by James Mottram
One of the most outlandish films you’ll see all year, Sasquatch Sunset is the brainchild of sibling filmmakers David and Nathan Zellner, who previously made the 2018 offbeat western Damsel with Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska. Co-directed by the brothers – it’s written by David and stars Nathan – Sasquatch Sunset follows a family of mythical Bigfoot-like creatures as they traverse the hostile North American wilderness. Alongside Nathan, the dialogue-free film co-stars Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keogh and Christophe Zajac-Denek, who all play members of this hairy tribe who, when they aren’t urinating, defecating or copulating, are simply trying to survive.
What gave you the idea? Have you come across a Sasquatch?
DAVID: “I wish! I’d love to. We have just been fascinated with Bigfoot since we were kids. And primates in general, we’ve always been obsessed with – whether it was 2001 or Planet of the Apes, or Koko the Gorilla. And a lot of National Geographic documentaries and whatnot… we have just always been fascinated with Bigfoot, the mythology of Bigfoot, but then also primates in general. When we decided to put together a feature, it wasn’t like we suddenly did a bunch of research, it was an accumulation of just lifelong interest.”
It’s very out-there as a film. How hard was it to get financed?
DAVID: “Oh, it was incredibly difficult. It took years. It’s what we signed up for. Which is why, on our end, from the script stage through when we’re coordinating investors through casting… our most important job in this was having clarity in what the tone was, what we were trying to accomplish with it, because we didn’t have a good comparison to refer to, what this was… So, we just tried to be very specific about what we’re trying to accomplish with it. And how.”
How crucial was Jesse Eisenberg in getting the film off the ground?
DAVID: “He was essential in getting it going. We couldn’t have done it without him in that regard. And he got involved early on. I mean, we’ve known him… he was a friend of ours for fifteen years. But he hadn’t been in any of our films. We always wanted to work together in that way. But it just didn’t happen until this one… it wasn’t the right time. But yeah, we owe him a lot.”
Did you always intend to play your role, Nathan, as the Alpha Male Sasquatch?
NATHAN: “We’d done a short [Sasquatch Birth Journal 2], where I played a Sasquatch. We just kind of goof around… but David wrote the script without anyone in mind, except for me. I could play that part and have the build for it. And it was just a lot of fun to play. This is the most makeup we’ve ever done and prosthetics and we’re always big fans of creature-features and makeup effects artists. There were a lot of different avenues why we wanted to do this film.”
Did you get much time to rehearse?
DAVID: “There was a good period over Zoom and then in person, working that out. But we were in an office and had a big room to put them in with a lot of food and objects. So much of it was about making everyone feel comfortable with each other. And just comfortable being uninhibited with it. I mean, a testament to Riley’s fearlessness, one of the first things she said… ‘I want to be the most feral of the bunch’.”
NATHAN: “Because we were dealing with a mythical animal, we were allowed to make our own rules a little bit. But we wanted to make sure the four of us were all, at least on a baseline, moving the same, speaking to each other in a similar way, so that we looked like the same species. But the script wasn’t exactly so bare bones… it didn’t have dialogue, but it was really well written. All the scenes that are in the movie are in the script [and we] made sure that everybody understood what the characters should or should not be going through and what we were going for on the day.”
You don’t hold back here, showing the Sasquatch’s penis. Was that essential for you?
DAVID: “Even when I was a kid, when people would hide stuff, it was more distracting than if you just show it. Which is more like American cinema – this inherent shame imposed on the subject matter. So, for us, well, they’re animals. If it was any other animal – like a pack of wolves, you wouldn’t blur out like a wolf’s genitals. Or any other primates or whatever. We just wanted to normalise it. And there was a lot of talk about the genitals because you’ve never seen Bigfoot genitals before. So, we just wanted it to be matter-of-fact, modelled after primate genitals basically. It’s both completely absurd and ridiculous, but also, completely naturalistic – that was the approach we wanted.”
They are small…
DAVID: “That’s very intentional. If you look at primate genitals, they’re tiny. But there’s something that’s funny about this hulking beast with tiny genitals!”
One of the most amazing scenes is the log sequence, in the water. How tough was that to film?
DAVID: “It was the hardest thing to do. It was brutal. Also, from when we scouted it to when we shot it, the temperature in the water dropped drastically. It was very tough to do.”
NATHAN: “But we knew it was a key moment in the film. A very important turning point for all the characters and technically it would be hard, but we wanted to make sure that we did it right because we really hinged a lot of the movie on it. So, we planned it out pretty extensively.”
What was it like wearing that costume?
NATHAN: “It was a lot of fun. Where we were, we were kind of shooting into the late Fall. And so, it actually sometimes was much more comfortable. We had a freak snowstorm that worked really well into the script, because that part of the movie was supposed to take place in the winter anyway. Everybody was really warm that day, who was wearing a suit. So, it was uncomfortable putting on the makeup for a couple hours every morning, but you don’t really get that opportunity. And Riley and Jesse and Christophe saying the same thing… it was something that you don’t get to do that often. And to just totally disappear into the makeup and in that character… even when we weren’t shooting, we were always playing around as if we were Sasquatch.”
What are you guys doing next? Have you got another project even crazier than this one?
DAVID: “We’ll see. Too early to say. The stuff that we’re drawn to in terms of the art we like, and then what we try to make is to at least attempt to do something in our own tiny way that is different… push the medium in some way.”
Sasquatch Sunset is in cinemas on 7 November 2024
