The Thing With Feathers I Variety Sundance Studio 2025 Presented by Audible

Variety

Today’s most notable creatives join Variety at Sundance for exclusive in-depth conversations across various entertainment mediums, presented by Audible.

Transcript

00:00to occupy that space. We're really fucking weird creatures, actors, you know, we want to be in

00:05these really extreme situations sometimes, which, you know, nobody else necessarily would

00:09to tell a story, but it does touch on something universal.

00:13Well, congratulations on the film. Dylan, when we talked before, you described this

00:30as an unfilmable novel, and I wonder, what was it about the book that made it so difficult

00:37to figure out how to crack cinematically?

00:40I think the book did things that literary fiction can do that you can't necessarily

00:46do in films, and I think all of the things that were daunting to me ended up being the

00:52positives in the adaptation process, so I looked at the way the book was so poetic in

00:58its language, and I looked at the way the book was told from different perspectives

01:02of the three characters, one of whom is potentially imaginary, and then also the fact that it

01:08was in so many different tenses, and it spans so much time, and it was, I think the thing

01:13that was off-putting to begin with is there's not necessarily a logical movie story shape

01:19in it, but the more I examined it and the more I dove into it, I found that it was there

01:24all along, it was just how you approach it and how you, the building blocks you take

01:29from the book to turn into the film, and my biggest ambition was to make a film that matched

01:36the tone and scope of Max's book in that it deals with this monolithic thing that happens

01:44to everybody, this really serious subject of grief, but it does it in a way that's so

01:49idiosyncratic and so unsentimental, yet still profoundly moving, so I think there was so

01:54much in Max's book, because he's such a brilliant writer, that in the initial stages of thinking

02:00how do I adapt this for the screen, it gave me pause for thought, but the deeper I got

02:05into it, the more fun it became, and I realized, oh, I can go anywhere with this, I can kind

02:10of, you know, as long as the core ingredients are there and the truth that the book is telling

02:15is there, there's sort of no limitations.

02:20And Benedict, what appealed to you about this project?

02:23I was a huge fan of the book, like Dylan, and when I read his screenplay, I thought

02:28it was such a beautiful, delicate, finely wrought, but also very imaginative retelling,

02:35and then just meeting in person with him and the friendship we struck up, the trust

02:39that built, and I could already see on the page his kind of visual ambition for the project.

02:45For me, it was more about interrogating, okay, well, how do we bring that off day to day,

02:49and what am I going to need to be held in that space to get to where I need to get to,

02:54and immediately I felt I had a real brother in arms as a collaborator, and so, yeah, the

03:04book in itself, early on, like Dylan, made a massive impact on me.

03:10It also came out at the same time as Megan Hunt and my sister-in-law's novella, and Max

03:13and her were very tight, and I was like, you're meeting Max Porter?

03:16You know, he was very supportive of her novel, which did very well.

03:19And so, yeah, and I'd seen the stage adaptation, and I enjoyed it, and Kenan Murphy's performance

03:25at the Centre, it was phenomenal, but I thought there's more to a dramatic turn of this that

03:32I think cinema could really examine, and Dylan's script certainly gave the promise of alluding to.

03:38So, yeah, that was it for me, and then, I guess, just as a role, to occupy that space,

03:45we're really fucking weird creatures, actors, you know, we want to be in these really extreme

03:50situations sometimes, which, you know, nobody else necessarily would to tell a story, but it does

03:56touch on something universal, and I think that, you know, the dad character's as near as me as

04:02any other I've played, to be honest, and it, you know, the middle class, the middle life,

04:08the father, even the milieu of Susie Davis' brilliantly realized northwest London flat,

04:15it kind of, it all felt very real, and I had an immediate access to it.

04:21And then, the extremes, like I said, we just, it's, that's kind of meat and drink to us,

04:25it's so, it's, I knew I had to go on quite a journey emotionally, and it turned out, you know,

04:31physically as well, because of how this grief manifests from an internal state into a real

04:35thing imagined. Menuhensis, Faux, Mary Poppins, Enabler, Irritating Best Friend, Therapist,

04:42everything that Crow is. Bad stand-up comic, I mean, all of it.

04:48It's just my writing.

04:49It's just your writing, yeah, bad, bad comedy. And so that, you know, there's a lot of meat on

04:54the bone for an actor, and then as a producer, just how to square the whole of realizing this

04:58ambition in a small budget, in an indie budget. You have to access so many difficult emotions,

05:05was it hard to leave the part behind? Did it take a little while to?

05:09No, because it was all there, you know, I felt like I kind of, I was exhausted at the end of

05:13the day, all I needed was a bit of self-care, sleep and nourishment, you know, I needed my

05:18home, I needed my family and my bed. That was really what I got from doing the job. There was

05:24no way it was going to leak into my life. There was too much to give on the day for that to happen,

05:29really. And vice versa, I think, you know, very much, very intimate set, very close set for a lot

05:38of it on one location in the studio. It always feels a bit naked when you're suddenly out in the

05:42open on location, but we didn't have too many, some extraordinary locations. We ended where the

05:49film ends as well, which felt like a great coda for the entire experience, that vastness of an

05:54ocean meeting a skyline of the sea, that kind of signalling of the eternal, as he says goodbye to

06:00his wife's ashes and him and the children play on the beach. And it was a beautiful sort of

06:04sending off for the project and for everyone involved, really. I forgot what your question

06:10was. I was going down memory lane. You answer it. Okay. The film has a lot of different tones. It's

06:16definitely a domestic drama, but it's also almost a horror film at points. Dylan, was that difficult

06:22to kind of figure out where tonally you were at different points and what did you look to for

06:26inspiration? I mean, it was, again, going back to the book, it was kind of an ambitious thing to do,

06:35especially for a first time dramatic feature, is that this is a screenplay that sort of hopefully,

06:42deftly traverses lots of different tones. And there are genre elements. I'd say the whole first

06:48acts of the film very much leans into the horror space. And it wasn't a huge jump because the

06:54initial stages of grief, the shock of grief are very much like horror. It's a horrific state to

07:02find yourself in and the world that you once knew suddenly become incredibly uncertain. So

07:09those tonal shifts are baked into the DNA of the project. And it was just our job to make them

07:14believable. This film's a journey and it starts in one emotional space at point A and hopefully

07:24drops you off in a more hopeful emotional space. But the journey is wild and it can go from being

07:31truly tragic and heartbreaking to moments of insane, almost surreal, wild action

07:39through domestic drama, as you say. And finding the ways to create those tonal shifts without

07:49throwing the audience out was one of the biggest challenges in writing and directing and kind of

07:54finding the performances with all of the actors, the young boys. So yeah, it is a film of many

08:01tones and hopefully they all marry together to kind of create something truthful.

08:07That was another thing that was attractive for me as well. It's not just a story about grief,

08:11it's about these many kind of forms that the film explores as to how to celebrate the novel's wild

08:16imagination and mixing those mediums. Because I think if you got told you were going to see

08:23an indie film about grief, you'd expect a certain level of earnestness or a certain kind of...

08:31Certain color, certain kind of thing. And I think we definitely have that. The film holds moments

08:35like that. But yeah, you're right. It subverts that with everything else we throw at it.

08:39Yeah. And it's unsentimental. It holds off on that and maybe that's because it's a British film,

08:44but it kind of reserves those moments of pure emotion for the moments when they're

08:51most impactful. And I think that was the important thing is to make something that,

08:55even though it's this sort of strange conceit, if you told someone the synopsis of the film,

09:02Grieving Family Visited by Giant Crow, it's a strange conceit, but hopefully

09:08it's a prism through which to get to a real truth about grief.

09:13Benedict, you're also making Roses. It's a remake of War of the Roses?

09:17Yeah. What can you tell us about that?

09:19I won't say too much now. I mean, it was a great, really enjoyable shoot as it would be on paper.

09:25Olivia Colman, I mean, just a dreamy, dreamy matching.

09:29Lovely person to play with and just a dear, dear human being and so, so good.

09:36Yeah, I don't think I should say too much at this moment. It's in its sort of post-production phase,

09:41but it's not really a remake of the film. It's a re-imagining based on elements of that film,

09:49I would say. That's one thing I can say about it. Jay Roach at the helm and brilliant,

09:53brilliant Tony McNamara script and an incredible cast. A lot of SNL supporting actors and just a

10:02lot of fun and a lot of, but also a lot of painful truth as well about what relationships do when

10:07they implode, when love turns to embittered hatred. I'm laughing because it's quite funny,

10:15but it's also quite painful. Yeah, that's about as much I can say about it. Nothing that people

10:20don't already know probably. And lastly, this is sponsored by Audible. I wonder what your

10:25feelings are about the future of audio storytelling? Oh, I think great. I mean,

10:29I think podcasts and audio books are a huge thing at the moment. I think it's coming into driving,

10:34it's a massive part of drive culture. Cars have become sort of mobile universities,

10:39whether it's popular fiction or literature or poetry, even podcasts as well. So I think,

10:47and that's something I love to do. And whether it's the live form that I help produce called

10:51Letters Live, which is a very particular medium, obviously of communication, but so intimate and so

10:56revealing and powerful and funny and provocative and entertaining and educational. It's quite a

11:02bizarre thing on paper. You go along to see letters being read, but actually you don't know

11:07who's going to do it, so it's an element of surprise. And you're bathed in the words,

11:12you have a live performance. It's kind of moving away from the territory of your question. It

11:16sounds like I'm promoting it, which thankfully I don't really need to do. I think it's kind of

11:20caught on really quickly. But yeah, I think audio books are huge. I think it's a wonderful medium

11:27as an actor to sort of stretch into doing that thing of creating an entire world with your

11:31singular voice is really exciting. It's hard work. And there's always those stories of like,

11:35you know, you get to page 80, said the Duchess in her very Bavarian accent. I've been doing it

11:40Scottish. Oh, you have to do that thing again. But I'd rather do the whole thing again than

11:45have another moment on a Graham Norton show saying Penguin the wrong way six times.

11:50Well, thank you both so much and congratulations on the film.

11:53Thank you very much.

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