From Joe Peltzer

I recently sat down with Blood for Dust directed Rod Blackhurst to talk about his new star-studded film that mixes a crime drama with a sort of Neo-western vibe for a unique examination of what people turn to when they’re at the end of their rope. The film just had its World Premiere at 2023’s Tribeca Festival. Check out the highlights below!

Rod, thanks so much for being here. Excited to chat with you about the film Blood for Dust. Rod, to start, I’ve seen the film described as an action thriller, a crime thriller, a Western. What was the inspiration for the story? And how would you categorize it? 

“We’ve been given all these genres but we invented our own genre, which we... Actually, I can’t say we actually invented it, but we call it a Northwestern, right? It’s a neo-Western. It takes place in the northwest. I mean, there’s snow. So, we’d like... I’m sure there’s other films that fall under that genre, but this film was actually an original idea that our company Witchcraft started developing after our first film won the Audience Award at Tribeca in 2016. And really, it was born out of this. I don’t know this critical look at choices that people make and where people sit between right and wrong. And even beyond that, what people who are economically distressed, what sorts of decisions that they might have to make, even if they are good people and ended up going down a path that they wish they hadn’t. They’ve sort of been cast into that. And also, at the same time, those sorts of people looking at the American dream and going, “Man, I’ve been sold a bill of goods.” And you’ve got all these other people who are getting away with things and doing very, very bad things and getting away with it. Like, where does that leave me? And like, what am I supposed to do in wrestling with that? I grew up in Upstate New York in the Adirondack Mountains. And I knew a lot of good people who made bad choices, not because they wanted to, but because they had sort of no other choice to make.”

Are there any specific films that inspired the style of this film?

“Yeah, I love this Wim Wenders’ film, The American Friend. I mean, I love Wim Wenders generally. Like, I mean, maybe Paris Texas or The American Friend. I don’t know if there’s any other films outright. Like, I mean, I love Drive, but it’s funny because there aren’t a lot of comparable films we found when we were talking about this movie that we could point to it and say, for familiarity, right? So someone could wrap their head around, “Oh, this is like X meets X.” I mean, I love like slow burn movies, thrillers that sprinkled details out there and then require you to invest in them and to pick up on those breadcrumbs as they all lead towards this — as a crescendo lead to this explosive finish. I think it was probably that more than anything else. I mean, there’s actually a lot of literary stuff going on in here, a lot of John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy to even more so than film so. Well, I can safely say Wim Wenders, the Nicholas Winding Refn. But in the American literary tradition, it’s like a strange Venn Diagram of things that’s not all cinema per se. But that’s sort of the vibe and style, I was trying to wrap up in the movie.”

Well, you’ve obviously worked on a number of other projects. And most notable for me is that you co-directed the Amanda Knox documentary. How is preparing for a film like this different than working on a documentary?

“Documentaries give me anxiety because you have no control over them, no control per se over the story, or whether or not someone is going to be a great narrator of their own experience. And I’ve always said that I’ve always been a genre agnostic filmmaker. Meaning, I love stories about real people in impossible situations. Sometimes that’s in non-fiction storytelling, sometimes it’s in fiction storytelling. The always interesting thing about that documentary, which I’m very proud of, and really changed my life in a lot of ways was, I had made this fiction film, called Here Alone that won the Tribeca Audience Award, came out before that, and sort of nobody seemed to know. And that’s fine and good. I mean that film had $176,000 budget. The interesting part is making a documentary that does well. For a long time, I had to remind people, “Hey, I’m not just the documentary filmmaker. I’m a guy that is interested in all sorts of stories. And if I have a point of view on it and know how to craft it, I’m going to tell it.” And really again, it goes back to what the point of entry is. And I love stories about very grounded and relatable people having to navigate insane things. It’s like Alice falling through the looking glass, really.”

Scoot McNairy is absolutely phenomenal on this, as is the rest of the cast with Kit Harington and Josh Lucas and others. Were these actors that you had in mind when you were writing to actors who wanted to go after? How did the cast come together? 

“Yeah, I’ve been obsessed with Scoot McNairy since I saw him in this film in 2010, I think, called The Off Hours. And even if he reads it, someday he’ll know this, because I’ve told him this. And it took a long! It takes a long time to get anything made. I mean, I hadn’t... I don’t know. I just thought, “Man, this guy looks like he is the type of person that can embody what it’s like to be drowning on dry land.” And I always like... And again, like a relatable everyman in so many of his performances. And that, to me, is... I’ve just always been drawn to that. And I don’t know. I mean, these were the actors that I had in mind for this great, great story, though. Like, who the hell gets to Kit Harington? And I mean... But truly, that was luck. Like, we wrote our agents in email one day, and we just begged them to send him the materials. And then they got back to us — I don’t know — a couple months later. I’m like, sure enough. Like, Kit wants to meet. So, I met him on April 19th, last year. I’ll never forget this because it was the day before my daughter was born. We had a Zoom meeting. And he was just a gem of a human being. And the reason why I always thought this is a great role for Kit was because it was so against type. And further to what I was saying a minute ago about being a documentary filmmaker, or people thinking I’m just the documentary filmmaker, I know the actors get put into boxes, too. And they want to do things that are different and they want to be seen differently. And they don’t always want to get offered the same things. And I thought, “Man, here’s a guy who I believe.” Personally, me as an incredible actor, I respect his choices, I love his inclinations. Like, I wonder if he’s feeling the same thing too. I would like to do something so different than nobody sees it coming. And we dreamed a dream and other people helped us make it happen. And it feels incredible, truly, to get to work with actors you admire and love. And you know, Stephen Dorff, Josh Lucas, Ethan Suplee. Like, I’m just like a kid in a movie candy shop, really.”

Are there any particular scenes or specific scenes that stick out for you as favorites in the film?

“I mean, I love craft, acting, cinematography, sound design, score. Like, all these things that go into, that obviously turned into a large movie. I think one of the things I’m most proud of about this movie is the way we use camera language to slowly reveal things and to constantly be evolving. I mean, the opening shot of the film really does this, right? It doesn’t just tell you how the film is paced, but it tells you, “Hey, there’s going to be language throughout this movie that’s going to start one place in someplace different. A lot of things are going to happen in the meantime. And you’ve got to pay attention.” So I used that type of language over and over in the movie. And it’s very important to me, too. I know I like telling stories that way. And so I’m proud of all those moments where we pulled them off where very complicated things happening, but the language doesn’t always call attention to itself. Like, you’d forget, “Hey man, I just watched an unbroken two minute shot are a three minute shot, because I’ve seen so many different things happen inside of that two minute unbroken shot.” I’m really proud of those moments. They’re hard to pull off. And they’re hard to pull off in a way that doesn’t feel showy, right? Not trying to be ostentatious. Like, I’m trying to just sit you inside of this world and have the camera language reflect the pace of the life that these characters are living, and at the same time continually tell you stories inside of those unbroken shots.”

What do you hope audiences take away from the film? 

“This is a great. I haven’t been able to put my finger exactly on it. Yeah, it’s just funny because I’ve had to talk about it a lot. And I find myself — I don’t know what the right word is — circling all these different ideas. I think about this like thing that was like very much a part of like John Steinbeck’s East of Eden that men are truly not good or bad, they have the choice to be good or bad, and that they’re between right and wrong, right? They have the ability to choose. And also on top of that, that men are also this... And this one is a movie about men, so I’m using the word men here. But we’re lumbering beasts that yearn to be free that think we can dream of reaching the stars, and changing our stars, and changing what we are, changing what we’re cast as, changing our circumstances. And so really I would hope that the film is a reflection of that, like this thinking or this idea that I’ve known very personally. I’ve been at those crossroads before. And I hope people look at it and go, “Man, I know people who have struggled,” not with running drugs, not with getting caught with crime syndicates. But people, that there’s still empathy and humanity to those people that are making those choices and are caught in those situations. And that maybe this movie says, “Man, I need to not this discard those people or disregard them, and give them a little more consideration because they are people that are struggling and they’re making drastic choices because they feel cornered and there might not be another choice they have to make.”

Follow Joe