The Big Picture

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sits down with the team behind Sasquatch Sunset at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Nathan Zellner, David Zellner, Riley Keough, and Christophe Zajac-Denek discuss making their one-of-a-kind festival gem. Sasquatch Sunset covers “a year in the life of a singular family” — a family of Sasquatches.

A major highlight at any film festival? Getting the opportunity to see a one-of-a-kind feature film that leaves you thinking, “How does this exist? I’m so grateful this exists!” That is Sasquatch Sunset.

The movie stars director Nathan Zellner, Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg and Christophe Zajac-Denek as a family of Sasquatches. Via a dialogue and narration-free narrative, the film shows what the creatures do when they’re not inadvertently getting caught on camera, like in the Patterson-Gimlin footage. It shows their everyday life. Entirely told from the Sasquatch point of view, Sasquatch Sunset follows the foursome as they munch on greens, mark their territory, communicate with one another, find curious ways to entertain themselves, and loads more.

Shortly after the film’s world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Keough, Zajac-Denek, director-star Nathan Zellner, and writer-director David Zellner swung by the Collider interview studio brought to you by Film.io to explain how a script they thought would be impossible to make became a reality. Hear all about the experience of creating and embodying a family of Sasquatches straight from the Zellners, Keough, and Zajac-Denek in the video interview above, or you can read the conversation in transcript form below.

Sasquatch Sunset A year in the life of a unique family. It captures the daily life of the Sasquatch with a level of detail and rigor that is simply unforgettable. Release Date January 19, 2024 Runtime 89 minutes Main Genre Comedy Writers David Zellnerr

PERRI NEMIROFF: David, I’m gonna give you these duties. Can you give everybody a brief synopsis of Sasquatch Sunset?

DAVID ZELLNER: It’s a year in the life of a family of Sasquatches fighting for survival in the Pacific Northwest wilderness.

Very succinct. I like that. In our press notes, the logline was just, “A year in the life of a singular family.”

RILEY KEOUGH: That was before the screening. He wasn’t giving much. [Laughs]

Looking at the writing of the film, can you tell us the core idea that started it all? But then also, did you have a break story moment? Something that convinced you that this concept could sustain a feature-length film?

DAVID ZELLNER: Nathan and I had made a short that we had at Sundance in 2011 called Sasquatch Birth Journal 2, and that did really well. So, I don’t know, we just kept joking about expanding on that world, and we just joked about it enough to where it became real eventually. But then it took a long time to get together beyond that.

Riley Keough Didn’t Know if She Could Capture a Cryptid in ‘Sasquatch Sunset’
Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

Christophe and Riley, you get this script and I’m sure it’s wonderful, but it feels like a concept that might be difficult to fully wrap your head around and believe is possible based on the page alone. After you read it, what were some of your biggest burning questions for David and Nathan in terms of getting the information you needed to make you believe that this could be a film you all could actually make?

KEOUGH: I got a call first and they said, “The Zellner Brothers are making a movie about Sasquatches,” [laughs] and I was like, “Great, hire me.” And then I got the lookbook and the script, and it’s such a beautiful script, and the lookbook, it’s so beautiful and true to the cinematography in the film. The script is also stunning. It’s a beautiful script, and obviously it’s really funny and ridiculous, but it’s beautifully written. I think that I was most nervous about being able to do a good job at it because it can’t be silly, and of course it is silly, but they need to be believable. In order for all those beats to work and for it to work, you have to be believable as a Sasquatch, and that’s not something that was in my wheelhouse at the time. [Laughs] So I think I was honestly most curious if I could do it. Then I met with them. I’d already met them before, but I love their work and I love them, so I kind of just decided to give it a shot.

That’s one of the best qualities of the movie, the fact that it offers laugh-out-loud moments, but there’s always an earnestness to it all that ensures you establish a real connection with these characters, and you care about them. I was very impressed by that.

CHRISTOPHE ZAJAC-DENEK: I got, I think it was maybe the full script and also the lookbook, and it just seemed like such a real project that wasn’t tongue-in-cheek or trying to be fake or trying to be silly for silly’s sake. And then the conversation that I had with David and Nathan, I felt like we gelled so well, or I understood what they were kind of trying to go for, and I was so into signing on to something that was wacky and also serious.

Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

Related ‘Sasquatch Sunset’ Review: Jesse Eisenberg Is Bigfoot. What More Do You Need to Know? | Sundance 2024 Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough play sasquatches in the earnest and extremely strange new film from David and Nathan Zellner.

KEOUGH: I remember we actually had this conversation about how heartbreaking watching your dog can be. You remember that?

DAVID ZELLNER: Oh yeah! You had your dog with you.

KEOUGH: I had my dog with me, and then that sort of was the essence of finding the characters of the Sasquatch family. And then, I think in that moment I was like, “That would be such an incredible thing to try and get to do as an actor, to play an animal person,” [laughs] you know, that evokes those kinds of feelings.

That makes so much sense. As a cat and dog lover, I feel like that immediately just clicked in my brain the way you described it.

‘Sasquatch Sunset’s Script Didn’t Include Your Typical Dialogue
Image via Sundance

Bringing up the script made me curious, what does the dialogue look like on the page?

DAVID ZELLNER: There’s no dialogue. It talks about where they grunt, and it talks about what they’re conveying in the grunts, so it gets very specific on the information they’re conveying. But yeah, it’s done through their language.

When the time is right, I would be so curious to read that script and see the lookbook. Release some extra materials when the time is right!

David and Nathan, how does your approach to directing your actors change when your actors are carrying around a significant amount of FX hair, makeup, and costumes?

DAVID ZELLNER: For Nathan, he’s been doing the Sasquatch schtick for a long time. [Laughs] Since we were kids, he’s just dialed into ape mode. And then when we talked with Christophe, it was very clear he got the tone, and Riley as well. We never had any question Riley would be able to dial into this role because I think one of the things we’ve always loved about her films is, no matter what she’s in, it always feels very genuine and very present and real, no matter what type of role it is. I’ve always seen that consistency throughout, and so we were like, “Oh my god, if we can bring that groundedness to this creature, it would be incredible.”

Is there any B-roll of you dressed as your Sasquatch directing the movie?

NATHAN ZELLNER: Oh yeah!

KEOUGH: I have some. I have quite a bit of that!

NATHAN ZELLNER: [Laughs] Yeah, because there were a few days especially where I was shooting the morning, or even in the afternoon, but everybody got into costume. And so yeah, it’s like me behind the camera with David and I’m in just my full makeup.

KEOUGH: I feel like he was staying in costume in solidarity with us, mostly because it was tough.

NATHAN ZELLNER: I think everybody got normalized to these suits and the look so quickly. I forgot that I was wearing it sometimes, and everybody else was — it was just like talking to me normally, I think.

KEOUGH: Yeah, we were getting directed by one person and one Sasquatch.

DAVID ZELLNER: One human that was cackling like an idiot, and then a very earnest Sasquatch. It’s funny how normalized how quickly it got for both the cast and crew, because we were joking, I remember a couple of times in the shoot, we were like, “If someone just wandered into this set and we were just so nonplussed about everything …” [Laighs]

KEOUGH: I know! We’d lock off the roads, but there were sometimes people would drive through and we’d be sitting on the streets in our cast chairs with our Sasquatch faces on and then, like, our jackets.

That would be my dream come true. Why can’t I drive by a set like that?

‘Sasquatch Sunset’ Was a “Really Fun Adventure” on Set
Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

Nathan, the answer to this question might be no, but I was just talking to another actor-director who explained his process of directing his actors this way, where sometimes he’s able to direct his scene partners through his performance, where he can make certain choices with his character in order to spark new choices in the people he’s acting opposite. Did you ever do that here?

NATHAN ZELLNER: Not intentionally. The big thing was, you know, the tone of this film being so specific and once we met everybody, everybody on the crew got that right away, and it just enabled everybody to have a huge sandbox to play in once we were on set. So it wasn’t like we had to push things a certain direction or whatever, it was more of like, “This is what the scene is gonna be about,” and then the mannerisms and stuff kind of just, when you were in those suits, it just kind of flowed out of you. And so the scenes kind of had that sort of rhythm to it where it’s like, “Alright, this is what we’re going to do,” and we didn’t really have to do a lot of specific corrections or directions, or anything like that. It mostly felt like a really fun adventure.

DAVID ZELLNER: I think because everyone was so dialed into the tone, it was the most collaborative thing we’ve ever done. It made our job easy because if we didn’t have to puppeteer anyone. We could just sit back and everyone could work within those boundaries, and everyone kind of knew when it was working or wasn’t.

With that in mind, I know this is a very unique movie, but is there anything about the process of making Sasquatch Sunset that you think you’re going to apply to your next film, even if it doesn’t feature a whole family of Sasquatch?

DAVID ZELLNER: It’s too early to tell.

I think you should turn this into an anthology and the sequel should be a family of Yeti or something.

DAVID ZELLNER: [Laughs] Who knows?

NATHAN ZELLNER: Distant cousins!

I like to speak what I want into existence.

You were kind of joking about this when we were slating earlier, but were there any names for them, or even code names that you would use to refer to each character on set?

NATHAN ZELLNER: Yeah, mine we just called the Alpha Sasquatch, because he was more of the stereotypical brooding sort of face …

DAVID ZELLNER: Asshole. [Laughs]

NATHAN ZELLNER: Asshole alpha male. And then the rest of the family we would just refer to like, The Child or, you know, Riley was The Mother Sasquatch.

KEOUGH: I feel like on set you were the only one that had a character name. It was Alpha, and then we were all, like, Riley and Jesse and Christophe. You transformed the most.

How the Real (?) Sasquatch Inspired ‘Sasquatch Sunset’
Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

I’m so fascinated by your work with a movement coach, I think someone Jesse brought in for the production. Can you each give us a pillar or specific technique you learned from that movement coach that everyone will be able to see you applying to your work in the finished film?

NATHAN ZELLNER: When we had this Zoom session with the movement coach and everybody was supposed to get into this sort of primate sort of animal mindset and just sort of walk around your room or your space and pick up things and discover them, and a lot of that turned into putting stuff in your mouth.

KEOUGH: Yeah, first we did Zoom rehearsals, and I was really nervous in the Zoom rehearsals, and then once we got in the room with each other it was actually less stressful. I think that he really helped with our walk. That was something that was super helpful. We had the same walk, but obviously we have different characters, but the walk of the famous Sasquatch video and the pose you sort of see them frozen in. We kind of took that and turned it into a movement, and he really helped with that. And then just finding how human and how ape to be was interesting. I think we all landed in different places a little bit, which I think was also fine because we were making up whatever we wanted.

DAVID ZELLNER: Yeah, it made each character distinctive in that way. I remember early on, maybe after one of the first rehearsal sessions we had, that Riley was like, “I think my character should be the most feral,” and we’re like, “Okay!” [Laughs]

KEOUGH: I just felt like on the scale of evolution, she was the most behind.

DAVID ZELLNER: Or the most advanced.

KEOUGH: Or the most advanced.

Related Riley Keough Is the Queen of Morally Ambiguous Characters Keough is a truly magnetic on-screen presence.

I was going to say, that was my impression by the end!

KEOUGH: It was my choice. I stick by it.

ZAJAC-DENEK: I think it was interesting working with Lorin [Eric Salm], learning how to pick things up not using your fingertips but grasping more with your hand. And then when we were talking about just putting things in our mouth — oh, and we got some references of apes that were just kind of using their eyes to look around instead of neck movements and stuff like that. So there was a lot of influence from that.

DAVID ZELLNER: Lot of YouTube deep dives.

KEOUGH: They had obviously done their homework and we got sent a huge list of videos and sounds and all these things, so it was kind of like combining all of them, which was cool. And then also watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, the beginning.

Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

One brief question before I have to let you go. When you’re watching the movie you do understand exactly what everything means, but can you give me the exact translation of something we see or hear in the film, whether it’s a grunt or one of the hand motions that they do?

KEOUGH: Somebody asked me today what the banging on the tree meant. Can I say that?

DAVID ZELLNER: Yeah, yeah!

KEOUGH: That was sort of like a call to see if there were other Sasquatch around.

Special thanks to our 2024 partners at Sundance including presenting partner Film.io and supporting partners Pressed Juicery and DragonFly Coffee Roasters.