Produced by his wife Deborah, adapted from a screenplay by longtime collaborator Kurt Johnstad (“300”), and directed by Snyder, the action-thriller follows a former DEA operative (Stuart Martin, a dead ringer for Hugh Jackman) who navigates a hellish unnamed South American country in search of his missing niece and nephew after their parents are brutally murdered. He’s joined by a battle-scarred, heroin-shooting war photographer (Fra Fee) who witnessed the killings. Snyder has been planning to make the film since the aughts — Christian Bale and Sean Penn were attached to star at one point — and shot it in 32 days, mostly in Colombia.
He contracted COVID during production and was running a 100-degree fever but soldiered through. And it’s getting killed online. Snyder is used to charged discourse surrounding his films, but this time feels different.
It’s a smaller film made independently that feels like his way of processing the death of his daughter Autumn, an aspiring writer who took her own life in 2017. Snyder and Deborah subsequently left “Justice League” during post-production to grieve, only to have Joss Whedon step in and make major changes to the movie, leading to allegations of misconduct. Snyder’s army of fans rather loudly demanded for the “Snyder Cut,” and, well, you know the rest.
Which brings us to the interview. It’s the morning after the premiere and I’m sitting across from Snyder in the lobby of his Toronto hotel. He seems remarkably sanguine given the backlash to his long-gestating passion project, and ready to speak his mind.
It’s been, like, two decades. It would be one thing if it was two decades where we had done nothing else, and the truth is that most of the things that we’ve done have stopped us more than anything. I think we were working on this before “300.” The reality of how we did it this time is, we had a hole in the schedule and there’s another script I wrote, “Illusions,” based on the Richard Bach book.
We were like, “Should we make ‘Illusions’ or should we make ‘The Last Photograph?’ How should we do this?” And then we went, “Let’s do ‘The Last Photograph.’” And the window was small. The thing that I credit most is the team and our own skillset of being able to mount it and do it quickly with no money. It’s a deadly serious movie, but on the other hand, if you’ve seen my movies, I’m in love with kitsch, and the highest-art version of kitsch, and I don’t think I ever escape that.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
