BOP Interview:
Dennis Quaid and Ramin Bahrani of At Any Price
By Ryan Mazie
May 6, 2013
After breaking into the industry with small dramas starring non-professional actors, director/writer Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Goodbye Solo, Chop Shop) delivers his most mainstream film to date with the Dennis Quaid/Zac Efron starrer, At Any Price.
“This film has a larger scope and story to it,” said Bahrani about this more expansive, yet just as intimate feature starring Quaid as a charismatic seed salesman with a rebellious racecar-driving son (Efron).
In a roundtable interview along with star Dennis Quaid, the director/writer and actor talk about: interviewing farmers, the physicality of acting, surviving the competition, and confronting Dennis Quaid at his hotel room.
How familiar were you with the idea of washing seeds?
Dennis Quaid: Not much, only what I’ve basically seen on the news at that point. I learned a lot from Ramin, who spent a couple of years down there knocking on farmer’s doors and living with them, asking questions where he really got to know their way of life.
Ramin, can you tell me about that experience?
Ramin Bahrani: I like to do that with all of my films; do a lot of research. First it is just interesting. You have a good job with journalism; because you get to meet people and talk to people, and learn things you don’t know. I like to do that too. I like to make stuff up also, so I have a luxury you don’t have as a journalist.
I became interested in where my food was coming from and that sustainability, organic and non-organic, GMOs, and that leads you to corn and that leads you to Iowa... And the thing that I heard from all the farmers was the expression, “Expand or die... Get big or get out.” They all told me this no matter whom I met. And what I realized is that these are all such good hearted people that invited me into their homes and I could tell that they loved their neighbors, but that pressure was the first thing that they wanted to tell me when I met them. And that was what was pitting them against one another, just to keep their family moving ahead. You come to meet a seed salesman and I never knew that there was such an occupation (laughs) and that leads you to Arthur Miller and Death of a Salesman and it seemed like a way to connect all of those things to make a story that could be a personal story about Dennis’ character and his relationship to Zac Efron, his son, and his family, but also to be something much bigger than that.
You just hinted at many of the plot strings that pull together this film. What was the initial thread?
RB: The initial thing was Dennis’ character: the salesman and the seeds. I spent a lot of time with Troy Roush who is in Indiana and featured in the movie. He is in Food, Inc. Monsanto tried to smash him into the dirt. He happened to be innocent... Anyway, I didn’t meet farmers who didn’t have families and family is very important to them. There is still the tradition of passing things on and the land itself. Even though the film is so modern, those traditional aspects are there.
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