Joe Skinner: What do you think is the responsibility of storytellers?
Michael Sarnoski: Storytelling is how we understand ourselves. Like storytelling is religion. Storytelling is how we place ourselves in the cosmos. Like the stories we tell ourselves about the things that we do end up becoming more important than the things that we do usually. So, we’re becoming more aware of kind of the role of that kind of narrative in our own lives and in culture and for better or worse, I don’t know if it’s a good thing.
Joe Skinner: Do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing?
Michael Sarnoski: You know, knives cut bread as well as they do flesh. Like I think anything can be a good or bad thing. It’s about how we choose to responsibly use it and use it through kindness and empathy.
Joe Skinner: This is “American Masters: Creative Spark,” and I’m your host, Joe Skinner. Our guest today is filmmaker Michael Sarnoski. The director of “Pig,” and “A Quiet Place: Day One,” is back with an uncompromising take on the “Robin Hood,” story, starring Hugh Jackman in the title role. When you hear Robin Hood, you probably think of the heroic outlaw who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. But what if he was just an outlaw, a violent outlaw who has to reckon with this past? The death of Robin Hood takes that on and asks us to reconsider our own myth-making in how we define ourselves.
Joe Skinner: What drew you to the mythology of Robin Hood?
Michael Sarnoski: I mean, I think like, I don’t know, any little boy growing up in Wisconsin, I had seen Disney’s “Robin Hood,” and I loved that. And then, I had this kind of mentor father figure who gave me a copy of his like childhood “Robin Hood,” book from like the 40s. And I remember reading that after having seen the Disney “Robin Hood,” and it was so different. It was like, this is crazy. And there was this one story in it that was Robin Hood’s death, and I always found that really fascinating. I think the strange like combination of the childish version of the Disney “Robin Hood,” that I love and is so fun. And then realizing that like, “Oh, wait a minute, this mythic figure died like a normal person.” I’m trying to like come to terms with that, and I think I spent the rest of my life trying to come to terms with that. And then, I had to make a movie about it to deal with it.
Joe Skinner: I guess what made the “Robin Hood,” mythology serve as such a good scaffolding for the kind of story you wanted to tell?
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, I mean, I think for this project where it came from was, you know, this, initially that fascination with the idea of like this sort of immortal folklore figure and the sort of very human death in that story about him. And then, I was always really fascinated by the relationship between Robin and the prioress in that story. It’s a pretty short, simple story and I always kind of felt like there’s more meat on those bones that I wanna explore. So, I think for me it became about dissecting that relationship between Robin Hood and this prioress, Sister Brigid, played by Jodie. And really making it go beyond the sort of surface level story that the old ballads had and diving into like what would that world actually feel like, what would these characters feel like, what would this interaction feel like without giving too much away. Just like what, how would this play out on a human level beyond just like the few lines in the old ballads. And then, I really went back to the old ballads to kind of try and find what these characters might be like, because there’s sort of these like five original Robin Hood ballads that are sort of the earliest written ballads. And they’re very different from the Robin Hood we think of nowadays, like they don’t have the crusades. They don’t even really have that steal from the rich give to the poor. Like he’s this, you know, wily outlaw who does brutal things, cuts off people’s heads and wears them into town to take on their identity, like very kind of like disturbing folklore fairytale vibe that we were familiar with in those sorts of stories. So, I used that as a lot of inspiration for what this character actually was going to be. And then, it was all just fun and games from there.
Joe Skinner: Could you sort of recap what that original story was? What that premise is between the two characters?
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, the original story is basically Robin is injured or falls ill, ends up at Kirklees Priory, which we’ve changed a lot of these details. This is not the plot of the movie, but the original story. He ends up at this priory and then a prioress who turns out to be basically an evil nun bloodlets him to death because in some, it’s that she’s, you know, working with some other guy that has a vendetta against Robin and others. It’s either way it’s always portrayed as like she’s the bad evil lady who decides to kill good Robin. And then, he, at the end of the story, the part that I think most people are familiar with is at the very end of the story, he shoots an arrow out the window and says, “Wherever that lands, bury me.” And the lore is that that’s where, you know, his grave is is near Kirklees Priory. But that’s the basic thing. Evil nun kills goodly Robin, who was heroic all his life and he decides not to take his vengeance because he’s such a good guy. And then he says, “Bury me where my arrow lands.”
Joe Skinner: You know, obviously, “The Death of Robin Hood” though subverts that in several ways. So, what drew you to that subversion and what is that subversion? What is the premise of this one?
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, I think I learned early on not to make subversion sort of the point of it. Like I think I started from a place of I want to examine these two characters, this prioress and Robin Hood. And I really just want to dissect that relationship, examine what these final days look like. And I think a lot of the subversion kind of just came naturally from that. It’s like, okay, what if Robin, what if the prioress wasn’t this evil wench who just like hates the good guy and what would the life of a prioress have looked like back then? And then, I started researching Hildegard Von Bingen, who was kind of this polymath German nun from that time period, who was like a composer, and a doctor, and a nun and was this sort of like fascinating character. And then, I started researching like what would the life of a medieval outlaw or bandit have actually been like. And I was listening to a lot of lectures and there was this one quote that I loved that was you know, people think of medieval battles as like knights in shining armor riding into battle, when really it was mostly peasants beating each other to death with shovels. And I was like, “That’s Robin’s world.” And like, and even one of the earliest little lines about Robin Hood in an old history book called the “Scotichronicon,” says, you know, he was this murderous cutthroat who all the common folk are so obsessed with telling stories about. And so, it was kind of like, okay, like what if he did just live this brutal life, and then lived long enough to see the stories that maybe he even partook in telling turn into the narrative of his life. And like what would that do to someone when they’re grappling with the difference between the sort of like hard, violent life they lived and these stories that are being told. And trying to figure out, you know, how does my life end and where does this go and what does it mean. And then, they meet this person that kind of opens up their understanding of the world and they form this relationship that kind of gives them a second chance at connection. And so it, you know, there are subversive things about that but in my mind, that all sort of unfolded from just trying to like dissect these characters a little more deeply.
Joe Skinner: The first act is pretty stark brutality.
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah.
Joe Skinner: What was the motivation behind introducing us to this world in such a way?
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, I mean, that started from one, if we’re gonna say Robin lived a violent life and we need to show that to you in a way that it’s not just like, “Oh yeah, of course everyone lived in violent.” It’s like, no, no, no, this is, we’re not kidding, like he wasn’t a good guy, and he did bad things, and lived a violent life. And so, it was the goal of that was to demonstrate that and sort of show people that if you’re coming into the movie being like, “Oh, I wanna see an action adventure with Robin Hood.” It’s like we’ll show you that, but in a light that like by the end of it, you should be like, “Oh my God, like this violence feels like upsetting.” Like we tried to approach the violence as more of almost like a war movie or a horror movie. Like the violence should feel very real and visceral to the point where like it’s not fun violence. It’s violence with the goal of portraying this is maybe what it kind of felt like to live in those times in the most brutal parts of those times. And so, that was kind of the goal was to be like let’s sort of give you what you think you want with the sort of Robin Hood action, but like portray it in a way that’s like so grounded and so visceral that you can really understand what this character is grappling with then for the rest of the movie as he’s dealing with this kind of legacy of violence, and this cycle of violence, and what his role has been in that, and what the role of storytelling has been in that. So we kind of needed to land that, which is part of why at the first third of the movie, it’s all shot in 239. It’s like very wide. And then as we get to the priory, it changes to 166. So, the aspect ratio changes to this much more square aspect ratio that really emphasizes sort of the internal worlds of these characters and the intimacy, but we want it to kind of be like, “Here’s your epic. For what it’s worth, you should probably have some qualms with some of it. And now let’s sort of dissect that and see how the characters feel about that.”
Joe Skinner: Yeah, it reminded me of this filmmaker, Steve McQueen, the movie “Hunger,” the way it’s divided structurally too. I mean, it seemed like you were really thinking about structure in specific ways.
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, absolutely. “Hunger,” was actually that was, I was trying to think of a list of movies that were influences and that’s actually a great one to add on there. That was definitely what I thought about. Yeah, no, I mean, it’s there’s a pretty stark transition from the beginning to the second half. And they should feel, they’re very different, but they should all be rooted in that Robin character and like what he’s experiencing. And like, you know, this is the life he has lived at the beginning. And then, he finds this new life and because of that, he kind of changes how he thinks about himself and his history, and the meaning behind his life, but it’s still like he is the through line. And that’s sort of what Hugh is great at is that he can do just the, you know, animalistic violence, but then also the warmth, and keenness, and tenderness that is required to kind of pull off the second half as well. And watching him kind of do that transition over the course of the movie was essential and so fun like that. I mean, that’s what he kind of nailed.
Joe Skinner: Yeah, there’s such a muscular kind of tenderness to it
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah.
Joe Skinner: The way he portrays it. Did you always have Hugh Jackman in mind for the role when you were writing it? Were you kind of visualizing as you’re writing the characters the actors that you had in the roles?
Michael Sarnoski: I’m sure, someday I will not be saying this, but I’ve never to this day written a part with an actor in mind. Like I actually kind of go out of my way to try not to do that because I really, I love the writing process and I love going into my little hermit mode. And I like writing a character that I feel connected to on the page without assigning even like the face of an actor to that person. So, I didn’t write Robin with anyone in mind. And yeah, it wasn’t until Hugh read the script and just I spoke to him and he just got it on every level that it was like, “Yeah, this should be you.” Like I wanna write characters that feel full on the page, and then when you find an actor who really understands them, they will get exactly what you’re going for on the page, but then bring some whole new level to that character. And that was what Hugh clearly was gonna do with it. So yeah, I’ve yet to write a part for any specific person, but I think this part was kind of destined for him. I kind of feel that way with like most of my movies that like, yeah, by the time you finish it, like who else could that have been?
Joe Skinner: I always wondered with projects like this, the tongue of the film is so different than our native tongue.
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah.
Joe Skinner: How did that process happen? What did you do there?
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, I mean, it’s a lot of things. I think, you know, it’s watching medieval movies, watching like that’s a part of it, but I also think it’s kind of the same thing as how we interact with mythological characters. Like we all have this kind of idea of Robin Hood in our minds that is like probably it’s like 75% the same for all of us, but there’s, but it’s not coming from one particular source. It’s this weird amalgamation of sources and like what feels true to that character. It depends on what your exposure to that character has been, but there is this sort of like vague communal cultural sense of that character. And I think it’s the same with like what feels right for period dialogue where like I wasn’t always… Like we definitely worked with a consultant for historical, for dialect, for, you know, all the sort of historical details of the movie, but like when I was writing that dialogue, it’s less about being like, oh, I’m checking old texts. Like if you wrote a text in middle English, no one would understand a word of the movie. So, it’s about like capturing something that kind of like feels right and doesn’t feel like you’re trying to put something on, but also it’s, I don’t know, like it sort of just felt like I was trying to tap into some way of speaking and some rhythm that like was buried deep in my mind since I was a little kid of like, yeah, this is what a “Robin Hood,” movie should sound like. And it’s not overly lyrical or overly Shakespearean, but it’s also not modern day and it just kind of felt right. And I tried not to overthink it, but it had a certain rhythm to it that made sense. And the actors seemed to understand it and respond to it. And but yeah, I think it’s like in the same way that we have our cultural understanding of Robin Hood, we have our cultural understanding of like what medieval speaking should sound like, and then we each have our own individual one. And I think this was kind of my individual version of that.
Joe Skinner: So going into this, I kind of assumed you would be more dogmatic about authenticity in a way. But it sounds like there’s a balance there of being, you know, faithful to the period like you are with the violence for example, but then balancing that out with your own personal connection to it.
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s you’re dogmatic about authenticity with certain things, but at the end of the day, you want a movie that feels real. And like with everything you do in a movie between eye lines, and lights, and all that stuff, you’re lying in order to feel real. So it’s the same with dialogue, with history. It’s like, okay, how are we, what is the thing inside of me that I’m trying to capture that I’m trying to explore. How do I communicate that to an audience and make it feel lived in and real? At times, accurate truth is the one way to achieve that. But at times, like well-placed lies and combinations and adjustments is how you make something feel real. So, it was kind of just you’re always kind of trying to find the organic way to find that. And like there’s tons of research and real stuff in here. Like I’ll never make the claim that this is like someone 100% historically accurate movie, but that’s always something that we started from a place of like historical accuracy. And then, you make the nudges and adjustments as feel right for the project.
Joe Skinner: You know, I just feel like in our present day, there is this kind of resurging interest in exploring old mythologies and exploring old folklores. What do you think it is that makes mythology and folklore attractive to a contemporary audience?
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think there are so many things. Like every folklore has its kind of specific reason that it existed historically and if it’s still around today, it’s probably because that reason evolved and changed and that was true for Robin. Like all these things, they meant something when they started. They still mean some of that, but like people found ways to repurpose that and to tell their own stories around it and they’ve stayed alive. But I think also on top of that, we’ve become so steeped in like storytelling and narrative nowadays. And we always have been as humans, like that is just language. That is cavemen sitting around a fire telling each other’s stories. But like I think we’re surrounded by narratives constantly nowadays with like the internet and social media and like that’s easy to get into. But like I think because of that, we should be and hopefully are more curious about like how do we form these sorts of narratives and how do we decide which ones sort of break through and how do we decide which ones we’re gonna like integrate into our own self identity. So, I think explorations of things like these long held narratives that we don’t always think about and trying to like sort of break them down and see where they came from and see what they might mean to us and what the responsibility around those stories is enticing because we’re sort of aware of, oh wow, storytelling has a big role in our lives now. We’re being sold stories constantly. How do we navigate that water? So, I think there is like inherently that’s something that we want to dissect and explore or at least we should. Sometimes, we’re told not to and to like ignore that stuff and not think about it, but I think we should.
Joe Skinner: And also now too, people are even more aware that there isn’t necessarily an absolute truth to storytelling, and that seems especially resonant in the film.
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, there’s definitely, you know, I think if you asked like 10 years ago, the average person what like meta narrative meant or something, like they would be like, “What are you talking about?” But like now that like memes and things, like all these things that used to be sort of in the, I don’t know, some sort of scholarly world and Dawkins and like now it’s like, oh yeah, we all know what a meme is and we all know what meta means. And like all these sort of like we’re so like self-aware of the version of ourselves that we present to society, because of social media and all this stuff that like we’re becoming more aware of kind of the role of that kind of narrative in our own lives and in culture and for better or worse. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but it’s definitely something we’re aware of.
Joe Skinner: Do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing?
Michael Sarnoski: I just said. (laughs)
Joe Skinner: I’m curious.
Michael Sarnoski: I think, I mean, like, you know, knives cut bread as well as they do flesh. Like I think anything can be a good or bad thing. It’s about how we choose to responsibly use it and use it through kindness and empathy.
Joe Skinner: You know, you’ve talked a little bit about “Robin Hood,” when you were a kid, but I kind of want to dive a little deeper into that. So, you know, you mentioned that “Robin Hood,” was a story that your dad shared with you when you were a kid, right?
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, I think so the full story is that the… So, my dad was a very outdoorsy guy. He was like an Eagle Scout. He sort of, I think you see some of that in “Pig.” Like he fostered sort of a love of nature and a respect for that in me. And you know, we loved comic books and “Robin Hood,” and all that stuff. Like we would watch Disney’s “Robin Hood,” together. He would read me “Spider-Man,” comics at night. Like we were nerds who liked nature. That was our jam. And then, he passed away when I was nine, actually coming back from a camping trip. We were on this big beautiful camping trip in the boundary waters and on the way back, he died in a car accident. And actually the mentor who gave me “Robin Hood,” it was like, it was sort of in reaction to my dad dying. My relationship with our neighbor became much closer and he gave me this book as kind of this like, “Hey kiddo, like read about ‘Robin Hood.’ Like I know it was something you and your dad enjoyed.” And so, you know, the deeper answer is that that whole sort of challenging of, oh, the childish understanding of “Robin Hood,” and the understanding of Robin as this folklore character who actually could die like any normal human being happened right at that moment when I was dealing with that, with my own dad and trying to like integrate that understanding into my own life. So, I think that’s probably part of why this has like stuck with me for so long was that the idea of an iconic masculine figure in your life, be it Robin Hood or your dad, dying and what that means and how you understand them and their role in your lives and like the lessons you’ve learned from them, like it was just something that kind of was swirling around at that time and has stuck with me as something that I’ve been dealing with for a long time.
Joe Skinner: Wow. Yeah, I mean so my dad also died when I was young and something that your film made me think about in relation to that is just the grieving process. And the way that, you know, after somebody passes that’s a close part of your life, so much of this, the narrative around them is developed after their passing in a lot of ways, whether it’s 30 years or 20 years or whatever it might be. And so, I’m just curious, you know, to learn more about that thinking with the film.
Michael Sarnoski: I mean, there’s obviously this running thing in the story about the role of narratives, the role of how we explain ourselves to other people and how the explanations of ourselves get integrated into our own identity. Like the Little John character, Little John/Edward, who’s played by Bill Skarsgard, is kind of exactly that. He was, in my mind, he was basically like a child soldier for Robin. Like Robin recruited some young kids and they became like what people think of as the merry men. And he, you know, he used, Robin used stories of adventure and excitement to kind of like create a gang of criminals that would follow him and give him power and all that stuff. And he told those stories so much that now Little John, who’s grown up and become a father, kind of doesn’t know what was true. Like in his mind, I always would describe him as a monster baby. Like he’s this sort of amoral, childish character who’s also kind of sweet and like thinks back on their adventures as like, “Oh, we had such grand times and like we’re on such a grand adventure,” as he’s like beating some like poor peasant to death. And like even he, as he’s become this kind of God-fearing father to Little Margaret, he doesn’t know what that meant and it’s sort of taken control of his own identity. And the movie becomes, really about for all the characters, everyone kind of has like two different identities that they’re trying to grapple with. Like, you know, there’s Edward and Little John. There’s the prioress and kind of the true story of who she was before the prioress. There’s Robin and Randolph. Like there’s all these, there’s the leper and his identity. And like everyone kind of has these sides of themselves that they’re trying to figure out. Like a lot of the story becomes Robin trying to explain to Little Margaret kind of how can she make sense of the two sides of her father that she saw. Like she was raised with this, you know, God-fearing, loving farmer father named Edward. And then for the last little while, he turned into this kind of like psycho monster named Little John that she doesn’t have any frame of reference for. And like, how do you explain to them, “Well, both of them were your father. People are complicated, kiddo.” Like, how do you do that? And yeah, so it definitely, that is all throughout the story.
Joe Skinner: What do you think is the responsibility of storytellers?
Michael Sarnoski: I think we have a huge responsibility as storytellers. I think we also have a huge responsibility to understand that we are all storytellers. And that the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we allow to be told to us and that we allow to sort of bring into our identity shape us and all the people around us. So yeah, I think storytelling is how we understand ourselves. Like storytelling is religion. Storytelling is how we place ourselves in the cosmos. Like storytelling is, you know, I don’t want to say… Storytelling is everything. Like we do things and the stories we tell ourselves about the things that we do end up becoming more important than the things that we do usually. So yeah, we have a huge responsibility and I think we all share that responsibility. And we should acknowledge that and like take it seriously and use those, you know, the lame thing would be like use those for good, but yeah, use those, know that we have the power to influence other people with our stories and try to tell those stories in a way that in our minds could maybe help people or open them up or open them up to their responsibility to storytelling. Yeah, there’s a lot of responsibility. But we also can’t let that like run our lives. It’s like, you know, I feel a huge responsibility as a filmmaker to tell stories that I think, you know, mean something to me or like can express something that… I like to tell stories that are kind of right on the edge of what I’m grappling with as human being. Like I don’t want to just like, I’m not trying to like tell some lesson that’s like, “Hey kids, like sit down and like, here’s the story you’re gonna learn for tonight and here’s the lesson I want you to take.” Like I wanna tell stories that are, “Hey, look at me trying to figure out something that’s just on the periphery of my own like moral understanding of the world and what I’m trying to deal with in my own life. Let me bring you into that internal conversation I’m having and let me make a movie that like is that so we can see if we can get a little closer to something that feels true or something that feels whole together.” So, I’m not saying that like we have to like tell basic moral stories, but we have to sort of like, you know, allow like, make our allow ourselves to be vulnerable and allow the audiences to be vulnerable with us as we explore murky territories.
Joe Skinner: So then, what do you hope people take away from this film or any film that you’re making?
Michael Sarnoski: Yeah, I mean, different things in every film. I mean probably the recurring things that I hope people will take away are hope. Like I tend to make films, you know, a lot of films about death everyone sort of assumes like, oh, you make like bleak sad films. And I’m like kind of. I actually think I make very like hopeful films because I like to start in a very bleak, difficult place and then see if we can get our characters to a place where like we’re not discounting the bleakness or the horrors of that world. But we’re getting somewhere where we’re like, we feel like we can do something about it or we feel like we can find peace in that. So, you know, I think if you look at all my movies, they all tend to be about like someone who sort of like has decided, okay, this is my life now. Like they’ve like isolated themselves or decided that like, you know, for all intents and purposes, like I’ve kind of done what I’m gonna do for better or worse. And, you know, I’ve lost connection with the world, I’ve lost connection with myself, but then even in those moments of deepest darkness and disconnection, if you are just a little bit open to the world around, you can find new connections and new ways of understanding the people around you and yourself. And that you can still grow and you can still find hope. And it’s not always gonna be pretty and it’s not always gonna be easy. And it’s usually gonna involve having to face the darkest sides of yourself that you probably have been trying to keep at bay and that’s why you’ve isolated yourself. But I think all of that taps into just our own basic sense of stasis and a want a desire to change and improve. It’s like we always feel kind of like, well, I’m just a schmuck who’s like stuck and like not gonna do anything more but like, oh, but like maybe like, you know, if the right thing happens maybe I can like still see the beauty in the world and we all want that. And that’s something I want people to feel like they can access.
Joe Skinner: I think that’s a beautiful note to end on. Thanks so much for coming in.
Michael Sarnoski: Thank you so much. This was great.
