20/20 Filmsight - Film Criticism by David O'Connell

Since it first made its way onto the festival circuit in 2008, The Horseman has been turning heads. Praised as much for its efficient storytelling as it has been its bruising visual treatment, it’s proven to be a genre film that even the highbrows can get excited about.

Now with a limited release in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne almost upon us, I had the pleasure of chatting to writer, director, editor and co-producer Steven Kastrissios.





The Horseman has proven a real head turner – when did you suspect something special was happening around the film?

Probably day four or five of the shoot when some of the performances started coming around, because most of the crew were working for free and the only way they were going to keep turning up – the first day particularly was pretty long and hard – was by seeing the results coming in. And there were just a couple of key scenes with Peter Marshall and some of this supporting cast where he just goes off his rocker, basically, and everyone was just really energised. So, it was well before we had even finished shooting that I just thought, ‘Wow, this is really coming together. The actors are giving it all they’ve got, and they’re taking the film and the script to the next level.’


What did you think when you sat down in the editing room?

I was really excited. Editing your own feature is just a marathon, but what kept me going – I mean every day you’re banging your head against the wall because there’s some shot that didn’t cut, and how do you figure your way put of that stuff – but what kept me going, and I cut it in order, was getting to the end and cutting the climactic twenty minutes together. I couldn’t wait to get to that footage, to get to the blood and guts!


Doing so much yourself – particularly the screenwriting to the directing – did you ever miss having someone to bounce the ideas off – someone to collaborate with and reassure you that you weren’t making something awful?

I did in the editing room. That’s where it was annoying sometimes to just to have to deal with the tricky bits, and that’s when it’s good to have a few heads looking at it. But, through all the stages – writing, directing, editing – I was always collaborating. Because we shot a short film of it, and that had a very different tone – it was much more cheesy and Charles Bronson-esque, and a few months later – by the time I got that out of my system and we were prepping the feature – I was thinking, ‘It would be much better to do this seriously and really get under the skin of the character,’ and so I had time to think that through that. I work-shopped the script with some actors and always listened to other peoples ideas.


Avoiding government funding and keeping everything in house – how important was that to the success of the film?

Because the script had pretty challenging scenes in it involving violence and creative violence, we just knew that whether it was government funding or any sort of large amount of outside investment, we knew it would be a lot harder and a lot more eyes would be watching us. And I had no illusions that I would be able to raise money without getting a higher-ranking executive producer onboard, and I didn’t know any, and I just wanted to have control over what we were doing. Also, I’ve been making movies since I was 14 and I really had a bee in my bonnet about going out and doing a low-budget shoot – creating it in that way and it was just something that I wanted to prove to myself more than anything else – that I could pull it off.


Peter Marshall’s a great performer - How did you get him involved in the project?

We just didn’t have the funds to look outside of Brisbane. Because most features that are shot here they import the main cast and a lot of local actors get passed over, so when we sent the script out I wasn’t that familiar with the acting community in Brisbane – I was a bit nervous, because the whole performance hinges on his performance and the performance of the supporting cast, because the script takes itself so seriously.

We were just so excited and relieved to see that Brisbane has a really vibrant acting community, and some of the really veteran actors turned up, which was quite surprising. Even though we were quite a low budget movie they liked the script and almost all the roles were fairly meaty roles – they weren’t walk on, say two lines and then leave – so it attracted basically Queensland’s best, and Peter just came in through a casting call and I just knew straight away that he was the guy, because he was the only actor that got the subtlety of the role. There are other guys that are talented, but he has a softness to him as well – he’s not just a hard-boiled, grizzly guy – he looks like an Aussie dad. He’s got curly hair and no man with curly hair is that threatening!



What’s your take on genre filmmaking in Australia? Is there renewed interest in that area?

There definitely is renewed interest. I think there’sinterest from the filmmakers more than anywhere else, which is frustrating. Everyone’s been quite energised since Wolf Creek, but it’s still a bit of struggle because Wolf Creek has still been the only success really – it’s the only one that’s made money, everything else has sort of failed. I mean Gabriel made money, but it was very low budget so it didn’t have that much to make back – it made almost two million at the box office.

But the funding bodies are much more open to genre now, so that’s one massive hurdle that’s been knocked down. The next major hurdle is getting through to the exhibitors, the theatres, because we kind of got locked out on The Horseman, but that’s also because it’s a R-rated film and there are no stars in it – even though I think Peter Marshall will become a star. So, the audiences have always turned up – whenever we’ve done screenings we’ve usually packed the houses out and people seem to really appreciate that there are people trying to do genre films and treat them seriously. They’re moving away from the 70s schlock stuff and treating them a bit more seriously.


Is it also a question of not knowing how to market Australian genre?

Well, it’s not the exhibitors who do the marketing. Back in the day they used to, but now it’s more left up to the distributors really. Theatre owners are fairly conservative, and they’re in a tough position too, because numbers are going down and independent theatres are closing down all over the country and it’s more the rise of the megaplexes. And to make a film work in the megaplex when you’re up against Iron Man 2, you have to have a really solid marketing strategy and basically throw a lot of money at it. On a small scale, I’ve really learned about how much you have to push films for every single screening, because every time we’ve done a festival, there’s just a really huge difference between pushing and emailing every press contact we had compared to when we didn’t. You’d think, ‘Oh, our last screening sold out. We don’t have to bother doing that much press for the next one because people will turn up, and then they don’t, and you realise it’s a really tough market and you just have to work so hard. And that goes for any film of any size. The only reason people turn up to see the big Hollywood movies is because they throw huge amounts of money at the marketing – it’s not because it stars Sandra Bullock, it’s because she’s on buses and trains and she’s in your TV and she’s on MSN ads and everything. So that’s what you’re up against really.


There’s been a lot of talk about the high quality of the fight scenes. What was your basic MO in approaching those?

Well I was fairly comfortable with action because ever since I started making films when I was 14 the first thing I did was shoot action, trying to recreate scenes from Predator and Die Hard in my backyard with my neighbours! And I used to shoot a lot of sporting videos and I really cut my teeth on shooting action that way and capturing movement and looking at the way you cut it together. For the short film we did a little action scene with no stunt people, and that turned out well enough to get some pretty serious stunt people confident that even though we didn’t have a huge budget we knew what we were doing. That’s how we got Chris Anderson onboard, who’s this legendary one-legged stuntman. He’s worked on Mad Max and King Kong more recently The Pacific.



Were you ever intimidated with all that talent coming onboard?

No, I was very comfortable, just because I’d been working on it and I knew every part of it. With any filmmaker, they know the work, they’ve played it through their head a million times, so they’re just trying to capture that. I was interviewing different stunt guys to work with and I could tell some of them were going to be difficult and there were others who were really lovely but were too busy, and Chris was just one of the nice guys who doesn’t walk around with an ego, even though he could if he wanted to.

And I was a little concerned, I guess, because I’d never worked with a stunt guy before – I just had friends who were a lot tougher than me come around and bang their heads 20 times. So I was nervous in that regard, because I’d designed all the fight scenes myself and then I had to perform them for Chris before together we’d iron out any bits that didn’t work. He’d beef it up a bit and say, ‘Oh, you could actually throw this guy down the stairs if you wanted to.’ He was just a real joy to work with.


What are the plans for the rest of the year?

I’ve got a writer working on a creature feature for me and I’m outlining a post apocalyptic film now. I’m pretty busy with that, but I’m also busy with Horseman stuff, just trying to get it out there and doing a lot of the hands-on marketing as well. Myself and the producer, Bec Dakin, we’re both having to go out and hand out flyers and stuff, because we’ve got to get the word out somehow, and there’s just not enough money to go around. It just came out on Blu-Ray in America, so we’ve been doing a lot of publicity for that as well.