Dara Van Dusen for ‘A Prayer For The Dying’ | The Business | SAG-AFTRA Foundation

[music] - I want to start Dara. We were just chatting backstage and you told me you haven't seen this film since you finished the edit and I am very curious to know if there's a reason or just is it just happened? - Um there's many reasons. I think you know this film took over a decade to make. Um so I've lived with it a very long time. You know it's that thing that you like carry over your shoulder. Actors know this, directors know this. You just walk into a room and you're like where do I put this baggage down before I have regular conversations? And then the filming itself, we only shot for 23 days but post was close to 9 months and spanned three different countries and you just get exhausted. You get a little sick of it and you start to not trust yourself. So it's good to remove yourself from it. Um yeah and I think I could only kind of appreciate this part of the journey if I removed myself from everything on screen. - Well and luckily it's a very light-hearted film that is fun to watch repeatedly. Um you said this took 10 years. Let's talk about that journey. So it's based on a book. It's based on a novel by Stewart O'Nan. Uh how did it come to your attention? What was that what the the origins like? - Um so it was more than 10 years. I don't even want to admit how long it took. It wasn't 20. It's between 10 and 20. Um and I first read the book. I'm from New York originally but I studied at the Polish National Film School. And my father um came and visited me. We went to an English language bookstore and he just threw it in my little carrier thing and was like oh you'll like that one. And I I read it in one sitting. Um it's a short book and I just remember when I closed it and all I could do was look at the wall and I was like what the [ __ ] What the [ __ ] just happened? And it was so overwhelming and I didn't understand how a book could do that to you. Um and I thought how fascinating if - [snorts] - a movie could do that too and leave you in that state because that is an emotion. Not everything has to be that you're left crying and sad or happy. I mean, what the [ __ ] is a feeling and an emotion? And um I emailed the author. I found his email online and I told him I loved his book. Um somebody else had the rights, so I waited in line and here we are. But it's an amazing novel, so I would recommend that every single person reads it. It's written in like the third person singular if I'm getting that right, so you stand, you look, you walk over there, you think. And it'll lead to other questions, which is why the camera is the way it is um because it it really plays with your mind. It's at once very distant and also very internal and personal. Um so if it hits you, it really hits you. - So then how did it look like that's such a specific to prose aspect of it, I think, you know, the point of view and the what you just described and the language? How do you go about adapting that for the screen or like into a script at all? - Yeah, I mean, it's hard also when you love something and I loved that novel. I still do. I love every word on the page, so I think, you know, the the gift of it having taken that long was that I had time to let it go because at first you just kind of translate it. If something's really perfect and good, you just take it and put it into final draft and you're like, done. I did it. Um but I over time I had to let that go and then the DP and I went to film school together. She's my best friend. She's the godmother of my daughter. We started working on the visual language really early um because I felt this story could handle it. It would be appropriate for it. It would enhance its telling. Um and I've always been super interested in visual language um and I felt that yeah, that there's such a biblical other worldly thing in this story itself even just on words on a page and I felt that a camera could really capture that. I hoped it could. - Uh and I was of course going to get into this but let's jump in right now. The cinematography, Kate McCullah is your DP's name. What a talent. I see why you're best friends. I want to be best friends with her. Like this it looks incredible and it's so distinct, so visual and you're saying that the camera itself has a point of view and a story that it's telling. Tell tell me tell us everything about this. - Yeah, I mean we decided early on so given that you know the villain in the story um there's a couple of villains, right? There's nature. There's faith if there's another if God is in charge of something else is at work. Um there are forces that you can't control that are kind of dominating and taking over and then you've also got a main character who's battling within himself. And we thought that if we had a camera that was a character in and of itself that represented that that represented other. Um that would be the right way to tell this but I think also we understood that it couldn't be human the camera. It couldn't be what we were used to seeing. It couldn't make smooth turns. It couldn't be unnoticeable because then you're just eyes in the room. We wanted it to stand out and feel like something other. Um which is why we came up with it moving really aggressively mechanically only at 90° angles only in sharp turns always off timed. It's always a little bit behind or a little bit forward very intentionally and it was timed to music. Um also because we're playing with genre with horror and with western we timed it to rap music because but we knew that something would always feel off if it was on the beat of like a Tyler the Creator song or Kanye. There would be something automatically kind of unsettling. Um and yeah so we based around that but it is a character that has a full character arc from start to finish, and the actors had to work with the camera as if it were a character, and I was really lucky that my actors were up for that. - That's really interesting. That reminds me of like some of the technique that they use in a totally dissimilar genre, which is mockumentary, but where they have kind of the rapid zooms and a lot of the time they will cut to someone a little bit later cuz the camera's catching the actor, and the camera operators have to sort of train like actors, and there is that relationship. So, can you tell us more about what that relationship looked like on this film between the actors and the camera? - Yeah, it was really interesting. Um, so, first of all, Johnny Flynn is the greatest person ever on the planet. We love Johnny Flynn. And um, - Had you watched Scrotal Recall? - Yeah, of course. - [laughter] - What's its new title? - Lovesick. - Lovesick, yeah. - Scrotal Recall is way better. - Still good. Still appropriate. - No, but he, you know, he was number one on the call sheet, so his behavior and his demeanor and his approach this whole production mattered a lot for everybody else. Um, and he was so excited to be working with the camera. He loved the idea of being on screen in character and then needing to run around the camera, tiptoe over the tracks, get out the door, and get back into frame. Um, and he really spread that energy on set, and I think he was really good about reminding me that everybody needs to know everything at all times. You can't just put the actor there and then be like, "Do your scene. The camera's going to wander over there, and don't act like that's weird." Um, it was it had to be a team effort, and everybody needed to know what the camera was doing and why every day. Even though we talked about it beforehand, it was a reminder. It's again, like having another person in the scene. This is what it's going to do, and here's why it's going to do that. And you know, their performances, when you're that stylized and the performances are to a degree stylized, I wanted them rooted in reality. Everybody needs to be in the know, or it'll feel off. Like you're building a kind of surreal universe, so all the pieces have to glue perfectly together, and if there's a crack, it falls apart. You risk losing the viewer, whoever's been immersed. So, it was really important the actors knew what was going on, agreed with it, and felt comfortable. Um I feel like specifically in this room, there's a good example, Christina, who plays Marta, is an amazing Norwegian actress, and she was up for anything all the time. But, there's one scene in the bed where she's looking directly into the lens, and I didn't think that that would be such a weird thing. So, I just said, "Yeah, yeah, it's a close-up in your face." And she was like, "Great." And she was lying there, and she could see herself in the lens, and she started to really struggle. And I remember thinking like, "Fuck, I should have told This is one I should have explained this to her so she could have prepared." And it took her really long time, and she really wanted to nail it, and I think she did, and it's all fine. But, it was That was the one moment I felt I hadn't communicated enough to her about where like how close the camera was to her face, also that she would see her own reflection, and need to be acting. Um but for the most part, thanks to Johnny and the amazing cast we had, they were all kind of down to do it. That was Some of the shots are Johnny's. Like, it was at that level. They were all sitting behind the monitor every bit for other people's scenes, and just so they knew what was going on. - Wow. And we have to talk about the rest of the cast, too. Like, what a great team. It's also not a very dialogue-heavy film. It's so much reacting and waiting, and you know, building this dread. And the camera's helping with that, the color's helping with that, the music is helping with that, but so much falls on the actor. How much did you or like how did you communicate with them about what that was going to look like? About you're not just going to be reading on the page like 50% at least is just face, just eyes and face. - Yeah, and I So, a big thing for me was because there's so little dialogue, and it's quite written intentionally. I didn't want it to become like stilted and stiff. So, I didn't want to read lines. I mean, the actors were anyway. They go off and they do it and I was like, "Fine, just not in front of me." Um but we spent so much time talking through the scenes, especially Johnny and myself. So, that we both knew we understood it the same way because it's such an internal performance. That I needed us to be on the same page. Also, because it was really important for Jacob not to explode. It's a man who's holding everything in. And it would have been There are so many moments where you're like, "Do it. Just [ __ ] let it out. Cry and it'll be amazing." Because it kind of feels I think for both Johnny and me at times you just want to do it and let it be this dramatic moving thing, but that wasn't what we were making. It's risky certainly to just say don't do it. Um but we talked through everything so much that we knew exactly the points where he was allowed to push it and the points where he wasn't. Um and because that relationship was so open and the communication was so good, it let him play also. Like, you know, the scene where he's saying he's in Fenton store and he's like talking to himself and twitching. That was because it wasn't working and then Johnny was like, "I have an idea. I have an idea." And I was like, "Okay." And we both knew he could explode there. And then he just came up with this whole thing and it it was That was on the second or third day of shooting and from there we were really able to kind of build the other parts of the character and the other scenes. But it's all mapped out and it's all overly planned, which I think is an amazing thing, but it can also be a very difficult thing. It's for better or worse that everything is so perfectly planned out both performance-wise, camera-wise, production design, everything. - Well, on the note of him not exploding, he does have that refrain that comes out throughout comes up throughout the film of like, "You don't know me." Right? Um and I want to talk about that a little. I You know, sometimes the director wants to leave it kind of open to interpretation or the actor does or maybe you discussed it together or internally, but just that line, that refrain that keeps coming up and at the points at which it does, I think is so interesting. If you can tell us a little bit about that. - Yeah, I know. It's not a secret. I mean, I think there's a lot from the novel, the script, and the film that is unclear intentionally because I don't have the answer either. Um but I think you're dealing with the main character who's kind of faced with impossible situations. Um and he makes choices. And he doesn't always make the right one, which immediately puts guilt on himself. Um and he starts to wonder, is he a bad person? And I think we all have this to a degree in our lives. You do things, whether it's intentional or unintentional, where you suddenly question your kind of moral grounding, standing, whatever. Um and given that he's a character who's playing an immigrant from Norway with a hidden history, a hidden past, who's dealing with PTSD from the war that he hasn't quite - [snorts] - figured out himself yet. And as he goes through these horrible events and questions every decisions he makes, I think he starts to feel that he doesn't know himself. And he doesn't quite know who's in control of both the world and his own actions. Um and I think a lot of that character, what he and I talked about a lot, were like that horrible feeling, and I hope we all have it, it's not just me and my own creeping mental illness of like um when you actually believe you might be a bad person for a moment that you can't believe anything good otherwise and that you've let everybody down. Um so I think that that sentence really had that power, I thought. And I also think it's that thing, it's so depressing to say, but like at the end of the day, does anybody really know you at you know, we all think about legacy when we go out, and your partners, your spouses, your kids, whatever, and you wonder, did they really know me? And I think that character felt like, no, they didn't. Um yeah, but it's it's a bit open-ended intentionally, too. - Great, that's what I wrote down too, so full marks. Uh what is something and you've talked about the flexibility with the camera and the communication. What's something that you really appreciated about the actors on on this shoot specifically? - I mean, I appreciated every I had the best cast ever. Um I think it was, you know, the guy playing Harlo, Gustav Lindh, is a really well-known Swedish actor. Um and that's a teeny tiny role for him in our world. I live in Scandinavia. Um Kristine also is a huge Norwegian actress and that's a smaller role for her. Um and it was just giving everything for what would have been a smaller performance, you know, on the page and they did. They gave their time, their energy, their effort. They showed up on set when they weren't there that they didn't need to be there that day. Um and I think it just led to the sense of we had a really good time shooting this really depressing movie. We were all hanging out and it felt good and it felt like we were making something together, but I think also um because it's a debut that they trusted in me was an amazing thing. Um and I didn't realize until after the fact. Like I really I worked as a script supervisor for like 10 years, so my relationship to actors was really different. I was used to being on set, but I was also used to being like, "They're crying." And I'm like, "Listen, the pen, you got to put the pen right now." And then like really backing away quietly and sitting there staring at the monitor like if she doesn't pick up the [ __ ] pen with her right hand, we have to do And this was such a different like I didn't understand what actors are really doing, like standing in front of 150 people ripping their chests open and giving you everything for somebody yell cut and it goes silent and then they're just sitting there. And I think when that occurred to me on set and I understood what they were doing not just for me, but for this project and it's so selfless and it's so painful and it's so they're in such a vulnerable position. The idea that they trusted in me. Also, with po- that was a new thing for me. Actors give you everything and then you walk away to post and they have no control, and you get to do what you want with the performance. And what an amazing level of trust to say, "I'll give it to you and do what you want with it." Um, but that responsibility and the dawned on me about halfway through. And I'm grateful that these actors gave me that trust. Um, and yeah, I'm still close with all of them today. - Aw, that's that's what you like to hear about any shoot, but especially a debut. Um, I hesitate to dig into it, but post. It sounds like it was a long, intense process. Um, but is there anything you want to share about that, you know, about again, revisiting the performances, the material? It's it's you know, to your point about actors having to like rip their heart out, bare their soul, post kind of does that to you in terms of having to take the material, rip it all open, and just have it laid bare. - Yeah. I mean, it's also when you grow close with the people you work with, it pains you personally to remove amazing moments that they give you. And I mean, I keep it more actor-focused in terms of post, cuz post was a real headache for me just as a director with VFX and editing, and I it was all a lot. Um, but I really struggled with separating myself from set. Um, and also like listening to the rules of the film versus moments I could see. There are amazing moments that are nobody will ever see, and I'm so sad about it, but I knew where they had to go out. Um, and that was really hard, but I I was really close with Johnny and Christina and Gus, and I just I was on the phone with them all the time, and it felt so good to be able to tell them like, "I'm cutting so much of your performance away." And they would be like, "That's okay." And I'm sure that's not even appropriate. I don't know. I don't know what the relationship should be, but it felt like we were all in the know of what like I wasn't doing anything wrong. Um, and it was again a learning experience for me. They've done it a hundred million times. I hadn't. And it hurts to to amazing work from somebody you care about just be removed for the sake of the film moving faster or because the scene before [clears throat] didn't work as well. So, you kind of need to get to a dramatic scene quicker. Um yeah, so it's a hard process, but also you're on your own in post. The director is alone and that makes it even trickier, especially with a stylized film because when you have the backing of other people, you can be really confident. And suddenly when you're alone you're like, "Oh, did I do something wrong?" Cuz you have people reacting and going, "Oh, you know you're not supposed to shoot like that." And you're like "Yeah, oh, did is it too late?" Like you suddenly lose all your confidence cuz you don't have this team of people going, "Yeah, yeah, go for it. We might as well take the big swing and you know, make a noble failure than something that's meh." Um but yeah, so it's really hard. That was a rough I don't I don't think about it much. It was a traumatic Sorry. Sorry to excavate that here. Don't bring that [laughter] up. - Um this is a room full of actors that - used to having to do that to dig deep. Um so, you mentioned the you know, the style aspect of it. It is very stylized. I want to talk about some of those surreal moments within it, too. Some of the specific visuals. I have not read this book and been affected by it in the same way, but if you can share whether it came from there or whether that was a conversation with you and Kate or at what point in it you decide, you know, we're going to have this like this blood red hue on everything. We're going to have visuals of smoke and just yeah. - Yeah, it's not in the book, but obviously we're dealing with these kind of biblical themes. This is a weird You know, the book itself is inspired by the book of Job um to begin with and then I am also inspired by that. Um it's also inspired by this I don't know what to call it, a collage book called Wisconsin Death Trip. I don't know if anybody's ever It's it's really worth reading. It's an amateur photographer in the late 1800s in Wisconsin. Um and then Michael Lesy found um, these photos and he paired them with news clippings. And all the photos, cuz it was an amateur photographer, a little bit off. Like if it's a horse, like it's kind of cut strangely in the middle of the tail and then like 3/4 up the way to the neck. And there's something haunting with that paired with articles of woman burns house down for the ninth time, man wanders into town hysterical, maybe has disease. You know, it's it's a strange book that was a huge inspiration for this. But color itself, because we were dealing with drought, Kate and I knew it was all going to be kind of sucked dry of color. This brown kind of sepia. Um, a thirsting landscape and we knew that when disease gets introduced, red would pop. Um, we None of this surreal stuff is in the book. I think I felt it from the book. Um, and we wanted to play with color and to take this really dried out world and then flood it with what would be a color that is always associated with hell or purgatory, whatever. Um, and I felt also because it was a character who was so losing himself within himself, that we had to go to a place, um, that wasn't realistic because I think there should be a question, I don't know if anybody felt it of if this story maybe already happened, if it's not really happening in real time, and that he's a really unreliable narrator who's lost in something beyond him. Um, and I thought that doing that with a surreal world was a good way also because I wanted the biblical elements of the story to really be pronounced in there. Um, so we we lent into that. I think it's something that can be very distancing for people. I think it's also something that some people really enjoy. Um, but it was an element that existed in the script from almost the start. Um, and I also think there was something in my brain about, you know, making this movie now with AI, um, being the kind of the threat on the horizon that you can't control nor do you fully understand. And I wanted the VFX to kind of dance the line of feeling not I wanted it to feel a little bit not real, but still threatening. Um, but that's a tricky line to tread. Um, and it was tricky in those eight months of post because people don't and I understand that they don't want to do things that they know don't look as good as they could look. Um, but I felt for better or for worse that that was a bit important in certain images. - Well, I think you did a great job because the tone of the film is so distinct and it's very confident. So, from the first frame, actually from the trailer. If you haven't seen the trailer for this movie, please go home and watch it because it's I think whoever cut that trailer, if that was you, kudos. It just it really speaks to exactly what the atmosphere is going to be. And so, from the start of this film, you were thrown in and I don't think there was any question for me as a viewer about the world that I'm in and how it is going to unfold. Another piece of that is the setting. I would love to hear more about your just the set and the environment, you know, it's very real. It feels very tactile, very rich. - Yeah, so we built everything. This was all shot on a field. - So, it's not real. - Yeah, so it's all fake. Um, it was like built on a field in Slovakia. An hour outside of Bratislava. Um, I have an amazing production designer, Hubert Pui. He did like Mandy, if anybody's ever seen that, which is also really surreal and um, we built everything from the ground up and it had to feel really real and rooted in reality because we knew where we were going with it. I think for the actors that was also amazing because early on they came to set while it was being built. So, they got to be there, you know, Jacob got to see his office being built. And Jacob and Marta walked into the church and that's where they would have been married. There were things that I could never give them as a director that they were able to get from just being there and watching it all, um, be built up. But I I think we really wanted this feeling that it was so impermanent, that it was a new place, and that it could go down in 2 seconds. So, that when you saw the fire, you just knew this was all over. And, I also think, you know, the goal was this is a joke, but it's not really like Drive is one of my favorite movies ever ever ever. And, I remember watching at the 14th Street AMC. And, I knew Refn, and I loved that director. And, I went in my husband, and we were like, "It's a Refn film." But, it was packed. But, it was because Ryan Gosling was in it. And, I thought, "Oh my god, none of these people know what a Refn film is." And, it started, and the theater was chaos. People were like, "What? What is this?" And, people were leaving, and it was just it was an amazing screening, actually. It was really cool to see what had happened. And, I said to Kate early on, like, I want to start really strong, announce ourselves early to have that feeling in the theater of like, "You better get out now. Like, if you don't want to If you This isn't for you, leave. Leave immediately." Um or, like, you're trapped. Too bad, you're watching this. But, I think because it's so stylized, you have to let the audience know really quickly that this is intentional. This is not a mistake. Something has not gone wrong. This is what it is. Take it or leave it. - Is there a specific moment in the in like the early minutes of the film that you think does that? That's the like - The sound on the title - It's right up top. - Yeah, it's the siren. Like, leave. Leave. Leave. - Um I'm so sorry, but I do like to ask people if they have a favorite like moment from scene from the film. I won't tell your actors that if they're not in that one. Um It doesn't And, let's maybe try to frame it around them. Like, a specific performance moment, or someone that you remember. Like, you talked about um you know, an actor being very close to the camera, and what that meant for you. But, that also sounded a little bit like maybe something you've fixated on that are and are being hard on yourself for. But, what's one that was good? - It's a tricky thing because, you know, so much of this film was set on the visuals during, but especially after, and that's what I'm left with. And normally I'm actually asked about which shot, you know, is your favorite, which I can easily say because I know. But the actors, like they just they were amazing, and I loved them in every scene. There's one teeny tiny thing, and I don't know if anybody notices it, but when Jacob is at the border with Bart, and Bart asks him about his family, and he says, "How are your girls?" And he did John did this It breaks my heart. He like looks away and he's like, "They're fine." And it was just like it was so rough to look at, and I've seen it so many times like in the edit, and I thought it was just so beautiful and so in the character of keeping it together, but there's pain in that smile. He has a couple of those. Also in Harlow's office, when Harlow asked Jacob, "How are your girls?" And he turns around, and there's just it's it's nothing. It's like a 3 seconds on in the camera, and you just feel it all in his body, and yeah. And also Christina. I the fight in the house. I think she's really the desperation there. Um it's all women behind the camera in this film. She's almost the only one in front of the camera, and to show the kind of pain and desperation of a woman locked in the house in that moment. I think she's able to do it in these what would be small moments, but she's really I love her there. I love her there. - Her physicality was really impressive. I think there's a shot I think it's slightly before that there's the really wide shot of her digging, and you just see the bottoms of her feet. I remember that so distinctly. And then of course on the rest of the, you know, just just unleashed, like, you know, she's flailing around and everything. She was amazing. - Yeah, she was using like animals as an inspiration, but I think again it's a woman trapped in the kitchen to, you know, for lack of better words, who then goes through this, but is almost the voice of reason, but she just she's so good. If anybody hasn't seen Sick of Myself, it's a Norwegian film. She's the leading I would absolutely recommend it. It's really, really good and she's amazing. - So, you've now been you've taken this film to the festivals. It's coming out in theaters. What has been like at this point in the process now we're done with post. It's behind us. But, years long journey with a text that is so, so close to you. How do How do you feel? Really is kind of my last question. Like - No, I always answer this honestly. Um I think you have to be so delusional to make a movie because it takes so long and it's so hard. And so, whatever you're imagining is at the end is so ridiculous and is not going to happen. And whatever hill you think you'll be on top of cheering and high-fiving people and whatever, it's not there for anybody. And so, you end up having finished and it's never going to be that. So, then you feel this weird kind of like ooh like empty in a way. And I think it takes time now as the film, you know, goes around to festivals and now it's in theaters in my home city, which is [ __ ] weird. Like that'll be tonight. Um you start to feel proud because you have enough distance. But, I think again, you have to play tricks on yourself to go through this to make anything. Um so, it's really hard afterwards. I remember in Berlin we premiered in Berlin and I had a panel with other directors and that question was asked and I said something similar and the guy next to me started crying and I was like, why? Did I And he was like, no, but I feel the same. I feel so empty. And we had this like all these people in front of us who were like, we wanted to like, you can do it, too. And we're like, no, no, you can. It just doesn't feel great. But, it is it's the honest feeling of it, right? Like, you know, it's just a really strange process. And I think directors are quite alone um towards the end of it. But, again, you know, when we premiered I had everybody there from crew and cast and that felt good. That we made something together and it gets to be in the world is insane. So. - Yeah, it is insane. Well, I mean, I hope you feel better. - [laughter] - I don't know. I do now. I'm okay. It's just like a - It is, but actually thank you for your honesty because that is a very accurate, I think, very like emotional answer from the heart. Uh, so thank you so much. Dar Van Deusen, A Prayer for the Dying is now in theaters. - Yes, it's in theaters. At the Alamo here. - Nice.