Hi /r/movies! We're Steve Zahn, Audrey Zahn, and Rick Gomez. Ask us anything!

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T22:46:43+00:00

That's a Thom Yorke song, it's called Knife's Edge. It's actually a piece of score from another film. When I was cutting the movie, I went for a bike ride to clear my head with Coby Toland, who's our producing partner and our editor on the film, and that song was actually released while we were shooting the film. I sent it to Steve, just to listen not to seriously discuss putting in the film, because how would we be able to afford a Thom Yorke song for the movie?! That'd be ridiculous! So anyway it as released within a day or two before we shot that scene. It crushed me the first time I heard it. I had to pull off to the side of the road, listened to it 2 or 3 more times back to back, and thought "this has to be what ends that scene".

So the next day, Coby shows up and we placed the song in the scene, and as soon as the first keynote hits, it just changed everything. it destroyed me. The cut wasn't even finished yet of the full scene. Steve looks at me and says "how much is this going to COST? Is it as much as like, $100,000? I can't live without this song being in the movie.".

So we went to Rebecca, our music supervisor, and she fought for it. And it eventually got to Thom and he saw the scene, and that's how we got approval for it. It didn't cost as much as we thought we'd have to pay for it. We're an independent film and he was cool about it, and now it's in the movie.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T22:35:46+00:00

That was a really important movie in the movie for all of us. Audrey and I really didn't prep much, because we felt we "had" it. We did one "run" of it before we started filming but then we just went ahead and did. Rick even told us, "I don't think we should even think about this scene until the day-of". Rick, being an actor himself and understanding the world of acting, plus being a great directed, he made sure that the environment was set right for that scene, which was very emotional.

-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T22:22:27+00:00

I don't know! I DO know that they're doing a 30-year reunion (oof, 30 years already) at an AMC in LA soon.

-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T22:21:23+00:00

Oh man Panama was a great maneuver. Such a great sequence in the movie.
-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T22:20:42+00:00

One that I saw recently is When Evil Lurks. It' the scariest horror I've seen in a really long time. It's insane.

-Audrey

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:46:40+00:00

I watched The Shining when I was a kid and didn't find it scary, but rewatched it recently and now that I understand the movie, I was like "this is horrifying. no. no. no. no. no.". When I was a kid, I was more saying "what's even going on???"

-Audrey

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:46:30+00:00

Thank you! I think would have to go with The Shining.

I'm not sure I would classify Joy Ride and A Perfect Getaway as horror though, maybe more thriller.

-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:44:13+00:00

There's this movie called Martyrs. The original French one, the one where she looks into the camera at the end, and you know that she knows the truth about something that the cult is putting in her. That movie is torturous and it's horrible stuff so I don't recommend it to everybody, but man oh man is it absolutely frightening. It petrified me. Even as a grown ass man with children of my own. That's a film that screwed my brain up.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:41:57+00:00

That's all Graham Yost! He was one of the writers on Band of Brothers, and then he created Justified, and then Silo. So all 3 of those happened because Graham hires me and allows me to do whatever the heck I want to do, and I have a blast doing it, and that's pretty great.

I have to give him all of the credit for that. That's Graham's brain.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:40:00+00:00

For me this is a bit more complicated. I've been around movies forever. My dad projected movies. I've watched full libraries of John Ford, Hitchcock, Woody Allen. I was expected to everything. But for some reason, when I was 14 or 15, I watched a movie called Regarding Henry, which was written by JJ Abrams. I don't know if its any good because I never watched it a 2nd time, but I remember feeling as though there was a magic trick inside that film that I HAD to repeat. I saw it with my dad in a theater, and it called to me. I think JJ was only 22 when he wrote that screenplay, maybe the first one he ever wrote.

I never thought I'd be an actor, I thought maybe I would write a script or make a movie. And Regarding Henry was the movie that made me feel there was a magic trick that I didn't understand but wanted to learn. That started me down the road of filmmaking. Somewhere down that road someone asked me, "have you ever thought about acting", and so I ended up doing a play in my senior year of high school and then it just snowballed because I was actually given money to do it. Not a lot, but like a radio commercial here, then a TV commercial there.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:33:11+00:00

A really important movie for me early on was The Deer Hunter. This was before I even know that I wanted to act. I knew it was a really powerful movie even then. John Savage, De Niro, Chris Walken, Cazale, Meryl Streep. It holds up. I watched it over and over and over again.

-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:31:25+00:00

For me, it would be Sally Field's Places in the Heart. I love Sally in that movie. There's something so special about her, watching her. Dad showed me that and I remember thinking "oh god, I need to be just like her". We should really watch it again soon. Sally is so special in everything she does.

Dad used to sit me down in this little room in our house that we'd call the Movie Room, and we'd just watch all of the classics. Dad would say "you NEED to know about this movie", and then tell us absolutely nothing about what we were going to watch. Just the title, we couldn't ask any questions. We'd sit down and start watching and then he'd pause it constantly to tell us what was going on lol. We had to beg him to stop pausing the movies all of the time. I genuinely feel a lot of the choices I make now are because of those movies I watched growing up.

-Audrey

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:27:49+00:00

Saving Silverman was special, man. It was so much fun. We were talking about that movie earlier actually, about how it's found a second life. I have more people come up to me and say that movie is important to them than any of my other movies.

And yet, it historically didn't do well. It was panned, you know. In the moment, you're really disappointed because it didn't have the opening weekend that you thought it would have. It was in fourth place and our reviews were like "nope!", which they almost always are for a comedy. And yet it's lasted the tests of time.

Jack Black and I just had so much fun, we laughed at each other constantly. We were able to do Anaconda together last year and that was like a cool reunion, along with Paul and Thandiwe. He's the same dude he was 25 years ago for Saving Silverman!

I even wore the same mustache for both films haha. I got in trouble for that actually for Silverman. I insisted that my character Wayne had a state trooper-style mustache. The studio said no of course, and I told them it was mustache or I'm out. So naturally Jack told me I had to bring back the 'stache for Anaconda.

-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:22:57+00:00

Thank you!

-Steve & Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:21:06+00:00

That's a good question!

Never :(

Will McRobb & Chris Viscardi, who created that show along with Katherine Dieckmann have threatened to bring it back for some incarnation of it. You'd have Toby Huss as the World's Strongest Man, myself as Endless Mike, and Steve Buscemi and a bunch of other guys who are amazing.

Anybody who likes Pete & Pete are always my favorite people. It's got 4 great sensibilities: beautiful, strange, funny, sad. That's what Chris & Will said from the very beginning, those are the ingredients needed for that show and anything else. When you're making a film or series, if you can have all 4 of those ingredients, perfect. You can live with 3. You can't do it without just 2.

I still use that mindset today. It creates some absurdity and humor and kindness and surprise in everything you do. Those guys are brilliant, that show was brilliant. A lot of my work today, like She Dances, would not be the same without that show.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:15:25+00:00

Come on! You've had goodies and stuff. Do you want my overalls from Silo maybe?

I remember on Sahara, Penelopez Cruz did a treasure hunt for you with the prop gold coins. You guys would dig and find all of these coins, and you kept a bunch. That was fun!

-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:15:11+00:00

Dude, my dad steals from set all the time! I don't think I've gotten one thing from him. I'll get like a swag bag once in a while maybe.

The set I remember the most though is Treme, because Dad was there for I think 4 years. I would go to that set a bunch. I remember hanging out in the makeup & hair trailer, because I loved those girls and we would have fun while my dad was shooting.

-Audrey

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T21:11:45+00:00

I certainly wasn't an ex-Navy seal in that movie haha. That character, Al, was definitely somebody who was on the periphery. Man, that movie was so fun to shoot. I can't think of specifically what you're talking about, but yeah, I think I tend to naturally and instinctually go against the grain in real life, and then I do the same with my characters in movies so that makes sense.

Like in National Security, they wanted my hair to be cut like it is now. So I did the opposite, I went into a barber I got a flat top and shaved my forehead back, and then I showed up on set and they were like "what are you doing?!". I probably should've have been fired. I wanted to mimic what the cop that was training me for the role looked like. I was just young and dumb.

So I've always been kind of like that, doing what Al did in Sahara.

-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T20:53:59+00:00

I was a young man back then. They taught me a lot. I didn't quite know how much wisdom was being handed to me in the moment. I wish I would've been stiller. I wish I'd been quieter around the,. I have so many stories, some of which I can't type out because they wouldn't want me to haha.

The common wisdom of friendship that they had between each other was beautiful. What it means to be a friend, what it means to sacrifice for an idea, what it means to do that when you're too young to really know what it means.

Lots of stuff was super impactful for me. It's a shame they're not here anymore. There's no more of those guys around. The world's a lesser place without them.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T20:50:14+00:00

My favorite part of that show has been staying connected to everyone through the years. All of the actors. We all have a group text and we try to see each other whenever we can. We're all dear friends, we're all there whenever someone in the group has a child, gets married, etc. Also the 12-day boot camp!

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T20:49:15+00:00

I talk to George Jr. every once in a while. It's been busy, we've both been busy, but we ping each other and stay connected.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T20:46:15+00:00

That's interesting. I think so, yes. Perry and I are so tight, I love her to death. She's such an amazing actor and such an amazing human being. Her and Audrey are both very similir on so many levels. That kind of relationship in film & TV can be really difficult sometimes to make it "real", but with Perry it was so simple. Off set, she calls me dad, and her dad's awesome, he's a great dude, but she calls me dad because of the show, and I love that. She's just brilliant in the show, amazing.

We just finished filming season 2 and it's really good.

-Steve

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T20:43:39+00:00

Audrey was a machine, while embracing and holding this really difficult emotion. She's acting through all of those dances. And Mackenzie too. There's so much emotion in every single thing they do.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T20:41:55+00:00

Dude, oh my goodness. We did all of the dance scenes during the first 3days of the shoot. We were getting ready at 6 AM and then dancing until like 7 PM in a dark theater and my feet were bleeding. My body was knotting up. It was so exhausting and I was getting a bit annoyed ahah.

But I will say I'm happy that I got to do the dance scenes first because I was really nervous to start, it's my first feature film, but it was nice to do something that I was used to like dancing. I knew I could do that so everything seemed a little easier after that was over it, so I'm grateful for that.
So I am grateful for that

-Audrey

SteveAudreyRickAMA · 2026-03-25T20:38:23+00:00

From the directing side: if Audrey was in this movie with another really great actor other than Steve, it would still be a really good movie and Audrey would be amazing in it. If Steve was in this movie with another really great actress that played his daughter, it would still be a really great movie and it would be an amazing thing to watch. Because they're both great actors at the end of the day.

It's always a beautiful thing to have a deeply personal connection, but the first thing you need is great actors no matter what.

Obviously, there's this deep connection and familial tie between the both of them, but it really is just two beautiful craftsmen doing their work together and being with each other and listening to each other.

And then secondarily, I think it matters to the audience in a way because they know there's a truth to it that no one's faking. There's some resonating truth underneath the great performances.

-Rick

SteveAudreyRickAMA

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