Cary Fukunaga’s Runaway Train

The "Sin Nombre" director talks about his "post-industrial wild west story."

Since this culture is not your own, do you think your multiethnic background allowed you easier access into this world once you got there?

I think more than anything it allowed me to not even pay attention to the fact that it wasn’t my culture that I was researching. There was no fear of it being another culture, it was a story I was researching and I was just trying to put the elements together. The very idea that it wasn’t my own experience wasn’t necessarily an issue that I was having to overcome.

From the perspective of telling a story, it was somewhat refreshing to see that nothing seemed to be precious or sacred. Was there ever any pressure to tone things down or keep certain characters alive?

No, I’m not a very sentimental person, so you’re not going to find schmaltzy scenes in my movies. [laugh] And if anything, people have to push me to be more emotional in my stories, which was sort of a journey on this project, especially, I think, for the female audience. I had a female producer [Amy Kaufman], [and] a lot of key people pulled me aside really wanting to know about the psychology of Sayra, for example, so that was its own challenge. Exposition and oversentimentalizing situations is something I don’t like to do.

The performances were uniformly good, but it seemed like you cast a lot of people on the look of their face alone. Was that a main criteria for you?

Definitely faces are important to me. One of my problems with a lot of things I watch is that everybody’s too pretty and it takes me out of the film because I’m thinking that all these people look like I’ve seen them in a café in Los Angeles. They don’t feel [they’re] of the region. I think about a Richard Avedon photo series, the kind of faces he gets of real people, which I find so captivating. Fellini was also great in filling his films with this ambiance, this environment, sometimes chaotic and carnival-like, but people’s faces were always amazing. I wanted this film to be similar in that respect, that people’s faces were beautiful and ugly at the same time. That was definitely a consideration in the casting, but obviously a face couldn’t be everything. They’ve got to be able to perform as well and be natural. But it’s easier to bring people down to a subdued naturalism than it is to bring people who don’t have it up to a similar heightened state.

Usually, people tell you not to work with kids or animals, but I’m assuming trains could be added to that list.

Definitely add trains to that list. It’s dangerous as hell. God bless extras, but they can be like cattle sometimes, and you’ve got a hundred crew on top moving heavy equipment and carrying cases across train cars and the extras are just sitting there in the way. [I’m thinking] “Come on, guys, move a little bit. I don’t want my fucking [assistant cameraman] to fall off the train because you don’t want to move your legs.” We had 150 basic extras on top of the train as well as the 100 crew and equipment, always changing angles and having to move people around, it was…when we were done shooting, I was very happy. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt on my film.

Are you working on anything now?

I am and [it’s] very different. I’m working on an unrequited love story — it takes place in the college years. I have a couple books I’m considering pitching for adaptations, and then I have a sci-fi idea that I’ve very minimally developed. I’m waiting to finish my outline for this first story before I outline that, but I usually just outline first and I write really quickly.

With a first film that’s been attracting as much attention and accolades right out the gate after Sundance, what has the experience been like of this whole afterbirth process?

I think I’ve been pretty sheltered from that. In terms of it getting buzz, I still have a lot of friends that know nothing about my movie. I’m like “how do you guys not know yet that it’s coming out? [laughs] You’re my friends!” So I don’t know in terms of anyone else. I mean, you’d think your friends and family would know first.

“Sin Nombre” is now in theaters.

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