The story behindBlue Ruinis as intriguing as the film itself.
Far from signing off Saulnier and Blairs careers,Blue Ruinsent it off in an entirely new direction.
Congratulations onBlue Ruinfirst of all you must be delighted with the response so far, Im sure.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the origins of the story.
It was Macon Blair, my best friend.
His beach bum character was spooling around in my head for two years prior to makingBlue Ruin.
And I just wanted to explore our old stomping grounds.
We had this rich experience in our youth, making films as a collective.
In our vacations, Macon and I would spend a week every summer going to the Delaware shore.
Its a revenge mission; its so simple.
We downscale it to our world.
We bring it back home.
With Macon in the lead who obviously isnt your traditional action helmer he really embraced it.
So we brought it home and made it attainable.
The minutiae, the inconvenience and the blowback of things that usually have no consequence in the cinematic realm.
Thats what made it so refreshing: how little machismo and righteous fury there is in it.
Hes very human, Dwights character.
How did you develop him with Macon?
I had to convince him and negotiate around the character.
Is he a bit off-kilter in terms of his emotional stability?
Is he actually a bit crazy?
Does he drink does he wallow that way, or does he drink tea?
We had a lot of exchanges about the character.
He himself is reluctant.
A very unfamiliar territory.
The last two-thirds of the film would come after the credits roll in most revenge flicks.
Only this enigmatic back story that is gradually revealed.
It was delightful to do things that arent done, and only because we didnt get much financing.
We had to trust audiences to fill in the gaps.
To not rely on needless exposition and flashback sequences to justify everything.
Your use of telling the story through imagery rather than lots of talking was another thing I liked.
That was really interesting.
I definitely wanted to do that as an exercise.
Theyre about people moving apartments, or painting a wall.
They were really mundane.
I like escapism, I like thrills and chills.
I wanted to do a visually-crafted movie.
I wanted it to be very quiet, and very formal, and very classic in its aesthetic approach.
And I hadnt been seeing these.
I thought, where are the directors who know their lenses?
Theres so much of this handheld free-for-all.
Something that I can showcase for audiences, and see if they respond?
I was inspired by the films of my youth.
I love action movies, horror movies, mostly for the atmosphere and the heightened experience.
Im not sure Ive answered your question, though!
Those films of the 80s really inspired me.
But I agree, it has been a while.
And I was really excited, because I realised, Wait a second.
What were about to do, I havent seen before.
Thats very invigorating to realise as a filmmaker.
Not that this is uncharted territory, but that its at least going to be refreshing.
We thought, wed better hurry up and make this before we lose our advantage!
Theres only one scene that contains a gratuitous gore shot.
And thats to mislead the audience, to make them squirm.
But the reason is because theres a punchline that follows.
I grew up doing special effects makeup, I was a zombie for Halloween.
You get the heart rate pumping.
What I wasnt going to do was a standard exploitation picture.
That genre had to take a backseat to the drama and the emotion and the setting.
The violence was used as a narrative tool.
Primarily, my focus was the audience and the narrative.
So if violence was used it had to respect the path of our protagonist, and carry weight.
Devin Ratrays character was a great contrast to Dwight as well.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about casting him?
Devin came in to audition for Teddy, and the dynamic was totally wrong.
He was too young.
But being a low-budget, independent film with meagre resources, you cant let an actor like that go.
I did some rewriting of the Ben character, and reworked it for Devin.
So I knew I could do it without even having a second audition.
I said, Do you want to play Ben?
And he was onboard.
We designed the film so people like Devin or Amy Hargreaves werent working for more than five days.
Our budget was so low, convincing them to take a whole month was nearly impossible.
We were so honoured to have actors like Devin.
The Ben characters modelled after my friend and next door neighbour whos also called Ben!
The gun collection in Blue Ruin is my friends gun collection.
Not literally, but I interviewed him.
He doesnt hunt, he doesnt harm things, but he was a good model.
He would be the guy Id go to in this scenario if I needed a gun.
I dont know a mobster that could meet me in an alleyway and pass me a gun.
So what Id do if I needed one?
Id go to Ben.
So I modelled the character after my good buddy whos a gentle soul, but also a gun aficionado.
I used that dynamic from my youth.
A lot of this film is about nostalgia and youth.
Hes almost regressing, going back to his youth in tracing this event.
It was great to see it come alive in the camera.
This was a low-budget film as youve said.
How instrumental was Kickstarter in getting it made?
Ultimately, it was only about nine percent of the budget, total.
The biggest hurdle for us was cash up front.
So my wife and I invested all of our money.
We borrowed some from our mothers.
But to greenlight the film, we were short $35,000 cash.
That was to make payroll for the crew through a legitimate company.
Macon and me were thinking wed do this film and maybe retire.
It was going to be our swansong.
So Kickstarter made it a reality.
We had a limited time to shoot it, with no other resources and no other investors.
It was a great way to bridge the gap between where we were and where we needed to be.
It really came together.
But only after wed invested everything we possibly could ourselves.
We were all in it together.
The success of the film was a shock to everyone.
It was a crazy ride.
But again, we needed that push early on.
It was a great vote of confidence, too.
It was a nominal amount of money for each person, each Kickstarter backer.
But when you get turned down by financiers, it doesnt help your confidence when youre making a movie.
Then you get 400 backers who are behind your movie, its a real welcome boost.
It must have been incredible, then to take it to Cannes.
What was the experience like there?
It was a surreal fairytale.
We were so shock.
We hadnt even planned to finish the film in time.
In fact, no one on the crew had.
So it premiered at the Directors Fortnight theatre in Cannes.
We were so grateful to be there.
Edouard Waintrop and Benjamin Illos from Fortnight had programmed our film that was the lottery ticket.
An obscure filmmaker with an unknown movie was plucked out of the hat.
That was the huge shift in our story.
We were just there.
By the time of the premiere, wed already had our first offer to sell it.
There was a press screening that we didnt attend in the morning, where someone made the first offer.
That person was Tom Quinn at [film distributor] Radius.
Oh, its us!
Me and Macon from Virginia.
This is absolutely insane!
Then, of course, our trajectory shifted totally.
Our access to the industry was a reality and all that.
Thats a great story.
I take it, then, that this isnt the swansong you and Macon originally thought it would be.
Do you know what youre going to do next yet?
Theres definitely been a shift in our trajectory.
The main thing for me is, I tend to be an over-thinker, and very precious.
I know one thing: Im not going to try and do that again.
Im not going to expect anything anymore.
I dont want to be too watered-down by financiers and script notes.
Jeremy Saulnier, thank you very much.
Blue Ruinis out in UK cinemas now.
You canread our review here.
