Butcher’s Crossing had its first-ever public screening at TIFF and was met with a standing ovation for filmmaker Gabe Polsky and stars Nicolas Cage and co-star Fred Hechinger before they took the stage for a Q&A. The film is based on John Williams’ 1960 western novel set in the 1870s and stars Cage as Miller, a buffalo hunter who lures a naïve young man (Fred Hechinger) into an ambitious expedition in the Colorado Rockies that goes horribly wrong. 

The film itself could have gone horribly wrong, Polsky confides, when he discovered shortly before filming began that he was forced to cut the shoot from 20 to 18 days.

“I’d only made one feature film and I didn’t really know what to do or who to call,” he tells the TIFF audience. “But a big friend and mentor of mine is (director) Werner Herzog, so I gave him a call and told him, ‘Hey, Werner, I’ve got 18 days to shoot this movie. What do you think?’ There was a long pause and he said, ‘even a magician couldn’t shoot this movie in 18 days!’ I was dumbfounded and depressed because these weren’t the words that I was looking for but later, I was thinking, ‘what would Werner actually do in this situation?’ and I remembered a quote from this famous Russian hockey player, Viacheslav Fetisov.

“He would tell me, ‘Gabe, in Russia, when you have one choice, you have no fucking choice’ so I had no choice but to dive right in, and that’s what I did, thanks to a lot of people who worked with me on this treacherous journey and really difficult shoot.”

The Chicago-born filmmaker gushes that he was lucky to have Nicolas Cage accept the role. “I really like actors that do the unpredictable things and who have that magnetic quality to them, and they make really interesting creative choices – and I think one of the most creative actors that we have on the planet is Nic Cage. He’s one of the biggest risk takers there is and he’s willing to do a piece like this – where most actors at his level probably wouldn’t want to play someone who does such bad things – and does it in such a creative and compelling way.”

Cage – who reminded the audience of his long history with TIFF starting with the 1987 premiere of Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck – said he was excited to tell this epic literary western classic. “John Williams’ book is a blueprint and I like making movies that are based on great literature because the book really started to stimulate my imagination. In the film, Miller has this dream and he’s going to get it at all costs but it’s just not happening. He almost wants to be sweet in the beginning, but then he wants to bring the kid (Hechinger) to the dark, evil side that exists in all our hearts. When Gabe brought me this role, I knew I could get close to something like Kurtz (the iconic central fictional character in the 1899 Joseph Conrad novella) in Heart of Darkness.”

Cage smiles when asked if he was borrowing from Marlon Brando, who played Colonel Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness-inspired 1979 drama, Apocalypse Now (directed by Cage’s uncle, Francis Coppola). “Believe it or not, Gabe wanted me to shave my head because he was thinking about Michael Jordan on the court and that need to win,” he insists. “But then, because there is a kind of Joseph Conrad/Kurtz appearance to the shaved head, I thought, “well it coalesces and could be Michael Jordan meets Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now too.”

The actor who recently parodied himself in the hit film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent then grins as he suggests audiences should watch the film closely for an homage. “When I first saw one of the cuts of the film, I said, ‘Gabe, the thing when I’m rubbing my bald head and going like this with my fist,” he gestures, “well, that’s a direct steal (from Apocalypse Now) and maybe you want to take it out’, but Gabe said, ‘no way, that’s one of my favorite things you do in the movie!’

“So, the question became ‘to Brando or not to Brando’,” Cage adds with a chuckle. “And Gabe chose to Brando so it’s in the movie!”