Lord of the Rings Inspired Scale of Brian Duffield Survival Story Whalefall

What happens when you are out for a swim on a bright, sunny day and suddenly a whale the size of an eight-story building swallows you up while hunting down a flailing squid of equal might? Writer-director Brian Duffield went a step further and made Whalefall.

Based on a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus, Whalefall stars Austin Abrams as Jay. Jay’s dive off the California coast goes horribly wrong when a local sperm whale gives him the Jonah treatment. Trailers for Whalefall tease how Jay’s life-or-death situation moves between the present and the past, with Josh Brolin playing his recently deceased father. Duffield promises his adaptation is a movie movie, wanting to go big after his straight-to-Hulu spectacle No One Will Save You.

Ahead of its Oct. 16 release, I spoke with Brian Duffield about the film.

Polygon: Brian, are you drinking a Canada Dry Ginger Ale?

Brian Duffield: Yessir. Put that in the piece.

That is called scene-setting. Now let us talk about Whalefall. You and Daniel Kraus adapted Whalefall together. Having read his books and spoken to him recently about his wild year, my impression is the two of you share a taste for inverting tropes. How did you wind up making this film with him?

Brian Duffield: I never met him or talked to him directly before. I think we followed each other because we were nerdy writers. One day, he tweeted out what Whalefall was going to be about before he had finished writing it, and I instantly had a lightning bolt. I slid into the DMs and told him I wanted to read this as fast as possible. When he finished writing the galley and sent it to me, I read it that night and called him the next morning. That happened on my first movie, Spontaneous, as well, where I knew within three sentences of the book that it was meant for me.

Working with Daniel was the easiest process I have ever had. The book is amazing, but writing the adaptation with him was a joy. He was on set a lot. I have seen the movie about 20 times. There has not been a single moment of friction. I talk to him almost every day still. He is off doing his own screenwriting and novels, and I have my own things too, but we have become soundboards for each other.

I could not say enough great things about Daniel Kraus. Except for the fact that he won a Pulitzer and I did not.

It is almost a cliche to say my location is like a character, but in this case, your location is a character. How do you properly bring something to life that is both living and landscape?

Our challenge was taking the emotions you feel for E.T. or King Kong, creatures you fall in love with even though they are inanimate objects. E.T. is puppeteered and King Kong is stop-motion. You have to fall in love with them from the inside out.

We talked a lot about how the whale is an innocent bystander in all of this. It is not going after Austin. It does not know Austin exists. But Austin has to grow a fondness for this thing. There is a Miyazaki quality to it, where it has a certain beauty, just the awe of being inside of a god. It should be terrifying, but it is an extraordinary machine.

Austin’s character is very sensitive. He really cares about people and his place in the world. Something important with Austin, that we talked about a lot, was not treating the whale as a monster, but treating it as your co-star. Austin is amazing at that.

We knew we had to be PG-13, but it was finding the line between how disgusting it could be and how far we could push it so that the stomach did not feel sentient on its own. You were always reminded that it is a living thing he is inside of. That came down to the work that Weta did building our sets, which ILM took over to a large extent, and then what the sound team did. When you see the movie, you will always hear the heartbeat and the whoosh of blood around Austin from veins.

Daniel excels at writing gushy, disgusting prose. I imagine sound was as important as picture in order to do Whalefall justice?

We always talked with 20th Century Studios about it feeling theatrical. From day one, I told the sound team that this would be the hardest job they ever had. I think they were drunk on that idea. And it was the hardest job they ever had. But you will hear it. It is astonishing work. We just had our final playback a couple days ago with the studio heads, and they were just like holy shit. The movie sounds unbelievable.

We joked with Steve Asbell, who is a big Lord of the Rings fan. I told him it is Frodo’s journey, but it is like 10 feet. We have all these different set pieces and locations, and he has a real hero’s quest, but the space of it is very small. The emotion of it and the visual impact are quite immense. We have a pretty nutty set piece in the third act that is not limited to the stomach, alongside him getting swallowed.

That is something I am proud of. When people see the movie, they talk about how it feels like a movie movie. It is claustrophobic in the right ways, but it does not feel like a small indie movie. It feels theatrical and big and strange. It came back to what it would feel like when this whale is 80 or 85 feet long. It is a big boy.

Still, and this is something I talked to Brolin a lot about, it is a movie about fathers and sons, and you want 10-year-olds to get as much out of it as 70-year-olds. It pushes PG-13 very hard. Daniel has a universal way of looking at the world while being hyper-specific. We have shown a bunch of young teens the movie, and they really reacted to it. Then parents like myself and Josh get another thing out of it.

I think it is that beautiful thing that Stand by Me does so well, where you get to age up with the movie. I want fathers and sons to get to see the movie together. Kids can feel like they are getting away with something pretty rough.

Whalefall opens in theaters on Oct. 16.

Source: Polygon