Deadline and the Directors Guild of America held an Art of Directing panel at the Toronto Film Festival, and the directors did not hold back. Curry Barker, Alex Gibney, Siân Heder, Rachel Morrison and Bassam Tariq gathered at the Bisha Hotel to talk about the hardest days on set, the biggest challenges and the moments that tested them. The conversation was recorded for Deadline, and the full panel is available to watch there.
Barker’s 26-Day Shooting Schedule
Curry Barker brought up the one-year anniversary of Obsession, his Focus Features release that grossed more than $500,000 at the global box office. His latest project, Anything But Ghosts — a Focus Features/Blumhouse Atomic Monster production co-starring Aaron Paul — came with a tight window. “We had a 130-page script and we had 26 days to shoot it,” Barker said. He is also starring in the film and holds the lead role, with more lines than anyone else in it.
Zach Kregger told Barker to cut 30 pages. “He just told me, ‘You have to cut 30 pages,’ and I probably should have listened to him,” Barker recalled. “But I didn’t cut a single page because I wanted to shoot all of it.”
Gibney’s Trouble With Musk
Alex Gibney faced a bigger problem while shooting his documentary Musk: nobody wanted to talk to him. The subject was Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, and Gibney found himself locked out. “Nobody wanted to talk to me, either because they were terrified and the central subject didn’t want to talk to me,” he said. “In fact, as I asked [Musk] for an interview, he responded with a tweet. And the tweet was ‘Gibney is a douche.'”
Gibney replied with “Douché.” The exchange became a talking point for the evening.
To work around the silence, Gibney assembled everything Musk had ever said on audio or video. He then built an avatar for the main interview, with two angles: one looking directly at camera, one off to the side. As editing progressed, the character was animated into a full avatar for the film.
Gibney admitted that even a sit-down might not have produced a revelatory interview. “He keeps repeating the same lines over and over and over again,” he said. “So I’m not sure I would have gotten a revolutionary interview or something that would have been truth-seeking. But it certainly would have been interesting and I would have enjoyed it.”
Tariq’s 30-Day Shoot
Bassam Tariq was in Toronto with Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, starring Mahershala Ali as an American Muslim hitman who goes to war with a mentor godfather-type in his mosque. John Cho plays a vicious far-right David Koresh-type in the film. Tariq shared that a 30-day schedule with five action set pieces was the ultimate uphill climb. He also followed filmmaking advice from his late editor-mentor Jonathan Oppenheim, who said, “In the first five minutes of the film, you tell the audience how to watch the movie.”
The film debuts in cinemas on September 25.
Morrison’s Global Locations
Rachel Morrison spoke about Love of Your Life, her Prime Video romantic drama starring Margaret Qualley, Aaron Pierre, Gabriel Basso and Patrick Schwarzenegger. She said her line producer pointed to the biggest challenge: shooting in three countries, four cities, across different states. “There’s a real tendency to pick a tax incentive state, shoot some plates and everything against green screen,” Morrison noted. “I really wanted to shoot things on the ground.”
The film was shot in London, Portugal, New Orleans and Boston. It streams on October 14.
Heder’s Accessible Set
Siân Heder won an Oscar for CODA. Her new Apple movie Being Heumann tells the story of disability-rights activist Judy Heumann, who led 100 disabled people to storm a federal building in 1977. The biggest hurdle was creating an accessible set. “It hadn’t been done before,” Heder said.
The movie stars 12 disabled leads and 60 disabled background actors. “We had to build our trailers from scratch,” she explained. “We had to build a hair and makeup trailer from scratch. We created like Ramp Villages, and from beginning to end, it was just there was no map for how to build an accessibility team and take care of people’s bodies while you’re making a movie.”
“There was one accessible trailer in all of North America; because [a production] never expects more than one wheelchair user to ever be working at the same time,” she added.
Being Heumann has a one-week play in cinemas on November 6 before moving to Apple TV on November 13.
The Panel’s Takeaways
The panel showed directors willing to push through obstacles. Barker refused to cut a single page of his script. Gibney built an avatar around a man who wouldn’t speak to him. Tariq packed five action scenes into 30 days. Morrison shot across four cities instead of relying on green screen. Heder built trailers from scratch for a cast of disabled performers.
Each director found a way forward, even when the path wasn’t clear.
Key Challenges at a Glance
- Barker: 130-page script, 26-day shoot, starring and directing lead role
- Gibney: Nobody would talk, built an avatar from audio/video
- Tariq: 30-day schedule, five action set pieces
- Morrison: Three countries, four cities, four states
- Heder: First accessible trailers built from scratch
Source material: “Curry Barker, Alex Gibney, Siân Heder, Rachel Morrison & Bassam Tariq On Taking Chances & Conquering Obstacles – Deadline & DGA’s Art Of Directing At TIFF,” Deadline.
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