‘Rebel Ridge’ Writer/Director Jeremy Saulnier Unpacks the Long Road to His Netflix Hit

“Rebel Ridge” is the #1 movie on Netflix right now.

In its first week of release the movie, which stars Aaron Pierre as a former Marine who heads to a small town to post bail for his cousin and finds himself in an increasingly labyrinthine conspiracy, amassed a whopping 31.2 million views (according to Netflix). It also won killer reviews, including our own review, which described the movie as “exciting, engaging, stimulating entertainment.” Plus, every cool kid you follow on Letterboxd is watching, rating and talking about it. Just look.

And this kind of universal acceptance and acclaim would be a feat for any movie, really, but it seems like even more of an accomplishment given the journey that “Rebel Ridge” has been on. This is a movie whose production weathered a COVID-19 shutdown, an abrupt change in the movie’s main cast and a prolonged post-production process.

For writer/director Jeremy Saulnier, the journey began back in 2018. He was finishing up work on his gloriously bleak arctic noir “Hold the Dark” for Netflix. And he hit upon the idea of pitting a protagonist against a small-town police force.

“It’s so hard to trace the exact origin,” Saulnier said. “I was just coming off a whirlwind of work, getting battered by the industry, yhaving some fun doing it, but just watching in these huge systems that we all operate in, everyone’s part in it, how frustrating it can be. I was definitely tapping into the frustration that we all go through with just living life in modern society.” Frustrations, Saulnier said, like customer service calls, the automation of an entire industry (something that will only get more frustrating with the encroachment of AI). “You’re trying to behave, you’re trying to stay within the guardrails, and you’re thwarted by bureaucracy and it’s just so stifling,” Saulnier said.

He was also aware of the “bigger, broader issue” of civil asset forfeiture, which serves as one of the narrative’s main engines and is beyond infuriating. He describes the practices as a “corrupt practice that is totally legal but universally regarded as unjust.” As it relates to the story of “Rebel Ridge,” the borderline criminality of civil asset forfeiture was a “really good way to get everybody on board behind a protagonist” – in this case Aaron Pierre’s Terry Richmond.

“When I wrote the script, I didn’t have in mind a white protagonist, but otherwise I was agnostic to just I needed to find the right actor,” Saulnier said. Although finding that right actor proved trickier than anybody expected.

In November 2019, the movie was announced, with John Boyega of “Star Wars” fame, in the Terry Richmond role. While filming was slated to begin in spring 2020, it was bumped due to the pandemic. Production finally got underway in May 2021, but by June 2021, Boyega had dropped out, citing “family reasons.” Saulnier said that the movie “faced some headwinds.” “We zigged and we zagged on this film. But when we found Aaron Pierre, there was just this undeniable synergy of, like, holy shit,” Saulnier explained.

They first met over Zoom; the actor was in England and Saulnier was in Louisiana. 90 seconds into the conversation, Saulnier knew, This is the guy. Casting Pierre added a “certain weight.” “I was just so blessed with actually picking the best people for the job,” Saulnier said.

Pierre, who has appeared in Barry Jenkins’ “The Underground Railroad” (and he voices the title role in Jenkins’ upcoming “Mufasa: The Lion King,” out this Christmas), gets his first real movie star role in “Rebel Ridge.” It’s as just as powerful a coming out party as Glen Powell in Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” (also released by Netflix). A good thing, too. We’re running low on movie stars. Saulnier said he won’t take credit when he becomes a huge superstar, but he’s “definitely proud to be a step along the way.” “Through the circumstances that unfolded, getting Aaron, who is an up-and=coming actor to do a movie of this budget level, is unheard of. Just doesn’t happen,” Saulnier explained. “That pressure that was created that allowed that to happen, is, I think, the coolest thing that ever happened to me as a filmmaker. Aaron took the film on his shoulders and carried us all. He wasn’t just amazing on camera, Saulnier stresses, but throughout everything – morning talks with the crew, safety meetings with the stunt team – he was “effusive with praise and a great leader and someone that everybody wanted to get behind and root for.” Saulnier continued: “People love this guy and want him to win.”

What was important for Saulnier, throughout the aforementioned zigging and zagging, to “maintain that giddy energy at the onset of making a movie.” To that end, he denied himself the “opportunity to overthink, to tinker, to revisit the script.” He said that there were some very minor changes; he added some scenes to “buttress the exposition” because he didn’t want to have to reshoot anything if test audiences were confused. (“It was designed as an insurance policy,” Saulnier said.) But the differences between the 2018 and 2022 versions of the script were very minor. If anything he was actually allowed to scale back some of the exposition, since things like civil asset forfeiture or police militarization was more commonly understood.

“Creatively, you’re trying to preserve that original potential energy as it transfers to this explosive power cinema,” Saulnier said. He took time off in between shutdowns. He wrote other movies. He spent time with his family (which he said he really enjoyed). He “hung out.” He never told this to Netflix but for the entire calendar year before he actually shot “Rebel Ridge” in 2022, his “true and only version,” he didn’t read the script that entire time.

“I wrote it, I prepped it. I was very close to it, and I did not want to fall out of love with it, so I focused on scenes and sequences and really gave them by all, just having faith that the original vision as a broad narrative would remain exciting,” Saulnier said. “And I actually carried that ethos all the way through to post where I combed through every single frame, I oversaw every edit. And it wasn’t until two or three weeks out from picture lock that I finally watched the movie, experienced it, whether it’s script form or on screen for the first time in like two and a half, three years, with a friends and family environment. I was just delighted that, you know, it’s a movie, yay. And two, that the original intent, surprisingly enough, is exactly the film I wanted when I started writing. That’s rare for me.”

There’s one shot in the original “Back to the Future” that is clearly from the version with Eric Stoltz playing Mary McFly. We asked if there was something like that in “Rebel Ridge” and Saulnier said yes, there was. There are a couple of scenes with AnnaSophia Robb, as a plucky young courthouse employee, and James Cromwell, as a wizened judge. And it wasn’t that they couldn’t reshoot but, but rather because the performances were great and not reshooting saved the actual production a couple of days.

It would be odd to call “Rebel Ridge” sunny, because it is laced with tragedy, but compared to Saulnier’s earlier work (which includes “Blue Ruin” and “Green Room”), it does feel lighter, bordering on the optimistic. (There are no exploding heads or severed limbs.) And Saulnier admits that this was intentional. “I just needed a bit of a lift,” Saulnier said. “I really dig and I’m fully at peace and have embraced my filmography. But a lot of my films are gut punches. You don’t walk out of ‘Green Room’ [feeling] euphoric.”

He asked himself: Can I do a movie that’s less reliant upon the constant feeling of dread and bodily harm? Can I do it with words? Can I create this tension? Can I create this propulsive cinema that I love, that I still want to be taken on a ride? “I want that pot to boil,” Saulneir said. “But it wasn’t just an exercise. I don’t want to fucking make a movie that’s so infused with dread right now.” Saulnier described “Rebel Ridge” as “my first film with a competent protagonist.” He wrote a “traditional movie here role,” while still finding a way to make him a fish out of water. “He’s not just kicking ass and taking names. He’s stifled by a small town court system and trying to jump through hoops and over hurdles regarding bureaucracy and well-meaning people who are part of a corrupt system,” Saulnier said. This is a character who is thoughtful, respectful and trying to do the right thing, until “eventually he’s backed into a corner.”

But was “Rebel Ridge” a response, at all, to the overwhelming grimness of “Hold the Dark?” He said he is very proud of the movie and saw himself as both the caretaker of William Giraldi’s original novel and frequent collaborator Macon Blair’s screenplay adaptation. It allowed him to expand his skill set – he directed a war sequence and worked with real-life wolves. Creatively, he finds it “a success.” He also acknowledges that it might be a movie that “people come around” to. “But yes, I also was like, let me do something else. I didn’t want to go for a broader film but I wanted to see, instead of having everyone hunched over and feel, violated by my movies, let’s see if I can get asses out of the seat and fists in the air,” Saulnier said. Clearly, that worked.

Throughout this entire process, Saulnier said that he never thought that the movie was just not going to happen. “My superpower is tenacity, and as I say, cinematic fortitude, like I just do not fucking quit until a movie is over the finish line. I just won’t allow myself to think that way,” Saulnier said. When Boyega dropped out, he found peace in knowing that, if they didn’t find the right person, he would let “Rebel Ridge” fall. “It was fated to be me and Aaron Pierre and this amazing cast,” Saulnier said. “It felt like this very confident momentum for the last three years of the actual making this film.” There was such a long post-production process because Saulnier wanted to take care, after having such great support from his New Orleans crew and his extremely talented cast. “I’ve got to make sure that everyone looks their best, I stand by every single frame, which is a first for me,” said Saulnier.

As for what’s next, he’s got a couple of potential projects in the hopper, including one that has an ending that he’s got to nail down. When writing, he said, there’s “no controlling forces, no Louisiana weather, you’re just sitting there, waiting for the muses to inspire you.”

He also knows that, should he ever land in the dreaded director’s jail, following a particularly crippling critical or commercial flop, he’s going to call one person – Aaron Pierre.

“Dude’s going to bail me out,” said Saulnier.

“Rebel Ridge” is streaming on Netflix now.

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