Jeremy Saulnier is one of the most gifted pulp directors of recent times. His four-in-a-row films, which include Blue Ruin, Green Room, Hold the Dark (my personal favorite), and now Rebel Ridge, constitute an extraordinary body of work over just a quartet of films. Rebel Ridge is a slight outlier in terms of its brighter visuals and its more commercial aspect. That’s not to say that Saulnier compromised, far from it, but there can be no denying the immediacy of the response to the film from its Netflix debut and beyond. Rebel Ridge caught a zeitgeist, immediately going to number one on the streaming platform’s movie chart.
In our conversation, Saulnier and I discuss the film’s immediate fame, as well as its slow march to success, and the strength of the main cast.
The Contending: Rebel Ridge, while hardly seeming like a detour for you, does seem different. It’s more brightly lit, and it feels more commercial. Maybe that’s because Aaron Pierre is so damn handsome. (Laughs). Was this a natural evolution for you?
Jeremy Saulnier: It definitely plays differently, because it’s my first film that I wrote and directed that has a competent protagonist. I revel in putting the inexpert at the helm of traditional cinema scenarios, whether it’s a revenge movie or a siege film. Green Room is not Die Hard; it’s a group of knuckleheads in the movie. They have no fucking sort of trade craft whatsoever, and that really adds to the tension. With Rebel Ridge, I inverted that in that I had a traditional movie protagonist. He’s sharp-witted. He is of course physically capable of dismantling his foes, but I threw him into a sort of bureaucratic soup of small town municipal courts and jargon and legalese and shit that he has no clue how to handle. But in the end, it is the first time I put a sharp-witted protagonist against a sharp-witted antagonist. So when Aaron Pierre, as Terry Richmond, faces off against Don Johnson as the chief, it was fire. It was great, and it was something I hadn’t done yet, trying to utilize one-upmanship as a sort of scene structure, as opposed to underwhelming disaster and idiocy as my muse. I wanted to try something that was a little less lethal.
The Contending: Aaron Pierre burns with a controlled fire. How key was casting him to the film? He wasn’t incredibly well-known before Rebel Ridge, but he is now.
Jeremy Saulnier: He was everything. He came in later in the process and saved the day for me. His quiet presence, his thoughtfulness, he has a very Zen energy to him, and it unlocks so much for the character. He was also hell bent as an actor not to fall into certain tropes and not do action movie/look over the shoulder/raise the eyebrow bullshit. He was very into keeping it subtle, keeping it grounded, respecting the text, and adding his own role as a caretaker to Terry and injecting some of his own ideas into the character, and it was a seamless collaboration. I knew it when I saw about four minutes of Underground Railroad, and in about 90 seconds of a Zoom meeting, this is currently the only person on earth who can play this role. We went in committed, and one year later, we fully realized the movie. I can’t imagine this film without him.
The Contending: I also can’t imagine the film without Don Johnson. I was a big fan of Miami Vice, especially the first two seasons and the finale. He went through some rocky times as an actor after Miami Vice ended. I remember critics questioning whether he could act or not, which I thought was rude. But since Tin Cup, he’s been on this upward trajectory later in his career, it’s fascinating to watch.
Jeremy Saulnier: He’s great. Of course, Miami Vice was so important for me. It was the first time I ever saw a bad guy get away on TV. It’s known for its pop culture iconography and Testarossas, pastels, and all that, but for me, it was the chops. Miami Vice had some of the best acting I’d ever witnessed and subtlety and gravitas and all that shit. I loved it. My dad was a huge Nash Bridges fan, so I’ve got nothing but love for Don. What hit me was that while I am preoccupied with filmmaking and writing and my life with my family and at home and all these things that we do, I don’t track a lot of actors. But when we were taking the script out, someone sent me Episode One and Two of The Watchmen, and he was fantastic. The whole episode, when he serenades the dinner party, I was just enthralled. And boom, offer out to Don Johnson, and he was kind enough to take a meeting with me. As a filmmaker always trying to punch above their weight class and coming from very modest means, when I sit down with a bigger actor, I just don’t expect that to result in a ‘yes.’ But it was easy, effortless. I think we were definitely on the same page as far as what he wanted to do with the character. When he and Aaron were on set, there’s just no better immediate feedback as far as this being the right choice. They played, they kept it subtle, and they kept it dangerous. It was so gratifying to see that subtle performance take life. It was amazing.
The Contending: There is also wonderful chemistry between Aaron and AnnaSophia, who is playing a little bit different role for her than what I’ve seen in the past.
Jeremy Saulnier: AnnaSophia blew us away. I first saw her audition in 2020, but she was the clear choice. It was amazing, and it was very fun for her. She respected the fact that there wasn’t the requisite sort of consummation of the relationship. It was just like these are real people, and their connection was more platonic; she felt respected. And man, she could just spit out that jargon like nobody else and have full authority over it and also bring a warmth and a charm along with the edge that’s later revealed in her character. She and Aaron were effortless scene partners. They’re a joy to be around on set. They created a wonderful environment, and it was fun to mine their performances in the edit. They gave me a lot of options, and it was a director’s dream to have that sitting there at the edit console with nothing but good choices.
The Contending: This film feels a little more politically or culturally minded, regarding the black experience in the South, but it’s not heavy-handed, which I admire. There’s a little bit of racist talk, but the corrupt cops are more interested in money. Race is just a convenience that they can use in this case.
Jeremy Saulnier: I don’t want to inject too much of that into my stories. I certainly have open eyes and open ears, and I collect information. I observe, and I do a lot of research. But one of the things that was really important was that civil asset forfeiture was a very unifying injustice. It affected people from all different spectrums of life, white Texas ranchers, and this Latin sort of gentleman who’s a Marine. I sampled from all regions. One of the only nine-to-zero Supreme Court decisions was the overreach of this practice. Now, there’s wiggle room if your state or local government outlaws it. Anyone can just tap into the federal program and override any local statutes about banning it.
So it’s this thing that pissed everybody off. For Terry Richmond, I didn’t write it for any one particular ethnicity. My family is a multiracial family. It’s very natural to us as far as who we champion. It’s rarely prescribed; it’s just a matter of who is the right fit in this case. Certainly, as a black man, Aaron brought things that I don’t have full comprehension of. That was me giving way to his experience, and we were very communicative on set about certain things. So once that decision was made, it’s about collaborating. I myself wouldn’t try to speak on behalf of anybody, but when Aaron took the helm, he was there, and he not only took direction and respected the text, but when appropriate, he led the way and showed me things, and it was very fruitful for both of us.
The Contending: When we think of police corruption films, we often start with Sidney Lumet, Serpico, and Prince of the City. Rebel Ridge takes it down to a small town, and once again, I don’t think you were trying to make a muscular statement about police corruption, but we have a lot of police overreach in our country right now. The film does speak to that.
Jeremy Saulnier: Oh, sure. I wrote this in 2018 and into ‘19, so it was going on then. It’s certainly true that there’s militarization happening. There’s overreach. But my interest was, of course, why, and how, and studying not only the research in police departments and small town courts, but also just injecting things from my personal life. We all have minor injustices at least, and we all have frustrations, and human dynamics are what I focus on. I don’t want to make a story about me, but I am very observant as a writer. I can research dash cam videos and pull from that, or how pissed off I was at work today and why, and fuse that all together and just filter it through a much more engaging narrative. It’s always something that I hold close as a filmmaker and want to mine and exploit, because getting that collective human experience on screen as we know it, I think, is why this film resonates. Whether you’ve experienced this level of injustice or not, you can tap into how it feels to be batted around by bureaucracy on a much more deadly scale, like this sort of battle zone we’re seeing unfold right now.
The Contending: In Los Angeles, right now. You mentioned that you had written the screenplay in 2018, and you had your longest break between films. There were six years in between Hold the Dark and Rebel Ridge. Was there any reason for that: Pandemic, struggling to get things off the ground, or something else?
Jeremy Saulnier: It was just stopping and starting. We got shut down a couple of times, but it was the pandemic era. Funny enough, it was on pace to be the fastest ever from script to screen, and then the fates intervened. But I will say, as tough as it was to make this movie—lots of twists and turns, only because of those twists and turns were we somehow able to find and cast Aaron Pierre in a role that most industry gatekeepers wouldn’t allow him to helm that early in his career. And it was just this wonderful thing that happened. I can’t imagine it happening again, and I can’t recall it happening prior to our experience. We found this amazing opportunity to showcase him. He’s a working, respected actor, but rarely do you get to level up helming a $40 million action movie. It was all worth it, and it all seemed to be pointing to the one true version of the movie. That sounds full of hocus pocus, but I really do believe it.
The Contending: Were you surprised by the overwhelmingly positive response when Rebel Ridge was released on Netflix, not only in reviews, but also in views?
Jeremy Saulnier: Yes. I was at peace with the film. I love the movie because it was such a long process. I usually send it out, hate it, and three years later watch it at a festival or some screening, and I’m like, oh, I actually like this movie. Rebel Ridge was so near and dear. I edited myself, I went through it all, every step of the process. I was very in love with it because it did justice to the collective art of our cast and crew. It was the best version of the movie. Any film has flaws, but I knew this couldn’t be better, and so I was very happy to set it free. I had no idea what was coming.
We were all shocked when it found a way on the Netflix platform and instantly became number one. It was something to talk about, too. The level of engagement back and forth, the lovers, the haters, everybody. It was just really exciting to see it unfold. I couldn’t think of a better ending for the movie, as far as how it was received critically and embraced by audiences. I’ve never felt such a real-world impact of anything I’ve ever done as far as those weeks after release. Everywhere I went, I was hearing about it, eavesdropping, or in a car on the way to the airport. Whatever it was, I was getting this unsolicited feedback from the movie. I’m still riding high off that.
