Clint Bentley on Making ‘Train Dreams,’ Selling His Movie to Netflix and What’s Next

Less than a year ago, Clint Bentley earned his first Oscar nomination as the co-writer on Sing SingGreg Kwedar’s emotional prison-set drama starring Colman Domingo. The pair are now in the hunt for a second consecutive adapted-screenplay nod with Train Dreamswhich has also been included in best-picture lineups by the PGA, Indie Spirits and more — only this time, it’s Bentley in the director’s chair, his second feature after the critical hit Jockey.

Adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella, Train Dreams stars Joel Edgerton in an elegiac, mournful portrait of a logger at the turn of the century. Spanning decades, the movie captures his encounters with romance and heartbreak, grief and redemption — at a deliberate pace, the thrills being found in Adolpho Veloso’s lush cinematography and Edgerton’s quietly stirring performance. This is all by design for Bentley, a Florida native born on a cattle ranch who’s suddenly emerged as the filmmaker behind one of Netflix’s top awards contenders. Below, he reflects on the experience with THR.

This is your second feature, and it’s come a long way from Sundance to where we are now. This and Jockey share a certain, deliberate pace and focus on smaller moments. Has the trajectory here felt reaffirming for your voice as a filmmaker?

It is something I’ve given a lot of thought to, because this one was a big bet in a lot of ways. What I’d started exploring in JockeyI was trying to grow without losing it and develop a cinematic language further — and be thoughtful to the audience, but also be very particular to what that style is and what my interests are. I was raised in the Sticks, on a cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t have access to art house cinemas or anything like that. I wanted to make a film that felt like something [Robert] Bresson or [Andrei] Tarkovsky does for me, but translating that to folks who might never watch Persona.

It’s a second film and I feel like I’m very much just beginning to figure out what I’ll do as a filmmaker. It’s incredibly encouraging that people have connected with it in a way that they have, in a way that I didn’t think that they would. But I’m not looking at this as a stepping stone to some big tentpole.

Why were you not expecting people to connect to it as they did?

If I told you, “Hey, there’s going to be this quiet film about a logger in the Pacific Northwest who doesn’t say very much, and it’s got a lot of magical realism,” it doesn’t scream something that’s going to connect with a broader audience — just on paper.

What’s the biggest swing you took on this film, creatively?

He’s a character who is not passive, but not a typically active character either. Very much from the beginning, I wanted to try and make a small life feel as big and beautiful as it does to us, without leaning on tropes of some big event happening or something like that. The little moments of when he’s with his family — I can’t take full credit for that because Joel is fucking amazing, and that works because of Joel. Then, the pacing and the tone and just trying to make something that’s quiet and gives people space to hopefully open up inside a bit as they’re going through it. I get notes from people being like, “I was watching a film with a family member and I can’t remember the last film that they watched that they put their phone down for.” That’s encouraging just for the state of cinema in general.

To your point, it is a quieter movie, and yet when it dropped on Netflix, it was stirring up real discourse. It charted on the platform. The streaming release really was an event in a way that is pretty uncommon for movies of this scope, even for those that go on Netflix.

The thing that I was really excited about, working with Netflix on it, was the fact that they had said early on, they were going to do theatrical distribution, which they did, and do a 35mm print and all these things. The other side of that is…there was something very exciting about working with Netflix, knowing that some of my family out in Florida who’ve never seen my films were going to be able to watch it at the same time that [cinematographer] Adolpho [Veloso’s] family in Brazil was going to be able to watch it. There was something very democratizing about that, especially given the subject matter. It’s what I would like to hopefully continue to do as a filmmaker. The fact that it actually cracked their top 10 when it came out and then started a discourse — I had family in town that weekend, and there was a New York magazine article about it.

“The Train Dreams Wars.” I remember the headline.

Yeah, and I didn’t know any of that happened because I’d just been hanging out with family that was in town over Thanksgiving. Then I poked my head out of the sand and was like, “Oh, there was a whole thing that happened over the weekend” — which is maybe better.

Did you stay offline intentionally that first weekend?

I make peace with what I’ve done. I have thoughts about it. I have notes on Train Dreams. (Laughs.) But I’m also very proud of it, and I’m happy with what it is. If I get a good review or a bad review, it’s not really pushing me one way or the other in terms of how I feel about the project. And just in general. I try not to spend a lot of time online if I can help it.

We got a really bad review from a critic who I really look up to and admire, as a film lover. There are those reviewers and those critics that you connect with, and I want to hear what they think about a project. So on the same day where I got that bad review from somebody I really respect, I got a note on Instagram from somebody from a father who had lost his child and had trouble moving beyond that. He wrote this long letter to me about how the film helped him move on. And so I was like, it balances it all out, I guess.

The first audience saw the movie in Park City, of course. What was Sundance like this year? You also brought Jockey there, but here you wind up selling to Netflix.

Jockey was in the first pandemic year, 2021. We went without a distributor, but then we ended up selling it two nights before it premiered to Sony Classics. Before the premiere happened, that anxiety was gone. With this one, it was the first time in person for me — I’d never been to Sundance because I never had the money to go as a young filmmaker. I was like, “I’m going to go when I have a film there.” Then I didn’t get to go with Jockey. So there were all these emotions. There’s the incredible anxiety of, so much has to go right in the room for distributors to get into your film. Now the way it is with most titles, and just in the landscape in general, is the wait to see how the reviews start to come out. So you’re also hoping that that goes well and that the reviewer has a good seat and doesn’t have a bad experience. There’s just so much pressure around this one screening.

But I remember just sitting down, and they do the pre-roll of the Sundance logo and the different films that they’ve played over the years and things like that. I just felt so grateful to be some small piece of the legacy of that organization and institution that had meant so much to me as a filmmaker. What they did over the decades shaped me so much. It felt like both of my films were premiering at the same time.

Did you have any mixed feelings about selling it to a streamer? Between you and Greg Kwedar, your co-writer who also directs his own movies, you’ve never worked with one before.

I won’t lie that, before I met the folks at Netflix, I didn’t know what to expect, and there was some trepidation before meeting them about what it could look like. But everybody I met over there, their passion for film and cinema really blew me away. Their passion for this film, and not only that, but their ideas about what the film could become and what they could help it become — that’s the thing that really struck me. I wanted to trust them on that, that they would do that, and they’ve delivered it and beyond.

I wish everyone would see a film in a theater. I’m always going to say any film is going to be a better experience for somebody in a theater for sure. I know I’m in a kind of a rare situation where I got to have my cake and eat it too: I got a note from somebody a week ago who just saw the film in the theater in New Orleans. It’s the longest theatrical run that any of our films have had. Jockey, Sing Sing — like any of the films Greg and I have done, it’s ironically the longest theatrical run. I realize the charmed experience that I’ve had with it.

When you think about what’s next at this point, is there a sense of more resources or a clearer path on how to cobble together the next movie?

We always want more time and more money. That’s what every filmmaker wants. But I like this idea of ​​growing slowly. A lot of the filmmakers that I look up to grew slowly, and I am really trying to, and it’s hard. It’s very difficult, but I’m really trying not to put the cart before the horse and think about a budget range. It’s just trying to just think about the story that I want to tell and start there and then let the rest fall into place as it does. The blessing and the curse is there’s a lot coming at me in terms of ideas and scripts, but also people who want to work together, which is amazing. I’m trying to get back from all of that, to come from a place of what’s coming from inside, which is where both Jockey and Train Dreams came from.

How do you reflect on these last few months, taking the movie around on the awards trail? What’s it been like?

It’s felt like being in an indie band. When we restarted in the fall [after Sundance]we started doing the different festivals. Then we were in smaller theaters that were half full. It’s been kind of beautiful to watch the theaters grow and the crowds grow. To see people coming back to the film having watched it, being at Q&As, coming back to watch it again. I’ve gotten to meet a bunch of heroes of mine along the way.

Like who?

I got to meet Spielberg, which kind of blew my mind. Joachim Trier. That’s the special thing about all of this, is getting to interact with your people you really, really look up to.

I remember meeting you at one of those very early Q&As which was, to your point, in a smaller theater. We just saw each other at another one in a much bigger theater, full house. That’s pretty rare, even for big contenders, for a movie that came out months ago.

I’m getting notes on Instagram from people in Turkey and people in Iran and people in India who are very moved by the film and want to interact with it. And I’m in the car and I’m passing a Train Dreams billboard right now. It’s crazy. It doesn’t feel real. I feel like I’m going to wake up very soon and then be like, “Oh, well, that was a nice dream.”