Watch out, Chris and Liam Hemsworth: there's another pair of Australian brothers on the rise. Nash and Joel Edgerton have a long background in entertainment -- 35-year-old Joel acted in the Star Wars prequels as Owen Lars and starred in the recent Sundance hit Animal Kingdom, while 37-year-old Nash has done stunt work for some of the biggest blockbusters ever made -- but with their new film The Square, they're poised to break out Stateside. Nash directed the neo-noir, which finds a hapless adulterer scheming with an arsonist (played by Joel, who also wrote the screenplay) to pull off a con on his mistress's husband. This being a crime drama, things do not go as planned.
The brothers rang up Movieline today to discuss their collaboration, and they also dished on a ton of upcoming projects they're involved with, including Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, the Nick Nolte/Tom Hardy fighting drama Warrior, and Universal's upcoming prequel to The Thing.
I've seen The Square described as not just as a film noir, but also as a dark comedy, because things keep getting so bad for our protagonists that you can't help but laugh. Is that a read of the film that you're OK with?
NASH EDGERTON: Yeah, definitely. Everyone has their own threshold for what they find funny and what they find shocking. Some will find it a little bit of both.
JOEL EDGERTON: Nash and I have always seen the film as dark-humored. In fact, during pre-production, we actually took a few [comedic] elements out just to balance it. We wanted the film to be a tense, dreadful experience in a way, and we felt like if we put in too many things that were goofy or broad, we'd lose that authenticity.
It's funny, because I just saw Animal Kingdom and it strikes that same balance between brutality and dark humor. Is it just something about the way Australians tackle noir?
JOEL EDGERTON: [Laughs] That's definitely true, some of the dialogue and situations in Animal Kingdom are similar to The Square. I think [Animal Kingdom director] David Michod and Nash are all good friends, so there's a similar aesthetic and crossover there. Sometimes the best way to get a shock out of an audience is to let them laugh. Playing the different sides of a situation can help a story, I think.
Nash, you had to convince Joel to finish writing the film when he lost faith in himself as a writer. What was the challenge there?
NASH EDGERTON: We started writing something together and he had no concept on how to write a film. He'd seen movies and tried, but it just wasn't that easy. As a director, I'm very instinctual; if I can see it when I'm reading it, I know I'll know how to shoot it. It was the same thing with The Square. When he gave it to me to read, it was such a page-turner and I utterly enjoyed it, and there were scenes in it I totally knew how to shoot, and then there were other ones where my mind would go blank, and those were the ones I shaped with him. If I can't visualize it, for me, there's something that doesn't work in it.
You'd shelved the story for a while before dusting it off again. What made you revive it?
JOEL EDGERTON: Two Hands had come out in Australia with Heath [Ledger] and Rose Byrne in it, and there was a spate of films that tried to piggyback on the success of that, some similar movies. We just thought, "Do we really want to run with the herd or do we want to swim off in our own direction? With The Square, we can really do our own unique thing." Thankfully, Nash read the script and really loved it and wanted to do it.
Is your dynamic as brothers similar to your dynamic on the set?
JOEL EDGERTON: It's a pretty easy kind of dynamic. We're really good mates. We're friends and we live together and we're Australian. It's a really easy relationship and we can be blunt with each other without holding grudges. The older we get, the more mature we get. [Laughs]
NASH EDGERTON: We have a shorthand with each other. We have the same sensibility, and we're going after the same result. It works. For some reason, it just works.
Nash, you have the craziest IMDb resume ever. There's entries for Stunts, Actor, Editor, Producer, Director, Writer, Editorial Department, Camera and Electrical Department. Do you ever think, "Well, there's only one or two I'd like to focus on?" How do you go after work?
NASH EDGERTON: Every now and then, a friend will ask me to work on something. I enjoy it! Other people's film sets is my film school. They do their thing, and I get to be a part of the film without the responsibility of putting it together.
Were there certain films that you were a part of that directly gave you that knowledge you needed for The Square?
NASH EDGERTON: Oh sure there were, especially when I started out. I remember when I first made a short film, the next time I was on the set as a stunt man was the first time I really noticed what was going on around me beyond the department I was involved in. I think it was The Island of Dr. Moreau, and I was really interested in what John Frankenheimer was doing.
That was a tumultuous set to get an education on!
NASH EDGERTON: Oh yeah, totally. It was total chaos. [Laughs] I was 21 or 22 years old, and I just enjoyed watching the process at such a young age. There are some film sets I've been on where you're like, "I never want my film set to be like this," and you can even learn from that. You can learn from people getting stuff right, but also from people doing things wrong, as well.
Joel, how is it that Nash got so heavily into stunt work and you didn't?
JOEL EDGERTON: It's sort of funny. Nash graduated from college and went into electrical engineering, and he was so frustrated and bored with it that he quit. Then, at exactly the same time I was sending in my applications to go to drama school, he had met these guys who had done stunts on some movie and it suddenly dawned on him: "That's what I want to do!" Nash had pretty much been a reckless guy all his teenage life. He was already a stunt man, he just wasn't getting paid for it.
Nash, you've done stunt work on some of the biggest action movies, but at the same time, you're credited for stunts on films that I wouldn't expect, like Sofia Coppola's next film, Somewhere. What did you do on that?
NASH EDGERTON: It's not that much action. Just a bit of driving, and someone had to fall down some stairs. I just came in and came out.
So how does something small like that get offered to you?
NASH EDGERTON: I knew her brother Roman because I'm a director at The Directors Bureau, which he started. I did videos through that for Bob Dylan and various other bands, and he encourages all the directors there to collaborate with each other. It's the same with Mike Mills [director of the upcoming film Beginners, which Edgerton did stunts for], who also started at The Directors Bureau. When my friends are making films, I just say, "If you need any help..." [Laughs]
Joel, you're an actor in Universal's upcoming take on The Thing, which was directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.. Is it more prequel or remake?
JOEL EDGERTON: We're not trying to reinvent the wheel. We all know that everybody who revisits that film knows that it's still a great movie and it really holds up, so we're doing a prequel rather than fully remaking it. I always try to go into a project with the right frame of mind, and if the intentions weren't good, I never would have gotten involved. I really love Matthijs, I love his passion for the original film and what he can do by revisiting the material. Remaking Psycho, for instance, there's got to be a really good reason to do it. The thing that really hooked me about Matthjis's pitch is that there's a lot of evidence in the original film that makes you ask, "How did things go down [before the movie started]?" We find a carcass, some stuff is on fire, caved in, there's an axe in the wall, all that stuff. This film will really go back to what happened just before the Thing started to mess with Kurt Russell and all those American guys.
You'll also be seen in Gavin O'Connor's mixed martial arts drama Warrior, where you're the brother to Tom Hardy and son of Nick Nolte. That's an intimidating cast already!
JOEL EDGERTON: Oh, it was incredible. To me, Warrior was a real turning point, probably one of the greatest experiences I've ever had as an actor on set. Gavin O'Connor, I'd walk into a fire for that guy. He's a brilliant filmmaker and a passionate man. I have no problem saying that it's going to be the first film that really pays homage to this burgeoning sport of mixed martial arts. It has a lot of support backing it from the mixed martial arts community and a lot of high-class fighters are in the film. It stays true to the sport while giving you a true dramatic story about these two estranged brothers, played by me and Tom, and this father who's fallen from grace. It's a painful family reunion played out on the stage of this MMA tournament, and I think it's going to be one of the great fighting movies, like Rocky. I think people will have a real treat when that comes out in September.