Having screened at Sundance London earlier this month Sasquatch Sunset arrives in cinemas across the UK from Friday 14th June. The film, directed by David Zellner and Nathan Zellner, stars Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough as two members of a clan of sasquatches. Sasquatch Sunset is as quirky as a film can get, but is full of humour and heart.
Beginning in the misty forests of North America, a family of Sasquatches – possibly the last of their enigmatic kind – embark on an absurdist, epic, hilarious, and ultimately poignant journey. Over the course of a year these shaggy and noble giants fight for survival as they find themselves on a collision course with the ever-changing world around them. Ahead of the UK release THN were able to speak with David and Nathan Zellner about the project. Read on to discover how the crazy idea came to fruition, what life as a sasquatch is really like, and whether the creature does or does not exist.
Due to the film’s somewhat surreal nature, the overwhelming post viewing reaction to this film seems to be ‘what did I just watch?’ How on Earth did the idea come together?
DAVID ZELLNER: Since we were kids we’ve always been fascinated with Bigfoot, Bigfoot lore, and cryptids in general. I think ultimately the way it represents a grey area between human and animal behaviour, and human’s connection to the natural world, is what led us to explore that as a feature. Also, when we would see the footage of Bigfoot, on YouTube or whatever, it was always the same thing of Bigfoot walking. What else is it doing? That can’t be all it’s doing, so that started us thinking about what their interior lives were like and built it up from there.
Given all of the stories, do you think that Saquatches have ever, or do, exist?
DZ: We would love it to be. We like the idea. It’s fun to believe in things.
NATHAN ZELLNER: It’s fun to have something mythical still around like in modern times. It’s still fun to think that something is out there that’s mysterious and unknown. I think that’s part of the draw that people get into these kinds of things; it’s like it’s almost better that it’s unknown and still exists, then found out to be real.
And what’s your take on sightings?
NZ: There’s always something interesting that pops up. There was one right after we were filming from a train in Colorado. You just wonder how that footage exists; it was kind of fascinating. There’s like a lot of sceptics within the Bigfoot community. They want to believe, but they also want to keep it pure. I think with social media and the Internet, there are a lot of just inherently pranksters out there who are trying to fool you, so there’s probably more false videos.
DZ: I mean still the most impactful one is the very first one is known as the Patterson-Gimlin film from the late 60s. That’s where the iconic Bigfoot pose comes from – the silhouetted profile. That’s like one of the most famous film frames in existence. In terms of footage or sightings or whatever, that one remains the king of them all.
Amongst the cast you have Jesse Einsenberg who is well known for The Social Network, Batman versus Superman, Zombieland. Actors tend to be quite precious about their faces, and being able to see them in their work. How did you manage to get him to agree to become a Sasquatch?
NZ: Jesse has been a friend of ours for about 20 years, but never had worked together in this capacity before. We sent him the script and he saw the same uniqueness and excitement that made us passionate about it in the first place. We really didn’t have to pitch him on it. It’s sort of a script that you get the tone, or or you don’t. He immediately understood what kind of film this would be, but then also what an opportunity it would be for him to disappear completely into character, and do something against type and act with different instincts than he normally would. Same thing with Riley, she read it and felt immediately like she had to do it because it was just so different and sounded like a really fun adventure.
The make-up is insanely good, I imagine they took quite a while to do. Did that put any pressure onto the shoot itself in terms of scheduling?
DZ: It’s just something you have to plan when you’re doing any kind of makeup effects. Also, oftentimes in creature work, you’re shooting on controlled environments – sound stages or green screen – and this, we were shooting on location and in remote areas and these hard-to-access kind of primordial forests. So dealing with weather, there’s many variables and the time of year there was less sunlight so yeah, there were a lot of things that cut into the amount of time we had each day. It required us all to be more prepared and have everything mapped out.
Nathan, you also star in the film as one of the Sasquatches, what’s it like inside the suit?
NZ: You can’t say it’s a comfortable process to sit in a chair for a couple hours. We also had to go through a full body cast and face cast where they put all the goop on you and then make a mold of you because the suits were all rubber covered in fur. They were pretty heavy, the feet were pretty heavy, and stuff’s just glued on your face. You would think that maybe would feel claustrophobic, but because it was these kinds of these characters that are supposed to be beasts, and sort of big and animal creatures, it was really fun. Especially when we were, like David said, it was all natural settings and the real environment and interacting with the elements and real animals. It was really easy to get into character because of all those elements.
The film is dialogue free, with the creatures communicating through grunts, which in turn provides their language. Was there ever any thought about adding a subtitle track or similar?
DZ: It took a long time to get this film going for those reasons. We always wanted, from the inception, we wanted to be as much from their perspective as possible. Whether it was through voiceover or having human actors in it with them, the second we put those elements in, it’s from the point of view of humans and you’re separating these creatures. There’s more judgement from a human perspective when we really wanted to be immersed in their world, and so by design we never wanted any voiceover. We wanted to be open to the full spectrum of animal behaviour. Wanted to be open to the full spectrum of what that was, whether it was some of the more absurd moments, and the more poignant, just to approach it without judgement, and just normalise it, all matter of fact, in the way that all animals other than humans do. I think that led us to conveying the exposition through means other than narration or dialogue. In some ways it was almost like a silent film. The score and the sound design play a big part of it. We really wanted to tell as much of the story as we could through the physicality and through the subtlest of facial expressions, so that’s where we kind of leaned on ways to move the story forward without the benefit of voiceover.
Hidden amongst the slapstick comedy elements Sasquatch Sunset has a timely message about eco-systems, the environment, and mankind’s impact on it. Why was it important to you to include this more serious aspect of the story?
DZ: It was a very intuitive process. When writing the script, and this goes with everything we do, but especially this project, we never wanted to… it’s very intuitive which way it leans into the comedy or the poignancy, wherever it went was just whatever felt like the most truthful moment. It was always circumstantial and approaching it with a certain level of sincerity, so it was never forced either way. In terms of the ecological aspects of it, it wasn’t like we sat down with some mandate or agenda. It’s just, I don’t know how you do a movie from the perspective of the natural world and not have that be a part of it. I think there is no way to avoid it. It was inherently just there. It would have been weird to avoid any element of it.
NZ: We found locations that were really unique looking and kind of prehistoric. But even when we were out in the middle of nowhere, you would just turn around and, “oh, there’s a logging road” or there’s the stump of a tree that was cut down a hundred years ago, that probably when it was cut down was 800 years old. So it’s just inherently there. We wanted the first part of the film to be kind of timeless and you really weren’t sure where this was in terms of the history of man, and it was harder to find like those areas where we weren’t having to like shoot around a power line or something like that. There’s also something really interesting about approaching the impact of humankind on the earth from the perspective of animals through the natural world in general.
The film is releasing in UK cinemas from 14th June, why should audiences take a chance on this movie?
The art we like to make, and the stuff that we respond to, is trying to take some kind of risk, and hopefully take you somewhere you hadn’t been before, like new, uncomfortable places at times. That’s most stimulating to us and we seek out and that’s what we tried to do with this. Beyond that, we never like to tell people how to feel, we want them to bring their own experience to it. Whatever they feel is legitimate and much more interesting than us imposing something on them about what they should think or feel.
Sasquatch Sunset is out in UK cinemas from 14th June.
