Putting their best Bigfoot forward
Sasquatch Sunset is perhaps the weirdest 14A-rated family movie you'll ever see. The art-house film from brother-directors David and Nathan Zellner (Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter) plays like a nature documentary for stoners who go to midnight screenings. Imagine being immersed in a family of primate-human hybrids through four seasons of their lives as they fornicate, defecate, mourn, experience terror and fight for survival in the idyll of their habitat deep in the woods of Eureka, Calif.
Maybe you've heard that it stars Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough — not that you would know it, since they're covered in hairy prostheses the entire time. We spoke with the Zellner brothers and Eisenberg to answer all your burning questions.
WHY SASQUATCHES?
The Zellners have been obsessed with sasquatch lore since they were kids, and even made a wordless Sundance short in 2011 called Sasquatch Birth Journal 2, starring Nathan as a mama squatting in a tree to give birth. (He plays the alpha male sasquatch in this film.) Most Bigfoot films are family films or horror films from the perspective of the humans, “and the Bigfoot/sasquatch is relegated to the background as a sort of bogeyman,” David says. Instead, they wanted to make a big-hearted, 89-minute movie thoroughly immersed in the world of sasquatches that's part drama and part slapstick comedy. “There's so much in this film that if you saw your dog or cat do, it's completely normalized,” David says. “But when you see these creatures with humanlike qualities, it suddenly becomes both much more uncomfortable and also hilarious.”
WHERE DID THEY SHOOT?
The actors spent 25 days in the same Northern California woods where the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film was shot, launching the imagery of Bigfoot as we know it, along with generations of conspiracists. That area is also, coincidentally, the epicentre of Bigfoot sightings in the United States.
WHY CAST ACTORS INSTEAD OF, SAY, STUNT PEOPLE?
Eisenberg had the same question, and was confused when the Zellners, whom he's known for years, handed him the script. He had just assumed they would go with pros who are great with physical movement. But within five pages, he says, he realized how emotional the film was, and how it would require actors who could pull off comic timing and body language that had to be funny and clear.
It's also, let's face it, a bit of a stunt to cast Keough and Eisenberg and then cover them in prostheses and fur.
WHY IS EISENBERG IN THIS?
He's not only in it, he's a producer! As a millennial who lives in New York and is the child of animal rights activists, he says he relished a chance to reconnect with nature.
Plus, he immediately connected with the (nameless) beta male character he would eventually play. “If I were a sasquatch, this is who I would be,” he says. “I would be the one looking at the trees when I walk, not just somebody aggressively looking for their next meal.
AND WHAT ABOUT RILEY?
The short answer seems to be that Eisenberg talked her into it. They worked together when she produced his 2023 movie Manodrome, about a bodybuilder who goes on a shooting rampage. Eisenberg knew she loves strange projects, and she had an opening in her schedule. “Riley 's one of these unusual actresses who feels more comfortable in extremis, is that the right phrase?” says Eisenberg. “She's a wonderful, natural actor, but she feels more comfortable in roles that require some kind of extreme behaviour.”
HOW DID THEY NAIL THE SASQUATCHES' MOVEMENTS AND LANGUAGE?
The actors did what Eisenberg calls “sasquatch boot camp,” hiring a miming coach, Lorin Eric Salm, who studied under Marcel Marceau. First, they practised movements on Zoom, such as grasping food with their hands rather than fingers. Then they spent months loping around their own homes. The first time they got together, “we were just rolling around on the floor of an office in Northern California, feeding each other ferns and throwing sticks at each other,” says Nathan.
DID NATHAN ZELLNER DIRECT AS A SASQUATCH?
Most of the time, it made sense for him to get into costume in the morning, even if he didn't have a scene scheduled till the end of the day, “which makes for really interesting behind-the-scene pics,” he says.