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Movies & TV News & Features

Interview: Nash Edgerton

THE SQUARE directed by Nash ­Edgerton, written by Joel Edgerton and Matthew Dabner, with David Roberts, Claire van der Boom, Anthony Hayes and Joel Edgerton. An Alliance release. 101 minutes. Opens Friday (April 16). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies.


You’ve probably seen Nash Edgerton a lot on the big screen. You just don’t know it.[rssbreak]

“Every time Ewan McGregor was tossed around in Star Wars, it was actually me,” says the Aussie stuntman, whose credits also include The Thin Red Line (“I died like a dozen times”), The Matrix Trilogy and Superman Returns.

It’s Edgerton’s work behind the camera, though, that’s now gaining him recognition. His directorial debut, The Square, scripted by his brother Joel (who also plays a supporting role), has already earned lots of buzz. It’s a gripping film noir about an adulterous man who digs himself into a hole after he tries to run off with a young girl and her husband’s cash.

On the phone from Los Angeles, the soft-spoken Edgerton plays down the comparisons that are already being made to the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple. The main similarities, he says, are the sibling dynamics between the writer and director and the fact that one of them is named Joel.

In fact, there’s a striking difference between the Coens’ surreal take on noir and the Edgertons’ dead serious one. Edgerton even says he didn’t really go in trying to make a noir.

The brothers were originally trying to construct a completely different hard-boiled crime movie, but when that story started to fall apart, Joel began writing The Square on the side.

“I think he got the idea from the headlines, particularly one story about an infant’s corpse found buried under a construction site,” he says. “It turned out to be a real page-turner.”

Nash agrees that part of what keeps the audience hooked is the way Joel writes each character, big or small, as an empathetic, fleshed-out human being with his or her own backstory.

“Joel’s an actor, so he writes all the characters as if he wants to play them.”

As for Nash, he sees his directorial work as an extension of his stunt work, just on a larger scale.

“Both jobs are really about problem solving. Only as a director, you don’t get bruised.”

movies@nowtoronto.com

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