Fight or Flight: Jeremy Saulnier on Rebel Ridge | Interviews

A ferociously satisfying update of “First Blood” with a rustic Southern setting, “Rebel Ridge” furthers writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s pattern of trapping his protagonists in tight spots and making them fight their way out, even as it recalibrates the grisly survivalism of “Blue Ruin” and “Green Room,” along with the atmospheric tension of his Alaska-set “Hold the Dark,” within a muscular action-throwback frame.   

When Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) cycles into the small town of Shelby Springs, intending to post bail for his cousin, it doesn’t take long for local police to run the ex-Marine off the road and confiscate the cash he’s carrying, exploiting a loophole in state law, known as civil asset forfeiture, that allows police to permanently seize a private citizen’s property without charging them with a crime. After confronting local police chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson) and learning the department has no intention of releasing his life’s savings, Terry allies himself with troubled court clerk Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb) and uncovers evidence of a deeper conspiracy, making it his mission to root out the corruption consuming this remote township.

In Saulnier’s past thrillers, such a pressure-cooker scenario might have escalated quickly, through acts of unfathomably savage violence, but “Rebel Ridge” (streaming Sept. 6 on Netflix) lights its fuse early and lets it burn a while longer, with searing results, across an increasingly ominous set of standoffs between Richmond, Burnne, and his heavily militarized department. Saulnier, who also edited “Rebel Ridge,” is working in a tradition of not only ’70s and ’80s action but also the mid-’60s spaghetti Westerns that preceded them, in which taciturn heroes rode into frontier towns and turned vigilante to save those around them from lawless local order. 

At the film’s core is a committed, star-making turn from Pierre, who imbues Richmond with vivid strength of character, an elegance and emotional intelligence that complements his action-star physicality and is borne out by an exhilarating gear-shift of a twist regarding his mysterious origins. Pierre signed on to star in “Rebel Ridge” after the project had stalled out twice before, first due to pandemic-related production delays in 2022 and then, a year later, after former lead actor John Boyega abruptly exited the production a month into filming, citing family reasons. Saulnier’s partner, Skei, had watched Pierre in Barry Jenkins’ miniseries “The Underground Railroad” and suggested him as a potential replacement. Within minutes of their first Zoom, Saulnier knew he’d found the right Terry Richmond, and the project successfully resumed production in the spring of 2022, wrapping in late July. 

With “Rebel Ridge” finally hitting Netflix on Sept. 6, Saulnier sat down with RogerEbert.com to discuss the influence of punk-rock and Sergio Leone, his obsession with vehicular carnage, and why, more than a decade later, “Blue Ruin” remains his “north star” as a director. 

This interview has been edited and condensed. 

You grew up in the punk and hardcore scene, and that background has influenced all your work, especially “Green Room,” though there’s a certain black-metal sensibility to “Hold the Dark” as well. “Rebel Ridge” opens with Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast.” How else did your love of music inform this film?

Music is always infused into my filmmaking. Iron Maiden was my first idea for that opening scene: how could I start with a bang, my way? Not in this contrived way where it doesn’t belong, but I wanted us to get into it, set something up, and immediately pull out the rug from under our guy, Terry Richmond. This amazing, majestic, rally-cry metal provided an emotional charge. I don’t usually do slow, creeping stuff. It’s like, “Let’s go in hard, guys.” 

A lot of my guys and my girls—like Bad Brains and Stormtroopers of Death (SOD)—are from the DC area, with punk backgrounds, and there are little touches infused in “Rebel Ridge,”  though not as much as in “Green Room,” of course, which takes place in a venue with throbbing music throughout. Here, the device was Terry’s headphones, when we hear the music subjectively versus when we hear it objectively. Even when he’s talking to Don Johnson and Bad Brains is coming through his headphones, I mostly use it as source music. I don’t do a lot of needle drops. I find ways to integrate it into Terry’s subjective experience. 

There was one little mishap in the sound mix. When Terry’s riding up a hill, he has Bad Brains coming out of his earphones, and it’s scripted to be the first time you hear it objectively, so it’s very quiet and buried in the mix. We’re not hearing what he’s hearing; we’re hearing the environment around him, and he’s isolated. But we fucked it up. [laughs] I didn’t write the proper email, and it came in hot in the mix as a needle drop. But I was like, “Holy shit, this is so much better.”

Music is always a big part of it, for me. There was actually a song I had integrated into another scene, but we couldn’t license it. There was some kind of legal dispute, so that went away. But, yeah, I love it. Music adds to the rhythm, the texture. Part of why I make movies is to create cinema for my high school friends, who are also in my punk-rock squad, who have bands and have written music—some of which appeared in “Green Room.” I make movies for a very select audience, hoping that they will resonate with a much broader part of the cinematic space.

“Rebel Ridge” shot in Louisiana, and the film is set in an unnamed Southern town, but its cinematic language is that of the Western, especially Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name Trilogy. How conscious were you of working within a Western framework with this film? 

Yeah, what you said! [laughs] ’Tis true. The obvious reference is “First Blood,” but that came later in the process when I realized I was pitting a guy against a small-town police force. The origin is more of the Western genre, and the first character I thought of is The Man with No Name. Terry rides into town on a bike, not a horse, but it’s the same concept. The less you know about his past, the better. 

There are some highly expository exchanges, but I made sure, at least in my eyes, they were well-earned and justified. If Terry didn’t have to say a word, he wouldn’t. But he’s trying to glean information. He’s trying to get from one place to another. He’s trying to understand this goofy, corrupt system that’s infuriating in its levels of bureaucracy and lack of accountability. I always thought of Terry as a Western character. We joked about tumbleweed rolling through the frame. 

That was very much akin to “Hold the Dark,” which I love. There were even some sequences in “Hold the Dark” I was directly referencing, because I loved the way they paid off on screen. One of those was with James Badge Dale and Julian Black Antelope, as Marium and Cheeon, in the doorway before the big shootout in “Hold the Dark.” It’s just two guys talking. I’d wanted to recreate that experience. As a filmmaker, I love that quiet tension, hearing the environment, and having this back-and-forth between two guys standing there. 

In “Rebel Ridge,” it’s in front of the police station, between Aaron Pierre and Don Johnson. I used the same technique I used in “Hold the Dark,” with a single camera on each of them, and let them do all the heavy lifting. I gave them space to find options and angles as far as their performances, but it was about keeping it simple and letting them lead the way. Hearing that charged dialogue, spoken aloud by those two actors, was probably my favorite day on set.

With “Rebel Ridge,” you’re examining corrupt systems and the cultures of complicity that uphold them, in the context of a criminal conspiracy that’s taken root in Shelby Springs. This made me think about “Green Room,” how this white-power movement is festering within a working-class community in rural Oregon, enabled by people of different political affiliations out of this shared sense of financial desperation, which is at play in “Rebel Ridge” as well. 

I have an obsession with justice—in my life, in my travels, and in the workplace. I certainly can infuse my very personal experience into my films and put it in a broader, more cinematic context that has more meaning to viewers. I’m an expert in the shit that I deal with, just like anyone else is at home. Whether you feel supported, buried, or stifled at work, everyday frustrations can play into much bigger stories, because in the end, it’s all fight or flight. The stakes are high if it’s your life, your livelihood. 

With “Rebel Ridge,” my research led the way, as far as the shocking revelation of how constitutional guarantees are not at all guaranteed. And it’s not always because of evil systems trying to oppress the marginalized. It’s because there’s no fucking money. People will disavow their place in these systems, and they’ll justify it through saying it’s for the greater good of putting food on their family table. I was certainly aware of shedding light on the practice of civil asset forfeiture and on municipal courts that just can’t afford to guarantee indigent defense to those who need it. However, as a filmmaker, I was making sure I utilized that in a narrative sense, not to project any beliefs or politics. I mine it narratively. 

What I did study, that I could bring from my own life, is human interaction and how we can behave. We can be cruel, and we can be just. That’s where I could infuse my direct, emotional, personal knowledge and inject that into the story in a cathartic way. That’s how the film fused, for me: channeling the energy that I have, that everyone has, and putting it on screen and making it bigger and more cinematic, to offer everyone at home a harrowing yet cathartic experience.

Aaron Pierre is a powerhouse in “Rebel Ridge.” In terms of delivering that kind of experience, he’s carrying the film on his back. Tell me about working with Aaron and finding the character of Terry Richmond.

That’s hard to discuss, only because it seems so effortless. Aaron has such great respect for the text. He’s from the stage, so that’s his discipline. The amount of reverence he had for the material, and the excitement he brought to fulfilling the vision as it was on the page, was incredible. He fully dedicated himself. Things would come up, as minor as a little vernacular that he needed, because this is written in a very DC/Virginia public school vernacular that I grew up with. 

Again, reaching back to my youth, I used the vernacular of my high school friends to write Terry. Aaron eased right into it, from his accent to his inflection. We just worked on the details. It seemed too good and too easy to be true, Aaron’s thirst for knowledge, for broader context, to know where he’s from, to see the prop license that we’re giving him, to know what his goal is.

In terms of physicality, Aaron already knew Keith Woulard, our stunt coordinator, from “The Underground Railroad.” They were very close, which was wonderful to have in jumping into this kind of movie. Aaron called him uncle. The whole film’s on his shoulders; he’s in all but four or five scenes out of 135. He had to not only just memorize dense dialogue scenes but also be ready to lift humans over his head and smash them onto the ground — safely. [laughs] 

Two standout sequences in “Rebel Ridge” take place in front of the police station. You mentioned the first, which is this dialogue-driven standoff between Terry Richmond and Chief Sandy Burnne involving the acronym PACE. But I wanted to ask you about the second, where all hell breaks loose, kicking up dust and dirt, with baton rounds and flashbangs in the mix opposite a hail of gunfire. What were some of the challenges of filming that climactic sequence?

I can’t even imagine what Aaron was going through. I tried to, of course, be there for him, but if our camera was off by two inches and we didn’t get the eyeline right, or the smoke drifted in the wrong direction because the wind shifted, we were fucked, and we had to do it again and again and again. 

The physicality asked of him—in the Louisiana summer, with a record 128 degrees Fahrenheit with the heat index–-was dangerous. We had to be very cognizant of everyone’s safety. We would only shoot for a small window and then take cooling breaks. He was lifting real humans over his head. The choreography was dialed in, but we were always playing catch up, including with lightning storms requiring us to shut down and then come back in. 

Directing was the easiest part because I was presiding over talented people from the special effects team and stunt team, as well as ensemble actors, Aaron himself, and the camera operators. We had done a lot of prep. We had shot that sequence in video, as we found out how we wanted to design the scene. I edited that footage myself, so I knew the cut points and the angles. Pushing through the execution and bearing witness to it was easy. I was more of an audience member because it was so dialed in. Aaron carried the burden, and he overachieved as usual.

In your films, there’s always a car: the hollowed-out Pontiac Bonneville of “Blue Ruin,” the van in “Green Room,” the truck Vernon annihilates in “Hold the Dark.” In “Rebel Ridge,” that shootout takes place in and around police cruisers, and the details of who’s driving what type of car in that department is telling. What role do you see cars playing in your films?  

That’s a good question — tough one, though. Maybe it’s me playing with matchbox cars in the mud when I was a little kid. My dad was a car guy. He bought old vehicles, and he loved fixing them up and taking care of them. Even, for me, watching the end of “Thunderheart,” shot by Roger Deakins, you’re watching a bunch of Plymouth K-cars go full-out over a dusty tundra and kick up real dirt. I think cars are so cinematic. I fight so hard not to do green-screen stage work. Cars have a life to them. You can feel the vibration, the exhaust, the light playing off them. 

The role that vehicles play in this narrative is natural to the environment. Of course, Terry’s on a bike; that’s his hero car, his picture vehicle. The police vehicles were required to tell this story. However, I did differentiate between the officers who get the old Crown Vics versus the new, improved Challengers. We even talk about the fleets and how the logistics of a police force dictate that you have to have a diversified fleet; in case of a recall, you cannot have all your cars taken away. I love those details, which I learned while researching the movie. 

The hero picture vehicle, of course, would be the Ford F-350 dually. Did I know it was a “Lethal Weapon 2” homage when I wrote it? I don’t know, but it certainly came to mind when I was pulling down a wall with a dually. [laughs] The turbocharger engine on that vehicle sounds like a jet engine. It is me playing in the sandbox like when I was a kid. Beyond the necessity of having to get from one place to another in Louisiana, cars have a lot of impact cinematically, with all this literal weight, and they can carve through that dust and mud. Visually, there’s nothing like it. 

Shooting all that roadwork was intense. I don’t think a lot of films get that level of support. I’ve done TV, [including directing the first two episodes of “True Detective” season 3, for HBO,] and you don’t even ask that question; you’re going to make up eight-page days of people pretending to drive on a stage. But “Beverly Hills Cop,” for example, has such a stunning opening, with this big fucking vehicle smashing through other vehicles, and it’s undeniably real. The force that I felt from this action-comedy opening is more than what I’ve felt when I see big spectacle action movies. I just gravitate towards that intuitively.

Where you place the camera in the vehicle, too, next to or behind the drivers as they’re crashing into the sides of other cars, compounds that impact. 

You’re subjective, you’re with the driver, you’re with our guy. A lot of the car-smashing in “Rebel Ridge” is unspectacular, as far as flipping and exploding goes, but you feel such a brute force. The camera jars. We did lots of visual effects to make it seamless when Terry smashes into the cruiser. I don’t need to have everything explode, but I need it all to feel real so that the impacts can reverberate into the audience.

It’s been a decade since “Blue Ruin” hit theaters. Though it wasn’t your first feature film, it was a breakout moment for you and your collaborators. Looking back, what does “Blue Ruin” signify to you these days? 

It’s very personal. “Blue Ruin” is always the high bar. Who knows if I can ever replicate that experience? It was self-funded, by and large, with Kickstarter funds as well. There were no expectations, and it was a very pure expression. I had a lot of fun, and I am very proud of it as a work of art. Getting into the Directors’ Fortnight section and premiering it at Cannes was a life-changing experience. There’s a part of me that’s always still wondering how I can navigate the industry, and do bigger and better projects, but tap into that filmmaking experience. It’s always going to be the north star, for me.

What’s next for you? 

Things come and go, as far as development. I always have something in my back pocket I can control, and I usually default to that, because I don’t have the leverage of a Hollywood heavyweight, but I also have my own terms. I’m very precious about protecting the art. I love collaborating but, if something lines up, I’ve always thought of myself as a director first, and I’ll hop on projects if I can. In the meantime, I train myself to not ever rely upon gatekeepers. While I’m pursuing these bigger projects, if I’m at home writing, I feel like my insurance policy is in place. If something doesn’t work out, then I’ve got something to present. My scripts are my scripts. I own and control them, and I have a lot of love for them. But if something better comes along, my shit goes on a shelf, and I go rock-n-roll. 

That’s the plan, at least. I’m tinkering with a new script. I’m in love with it and enjoying the experience. But when “Rebel Ridge” is released, I’m just going to celebrate that moment and keep an eye out for whatever opportunities might arise.

“Rebel Ridge” is streaming on Netflix on September 6.