In The Leech’s fourth bonus episode, the guys talk with filmmaker Zeek Earl, who co-wrote and -directed Prospect with Christopher Caldwell. Zeek and Chris won the 2018 SXSW Adam Yauch Hörnblowér Award for Prospect.
After hearing about Zeek’s journey into filmmaking (1:29), the guys learn more about the world of Prospect (7:51), Zeek’s influences (9:52), and Prospect’s production design (16:26). They dig into shooting one of Prospect’s most memorable scenes (23:01) before Zeek shares the backstory of the enigmatic ‘man in pink’ (a Leech-exclusive reveal!). Finally, they close the episode hearing about Zeek’s leechiest movies (40:06).
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Evan 00:29
Well hello everyone, welcome back to the Leech Podcast, the most visceral podcast. I'm your host, Evan Cate, and I am joined by two leechy gentlemen, Aaron Jones and Banks Clark. What's up guys? [Hey, good to be here.] The Leech Podcast is a show about movies that suck the life out of you, but also stick with you. And they may even be good for you -- like a leech. This week we have a very special bonus episode. We are pleased and honored to have with us filmmaker Zeek Earl. He is best known as the co-writer and director of the film Prospect, along with Chris Caldwell. This film is the winner of the Adam Yauch Hornblower Award from South by Southwest. And I'm told that this award goes to directors whose work "strives to be wholly their own without regard for norms, or desire to conform." I love that. Welcome to the program, Zeek.
Zeek Earl 01:27
Hey guys, happy to be here.
Aaron 01:29
Ah, Zeek, we're so glad to have you and, and this is a podcast about movies. And just to start off, I'm kind of wondering, Why do you make movies? What is it that you love about this? How did you get here? Can you talk to us about that?
Zeek Earl 01:44
Yeah, I've got to kind of reach way back for that. You're doing something your whole life it's like, Wait, why am I doing that? No, I mean, I think the simplest answer is... it's very, I mean, it's very built-in to my, my personality and my psyche. I was a, I was a Lego kid. I built massive custom worlds that were highly detailed, very original. And having kind of this holistic imagination where it wasn't just one idea, one concept, but I like to imagine things very completely. So that's, you know, and then I caught the bug for filmmaking in high school and just messed around with my friends. Um, and you know, kind of as I got older and I guess a little more, you know, mature, I kind of realized that this, this kind of this part of my imagination translated really well particularly to science fiction, where often you have to not just sort of track a singular storyline but an entire world. And so which, and I so, I'm very pleased that it -- particularly for my debut film, feature film Prospect -- the world-building has been, you know, kind of one of the most recognized, nice things. And I think it's you know, what, what Chris and I are really best at.
Aaron 03:12
That's fascinating. And you -- am I right that you one of you, or both of you, studied English and literature in college?
Zeek Earl 03:18
Yeah, we studied English together. And that's how we met.
Aaron 03:21
Wow, how does that kind of, does that feed into this filmmaking? It seems like kind of a divergence, maybe? How does that fit in?
Zeek Earl 03:28
Yeah, no, I haven't studied film formally. Ever. So, Chris and I did a lot of like creative Writing classes together and kind of honed our ability to tell stories kind of in that medium, which I think actually makes a lot of sense. Filmmaking is such a layered art form that it's, it's kind of hard to wrap your -- while learning -- kind of wrap your head around the whole thing and all the different moving pieces. So I think to spend, you know, four years in college just kind of focusing on reading literature and philosophy. We did an Honors program together, as well. So it was actually a very kind of well-rounded in all sorts of kind of artistic and even scientific traditions. So I think we kind of got on the same page on a lot of things and then didn't start making movies together until after college.
Aaron 04:19
Amazing. Now you all, I mean, you had to write the script for this, but there's a lot of different planning phases. Like is there a specific part of filmmaking that that really gets you excited? Do you want to be with the script? Are you -- parts of production, is it the shooting -- like where are you most yourself and energized?
Zeek Earl 04:37
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. The different phases all carry their own different energy. Um, writing is definitely the hardest. There's no, like, you can't force it. You can't like give yourself a deadline. You're like, "Alright, I have two months. I'm going to finish this screenplay." Most... Prospect, we took about three years to get financed. And over those three years, we rewrote the script like four or five times. And I, and I'm so glad -- had the first version gotten financed, it would have not done as well, you know, we would have discovered problems that that just took time. So writing is very frustrating to me, I'm a very kind of efficiency-minded person. I'm a really hard worker, and just writing, you can just spend hours and hours and get nowhere until you eventually stumble on something and then, you know, it gets kicked off. So I love when you get past writing. For Prospect, I mean, one of the things that we were recognized with that award from South by Southwest, was kind of the unique method in which we created the film, which was opening our own production design shop. [Yeah.] So, kind of our budget wasn't just to you know, hire some other people to come in and make everything. We had like individual tools and materials in our, you know, proposal, and so we got to hire all these friends and collaborators we'd been accumulating for years, and we opened this shop in an old boatbuilding warehouse. And to me, that was just exhilarating. That was the most fun thing I've done in my entire life, the six, seven weeks we got to spend fleshing out the details of this world that had kind of slowly existed in my imagination for years by that point. And then production, getting on set, is extremely exciting, but extremely stressful. It's just a high stakes, like time management, like you feel the minutes slipping by you, and you have, you know -- and we even, we just, we didn't take it easy on ourselves for this first film. The visors you see on all the actors, the majority of the movie, would fog up after a few minutes. And we had to, like, end up hiring extra people just to create these kind of NASCAR teams around each actor that you'd yell "Cut!" and people would rush in and swipe the visor off, and like put a new one on and you develop this whole system. And so when normally, in the same amount of time you get like 10 takes, we were getting about three. And so it's like [Yeah.] so incredibly stressful, and you just have to make these kind of gut decisions near constantly, you don't have time to really think through all the ramifications of what you're doing. You just have to go, go go. But it's exhilarating. You know, it's, it's great in a different way. And then, you know, post-production is just a relief, because you finally get to sit down and see what you've, you know, captured, what you've collected, and start piecing it together. And we were very lucky to have a financier that really allowed us time to really, you know, try different things in post. And anyway, so I like all, all parts of the process, except writing, which is what I spend the most time doing.
Banks 07:51
I mean, one of the things that I've like really curious about -- you know, you mentioned with the writing and you know, the iterative process of always having to rewrite, and you were talking about just the number of changes that had to be made when you're building this world out. And there have to be so many stories that you guys have -- backstories, side stories -- that never like making the film that are perhaps they'll know -- and I'm curious if you have some favorite, lesser known tales of Prospect that many people don't know, but really help flesh out a character, or just have good stories to be told.
Zeek Earl 08:26
Well, we're working on a TV show. So I can't, I can't give that stuff away.
Banks 08:30
You know, there's a gray area in between: we're going for that, you know?
Zeek Earl 08:35
Yeah, I like, I'm just trying to think through earlier drafts of the script. I mean, in the film, there's a brief episode where Ezra, the character played by Pedro Pascal, tries to sell or, you know, is potentially going to sell you know, Cee, his partner, to these very strange, kind of homesteader cultish people, and in earlier drafts that was a much longer, more drawn out, intricate sequence. And that culture was much more highly developed and she previously spent a lot of time with them and you sort of like learn more about their weird ambitions on the planet and why they're really there. And it involved kind of awaiting a black hole to enter this part of the galaxy and like suck them into like a different dimension. And it just like was way its own thing. But it really had no space in like, you know, a 100 minute movie and got very pieced down, just kind of this brief strange interaction. But yeah, there's, any... I mean, that's the thing about Prospects, is it's a very wholly developed world, and you can kind of pick at any aspect, any single character, and we spent a lot of time thinking about where they came from and where they were going. And, you know, really, it's just a movie about this one girl who intersects all these kind of very kind of full, full storylines.
Evan 09:52
Well, and I think that may, maybe connects to a question I had, which is, it seems like we're asking about: what are the stories in between the scenes that we saw, or the stories in between the stories that we saw -- which, my favorite scene in Prospect is the conversation between Ezra and Cee as they're walking through the woods, and Cee describes this, this story that she has loved, that she has memorized, that she has imagined herself into, and imagines scenes that don't even exist in the story. So I was -- it sounds like in some ways you're now mining some of those stories from your own film for this, this potential project. I wonder if there are other stories that, that you have drawn on, or even imagined, you and Chris, maybe imagined yourselves in between that the influenced Prospect.
Zeek Earl 10:36
Yeah. I mean, the film was... It's, it's always kind of hard to like piece apart your, your inspirations, but there's definitely a lot of things in that, in that soup. And you kind of separate it out that the, you know, the I mean, the world, the texture of the world, owes a lot to Ridley Scott and, you know, the first Alien movie and Blade Runner, just seeing sort of like, you know, the feeling of the grittiness of the production design. Story-wise, everything we do has a huge debt to the Coen brothers -- just the masters of character and genre and kind of combining those two things in the most delightful, propulsive ways. True Grit, the Coen brothers's True Grit, was a, was a big kind of touchstone when just trying to explain the movie to people and it's movie we really love. But then you get some really weird stuff mixed in there, like Sofia Coppola's Somewhere was a big reference for more my co-director Chris. It's which -- he -- I mean, when it comes to how do we write our projects, I'm a little more in the world-building structural headspace and he kind of takes the characters and really kind of fleshes out their emotional reality. And for him that was a big touchstone -- that movie, I mean, you would never in a million years guess it had any intersection with Prospect. For me, I mean, one of my Leech movies is Kieslowski's Blue [Oh, yeah.] which I, which I again I don't, I don't think I -- I'm almost hesitant to mention cuz it really has nothing to do with my movie -- but I watched it like four times during pre-production almost as just kind of like a headspace thing. Because that, that film like, man, it does things that only cinema can do, as far as kind of conveying a certain kind of emotional reality through camera work and and sound -- and just something that I wanted to be feeling while while moving into Prospect. But yeah, I mean, you spend so much time, particularly as a first feature film, it's so hard to get financed; I mean, kind of like the rewriting, that just you just absorb more over the years and little details and there's just probably all sorts of things that I haven't even kept track of that are, that are in that mix.
Aaron 12:59
Yeah, I think that with the financing piece, I think I read in your interview with Sci-Fi Wire several years ago that, that a lot of the early financiers wanted you to change Cee's character to a boy? Is this true?
Zeek Earl 13:14
Yeah! You can't imagine that happening anymore -- it really, even at the time, it felt like a vestige of just kind of a weird old Hollywood thing. But yeah, we you know made our way up the chain at a unnamed studio, and yeah, I've -- one of the executives at the top is like "This really feels more like a... you know, father-son story, huh?" No! We held out on that one. And I mean they didn't end up financing it, so clearly there wasn't a connection, but it's... Yeah, it's really, you know, traditionally Westerns are very like obviously masculine-driven and there's still quite a bit of, I guess, you know, at least from a financier standpoint, inability to imagine outside that. Even though now there's been just numerous, numerous successful examples. But yeah, that did happen to us.
Aaron 14:08
That's amazing. Gosh, I can't, yeah, that process sounds so excruciating.
Zeek Earl 14:12
Yeah. It gave me IBS.
Aaron 14:14
Oh, oh man! That's real.
Zeek Earl 14:18
True story.
Aaron 14:20
But what, what kept you all -- What kept you on going? What kept you all kind of passionate about the project?
Zeek Earl 14:27
It's a good question. It's like hitting your head against the wall for three years. That's awful. Um, you know, it's like... I have, I had trouble -- like we, I get asked a lot by aspiring, like, kids in high school and college and aspiring filmmakers, like, and it's hard for me to be encouraging because it's, it's so very hard to make a movie. Um, and you know, we had people, though, that that believed in it, you know. We signed on with this production company LA Depth of Field, headed by Chris Weitz, who's a very established director in his own right. And you know, they really thought this, this was a good idea and they kept fighting for it. So it's like we didn't feel like we were on our own. And then we'd also, you know, been assembling all these, these collaborators, who helped make these films. These are people in Seattle who make physical stuff. And who ended up making the guns and suits, the backpacks, the spaceships -- all that stuff. And they were this, you know, this collective that has, that has also stayed, you know, after the film kind of together, called the TAKA Collective that, you know, when we have this group of people, you just really don't want to let them down. And they all believe in it. And you just kind of keep, keep swinging. But, I mean, I think it was the fifth or sixth financier that seriously considered it, that actually ended up financing it. And even, kind of, that, in itself, it's too, it's too much of a diversion, but it was a big Hollywood story in that our agency kind of owed our producer a favor, and they did a thing for this company -- made a big sale -- and it was kind of this big, Hollywood backroom buh-buh-buh-buh-buh. And I mean, I think we had the merit -- like we had proven that we could do it. But ultimately, I think so much of this industry is just out of the creator's control. Like [Wow.] there's a lot of talented people that aren't getting stuff made. And it's very, very difficult. I feel incredibly fortunate that we got something financed. And it takes a certain amount of stupidity, because the odds are definitely against you.
Aaron 16:26
Wow, stupidity and IBS. That's a winning combination. Sorry. Well, let me, let me come back, because you talked about the TAKA collective. And I was reading another interview where you talked about -- I think this is from yourmoneygeek.com -- you mentioned that the kind of the aesthetic, the material culture that you're creating for the film, and that the collective helps produce and create, you call it a "Soviet moon rush aesthetic." [Yes. Love that description. That's good.] And I'm just wondering, if there's like, there's a process in order to develop a coherent material aesthetic, like, what was that research process? Like you said, you, you looked at Russian and NASA stuff from the past -- like, tell us about that process of arriving at the culture, the material things you made.
Zeek Earl 17:20
It's a couple of things. I mean, part of it is just like, that soup of things you get excited about, like, in childhood. Like I loved Star Wars, and particularly, like, you know, the original Star Wars films that were in the 70s, and the 80s. And like, there's just a certain part of that, that's just like, that's hardwired in your DNA, and you're just drawn to it and you want to recreate it. But, you know, with Prospect, to kind of try to go back to this, you know, kind of aesthetic so many years later, with a modern movie, I mean, it was motivated, like we had a reason. And it's not just total, you know, kind of fan service to the movies we love, and that was that we wanted it to feel like a period piece, just kind of ... So it's like, yes, this takes place in the future. But we don't want you to think about this as if it were, you know, futurism. We want this to feel like a story that, in some weird way, even though it's an alien movie, takes place in the past. So a lot of those kind of references. And that's because it is, it is -- it's almost not science fiction. It really is a Western, because it's not driven by technology. It's not driven by, I mean, in a lot of science fiction it's really just kind of magic. Like it's characters have to make really hard, grounded decisions. And that's what propels the story. And so it felt very fitting to give this sort of subliminal texture of something kind of being in the past. And also it looks cool.
Banks 18:44
You know, one of the fascinations that we have with this podcast, one of the things that that brought this group together is, you know, we're fans of movies that make you -- I don't know if they make you feel good, but they definitely make you feel deeply. And, you know, Prospect is a movie that definitely has some scenes that make you feel deeply and also are just, you know, deeply uncomfortable, as well. And, you know, one of the questions is, you know, what is it like to make scenes that you know are going to be difficult for a viewer to watch and yet are also so just pregnant with meaning to the plot, and at the heart of the movie itself. So what is it like to bring those two things together -- something so visceral and something so meaningful? Because in the director's chair, this is -- you're in the pilot seat, to kind of have to navigate that tightrope.
Zeek Earl 19:41
Yeah... No, I, that it's so interesting. Well, well, I mean, I think you're feeling sort of the emotion of it while you're writing. It's in that space that you're actually most connected to the characters because you're not, like, burdened with the reality of making the movie. It just all is abstract. And, you know, you definitely kind of feel those emotional moments and I think have the best connection with how it's gonna make an audience feel until, I mean, much, much later. Because even while you're editing, you're still looking at these people who now have become your friends, and you, like, it's hard to convince yourself of the fictional reality. And on set it's actually always exciting because those -- the scenes you're describing are the scenes the actors are most excited to make. It's like why they took the project. So I don't know if this qualifies for you. But a -- spoiler alert -- let me, let me, maybe I'll be a little more vague. There's a scene where Pedro Pascal's character Ezra must undergo a medical procedure in unideal circumstances.
Evan 20:45
"Two for flesh, four for bone."
Zeek Earl 20:47
Yeah, it was, I mean, that was the singular, probably most joyful day on set, because Pedro was stoked to do the scene. And it was techincally actually pretty simple. We just kind of set up a tripod on him. So, like, from my perspective, this is logistically a great day: I just sit around and watch it happen. And just to see this actor, at the height of his power, deliver this thing that was so much better than I could imagine, was just like, you're like, YES, YES. So like, you know, from a director's point of view, like, I am excited to emotionally manipulate you. I'm excited to mess with you. Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Aaron 21:30
Wow. Yeah, that scene is one that we definitely -- when we discussed Prospect -- that was a, was on our minds. Oh, indeed, indeed. We made many jokes about the buzzing scalpel apparatus. Oh, gracious. Wow. Can we maybe -- we can kind of talk about some of the other scenes that we really enjoyed from the film? Would that be all right? Or that we had questions about. I mean, so, when I think about the film, Zeek -- and I'm thinking about you, as writers and directors being really in control of the audience, and having the audience kind of almost in a panic, or on the edge of their seats -- is when they finally reach the Queen's Lair at the end. And there's that group of mercenaries who they encounter and they're asking for a ride off the planet. That moment for me is like, I am, I'm panicking in the film. It is so difficult. It's so difficult. And then watching, watching, Cee, and Ezra try to, to kind of extract the aurelac and to make good on the deal. Once they've -- I mean, I have to say, the scene where they confront the mercenaries and ask for a ride, it's, it's super long compared to some other moments in the movie. Like, you just don't let up on that. I don't know. Can you talk to us about that moment? How you all were thinking about that moment -- everything that transpires there, around the Queen's Lair; kind of the movie has been moving there the whole time.
Zeek Earl 23:01
Yeah, I -- this is one of these like things, it's almost hard for me to talk about, because those... So the scenes you're talking about we shot at night. They were originally supposed to be at a studio that was going to be blacked out and create a simulation of night, and that just didn't kind of work out. So these were actually the most difficult shooting like weeks and days. So the first thing, and this is not a great answer to your question, but to me, it's just like, "Oh my god, that was terrible. I'm desperate to get anything." And we actually, there's a lot of those scenes that -- because you, it's difficult to see anyone's mouths, we actually rewrote in post and recorded ADR and reframed um... And yeah, a lot of work, a lot of work went into that, you know, because it is kind of like the emotional climax. But I mean to me that whole sequence is um, again, I'll try to be not super overt with the spoilers, but is about the moment where Cee, the protagonist, fails at something. And that you're, you know, we, I mean, this is the type of thing that gets me excited in filmmaking: it's about setting up that, that inspirational moment where she, you know, is supposed to pull through and saves the day - and then doesn't! Because then it's immediately, it's just like, "Oh my gosh, now what happens?" And yeah, I... I mean, the thing I do, I think, probably have to say -- and I'm so glad you guys enjoyed the movie -- I mean, for me, it's a little bit like my film school on display for everyone. I had never stepped foot on a feature film set before making my own feature film, which is a terrible idea and I don't recommend. And we were learning so much and like those, those two weeks of shooting at night were so logistically challenging and so many things went wrong and everyone's like sleep-deprived and like the equivalent of jet-lagged and, you know, I... A lot of the action that takes place is like, it's very rough and I wouldn't give anything to redo. But, you know, but we spent, you know, and those are the scenes we spent the longest amount of time in post-production, trying to see what we could do. We tried -- we did some, you know, kind of very cosmetic reshoots of close ups to try to bridge things together. And, you know, and I think it's passable, but I very much hope I get the opportunity to make another movie and perfect, perfect my craft a bit more.
Aaron 25:21
Well, I think, I honestly think, though, that there's something going on where I'm, I'm looking back to Akira Kurosawa, Seven Samurai, and the kind of legendary tales that are told about the difficulty of shooting the climactic, kind of, attack on the village at the end of that movie. And it's so potent and so amazing and obviously the most difficult part of the movie to make. And I'm just, I'm just wondering if there's something going on there with, kind of, the pressure around that moment, making it like a diamond moment, right? Like pressurizing this coal, in a way. I think, I think those moments at the end are brilliant. But I think we, what's nice is that we can't see your fingerprints and all the, and all the like the marks of the chisel and everything. Mmm. We're fortunate, yeah -- you're less fortunate than us because all you can see is chisel marks. Can you talk to us about -- so in that scene, one of the most enigmatic characters makes an appearance. The man in red or the red man. What in the world? We have speculated endlessly about this, and maybe you can't say much, but can you say anything about what's going on there for you guys?
Zeek Earl 26:39
Yeah, I... it's really funny, it's the most -- I think partially because of its placement towards the end -- it's the most controversial thing in the movie. And you know I either, I see people seem to either kind of love the mystery or hate the lack of explanation. And yeah, I, I always, I always kind of remain vague -- I kind of want to let the, you know, the film somewhat stand for itself. Because I mean, as we were talking about earlier, you know, it's, it's... I, I love films that feel bigger than what's presented. I love, you know world -- I mean for me as a kid, Star Wars, like you, you're you're going down like the the alleyways of, you know, Mos Eisley and like you can just imagine this populated world and you want to know what else is going on. And I mean I think for us the man in red or pink -- depending on the calibration of your TV -- like a very unexplained, enigmatic, you know, character... And and I wouldn't say it's perfection, like it could be dialed, you know, different ways. But you know, yeah, it's, it's these mercenaries brought this, you know, I'll give it away. I think I've been vague in enough interviews -- I'll let you guys in on the backstory, why the hell not? He's a warlord from a totally different culture, civilization. And these mercenaries have been paid to bring him here for a ceremonial execution. This actually has to do with, you know, this, this freighter run is ending because this impending black hole and they want to leave this guy here to be destroyed by this black hole. Again, all this black hole stuff that was in different drafts that doesn't make the movie. And so, you know, we kind of, we kind of kept him in and I think in some ways, it's like, I'm such a visual stylist and in some ways, he's almost too stylish of a character because he's just -- you want, you want to know so much more than is given. And, you know, we tried to have kind of this moment where, you know, Cee and him kind of exchange glances at the end -- that's a little bit of like, to me, an emotional resolution of just, like, you know, they're on the same page in a weird way. But that's of course, you know, there's there's a few lines given by Anwan Glover's character Mikken that are steeped in just dense in-world dialogue that sort of gives some of this away. But I, I don't fault anyone with being completely clueless about that character.
Aaron 29:13
But one of the reasons that I, that I bring it up is because I think that most of the interviews that I've read about the film have been so fixated on the, how do I say, fixated on the performers in the film, fixated on the dialogue, fixated on the production -- and I haven't seen, honestly, a lot of rich takes on the, kind of, the themes, the themes of the film. And I, for me, when I'm looking, like I'm reading -- I'm an English teacher, actually -- I'm deeply steeped in like reading films as texts. And what I'm up to when I look at the film, is I'm looking at the film very much as a Western, but as kind of an environmental Western. And I'm reading itm and I'm reading the man in red -- you say he's a warlord from another culture -- I'm reading him as a like a native person, an indigenous person. Like he's painted red, he's the, the so-called "red man" of... who's encountered and captured or fought in the West. And, I don't, I don't know, I'm just like, I want to know -- I kind of want to know are there ideas that you all are trying to kind of explore about Westerness, about colonization, about plundering environments as you're writing this film? Like what are you exploring?
Zeek Earl 30:32
Yeah, I mean I do unfortunately have to... he's meant to be pink, not red, so that's not how I intended it, but I get it. [It's just my TV, it's just my TV!] Yeah, which is, which is awesome. There's actually been, there's been a little bit of writing about like environmental takes on Prospect.
Aaron 30:51
I want to find this, yeah.
Zeek Earl 30:52
Um, I mean, I mean, to be honest, it's, it's like I mean I'm from Seattle, I'm steeped in a very like environmentally conscious like kind of culture personally. And I imagine that's just kind of built into me so some of that comes out. I mean, the type of Western -- from a thematic level, you know, what what's more front of mind -- you know, because there's all sorts of the subliminal stuff, which people that pick up on is really cool -- but the more kind of front of mind parts of actually writing this script is, is, you know, the type of Western that explores, kind of, human interaction and relationships outside of civilization. Like that's, that's what Green Moon is, you know. It's like there's, there's Western stories that take place in small towns or with like small amounts of civilization. But ours is like, you know, there's, there's no law here, there's no civilization. It's every interaction is what the two people make it. And so Cee and Ezra's relationship is, you know, is an evolution, is something they, they define and redefine and redefine. So I mean, I think that's -- when we're in kind of that dialogue, the western context, that's more what we're explicitly playing with. But then yeah, all this other stuff just kind of, you know, gets in there for sure.
Aaron 32:05
Well, let me let me kind of push a little bit more, I just -- I don't want to get too obsessed with my own take on my idea -- but I am looking at... But help me think about the... this, this thing that they're after this aurelac, is that what it's called? [Aurelac, yes.] So I, when I'm looking at that, that is some, that's some gross stuff. And what it looks like to me is this strange -- it's this really intimate act. It's a much more intimate act than sifting for gold, right? Kind of cutting into the earth, and almost like taking out this fetal sack of life from the earth, umbilically attached to the earth. And it feels like taking something really personal and intimate out of the body of the planet or the moon. How in the world did you all end up with that kind of imagery, that image of extraction?
Zeek Earl 32:57
Ah, yeah, it's really fun. Intimate. It's not, It's not an adjective... It totally makes sense, like it really makes sense. Um, I mean, I think like... It's really sort of, I think, the texture of the whole sequence is really due to our production designer, Matt Acosta, who, with our 100% support, loves pushing things in the most kind of, you know, visceral, kind of gross organic directions. I, and this is a little bit of a deviation, but I mean, to me, like, there's this kind of famous moment in one of the Rian Johnson Star Wars movie, which is it? The new one that... [The Last Jedi.] Is The Last Jedi? Okay, yeah, The Last Jedi, that I think is universally hated by Star Wars fans, but Matt and I, it's like our favorite part. It's when Luke Skywalker milks some sea creature. I'm like, "Yes, finally! This world has some damn detail to it!" [Yes.] And how, you know, people are just so squeamish about anything kind of that has, like, viscera to it. And so for us it's like, like "100%!" -- like, to me, it's like, it makes the world so much more real and believable to add all this kind of gross process. So I was extremely happy with that, that that sequence. And of course like, you know, from a plot standpoint, it's meant to be complicated -- it's meant to require skill, which Cee does not have and her father does. And he has this kind of, you know, experience. Um, but yeah, I mean people's relationship with the planet is, is very Western, it's very just like people just kind of stripping resources. One thing that we were wanting that, that again -- similar to not changing Cee into a boy -- but another thing we had to occasionally fight executives on were the idea that what they're harvesting has no utilitarian value. We really liked the idea that this is just to -- and the film doesn't get into this -- but in our minds, you know, this aurelac, this gem that's at the center of the gross creature, is just for some luxury economy somewhere. I mean, one of the early premises of the film is that, in a universe where platinum, gold, silver, whatever are commonplace because of asteroid mining, that the luxury economy has to turn to really obscure, weird stuff to be valuable. So these people, you know, risk their lives, spend months and their life savings to go out to this obscure planet to harvest, you know, what essentially is just a shiny crystal that you can't get anywhere else. And sort of, kind of, the meaninglessness of it to me was important to the premise.
Aaron 35:37
Wow, see this is the, this is the kind of rich themetic content I'm after. Like that's, yes.
Evan 35:43
And I almost wonder if thinking about it that way reframes how you think about gold. I mean, in some ways gold is kind of a useless... I mean, I, it is considered very valuable, but I don't have a lot of gold and I'm doing okay, you know?
Zeek Earl 35:59
It's, it's important for certain microprocessors, but uh yeah. That's about it. [Haha.]
Banks 36:07
You can make it super thin and, you know, make gold leaf that's what you can do.
Aaron 36:11
Yeah, beautiful. Well then, let's start to, we're gonna start to make a little bit of a turn toward leechiness, but then let's, let's make that turn in a way that, that starts with the actual environment in which you shot the film. So you have, clearly, in a lot of interviews you talked about this -- a relationship with the settings where you shot the film. Can you talk to us about being, shooting in a national park? Shooting in this lush green environment, this rainforest environment? Yeah, can talk about that for a second? I'm gonna make a connection to leeches before too long. [Okay.] But talk to us about that.
Zeek Earl 36:46
Yeah, so the whole rainforest was at just kind of the center of our entire proposal for this film. It's a place that, you know, I went hiking and backpacking when I moved to Washington and was just totally smitten. It just feels larger than life. It feels, you know– even high budget CGI movies, you always are just aware that you're looking at a facade. And to a degree I really wanted this very character driven story to take place in a real, immersive place. And so, yeah, we shot the Hoh Rainforest. Actually, it's very– it's almost impossible to shoot in a National Park. It's in a private land preserve just outside the National Park, [wow], they allowed us to kind of set up set up camp there for a good deal of time. But I mean, I'm super inspired by like Verner Hertzog's 'Aguierre: The Wrath of God.' And I mean, which is– you guys should definitely do an episode on. It's amazing. There's a documentary about it that is as fascinating as the film, because he just decided, it's about conquistadors floating down the middle of the Amazon River. And to shoot this film, he did just that. He got a bunch of consquistadors and put them on a raft and they floated down the Amazon River. And it's, I mean, you couldn't do it now. It would– no one would insure it. It would be incredibly dangerous. It was incredibly dangerous. But there's moments in that film that occur because they were in those kind of constraints in that environment. And it's stuff that you just, you can't simulate, you can't create any other way. And so we were hoping, you know, in our modern context, just to get a little piece of that by being out in the Hoh Rainforest, and I think we did.
Aaron 38:28
Oh, absolutely. So I know, we're moving towards our last couple of minutes here. But I– we're gonna talk about leech movies in a second. But I actually want to talk about leeches on the Olympic Peninsula for a second. [Oh, yeah.]
Zeek Earl 38:39
I never encountered any.
Aaron 38:40
You never encountered any? I was so curious, so curious to know. [I don't think they're there?] So let me make a quick connection for us before we talk about leech movies. So a couple of months ago, we interviewed one of the most amazing people I know, Sebastian Kvist. He is amongst a small group of people who are elite leech researchers in the field of biology across the world. And he's in Canada. He works at the Royal Museum of Ontario and the University of Toronto. And I was just researching leeches on the Olympic Peninsula.
Zeek Earl 39:14
Oh, really?
Aaron 39:14
And what do I find? What do I find but a publication by Sebastian Kvist himself from 2011 where he and his collaborators go to the Olympic Peninsula and are searching through lakes, they're wading into lakes, and seeing what leeches they bring up on their legs when they come out. And they found numerous, numerous leeches up there! So you were shooting Prospect in the company of leeches. You just didn't know it. To be fair, we were shooting along the Hoh River, and not– Yes, yes!
Zeek Earl 39:47
So there's leeches in the Hoh River?!
Aaron 39:49
People fish with leech fishing lures in the Hoh River all the time, [I had no idea]because the fish there, they're really attracted. Leeches are like dessert for fish.
Zeek Earl 39:57
I guess I don't wade through enough lakes. [Yeah.] We stayed, you know, as dry as we could, so yeah, did not encounter any leeches. That's good to know, I had no idea.
Aaron 40:06
Fascinating! So let's close out with this idea of leechy movies. Leechy movies. And I– we're almost done here, but I'm just wondering, movies that stick with you, that suck the life out of you, they're difficult but you can't seem to get them out of your system. Can you just talk to us about a couple of titles that have been like that?
Zeek Earl 40:26
It's so funny, the part that's like difficult to me, because I think I have this kind of inverse thing, where if I get a movie that's like, starting to drain my soul emotionally, I get like– it gives me energy.
Aaron 40:37
Gasp! Yes! A strange cyborg.
Zeek Earl 40:40
Evan mentioned before we started that like, he saw, you know, No Country, you know, For Old Men in college, and like, revisited it later and realized how a great movie it was. I similarly, I saw it in college – I actually snuck in, I didn't pay, I was broke at the time. And like immediately went back like a week later and just became obsessed with that movie! I mean, that's definitely a leech movie for me.
Aaron 41:02
Are we talking about No Country, or There Will Be Blood?
Zeek Earl 41:03
Oh no, There Will Be Blood!
Aaron 41:05
Okay, I'm with you.
Evan 41:05
They came out the same year.
Zeek Earl 41:06
Which I love both those movies, yes! [Absolutely!] There Will Be Blood, you know, was a movie I was obsessed with. I mean, also like, PT Anderson's The Master is a movie I rewatch – [Yes, it's on our list] – once a year that is incredible. I mean, but No Country for Old Men. I mean, I can't, it's amazing There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men came out in like the same year, right? Insane. [I know.] Shot within like miles of each other, and two of the best movies ever made. [Ever made.] Like No Country for Old Men, anytime we're working in genre, is a movie we rewatch just from like, just a purely craftwork standpoint. It's just immaculately made, and I could only hope to make something a tenth as good. But yeah, I think like, maybe what more fits kind of the leech definition for me, two movies that you might not expect to come out of the director of Prospect, but I mean, Kieslowski's 'Blue' and Wim Winders' 'Paris, Texas,' because like I was super obsessed with Kurosawa and Tarantino and Kubrick and all these kind of masters, kind of high school and college, and they're movies that just like I studied intensely for the craftwork and just to see how the machine was assembled. And then when I encountered those two movies, kind of later on, I think still in college, but a little later on, it was just kind of something different because it was less about understanding how they work and not fully understanding how they worked. Where, to me, 'Paris, Texas,' like if you describe it, it just sounds like the most boring thing imaginable. And you're just like watching a guy wander around the desert for like the first half an hour mostly, but it has like an emotional soul to it that to me, is purely what can only happen in the artform of cinema. And that movie, like I just have to rewatch periodically to be reminded about what's possible. I mean, I you know, I'm currently a genre filmmaker, I'm not sure I'm ever gonna get to make anything like that. But it's, there's a couple of these movies that just have a certain soul to them that's difficult to define.
Aaron 43:23
I love how you, you're like, you're like this strange kind of creature who, like a leech is attached to you, but you're drawing power from the leech. [It doesn't even know!]
Zeek Earl 43:36
During the darkest moments of the pandemic, I just went on a huge Bergman kick, and just watched a series of soul-crushing movies, that just really like, it's, I don't know, it's cathartic. Like it really can psychologically help you. Or if you're just, you know, watching passive entertainment all the time, I think you realize that you're kind of actually starving yourself. Yeah.
Banks 43:58
Mmm, ohh, ohh!
Evan 44:00
Okay, that is a great place, I think, to end it. Thank you, Zeek, so much for being with us.
Zeek Earl 44:05
Yeah, thank you guys, it was fun!
Evan 44:06
Thanks for sharing about this film and your insights and experiences. Is there anything, Zeek, that you would like to plug before we head out?
Zeek Earl 44:13
Uh, yeah! So the art collective that made Prospect does cool stuff. Right now– I mean, hopefully, that will appear on, you know, TV screens, soonish. But you can follow along on Instagram. It's @TakaCollective. If you kind of want to follow along with with the stuff we're making.
Evan 44:34
Cool. Thanks. And Taka is, that's T-A-K-A?
Zeek Earl 44:37
That's correct. Yeah.
Evan 44:38
Great. Okay. Well, great. Well, thanks again to Zeek Earl. And thanks again to everyone for listening. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're @leechpodcast, on Instagram, @theleechpodcast, and theleechpodcast.com is our website. Please send us your thoughts and questions and ideas. Thanks again to Zeek, and on behalf of Banks and Aaron, I'm Evan Cate, thanks so much for listening. This episode was hosted by Evan Cate, Banks Clark, and Aaron Jones. Editing by Evan Cate, graphic design by Banks Clark, original music by Justin Clump of Podcast Sound and Music, production held by Lisa Gray of Sound Mind Productions, and equipment help and consultation from Topher Thomas.