Rights songs that were written by my high school buddies in the ’90s.
How did you achieve that effect with Yelchin’s arm? It was incredibly realistic and freaky. —Zac Barr That was a totally practical effect. Just a good old-fashioned (and very well-placed) prosthetic with hidden blood tubes. Anton and I worked on increasing flexibility in his wrist so he could dangle his hand as if his tendons were severed—it totally sold the gag.
What was the screenwriting process for Green Room? It was one of my favorites this year! Also loved Blue Ruin. —Ernesto Thanks. I was coming off of Blue Ruin and reading a ton of scripts. Was terrified I wouldn’t find the right material and I started to panic. Green Room was an idea I’d had for years (even before Blue Ruin) but didn’t have the resources to make. I decided to take that old idea and run, thinking I’d never get a chance to make it again (too weird, violent and esoteric to push through the system under normal circumstances!). I had momentum from Blue Ruin and so I just started cranking out a script as my festival tour was winding down. From page one of the script to wrapping production was exactly one year. I don’t have an identifiable ‘process’ yet, as I’m always writing under duress. But usually I procrastinate, talk about my idea a bunch, research and take notes, and then one day just sit down and power through a draft. Two pages some days, ten pages other days. Jogging Prospect Park helps me clear the head and problem solve narrative issues, and pulling from real-life characters helps me add the details that so excite me.
With a relatively larger budget for Green Room in comparison to Blue Ruin, how did that affect how you adapted the script to screen? Was a larger budget in mind when writing the screenplay? —BradDee Green Room had more than ten times the budget of Blue Ruin, but we had the exact same number of shooting days (31)! This was mostly due to Green Room being part of a sustainable model of filmmaking—union rates and thus far more expensive. But people on set, including me, were actually making a living—and that was a first for me! The big difference between the two was Blue Ruin was custom built on the page to incorporate locations, cast members, props and picture cars that I had access to and intimate knowledge of, while Green Room had to be built from scratch to accommodate the fictional locations and scenarios I had dreamt up on the page. When writing it, I had no idea it would cost so much!
Big fan. How did the final dog scene in Green Room come to your mind? It seemed so out of the blue but awesomely subverts a classic trope! —Cutler Thanks! The final dog scene in Green Room just came naturally as I wrote the film. I had done a lot of research on Pit Bulls and fighting dogs, and it became clear how misrepresented fighting breeds are as depicted in films. I played that angle up for most of the film, yet felt it important to reveal the ‘true nature’ of Pit Bulls as a nice little button at the end. It also helped to offset all the gaddamn carnage!
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