Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Movies, Paramount Pictures | Tagged: john turturro, orlando bloom, Republic Pictures, Sean Ellis, The Cut

The Cut Director Sean Ellis on Desert Filming, Influences & More

Director Sean Ellis (Anthropoid) spoke to us about his psychological thriller, The Cut, filming in the desert, cut scenes, 'Alien' & more.

Sean Ellis has worked his way up creatively in Hollywood for almost 30 years since he started directing music videos, starting with 1997's All Saints: Never Ever. He would make his feature debut in 2006's Cashback for Magnolia Pictures, and develop his filmography with After Dark's The Broken (2008), Oscilloscope's Metro Manila (2013), Bleecker Street Media's Anthropoid (2016), and LD Entertainment's The Cursed (2021). His latest is a psychological sports thriller, The Cut, for Republic Pictures/Paramount, which follows a former champion boxer (Orlando Bloom) who is training for redemption after a career-ending defeat, but as obsession takes hold and reality unravels, he may be spiraling into something far more terrifying. Ellis spoke to Bleeding Cool about his most difficult scene to film, which took place at the beginning of filming, what he had to cut, and how the Alien franchise set him on a path to filmmaking.

How 'Alien' Influenced 'The Cut' Director Sean Ellis as a Filmmaker

What was the most difficult scene to film?

The scene in the desert was probably the most difficult. It was our first day of shooting, and we had all sorts of problems that day, like cameras being super loud, dropping cameras, and running out of time. It was John's first day, and I think he looked at us like we were some amateur troupe. He was shaking his head at some point. He wanted to be in a place where he could do good work, and we couldn't on that day for various reasons.

We did manage to get the scene of them both [John and Orlando] in the car, where he's talking about failure. John came up to me a couple of days later after he'd seen the rushes, and he's like, "I think that scene's going to cut quite nicely." I looked at the rushes and agreed with him, so we scheduled another evening in the desert to mop up all the things we didn't get, which were the wide shots and some digging into the sand. We got those on another night.

I remember watching those scenes in the hotel room. Were there any scenes you had to reshoot, because maybe you thought what you had might have been too cathartic? Were there any scenes you cut out because you felt they might deviate from the message of the film?

There were some flashback scenes we cut. There was a scene where the mom sells him as a male prostitute to a man, and that was a bit tough. I think a lot of the audience reacted quite strongly to that, and there was originally some pressure on me from some of the producers to cut it. I went to Toronto with it in, and we saw some of the reviews and spoke to a few who felt that scene had probably gone too far. We removed that, and we relied a little bit on the mom coming back in various scenes in the present, where she's like a zombie ghost who's watching him, and that lent into the horror genre a bit more. Ultimately, I think Orlando's performance was so strong that he didn't need these. They felt like crutches, so we removed them and brought his performance up front and center.

What are your biggest filmmaking influences?

I've got a lot of them, but if I go back to the beginning, it was Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) that made me want to be a filmmaker. I remember seeing that when I was 12 or 13 on home video, thinking how I loved horror films at that age. I would rent horror movies from the video shop, but Alien was on a different level. There was a craftsmanship to that movie, the production design, photography, and what H.R. Giger designed for the xenomorph in Alien was so magnificent. I appreciated the value of what I was watching and its class. That was what inspired me to go, "I want to make something like that. I want to make it something that inspires others, like how that inspired me."

Are you following Alien: Earth right now and reliving that a little bit?

I watched the first episode, and it wasn't for me. There was a sentiment that was missing for me that I couldn't place at the moment. I get what they were doing, but it didn't resonate with me. The premise is great and it fits for TV, it's great, but that franchise has always been a cinematic experience for me.

The Cut, which also stars Caitríona Balfe, John Turturro, and Mohammed Mansaray, is now available on digital.

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