Now available to rent or buy on various digital platforms, The Run is set in a dystopian, post-pandemic world crippled by a global fertility crisis, where an aging smuggler, Mac (Callan Mulvey) struggles to protect a runaway teenager and her baby from ruthless criminals, while trying to complete his run for his vicious employers.
Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s lead actor, Callan Mulvey (Avengers: Endgame, Batman v Superman), about finding the humanity in a dystopian story, and the importance of a good crew to make a film feel incredibly immersive.
Callan Mulvey: I love the collection of DVDs behind you, mate. I really want to start buying and collecting more of them.
Nick: I was a Blockbuster kid growing up. I started working there when I was 14, and I still think it’s the best job I’ve ever had. What did the video store mean to you growing up?
CM: Well, the thing that I love the most, and that I think we’ve lost not with streaming, is when I was young, you would spend 45 minutes to an hour there. Asking the workers about what films are worth watching. You’d spend all this time making your decisions. You’d get to pick like three films, then go and get your takeaways. Go home and put the cassette in, and if the film sucks – I’m watching it. I’m invested! I’ve put so much time into choosing it that I am going to see it out. And you can’t always judge a movie in the first five minutes, but movies are made now – and I think it’s so sad – where the writing has changed to accommodate the fact that you’re watching something where if nothing blows up in the first 30 seconds, you just move to the next thing. So, I’m envious of you DVD collection back there because I want to do the same and build my film collection that doesn’t go away if I don’t have a subscription or they decide to not put something on a platform anymore. There’s something beautiful about that tangible piece of plastic. It’s yours to own. I look back with nostalgia at those video stores. It’s like a ritual that is now reduced to nothing.
Nick: Tangible is exactly the word I use. There is something so special about taking something tangible that you have so much care for, and being able to show it or share it with someone else. It’s a beautiful thing! And as a kid, movies were the way I was able to explore stories, characters, and especially emotions. So, I’m curious to know, with a character like Mac who is quite stoic on the outside, but is harbouring a lot of pain on the inside, what was the process in finding that emotional balance needed for The Run?
CM: The reason I said “yes”, and sadly the scene was actually cut from the film, is at the beginning of the film in the script, after the meeting where Mac is shown the picture of his wife, he goes back to his farm and is just spaced out in his car, and taking in what’s just happened before he walks into his place. And there is this ruckus, his dog is yelping and screaming, and has been attacked and killed by wild dogs. So, he wraps the dog up in white fabric, and there was this beautiful shot we mounted where I have the dog in my lap and I am just bawling and crying. Then I drive to my daughter’s grave, telling her about what happened while crying. There’s this big monologue about how the dog is gone, and she would’ve been 11 today. There was this sequence of events where by page 12, I was just sent by what this guy was going through. I was so invested in this dude and what he’d just been going through. I wanted to continue the journey. And I don’t know if I can fully articulate it, but I think within all of us there are sides that we present because we don’t want to be shunned or ostracised. Something that is in our ancient DNA. But I also feel like we all experience this multifaceted degree of pain, and we’re so effective at hiding it. I think Mac at this point is just hardened up because he has to be. The trauma of losing his child in a horrible way can’t break through because of the situation he’s in. But then Aliya and her bub slowly start, sort of, penetrating that wall in finding his redemption.
Nick: How does all of that emotional conflict happening within Mac inform the physicality of him, especially when you have to use that emotion for the action scenes?
CM: Yeah, I certainly do, but only to the degree where I’m not devoting brain power to doing it. There are actors out there who are brilliant at that. I don’t have that skill set. I’m not that good. I have to devote that much brain power to the physicality, then I’m not focused on the other actor or what’s happening in the moment. If I get too self focused, you’re not spontaneous. I think I tried to have a sort of weariness and this sense that Mac was just fucking over this battle, and the physicality came through that idea of him keeping the walls up. But, emotionality definitely affects physicality. And if you’re feeling the scene, and you’re in that emotional state, the tension will exist in your body and manifest in certain ways.
Nick: One of the other things that really stuck out to me is how immersive the film feels because of the practical locations. I know this is an independent feature, so the budget doesn’t cater to green screens or built sets, and I think that works so well in the films favour. With a story that’s set in a desolate, regional part of Australia, how much did those practical locations help your own immersion into the story?
CM: Well, our phenomenally talented DP, Michael Tessari, what he was able to do with the time and budget constraints he had was just remarkable. Frankly, it looks like there is $10 million more on the screen because of him and the extraordinary art department we had. Everyone just pulled blood from stone, which was so helpful to us actors. When you’re in those environments, those spectacular landscapes, it’s incredible. We had one set that was an abandoned rural fire shed that had nothing inside it, but was getting turned into a truck stop. And a few days later, I walked in and was just gobsmacked. I wrote an email to the whole department saying that they had just crushed it. That’s the best thing about this job – the collaboration. It’s all of us together. The work that they do, the skill that somebody learns – even just the way paint flakes on a light switch. They can make it look 10 years old, and then they’ll add a little bit of a chemical on there so the paint looks 30 years old. It’s stuff you never see, but it imprints on you. It gets into you. And for us as actors, it makes it easier to trick myself into the circumstance. It’s beautiful. All of the crew and craftsmen and women whose skill set it is to create that environment are so incredibly helpful. Plus, it’s recorded forever, right? All of that work that everybody has done is there to see forever.
Thank you so much to Callan for his time, and to NedCo PR for organising the interview. The Run is available to rent or buy on various VOD platforms now.
