The Big Picture · Interview
April 13, 2018/ 32 min/ Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessey talks to Andrew Haigh about 'Lean on Pete,' low-level horse racing, filming the American West from a European vantage, and the terror every director carries onto set.
4 films across 1 segment.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
In conversation
Haigh's adaptation of Willy Vlautin's novel, with Charlie Plummer as an orphan boy walking a quarter-horse from Oregon toward Wyoming. Haigh calls it a reverse-Oregon-Trail story about a kid heading east for stability, not freedom, and resists reading it as a coming-of-age film.
His breakout; he couldn't raise its sub-$100,000 budget and cites it as proof the money got easier only slowly.
The married-couple drama he says made 'Lean on Pete' fundable; rewatching it, he noticed it already had some of the same wide landscape work.
His pick for last great film he saw: Andrey Zvyagintsev's, whose surname he refuses to attempt. 'Insanely bleak,' and he's jealous of its control.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In passing SeabiscuitGladiatorMr. LonelyAll the Money in the WorldTransformersA Quiet PlaceSuper Troopers 2
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
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