The Big Picture
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The Thicket
is a unique western set in the early 20th century starring Peter Dinklage and Juliette Lewis. - Director Elliott Lester faced subzero temperatures and avoided frostbite while filming in Calgary.
- The filmmaker was inspired to cast Metallica’s James Hetfield after the director had a dream.
Director Elliott Lester has worked with the biggest pop stars on the face of the planet, directing music videos for Selena Gomez, Avril Lavigne, The Fray, to name only a few. He’s brought us thrilling Jason Statham action in Blitz, helmed Nightingale, an Emmy-nominated psycho-drama starring David Oyelowo, and even coaxed a tender performance from Arnold Schwazenneger in Aftermath. Now, he’s thrilled to bring audiences a Western, the likes of which have never been seen with The Thicket.
Set at the dawn of the 20th century, The Thicket stars Emmy Award-winning actor Peter Dinklage as bounty hunter Reginald Jones. After being recruited by a desperate man to track down ruthless killer Cutthroat Bill (Oscar-nominated actress Juliette Lewis), Jones gathers a band of unlikely heroes and embarks on a dangerous journey tracking down Cutthroat Bill into the deadly unclaimed territory known as the Thicket.
Collider’s Steve Weintraub was pleased to sit down with The Thicket director, Lester, to discuss shooting in subzero temperatures, postponing production past COVID, and conjuring Metallica frontman James Hetfield in a dream.
COLLIDER: If someone’s never seen anything you’ve directed before, what’s the first thing you want them watching and why?
ELLIOT LESTER: My Jessica Simpson videos, obviously. [Laughs] I love that question. If not The Thicket, then I would probably say the Jared Leto videos for 30 Seconds to Mars, when we went around the world. I would suggest looking at those. “A Beautiful Lie” and “From Yesterday.” They were really epic and bold, bold, bold work.
‘The Thicket’ Is A Western Set Among Early 20th Century Technological Advancements
Most Westerns take place in and around the late 1800s. What I really dug about this was that you never say the year, but it’s clear it’s around 1904, 1910.
LESTER: Right in the middle — 1908.
You’re capturing this time when the Old West is ending and technology is coming in. Can you talk about setting the film during this time period?
LESTER: It was exactly what you just said: it was about change. The American West was not a long period in American history, really, maybe 60 to 70 years. It was ushering in change. You had these little podunk towns that had never seen a light bulb, never heard the rattle of an engine. The beginning of the movie is ushering in change. It’s saying, “Something is happening in our world, and where is this gonna go?” It was important for me to set that tone from the beginning.
You also have a very cool opening shot. I was not expecting to have a motorcycle open the movie. What was it about having that shot open the film?
LESTER: For me, it was setting the tone. You knew there was something curious about it. You weren’t gonna be sure if it was like Mad Max, if it was gonna be steampunk, any of those sorts. I wanted to catch the audience off guard a little bit.
‘The Thicket’ Shot in Below-Zero Calgary Winter
As I watched this film, I could not believe the level of cold — the winter, the on-location, and w hat you must have gone through to capture this footage. What the hell was it like making this?
LESTER: We’re still going through it. [Laughs] It’s like trauma babies. It was unbelievable. It was like nothing I’ve ever felt, and whatever I felt, it was 100 times worse for the cast. They literally were on the other side of the camera in very thin period clothing that wasn’t particularly warm. There were days that were so cold that we had to shut the movie down — -35 is the opener and -75 is when it gets dangerous. We were doing a scene, and the line producer, John Kerr, was like, “No, we gotta get out of here.” There were days when we couldn’t believe where we were. Tough shoot.
It’s beautiful to look at because you’re out in the wilderness making a movie. It’s very impressive to watch. Were you nervous at any point– and I’m being serious when I say this– that one of the actors might say “this is too much on me.”
LESTER: Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. One of the things we were really concerned about was frostbite. We came close to a couple of the actors losing their toes. It’s a very real thing. When you’ve been sitting outside on the set for two hours (as they often have to do), to then take that actor back in when their feet, their toes, their digits are starting to freeze up. That takes an hour, two hours just to unthaw them. Absolutely. I was really concerned about anyone getting colds and fevers and things like that, but we were very, very lucky. We didn’t have any of that.
“We can’t make this movie without Metallica’s James Hetfield.”
I grew up listening to Metallica. I am a fan of Metallica, and I will admit when I heard James Hetfield was in the movie, I was like, ” Get the fuck out of here! This is incredible!” Talk a little bit about the inspiration of thinking about James and then actually getting James to do it.
LESTER: I didn’t think about him, I had a dream. I woke up the next day — Peter [Dinklage] is my producer, as well — and I called Peter, and I said, “We have to have James Hetfield in this movie, and that’s it!” And he said, “You’re absolutely right. We can’t make this movie without James Hetfield.” So then we tried to find James Hetfield, and it’s hard to find the lead singer of Metallica! You can’t just call him up. [Laughs] But we found somebody who’d made a documentary about heavy metal called Anvil. He put us together with James, and five days later, we had James Hetfield. We couldn’t believe it.
We did this wonderful Zoom call with him, and he was like, [singing] “I’ve always wanted to play in a dark Western.” And I was like, “OK!” [Laughs] He showed up in Calgary. He was there, and it was wild. He came in, he did the table read. We had a really good rapport. I don’t know a lot of Metallica songs, but the one song I did know was “Enter the Sandman,” and I sang it to him. He said, “Well, I know that song.” I said, “Yeah, but you’ve never heard it sang this badly.” He was fantastic to work with. Never complained. Nothing. He said to me, “This is like being on tour! You all come together, you’re like a band of Gypsies.” I think he had a really good time. Brilliant! Brilliant, brilliant guy to work with.
I interview and speak to actors all the time, but every time I’m fortunate enough to talk to a singer or a band, it’s always a different level because I never get to talk to them. I would imagine the actors and everyone on set were thrilled about him being there. It’s so unusual.
LESTER: He would show up, and you’d see it. He would pass, and they’d all stare. He was such a delight on set. He was laughing, he had a good time, and he stopped being the lead singer of Metallica and became the character which I really loved.
A Worldwide Pandemic Made ‘The Thicket’ A More Visceral Experience
I’m fascinated by editing because it’s where it all comes together. When you get in the editing room with your footage, are you ready to jump through the window? Are you excited? What are you feeling? And how did the film change in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect?
LESTER: We didn’t have a lot of time to make the film. When you don’t have time, you don’t have a million bits of footage to pull from. There is always that moment where you breathe in, and you go, “Have I made a mistake? Have I not made a mistake?” Fortunately, the editor I had was Jean-Christophe Bouzy, a French editor who’d never cut an English-language film. He delivered a beautiful first cut. When you know you’ve got something that is okay, you ease into it, you can take some more risks, and you start to actually enjoy the process. I really enjoyed the editing process on this. It was definitely one of my favorite films to edit.
One of the other things that people might not realize is that you originally were in pre-production in February 2020.
LESTER: We were gonna originally shoot the movie at the home of the Spaghetti Western in a place called Almería in Southern Spain. We were struck by COVID, so we had to shut the movie down and put the movie on hold for a couple of years. Then we couldn’t let it go, and we all came back together.
Did the film change at all from what you were originally going to make in February 2020 to what people are actually going to see?
LESTER: When you’re presented with the budget and the schedule, you have to make choices. There are a handful of scenes that just didn’t make it, just for the fact that I couldn’t have made the shoot happen any other way. But not really. I think we got lucky. It was kismet that we ended up in Calgary because of the scope of it. Don’t get me wrong, Almería would have been great, but Calgary gave it that more visceral quality.
I think it looks fantastic, and again, it looks like you guys went through hell on earth to make this thing.
LESTER: [Laughs] Yes, we did.
The Thicket is now in select theaters.
