When director David Gordon Green set out to make Nutcrackers, the family comedy starring Ben Stiller that opened the Toronto International Film Festival Thursday, he didn’t have to search to find his four key child actors. Central to the story, the kids play the unruly brothers who torment their Uncle Michael, Stiller’s real estate developer character, who is charged with figuring out their care after the death of their parents.
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Instead, the film was entirely based around Green’s relationship with the four real-life siblings: Atlas, Arlo, Ulysses, and Homer Janson—ages 8 through 13 (Arlo and Atlas are twins). Their mother Karey Williams was a film school classmate of Green’s.
“After making a few movies as a collaborator of hers, she went back to the farm, fifth-generation farm in Ohio, and had four beautiful sons,” Green says in a phone interview the morning after the premiere. “As we kept up and they grew up I was always blown away by their charisma and charm, and every time I’d go over there and hang out I just felt there’s a movie here if we just bring a camera next time.”
Nutcrackers, which is seeking distribution out of the festival, marks Stiller’s first lead acting role in seven years—he’s been away directing television like the highly acclaimed Apple TV+ series Severance. However, it’s the Jansons who pilot the story and who inspired Green, who had recently been making studio horror like the Halloween revivals and directing shows like The Righteous Gemstones, to return to his roots in indie filmmaking. While the film hits familiar beats, it’s also the kind of throwback live-action family movie that feels like it’s from another era.
The boys play the Kicklighters, who have recently lost their mother and father. Their uncle arrives on their farm with the idea that he’ll just have to sign some papers before they are shipped off to a foster home. But Michael is quickly told that finding people to take them in will be harder than he expected—it’s nearing Christmas, after all. So now he’s the unwitting caretaker of these menaces, who loom over him wearing bunny masks, throw baseballs at his head, and keep their pigs and chickens in the house. The eldest, Justice, played by Homer, also really wants to jump his uncle’s yellow Porsche over a makeshift ramp.
Ultimately, as one might expect from a heartwarming comedy of this ilk, Michael develops a sweet relationship with the boys who are also unexpectedly talented. Their on-screen mother was a ballet teacher and they are all wonderful dancers. The movie culminates in their version of The Nutcracker, this one with a samurai and a knock-off John Rambo.
When Williams told her sons that their family friend Green wanted to make a movie with them, they were “super excited,” Homer says.
“We thought that it was a joke or something, but it was real,” he added. “All of us immediately got into work mode and were like, ‘We got to impress David.’” They tried to at first be professional around Green and writer Leland Douglas when the pair visited the farm to construct the script, but that facade slipped when they wanted to be their rowdy selves and swim in the pond.
The movie was really shot at the Janson family farm, and all the animals—except for the snake the kids put in the toilet to scare Michael—actually belong to them. (Sadly, the film ends with a tribute to one of their dogs who has died, who appears on screen.)
Green wanted the scenes to feel as “unmanicured” as possible and sought the Jansons’ input. When it came time to do the Kicklighters’ version of the famous ballet, he asked middle child Ulysses to share what his version of the story would be. From that emerged their slightly tweaked name of the production, “The Nutcracker’s Mustache.”
Their performance skills are not a fluke, though. All of the Jansons are trained ballet dancers. Homer says he’s been taking lessons for seven years, and some scenes were shot at their actual dance studio. The day before they flew into Toronto, they had private classes because they are preparing for a performance of the actual Nutcracker in a couple of months. (“Honestly, I prefer Uly’s,” Homer says.)
While Homer adds that “Ballet is definitely another serious career option for us,” they all say that they would potentially consider professional acting. Part of the fun of filming was throwing cheeseballs at Stiller, Homer says, but he also marvels at what it was like to have a crew at his house.
“We saw the trucks rolling in and were like, ‘Wow, this is actually happening,” he says.
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