Hollywood will put up with a lot of bad behavior if it results in a blockbuster movie (see: the careers of Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein). But tell someone that a well-respected director—even one whose casts and crews have nothing but praise for their on-set leader—issued a “no chairs” rule on the set of a film and people lose their sh*t.
Just ask Christopher Nolan, who incited a media firestorm when Anne Hathaway casually mentioned that the Tenet director bans chairs from his sets. While Nolan and his PR team have since set the record straight that it’s Nolan who doesn’t use a chair, Zack Snyder is proudly flaunting the anti-chair stance he took while filming Netflix’s Army of the Dead.
While sitting down for an interview with The Playlist’s “Fourth Wall” podcast, Snyder shared some of his golden rules of moviemaking and how those translated to the making of his new Netflix zombie-heist-thriller, which stars Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Garret Dillahunt, and Tig Notaro (looking super hot). In addition to co-writing, directing, and producing the film, Snyder served as both its DP and camera operator. That’s a lot of jobs, so Snyder wanted to make sure he was available to his actors and create as open an intimate set as possible. That’s where the whole “down with chairs!” rhetoric came from. As he shared during the interview:
“There’s no sitting down, like, I banned chairs from the set. But the nice thing is, it’s really intimate. I can just talk to the actors right there, I’m not back in a monitor across the room. It was definitely the most purely engaged I’ve been making a movie.”
While we’re not exactly sure how being engaged and standing on your feet all day are related, we’re willing to take Snyder’s word for it (unless #HotTig tells us differently).
Army of the Dead premieres on Netflix on May 21. You can watch the trailer below—just be sure to let us know if you see any chairs.
(Via IndieWire)