Vincent Grashaw keeps himself busy. In the past five years, he's directed three films of wildly different genres, each bearing his hallmarks of deep and conflicted characters and brutal, unexpected violence.
His horror film, What Josiah Saw, dealt with generational trauma in striking manner. He followed it up with the hard-hitting and surprisingly moving drama, Bang Bang, about a retired boxer figuring out who he is outside of the ring.
Now, he arrives to Night Visions with his latest feature, an old-school cop thriller where a grizzled veteran takes a rookie under his wing as a triple homicide shakes the reservation they live in. It's a stunning piece of filmmaking that once again showcases Grashaw's mastery in directing actors through morally complex and nuanced material.
I sat down with the director to talk about working with actors he likes, how to deal with ethically murky characters, and how he's kept up this kind of pace in the unstable climate that indie filmmakers have to deal with today.
[This interview is edited and condensed for clarity.]
Joonatan Itkonen
How did you find Keep Quiet?
I don't love writing myself; I like to read scripts. Sometimes I'll go on this website called The Black List and look around. That's what happened with Keep Quiet. I was just browsing screenplays and found it. It was a moving piece of work.
I don't know if I talked to my producers first or if I reached out to Zach [Montague], but I wanted to get to know him a bit and find out where this came from. He's an actual police officer who had some of these experiences on reservations in Canada. So it felt authentic.
Lou Diamond Phillips is amazing in the leading role. Was the part always meant for him?
We went to Lou first. I've always been a fan of his. He's a household name; everyone knows him and loves him. He's somebody I think people endear.
To be fully transparent, it was initially written for a man who was Native American. We had three actors in mind that we felt had the sort of name recognition that we would pursue. It was Lou, Adam Beach, and Benjamin Bratt. And Adam was the only one who was Native American.
That said, Lou's done a lot of charity and played a lot of roles that were Native American. But initially we thought about it and decided to adjust the script to fit who he is. I think it works in a really interesting way.
Lou is half-Filipino. He's got a very little bit of Cherokee in him, but not enough to where he would register with a tribe. But he's been given names by two different tribes, Lakota and Cheyenne, I believe, because of the amount of work he does with the community.
It's about an outsider who doesn't belong in his community. He's too brown for the white folk, but he isn't Native American, so he doesn't fit in anywhere. Then he marries into the tribe. I thought that was a really interesting position for somebody to be in and to see how they would navigate that.
With the script changing to accommodate Lou, did the rest of the material evolve during the production process as well?
It evolved a little bit. It was initially set in Canada and the gang culture outside of Alberta and cities like Edmonton. The rural, isolated, and impoverished reservations out there. It felt very lived in with a lot of research. Zach told me how they policed those areas and he was showed me gang members' Facebook profiles.
The gang culture is very similar to how the Bloods and Crips were with colors and representation of brotherhood in South Central in the 80s and 90s.
We adjusted it for America because it's different than it is in Canada. In America you have your own tribal police departments, so if there's a murder, the FBI handles it and then there's the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So there's quite a different structure. We looked at that as well the cross-jurisdictional issues with tribal police and the outside sheriff departments that will infringe on those boundaries and borders. Sometimes they work together. But there's a lot of clashing at times.
One thing I noticed about the film is that you never give an exact location or a tribe. Was that intentional and how did it come about?
When we got Lou, he brought on Marcus Red Thunder, whom he had worked with on Longmire, as a consultant. And Marcus said: look, you can go specific with this, but this is a universal thing that could be plugged into anywhere on a lot of different reservations and states in America.
But also by making it more universal, I think strips away the preachy aspects of how it could be seen. Because at the end of the day we're making a movie that I think has very strong themes, but it's also a movie; it's fictional, it's entertaining, suspenseful. I didn't want it to come off like we're making some preachy statement. I wanted those things to be baked into the movie.
So on one end you have a commercial crime thriller that you can be invested in, but also go, wait a minute, this carries a lot of weight more than just a movie. I wanted to bridge all of that. I agreed with Marcus on how that would help.
I appreciate how honest it feels. It doesn't sensationalize the material or the people.
I thought it was a really smart way for us to clear up misconceptions, like that all Native Americans have several names – and some of them do, but some of them just have regular names. I met some of the nicest people you'll ever meet on the reservations. Considering the past history there was this resilience that I hadn't really experienced before. It was one of my favorite film experiences shooting and engaging with the people there.
I'm obviously an outsider. I'm not Native American. But as a filmmaker, I prefer to have more of an investigative hat on. I like learning about other cultures and things outside of my purview and where I grew up. That was sort of my goal with this: to really throw myself in and see this different world that's not just the Native American aspect, but the gang culture one as well.
I've always been fascinated by gang culture and why people who join gangs see it as a net positive when history shows it always ends one of two ways: typically you're dead or in prison. It doesn't end well. I wanted to find out why people go that way and why it makes a lot of sense a lot of times. A lot of that has to do with poverty, which is a universal theme as well.
I see it's something you're taught or that you've experienced some sort of trauma to become that way. You're not just born a racist or a killer. You're led or guided that way somehow. You're a product of your friends and your family.
You also brought in people who you've worked with before. I'm especially happy to see Nick Stahl, who always gives great performances in your films.
I like working with the same actors when I can. I've been a fan of Nick since In the Bedroom and Bully. Those are the two movies that come to mind where I was just like, man, this kid's a star.
When you make movies, you want to have fun. It's not always just about the performance. There's a lot of people who you could cast in these kind of movies, but I like working with actors I have an established relationship with. I believe in him. I think he's having his own renaissance in an interesting way.
It's fascinating because he doesn't talk a ton, but he does his homework on his characters. He brings things to the table that surprise me in a good way. When I told him about this role all I said was I didn't want him to be some caricature bad guy. I wanted people to go, yeah, this guy's wrong about 80% of the things, but he's right about 20% of stuff.
It's the same with Teddy. Teddy's right about a lot of stuff and he's wrong about others. Like all of them, even Richie, they're complex people. And I love stories where you have characters like that.
I kind of based, at least in my mind, [Nick's character] Darius on Mark Fuhrman. Do you know that guy?
I do, yes.
I told Nick to look into Fuhrman's past because it was really fascinating how he was involved in the O.J. Simpson trial.
He was a detective. By the time the O.J. trial happened, he'd probably gotten rid of a lot of his problems. But when you dug up his past, you were like, holy shit, this guy has a lot of issues.
Most people don't know this, but he had actually gone to the police department and wanted to go on disability because he was worried how hateful and angry he was. He wanted to retire because he was self-aware of how much he hated the criminal element to the point where he probably did awful shit to them.
So Nick took that and he made Darius a balanced character. I didn't want people to just immediately go: here's your evil white cop. I wanted it to be a little more nuanced than that.
Even in the film it's quite clear that in another time or place, he and Teddy probably would have been friends.
He mentions it! He goes, Teddy doesn't even come have a beer with us anymore. Like clearly they probably did have some good times together.
It's important to look through those lenses sometimes, because this guy is acting this way because of a triple murderer. So I can understand that anger. It really puts things into perspective. But what the character's doing on top of that also really shows their cards.
I want to talk about the way you film violence, because it's unlike most filmmakers out there today. It's ugly, horrifying, and blunt. When it happens, it feels like a gut punch and doesn't shy away from showing the nauseating aftermath of what a gunshot does to a person.
I love that you said that because there's a way to make it authentic that is exciting but effective and believable.
I love movies like Demolition Man that are supposed to be jumping out of a building, shooting two guns at the same time without aiming. There's a fun aspect to that type of action. But on a movie like this, it's just grounded. I tend to really focus my movies to be grounded in reality. Whether that's in horror or action, I want to feel like it's relatable and believable. I'm not making those John Woo type action movies. And that said, I love Face Off!
It's just I'd rather it be grounded in a realistic way. I aspired more to something like [Michael Mann's] Heat, and I wanted it to sound like an AR-15 was going off in a hallway. It's important to me, so it's cool that you've noticed that because that's definitely something I strive for.
I'm glad you mentioned Heat, because the guns do sound real. There's that deafening blast that really hurts the ears. It gets overlooked and it makes us complacent to them.
Yeah, that stuff matters though. Those little things that people who have seen that side of the world would notice and be like, oh, that's not how somebody gets shot. That's not how that gun would sound. That's not how they'd react to it. People notice that stuff. So I at least want to do my best to make it as authentic as possible.
You work fast and really efficiently. What's the secret?
I think if everybody had access to the kind of financier and production team that I have had in the last five years, they'd probably be doing the same amount of work. I'm grateful to my producing partners because they believe in the movies that we've made and they've wanted to make these films together.
So that's one of the main reasons, access to financing, because you can't make these movies alone, you can't make them on this level without an investor to partner with.
It's the hardest, if not the only hard part of making movies, in my opinion. The rest of it's fun and a lot of work. Not to say that it's not hard, but there's a frustration that comes with the inability to make or say something you want to say. It's hard to find money and I think there's a lot of frustrated people that have changed their careers over the last five or ten years because it's contracting. It's hard to sell a film these days the way it used to be for independent films specifically.
I'm just grateful to be partnered up with a group of people that have Random X Productions. I've made four films with them now. In the last five years.
So, I mean, I'll keep doing it as long as we can.
Do you have a release date set for Keep Quiet?
It'll come out in Canada and the United States between March and June of 2026.
