23 - How to Blow Up a Pipeline filmmakers - Screen Slate Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Dieringer (00:20):
You are listening to the Screen Slate Podcast. I'm
your host John Derringer, and onthis episode I am thrilled to
speak with the team behind howto blow up a pipeline a new eco
thriller based on Andreas, mom'snonfiction book about sabotage
and property destruction andclimate activism. In this
fictionalized story modeledafter a heist film, we follow a
group of people from disparatebackgrounds who get together to

(00:42):
build bombs and demolish oilinfrastructure. On this episode,
I am joined by many multihyphenate its director, producer
and CO writer Daniel Goldhaber,actress and CO writer Ariela
barer. Editor Daniel Garber andCO writer Jordan Shoal. We cover
a lot of ground from theirapproach to adapting the book to
the research process to shooting16 millimeter around the country

(01:04):
and a low budget duringCOVID-19. And some of the
initial responses and reactionsto the film among a whole lot of
other stuff. I want to give ahearty shout out to all of
Screen Slate 's Patreonsupporters. This podcast is 100%
backed by our Patreon members,we don't have a secret oil
benefactor, we don't have thatFord foundation money.
Everything we do is enabled bythe generosity of our listeners.

(01:27):
So you can visitpatreon.com/screen Slate, throw
us a few bucks a month you getaccess to the discord that
myself and our writers and otherPatreon members are on. And
let's do special events,promotional discounts and more.
So that's patreon.com/screenslate. And with that said, it's
time to blow this shit up.
Welcome to the Screen SlatePodcast, how to blow up a

(01:50):
pipeline team.

Daniel Garber (01:51):
Hello, hello.
Thanks for bringing the pipelineinto the office.

Oh, yeah, totally. Thanks for coming out
to Screen Slate HQ. So we havewe have two Danny's we have Dana
Gould, Haber and Daniel Garber,who have collaborated on many
films. In fact, one thing Iwanted to ask you about maybe
this is a good way to start isthat the film is credited to all
four of you as a film by andcould you talk about that
decision?

Daniel Goldhaber (02:15):
It was just a typo actually.

Like Jon Dieringer. Yeah.

This is I think, a good time for you to
air your gripes that your nameis spelled incorrectly.

upfront. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. I'm honored
that way. I have like plausibledeniability, if the film is, you
know, canceled that which itwon't be

now.
No, I mean, I think that moviesare made as collectives, they're
just rarely credited orrecognized is that and, you
know, also the collective effortthat it took to make this film
goes far beyond even just thefour of us. But I think that
something that started with myfirst film, Cam,

(02:59):
was was, you know, that was amovie that I made with another
filmmaker, Isa Motzei. And that,you know, through that process,
you know, we were just thinkinga lot about, we were making it
in this very collective effortand like, how do you kind of
communicate that collectiveeffort? I think that we have
this really flawed notion thatthe director is the auteur and
as the sole visionary of a film,but often that's just not the

(03:21):
case. I think that's totally thecase sometimes. But I think that
it doesn't have to be. And so Ithink like in this film, you
know, a lot of us wore multiplehats. But I think that,
ultimately, at the end of theday, the thing that I think was
shared between the four of us islike, what is this movie? What
is the identity of this film?
What is this film saying? And,you know, I think that it just

(03:42):
was very clear by the end ofpost production that like, this
is what it was. And that, youknow, that doesn't mean that
many other people didn'tcontribute monumentally to the
movie from the other crew. Anddepartment heads to the other
cast members. But I think thatlike it was the four of us kind
of figuring out what are wesaying, and how are we saying

(04:03):
it? I think it's been coolseeing people not just embrace
that, that kind of drawparallels between the way the
movie was made somewhatcollectively and the story
itself,

and how did you come upon the idea to adapt this
book? I'm sure that's a verycommon question that you
probably have great catch

the first time that we've heard it,

I should specify too in case anyone's, you know,
listening totally cold anddoesn't know this is based on a
nonfiction book, which has been,you know, fictionalized and
radically adapted in that sense.

Jordan Sjol (04:35):
Yeah. So that I think the book first came to me
I'm also a grad student. I'malmost done being a grad
student. Oh, congratulations.
Yeah.

We're at you got away doing

it. Yeah. I'm finishing the program and
literature at Duke University.
Sort of program started byJamison. So Verso Books and the
like heard usually sort Look atmy attention span. And I think I
was looking for something elseon the website. I can't even
remember what else. But, youknow, Andreas book has this
great cover, and it's got thisgreat title. So yeah,

I mean, I'll confess, I've totally bought
Versa books on the aesthetics,you know, when they do the 50%
off. It's kind of like, theradical version of the criterion
50% That's,

that's the business model. Yeah,

they throw in a free ebook. You know, it's good
stuff. It's totally. But yeah,showed up and I went, I went to
LA to, you know, during theheight of COVID, to, to one of
the places where COVID wasworst, which was a great idea
and potted up with Danny andAriela and I read the book, and
Danny read the book, and Ariellaread the book, and we're all

(05:46):
pretty excited about it. And Ididn't, I didn't pitch turning
into a movie,

I had always been interested in making a
heist film. And, you know, myparents work in climate science.
And I kind of grew up withclimate neum from a very young
age, and, and always kind ofwanted to tell a story about
fighting climate change, andabout, you know, kind of
environmental activism. And Ithink, you know, just the

(06:11):
combination of the book istitle, the politics, the ideas,
there was kind of a lightbulbmoment of, you know, a bunch of
kids in the desert strugglingwith a bomb. And I think that
you know, that the basic idea ofdoing this is like a heist
action process movie, followedvery quickly. From there. We
contacted Andreas, we started,you know, interviewing him

(06:32):
interviewing other activists, heconnected us to spend about two
months doing research. But itwasn't until kind of Ariela kind
of cracked the opening 10 pages,which kind of put the ensemble
together. And also, I thinksuggested a tone and an approach
and a rhythm of the film that Ithink we actually knew that we
had something. Yeah. Andobviously, throughout that

(06:53):
process we were talking withDan, you know, I've been working
with Dan for basically, since Istarted making real movies. You
know, it's been almost 15 yearsthat we've been working
together. We started talkingvery early on in this process.
And he went and bought the book.
And you know, so that was, itwas always kind of a
collaboration in some form oranother between the the four of

us. Yeah, all right, Ariela, do you want to
talk about your approach tostarting this first 10 pages and
kind of coming up for thefictional framework for the
story?

Ariela Barer (07:24):
Yeah, I mean, we'd had a lot of conversations
generally about wanting it to bea heist movie, wanting it to be
very process driven. And at thesame time, we were talking to
pretty much any expert inanything that could help us make
this movie and in turn, meetingjust so many interesting
characters. And we had kind oftalked about certain archetypes

(07:47):
that we wanted to follow in thisstory. But we didn't have
anything concrete. And I think Ijust kind of came in one day
with like a list of characterslike eight characters and their
general story, where they wouldcome from and why they would be
here and all of their names. AndI think the only name that
changed was Alicia, since thatone that just kind of became a

(08:10):
very solid foundation for us tomake our process driven heist
movie. But I mean, even fromthere, we were still playing
with structure. At first, it wasgoing to be one flashback at the
center of the movie. But wefound that all of the
discussions that we needed inthe movie to, you know,

(08:33):
appropriately adapt the ideas ofthe book wouldn't really makes
sense once you're already doingthe act. So thus, the multiple
flashback structure was born.
And we were just kind of rollingwith the punches as we went on.
Because it was just a reallynonstop breathless process of
making this movie. And I thinkit's felt in the movie itself
because of that.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of urgency to it.
I think there's urgency,obviously, in the story of how
do we address climate change,there's urgency to this
particular mission there onthere's even, you know, I would
say urgency to the idea ofmaking an independent film,
during, you know, COVID-19. Imean, I'm wondering if you could
talk about choosing thesedifferent characters to focus on

(09:15):
you have, you know, someone whoreads is vaguely sort of right
leaning, although I don't thinkthat's necessarily clear in the
film, teaming up with more likeradical, younger leftist types.
Was it important to you torepresent a constellation of
people and ideologies comingaround a common cause?

I think the idea kind of started with us saying,
What if it was us and ourfriends and we went and did
this? And there was the versionof it that could be about like
whiteness and entitlement likein this battle, you know, when
the three of us are writingsomething. It is a predominantly
white group, and then we kind ofjust very quickly realized that

(09:58):
is the least interestingversion. Have what we
specifically want to do, wewanted to sort of fantasy heist
movie that was invigorating andinspiring. And we realized we
really needed to be true tolike, who would be on the front
lines? And who would be the mostaffected by this? And also just
truly the honest answer is, ifit were us and our friends, it
would look like a group likethis, a lot of the characters

(10:20):
are based off of us and ourfriends specifically. So very
quickly, when we started talkingto people, these characters
became who they are. Jordan, doyou

want to follow up on that as well?

Yeah, we started talking very early in this
project, especially when itfirst started, when we were
looking at other media aboutgenerally, let's say, left wing
radical action, how there's thistendency for these stories to be
stories of infighting andfailure and defeat. And also, I
think, as people on the lefthave seen a lot of infighting.

(10:55):
And so part of, you know, partof wanting to tell the story was
also telling a story of peoplecoming together who might have
different motivations, and whomight not necessarily agree
about all of the all of thefiner points of why they want to
do what they want to do. Butknowing that they have the same
goal, and being able to gettogether on the same goal and
say, well, we can leave, we canleave some of the other stuff

(11:16):
aside. And I think to similarend, Dwayne's character who's
like very close to my heart, Igrew up in Wyoming, I know a lot
of I know, a lot of Dwayne's is,in part, in the movie to be a
little bit of a strike againstthis way that the environmental
activism has been so separatedinto a left right binary in this

(11:39):
country, which is very recent,and I think really stands in the
way of people finding the otherpeople who share their material
interests, and getting togetherand working towards a common
goal, even if they havedifferent beliefs underpinning
what they want.

Yeah, I sort of wonder, too, I mean, I guess
speaking of leftist infighting,you know, some people might say,
it's sort of like, naive to tryto tell a story in which people
come around a common cause.
Gerber, you look like yeah,

I feel like that's just not it's not really
a criticism, because it'ssomething that people don't say
about so many other movies, somany other action movies in
particular, about, you know,Marvel movies, or like, pretty
right wing movies like Top GunMaverick or something. It's not
as if people are coming outagainst that and saying, Well,
this is totally unrealistic.
It's like, that's not really thepoint. I mean, of course, our

(12:31):
aesthetic is way more groundedthan a lot of other films. And
so there is an element ofrealism in the aesthetic
approach. But still, on somelevel, I think one thing that
movies can do that a lot ofother mediums don't do as
effectively is make concrete andvisible, a version of reality
that does not currently exist.

(12:52):
And that's exciting. And that'sinvigorating. That's one of the
reasons that people go to themovies. So I don't really think
that the fact that it's somewhatutopian in a sense, is is really
a deficit in the film. It'sactually I think, part of the
design of the film.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's really
interesting, too, that the wayyou talk about the film, it's
almost like, you know, one couldsay, a spoiler, and that you're
very open about how you wantedto, I think, as you were saying
earlier, Jordan, like, tell astory that has joy in it or, you
know, frankly, success.

Well, so much of Andres his book, which I
actually just was rereading,because I've been doing some q&a
s and reading it is it's reallyjoyful, because he goes through
these historical precedents. Imean, his point is to show the
property destruction was used inso many of these movements that
we've sort of sanitized in theway that we're telling them, but
he goes through through thesemovements, and there is this
real sense of like, look, itworked. Look, it worked. Look,

(13:49):
it worked, there are things thatcan be done. And, and that story
of success. And that feeling ofpossibility is something that I
think people in power wouldreally like us to not feel right
now.

So what were some of these conversations with
Andreas like when you firstapproached him like Goldhaber?
Are you the first person toreach out to him or

Yeah, I'm a big fan of the cold email. We
just found texting. Yeah, wejust found Andreas his email
online and emailed him andimmediately got the most
aggressive auto reply that I'veever gotten from somebody. I
like to throw those up from timeto time. But Andreas is are
like, you know, I am onpaternity leave. I will not be

(14:31):
responding to emails for thenext three months. Do not try to
contact me like, I'm out. Yeah,I've

got I've got a lot of respect. Yeah. But then
we're like, oh, when everyone'svirtual, yeah, it's hard to say
like, I'm out of the office whenwe're all in the office. So I'm
just like, I'm not going torespond to your email and like,
just because I'm tweeting 50times a day.

And so yeah, we we, we were like, Oh no, this
is not you know, this is notgoing to happen and then a
couple or days later, heresponded and was like this,
this sounds awesome, I'd reallylove to meet and we met with him
and, and, and kind of you know,walked him through our pitch.
And Andreas has kind of a verysevere face and demeanor. And so

(15:15):
you know, I think he was in bed,like,

staring down his stomach like at the

like Joe Biden photo.

We're just like, just frowning, just
wedding out, when we get throughkind of our proposal of how we
want to kind of approach this,she's like, this sounds great.
Like I'm in like, I'll put youin touch with verso, like, I
totally get what you're doing. Ilove it cool. And he's been kind
of just nothing but supportive.
You know, he, he connected uswith a bunch of activists and
people in the space who, youknow, added just like so much

(15:44):
context to, you know, not justwhat the film should be, but how
it should be that way and how weshould be thinking about the
film and, you know, read a lotof drafts of the script. And
and, you know, his one big noteon the script was that he didn't
believe that we still had punksin the United States. He wasn't
sure that that was actuallyaccurate. Yeah, you know, but

(16:04):
but, and it was always nice tohave this kind of, you know,
philosophical and almostexistential stopgap on the
movie. You know, we always kindof knew that, you know, we could
keep pushing the theory. And,and, and, you know, really
refining what the movie was, andbe able to show it to him and

(16:25):
kind of know that, like, youknow, he would, he would have a
barometer check on whether ornot we were kind of staying true
to what the ideas were and, andso he was always just like,
extremely supportive andextremely kind of helpful and
kind of guiding us through thatprocess.

Yeah. And had he seen cam.

I don't know when he watched cam, or if he's
seen cam, I honestly don'tremember if he ever watched just
curious Yeah, I can text him andask him. Yeah, do it right now.

No disconnect.

I'll do it.
Cool. Maybe

we can put him on the phone? Um, yeah, no, I mean,
that's super. That's superinteresting. And I guess it also
leads into the question ofinterfacing with different
activist groups, and likeunderstanding this culture, how
did you approach that?

Versus he did see cam and that it's great with
a lot of exclamation points.
Awesome. Sorry to derail?

No, that was important. Um, the thought
process was one of my favoriteparts of writing this movie, we
were met with a degree ofsuspicion at first from people,
but we generally just engaged soearnestly that I think, those

(17:44):
suspicions did not last longinto conversations with people.
And we very, very seriously tookevery note that we were given
from activists, that was kind ofone of the most important things
for me. While I, while I care alot about making a good movie,
and I think making the bestmovie is the best political

(18:06):
thing that we could do for thismovement. I also kind of had
this mantra in the back of mymind the whole time where I
could forgive myself, if themovies less than great, can't
forgive myself if it hurts thismovement. And that's really, and
engaging on that level, I thinkwe were able to get some really
lovely productive conversationswith activists that I continue

(18:27):
to keep up with, and I'm a bigfan of,

is there anything in particular that was in the
script that, you know, you feltyou had to change in response to
a note not had to change in thesense that you know, anyone
forced you but just had to,maybe that led you to rethink
anything that you had written?

Most of this stuff, I think was stuff that
was like, kind of architecturaland infrastructural in the
script like it. I think that theproblem that a lot of people
make when they're making movies,or telling stories about things
that are outside of theirexperience, is I think that
they'll like write a first draftand then show it to a consultant
and be like, What do you think?
And, and that's kind of assumingthat somebody from outside the

(19:09):
film industry is going to beable to give, like, great notes
on a screenplay, which is like avery strange and bizarre
document. I think that for us,like, and this was also the
process that, you know, I haveon cam and that, you know, I've
done other projects with bothJordan and Ariela and Dan, now
that, you know, I think thatwhen you're you're doing work,

(19:32):
and you're doing researchoutside of your own experience,
I think it's really important tostart that research before you
start writing and before youeven know what you're writing or
what you're or how you'rethinking about something. And,
you know, I think that one ofthe reasons that we were able to
build trust with people on thisproject is because we were going
in saying, all right, we'regonna adapt, how to blow up a

(19:53):
pipeline. It's going to be aheist movie in which people blow
up a pipeline. What do you thinkwe should to do with that, how
do you think we should tell thatstory? We don't know. Like, we
don't really know what our wayin is, we don't really know who
these people are, we don'treally know like, what the
narrative structure should be.
And like, I think one of theearliest questions we asked is

(20:13):
like, what is the worst versionof this movie to you? What, what
scares you about, like, how wecould screw this up. And I think
that that's the thing is that wehad all of those conversations
before we wrote anything down onpaper. And it was entirely just
like, open forum, we weren'teven really structuring the

(20:33):
movie, we were just collectingideas. And, you know, and then
we were like taking that allinto the shop, and, you know,
talking through it and sortingthrough, you know, well, this
person said this thing, and wedisagree with that we disagree
with what this person thinksabout the film. But we really
liked this thing. And like thatthing, and, you know, this one
person disagrees with somethingelse, this person said, that
feels like that's a disagreementthat would actually probably

(20:56):
dramatically play itself out inthe movie. And so it was kind of
all of those conversationsultimately got woven into the
script. And I think by the timewe were writing, we kind of knew
what we were trying to say andhow we were trying to say it. So
we didn't actually share thescript, almost at all with any
of those consultants are thosepeople kind of across the
political and ideologicalspectrum, you know, because I

(21:19):
think that by the point that wewere writing, it was really
about trying to make it the bestfilm possible. And I also think
that we had enough eyes on it tokeep it from being kind of
politically treacherous. Yeah.
They've all watched the movie,though. Yeah. Now they've all
watched

the movie, and whatever some of those responses
been. I hate

you go to hell. Why would you do this to
me? No, it's

actually I mean, you mentioned earlier, like
asking people what the worstversion of the movie would be
like, what were you know, werethere any interesting responses
to that question? Like, youknow, I don't know. Having Rambo
show up. And like just shootingthe pipeline, or, I don't know,

I think one thing we heard a lot was the version
of the movie that feels fingerwaggy. That is they blow this
pipe line up. And then that wasa really bad thing to do. And
they have to be contrite. Andthey have to pay their penance.
And they have to, you know, Ithink that would have been a
exactly counter to what wewanted to do.

I mean, it's interesting to like, as you're
saying this too, and I'mthinking about what kind of
works well about the movie isthinking of everyone got really
into Columbo during thepandemic. And you know, the
whole premise of that show isyou know, who the murderer is.
And it's sort of like the thedramas like, how was he going to
catch him? And I think that'ssomething that works really
well. And pipeline is, again,you know, you've been fairly

(22:45):
open about like, the title kindof tells you what is going to
happen in the movie, but it'sit's the dramas and how you get
there. I think that also speaksto the heist narrative, which
you've mentioned. And do youwant to talk about, like certain
films that are maybe outside ofthe, I guess, traditional
spectrum of like, radical cinemathat you were drawing on? Like,

(23:08):
maybe, you know, to me, it seemslike, sorcerer and thief are
kind of, like touch points.

It's, it's so funny, because the one movie
that everybody mentioned, issorcerer, and the one movie that
we didn't watch as a referencefilm, and that we literally
never spoke about while makingthis movie was sorcerer. That's

crazy. That's crazy to me, never

seen sorcerer.

It's a total, it's a total, like how to blow
up a pipeline. I think what Ithink maybe part of the reason I
think there are maybe two thingsthat people are making that
connection about. One is the waythat the backstories are kind of
woven in, like it's very muchabout, you know, a very specific

(23:56):
task, but then you kind of weavein these backstories that go
outside of that space and thattimeline, which you do in this
film, and then, you know, also Ithink Gavin's score, which is
fantastic. And the film feelsvery, like tangerine, dreamy.

That was a thief. Yeah, we had a lot of
thief in the movie. There was so

much so much watching Michael man. I mean,
often when I would get stuck inthe edit. I mean, in the early
days anyway, I would just throwon the first like 15 minutes of
thief and be like, Alright, I'vegotten my head in the game now.

Yeah. I mean, I think another thing that that
Michael Mann does is reallyinteresting as part of his
research process where he'stalking to like cops and
criminals, and I wondered if youcould talk about that aspect of
research in your film where youknow, you're speaking to
activists but you're alsospeaking to like DHS people
about you know,

well like Michael Mann we were just high
on amphetamine the entire timeso that yeah, that really helped
us. Kill any horses, ya know? Imean, yeah, it definitely was a
cross section of activists,academics, journalists, pipeline
experts. And and, you know,yeah, we, we were very early on

(25:12):
in the process luckily connectedto somebody who is a bond
expert, who is a contractor whoworks in counterterrorism. And,
and who is, you know, justsomebody who's a giant bomb nerd
and hates that bomb building isalways extremely inaccurate and
movies. Sure, yeah, wanted tohelp us get the details, right.
And, you know, just kind ofeverything that's in the movie

(25:34):
is something that you could puttogether with an intelligent
enough Google search. But Ithink that he helped us, he just
helped us kind of understand,where would they source the
materials from? And how wouldthey do that staying under the
radar, and, you know, all of thelittle details things like, the
way that Michael packs, theblasting caps is like a fairly
inside baseball kind of DIYsolution to like, packing

(25:55):
blasting caps, so that if youslip, you don't kill yourself,
or, you know, in His Word, spendthe rest of your life, having
your wife open your ketchupbottles. You know,

I mean, even even like a thing like that, which,
you know, as I recall, not inthe film, but it's like, that's
the kind of context and coloryou get that you can only get
from speaking to people likethat. And,

and this was also, you know, that particular
expert is also somebody who is,you know, on a more personally
conservative point of theideological spectrum, and was
somebody who never read thescript or anything, but
absolutely, we were thinkingabout in terms of, you know, the
representation of Dwayne and youknow, how might Dwayne engage
with, with with with with thesethings?

Well, and also and also Michael as Bom nerd, like
there was some effective stuffgoing on there, too. Yeah. And I
mean, there's something to just,I get it, I get it, that it's
exciting to build bombs afterdoing this, like doing all of
this research and going through,you know, the Mujahideen
improvised explosive handbookand going through declassified,

(27:04):
like, improvised explosivehandbooks from the US military
and everything. There are theseways that you start to see how
these little small things thatyou can do yourself fit
together, that you sort of get Ithink, going through this
research process started tounderstand why people get Pyro
maniacal.

Yeah. Well, it's like, you know, in a way,

all the bombs in the movie for real.

I'm glad to see you. So have all of your fingers
attached opening girl andketchup bottles. But yeah, I
mean, it's sort of like, youknow, what do we all do in
elementary school? It's like,you know, you put the fucking
arm for getting vinegar andbaking soda together and make
like the little volcano and it'scool as fuck. And then next

(27:52):
thing, you know, you're blowingblowing up pipelines.

Jordan did not actually.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was just kind of curious
about, you know, pullingeverything together, especially
working on such a small budgetin during COVID, which I think,
you know, it's reallychallenging. This is something I
hear from filmmakers a lot, butdon't really see discussed
online or in articles a lot. Butit is just like how resource
intensive it is to keep yoursets safe. And, you know, both

(28:26):
in terms of like, the practicalefforts, and also the financial
resources. So, yeah, it justseems like mounting the
production itself, is this sortof pipeline ask activity? And I
wondered if you could talk aboutthat.

Yeah, I would say most of the energy you get in
the film was born out of purenecessity, because of limited
resources. I think it's like,very easy to forget, now that we
have Nyan attached that this wasa completely independent
production. And we wererewriting scenes on the day just
because we realized we did nothave time for three scenes make
it one scene, you know. And I'mactually very grateful that that

(29:09):
happened because it streamlinethe ideas and it got everyone's
so focused, and it was just purepassion being channeled into
every minute of this movie. AndI think you can kind of feel
that when you watch it. Butyeah, we I mean, we were very
serious about the safety duringthe explosives and,

and in COVID, and we had some the benefit of some
help from a New Mexico program,helping us fund some of our
COVID testing, which was also ahuge No, it was New Mexico
project in the whole project andallowed us to make this movie
because they sponsored and paidfor the COVID testing and yeah,
we I mean, we would not havebeen able to make this movie

(29:50):
during COVID. On this timeline.
If our cast and crew were justpunching the clock. The people
involved in this movie caredabout it and that saved us

virtually no COVID positives on this film.

Yeah. Which is remarkable. I mean, I feel like
every everyone I've talked tohas had some sort of shutdown or
like having to, you know,quickly replace other crew
members or get temporaryreplacements in order to keep
shooting. Because of COVID.

We did lose two actors for one roll to
COVID. Unfortunately,

wait, is that true?

Yeah, that's true. Not none of them main
ensemble, but we had I didn'tdie. Yeah, but we had an actor I
won't say who was actually castfor the FBI agent who was like
going to be it was going to be areally cool cameo. And the day
before we shot, John him herhusband tested positive for

(30:42):
COVID. And then we couldn'tshoot with her and then and then
we cast another actor in thatrole. And then that actor got
food poisoning and then Damn,not even COVID Not even ice. I
don't know why I said two toCOVID COVID. And one, two bad
shrimp salad. All right.

So grateful that FBI plotline is what it is,
though, and that it didn'tbecome overly distracting by the
cool cameo? Yeah, I think

that was a much more significant. There was
like a lot more FBI material inthe movie that got cut out.

Yeah, yes. Didn't have the time to do it. And I
think it kind of becomes theperfect balance now. While
focusing on that, more of theAct and the main characters.

And I mean, speaking, speaking of the
actors, I mean, or do you wantto talk about preparing for your
role? Also, I think you're thefirst actor we've had, um,
Screen Slate Podcast. Yeah.
Honored? No, it's a great honorfor us. Yeah.

Put that in all my bio. All right. Um, oof
pressure. No, I'm preparing forSochi as an actor was nearly
impossible because I was showingwriter brain. And we were
talking about this today on set,we're often I couldn't even
process things until we wereshooting it. But we also very

(32:02):
intentionally were writing socheap with that in mind, once we
decided I would be the characterhaving sort of the author of The
Plan and the author of the moviebe one became a way for us to
comment on our own roles in thiswhole thing. Also, it became
convenient that she was soconstantly on the brink of

(32:25):
implosion under stress, becausethat was me on set and in
between takes off, and I'd haveto go rewrite a scene instead of
preparing for my coverage, andthen just launch into it and see
how that went. And it becamealmost experimental. And it's
really like a as a process. Forme, it's not a way I've ever
worked before, but it's kind ofso interesting to watch. And in

(32:45):
hindsight, it was so raw, therewas very little crafting of it,
that could be done until later.
But it was really fun. Becauseof that it was pure impulse in a
way that I hope to carry with mein future work.

I mean, making the movie was kind of pure
impulse for kind of all of us, Ithink maybe we had more time to,
I think think in the edit. Buteven then, the the the last, I'd
say two, three weeks of theEdit, despite having worked very
kind of methodically for severalmonths. We like started just
like cutting huge swaths of themovie out. And we cut close to

(33:27):
two minutes of the film out inthe last four days of the edit.
And I think we actually cut afull minute out in the last day
of the edit. Yeah, it or if notthe last day and a half or so
they think 90 seconds. Yeah,

I believe you.
But I've totally blocked thatout. I have no memory of this

standard, like a 16 hour edit day One day,
which which is just I think,virtually impossible for one's
eyes. When fingers. And that wasa that was a tough one.

But it seems like you have so much moving parts,
especially when you have this,this brain story and jumping
back and forth with differentstories. And, you know, because
many of the characters in thefilm overlap, you know,
personally, there are decisionsyou probably had to make about,
you know, what, if this makessense, like what is whose story

(34:18):
when you have characters whowere like in relationships, etc.

Yeah, it's true.
It's all kind of in meshed. Andit's a little bit hard to
separate out the individualthreads. Because yeah, it is
ultimately about this collectiveaction and building up one of
the characters inevitably endsup building up the entire
ensemble and why I think one ofthe things that was sort of
strange about this edit,compared to most others that
I've done is that the basicidentity of the thing and the

(34:43):
basic shape of it was prettymuch in place since the
beginning and I know we had allthese worries about, well, will
this sort of flashback structureeven work at all? Are we going
to have to fundamentally rethinkhow to structure this film, and
fortunately, it did, at leastkind of work from the very
Beginning at least it workedwell enough that we saw a path
to making it work as well as as,

try a version that was like, you know,
chronological or

we didn't. I mean, that was definitely
something that was always kindof on the table. And just
knowing how difficult it wasgoing to be to pull that off. We
ultimately decided that itdidn't make sense if it was
somewhat working from the firstassembly, it didn't make sense
to scrap the whole thing and trya version that would

be so funny chronological now is like an
experiment. Yes, see whathappens.

Yeah, like the Gasper, no way. Yeah, reversed.

I mean, I do have to give a lot of credit to all
the writers here who I thinkreally thought through so many
of these issues and in thestructure, well, before the
footage reached my hands, so I'mhappy that it worked. So well to
begin with. And I think that oneof the one of the struggles was
that, because it worked wellenough, at the beginning, there
were all sorts of little thingsthat could have been improved,

(36:01):
like they could have gone from,from fine to actually very good.
And we just, we weren't bumpingon those things, because people
were captivated enough by themain experience of the heist,
that, that it didn't force usinto a position where we had to
address those issues. And so itwas really at the end of the
process, we were really beinghard on ourselves and saying,
Well, this is decent, but couldthis be great? Yeah, we actually

(36:26):
started to make a lot of thosechanges.

And it's a funny thing with this process,
because it's true that like alot of people like give Dan
credit for like the the the thethe Edit credit for kind of the
cuts, you know, back that theflashback cuts, you know, which
I think is a some of the mostobvious editing of the year, in
a way, that's great, and I lovebut those are all of those cuts

(36:51):
were scripted. And it's actuallyfunny, because the challenge of
the Edit was not those cuts,which were all fairly easy to
make. But it was getting themall to work, I think is that is
the challenge. And it's kind ofyou know, I think that the
biggest challenge that weactually had in the edit, when
you have kind of a very, youhave a nonlinear structure like

(37:12):
this that's still kind ofworking inside of this action
genre. It's like getting all ofthe characters to be legible,
and getting all thosebackstories balanced, pacing
wise and getting all theinformation to work was really
challenging, but also even justlike receiving and decoding the
feedback was really hard.

You build up to these great climaxes before you
then cut to the backstory, and Ithink that's something it feels
very, like, punchy or somethingwhere it's just like,

yeah, totally. I mean, I think structurally even
though all that stuff was set,getting the exact pacing rights,
that people have a certainexpectation that is then not
fulfilled at the right moment. Ithink that that's really what
the challenge was like, likeyou're

really in such a way and then it cuts you know,
right? Right?

Exactly. You create you create a desire or an
expectation for the audience,and then intentionally withhold
that force them to sit throughsomething else. So that then
when you get back to the mainstoryline, you can then fulfill
that desire and it's sort oflike creating that sort of
suspension and expectation thatthat sort of enables you to buy

(38:27):
the time for these flashbacks.
Yeah. Do you have a moresuccinct answer to that
question?

Is the origin I knew exactly what you just
heard

it's just edging

it is. I was really trying to like not use
the word climax. I was like, butyeah, every word I could think
of felt very. Yeah. Oh,radically loaded.

And Val, I mean, like not to discredit any of the
like, brilliant work, Dan. Heobviously understands the
technique and executed itperfectly in the movie. Yeah,
it's not just edging you know, Iwould never take away the power
of edging in this movie.

I think it's a skill. Yeah, it takes practice.
Yeah. Edging Master I thinkwould be the name of the episode
edging with Daniel Garber andHeather. Yeah.

But it's also it's, it's, I will say that like
associative editing Matkaediting is like, one of the most
I don't know, it's, it's, it'sprobably like one of the most
cinematic things that there is.
And it's also like, it'ssomething that if you actually
look at like a lot of what makesSpielberg great like an

(39:57):
understanding Have likeassociative and match cut
editing that is kind of builtinto the shot composition. And
the narrative structure is likehalf of what makes his movies
tick. Like that man is a masterof the transition. And you also

have these these very, like micro, I guess I
shouldn't say very micromoments, but like on more of a
micro level, so not thinkingstructurally. But moment to
moment of creating suspensearound the bomb making and, you
know, both the, the sort ofpatience and the detail that
goes into it, but then also thesuspense and the fear of it,

(40:37):
this going to explode. Is thisgonna work? And could you talk
about creating some of thosemoments?

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think
that a lot of it is aboutproviding the audience with
exactly the right informationthat they need to understand why
something is suspenseful, or whythere's some sort of real risk
to one of the characters. And,and so much of it is also about
not giving them too muchinformation, I think that
there's a degree of being in thedark, that is actually very

(41:04):
helpful when it comes tocreating that sort of tension.
If you just have this ambientsense that things could go wrong
at any moment. That's often morehelpful than saying,
specifically, this is the thingthat you should be worrying
about. And so a lot of a lot ofthe editing, especially in the
early days was about figuringout what information to withhold
where to make the audiencewonder what's going to happen.

I'm curious about the locations like was it
difficult to get permission towe didn't

have any I mean, we don't need it, the
shots in North Dakota were allstolen. They shot in LA in front
of that refinery was just beshot by the refinery. And then
the valve station was the onethat was kind of diciest. But
that was actually on theproperty that we shot on this
big ranch, called Diamond tailin New Mexico. And that valve

(41:54):
station is just on thatproperty. And so we had the
ability to shoot outside of thefence, just kind of based on our
location agreement with theranch, we started to get a
little bit ambitious. And weactually were like, can we get
into the valve station becausethat would be sick. And so our
location manager, veryenterprising, Lee called the the

(42:18):
company and was like, Hey, we'remaking a movie about a pipeline
being built. And then some kidscome along and try to sabotage
it. And there's a scene thattakes place at a valve station,
can we shoot in this? Like, canwe shut the valve station, and
they were like, totally not aproblem. Really excited would
love to support the New Mexicofilm industry would just love to

(42:38):
take a look at the script. Andthen we'll like get into the
approval process. And they neverheard back from us. Very whipped

up like a maybe like a short film. You know, we

would have had to do what I heard that Kirk
Douglas did when he madeSpartacus when he was putting
together the all star cast,which is that they sent a
version of the script to everyactor in which it appeared that
that actor was the lead actorand to get them to sign on to
the film. Yeah. Which is abrilliant idea. But we were so
tight on production that wedidn't have time to produce a
fake version of the movie.

Yeah.
Interesting. No, it's crazy. Iactually I don't think I ever
mentioned I was like, detainedat a pipeline or not a pipeline,
an oil refinery once per takingphotos. Because like, there's
one of my basically, in myhometown, there's like all this
fire shooting out of it. And Iwas with a friend. And this was,
you know, probably mid 2000swere like young getting into

(43:34):
photography. And we're just liketaking pictures of this
pipeline. And these two dudesshowed up kind of like in your
movie and like detained us andcalled the FBI. But I think part
of that too, just speaks to likethe the sort of post 911 moment
and yeah, so it was kind ofcurious if anyone like showed up

(43:54):
and tried to try to bust youguys.

No, we also there was like a little bit of
weird attention in North Dakotabut nothing that I would say is
like concrete. People like knewwe were in town making a movie
about oil and we got some like,weird looks and questions but we
weren't we were pretty lucky andwe were also lucky because
there's some shots inBakersfield that we went in and

(44:21):
got on a day of pickups and wewere also stealing all that like
I was literally we were like Iwas like hanging out a car
window for that shot where itdrives by the oil derricks

camera through fence, like gaps and fences to
get shots inside of the

little montage where like the oil is shutting
off. Yeah, got in Bakersfield.

Cool. So yeah, I mean, maybe maybe we could talk
about just the reception to thefilm both you know what you've
had so far at festivals and alsokind of what you hope you know
how you would like the film tobe received.

I mean, I think younger people But in general
tend to respond very positivelyto it. And that's something
that's been very gratifying. Imean, I think in a somewhat
condescending way, sometimespeople from older generations
say things like I'm so I'm soglad that your generation is
going to solve all of theseproblems that we created. And,

(45:21):
and I find that reallyirritating. And I guess I would
just rather than making a filmthat sort of panders to older
generations, I would rather havea film that really speaks to the
people who are likely to bemaking change in the world. And
if it resonates with them, thenthat's, that seems like a major
victory, right? And

also people who are going to have to live
through the worst of it, youknow, totally, you know, really
sad to think of, you know, thepeople who are fucking
everything else are just gonna,like, die. Or any consequences.
Yeah.

I mean, speaking of younger generations, there
was this. We've been, we've beentraveling a lot with a movie,
and I did a film festival inSpain, where we showed the movie
to two groups of high schools,students that we had, like two
different screenings for severaldifferent high schools in the
area. And it was so interesting.
I mean, they responded reallypositively to the movie. And

(46:16):
then there was kind of a q&aafter and it was funny that at
first the kids wanted to be kindof trollee kids about it. And
and they, of course, it wasright after, like, soup had been
thrown on paintings, and theyhad so many jokes about it.
Yeah, you know, which is fine.
But then, you know, using themovie as kind of like a point of

(46:36):
reference, we were actually ableto have a really cool discussion
about property destruction.
Yeah, kids ended up engaging.

I think that there's like, a really funny
kind of, I'm not, I'm notaccusing you of doing this. But
there's this kind of like,slightly leading question thing,
when people ask that questionwhere I think they like, they
look like they want us to belike, we, we hope that people go
and do X, Y, and Z, and it's acall to arms. But I think that

(47:05):
like what I really believeabout, I think what we all
believe about the movie is thatlike, there does not need to be
one desired response from anypiece of art, and especially
from a politically engaged pieceof art. I think that the idea
is, as Arielle was saying, like,we're trying to ask a question.

(47:25):
And that question is, in theface of climate apocalypse, what
tactics are necessary,unjustifiable to avert it? And I
think that there's notnecessarily Well, there are
plenty of wrong answers. But Ithink that the conversation, the
cultural conversation aroundthat is really important. And
that there are hopefully waymore than one thing that comes

(47:48):
out of a cultural conversationand a cultural shift of
confronting, you know, what anescalation of tactics means, and
how it can be, you know,implemented, and how, you know,
activists who are currently onthe ground today, fighting this
fight can be supported, and howthe support of that fight can
create new legal precedents thatcan, you know, allow us and

(48:09):
enable us to, you know, force amove towards a different, more
sustainable future. All of thesethings are related to each
other, all of the kinds of, youknow, more formal systemic
change that we're looking for,rests on the back of, you know,
activists and and I think thatunderstanding the fact that,

(48:32):
generally speaking, we have beenlied to about the legacy of
social justice movements in thiscountry and in the world, and
about the place that sabotageand direct action has had in
those getting people torecognize that and think about
that, and empathize with thatand making that tactile and
immediate to our current moment,I think has a lot of value.

(48:52):
Because I hope and believe thatpeople will take that and do
stuff with it.

Yeah.

So a great reaction is going out. And by Andreas,
his book, it is good forconsciousness raising,

I never great reaction with it. going and
getting involved. Yeah, gettinginvolved. There are there are
tons of people and organizationsthat are fighting this fight
right now that are doing thingsthat are extremely impactful and
far less extreme than blowing upa pipeline. If that is not your
bag, you know, and it's like,look at, you know, what's

(49:25):
happening in Atlanta right now,there are a number of groups and
organizations that are yousupporting the cops city fight
in Atlanta, look into the caseof Jessica reznicek and Ruby
Montoya. You know, look into theguy. There are so many different
movements that are probably youknow, in your own backyard and I

(49:46):
think that that getting involvedwith those and figuring out how
to wield your own place in yourown life to engage with the
movement is basically all thatyou can do as a person and I
think that we can Can you reallysend this message that you need
to do more than that somehow?
But I think that that's, that'sa flaw, I think, do what you
can. And and that's a greatplace to start.

Yeah. I mean, this would be a great place to
end the episode. I am curious,though, to ask what the
discussions have been likeworking with neon when you sold
the film, like, typically, Ithink the way people approach
marketing films now is like,getting involved with various
communities, like identifyingwhich groups may be interested
in the film. But there's also aslippery slope of like not

(50:33):
wanting to exploit socialjustice movements. Yeah. And
then also, of course, on atotally different level, just
sensitivities around thepotential, let's say, like,
political blowback to the film,like is neon at all, you know,
has there been any concern oflike, Oh, we're gonna, I don't
know, if someone's gonna getmad, a right wing politician is

(50:55):
going to get mad at the film.

Think that the first you know, that the the
rules that we had in theresearch process hold here, you
know, we approach anybody thatwe're thinking of partnering
with and say, Hey, there's thismovie that is related to the
work that you're doing? How canwe be helpful to you? How can we
be a resource to you? How can weuse our platform to help you,

(51:19):
and those are conversations thatare still ongoing, it takes
time, I think that as the moviegains more purchase in the
world, right now, we're alltrying to figure out what those
partnerships can and will looklike. But I think for us,
there's no real desire, from theneon end of things, or from the
US end of things, to partnerwith groups to sell the movie,

(51:40):
we would like to be able topoint them in the right
directions, because people comeout of the movie feeling
energized. And, you know, it'simportant for us that we're
directing them in places to usethat energy in ways that are
productive. But that also, to dothat, we need a lot of
information, we needpartnership. And also we don't
want to, I think ever make itfeel, wherever have it be that

(52:02):
we're kind of insertingourselves also into a
conversation in which we don'tbelong. So it's about that kind
of cooperation, that dialogueand that conversation. On the
other side of things. I thinkthat it's similar, there's
there's absolutely no fear, andno real concern about blowback
or pushback. I think that, fromour perspective, conversation

(52:24):
about the film is good. I thinkthat it's just about the fact
that we all need to feel like wecan fully stand behind what the
film is, and what the messagingis, and what the marketing is.
And that is a that is aconversation that, you know,
again, is ongoing, you know, I Ireally hope that you know, three
weeks from now, I don't have towrite you, John, oh, no, a piece

(52:46):
of marketing came out that wedidn't all align on and, you
know, now we have to disown thatpiece of marketing that, that
that hasn't been the case yet.
You know, like, thus far, it'sbeen like an extraordinarily
harmonious and collaborativeeffort in in, you know, making
sure that we're, we're doingeverything we can to, you know,
first and foremost ask thatquestion, that that, you know, I

(53:06):
kind of outlined earlier in away that is entertaining and
accessible and provocative. Likeit's okay to be provocative that
the idea is to provokeconversation and to provoke
cultural movement. But you haveto be provocative with a
purpose. And I think we all havehad a lot of clarity on that

(53:27):
purpose. And I think we justhope that we can continue down
the path that we've been on.

All right, thank you how to blow up a pipeline
team. It's been a pleasure tohave you at the Screen Slate
compound. And yeah, we hopeyou'll be back in the future and
wish you great success with howto build up a pipeline opening
in April 7,

April, seventh in New York, LA San Francisco,
Austin, Orland in Seattle,Portland and Seattle. And then
April 14, going wide across thecountry Whoa,

really wait like how many theaters and they don't
tell me like but like, will yoube able to see it in Canton,
Ohio, you might be able to likeYeah, yeah, I'm gonna tell my
parents. This has been theScreen Slate Podcast. I'm your
host Jon Dieringer. I want tothank you for listening and
thanks to our special guestsDaniel gold haber Ariela barer,

(54:22):
Daniel Garber and Jordan Shoal.
And thanks to Kayla here forhelping us set this one up, and
extra huge shout out to ourPatreon members for making this
possible. If you would like tojoin them and support the show,
you can visit patreon.com/screenslate. In addition to the
discord special event invitesyou also help us pay writers
maintain our online listingsplatform. Keep the daily
newsletter going, and of courseback the show. Last but not

(54:44):
least, be sure to subscribe tothe pod on iTunes, Spotify
iHeart Radio or wherever youlisten. We are currently
experiencing pod mageddon atScreen Slate we have so many
pods coming up. Tomorrow we haveanother one with a grid. Kelly
Reichardt who needs nointroduction. And next week we
have yet another episode withChristopher Burghley about his
fantastic new feature sick ofmyself. Also with quick plug,

(55:07):
I'll be doing a q&a withChristopher next Wednesday,
April 12 at IFC Center at the730 screening of sick of myself,
so don't miss that. I think it'sa really wonderful film that
should definitely be on yourradar. And so with all that
said, thanks for listening, andwe will see you tomorrow with
Kelly Reichardt.

All Episodes

23 - How to Blow Up a Pipeline filmmakers

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}23 - How to Blow Up a Pipeline filmmakers