Zach, you’ve said Barbarian was an exercise in getting into the mindset of a kind of anxiety that you aren’t familiar with, like a woman recognizing when a situation is unsafe, which seems like its own challenge.
Cregger: I’d read a book like 10 years ago that I think about all the time. It’s called The Gift of Fear. [And it says that] every situation that you’re in where you’re interacting with strangers has a context. It’s a different context for every participant. It just felt like a fertile playground for tension and a way into a scene. I didn’t sit down to write a movie, I sat down to write a scene just for fun and as I went, not knowing what was gonna happen, I allowed it to do whatever it wanted to do and Barbarian came out of that. For me, the best thing I can do to write is just to try and be a little kid with crayons. To be that free and that playful and let it be fun. Obviously, a lot of dark shit is gonna come out of that because, like Parker, I’m fascinated with the worst things. My favorite art is pretty dark shit, so that’s what I think of as fun.
Finn: Is there a character in your movie that [you identify with]?
Cregger: All three characters are me. The Mother’s not, but Tess is me, truly, because to me she’s the child of an alcoholic, which I am, so her whole shape is about “What does the person I’m with need?” That’s the problem with people like me, my siblings, other children of alcoholics—whatever relationship dynamic we’re in, we want to take the form that is the most pleasing to the other person, which is why Tess’s whole problem is that she keeps going back for these men and becoming what they need her to become. The literal extreme of that is infantilization, which is why of course she’s gonna drink from the baby bottle. Her arc is to separate herself from the infantilizer. Pulling the trigger at the end, that’s me wishing I could draw some sorts of healthy boundaries in my own personal life. And then AJ, yes, he’s a despicable rapist, and I can honestly say I [am not that], but who among us has not had bad inclinations? There’s aspects of my personality that are narcissistic and shitty. And Keith, the way he behaves in the house, the overexplaining and the need to be like “I saw you didn’t drink your tea so I thought I’d wait [to open this wine],” every woman watching that is like “What a fucking creep!” I probably would have said all that shit. I would’ve definitely over-talked and tried to make a woman feel too comfortable and in doing so made things worse.
Finn: It’s amazing, too, how people, based on life experiences, view that scene. Obviously, Tess is our lens into it, but you can also feel being on the other side like, “God, I’m trying so hard to not be awkward or freak this other person out and I’m just making it worse through every attempt.” I feel that so much.
Grant Rindner
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