Director Jeremy Saulnier Talks About Getting the Punks-Versus-Skins Dynamic Right in 'Green Room'

Callum Turner, Anton Yelchin, and Alia Shawkat. Photo by Scott Patrick Green, courtesy of A24.

Making a movie about any subset of punk for mainstream consumption is a daunting task. More often than not, the end result comes off feeling inauthentic and uncomfortable, with characters dressed to the nines in patches and spikes, spouting off hacky punk dialogue written by someone who—at best—has flipped through Please Kill Me once or twice. This is what makes Jeremy Saulnier’s latest punks versus-skins-thriller, Green Room, so refreshing. Rather than telegraphing the minutiae of punk sentiments with every line, the punk characters and music are just the basis on which the narrative can evolve. The result is a bloody and terse siege film that, in spite of its bleak and gory visuals, does well to develop a heightened, emotional basis for viewers to connect with.

Though the film positions punks against neo-Nazi skins, led by Patrick Stewart, it manages to avoid most, if not all, of the clichés typically associated with this premise. Instead of focusing heavily on the ideological differences between the film’s punk protagonists (who are on a fledgling tour with their band, The Ain’t Rights), Saulnier’s film is concerned more with depicting a world of happenstance. Despite The Ain’t Rights antagonizing their neo-Nazi crowd by opening their set with Dead Kennedys’ “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” they more or less win the hostile crowd over by the end of their set. When they emerge from the stage, they are even handsomely paid (any who has spent any time touring with a shitty punk band will know that over 300 dollars for a single show is nearly unheard of) for their troubles. But in the blink of an eye, everything changes when The Ain’t Rights’ bassist, Pat, played by Anton Yelchin, storms into the venue’s green room to see something he wasn’t supposed to see. From here, Green Room hurls towards its grizzly and bloody conclusion. As the follow-up to his indie smash, Blue Ruin, Green Room further shows just how careful a filmmaker Saulnier is, with every instance filled with suspense and dread. It’s a suffocating but ultimately rewarding experience.

Since the film deals directly with familiar aspects of punk culture, it seemed fitting to sit down with Saulnier to talk about his first-hand experiences in and out of the scene, as well as what attracted him to the concept of creating a thriller out of the age-old conflict between punks and neo-Nazi skinheads.

Patrick Stewart, Brent Werzner, Samuel Summer, Colton Ruscheinsky, and Mason Knight. Photo by Scott Patrick Green, courtesy of A24.

Noisey: How did you first get into punk and hardcore?
Jeremy Saulnier: My very first taste of punk rock and hardcore was the Dead Kennedys. On a road trip across country, we stopped in Colorado at my parents’ friends’ house and they had a son who was older and into punk rock. He was the guy who introduced me to punk. I only knew him that one day, but it stuck with me because I was able to dub Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables over my Beverly Hill Cop soundtrack that I had on cassette—but I preserved “Axel F,” just so you know. That was sacred ground.

So that planted the seed, how did you break out into other bands?
I was a skateboarder at a very young age and, at the time, I was pretty good at skating so I was hanging out with a lot of older kids. There’s always been that association with punk rock music and skateboarding; skate culture had that punk infusion, as far as I can remember. So I was that young kid—eight or nine years old—hanging around a lot of older kids, trying to see what t-shirts they were wearing and remember the band names. Then, I’d go home and ask my mom to take me to the record shop and I’d try to remember who the fuck The Meatmen were [laughs] and tried to find the albums.

Alia Shawkat and Anton Yelchin. Photo by Scott Patrick Green, courtesy of A24.

You grew in Alexandria, does that mean you spent a lot of time heading up to DC for shows?
Yes, as soon as my older friends started getting their driver’s licenses, we’d drive across the Memorial Bridge out of Alexandria into Washington, DC. I was still pretty young, and felt out of my depths, but that’s when I became involved with the actual scene. My friends and I formed a hardcore band, my other buddies were in punk bands, and it just became this collective fusion of punk, hardcore, zombie films, and home videos.

By the time you became involved in the DC scene, then, it had already passed its prime. What was DC like at this point?
This is when it was the murder capital of the US. So it was skuzzy and it was dangerous. There were all these different movements within the scene. It was so diverse. Of course, you have some Nazi skins who would show up in boots, braces, and wearing swastikas—and that was something I did not see living in Alexandria. They attracted a certain amount of violence and, more often than not, they were the victims, because they were not welcomed.

Callum Turner, Joe Cole, Alia Shawkat, and Anton Yelchin. Photo by Scott Patrick Green, courtesy of A24.

Did you experience a lot of this violence firsthand?
The only real violence that I witnessed was a stabbing outside of a club that was nonfatal but it struck me as something just disturbing; just having to walk through those droplets of blood where it happened when they shut down the venue and kicked us all out.

To transition, then, to Green Room, where did this idea of a film revolving around punks versus Nazi skins first blossom?
The premise has been haunting me for almost a decade. The idea probably originated back in 2006 or 2007. I wanted to make a film about punk for its energy and aesthetic value. I didn’t want to make a movie about “punks being punks,” but to use it as a way for me to immerse the audience into this amazing culture; to use it as a propulsive force for the narrative. Setting a siege thriller in a green room is one thing, but having it take place during a live concert, that dynamic was so great and I could mine it for so much tension, energy, and chaos. So it stayed in my brain for a while because, as an independent filmmaker, I didn’t have access to the resources to depict that kind of world, to have that kind of control over an entire concert venue that had to be in a remote area. So I let it sit back there and remain dormant until after Blue Ruin when I had a chance to get it made.

It’s interesting that you mention that you weren’t interested in making a film about punks being punks because that is probably what I found most refreshing about Green Room. You use the punks versus skins backdrop as a way of really creating a launchpad for discussing a whole depth of questions.
Well, I certainly thought it was an original premise and it’s as high-concept of an idea as I have ever had. The mission was to not get too bogged down, ideologically. It was to just plop the audience in that world, so they are there, their eyes are wide open, and their ears are attentive. I get aggravated by false notes. Being in a hardcore band, rarely did we talk about how punk we were. The rule is that the characters can’t really speak to the audience, it is not a guided tour of a punk scene. You have to watch and listen and feel that there is an authority here that the world is true and very believable, so that it helps you sit back and relax—maybe you won’t know everything they are taking about, maybe you don’t get all the vernacular, but you sure as shit know you are somewhere where you shouldn’t be and that helps to intensify the experience.

Imogen Poots. Photo by Scott Patrick Green, courtesy of A24.

On that point of ideology, one thing that struck me is that the film almost de-politicizes the groups. It would be far too easy to paint a film of anti-fascist punks who infiltrate a neo-Nazi organization. That’s not this film, though. The punks are almost ambivalent, even apathetic, to the Nazis, who they have no problem playing for and taking money from. On the flipside, you intentionally almost never make the Nazis the talking heads for Nazi ideology. It’s more in the symbols that we recognize their values. What was the reason behind this?
Absolutely, and the reason as to why I had the Nazi skinheads as the antagonists was not because they are Nazis, but because they really are organized—there is a structure and hierarchy, there is a gang culture, they wear uniforms, and, of all the subgroups within the hardcore scene, I do believe they are the most militant and likely to have access to weaponry. But it is the practice and not the contents of that ideology. That was very much a part of the film and to not indulge in the easy way out and hear a big Nazi speech so we can all root against them. The real challenge was to humanize them. The key was to humanize everyone and then really start to analyze these labels. Can you define someone because of what they are wearing? Are all Nazi punks inherently born racist or are they recruited? They have some sort of hurt and need that is being fulfilled by being part of the group that can attract them with music and then bastardize their ideology and channel their hatred or sorrow towards a certain group. That seems to be the case, because punk and hardcore attracts a whole lot of people, and most of the energy is very positive and the community is very supportive, but sometimes it’s mishandled or treated with a certain amount of irresponsibility and used to serve other means. That’s the whole thing about Green Room, it’s not so much about “Nazis are bad,” it’s about power structure and how ideology, content, and understanding is used to give marching orders to give thrust behind these other movements that cause so much strife and carnage in our country. All this back-and-forth and hatred piles up, and you gotta ask, not only what are we fighting for but who are we fighting for? Because it seems to be that these young skinheads and The Ain’t Rights aren’t really benefiting from this battle. It’s one guy at the top and he has a motivation that is not involved in ideology, it is involved with self-preservation and enterprise. That is very relevant to the mainstream political landscape, not so much the extreme, marginal fringe groups.

To go back to the music again, I was wondering about your choices for the neo-Nazi club. You tended to focus on metal—and metal bands that aren’t associated with Nazis, like Midnight for instance. I was wondering if there was a reason you avoided using groups more closely associated with neo-Nazi skin movements like Skrewdriver or other RAC bands.
To be honest, I didn’t want to license that music and be involved in commerce with those bands. The other thing was that I wanted to get more of a metal vibe from the music venue, like a Motörhead style. It was pure atmosphere. Midnight is a known metal band and they have a real cool rock and roll sound and, to be completely honest, it was used to replace a Motörhead song we couldn’t afford. But once we replaced it, I had said that I wouldn’t even replace it if we had the money. Midnight was it. There was actually subtle amounts of actually supporting the scene as well. When I licensed the music for Green Room, I went to my friends. We even supported a crew member, licensing two songs from her band. That is part of the reason of doing this shit because, while we didn’t have a ton of money, we were able to archive their songs on screen. All of my hardcore experience is pre-internet, and I don’t have much to show for it, but now I have Green Room.

Patrick Stewart. Photo by Scott Patrick Green, courtesy of A24.

Without spoiling the finale, there is a reoccurring motif of the “desert island band” question—if you are stuck on a desert island and you can only choose one band to listen to, who would it be? Can you explain a little about the importance of this question in the film for the characters?
The desert island band theme came to me early on because of how I felt being a member of the hardcore scene. I was true, I wanted to be there, and I was physically there and giving it my all. But sometimes, like in a lot of scenes, you feel like maybe you are an imposter. Maybe you don’t like every band or every song. Maybe you go to the store and get a JFA record and you think it actually sucks. [Laughs] Sometimes it can feel like it is about how many names you can drop and how expansive you vinyl collection is; like a contest. Someone even tweeted after seeing Green Room that “The Ain’t Rights are calling themselves hardcore, calling themselves real, but they have a Fugazi sticker on their bumper.” And I was like, first off, that’s Ian MacKaye, how are you calling that not true? And that is the whole point; it is not a contest. As you get older and “cool” is less a currency, you understand that you can have difference tastes. For me, it wasn’t about my knowledge of hardcore—I can’t drop 1,000 bands that I toured with—but I know that I loved being there. It was the experience of showing up and being true. So as this insane movie unfolds and the pressure cooker falls over, all these facades and posturing start to melt away, they start to admit that maybe their favorite band is something else… and that’s just as punk as anything else. It all boils down to rock and roll.

Joe Yanick is on Twitter - @JoeYanick