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  • Hi, my name is Craig Zobel, and I directed 'The Hunt.'

  • "What?"

  • The scene you're about to watch

  • is a scene between Ma and Pa, played

  • by Amy Madigan and Reed Birney,

  • in which they're cleaning up after having just

  • killed one of the people they're hunting,

  • and this is really one of the first times in the story

  • that you get to hear kind of the reasons

  • why this one set of people might be hunting

  • this other set of people.

  • "Those people?"

  • "Sorry.

  • Black people."

  • "African-Americans."

  • "Honey, it's--"

  • "Privilege, Julius."

  • "It's perfectly fine to call them black again."

  • [LAUGHS]

  • "According to who?"

  • "NPR."

  • Our hope in the scene was that we would, through comedy,

  • be able to expose one side's assumptions

  • about the other side's beliefs,

  • as well as mocking the hunters at the same time.

  • "You there?"

  • "Hey!

  • We're here.

  • We got three of them--

  • Molly, Moses, and Mr. Whimper."

  • "Yeah, great.

  • Liberty got--"

  • Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse, the screenwriters'

  • screenplay pokes a lot of fun at liberals,

  • and this is one of the scenes that kind of we

  • first really lean into that.

  • And this is really the kind of the first scene in the film

  • that the kind of horror and action

  • that you have been seeing truly is colored by--

  • "Honey, that's poison!"

  • --a sense of satire and comedy.

  • "You-- you rigged the soda?"

  • "No.

  • There are 43 grams of sugar in that bottle."

  • "Oh, good god, Miranda, you really scared me."

  • "I am not going to apologize for caring."

  • The hunters have been playing a pretty elaborate game,

  • and they have actually constructed this convenience

  • store as a trap in order to catch the hunted.

  • So everything in it has been designed

  • to be appealing to a group of people

  • that they feel like they aren't a part of,

  • and we did a lot of that kind of in the production design

  • of the convenience store.

  • And then, of course, this new person appears,

  • and this is Betty Gilpin playing

  • the role of Crystal, who turns out

  • to be the main character in the film.

  • This is kind of the first time that you're really

  • interacting with her in the story.

  • You've seen her once or twice before,

  • but she's been kind of an outsider on the edge.

  • As she comes into this trap, this fake gas station,

  • we see her process who these people are and quickly

  • deduce that they are, in fact, some of the people that

  • are hunting her, and that Crystal is

  • one step ahead of everyone.

  • "Everything O.K.?"

  • "I lost my wallet."

  • "Oh."

  • "It's for emergencies."

  • "You want some matches with that?"

  • I was really lucky in that I had cast Betty

  • prior to casting Reed Birney in the film.

  • But once I cast Reed, I discovered

  • that Betty and Reed had been in a play together,

  • where it was just a two-person play with the two of them

  • before.

  • I was unaware of that when I cast the role,

  • but it really added a lot because they

  • were able to immediately have a shorthand.

  • "--Arkansas.

  • Is there anything else?"

  • [GRUNTS]

  • [GUNSHOT]

  • [PA SCREAMS]

Hi, my name is Craig Zobel, and I directed 'The Hunt.'

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