Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater on Bringing Downtown Owl from Page to Screen

We sat down with writer/co-director/producer Hamish Linklater and actor/co-director/producer Lily Rabe, to talk about the long-awaiting process behind their new film Downtown Owl.  When Lily Rabe first reached out to “bard of Generation X” writer Chuck Klosterman for the rights to his 2008 novel, they were already held by someone else.  It wasn’t until Klosterman reached out to Rabe many years later that the project began to lift off: The rights had become available and he couldn’t imagine anyone but Lily playing the protagonist.

Hamish Linklater wrote the screenplay adaptation wanting to bring the book’s nuances and vivid imagery to life, with Klosterman’s trademark cynicism enveloping an ultimately romantic plot.  When it came to planning the shot list, Linklater and Rabe found that they had nearly identical visions.  Though they walked into shooting with “quite a rigid edit in mind” their mutual background in theater brought a sense of play to filming, where they allowed moments to emerge and change. They credit their fiercely committed cast, including Henry Golding and Ed Harris, for bringing their A-game to every take (even in the freezing conditions of recreating a white-out blizzard!)

Watch the full conversation below.

Based on the novel by Chuck Klosterman, Downtown Owl is a sparkle dark Reagan Era comedy set in the fictional town of Owl, North Dakota in the leading days up to the region's blizzard in Minnesota's century.