In an exclusive interview with ETimes, director Sean Durkin opened up various aspects about the film. Talking about the brotherly love shared by Zac, Jeremy, Harris and Stanley play brothers), he said , “That’s the sort of compliment that I dream of. The film is so much about brothers and brotherly love. Some of that is just instinct on casting, like Zac Efron. Also, I knew Jeremy and was talking to Harris, and then we found Stanley through casting tapes and had a meeting with him. But then you never know, there are times when the chemistry is just not there between the actors, but this time it was. We shot for the first two weeks on the ranch, so that was also a big part of it. We had a lot of dinner scenes, a lot of downtime hanging out in isolation out there, it’s a huge property. So there were not many distractions. It’s just them being together, hanging out and we did a wrestling boot camp too. The guys gelled well as soon as they met, so that also contributed.”
He also shared his views on the curse aspect of the film and said, “I don’t believe in curses but I do believe in the psychology of believing you are cursed. So I think if you come from a family where a lot of bad things have happened, and something bad happens to you, you start to believe that bad things are going to keep happening. I think that’s really natural and very human. So when I thought of the curse, I thought of it that way.”
“But the curse is simply these ideas of masculinity, instead of recognizing a boy for who he is, and what his interests are, and the nuance of himself, he’s stuck into a box to be the biggest, the toughest, the strongest, the most successful. Fritz’s (Holt) character was coming from a place of love, believing that these were the things he had to give to his sons in order for them to survive in the world. And there were these blind spots that it wasn’t. And that is, you know, that’s the real curse, of course,” he added.
