by Anthony Frajman
Since his striking and subdued outlaw romance Ain’t Them Bodies Saints debuted at Sundance, David Lowery has cemented himself as one of the most exciting and versatile American filmmakers.
In the years following, Lowery – a writer, director and editor – made the powerful and considered low-budget supernatural drama, A Ghost Story (2017), re-teaming with Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, which follows a ghost who returns to the home he shared with his wife, and the bittersweet crime flick The Old Man and The Gun (2018), in which the legendary Robert Redford played real-life career robber, Forrest Tucker.
In 2021, Lowery made the enchanting, complex and dazzling medieval fantasy, The Green Knight, based on the 14th Century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, starring Dev Patel as Gawain, along with Sean Harris, Kate Dickie, Joel Edgerton, Alicia Vikander, and Ralph Ineson.
Lowery also made the inventive Disney films, Pete’s Dragon, and Peter Pan and Wendy, uniquely balancing big-budget features – which still bear his style – and indie fare, like perhaps no other modern filmmaker.
While he is now working on the biggest stage, and one of the most preeminent directors in the US, Lowery rose from humble beginnings. Raised in Dallas, he grew up in a place with little filmmaking activity. Yet he found his way to cinema.
“When I first moved (to Dallas), when I was very young, Oliver Stone was in the midst of making several movies there. He was making JFK and I think he did a bit of Born on the 4th of July. Robocop had just been made there. So, I moved there with a sense of it being a place where movies could get made. That was helpful. But there wasn’t that much of a scene there. It’s not a place where you’re stumbling upon a film shoot every day of the week like you do in New York or Los Angeles. It’s pretty limited. So, I was very much outside the bubble when I was growing up.”
Despite the relative lack of filmmaking activity in Dallas, Lowery was determined to remain in Texas, and to carve his own path and pursue his own brand of hand-made, director-driven filmmaking.
“At a very specific point in my life, I just realised that I was sort of going to do things in my own way. I was a very stubborn child. I remained very stubborn, and I just decided I wanted to do things on my own and not go down the well-trodden path of moving to Los Angeles or moving to New York and trying to make my way there. I really wanted to do things my own way and my own way involved staying someplace where I knew the landscape, so to speak,” he says.
“I knew who I was and where I was, and I didn’t have to try to reinvent myself. And I really believed that I could just make movies wherever I was. And I still believe that there’s no geographical barriers to making cinema.”
One of the biggest early points of inspiration, was fellow Texan independent filmmaker, Wes Anderson.
“Wes Anderson made (his debut) Bottle Rocket in Dallas, right around the corner from where I was living. And the Wilson Brothers, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, they were also from Dallas. And so, I kind of imagined myself following in their footsteps and indeed explicitly tried to follow in their footsteps, even taking the same day jobs that they had and working at the same movie theatres and going to the same coffee shops. I was really trying to mould myself after them. But I also was interested in the idea of what if they stayed there, what if they stayed there and kept making movies there?” he recalls.
Although he has reached the highest level of moviemaking, unlike many of his contemporaries, Lowery has been able to balance smaller features, with the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood, while putting his own stamp and style on both.
“I think there is the independent filmmaking on the financial side, but then there’s the independent filmmaking (approach) on a more holistic, spiritual side. And I certainly try to pursue that with everything I do. Even when I’m working for Walt Disney Pictures, one of the biggest movie studios in the world, I can’t help but try to treat it as if it was an independent film,” Lowery says.
“That’s not to say that I’m not taking advantage of all of the bells and whistles that come with making a studio film, but I am trying to maintain my own sense of autonomy, my own voice, my interests as a filmmaker and my idealism, my belief that cinema can be more than just a form of entertainment that’s marketed to the masses. There is something more fulfilling about it,” he adds.
One similarity, in both Lowery’s bigger and smaller features, has been his use of an ensemble of actors, including Casey Affleck, with whom he has worked three times.
“I’m the oldest of nine kids. So, I’ve got four brothers and the relationship that I have with him on set is very much like I have with my brothers. It’s very, very laid back, very fun, lots of jokes and ribbing each other, but it took a minute to get there, it takes a minute with any actor to understand one another,” he says.
“I remember the very first time we collaborated, it took a moment for us to find that comfort zone and to understand the way in which we both liked to work and to realise that we had a lot in common and the way we like to work,” he adds.
For Lowery, the casting process is one of his favourite parts of filmmaking.
“It’s incredibly vital because ultimately, they are going to be representing the movie. They’re going to be representing the human side of the story you’re telling. And they are going to be the ones saying the words that you’ve written, if you’ve written the screenplay, which I always do. And, the movie is one thing, but the experience of making it as another, and you want that to be beautiful and harmonious as well,” he says.
“Movie making can be a bumpy ride sometimes, and you also have to always be thinking about the final product. But, at the end of the day, the experience of making the film is as important to me as the finished product. And so, finding collaborators who fit that mould is really important.”
Equally important, for Lowery, is post-production.
“Editing is a very exploratory process for me. It’s a very gentle and exciting and solitary process. I get a lot of strength from it. A lot of my fortitude gets worn down over the course of a shoot because I’m naturally a very introverted person. I’m a very private person, and so when I get into the edit, I can build myself back up again and really find my voice after it’s been worn away by the travails of production. And it’s something that also doesn’t need an army the way the rest of the movie does.”
As a filmmaker, Lowery also has the honour of having worked with Robert Redford. “It was something I had to cast out of my mind because otherwise I would become too precious and there would be too much weight attached to every single moment on set,” he says. “That was the opposite of what I wanted that movie to be. I wanted that movie to be lightweight in its ethos. I really wanted it to feel like a light fluffy cloud that was enjoyed for a moment and then floated away. And had I thought about the legacy of its leading actor, being the final time he would do that thing on screen, I would’ve probably been overburdened with a sense of expectation.”
Though he is now able to work with huge budgets and resources, as a result of the sustained acclaim he has received throughout his career, Lowery says maintaining his ability to make cinema on his terms, is integral.
“It’s part of who I am. I always am going to want to push the form of cinema forwards. I want to see where it breaks and what I can do with it. That really excites me. And I never want to become complacent in my role as a director. I never want to become bored as a director. I always want to foster this sense of creativity and wonder and curiosity that cinema can generate within me. And so, even if I’m making something like Peter Pan and Wendy for Disney, I’m always going to be looking for ways to poke and prod at the form itself.”
One of Lowery’s most memorable films was The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and Joel Edgerton. “I am obsessed with Joel,” he says when we speak with him in Melbourne, where he was part of the Bright Horizons jury at the Melbourne International Film Festival. “Every movie I’ve made since then, which has just been two, I’ve been trying to find ways to have a role for him again, I’m desperate to work with him again. He is not only one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with, but just such a wonderful human being. And, he shares my love of pranks, which is a very specific and very important point of kinship between us. I adore him.”
For Lowery, who has long been a big fan of down under screen talent, there are many Aussie actors he hopes to work with. “It seems to me like there’s something in the water in Australia that has led to so many incredible actors, off the top of my head, Cate Blanchett, I’d love to work with her. Chris Hemsworth just makes me laugh so much in the latest Mad Max movie. Everything he did was just so wonderful. Toni Collette, Jacki Weaver, there’s just so many.
“Someone else that’s influenced me in a tremendous way, I feel like it’s probably evident in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints to some degree, is Nick Cave. He’s been a creative North Star for me for most of my life. And I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to tell him that or to work with him, but that would be someone I would love to collaborate with at some point.”
As we speak, Lowery is currently in post on his next project, the A24 film Mother Mary starring Anne Hathaway.
He is determined to continue to push and challenge himself, committed to doing a full-blown horror, a life-long goal, and to make even more ambitious projects.
“I love horror films, I would love to make a tried-and-true horror film, a straight up horror movie, I’ve never made one. So, when I do that, it’ll feel a bit like a swing. Horror is my favourite genre. But I also love that genre so much that I don’t want to do it until I’ve found something that really speaks to me within that genre. But it really excites me. The same with science fiction, the same with comedy,” he says.
“All of the stories I’m looking to tell, all the films I’m trying to make right now are all set far, far away. I’m looking at making them in places that are not in the United States.
“At the end of the day, I’m eight feature films into a career. I hope I get to make at least eight more. And I think that they’re all going to ultimately probably feel very similar to one another, even though they vacillate wildly in terms of genre and tone and content and scale. But I’m pretty certain they’ll all feel like mine.”
