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Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. Happy New York Primary Day. Polls are open until 9:00 PM. Speaking of politics, coming up on the show today, we'll talk to the Pod Save America team. That's Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor about their new book, it's called Democracy or Else: How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. They join me in the studio to discuss, and we're going to take your calls. Plus, we'll speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Emily Nussbaum about her new book, Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV. We'll speak with speech writer Riley Roberts about what makes a good commencement address. That's the plan. Let's get this started with writer and director Michael Sarnoski.

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The new installment of the film franchise A Quiet Place opens with a shot of the New York City skyline, and onscreen, you see a fact that the decibel levels in the city are about the equivalent of a constant scream. That's because this prequel film, A Quiet Place: Day One, takes place in New York. On the very first day that bloodthirsty aliens arrive on Earth, the aliens hunt by sound. The very noisy Manhattan very quickly becomes their feeding ground. The film's protagonist is Samira played by Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o. Samira is in hospice care. She's dying from cancer, and the only thing that seems to give her any comfort is her cat Frodo.

When a hospice worker suggests that she join a group excursion to the city, she agrees only because she wants to get pizza in Harlem. When the creatures arrive and the city is decimated, Samira finds herself fighting for whatever life she has left alongside a British law student named Eric, who's played by Joseph Quinn. Eric has bonded with Frodo the cat, and Samira herself, and together, they try to stay alive and also grab a New York slice. A Quiet Place: Day One was written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, who you might know from his previous film Pig. The film is in theaters this Friday, and I'm lucky to have Michael sitting right next to me in studio. Michael, hey, welcome to All Of It.

Michael Sarnoski: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Kousha Navidar: It's a pleasure to have you. Let's talk about your previous film Pig for a second. It definitely had some thrilling elements to it, but it wasn't a big box-office horror film. People might remember it as the film where Nicolas Cage is searching for his kidnapped truffle-hunting pig. Thinking about now, A Quiet Place: Day One, what made you want to make the leap to this bigger project?

Michael Sarnoski: I think I was excited by the idea of getting to explore something equally intimate in its own way, but just on a much bigger canvas. When John Krasinski came to me, he had seen Pig and he really loved that film, and he said, "Can you bring some of that touch to the Quiet Place universe." He gave me a lot of freedom to explore that and to see what that would mean for me. For me, that meant really finding this character of Sam that Lupita plays and finding a core emotional story that I hadn't really seen in a movie like this before that I could follow and that I could get behind. At the end of the day, I just see both of them as very character-driven intimate dramas.

Kousha Navidar: Looking on the production side of things, was there something new that you feel like you had to learn going from Pig to A Quiet Place?

Michael Sarnoski: Oh, yes, there was a lot to learn. There were a lot of visual effects, special effects. I was intimidated at first, but then once you get on set and once you start working with all these really talented people, you just realize that it's the same stuff, just more. You're working with your heads of department, your production designers, your cinematographers, whereas with Pig, their departments would be a few people. On this, it could be 100 people. It's just scaling it up, but it's the same stuff. You're having creative conversations, you're brainstorming what the best way to do something is. It ended up being not nearly as intimidating as I thought it would be.

Kousha Navidar: That's great. Let's talk about the plot a little bit. Did you always conceive the story as being placed in New York City?

Michael Sarnoski: When John came to me, New York City Day One was what he and Paramount were excited about. In A Quiet Place II, Djimon Hounsou's character talks about that experience of New York City on the first day of the invasion. They knew they wanted to explore that moment. Then beyond that, they really gave me free rein to say what kind of characters do you want to follow, what kind of story do you want to tell. Yes, the New York was always a big part of it. When I first got the job, I got an apartment out in New York for a month and just steeped myself in the city and walked around a lot and just did my own brainstorming of what would I want to see happen in this city.

Kousha Navidar: How much of it was actually filmed in New York? Was it mostly on a sound stage?

Michael Sarnoski: It was mostly filmed in London. We built this back lot set that was this two-block New York set that we kept having to redress for different parts of New York, which was one of the biggest challenges, but also the most fun element was our production designer, Simon Bowles, had to figure out how do we do New York everywhere from China town all the way up to East Harlem and do all those neighborhoods justice on this back lot set. He did an amazing job. Another part of that was finding spots in London that had a sense of history and could be believably play as New York City. It was a combination of sets, but then also using as many real places as possible that just felt like they had a presence to them.

Kousha Navidar: That term presence, I think, is so key. At least for me, I saw the film last Friday, and that idea of presence, especially having lived in the city during COVID, felt very striking because you see these huge abandoned buildings, you see these lots where it's all just so empty. I'm wondering, for those of us listening, that kind of experience in New York City during the height of the pandemic, did that go into your thinking at all? Was COVID on your mind at all when you were shooting?

Michael Sarnoski: Yes, it absolutely was. I was looking at a lot of those photographs. I think, from a thematic level, that was always important to me. I think we can all relate to that feeling like the world is falling apart around us. It's burning around us, and we're just trying to find this kind of quiet moments of peace and connection. I think that was something I really wanted to capture with this movie, the scale and desolation of that empty city paired with these like really small intimate moments of connection. COVID was definitely at the forefront, and yes, those visuals were pretty striking, and that was a big comp for it. That early image of just Sam walking with a cat through an empty city was the emotional image that grabbed me initially.

Kousha Navidar: When you were living here in prep for it, was there anything about living here that surprised you, that touched what we see in the movie?

Michael Sarnoski: I guess it probably did translate into the movie. One thing was, I think New York's known as being, "Oh, everyone's going to be abrasive and they're moving quickly and all that." I was surprised by how warm people were and how you quickly feel a sense of community on your block in your neighborhood, the bodega gets to know you. I don't know, I was expecting to feel a little more alienated in the city, but I actually felt, I don't know, at home in a nice way. I think because this was a movie about people connecting, that was probably very useful, finding connections in surprising places in a city that otherwise seems very alienating.

Kousha Navidar: Where were you living?

Michael Sarnoski: I was living in Chelsea. I've been there for the last year as well for post-production we edited in New York. It's been really nice.

Kousha Navidar: Kudos to you for using the word alienated. That's such a perfect word for this kind of interview.

Michael Sarnoski: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking to Michael Sarnoski, who's the writer and director of A Quiet Place: Day One, which is in theaters this Friday. You had just mentioned the character of Sam, so let's go into her a little bit. We learn early on that Sam, who again is played by Lupita Nyong'o, is in hospice. She's dying of cancer, and yet here she is fighting for her life. Why did you want the central character to be someone who's dying?

Michael Sarnoski: I think because it seemed like a really interesting challenge and risk to me. I think when I had first heard New York Day One, I immediately knew I wanted to avoid some of those classic tropes of those kind of disaster movies. I wanted to avoid military involvement being front and center. I wanted to avoid that rescue your family, escape the city, all those kind of tropes that we've seen in movies like this.

Then I thought, what if we were avoiding even someone who, in the long run, was trying to survive because, at its core, a lot of horror movies, disaster movies are about survival? What if that wasn't even at the forefront of someone's mind and they were just actually given an opportunity to live one last time before the end of the world and then exploring how the city dying around her could reflect her inner world? It all just fell into place and made a lot of sense.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. Thinking about Sam's character, that is such an interesting conflict to have, and I don't want to get too macabre, but for Sam, why do you think she's fighting so hard to survive if she has so little time left?

Michael Sarnoski: I think it changes over the course of the movie in different ways. You learn more about her backstory, and you learn more about what some of these things mean to her. I think, on one level, agency's a big part of it. I think, especially when people are towards the end of their life, they've lost a lot of what they thought made them human for a long time and being able to do the things they love to do and even live in the places that they love to live. I think there's an element of the world's falling apart around you and you just want to feel like you are a person that controls your life for one last time.

Kousha Navidar: She's really focused on heading uptown to get pizza in Harlem, which I could really relate to. I thought that was a great touch. It's at this place called Patsy's, even though it seems insane to travel uptown, is it that sense of agency that you're talking about that makes her so steadfast on getting to that pizza place?

Michael Sarnoski: Yes. The bigger the challenge, the more relatable that is. It would be one thing if she just walked outside and said, "I'm going to get a snack next door." If she's willing to go through this for this thing, it really makes you wonder what does that really mean to her.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. That MacGuffin idea, I guess, how early on did you know that it was going to be a slice of pizza?

Michael Sarnoski:  Pretty early on. The first thing was Sam, her emotional spot, her physical spot with her sickness. Then it was pizza and a cat came about at the same time. That was very early on.

Kousha Navidar: Let's talk about the cat then, because there is this cat, Frodo, that is kind of the emotional core, I guess, in some ways. One of the emotional cores of the movie. Where did the idea for the cat come from?

Michael Sarnoski: I think it was a few spots. One, that visual of her in this desolate city with her cat. There was something beautiful about that. I think cats are related to New York City in a lot of ways. We have bodega cats, this idea of stray cats that can live in the city and function on their own. I liked the idea of an animal that would do fine in this environment, like they can be very quiet and sneaky.

Also, I just wanted something that stood for her past life. I always imagined this was like a stray cat that she brought in when she lived in the city, and then she brought it with her as she moved into the next phase of her life. It was the one thing she still sort of hung onto. It made sense that they would return to their city together. Then how that cat plays into her relationship that grows with Eric sort of takes that to another level. There were a lot of reasons. Cats are just real cute.

Kousha Navidar: Are you a cat fan?

Michael Sarnoski: Yes, I am. I have a cat now. Lupita and I both got cats after making this movie.

Kousha Navidar: Really? Because I read that Lupita was not a big fan of cats before.

Michael Sarnoski: She was terrified of cats.

Kousha Navidar: Tell me about that. What was it like working with cats, because these are real cats?

Michael Sarnoski: Yes. We didn't use any CGI cats in this, which was a big deal for me. I really wanted Frodo to feel like a character you believed in. I think part of that was having an actual cat that portrayed him. We had these two cats, Schnitzel and Nico, that always played him. I liked the idea of keeping that number down, because sometimes animals in films, you'll have a dozen animals playing with them. These are just two cats that grew up together and know each other and have similar mannerisms.

Lupita just really had to be brave about it. When she first came on, I remember we were in my office and we were sitting on the ground for like 15 minutes while she slowly crawled over to the cat to touch it. She was really terrified of cats. By the end of it, she was picking both cats up and kissing them. Building that relationship was essential, and it took a lot for her to do that, but she did. Now she has her own cat named Yoyo, who's adorable.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, what's your cat's name?

Michael Sarnoski: My cat's name is Navi.

Kousha Navidar: Okay. Navi. Do you feel like after working with these two cats on set, you're able to train or be with your cat, better understand your cat better?

Michael Sarnoski: I think so. I think the big thing to remember is that every cat is different. They have a different personality. They like different things. I think it's just about giving any animal the space they need to be who they want to be. On camera, that's what you want. You want to be able to capture something authentic. Knowing how these cats work and what they like and what they respond to, then you just can sit back and try and capture some of that authentic sweetness.

Kousha Navidar: It is very sweet. Seeing Eric and Sam connect with this cat plays a lot in what we do. Another thing that plays a lot in the feeling is the sound design, of course, which is always important to A Quiet Place film. Any slight noise that someone makes can summon one of the aliens that are the enemies of the film. Here's a little bit of the trailer where you can hear some of the sound design at work. Let's listen.

[A Quiet Place: Day One, trailer playing]

That was from A Quiet Place: Day One. What were the conversations like with you and your sound design team when you were thinking about what you wanted to achieve with the audio in this film?

Michael Sarnoski: We started a lot talking about environmental stuff. Lee Sullivan was our sound designer on this, and he's based in New York. He really knows this city. He spent a lot of time experimenting with, how do we want to communicate what New York sounds like before the aliens come, and then after. Establishing that life and all of that beforehand. Then finding out what a silent New York sounds like, because you don't just want an empty barren New York. You want to feel those winds and those groans, and you want to still feel like you're traveling through a space that you believe in. It was really just a lot of conversations, a lot of experimentation, and really trying to make sure that although we're leaning into silence, it just doesn't feel like boring silence the whole time. That there's kind of, again, a presence to this city.

Kousha Navidar: How much did you play with the levels? Did you elevate really small sounds? They feel more dramatic. I'm thinking of one particular scene with a ripped shirt, for example.

Michael Sarnoski: It really depended on the scene and what we're trying to communicate. Sometimes the best way to portray silence is to just be hearing people breathing because you're feeling if it's so quiet that I can hear people breathing loudly, even when I can tell they're trying to breathe quietly, that just conveys how breathlessly silent things are. Sometimes it's about bringing environmental stuff down and really bringing up those little incidental sounds or vice versa. It really depends on the moment and what we're trying to convey.

Kousha Navidar: Did you take any lessons from the previous films in terms of that, that you were like, "Okay, here's how I've seen it done well in the previous quiet places. Let's implement it here as well"?

Michael Sarnoski: I think that idea of not being afraid to make some sounds louder than you think they should be was one thing that the early films did really well. I think if you just make play everything quietly, you're not getting the dynamic excitement that you could otherwise. That was definitely something we took from that.

Kousha Navidar: The film also has some really great jump scares. I got to say, as someone who hates jump scares, me personally, I actually enjoyed it in this movie, so kudos to you.

Michael Sarnoski: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: What are the keys to a good terrifying jump scare?

Michael Sarnoski: For one thing, any scare should be somehow anchored in character. You need to be with your characters in that moment, or else you're not going to care. Step one, be with the characters. Step two, suck out as much sound as you can and then hit it hard. We tried not to be too cheap with the jump scares. I think sometimes you want a little bit of that because that's part of the excitement of the quiet place is going from silence to sudden chaos and terror. I think at the end of the day, for anything to be scary, you just have to believe in your characters and their journey.

Kousha Navidar: In your mind, how horror is this horror film? Because it is a lot about an adventure almost, or experiencing the relationship between two people. Tell me about that.

Michael Sarnoski: I just avoided thinking about it as a horror film. I knew, inevitably, it's going to be scary. There are these creatures. The things they're going through are harrowing and deadly. I almost didn't want to put too much emphasis on that. I wanted to focus on, okay, how do we develop these characters? How do we get on board with their journey and their relationship? Then, inevitably, they're going to be stuck in these terrifying situations. My solution was just to think of it as a drama that happened to take place in a horror world and just let the horror do its thing. You don't have to overplay that.

Kousha Navidar: Right, because there are these quiet contemplative moments, which is the real emotional heart of the film. If you think about it as a real drama in the cityscape of a horror movie, what are some of the emotions that you really wanted to develop and focus on between Sam, between Eric, between Frodo? In your mind, what does that look like?

Michael Sarnoski: I think the big one was, as I mentioned with the pandemic stuff, I liked the idea of people finding quiet moments of peace. People finding connection in spite of, and, in some ways, because of the world feeling so tense and horrifying around them. I wanted to carve out those little surprising moments, those little things that we focus on, our pizza, baking bread. These little things that people do when they're trying to find some sense in a world that doesn't make sense. Watching people try to have to do that together was really important to me.

Kousha Navidar: That's probably a lot of what makes A Quiet Place the franchise so compelling to viewers too. It is that relatability. [crosstalk]

Michael Sarnoski: Those first movies, they're family dramas at their core. Yes, they have monsters and they're scary, but it's an interesting family drama that asks challenging questions about guilt and forgiveness and all that. I wanted to do justice to that in a very different way with a different character's journey.

Kousha Navidar: Here's the challenging question for you, not too challenging, but just as we're wrapping up here, how well do you think you would do in a quiet place scenario?

Michael Sarnoski: My stomach grumbles way too much. I would be done for. We did have a lot of conversations about how some of that works. I would have a nervous tummy grumble and then I'd be gone.

Kousha Navidar: Bring it all back to pizza, I guess. [chuckles]

Michael Sarnoski: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: We have been talking to Michael Sarnoski, who is the writer and director of A Quiet Place: Day One. It's in theaters this Friday. You can go check it out. Michael, thanks for the work, and thanks for hanging out with us.

Michael Sarnoski: Thank you so much. This is a pleasure.

Kousha Navidar: Yes.

 

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