[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] "On Story" offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

All of our content is recorded live at Austin Film Festival and at our year-round events.

To view previous episodes, visit OnStory.tv.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story."

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

This week's "On Story," writer and director of "Pig," Michael Sarnoski.

I enjoy writing things that are kind of on the edge of my experience and everyone always says write what you know, but I think it's like write what you kind of know, but want to know a little more about, and then you find thematic things in your own life that you wanna kind of bring into it and you realize, oh, I guess I'm going through this thing in my life.

And it seems to kind of wanna be in this film as well.

[paper crumples] [typing] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] In this episode, Michael Sarnoski dissects writing, constructing and managing the overall production scope of his directorial debut.

Sarnoski speaks to how the film subverts conventional revenge themes and explores loss and overcoming grief.

[typewriter ding] - I was so curious after I saw the movie to actually read what it looked like, like read what it looked like on the page.

It was a really spare script and really beautiful.

And it sort of fits perfectly into what's been sticking in my mind this year, which is just how you start your film, how you open it up.

The film is put out there as a revenge thriller, but I put it out there as a love story.

And it was a really beautiful way to open a love story to me, and also an interesting way to open a revenge thriller.

- So the opening was actually one of the spots that I think I rewrote it three times on set basically because of budget reasons, the initial opening of the film in the first draft of the script that went out to producers, and that was pretty much what we went up to Portland to shoot, was Rob going down into an underground meat cellar, is that the version you have?

- Aha, that's the version I have.

- So he starts in an underground meat cellar getting like treats for his pig basically before a day of truffle hunting and early on the production designer was like, we can't afford to make an underground meat cellar.

And so then we went through like a couple different options for the beginning.

I mean, mainly what I wanted to have was this feeling of, it's a very like sort of interior exterior film, like it's about the sort of inner world of this person and how it relates to the outer world around him and this kind of past that he's left behind, these people.

So I wanted that sense of kind of like starting interior and then opening up.

And we ended up with this sequence of him, what he's actually, it's sort of hard to tell what he's doing, but what he's doing is he's washing and seasoning a cast iron pan in the river, which ends up kind of becoming like a symbolic place for him through the movie.

But a lot of that was kind of discovered because we could not do the original opening and then we couldn't do the other opening for various reasons that became very complicated.

And it's really hard to have fish on set.

There was gonna be an opening where he was catching fish underwater and we had this amazing handmade fish trap built.

And then that didn't work out for a bunch of really stressful reasons.

So then it was pretty much on the day just being like, what could he do?

And I was like, we're gonna do an underwater shot of him washing a cast iron pan.

So it sort of, it was about finding something that tonally had the sort of same feel and thematically was exploring the same things, but was something that we could afford to do, which wasn't a lot, 'cause we built one set in the entire movie and it was just the set of his shack and it wasn't even really a set.

It was just a shack in the woods.

So we didn't have the money to do anything else, really.

- I think that the lack of narrative about who this man is, was what made for me the film so, it was just so surprising and I had no expectations because your film came out at a really good time in a way.

And I think one of the things that was so beautifully done was that we don't know anything about him.

And even at the end of the movie, we still don't really know anything about him, and that is, but we do see this little movement that's made in his life which seems incredibly large.

- I think initially, and a lot of this is just in retrospect trying to put some sort of narrative onto it because the actual process is pretty messy.

But initially it was always that core image of this old man in the woods with his truffle pig.

That was like, I had that in a little document of writing ideas for a couple years before I even started working on it.

And then, when I decided to write a script around that, it's sort of just trying to unpack what it is about that image that I found so compelling and like asking myself, like, why does this move me?

Like what are the elements of it that I find so interesting?

So it's a lot of just asking questions about something that moves you.

I enjoy writing things that are kind of on the edge of my experience and you know, everyone always says write what you know, but I think it's like write what you kind of know, but wanna know a little more about, and then you find thematic things in your own life that you wanna kind of bring into it and you realize, oh, I guess I'm going through this thing in my life.

And it seems to kind of wanna be in this film as well.

- Well, so what is it about to you?

- I think what I liked about it, I liked this sense of isolation.

There was an endearing quality, there was a sense of mystery and focus and sort of this kind of primal simplicity.

But then as the film kind of progressed, it very much became about grief for me.

Like it was about I, I was at, my dad passed away when I was a kid and I wrote this script in my late 20s.

And I think I was at a phase in my life where I had, I was sort of seeing not the immediate effects of grief, but kind of how long term it had changed my family and how they interacted with the world and how they sort of built their identity around that grief.

So it became a story about kind of examining these three different characters who had all dealt with grief in different ways and had created their, crafted their identities around that and how at their core they're all kind of dealing with the same thing, but it vastly has sort of changed their world.

So that became kind of what the movie was about on a more like emotional thematic level.

- People still talk about it, you know?

It's probably the only time I remember my mom, like... - What happened to her?

- She's... um, she killed herself.

She was, she was never like, when you're like that, it's just, it's gonna happen sooner or later.

My dad was, oh, he was always the tough one in the family.

- The language is also very it's spare.

It's also spare, so when he first got into Amir's car and they're driving away and he turns off that really irritating classical music guy, that, it's like it was a really great, it was just a great moment.

It was like one of those, just how it came across, you know that this difference between these two people and the difference between their environments was clear and drastic.

A scene I really would like to hear you talk about the crafting of, is that wonderful scene with the chef in the restaurant that is just like, is that everybody's favorite scene?

And it's pretty awesome, you know?

So, and it's wise and beautiful, but it's also just such a great capturing of, I think probably every creative person has had a moment where it's like, why am I doing this when maybe I should be doing the thing I love.

- I talked to the editor a lot about this, this idea that films should have like a fractal nature to them where every scene in some way should kind of encompass the whole of the film.

And I think that's a scene that does that pretty well.

You kind of get, you kind of get the whole movie in that scene.

It has sort of, it's absurd.

It's sort of funny, it's sort of sad.

You see that glimpse of this arc and this relationship that's developing.

Like it kind of has everything packed into this scene and that scene in the script, it was like, I think a nine page scene.

And it was one of those ones that I think the producers in their minds, they were like, yeah, we'll shoot it.

And then cut it down to like two page, like two minutes or something.

But we ended up doing the whole thing and pretty much you see the whole thing in the movie.

And it's like an eight minute scene.

And I mean, I think the scene, it works because it's specifically about the restaurant industry, but it's really not.

And it kind of applies to, yeah, I think with anything you're writing, it's always fun to find something hyper-specific, like extremely like just through the lens of the character that you're exploring, but then find a way to kind of make it universally relatable.

And I think that scene does that where people who don't care at all about the culinary world watch it and it just applies to whatever job you're doing, whatever passion you have.

- They're not real.

You get that right?

None of it is real.

The critics aren't real, the customers aren't real because this isn't real.

You aren't real.

- [laughing] Okay.

- Derek, why do you care about these people?

They don't care about you, none of 'em.

They don't even know you because you haven't shown them.

Every day you'll wake up and there'll be less of you and you live your life for them and they don't even see you.

You don't even see yourself.

We don't get a lot of things to really care about.

- It was the scene that had Nick's favorite line in it.

He loved the, we don't get a lot of things to really care about.

He said, when he was first reading the script, he was in England and he read that line and immediately got on a plane to go see his son, which that meant something to me that that was like, I think that was the line that he decided to do the film based off of.

And yeah, I mean, it just, it had a lot going on.

It was this kind of crux moment for the character.

It was this moment where you first see Amir and Rob working together.

It's this moment where you first see Nick not only kind of acknowledging his identity, but acknowledging the identity of someone else and using the relationship between those two identities to accomplish something, 'cause this is this it's kind of a movie about Rob's character coming to terms with his identity, coming to terms with the fact that that identity means something to other people.

And then through that, coming to terms with the fact that other people kind of have their own inner worlds and we have a responsibility in relation to those worlds.

So, it's kind of the first moment where you see all of that come together.

[typewriter ding] - So Robin's a, you said this first appeared in your head as just an old man and his truffle pig, but Robin's a pretty fascinating character.

And I feel like he's, I think his lack of know-ability is what made me feel so attached to him.

'Cause I wanted to know more about him.

I felt like, wow, this guy's fascinating.

How are we gonna, even when he is talking about what was he talking about, volcanoes or whatever.

- Earthquakes- - Earthquakes.

- And volcanoes and tidal waves, just everything.

- So, but he is.

But I mean those little pieces of character, were not so much revelatory, but magnetic.

- I mean, I think for me, it really did start with that core image and asking why is there this old mountain men in the woods with a pig?

Why is he so good at finding truffles?

Why is this something he chose to do?

The fact that this takes place in the culinary world that came organically out of like, of course it would take place in the culinary world.

This is a truffle hunter.

Who's found a little niche that they have an expertise in, but can sort of do removed from society.

Why is he removed from society?

Well, let's look into his backstory.

What would drive someone away from that world?

What was that world like?

I mean, usually it's just kind of going from one stepping stone to the other of asking questions and hopefully that'll kind of lead you somewhere that you find interesting.

And I guess that's kind of how I crafted it.

And then there was also quickly like with the pig getting stolen quickly, I knew that I was playing in sort of this noir cowboy revenge realm and it kind of has the trappings of that genre and people say it subverts it and it does, but not exactly intentionally like in my mind, the chorus subversion was just this idea that in a cowboy movie, you always have this idea that this guy is the best gun in the west and he can shoot anything from a mile away.

And I was like, well, what if we just do the same structure?

But instead of him being the best at shooting people, he's just the best at cooking stuff.

And that's his superpower and like that, it's kind of subversive, but it's also like, you know, why not?

So switching that one little thing kind of shaded everything in a different way.

And a lot of things grew out of that naturally like the ending spoilers for anyone.

But like I liked the idea of the ending where instead of it being three guys standing with guns in a shootout, it's just three people sitting around a table having dinner.

Like it's sort of all those things kind of naturally unfolded from that core decision of like, let's give him a different superpower.

- Amir's character, he came across on the page, I mean he just came, totally came across as this kind of anti-character, the odd couple of Robin, it seems like that character got put up against Robin so that we could see more of Robin.

- Yeah, I mean kind of every character we encounter so that we can see more of Robin, I enjoy stories where you neither know more than the protagonist knows, nor do you really know more than the protagonist is presenting and that's kind of how "Pig" works.

Like you are discovering everything with Rob, but you're also like not given a bunch of backstory around him.

So you're kind of also discovering whatever the people around him are discovering about him.

And I just find that to be like a very, I mean, A, it it's sort of a straightforward way to write something.

It gives you limitations that you have to play within.

And it also, I don't know, it just makes, it's how we naturally discover human beings that we have relationships with.

So there's something that makes you kind of lean in and wanna get to know these characters.

So yeah, all the characters kind of that he interacts with are, they are our windows into that character.

And Amir's the main one.

He kind of becomes, it's a little bit of like a buddy movie in some ways.

And yeah, I think that was on the page and then it just became even better with Alex Wolf and Nick Cage had such a great energy just in real life.

[typewriter ding] - Going back to the opening, I felt like the opening set the tone for the world.

I don't know that any of that world, I thought, I think that's also what I found so interesting.

I know nothing about truffles or pigs or-- - I didn't really either.

- And so, but I mean, it presented an other-worldly place.

I'm interested in the little sub-story about the underground fighting of restaurant people and just like what that world looks like.

So I'm assuming you did a bunch of research to get to the world that is of your making.

- I always wanted this movie to have a little bit of a sense of like a fable or something kind of folkloric.

So it's exaggerated partially because that's how Rob sees the world.

Like he's been away from the world for 15 years and he kind of sees the world as a little bit absurd and it doesn't make sense to him.

So I wanted the world that the audience was experiencing to kind of feel like that.

And then as he kind of builds a stronger emotional connection to the people around him, some of the more absurd elements start to fall away.

And it becomes just more of this emotional story between these characters, but all of those things have a basis in reality, like the underground fight thing.

It's from my research, it's true that there's a lot of aggression in the restaurant industry, there's a lot of brawling.

Like I read a lot of Bourdain books and Marco Pierre White books and there is this pent-up aggression.

There's a lot of abuse and stress in that industry.

And then Portland does have like a lot long history of this kind of underground world.

They became kind of like a hippie town in the 70s.

But before that, they were an extremely, like dangerous place that had, or a lot of organized crime at the turn of the century.

It was one of the most dangerous cities in the nation.

And so it has, yeah, it's very like trendy and fun and artsy, but it also has this kind of history of a little bit of darkness to it.

And the things that were like there were these underground tunnels, Pioneer Square was built where the Portland Hotel was torn down in the 50s.

So, there are elements of truth, but then I kind of exaggerate them to create more of a sense of kind of a folk tale and to give opportunities to kind of explore character moments for Rob.

- Amir's father is also a really interesting character.

And that last act with him was, it felt very different than the rest of the film in a way, not like it didn't belong, but it just was a very different emotional feel that we entered at that point.

And I just think that was also an interesting piece of world building that we have this person that Amir is clearly afraid of, but wants to be like, but we don't really get to meet him until the very end.

And you don't really give us a chance to like him or dislike him.

I don't know about y'all, but my heart was in my throat at that dinner scene.

You know, it was just a really beautiful scene.

[sipping] [wine glass hits table] [silverware clanking] [forks slides across teeth] [inhales] [sobbing] [chair slides across floor] - I mean, there were, there are a lot of things that go into the kind of emotional pacing of the film, 'cause it does, the film has a lot of tonal shifts and then a lot of tones that kind of play simultaneously and it was very tricky.

You know, there were a few ways that I approached it.

One was from just the straightforward, the thing I talked about before, where like you don't know more than the protagonist does and you don't know more about the protagonist than the world kind of knows about him.

And that was a big thing.

Like the point of view of the film was always very important to me.

Like it's from Rob's point of view until the ending, when it starts to split a little bit and becomes from both Rob and Amir's point of view and kind of tracking that gradually like, it's not until like the second half of the film that we get a single scene where Rob isn't in it, and then you get like a couple little scenes with just Amir and that's kind of an expression of Rob starting to see Amir as a full person.

So kind of tracking whose perspective the film was from was a big thing, there were little tricks, like the title cards were kind of important to me because the, which those actually changed from the original script, but the title cards, the main intention of them was to give the film a little bit of a storybook feeling that kind of folkloric fabley feeling, but then also to prepare people for tonal shifts, like they always happen at these moments where kind of the film is sort of going in a different direction.

Like one big one happens after the underground fight.

And before that sort of next day, when we have the breakfast with Amir and Rob, and that's a moment where it's kind of like, you're letting the audience know, you don't exactly know where we're going, but I just wanna let you know that like we've reached, sort of another chunk of the film and like be prepared to kind of like realign yourself with what the vibe of that portion of the film is gonna be.

And I think that's sort of useful to give the audience something to hang onto, even if they're not sure what that thing is going to be.

But yeah, I think just like staying kind of emotionally true to the characters was the biggest thing.

Like it's just, you're just with Rob and then you're with Amir and you're just kind of, they carry you through it and people go through different tunnel shifts in their life and they have different things that mean something to them.

So as long as we're with those characters, we'll hopefully be willing to kind of go to different places.

- The choice to shoot them the way you did in the dining room to distance us a little bit from them.

And what was when you were taking it from this, especially as your first film to direct, you're taking it from the page that you've written now to truly envisioning it, did that shift a lot once you finished it and it started getting going and to make decisions like that.

- There are some scenes that are just exactly how I imagine them and others where, once you bring other talented people on board, Pat Scola was our cinematographer and sitting down with him and going through and making a shot list was extremely important.

And it was really important that he understood the vibe of the film.

I remember the first meeting I ever had with him, I had already storyboarded like the first 20 pages of the script and I presented them to him and he was like, I don't wanna see 'em.

Let's just like talk about it.

And I was like, okay.

And then we talked about it.

And the one moment where I was like, okay, this guy gets it, was when he described the kidnapping scene to me.

[pig snorting] [clucks to pig] [pig snorting] - Hey, hey.

[pig snorting] It's just coyotes.

That's it, go to bed.

[pig snorting] [floor creaks] [door breaks open] - Exactly as I had storyboarded it like this one shot where the camera like tilts completely and you are following this action.

Like he just was like, "Well, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?"

And I was like, "Yes, that would be cool."

And that's exactly what's in that storyboard and let's work together.

So I trusted him a lot.

Like he really understood the vibe we were going for.

And yeah, we just kind of went through and talked through all of the scenes in a lot of detail and talked through how we wanted to show the various progressions.

Some of that was through framing.

Some of that was through when we wanted to use static stuff.

And when we wanted to use handheld stuff, we sort of created this language that like when he's cooking and when he's starting to connect with people more, we move into more handheld work.

And when he hasn't gotten to that point yet, we have more static shots.

So, there are little things that we experimented with and some things you change on the day and you're like, actually this feels better, but you plan as much as you can and then leave some room for experimentation, which we didn't have a ton of room for, because again, it was a pretty short shoot, but yeah, I mean, that was very much, being on the same page with the cinematographer.

[typewriter ding] - The question is: why'd you kill the pig?

- Pretty early on I knew that the pig had to die [audience laughing] because, I mean, for me, it is a story about this guy coming to terms with death and loss.

And I think it's about, it like on a sort of symbolic level, like the pig is always dead.

Like everything you love and everyone that you're close to is in some stage of dying.

And we need to find a way to still love and to still make progress and to still work together and live a life, knowing that.

So I liked the idea that not only does the pig die, but the pig was like always dead from the beginning of the story, the pig has been dead and that doesn't make the journey or the relationships that he's formed less meaningful.

[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You have been watching On Writing "Pig": a conversation with Michael Sarnoski on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project.

That also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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