A slapstick frostbitten battle between a drunken applejack salesman and diabolical beavers – hundreds of them – who stand between him and survival. Hundreds of Beavers stars Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who co-wrote the script with Mike Cheslik. Following its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in 2022, the film has screened at more than 50 festivals, including Popcorn Frights, Fantasia and Sitges.
Playing to sold out sessions all over Australia before it’s digital release of July 24, Nick L’Barrow spoke with lead star and co-writer of the film, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, about the film’s growing success, making a film with no real script, and his filmmaking journey so far.
Nick: Whereabouts in the world are you now?
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews: I’m in Kyoto, Japan! I’m kind of on vacation, but we were in South Korea for a film festival, and we had a few screenings [of Hundreds of Beavers]. Then we’re going to Finland and Estonia for some more screenings, and then the Czech Republic for some more screenings. So, it’s a good excuse to go to some other countries, too!
Nick: It’s the Beavers World Tour! Well, I appreciate you taking the time to chat during your down time, man. And I mean, the response to this film all over the world have been incredible. How are you feeling about the reaction from audiences for this movie that you and Mike [Cheslik, director] created the idea for in a bar all those years ago?
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews: I mean, it’s been amazing man. I think it’s been the best-case scenario; you know! When we made the movie, and finished the movie, we both thought we had something pretty special on our hands, but we didn’t know how audiences were going to react to it necessarily.
It’s a long, black-and-white, no dialogue, slapstick movie with mascots. So, it’s kind of like, we had no idea what everyone was going to think of it. And it did take a little while for it to catch some steam. But it’s been doing the rounds for about 2 years now, and it’s doing better than we ever thought possible. So, we’re pretty happy with it.
Nick: I’m so curious about what the writing process looks like on a film like this, which is hilarious set-piece after set-piece. But you also have to try and work all these comedic bits into some sort of narrative, so how did you and Mike cohesively put all these crazy moments together to make the overall story?
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews: Yeah, we wrote a treatment that tells, more or less, what happens in each act of the movie. But we had to spend months retooling it, all the different gags. For months, we just had pictures that Mike had drawn from ideas we had for different gags and how they would connect.
It was a lot of brainstorming of what out of the 1000 gags we had that were going to be the funniest. So, we had to trim that down to the funniest like, 50 or 60, and make them all connect to each other and ties in with one another. And we needed to have a clever gag that was sort of “Looney Tunes-y”, but also fur trap based, but also connected to other things that happened earlier that are going to pay off later.
It was like putting together this giant puzzle over several months. There’s no formal screenplay of this movie. It’s like three binders full of storyboards.
Nick: So, without a screenplay, and a movie that has no “real” dialogue, is there something where you have what the beavers are saying to each other in their own language? And even things saying how the human characters are communicating with each other through their noises and grunts.
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews: We just had to keep in mind where the character had been and where he’s trying to get to. Then we just had to show that visually. There was definitely times when we were writing where we were like, “Can we just say a line here?” Because that would’ve been so much easier [laughs]! That would’ve saved us so much time. But we really challenged ourselves to show, instead of tell. As long as we knew where the character was going, it sort of informed everything.
In terms of the beaver performances, a lot of the “beaver language” was thought up by our sound designer, Bobb Barito, who gave the beavers their own language. He used camel sounds to make the beavers talk, and he would customise each sound according to how they were feeling.
Nick: That’s incredible! I love how this film blends elements of old school filmmaking and modern-day techniques and effects. How did modern filmmaking techniques help bring the old school feeling to life? And was there one element of old school filmmaking that you guys were proud to have pulled off?
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews: Yeah, like, Mike did over 1500 effect shots with After Effects. So that definitely helped. We couldn’t have made this movie if it was in a nice colour, 4K, hi-res image. The whole point is to have that lo-fi quality. So, an effect that would normally have taken Mike a day to render, would only take an hour. As long as audiences were buying into our shoddy effects, and the fact that the movie looks like crap, then we could get away with anything.
With the old school filmmaking, a lot of my performance is based on Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. And I guess one that we always kept in mind was Toshiro Mifune, because he was really good at striking really strong poses. All his movies had dialogue, but he was really good at showing the audience how he was feeling.
So, when Mike was directing me, he would say that you have to get an emotion across in a split second. And so, a lot of that came through in striking strong poses. I think it was something that they don’t really do in modern movies, but they would do in silent movies.
Nick: I’m guessing Mike’s direct feedback would help, but when did you know that you had those right movements and physical expressions for your performance, considering you don’t have dialogue to fall back on?
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews: I would say more during like the second winter. The first winter we shot was mostly the first act. And as you saw in the first act, it was mostly just me being cold and miserable. And I’d be out in the middle of winter, the sub-zero degree weather, half naked, and Mike would be like, “And now you’re cold!” Yeah, no shit! Thanks for the direction [laughs].
But then in the second and third act, Mike would have to remind about things that have happened in the scenes before to make sure I got what my mood should be, or what my emotions are right now. I think by the second winter we really struck it, and I would constantly keep in my mind where I was coming from and where I was going, while also being animated, like a cartoon character.
Nick: I’m so curious to find out – how many people actually got to don the beaver suits?
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews: Almost everyone involved with production wore costumes at some point. I wore the costume a number of times, so did director Mike. Everyone did! I think it was somewhere between, like, 15-20 people wore all the costumes. Some people would just wear it for a day, and just like be a beaver for a day. Other people would all seven animal costumes.
On an average day, there was only like 4 or 5 people on set. Then there were some days where we would have a few more people come on set, and we’d be like, “Guys, get ready! We got a few people coming up this weekend! We’re gonna have 7 people!”
Nick: I think that’s just a testament to how much the love for making this film comes across on screen! Before we wrap up, I’d love to get an idea of what Ryland, the kid making movies at home in Wisconsin, would think of being here today with Hundreds of Beavers. What decisions did he make to get to where you are today?
Ryland Brickson Cole Tews: I just really enjoyed watching movies and making home movies with my family and my neighbourhood friends. If there was like a school assignment due, I would always ask the teacher, “Hey, can I make this into a video instead?” I didn’t want to make a stupid poster board or diorama.
And usually, the movies weren’t even that much related to the source material, but the fact that the teachers were like, “Wow, he put so much effort in. We’re gonna give him a good grade.” It had nothing to do with photosynthesis, but we really tried hard!
I think there was also something special about being able to watch a Hollywood movie as a kid, and then have a video camcorder and be able to shoot and edit a movie in camera. You can watch the playback and see that it’s a real movie. There’s something kind of magical about that, that always sort of stuck with me.
We made stuff in high school and college that everyone seemed to enjoy, so Mike and I stuck together and tried the movie thing. And it seemed to pan out. We made Lake Michigan Monster for like almost no money, and because of the success of that, we got a little bit of money to make Hundreds of Beavers, and now it’s doing really well. It’s been a long journey, but it’s just one of those things we just stuck to and worked hard on, and people seemed to enjoy it. So, we just figured we’d keep doing it.
Thank you so much to Ryland for his time, and to Light Bulb Films and Walkden Publicity for organising the chat. Hundreds of Beavers is now playing in limited Australian cinemas and will release on various VOD platforms from July 24.
