If we told you that the Zellner brothers’ latest film follows a family of Sasquatch as they roam about a forest for a year, that two of the Sasquatch are played by Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough and that there isn’t a single spoken line of dialogue in the whole thing, how quickly can you get to a cinema? Sasquatch Sunset is genuinely unlike anything you’ve seen before with its slapstick humour, pathos, and creature suits that look just unbelievable.

Bringing a mythical creature to life is something most of us will never have to do, but for Steve Newburn, it’s just another day on the job. The man behind some of the strangest creations in cinema today (Nightmare Alley, The Dark Knight Rises, Hereditary), we had to chat to Steve to find out the process of bringing Big Foot to life.

Barry Pierce: So, tell me about the initial pitch that you received. The Zellners are doing a Sasquatch film and they’ve approached you to help realise that. How did you react?
Steve Newburn: You know what? It wasn’t David and Nathan specifically who came to me, it was Tyler [Campellone] from Square Peg [Ari Aster’s production company]. We’d done most of Ari’s projects since Hereditary and we have a good relationship with them. It was the height of Covid when the email came in and, at the time, it seemed like the perfect Covid project. It’s outside, it’s a small crew, we’re all in a bubble. Ultimately, it didn’t come together at that time, which is the nature of the business. But the project was off and on for about two years after that. It was really when Jesse [Eisenberg] got involved that that got the wheels turning at the eleventh hour. Then it all happened very quickly.

But David and Nathan chimed in almost immediately after the initial pitch and we just chatted it through. It was something I’d always wanted to do. I’m a big fan of Rick Baker’s Harry and the Hendersons, I’ve always thought that is one of the best creature suits ever put out there, there’s just so much character to it. I’d never got to do a Sasquatch before and now I had the opportunity to do four.

“I’d never got to do a Sasquatch before and now I had the opportunity to do four.”

BP: Sasquatch are mythical creatures, or at least they’re allegedly mythical, so your job was to bring to life something that doesn’t exist. What were your reference points for creating the Sasquatch?
SN: David and Nathan certainly had their own take on how the Sasquatch should look. They’ve been obsessed with Sasquatch since they were kids. From their side, they wanted something that’s a fictional character but believable in a real-world environment.

BP: Yeah and there is so much realism with the Sasquatch. Like, you can see their teeth and they drool and their fur is matted and covered in leaves.
SN: Yeah, we looked at monkeys and other primates because they’re going to be your closest guess. There’s so many movies where you see guys in gorilla suits or these new Planet of the Apes films and every hair is perfectly placed as if they’ve just walked out of a salon. I would always sit there like, they’re going to look mangy and sweaty, they’ve been rolling around on the ground, they’re going to look dirty. Thankfully, David and Nathan were on board with that.

BP: How long was the creation process for the Sasquatch, from initial ideas to the final suits?
SN: Well there was that two year period of on and off, on and off. On my own I had started prototyping little ideas and sculpting versions of the costumes. We took a body cast of Jesse when he was between projects so I had that to work with but the project kept falling apart or the money would fall through. But we were really working with Riley’s schedule because she had to do another project. So I had gone into this saying I need twelve weeks of prep and, by the time it came around, I think my prep turned into six and a half weeks, which was a crazy marathon of just go, go, go.

BP: How do you feel being the go-to person when a director needs a strange or disturbing creature made?
SN: I don’t know that I am. I mean, I wouldn’t mind being that guy. But it all comes back to my relationship with Square Peg, by the point Sasquatch had come along I’d already done Hereditary, I’d done Beau is Afraid, Dream Scenario, all movies they’d produced, so this was just kind of another one.

BP: You must be naturally drawn to creating these types of creatures though?
SN: I think you have to be to do what I do. There’s probably a lot of people who’d tell you the same thing, we all have a lot of the same influences from back in the 60s, 70s and 80s. For me, I like it because every project is something different. You’re not doing the same thing day in, day out. Every project that comes across the table is going to be something creative and hopefully artistic and even if you’ve made ten Sasquatch before, hopefully you’ve learned from those previous ones and you can make them even better the next time.

“[Speaking of references] any of the genre stuff of the early 80s where it’s a rubber monster, or slasher films.”

BP: You’ve mentioned influences from the 60s to the 80s, what would be those great influences?
SN: Well, the original Star Wars, the opening of 2001, most people in my age bracket would say anything that Dick Smith was involved with like The Exorcist. Not so much me, I was more into the Universal Monsters, Frankenstein, The Mummy and things like that. And any of the genre stuff of the early 80s where it’s a rubber monster, or slasher films.

BP: And what was your journey into a career like this?
SN: It was easier back in the day, pre-visual effects. I got into it in the mid-90s, the whole CG thing was only just beginning to take off. I’m originally from Los Angeles so, whether you want to or not, you know someone who’s working in the film industry. That was my connection, through mutual friends. These days you have people going to makeup schools, it’s a different mentality. I think people have been raised now thinking “Oh that’s cool, I want to do that” and they don’t have the same passion as people from the previous generation had when there were no schools, you were self-taught, you had to learn to do it yourself because you were such a fan.

BP: What was your first major project?
SN: I mean, I had a little bit of a hand in Starship Troopers. Then Alien: Resurrection. Those would have been the first real ones and that was all around ’96. But I remember going into it in those early days just being around the sets and I met a guy, I can’t remember his name, but he worked on the original Beetlejuice. He had puppeteered the guy with the little shrunken head. And I was grilling him over that, just as a huge fan, and he kept on being like, “I don’t know, I don’t remember”. At the time, I remember being like, “Oh my god, how can you not remember this, this is the greatest thing ever,” and now… I don’t remember half the stuff I’ve done.

Sasquatch Sunset is out now in UK cinemas.