Show notes
Johnny Flynn talks with Mike White about playing Jacob Hansen (opposite John C. Reilly's Doc) in A Prayer for the Dying, Dara Van Dusen's directorial debut adapted from Stewart O'Nan's novella. Flynn breaks down the challenge of embodying an unreliable narrator — a Civil War veteran whose PTSD warps everything the audience sees through his eyes — and the novella's hidden debt to the Book of Job, which is why he showed up to set in Slovakia with a real, unscripted beard he and Van Dusen eventually agreed on.
Flynn also gets into what drew him to working with a first-time feature director, tracing it back to his experience on Michael Pearce's Beast and explaining why a director who's spent a decade fighting to get a passion project made brings an urgency he finds irresistible. He talks about Van Dusen's path through Poland's famed Łódź Film School (where she met cinematographer Kate McCullough), her decade-long effort to secure the rights to O'Nan's book, and the film's long road from its 2024 shoot to premiering at the Berlin Film Festival.
Flynn also gets into what drew him to working with a first-time feature director, tracing it back to his experience on Michael Pearce's Beast and explaining why a director who's spent a decade fighting to get a passion project made brings an urgency he finds irresistible. He talks about Van Dusen's path through Poland's famed Łódź Film School (where she met cinematographer Kate McCullough), her decade-long effort to secure the rights to O'Nan's book, and the film's long road from its 2024 shoot to premiering at the Berlin Film Festival.
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