The Monstrous Bonds of Sasquatch Sunset

Family inevitably pervades the films of David and Nathan Zellner simply by virtue of them being brothers. But thematically, they have most often been drawn to isolated characters, like the divorced cat owner of Goliath, and Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter’s titular self-deluded protagonist. In the Austin filmmakers’ latest, Sasquatch Sunset (which premiered first at Sundance in January), they bring both together in the tale of a troupe of Bigfoots in Northern California, contending with the oppressive fear that they may be the last of their kind.

Actor and director Nathan may have been destined to play the patriarch of the small troupe of cryptids: broad, a little stooped in the way of tall people used to banging their heads on low doors and branches, with the kind eyes mentioned in sightings of these giants of the wilds. He laughs at this suggestion. “David says I’ve been doing the Sasquatch schtick my entire life.”

And, indeed, he’s played one before, in the siblings’ 2011 short “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2.” That was their most successful short to date, writer/director David explains, and they quickly started thinking about a feature version. “It started as a joke, expanding it, but the more we kept talking about it the more the story started to build itself, and then we started to get obsessed.”

Really, that obsession predates even the short. In the early days of the internet, the brothers owned the domain rights to skunkape.com, named after Texas’ own fuzzy beast. “We thought we were sitting on gold,” David said, “but we let it expire.” Domain names may come and go, but the fascination with this elusive humanlike creature is eternal, whether it be the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, Nepal’s Yeti, Australia’s Yowie, or Sumatra’s Orang Pendek. “Long before other parts of the world were able to communicate with each other, they all had variants of this myth of this hair beast man in the woods. So what is it that we needed, in terms of this myth, that was universal?”

In person, Nathan is less talkative than David: again, fortuitous for the film, since the creatures of Sasquatch Sunset are nonverbal. Not that there’s no communication between the quartet (rounded out by Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, and Christophe Zajac-Denek), in grunts, barks, hand gestures, and meaningful stares. Of course, this means taking an A-list cast, giving them no lines, and rendering them unrecognizable under thick layers of fur and latex. “It wasn’t like a lot of movies with creature work where they’re in the background,” David said. “We wanted to delve into their personalities and feelings, and that was part of the challenge – the idea of taking these creatures and making them relatable and with nuanced performances.”

Eisenberg was one the first actors they approached about the film, and David recalled that, even though they’d been friends for years, “we were still nervous when we sent him the script because, well, what the hell is this?” However, the star of The Social Network signed up in a couple of days. “He saw what he could bring to this, and how it would be different to anything that he had done before, and instead of feeling daunting it was exciting for him.”

Fortunately, the Zellners could look to some of their biggest cinematic inspirations to be assured that performances could pass through prosthetics: the original Planet of the Apes films. Indeed, the costumes, designed by Steve Newburn (who recently gave practical FX flesh to another legendary North American creature for The Windigo), informed the performance. Nathan explained, “It was really fun to put on all the makeup, and everyone felt instantly transformed into these beasts. It was really easy to feel how they move and be feral and eat a bunch of plants and run around in the woods.”

And eating plants is a major plot component of Sasquatch Sunset. After all, unlike the violent menaces of horror movies like The Legend of Boggy Creek or Abominable, these gentle giants are mostly foragers, and so the cast spent a lot of time plucking, pulling, harvesting, and chewing forest plants. Nathan credited production designer Michael Powsner with finding all the edible plants from the region. “He found some really fun stuff to munch on,” said Nathan. “Even the ferns are edible.” Edible, yes, but that’s not the same as tasty. “There are certain things you would swallow, and certain things that, like a cow, you would just kind of chew until the take is over.”

Sasquatch Sunset

Festival Favorites, Texas Premiere

Monday 11, 11:45am, Paramount Theatre

Tuesday 12, 5pm, AFS Cinema

Where the Heart Is: More SXSW Films About Family

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Wednesday 13, 2:45pm, Alamo South Lamar

Thursday 14, 9:30pm, Zach Theatre

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Wednesday 13, 3pm, Zach Theatre

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Friday 8, 5:45pm & 6:15pm, Violet Crown

Monday 11, 11:45am, Alamo South Lamar

Thursday 14, 2:30pm & 3pm, Violet Crown