As she stumbles to wrap up an answer to my question, Ariela Barer pulls no punches. “Did I miss anything? I’m sorry, I’m just so, so tired.”
Sitting in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Toronto, Canada, the actress is surrounded by a lively atmosphere, as well as a messy table piled with empty water bottles, half-drank coffee cups, and crumpled napkins.
“The TIFF experience is setting in.”
Also alongside her sits Daniel Goldhaber, Jordan Sjol, and Daniel Garber. Including Barer, they are the creative foursome taking TIFF by storm this year with their environmental heist thriller, How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Having premiered in the festival’s always-audacious Platform section just two days prior, there is a sense of exhaustion in the air.
“You know, [we’re] getting lots of sleep,” Goldhaber sarcastically jokes. “Perfectly normal caffeine levels,” adds Sjol.
This was clearly one of many conversations they had been having about the film. Pitched as an Ocean’s Eleven for the climate crisis, raves began pouring in from the festival community following the film’s premiere. Just a day after we sat down for this interview, NEON announced they had acquired the film for distribution across North America, one of the few deals that have been struck since the festival began.
“This is such a rare festival in that there is both a really robust industry component and also these incredible audiences of people who don’t work in the industry,” says Garber, the film’s editor. “There are plenty of everyday moviegoers who have been coming up to all of us and just stopping us on the street. That’s crazy.”
“This movie is for the people, not the industry,” responds Goldhaber, who directed the film and shares writing credits with Barer and Sjol.
The film centers around a group of young environmental activists who team up to destroy part of a Texas pipeline in protest of the fossil fuel industry. It’s a tight, engaging thriller that captures our current moment of social justice with a daring potency. It has elements of a crowd-pleasing heist flick, yet also feels like a film that would never get made through the studio system.
“We knew going in that this was a movie that was not going to appeal to 99% of the people that make movies,” continues Goldhaber, “but the 1% that it did appeal to were going to jump on it immediately and see the opportunity and be passionate about telling this story.”
“This is a movie with a really provocative message and really provocative ideas. It’s also really fun. People seem to be putting those pieces together themselves and that’s amazing.”
Sjol, also credited as an executive producer, agrees, calling the audience response “overwhelming.”
“I’ve been really bowled over by the absolute generosity and close attention. The people seem like they really are feeling a connection to the movie which just feels fantastic.”
Amidst the chaos of TIFF, Pipeline’s creative team shares insights into how they adapted a manifesto into a movie, the surprising amounts of improv on set, and the unconventional influences that helped guide their editing process.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Larry Fried: First of all – we’ll quickly go around the circle here – how are you guys doing, how has your Toronto experience been so far, and how have you been reacting to the response that the film has gotten?
Ariela Barer: I’m good, I’m likin’ Toronto. [laughs] I genuinely love the energy of this [festival] and being here kind of reinvigorates you. The passion for film is exciting and everywhere and the response to the movie has been kind of a dream come true. It’s been really exciting to see people and have these conversations face to face.
Larry Fried: Is this your first time in Toronto?
Ariela Barer: No, I had a layover here once when I was 14 and I tried poutine at the airport and I thought it was delicious.
Larry Fried: I think they would qualify that as a Toronto experience.
[everyone laughs]
Daniel Goldhaber: This is my third time at TIFF, but my first time here with a movie and it’s really a dream come true. It’s no joke that the audiences here are really great and really love movies. I think that the response to the film has been kind of overwhelmingly…I don’t wanna say better than expected, but I think that people just seem to really be meeting the movie on its level across the board and that’s actually been really heartening. This is a movie with a really provocative message and really provocative ideas. It’s also really fun. People seem to be putting those pieces together themselves and that’s amazing. I think that’s kind of a dream. So thrilling.
Jordan Sjol: This is my first TIFF. I’ve been to Toronto before for an academic conference, but never TIFF before. I’m very fond of the city, I love it [and] I love this festival. It is so nice to have, just, people who like movies in the audience. I think the word that [Daniel] said about the audience reaction was “overwhelming.” Absolutely. I’ve been really bowled over by the absolute generosity and close attention. The people seem like they really are feeling a connection to the movie which just feels fantastic.
Larry Fried: They are great audiences because they bring the exact kind of intentionality and viewership that you want. They’re really attentive. They’re film lovers, bringing themselves and opening themselves to a film, and I think the response to this film has been huge. I’ve literally heard nothing but raves so far at the festival.
Daniel Garber: I have been to Toronto before, but I have never been to the festival and people have always told me that it’s a great festival. This is my first time getting to appreciate it firsthand. One thing I was talking to Jordan about yesterday is that this is such a rare festival in that there is both a really robust industry component and also these incredible audiences of people who don’t work in the industry. To have both of those things in one festival is really unique. I’m just having a great time. I’ve never been quite this nervous for a film coming out because I really had no idea what the response was going to be like. I’m really gratified to see just how positive people have been about it.
Larry Fried: Have you noticed an even amount of industry people and casual filmgoers attending your screenings?
Daniel Garber: It seems that way to me. It seems like there are a lot of industry people who have come up to me separately and maybe many of them feel a little bit more emboldened because they work in the business, but there are also just plenty of everyday movie goers who have been coming up to all of us and just stopping us on the street. That’s crazy.
Daniel Goldhaber: This is a movie for the people, not for the industry. So…
Larry Fried: Fair point! Daniel [Goldhaber], I want to go back to something that you said earlier about the provocative nature of the film. This really is a politically daring film. It’s very easy for a lot of films with political messages to say that they’re “daring,” but obviously we’re in an industry right now where the higher-ups control every little detail about what is sent out there. Having a film about property destruction as a tactic for revolution, in a festival like this especially, feels miraculous. Is it surreal for you that you’re being given a platform and you’re here at this festival with a film that talks about a subject that is only just starting to get a lot of mainstream attention?.
Daniel Goldhaber: I wouldn’t say it’s surreal. I’m just really grateful that so many people along the way have come together to get us here. Everybody from Andreas [Malm, original author of “How To Blow Up a Pipeline”], to our crew, to our cast, to our financiers who came in and took a huge bet on this movie and let us do it our way––there was nobody older than 35 on the production team of this movie, they really gave us the ability to make this movie the way we wanted and needed to make it––all the way up to Peter Kuplowsky at TIFF who saw the film and has been championing the film, and then the rest of the programming team and the rest of the festival team. For me, it speaks more to the fact that this is a movie that is about something that touches the life of every person on planet earth. I feel like TIFF has really responded to that and has really responded to wanting to get it in front of audiences. I think it just speaks to the daring nature of the festival. I just mostly feel filled with gratitude towards the programmers and everybody that made the movie happen.
Larry Fried: Was it difficult pitching this film to financiers? Considering the element of property destruction especially, was that difficult for some financiers to listen to or wrap their head around?
Daniel Goldhaber: They simply did not pick up the phone, so it wasn’t hard. You know, we finished the script on August 12th of last year. We were shooting by September 19th––sorry, November 19th––so it was three months and eight days.
Larry Fried: Still, an incredibly quick amount of time.
Daniel Goldhaber: To finance an independent feature film in that time span is, like, beyond miraculous. Literally our sales agents have said they’ve never seen a movie get financed that quickly. On some level, I think that we knew going in that this was a movie that was not going to appeal to 99% of the people that make movies, but the 1% that it did appeal to were going to jump on it immediately and see the opportunity and be passionate about telling this story. Ultimately, it wasn’t that hard because we just didn’t get any meetings. We went out––Ariela and I went out and found people…
Ariela Barer: Yeah, we funded a little work trip to Cannes where we just went around to every single party saying, “we’re making a movie, you should get in on it,” but framed it like the movie was happening. We didn’t have a draft [laughs] but the movie was already happening. We were willing it into existence and we found the exact right person with the exact right attitude and the exact right amount of money to give us, so it came through.
Larry Fried: That does feel a little bit meta in that the characters in the film also will their plan into existence. Did it feel the same way with getting this film made?
Ariela Barer: Absolutely. It was like capturing lightning in a bottle. I think that pure kinetic energy was only achieved because we didn’t stop moving ever. We didn’t sleep because we had to make it happen.
Larry Fried: Jordan, this is an incredibly unique adaptation. It’s adapting a non-fiction manifesto and dramatizing it into this heist format. For people who are not familiar with the original work, can you give us a brief idea of what “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is and, in the most intrinsic sense, what are the choices that you have to make in order to dramatize a work of nonfiction?
Jordan Sjol: The original “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” by Andreas Malm, in essence, is a history of social justice and using that history to show that pretty much every successful social justice movement has used property destruction as one of its tactics––not necessarily its main tactic and not necessarily a tactic that was accepted by the mainstream of those movements but that has been, and sometimes for that reason, very effective, whether it’s creating a radical flank to give the more mainstream [tactics] more leverage or whether it’s been just scaring people into thinking hard about things. The examples from the book [include] Suffragettes throwing rocks through windows and burning buildings down.
Andreas points out that there is an absolute [prohibition] on property destruction that adds a tactic in the environmental movement. And that, in fact, might not be a good thing, especially if we’re looking towards the history of progressive change and thinking about what works. Reading the book, there’s a sense in which it feels like someone’s telling you something that you’ve been wondering about, something that you’re not allowed to say in polite company, that I find very electrifying. Malm also makes the point that the sheer mass of infrastructure required to carry out planet-destroying activity is so vast that it cannot effectively be protected. I think that’s an idea that he makes very clear in the book that also feels very dangerous.
Daniel Goldhaber: I think that, in a lot of ways, we saw the book as a great collaborator in the process. The way that we like to work when making a movie is building it out of ideas first and then figuring out the best way to communicate those ideas in the most entertaining, accessible, and cinematic way possible. We had this amazing starting point of this book of really provocative ideas in which we actually have to remind ourselves how significant they are.
I think a great example of the adaptation process––and it’s ephemeral, it’s not like a one-to-one––but the book is all about setting up this target: there is this fossil fuel infrastructure that is destroying the planet, right? So then, as we started thinking about building the movie, it’s like, “well, what’s the antagonist of the movie?” The antagonist is the pipeline. That’s the big bad. There’s no Andy Garcia character from Ocean’s Eleven, there’s just these machines. They’re the pipeline, they’re the refinery in San Pedro, they’re the crazy fracking infrastructure in North Dakota, they’re the construction equipment in Portland. I think that’s a great example. We take this idea that this is the target, and then we start thinking about it as a heist movie, and then it becomes the antagonist and the target of the film. I think that, at every step of the process––and it’s fairly organic––but it’s about finding those ideas that we really connect to and then finding a way to rebuild the heist genre and remap the heist genre onto those ideas.
Daniel Garber: I guess what I like to think about in this context is what is uniquely possible in the medium of film and what is possible in text. Each one of those mediums has its own strengths. What we want to do here is make a film that opens a window of possibility in people’s minds and makes it possible for them to think about these ideas and possibly engage with them in other mediums as well, like buying Andreas’ books, and continuing to think about the politics behind the film. But in terms of what we can do on film, creating characters that provide an entry point for the audience and creating that kind of genre tie-in that allows people to view it as a work of entertainment, is honestly much more important than communicating all of the ideas in the book. I mean, I would hope that people are sympathetic to the ideas in the book after watching the movie, but it’s not a substitute for continuing to think about these things as you go through your life.
Jordan Sjol: We talked a lot also about the difference between making propaganda and making art. I think there’s a propaganda version of this movie, which is maybe good on its own terms, but we wanted to make the art version of this movie. Argumentative academic work is all about thinking and you do a lot of feeling along the way, but art is a lot more about feeling and doing a lot of thinking along the way.
Larry Fried: Ariela, Daniel [Goldhaber] has spoken previously about the choice to feature a collective of characters in this movie as being very intentional. It’s an ensemble piece, which happens to work really well for a heist film. Can you talk to me about assembling this group of actors and what it was like for you as a cast member to work on this film with all of them, especially with Sasha Lane who you have a very particular relationship with?
Ariela Barer: I was very involved in the casting process because I, obviously, have been an actor for a bit and I come from a place of really loving actors and also seeing the ways that actors can get very boxed-in in their careers. I was so excited to hear the way everyone in this movie talks about their process and knowing that they were capable of stretching and doing something like this. I was just constantly in awe of them on set. We were in the elements and I couldn’t believe how on top of it everyone was and how transformative everyone was. There were some people that were playing versions of themselves and then some people that were playing unrecognizable characters––like Jake [Weary] as Dwayne is crazy. I mean, everyone’s amazing. I’m so happy with how it all came together and how the collective fits together. Everyone just kind of fell into their role without a second thought, it was just natural.
Sasha was the first actor attached to the movie and she’s also an executive producer on the movie because she really helped the movie get made. The first thing we talked about with her and [her character] Theo was her attitude. She said something in an early meeting that was along the lines, “I think above all else, Theo is just so happy to be there and so happy to be doing this.” Sasha really brought that attitude to set every day. She is such a fun character of a person and just always saying exactly the most hilarious thing in any given moment. Her improv in group scenes was perfect every time.
Larry Fried: Is there a lot of improvisation in the film?
Ariela Barer: There was a lot of improvisation, which was hilarious, because we were explicitly like, “guys, we’re shooting on film, don’t improv,” but Lukas [Gage] immediately came in and said, “uh, what’s a script?” Forrest [Goodluck] also. Then it was just an improv set and thank god that it was because there’s so much in this movie that happened spontaneously because everyone was so in their role and in this dynamic so perfectly. It brought so much more life into the script and the story, as well as levity, which is necessary when you’re dealing with such heavy subject matter like this. I’m grateful for the levity that was brought to set from the cast every day.
Larry Fried: Daniel [Garber], in a Q&A after the screening, Daniel [Goldhaber] cited films like Ocean’s Eleven and Reservoir Dogs as inspirations, but I’m curious if there were any inspirations for you in the editing process that were not heist films. Is there a film that people wouldn’t initially think to be inspirational to the creation of this film but was actually paramount to figuring out what you wanted to achieve?
Daniel Garber: Ooh, that’s a really good question. I wish I had a better answer…
Larry Fried: I heard Ariela drop The Battle of Algiers––
Ariela Barer: [laughs]
Larry Fried: ––which was the most incredible touchpoint, I think, when thinking about this film.
Ariela Barer: Perfect movie.
Daniel Garber: Oh yeah, Battle of Algiers, definitely fantastic. Robert Altman has also been a really good reference for me in a lot of ways because he’s so good at navigating multiple storylines and balancing the interests of many different characters in an ensemble. I think that working on an ensemble film is always its own kind of challenge because the group develops its own identity. Those kinds of things can’t always be anticipated on the page, so finding ways to bring out those natural elements in the performance is really, I think, one of the joys and one of the challenges of working on a film like this.
Larry Fried: Is there an Altman film or Altman films that particularly come to mind for you?
Daniel Garber: I mean, Short Cuts is particularly near and dear to my heart and probably the most recent one that I’ve seen.
Daniel Goldhaber: We watched McCabe and Mrs. Miller during production, which was a nice thing to do, partially just because of the way that you can feel the elements in that movie. I think that was something we were just going through while making it. One of the things that’s been really amazing about working with Dan on this process is that, on some level, action and heisty stuff in the movie is the easy part. It’s fun and easy to find really punchy cuts. You know what I mean? I think the harder part is to then navigate everything else in context of that. Dan has such an unbelievable instinct for like, “we need to hold on this shot for one more second,” or “we need to feel this moment of performance.”
There’s one moment in the movie where Dwayne gets dropped off. He says, “Merry Christmas,” then we push into his face and we have this moment, and then he exits the frame and it just holds on this landscape for just––I don’t know––a second, and then we cut. I remember very early in the [editing] process, I was like, “why are we holding on this landscape for no reason?” Dan said, “because the audience is going to sit and look at the landscape and wonder if something bad is about to happen,” because we’re holding on an empty space for a brief second. I think that for me, that’s just magic. That’s anticipating how somebody is going to be in this moment, an hour and 20 minutes into the movie, and incepting the suspense out of nowhere into them. I think this is actually where the magic of the editing of this movie is. I don’t even know where you get inspiration like that. I think that’s just genius.
Larry Fried: Have you guys gotten a chance to see any films at the festival? What films do you think our readers really need to pursue?
Ariela Barer: I’ve only seen one movie because we’ve been very, very busy, but I saw Aristotle and Dante [Discover the Secrets of the Universe]. I have a friend in that movie, Isabella Gomez. She’s a star. I love her so much. She’s super talented. Put that in––put that in the interview. [laughs]
Larry Fried: Absolutely.
Ariela Barer: I also think the director, Aitch [Alberto], is a real talent to watch and I’m a big fan. I plan on seeing many more.
Daniel Goldhaber: I haven’t seen anything at the festival this year yet, but I saw R.M.N. at Cannes and I really loved that movie. I thought that was a really exciting and interesting political film about questions of immigration and statehood and industry. That one really, really hit for me. I’m really excited for De Humani Corporis Fabrica.
Larry Fried: I can’t wait for that film.
Daniel Goldhaber: Dan and I went to Harvard and we were in the VES [Visual and Environmental Studies] program. Lucy [Castaing-Taylor] and Verena [Paravel, the film’s directors and faculty at Harvard] were around. I love their work. I’m also really excited for All The Beauty and Bloodshed, as well as The Fabelmans because I love Steve!
Ariela Barer: There’s a Palestinian movie I really wanna see…
Daniel Goldhaber: Yes! Alam, I’ve heard, is very good.
Jordan Sjol: I haven’t seen much, but my favorite thing so far has been No Bears. I think No Bears is absolutely fantastic. It’s playing with film form, it’s playing with the responsibility of storytelling, it’s doing a movie-in-a-movie without being annoying about it, which is really hard. I thought it was very, very well executed and a good watch.
Daniel Garber: I’m with Jordan. We saw No Bears together and I was really blown away by it. I highly recommend that. [Director Jafar] Panahi is just such a phenomenal filmmaker and his sense of rhythm and timing within shots is impeccable. Even beyond the politics of the film, which are great, I think filmmakers can probably learn a lot from the way that he directs people within shots, the way that he manipulates space and moves bodies through it––
Jordan Sjol: And how he shoots the location and moves the camera in these like insane long shots that don’t feel flashy. It’s so, so good.
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline had its World Premiere in the Platform section of Toronto International Film Festival 2022.
Larry Fried is a filmmaker, writer, and podcaster based in New Jersey. He is the host and creator of the podcast “My Favorite Movie is…,” a podcast dedicated to helping filmmakers make somebody’s next favorite movie. He is also the Visual Content Manager for Special Olympics New Jersey, an organization dedicated to competition and training opportunities for athletes with intellectual disabilities across the Garden State.