Want some?
Patrick Stewart turns nasty in Green room
Jeremy Saulnier clearly likes his colours. after all, his last movie was called Blue Ruin, and he’s continuing that theme with the nail-biting thriller, Green Room. But the key colour here isn’t green, or blue. it’s red. Blood red.
“i like hybrid genres,” says Saulnier. “look at Robocop — it’s a sci-fi action movie but the gore is full-on. i love that kind of aesthetic — and Green Room is my opportunity to go full gore.”
The movie follows a punk band called The ain’t rights, who witness evidence of a murder after unwittingly being booked to play for an audience of neo-nazi skinheads in Oregon. locked in the backstage area — the green room of the title — the band wait for the cops to arrive, unaware that the neo-nazis have other plans. Plans that involve the wrong kind of fretting, shredding and axes.
Saulnier, a former skate punk, has nurtured the story for years, and was even inspired by his own experiences. “although the film goes to a much darker place, i have been in some scary situations,” he says. “Back in the ’90s there were a lot more nazi skinheads walking the streets.” after Blue Ruin put him on the map, he considered offers to do “something bigger and classier, but i thought, ‘Hell no, i’ve gotta do this!’ i was racing against time before someone else had the same idea and made the watered-down Hollywood version.”
That version would probably cast a known tough guy to play the neo-nazis’ leader, Darcy. Saulnier plumped for Sir Patrick Stewart, a million miles from the enterprise or the X-mansion. “The film i compare it to is John Boorman’s Deliverance,” Stewart says. “Well, maybe the band are not quite as sophisticated as the people in Deliverance…”
Green room is out on May 13.