It’s been a remarkable few years for screenwriter Zach Baylin. He first broke through when his spec script King Richard, a biopic about the father of tennis greats Serena and Venus Williams, was named one of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood by the 2018 edition of the Black List. That script, of course, was made into a hit film starring Will Smith that earned Baylin an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and in the last two years alone he’s worked on another five produced movies, co-writing Creed III, Gran Turismo, Bob Marley: One Love, and the remake of The Crow.
The fifth and most recent of those projects is one Baylin has been thinking about and living with for a while: the action thriller The Order, based on the real-life clash between Bob Mathews, the leader of the titular white-supremacist militia, and law enforcement in the 1980s. Baylin says he first became interested in the topic after a sobering trip in 2017 to the national memorial for the Oklahoma City bombing, when he discovered that Timothy McVeigh and Mathews were both radicalized by the same book: “The Turner Diaries,” an apocalyptic novel about a white-nationalist takeover of America. Further research revealed the extent to which Mathews funded his extremist movement with armed robberies, which made Baylin realize “there was a kinetic movie in there.”
The resulting film was directed by Justin Hurzel (Assassin’s Creed, Nitram), and stars Nicholas Hoult as Mathews and Jude Law (rocking an incredible period-appropriate mustache) and Tye Sheridan as a pair of fictionalized law officers aiming to bring him down. Baylin admits that the production wasn’t an easy one. “I mean, the whole process was budgetary pushback,” he says with a laugh. “It was really hard to get the movie made, and it felt like it kept getting chiseled down and down.” Maybe so, but the payoff was well worth it: The Order has earned rave reviews since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and the relationship Baylin developed on it with Law will continue with Black Rabbit, an upcoming Netflix mini-series about New York City nightlife.
Baylin spoke to Awards Focus about incorporating good ideas from actors, the harrowing real-life events that inspired the story, and what the most rewarding part of the film’s success has been.
Awards Focus: Congrats on the success of The Order, I really loved the film. I understand that your trek to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum is where you first encountered the book “The Turner Diaries,” the 1978 white-supremacist novel that inspired Bob Mathews and, as you note at the close of the film, the events of January 6. And I just wonder what it was like when you saw that and then you started to read the story. Did you order a copy of the book? Was there a placard that explained the reason it was there?
Zach Baylin: In my recollection, when you go into the Memorial Museum there’s like a timeline of Timothy McVeigh’s radicalization. And there’s a copy of the book in a display case. I remember it being very jarring to see it. That whole experience of being at that memorial is really powerful.
I can very specifically remember seeing the cover of that book for the first time and just saying, like, “who the fuck read this and thought that this held the blueprint of a way to change America?” And so, yeah, I ordered a copy of it. You could still get it on Amazon at that point. This was probably 2017.
And then producer Bryan Haas and I just started reading all about Bob Mathews and sort of how McVeigh had found that book and why it had become this sort of seed that was passed through these white-separatist groups. And so that was sort of the first entry point into the story of Bob Mathews and the Order for us.
And there’s a really good documentary on Netflix about McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing that has a little clip about the Order and about the Ukiah heist, which was at the time the biggest armored-car heist in U.S. history. So all those things started to speak to the idea that there was a kinetic movie in there.
AF: You got Tye Sheridan and Jude Law, and they have this incredible relationship of the veteran and the local law enforcement that ultimately gets a little rash. Can you talk about the dynamics of how you wanted the protagonists to have that interplay?
Baylin: Yeah, it’s pretty classic to that genre. And I knew that we were playing with sort of archetypal roles within the crime genre.
There are a handful of real investigators that we composited. There was an FBI agent who was relocated to Coeur d’Alene at this time, and his entry into this case and with the Aryan Nations was through his relationship with the undersheriff of county in Coeur d’Alene. But the latter was actually an older man.
As we were developing Jude’s character, we were really leaning into how sort of weary and broken and how much weight he was carrying around — not physically, but like, emotionally — and it felt like a much more interesting dynamic to pair him with someone who was younger and who was coming into it a bit more idealistically. And so that was something that we started building with Tye and Jude and Justin together, and they just had a really natural chemistry.
AF: It was incredible. And that scene where Tye’s character gets hit, and he’s still walking and shooting and Jude runs past, the choreography of that is just so electric.
Baylin: That moment speaks to the way that the whole script was developed once the pieces started coming together. I had written it and had it for years, and we were trying to figure out how to make it, but once Justin and Jude came on and then the rest of the cast, we had these great workshops where we would rehearse. And Justin’s really collaborative in the best way.
I remember having a conversation with Tye early on, and Tye’s from Texas and he’s a big hunter. And he was telling us that sometimes, when you shoot a buck, it doesn’t know that it’s been hit yet, and it’ll keep going until it just stops. And so Tye actually suggested that maybe when Jamie gets hit he’s still moving and and Husk wouldn’t know. And so that really came out of this great awareness that Tye had about hunting and bringing something in from his life.
And then Justin just did this amazing job choreographing it. I think it’s a really shocking moment in the way they did it.
AF: The interplay between Nicholas Hoult and Jude is this sort of cat-and-mouse chase — it reminds me of Heat, which is one of the all-time greats of that genre. And this has that fun element where you see their interactions and their paths crossing. Can you talk about how there’s maybe a connection between the two of them?
Baylin: Yeah, certainly, when I was looking at the script I was trying to think about the ways in which those characters would relate to each other. I think they’re both trying in their own screwed-up ways to build a community and try to carve out the future that they want for their families, so that they were both on similar quests. And Bob being someone who was — while he’s mentally very damaged — he lived a very healthy life, like he didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t cuss. So we’re like, okay, then Jude’s character should do all of that stuff.
I remember talking early on with Justin about this idea that in Bob’s self-aggrandizing mythology, he wanted to be martyred. And so he was almost interested in sort of seeing, you know, who would be the person who would be famous for killing Bob Mathews? And they have a kind of Jesse James/Robert Ford dynamic. That scene we put in the middle of the movie, which is fictional, where they see each other: that really was Bob sort of saying, “is this guy going to be the guy who brings me down?” And so that became a really interesting, different dynamic, I thought.
AF: Did you encounter any budgetary pushback while making the film?
Baylin: I mean, the whole process was budgetary pushback. (laughs) It was really hard to get the movie made, and it felt like it kept getting chiseled down and down.
I’m sure I’m going to get some of these details a little bit wrong, but I remember Justin and I huddled up during the last two weeks before we started shooting about how we have to cut out another 10 pages of the script. And so it was constantly being whittled down to what was essential. And Justin, cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, and First AD Eddie Thorne were just incredible at figuring out, okay, how can we use this location three times? How can we shoot the heist on the highway and the big shootout sequence at the hotel — and both of those are really factually accurate.
They shot each of those in a day, and those are big choreographed action sequences with lots of effects and stunts and all. They figured out how to do it, but we did not have enough time or money.
AF: I feel like sometimes that pressure adds to the acting, which is great. I mean, it’s such a high-octane scene already.
Baylin: Yeah, I think it definitely did. And Justin builds these really naturalistic environments on set, so there was a lot of authenticity in the sweatiness and exhaustion and franticness of those scenes. Like the scene in the mall parking lot where Bob drives by Jude’s character and doesn’t shoot him, and then Jude gets back in the car and he punches and breaks the windshield.
And that was all Jude and that’s not scripted, it’s just one of those amazing moments that developed on set.
AF: I really liked seeing the hate group’s in-fighting: it’s like Fox News and Newsmax, with the more radical one trying to seize control. There’s that confrontation in the church and Nicholas gives that incredible speech with almost psychotic enthusiasm: can you talk about writing that and then seeing how it was interpreted on screen?
Baylin: That scene was always in the script from the very early iterations of it, because there was a real moment in Bob Mathews’ ascendancy within the white-supremacist movement where he gave this speech at a National Alliance convention that invited people to come and join this militia cult movement that he was growing — and he was also willing to pay people to come. Which was pretty audacious.
And as insidious as his ideas are, he had some oratory skill. It was clear from reading about it, it was a galvanizing moment where the young buck was sort of overtaking the old guard in that community. So it felt like this very important moment to depict, and a lot of what he says is verbatim to that speech. And then we had a lot of conversations with Nick, because Nick had done a lot of his own research and had listened to all of these tapes of Bob. And so we sat down and listened to some other speeches that Bob had given and tried to figure out a way to further personalize it.
And so the beginning of that where he talks about his father and how he had been disappointed in his father’s resilience — in early iterations of the script, his father was a character and we actually saw Bob holding back some of his worst instincts because his dad was still alive. And his dad passing was a transitional moment in the movie.
And we ended up saying, we just have to start the movie with them already off and running. So trying to find ways to bring some of that into the script was something that was always moving around. And I think Nick’s performance in that scene is just absolutely electric.
And I wasn’t there that day, but I remember watching the dailies and it was kind of frightening because there was an atmosphere where it does feel like he’s just turned this whole group. And when they all started chanting “white power,” it felt very haunting to watch the first time.
AF: And I assume you enjoyed working with Jude so much, you wanted to collaborate with him again on Black Rabbit, the upcoming Netflix miniseries you’re making with Jason Bateman?
Baylin: Yeah, you know, it’s so crazy. When I met with Jude to talk about The Order for the first time, I met with him and his producing partner, Ben Jackson, who’s awesome. And as we were talking about that, he asked, “what else are you doing?” And I said that I was developing this TV thing with my wife and Jason about a certain era of New York nightlife. And he was like, oh, I was there that whole time. And so he got on board that at the same meeting.
It was really amazing. I had worked in art departments for a long time in New York, specifically in the prop departments. And I had worked on a movie that Jude shot in New York, like 15 years ago, for Steven Soderbergh. And I told him, “we have worked together before — I handed you a briefcase one time.”
And he’s just an amazing guy and an amazing collaborator. We just had this incredible time building that character together. And he takes and deserves so much ownership of what that person became.
Justin was also so much fun to work with; he makes these very challenging movies, but he’s an absolutely lovely person. And so Justin came and directed the last two episodes of the show with Jude and Jason.
AF: What’s been the most rewarding response that you’ve gotten with the film?
Baylin: It’d be hard for anything to top going to Venice, which was the first time that we had been around an audience seeing it. It felt like there was a genuine appreciation of the movie, and to be in that setting and experience that was really fantastic.
And some of the more personal responses have been incredibly meaningful: we got a message from Alan Berg’s ex-wife that she had seen the film and said “you got it right.”
And the federal agent who Jude’s character is primarily based on is named Wayne Manis, and he saw the movie and said, “you got it, that was it.” I’ve written a couple things based on true stories — and while we obviously have to make huge creative decisions — when those people who lived it see it and say that the essence of what’s there is true, that’s really powerful.
I hope a lot of people see it, because it’s a challenging time to get a movie like this out. But among everything I’ve done, I’m really, really proud of this movie. And I think that Justin executed it on such a high level. And I hope more people see it.