Nash Edgerton, Stuntman Turned Director of “The Square”

Nash Edgerton on going from a stuntman in "The Matrix" to director of the naughty, knotty thriller "The Square."

You were involved in a lot of the big productions that came through Australia during the late ‘90s/early ‘00s like “The Matrix.” Did that provide an infrastructure or possibly a desire for a group of filmmakers like Blue Tongue to make their own movies?

Blue Tongue started out of us trying to get work on these things by making stuff for our show reels. The first short film Joel, Kieran [Darcy-Smith], Tony [Lynch] and I made was literally a dialogue scene and then an action scene. It was for Joel and Kieran to get acting work and for me and Tony to get stunt work and we just enjoyed the process of making it so much that we just kept doing it. Along the way, we met David [Michôd, director of “Animal Kingdom”] and Spencer [Susser, director of “Hesher”] and Luke [Doolan] and we all just started doing stuff together and working on each other’s films. I really love what it’s become and how everyone kind of pushes each other and helps each other out on films. Everyone makes their own films and then we’ll come and help out on each other’s films.

When Luke’s short “Miracle Fish” was nominated for an Oscar this year, you went with him to the ceremony. What did you learn that you might not know from watching it on TV?

It goes a lot faster in the room than on TV. The group of us usually sit at home and watch it at my place in Sydney and get pizza and make fun of it. To actually go there was really bizarre, but it was fun. It was just awesome to see Luke all dressed up and all excited.

I’m reminded of the recent doc “Not Quite Hollywood” when thinking about a tight-knit group of Aussie filmmakers like Blue Tongue. And the stuntmen were real daredevils — is that true to what you heard about the era?

Back in the day, yeah. I was in high school when a lot of those films were being made, but from people I know that were in the industry, that was what it was like. But I thought what Mark [Hartley, the director] did with that movie was so fun to see all that stuff. Just the title sequence alone was amazing. And it made me want to revisit so many of those films because when I was a kid, I never thought of them as Australian movies and American movies. They were just movies. I didn’t think “Turkey Shoot” was Australian. That thought never entered my mind. As much we made “The Square” in Australia, I don’t think of it as an Australian movie. I just think of it as a movie, the same way that “Animal Kingdom” and “Hesher,” which was shot [in America], feel like they’re just movies. They should work anywhere.

“The Square” opens in New York and Los Angeles on April 9th before expanding into limited release on April 16th. All showings will be preceded by Edgerton’s award-winning short “Spider.”

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