Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gus Van Sant discusses his new film ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ and the true story, on-set challenges, and revisiting ‘Good Will Hunting’.
“I didn’t know about it,” Van Sant says about the story behind ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. “It was something that was out of the blue, even though it seemed to be such a national story. I hadn’t heard about it so I was learning as I read and astounded that it had happened without my knowledge.”
In this in-depth conversation, Gus Van Sant reflects on bringing ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ to the screen, discovering the real-life story behind it, shooting in Louisville under unexpected conditions, and collaborating with a cast ready to work within a tight schedule. He also shares warm, funny memories of Robin Williams from ‘Good Will Hunting’ and considers how the film’s themes resonate with today’s political and cultural climate.
The morning of February 8, 1977, Anthony G. “Tony” Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), 44, entered the office of Richard O. Hall (Dacre Montgomery), president of the Meridian Mortgage Company, and took him hostage with a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun wired with a “dead man’s wire” from the trigger to the Hall’s head. This gripping true story follows the shocking stand-off that captured global attention, as Tony demanded $5 million, immunity from prosecution, and a personal apology from the Halls for what he claimed was a financial betrayal.
Van Sant directs from a script by Austin Kolodney. ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ stars Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes, Myha’la, Colman Domingo, and Al Pacino.
Following an Oscar-qualifying run beginning on December 12, 2025, Row K Entertainment will release ‘Dead Man’s Wire’ in limited theaters on January 9, 2026. A wide release will follow on January 16, 2026.
Awards Focus: It’s so nice to meet you. How are you doing?
Gus Van Sant: Good. How are you doing?
AF: I’m doing well. It’s been seven years since your last feature film. What took so long to direct a new one?
Van Sant: Well, I think there were some strikes. There was Covid. There was a TV show, where I did six episodes of ‘Feud’, which was a Ryan Murphy series. It just ate up the time.
I mean, I did work during Covid on a Gucci advertisement, which was feature-length.
AF: How familiar were you with Tony’s story prior to becoming attached to direct ‘Dead Man’s Wire’?
Van Sant: I didn’t know about it. It was something that was out of the blue, even though it seemed to be such a national story. I hadn’t heard about it so I was learning as I read and astounded that it had happened without my knowledge.
I’m assuming that the broadcast—he wanted a national broadcast. The way that I understood that the TV stations worked, being you could only own seven stations at a time, that he probably just reached the Midwest and not the coast to coast.
AF: When I found out a few months back that the film was filmed in Louisville, my first thought was, did something happen back home that I never knew about?
Van Sant: (Laughs)
AF: And then when I watched the film, I was surprised to see it taking place in Indianapolis. How did you decide on Louisville rather than Indianapolis?
Van Sant: I think the producers, they had already set it up before I arrived. There was an incentive in Kentucky that I think is still there. It had been there at one point, then it disappeared and came back, but they were doing a few other films as well as ‘Dead Man’s Wire’. They were all set up with that incentive.
I don’t know if Indiana has an incentive or not, but it was close enough city-wise that they could do it there.
AF: I’m assuming the Indianapolis setting is one of the reasons why the skyline is kind of blink-and-miss it in the background.
Van Sant: What does miss it mean?
AF: Well, I was watching the film and I had read a few days earlier that the Louisville skyline was featured in the trailer, but then, when I’m watching the film, I’m looking for a more visible shot.
Van Sant: Right.
AF: And then it’s one of these where it turns out to be that it’s in the background.
Van Sant: There was something that we shot, which was of buildings in the beginning, and that I used to use as the credits for the film, but it just didn’t end up to be part of it.
I don’t think we were trying to escape the buildings, but they looked quite a bit like Indiana, but we definitely didn’t have a cityscape. Are you from Kentucky?
AF: Born and raised in Louisville.
Van Sant: Wow, that’s amazing.
AF: Yeah.
Van Sant: I’m from Mayfield, Kentucky, so it’s far away, but I was born in Kentucky.
AF: My understanding is that Austin was in financial straits when he started working on the script.
Van Sant: As a matter of fact, during the making of the of the film, he kept saying he hadn’t been paid for his script, even though we were shooting the script. I eventually asked him, “Why haven’t you been paid?”
There was something about—I can’t remember, there was some strange problem. I don’t think it had to do with unions, but it had to do with the original people who had been involved in creating it. There was another producer involved that I hadn’t met.
But anyway, he was in pretty dire straits, but he’s okay now.
AF: Did you sign on to direct after he started working on the script or?
Van Sant: Yeah, way after, because he started during Covid, which is quite a while ago. He had worked all those years and there had been other people involved, other concepts, other companies. Tom Culliver, one of our producers, had been shopping it around.
It kept getting pushed aside by different people that touched on it or worked on it, which was why, when I came aboard, there was a lot of things already set up, including the incentive. They had actually gone to Louisville to scout at one point.
But we went and re-scouted. We started kind of from scratch, but there was a lot of history that it had.
AF: What was it like to direct this cast?
Van Sant: They were great. I mean, all casts are interestingly coming from such different places that I’m used to individually having a different relationship with each person.
They were fantastic. Everyone was. It was a very small number of days we had to shoot and they were very at the ready to make it happen.
AF: What was the most challenging aspect of the production?
Van Sant: Well, one of the problems we had, which also was a blessing, was that on the first day, we got a foot of snow, which is pretty rare in Louisville, as you probably know.
Indiana had—during the actual event in 1977—snow everywhere everywhere in the footage that we used in our film. But also, in all the stills from the original event, there was all this snow everywhere.
There was snow except for our first day of shooting. None of the background cars, or even a lot of the people—that were in supposedly in the city—showed up because of transportation and/or the background cars. A lot of them were afraid to come because of salt on the roads and they were collector cars they were afraid to come so we had really cool Mustang, and one bus.
We had our Cadillac, too, so it was hard to shoot.
AF: Is it hard to believe that ‘Good Will Hunting’ is nearly 30 years old?
Van Sant: Yeah, for me, of course. I’m 73 so everything, including things when I was 18, seemed just like a couple days ago.
AF: Do you have any favorite memories of working with Robin Williams?
Van Sant: I mean, yeah, I was just talking to the group—I’m at the Sun Valley Film Festival. There was a really funny part where—I mean, in general, things with him were funny, but we had in ‘Good Will Hunting’ when Will meets Sean in the office and the subsequent meetings that they have in the office, which are generally quite long.
They were four and five pages long. I was trying to move the camera around a lot so that there was some activity going on while they were having their scenes. It made it so that we had to measure a lot, stop the camera, and get all the measurements because the camera was constantly moving closer and farther away from the actors.
While we did that, in order to actually rehearse it, they had to do their lines so that we knew which line was happening at which mark.
In order to not belabor their own characters, somebody had the idea—one of either Matt or Robin had the idea—to do it in just other dialects, other characters. Robin would do it as Janet Reno in one case. They would change every take.
He would do Janet Reno, then Matt would do Baby Huey, the cartoon character. And then, the next run through, one would be Nixon and one would be Kissinger. And they would do that, they said, because they didn’t want to do it as their characters over and over again before a fresh take.
And then I mentioned to Matt one day when we were off, I said, “It’s really funny when you guys do those characters in these other characters.” And he said, “Yeah, it’s exhausting.” He was complaining. He’s like, “I didn’t like it.”
And I said, “Oh, you’re not having fun. You seem like you’re having so much fun.” And he’s like, “No, it’s completely exhausting. You try and keep up with Robin Williams.” Because Robin was trying to be funny and I think Matt needed to match him and be as funny just in front of the crew.
I didn’t realize that he had to work at it. I thought they were just having fun.
AF: Just trying to keep up with Robin Williams—that’s a challenge in and of itself, unless you’re one of his equals, like Billy Crystal.
Van Sant: Yeah, if it was Billy, it might’ve been a different story. But yeah, he was quite funny.
AF: What do you hope people take away from watching Dead Man’s Wire?
Van Sant: I don’t know if it has a message exactly. I mean, it’s maybe inspiration for people that are trying to overcome larger powers, but I don’t think that’s a message in the movie.
I think, of course, since it’s mirroring our modern day troubles with Mangionie or the Trump administration, that it certainly, I think, touches on a lot of us in that helplessness that you have in face of the larger machine that, of course, Tony is trying to fight against.
I think that there’s resonances that we feel as just citizens of our country.
AF: I know we didn’t have social media in the 70s, but it makes me wonder if he would have been celebrated as a hero at the time.
Van Sant: Yeah, I’m sure not, yeah. Although he was celebrated in Indianapolis because of the mortgage company being such a difficult one, they had already gotten in trouble in part of their history before our film was concerned, before our telling of the story, where they were viewed by the community as maybe disreputable.
When Tony got let off with his verdict of insanity, the community really rallied. My next door neighbor has a friend who was in a big stadium where there was a game, and the announcer announced that Tony had been let off on insanity, and the entire stadium erupted in cheers.
I think the community was really for him.
AF: Well, it’s been a pleasure getting to chat with you. Thank you so much.
Van Sant: Great, thank you.