Interviews
Filming in Australia Led to Terrifying Snake & Spider Encounters for ‘Anaconda’ Cast [Interview]
Art imitated life on the set of Anaconda, a meta-comedy reimagining of the 1997 creature feature.
Whereas the plot sees four friends set off to the Amazon to remake their all-time favorite movie, director Tom Gormican‘s (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) reimagining was filmed on location in Australia.
That meant that the cast and crew also had to look out for the local flora and fauna.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with stars Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Thandiwe Newton, and Steven Zahn ahead of the film’s opening in theaters on December 25, where they discussed what it was like on set. Humor was in spades, of course, but also a few moments of genuine fear thanks to some unexpected spiders and insects.
Oh, and a fear of snakes.
Paul Rudd plays Griff, the best friend to Jack Black’s Doug and the inspiration behind the foursome’s movie-making pursuits. It turns out that Rudd shares one key trait in common with his character: a fear of snakes. That’s not so bad when your giant snake co-star is made up of VFX, but less so when an early scene requires wading into the swamp at night to collect specimens.
“That scene was one of the very first scenes we shot in a whole movie,” Rudd said. “It was about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and it was in a swamp in water up to here. And I knew that there was tons of things swimming around in that. I was not excited to film that scene at all. Even the drivers were like, ‘Whoa, you’re going in that?’ Because in Australia, yes, you said it, everything can kill you. But that sucked. It was terrible. Thankfully, I made it out unscathed, but it was not a pleasant experience.”
Filming on location in Australia also required an actual snake handler who would clear the natural set of any dangerous critters.
Thandiwe Newton explained, “They’d always go before we turned up. They’d go a couple of hours before and just clear the area. And then we’d always turn up and go, ‘What’d you find? What’d you find today?'”
Steve Zahn adds, “He would say, like, ‘I found a brown snake that was really poisonous.'”
It wasn’t the snakes that terrified Newton, though, but an Australian specialty- the Huntsman spider.
“I actually saw the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my life on the set, and no one was with me,” Newton recounts. “We were shooting by the river, okay? So it was like an old boatyard, a disused boatyard. And they had this restroom there just for the staff. Okay? So it was outside, but inside at the same time. So I just go because I wanted to use a proper loo and not the porta loos because I’m a princess. So I go in there, and I do what I need to do, my wee wees. Come out, and I’m washing my hands. I put the soap on my hands. And I’ve seen everything. In Mexico, I’ve seen tarantulas and wolf spiders in LA. The biggest spider that was literally, literally the size of my hand. It looked like a Thanksgiving turkey. It was massive. I’m literally going to put water on my hands, covered in soap. This thing comes up over the side of the sink.”
Watch the full story below and get ready for a meta-comedy adventure on Christmas Day.
Interviews
‘The Death of Robin Hood’ Director Michael Sarnoski on Brutal Violence and Reinventing the Legend
Michael Sarnoski (A Quiet Place: Day One, Pig) gives a darker spin on a classic ballad in The Death of Robin Hood, which sees a legendary outlaw confront his own violent legacy.
A24 releases the dark reimagining of the classic folk tale in theaters this Friday, June 19.
Hugh Jackman stars as a grizzled Robin Hood, who begins Sarnoski’s latest in a grim place of death and violence before a grave injury presents a rare chance at salvation.
In 13th-century grit and squalor, the violence in The Death of Robin Hood is especially brutal, setting up a stark contrast for the outlaw’s thematic journey in his final days. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting ahead of the film’s release, writer-director Michael Sarnoski explained that the visceral brutality at the film’s outset was both a reflection of period authenticity and in service of Robin’s story.
“It’s always a little bit of both,” Sarnoski explains. “The initial idea for the movie was I wanted to humanize these characters from this old legend and really understand them. So, part of that is understanding the authenticity of the period and studying the brutality of the old ballads. Both things evolved at the same time, because then it became this story about this person who was grappling with their own legacy of violence and their own folklore.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
He continues, “It was a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing where it was like, ‘Okay, the authenticity is where we’re going to access the humanity.’ But then, through that, we also have to access how these people felt about that violence. And because of that, we really have to make that violence feel human and real and brutal and not Hollywood-ized at all.“
But don’t expect The Death of Robin Hood to be too beholden to period accuracy; the filmmaker never wanted to lose sight of its characters or their humanity. “I was more trying to capture, in my mind and soul, what it might have felt like to live at that time. When you’re steeped in nature and all of its brutality, but also all of its divinity and spirituality, what would that just feel like on a deeper soul level? A lot of the research was focused on just trying to capture that human side of existing back then.”
The Death of Robin Hood avoids retreading the familiar origin story of the outlaw and his Merry Men; the past is a distant memory steeped in blood for this iteration of Robin Hood. Save for Little John (Bill Skarsgård), very little calls back to the familiar folklore fixtures and iconography.
“It wasn’t straightforward,” Sarnoski says of his writing process and choosing which characters to incorporate. “It kind of happened organically. I knew I just wanted the pieces that I needed for that character, but then at the same time, I wanted to acknowledge that he’s grappling with what he believes his life was, and the violence of that life and of that time. But then at the same time, he’s also not a fully reliable narrator. He has been jaded for decades and has just been steeped in that violence. Even he and Little John especially aren’t 100% sure which of these things were stories and which were real in some way, because I think even in our own lives we have that, where our memories become these stories that we just tell each other.”
“I wanted to make sure that we’re doing some justice to that Robin Hood legend, and there are a lot of references to that. I wanted to use it sparingly and specifically, but then also acknowledge that no one in this world is 100% sure who this guy was, not even the guy himself.”
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
While Jackman commands the screen as the world-weary outlaw, it’s Murray Bartlett (“The Last of Us”, Opus) who steals scenes as the enigmatic leper standing vigil over the Priory.
Bartlett’s complex performance, buried under unrecognizable costuming and prosthetics, surprised even Sarnoski in more ways than one. “The initial surprise was finding such a great actor who was willing to completely disappear. And that takes a lot of ego death and bravery and excitement for the pure creative, emotional side, and also bravery in the performance side of, ‘You’re not going to have 90% of the tools that you usually use. You’re going to have to do this with your eyes, your voice, and just your physicality.’ So, I think just the surprise of finding someone who was like that was the feature, not the bug. He was so excited about that, and he found it very liberating.
“Then, it sounds kind of obvious, but the next surprise was just you write this character on the page, and you’re like, ‘Okay, he’s supposed to have this depth, he’s mysterious, but he’s also gentle, and he becomes this almost teacher.’ In your mind, you’re like, ‘Okay, I think this character can work.’ But then you see Murray embody it and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is so far beyond what I ever could have hoped for.’ And it’s so moving and so human in spite of all the limitations on the performance.”
Sarnoski notes this character acts as the ferryman, right on the cusp of life and death. That, along with the period, also informed the Leper’s look, “In those old monasteries, they had these orchard cemeteries that were also where they buried the body. It’s this place of graves and growth. He has subtly different outfits that he wears depending on if he’s ferryman or orchardman. There was a lot of thought that went into all of that.”
Credit: Aidan Monagha
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