Elliott Lester returns to the director’s chair with a fresh take on the Western genre inThe Thicket. After making his feature directorial debut with 2006’sLove Is The Drug, Lester would find his breakout work inthe Jason Statham-ledBlitzin 2011, quickly following it up with the acclaimed David Oyelowo-starring dramaNightingalein 2014. Lester returned to the director’s chair for two back-to-back 2017 releases with the psychological thrillerSleepwalkerand true-story-based Arnold Schwarzenegger dramaAftermath, though would go on hiatus until his new film.
The Thicketserves as an adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s novel of the same name centering on Jack, a devout Christian whose quiet life is thrown into turmoil when his sister, Lula, is taken by the brutal outlaw, Cut Throat Bill. Jack leaves his home in search of Lula across a snowy frontier, crossing paths with reluctant bounty hunter Reginald Jones, his business partner Eustace Howard and Jimmy Sue, a woman forced into prostitution. With the promise of a $10,000 bounty for Cut Throat Bill and a determination to get Lula back, the group embark on an eye-opening journey.
Every Movie Coming To Theaters In September 2024
September 2024 will see the return of Beetlejuice, a new Transformers movie, Francis Ford Coppola’s latest project, and a lot more.
Peter Dinklage leads the ensembleThicketcast as Reginald alongside Levon Hawke as Jack, Gbenga Akinnagbe as Eustace, Leslie Grace as Jimmy Sue,Yellowjackets' Juliette Lewisas Cut Throat Bill, Esmé Creed-Miles as Lula, Metallica frontman James Hetfield, Arliss Howard, Macon Blair and Ned Dennehy. The movie also serves as a passion project for Dinklage, who has been attached to the project since 2014 and is also a producer on the Western thriller.
In honor of the movie’s release,Screen Rantinterviewed director/producer Elliott Lester to discussThe Thicket, the changes he made to Lansdale’s novel, and how he got approval from the author, his working relationship with Dinklage, and the challenge of shooting on-location for the Western thriller.
Lansdale Was “So Wonderful” In Allowing Changes ToThe Thicket
Screen Rant:The Thicketis such a fun movie, but also such an interesting take on the western genre. Obviously, there’s the source material by Joe R. Lansdale, so I’d love to hear what it was about the book and about Chris' script that drew you to want to get in the director’s chair for this one.
Elliott Lester: Well, the book is phenomenal. It’s a true road movie, very in the vein of The Searchers, which are films I’ve always been curious about. Chris Kelly’s a playwright, and he did a really wonderful job interpreting that text. I changed a lot of the tenets of the book. I made Cut Throat Bill a woman, and what I found was that Joe was very open to those changes. Because, look, obviously people honor the book, I wanted to honor the book, but I am also making a feature film. He was wonderful, so I went ahead and started shifting things around to make this version of The Thicket.
Lester Knew Lewis' Casting Was “The Right Way To Go” For Cut Throat Bill
I actually really like that you went for a flip with Bill to be a woman, and Juliette is just incredible in this film, it’s one of my favorite performances from her yet. I’d love to hear about the search for finding the perfect person to play Bill for this film.
Elliott Lester: So, I knew her manager, and I gave her manager the script, and a week later, I was in front of Juliette Lewis. She read it that quickly, and then was like, “Let’s get on a Zoom.” And that Zoom, I could tell from the beginning that this was the right way to go. We wanted to make a punk rock Western. I wanted to utilize all of her gifts as an actor, as a singer, as someone who’s a maverick, someone who is fearless, has no ego.
When you’re developing a character like that, the first thing you do is find the voice. I remember, one day, I was sitting at home, and all of a sudden, this video comes across with Juliette Lewis doing the voice of Cut Throat Bill, and I just got chills. It kept getting better and better and better from there on. It was a phenomenal collaboration.
Dinklage Was “Fantastic” As Both A Producer & Star ForThe Thicket
I also love Peter Dinklagein this film. I love that he has sort of this dark sense of humor throughout the film, even as he’s getting into action. What was it like getting him for the role and, like with Juliette, collaborating to find this character?
Elliott Lester: It was his film from the beginning. He’s had the movie for 11 years, and was a producer of it, so we sort of picked each other, in terms of collaboration. As a producer, he’s fantastic. He picks up the phone, he does the calls, he follows through, he’ll do script notes, he has input. Probably one of the best experiences I’ve had with an actor.
Performatively, it’s Peter Dinklage. You point him in one direction, it’s great. Give him a little adjustment. He embraced the role fully, and you could see he was having a good time, and he was not challenging to me at all. He allowed me to direct him in the way that we needed to, and every night, we’d have a glass of wine and eat a piece of moose. That’s how it was.
Lester “Didn’t Sit Down The Entire” Shoot Due To The Cold Weather
I’d love to hear about filming on location for this one, because the practical sets, the shooting in the forest, were all incredible to see on screen. What was it like for you, as a director, you know, putting all that together and actually filming that?
Elliott Lester: It was -35 degrees, it was the most brutal winds. I didn’t sit down the entire film. I was marveling at the crew in Calgary that they’re literally like mountain goats. I think it was, at times, really hard on the actors, because nothing can prepare you for that level of cold. They got through it. We try to make everyone as comfortable as you can, but it’s undeniable you’re out there freezing. In terms of preparation, I packed a lot of wooly socks and drank a lot of soup. [Laughs]
Lester Purposely Avoided A Few Western Genre & Period Piece Tropes
I’d also love to talk about the movie’s tone, because, you said a few minutes ago, it is a punk-rock Western, and that is something I’ve always loved about both Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale’s projects. They’re in the Weird Western genre, where they have their own unique tone and settings. I’d love to hear about working with Chris, and also your own vision, of finding that specific tone to set this film apart from traditional Westerns.
Elliott Lester: I didn’t want to orientate it too closely to what you would expect. As you know, the costumes are slightly different, the feeling is quite different. An audience will forgive you if you take a form, like the Western, and you just shift it slightly to the right or to the left, because you understand the framework. I think my approach was like, “If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it my way. You see yourself as an artist, and this is how I’m going to interpret it.” You saw Leslie Grace has a big, giant orange afro. There’s one very specific thing that I wanted to point out, that no time in the film you ever hear the N word, you never hear it. You do that because we’ve heard enough of it, and I wanted it to sort of be a pure experience, and never have the audience taken out by that word.
Lester Pulled From An Oscar-Winning Leonardo DiCaprio Movie ForThe Thicket’s Look
I’d love to also hear about working with Guillermo Garza to find the actual visual look of this film, because it is, again, such a uniquely layered palette and style.
Elliott Lester: I picked Guillermo, because he’s a very good, naturalistic cinematographer, and we made a decision to go to Calgary. One of the main reasons, because it’s a heavily Western influenced part of Canada, the light there never gets above 10 or 11 o’clock. So, you always have soft light. The majority of the film takes place outside, and they shot The Revenant there, and w, that movie is undeniable. So, we were like, “Well, how are we going to get this?” Because we didn’t have a lot of time, we didn’t have The Revenant money, but we could have The Revenant’s light. So that was the decision.
Lester Enjoys Getting To “Introduce The World To New Actors” Like Levon Hawke
I’d love to also hear about casting Levon Hawke, because he does such a great job in this central role as this brother trying to find his sister and rescue her before it’s too late, but also being transformed himself by learning about the world. What was it like finding him to really play this part?
Elliott Lester: He’d only been acting six months, and Peter had known him his whole life. I met with him, and there’s this thing as a director that you should do, which is you have an obligation to bring new voices out, to introduce the world to new actors. I’ve done it a few times, with David Oyelowo and Lewis Pullman and people like that. And I felt that this was Kismet. I was like, “This is an opportunity for us to meet Levon on his ascent.” And as you know, he’s coming out in Blink twice, and he’s got so much stuff going on. He’s a phenomenal actor and very, very humble, very easy to direct.
So, with him being such a new, fresh actor, what was the big inspiration that you gave him to sort of take the character and make it his own?
Elliott Lester: Well, we shaped it together. What I would do is, I would basically say, “Make every mistake you want to make in rehearsal.” And we would make every mistake, and then allow him to not be frightened of taking those mistakes and being open to shape things. We would find the voice together, which is really, really important. That’s the first thing you do.
And then, again, just being open. He would come over, we worked through scenes, and then he would tell me what he thought, and usually his ideas were great, and I would implement them. Just allowing the artists to express themselves, because I don’t like someone sitting on my shoulder telling me what to do, and neither do actors. You just guide them, and he was very open and willing to be guided.
AboutThe Thicket
When fierce bounty hunter Reginald Jones (Peter Dinklage) is recruited by a desperate man to track down a ruthless killer known only as Cut Throat Bill (Juliette Lewis), he rallies a band of unlikely heroes including a grave-digging ex-slave and a street-smart woman-for-hire. Together they embark on a perilous quest to track down Cutthroat Bill that leads them into the deadly “no-man’s-land” known as…The Thicket.
A film about vengeance, justice, and unlikely companionship, THE THICKET also stars Esmé Creed-Miles (Hanna), Levon Hawke (Blink Twice), Macon Blair (I Care A Lot), Andrew Schulz (You People), James Hetfield (Metallica), David Midthunder (On Sacred Ground), with Arliss Howard (Mank), with Leslie Grace (In The Heights), and Gbenga Akinnagbe (The Old Man).
Stay tuned for our otherThicketinterviews with:
The Thicketis now in theaters and will make its VOD debut on September 24.
The Thicket
Cast
Set in the harsh Wild West, The Thicket follows a rag-tag group of people, including an ex-slave and a brutal bounty hunter, as they hunt down a mysterious killer who goes by the name Cutthroat Bill. Their journey to find Cutthroat Bill takes them deep into the inhospitable region known as the thicket.
