Farm Animals, Untrained Child Actors and David Gordon Green
“I’ve never worked with a hog before,” Ben Stiller says. “So when they started making crazy sounds, I’m like, ‘Wait a minute! Am I safe?’” At this, Stiller squeals and snorts like an irate pig, mimicking the scene-stealing sows from his new comedy “Nutcrackers.”
Stiller had to be ready for anything when it came to making the low-budget indie about a workaholic real estate developer who becomes a guardian to his unruly nephews after their parents die. That openness started with his co-stars, Homer, Ulysses, Arlo and Atlas Janson, four brothers who range in age from 5 to 13, who’d never been on a film set. Instead of a Hollywood soundstage, the movie was shot on their family’s Ohio farm, a rural homestead filled with chickens, goats and, yes, hogs. Clearly, Stiller wouldn’t be spending time relaxing in a trailer or enjoying other movie star perks.
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“When I called Ben, I said, ‘I hope you don’t have any allergies, because there’s every imaginable animal running around here,’” David Gordon Green, the film’s director, says. “And bring old shoes, because you’re going to be stepping in shit.”
“Nutcrackers,” which premieres at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival where it is looking to land a distribution deal, offered both men a chance to do something looser and liberating. Green first hit the scene in the early aughts with art-house films like “George Washington” and “Undertow” that were clearly influenced by his friend Terrence Malick. But he has spent the past decade making bigger, more expensive studio movies, most recently wrapping up his “Halloween” trilogy. And Stiller hasn’t starred in a film in seven years. Instead, he’s been focused on directing, making the 2018 prison-break miniseries “Escape at Dannemora” and then “Severance,” a workplace sci-fi thriller that electrified critics and audiences when it debuted in 2022.
“I never thought I’d take this much time away from acting,” Stiller admits. “It wasn’t intentional; it was just how things evolved.” But production on the second season of “Severance” stalled during the 2023 actors and writers strikes, and Stiller found himself unexpectedly available. Because “Nutcrackers” was produced and financed outside the studio system, it received a waiver from the unions to shoot. “This movie happened in a zone where it was literally the only time I could have made it,” Stiller says. “A few months later, and I couldn’t have done it.”
For Green, “Nutcrackers” started with a visit to Karey Williams, an old friend from film school in North Carolina. He was in Ohio, shooting a cameo in Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” near where Williams lived and wanted to meet her kids. There was something so disarming about the boys that he knew he could build his next movie, a kind of homage to “The Bad News Bears,” around them.
“They’re homeschooled. They have an eclectic life full of art, ballet and running a farm. And they have this house, where they leave the doors open and chickens and critters are running inside. When I said, ‘We’re going to bring Ben Stiller and make a movie right here,’ the response was ‘Why not? We’ll make dinner.’”
Green emulated the family’s laid-back style as he shot “Nutcrackers.” “We rehearsed a bit and talked through the scenes. But we didn’t overanalyze it. I didn’t want it to feel like they had to hit their marks.”
Stiller plays a narcissist, annoyed to be saddled with a bunch of kids, but he made sure that his character’s attitude didn’t spill over to his off-camera interactions with the brothers.
“I wanted to have a good relationship with them, because sometimes I have to be a jerk in the movie,” Stiller says. “Especially with a kid who hasn’t acted before, you watch them react to something you say and look hurt. First you think, ‘That’s great for the movie!’ And then you’re like, ‘Gee, I hope that’s not damaging.’”
Earning the boys’ trust meant getting in touch with his juvenile side. “Usually, you don’t want your co-stars farting, but these guys would go for it, and we’d all crack up,” Stiller says. “It would be like, ‘OK, see you kids at the Oscars!’”
UTA Independent Film Group is handling sales for “Nutcrackers,” which was produced by Rivulet Films and Rough House Pictures.
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