'Sasquatch Sunset' Brother Directors Cut Their Own Indie Style

A family makes their way through a forest and finally stops to camp. They eat something, go to sleep, and then get up to do it again.

Except this isn't a family on a desert getaway. It is a group of furry, mythical creatures known as Sasquatch, who go about their daily existence. The movie “Sasquatch Sunset” is unexpectedly heartfelt and moving (though also quite funny) in its exploration of the dynamics of their lives as they defecate, lactate, fornicate, urinate, procreate, chew and generally make their way through the world. .

The latest creation from filmmaker brothers Nathan and David Zellner, “Sasquatch Sunset” feels like an extension of their unconventional explorations of behavior amidst the natural world. Having first emerged as prolific short film makers, their feature films now include 2014's “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter,” starring Rinko Kikuchi, and the 2018 western comedy “Damsel,” starring Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson. They also recently directed episodes of the television series “The Curse,” starring Nathan Fielder, Benny Safdie and Emma Stone.

The Sasquatch family from his latest project is played by Nathan Zellner, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, all unrecognizable under elaborate prosthetics and costumes. The film functions as an examination of family bonds, a meditation on what constitutes a society, and a call to save the environment. Which is quite surprising for a film without conventional dialogue, since the creatures communicate through a language of grunts. And for a film that freely exploits body humor, there's also a vivid and delicate emotional side.

“That was the goal, we wanted to sneak it in,” says David Zellner, 50, during a recent interview with Nathan in Austin, Texas, at the South by Southwest Film Festival. “We liked the idea of ​​taking something that someone else might do as a one-note joke and then revere it and humanize it as much as possible. It's absurd from the start, but can we make people care and give it more depth and resonance and make it work on different levels? You have to find things about it that you can connect with.”

The script was a 60-page document that included all of the film's story points and emotional beats, built around a four-season structure, although it had no dialogue.

Keough, 34, recently star of “Under the Bridge” and “Daisy Jones & the Six,” was already familiar with the Zellner films and had read the “Damsel” script before being sent “Sasquatch Sunset.”

“I got the script and it was all the things I love: absurd, hilarious, moving, poetic, beautiful and emotional, and somehow totally gripping and without any dialogue,” the actor says by phone from London.

“I hope the script gets published so people can read it or at least leak it, because it's one of the best scripts I've ever read,” agrees Eisenberg, 40, calling from New York City. “I've had this a few times before, where by reading it you know what each take should be like. Although the tone is unusual, the tone is very clear in the script, it is very intentional, funny and full of pathos.”

Originally from Colorado, the Zellners first emerged as part of Austin's vibrant film community. (Nathan, 48, still lives in Austin, while David now lives in Los Angeles.) It speaks to the Zellners' unsettling creative curiosity that when they were trying to find a location in Austin for our interview, they didn't want to go to some favorite place. favorite place, but rather a new tiki bar that neither of them had been to before.

As they decide what to order from the extensive menu, they eagerly watch the extravagant drinks being passed to other tables, and Nathan expresses mild concern about what David will eat.

“I have a thing for bones,” David says. “It's my problem, it's not the problem of the bones.”

De let, Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg and Christophe Zajac-Denek in the movie “Sasquatch Sunset.”

(Bleecker Street)

The Zellners first designed a homemade Sasquatch costume for their 2001 short “Frontier.” They used the same costume for 2011's “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2.”

“You never throw away your costume,” Nathan Zellner said. “You never know when you might need it.”

“We've always been obsessed with Bigfoot,” David Zellner said with a mix of joy and seriousness. “But whenever there are images of Bigfoot, he is always seen walking or running away. And then we thought, 'Well, what else is he doing?' He is doing the same things that any other animal does. Why isn't that recorded on film? But in this context, because it's this mythical creature, because of the way it represents this bond between man and animal, it feels familiar and uncomfortable to see him do these things that are attributed to animal behavior.”

The film's producers include Lars Knudsen and director Ari Aster and his company Square Peg. They hired Steve Newburn, who worked on Aster's “Beau is Afraid,” to create the creatures' costumes. Special attention was paid to ensuring that the actors' faces could still be expressive under their prosthetics and that their eyes were clearly visible.

“I can probably speak for most actors by saying that I don't love wearing prosthetics,” Eisenberg says. “It's incredibly exhausting and difficult to act. When David asked me to send me his new script, I was excited because I love what David writes and we shared everything. But when he told me that he wanted me to participate in it and that it would all be creature work, I said, 'Thank you.' I can't wait to read it. And I assure you that I will never do anything like that.'”

However, Eisenberg was quickly won over. “When I read it, in about two pages, you realize it's as wonderful as any kind of independent drama you can make,” he says. “The humor was very funny, inventive and original and yet always based on character. I know it sounds very strange to say that because our characters are not human and yet the emotions were very clear to me. “These characters were written with a specific spirit in mind that set them apart, that made them individual.”

Eisenberg, who also premiered his latest work as a writer and director, “A Real Pain,” at Sundance this year, met the Zellners at a film festival in Poland nearly 20 years ago and was immediately impressed by the integrity and originality of their job. .

“I met them when I was very young, and that's when I started seeing more unusual independent films,” Eisenberg says. “He aspired to write or act in films that had a similar tone. It's very difficult to achieve those things. And 'Sasquatch' seems to me to be the culmination of all that because the premise is a complete embodiment of that unusual sensibility.”

A scene from the movie “Sasquatch Sunset.”

(Courtesy of Square Peg/Sundance Institute)

The Zellners have a knack for filming in unusual places. “Sasquatch Sunset” was filmed in northern California's Humboldt County, a hotbed of claims of real-world Sasquatch sightings. Some of the same locations were used for the Ewoks' planet Endor in “Return of the Jedi.” Having the actors in their costumes not on sound stages but in remote outdoor locations proved to be a challenge.

“There's something about the adventure of going to places that are hard to get to because you get something unique out of it,” said David Zellner, citing the influence of Werner Herzog's films.

“Unconsciously it worked well for this one, like nature documentaries where you see a part of the Earth you've never seen before,” Nathan Zellner continues. “You have to put them in an environment that seems otherworldly.”

It also took a while for the actors to get used to acting in the costumes.

“I definitely approached this differently than anything I had done before,” Keough says. “You have to transform yourself in a way that's really extreme, but really fun. That's the dream when you're an actor, at least for me. The more I can disappear, the more fun the process is.”

Eisenberg says, “It was necessary to get away from the sensor in my head that tells me I'm overreacting. You have to exaggerate things a little to get them across. Even things that appear on screen as very subtle; “When you're in the suit, they feel pretty roomy.”

From left, Nathan Zellner, Christophe Zajac-Denek, Riley Keough and David Zellner of “Sasquatch Sunset” at the LA Times Studio at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Keough was also captivated by the many levels of meaning that can be read into the film's story.

“It can be as deep as you want,” Keough says. “This could be a family of Sasquatch that lives in the redwoods. It can be about family relationships, pain, birth, life and death. It may be about the invasion of the natural world. I think they did something really special, that made you connect with these non-human characters in a very human way. And that's a really powerful thing.”

At a time when other notable long-running sibling film teams (the Coens, the Duplasses and the Safdies) are taking a break, David and Nathan Zellner are still going strong, in part because neither makes the other laugh. in the same way.

“We've never had any other way,” says David. “From when we were making home movies on VHS and we were like 8 years old until now, there has never been a break. “We kept trying to make things less s— as we went along.”

“When you grew up watching the same movies and you can make yourself laugh just by saying a word or it reminds you of some joke or something, I think that's a big part of it,” Nathan says.

Although they've had some larger projects in development that have fallen apart, including a “Looney Tunes” project at Warner Bros., the Zellners are quite happy with the scale of their work and their ability to simply keep creating something new.

“I don't know if it's the best career path, but we always think of it more as an artist's path than a career path,” says David. “But we never expressed it much. There has always been, since we were little children, the need to create something. I don't know if that's good or bad, it's simply been the way we've been less strategic and more intuitive, what we're most passionate about and what seems fresh and new to us.”

“And it's hard to come up with because no one knows what it is,” Nathan adds.

“We love cinema a lot, but we also get bored with so much repetition,” says David. “We're just trying, in our own small, tiny way, to push the medium a little bit in some interesting direction. And whatever happens with it, will happen.”

By continuing to operate on their own terms, the Zellners are far from lost in the wilderness. They sound like happy wanderers going their own way.