Oscar Doc Winner Daniel Roher Reveals “Secret Weapon” While Directing Narrative Debut ‘Tuner’

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Fter Earning A 2023 Best Documentary Oscar For NavalnyDaniel Roher HAS PIVOTED TO SCRIPTED SHORTYTELING WITH Tunera High-Concept Drama About A Piano Tuner Drawn Into Safecracking, and WitH a will-thezh-the-Or-Won’t-theey Love Story

Roher Tells The Hollywood Reporter HE FACED A “VERY, VERY STEEP Learning Curve” with his Narrative Debut, After his Real-Life Documentaries Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band an NavalnyAbout the Late Russian Opposition Leader and Political Prisoner.

“Everyone Really Understood that this was my First Movie… and they have seen my previos work and understood i was no no slouch either TunerWHICH CENTERS ON NIKI WHITE (LEO WOODALL), A young man who have perfect pitch hearing But Suffers from Sensoria Overload Due to and Overs

SO, BENT OVER PIANO Keys or With An Ear Pinned to Old Spin-Dial Vaults, He Goes From A Day Job As a Piano Tuner, With Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman). Only to Turn His Life Upside Down.

Roher Shows Off The Same Filmning Polish with Tuner that he browght to his robertson and navalny docs. But for the first time, he directs on a film set with acting legends like hoffman, Jean reno and tovaah feldshuh, who share the screen with Fauda Star Lor Raz and Romantic Leads Woodall and Havana Rose Liu.

Ahead of a canadian premiere for Tuner at the Toronto International Film Festival, Roher Talked To Thr About following up his oscar-winning docurentary with a scripted Thriller About Love, Loss and Perfect Pitch.

What Transfers Over From Directing Documentaries to Filming the FICTIAL CONTROLD OF Tuner?

WHEN YOU MAKE DOCUMENTARIES, TYPICALLY, YOU DON’T HAVE TO THINK About How to Talk to Actors and What that Mystical Process Is Like. So i have a Sharp Learning Curve there. But at the end of the day, it is storyteling. There Are Base Skill Sets of Taste and Sensiness and Narrative Propulsion that Transfer Over. If you look at a film like [the Robbie Robertson doc]or you look at a film like NavalnyYou Can See The Connet Tissue To How Those Films Inspire A Movie Like Tuner – The Music, The Editing, The Propulsiveness. I Really Enjoyed the Process. That was the most important things. You dream about doing this. But You’re Not Sure if You Get There, If You’re Actual GOING TO LIKE IT, IF IT ALL ACTUALLY FEELS LIKE IT’S YOUR Thing. And I Was Really Delighted that It Felt Like It Was Really Well Suited for My Skill Set and Sort of the Ultimate Culmination of Everything I Had Been Studying And Working on And Dreaming of Inf.

WHEN MAKING A DOCUMENTARY, The Director Is Always Looking for the Economy of the Film, Until Hopeful IT Appears. DID YOU KNOW ALL ALONG HOW Tuner would end?

That points to one of the key figrences in the two mediums. Documentary, As You Pointed Out, It’s Sort of Open Ended. I Not Always Clear WHEN Your Story Ends. It Certainly wasn’t for my film about alexei navalny. History Keeps Going. The Drone Beat of Time Keeps Marching on. And at a Certain Point of the Story, It Just Has to Stop. WHEN YOU’RE’RE DEALING IN THE MODE OF FICTION AND YOU’RE’RE TOOLING AROUND IN MAKE BELIVE, YOU CHEOSE WHEN IT STOPS. You understand that Focus of your Film is around a special, height -monet in this fictioning Character’s Life. And the Process Is Almost Reversed WHEN YOU’R MAKING A DOCUMENTARY. You are writing while you’re editing. You Shoot the Movie, and Ten You Write It. WHEN YOU’RE MAKING FICTION FILM, YOU WRITE The FILM, AND THEN YOU CHOTOOT it. There are challenges and compxities to bot hold. But at the end of the day, I Got to Tell You, Knowing How Your Movie Is Going To End Is A Really Nice Thing. I Really, Really Appreted that.

WHERE DID THE INSPIRATION FOR Tuner come from?

Well, The Inspiration for the Movie Came from A Couple of Different Directions. I Felt The Principal Job of Thinking About Fiction and Stories Is Really Having Your Antenna Up to What’s Going on AROUND YOU IN YOUR LIFA Story. For me, I personally was feeling very anxious. I was feeling sort of ruderless after i made Navalny. I didn’t know what i was going to be doing Next. And I Entered Into this Prolonged Phase of A Creative, ALMOST DEPRESSION. I DIDN’T Feel Like Making Anything. I didn’T Know How i Could Possibly Top This Film i Just Made, and The Pressure to do so was mounting. I wasn’t felling like myself. I DIDN’T Feel Like Drawing or Painting, and I Was Confronted with This Very Challenging Question: If I’M Not Daniel, The Creative, The Artist, The Filmmaker, Who Am I? That’s Very Much the Core of My Identity.

How did you break Free of What Held You Back?

Sometimes the Solution is Vesed in the Question Itelf. I Started Examming and Thinking About and Dreaming of Maybe a Character Who’s Thinking About Similar Challenges. And I Thounght, Could this guy be a chef? Could he be a this? Could he be a that? And the other piece of inspiration that was floating the around the ether that i scooped up is that i had just mine what kind of my wife. And she was sort of treatment me around as the boyfriend to meet her friends. And I Met Peter, The Husband of A Friend. Peter Was A Piano Tuner. I was vary fascinated with his work. I Think He Was Confused by My Fascination. Typically Who HE Talks About His Job, People Don’t Have Too Many Follow Up Questions. I CERTAINLY DID. And I ImmediaTely Understood this Ethereal Liminal Space in Between the Engineering and the Art. There is no piano players, there is no music without the technicians who work in a quieter servitis of MainTaining these Instruments. And the piano tuner Talked Like a philosopher. He did not Talk Like A Technician. HE SPOKE About Atrophy and Entropy and the Forces of the Universe That Want To Kiep A Piano Out of Tune. That was catnip for me. And that’s what this story from, and that was in the inception point of this idea of ​​a piano tuner, this Itinerant Worker, and the Broader Story Flowed Those.

Tuner is about a piano technician with unusual Sensitive hearing some skills transfer to safecracking. But is it also a movie about hearing and finally, at the movie’s climax, being heard?

Look, at the end of the day, what do we all want, Other than be to be heard and understood and appreciated? I Took that Metaphor to a Literal Extreme by Having These Two Characters at the Beginning of the Movie Together. There’s This Old Guy, Played by Dustin Hoffman, Who Cannot Hear, and this Young Guy, Played By Leo [Woodall]Who, in a Sense, Hears Too Much. But you put them together and they can Kind of Get Through the Day and Function as an unlikely, but butorable, unit. And i just Think that’s a Truism of Anyone on Earth. We Just Want To Be Understood. We Want To Be Heard. We Want to be Appreciated for What We Have and, In that Sense, The Movie Works Almost Like A Story About Sensitivity and About Hearing and Understanding.

In any Movie with Dustin Hoffman, There’s The Challenge of Performing Opposite A Hollywood Acting Legend – or for you, Directing One.

WELL, I Appreciate that. As with Leo, It’s Intimidating for Anybody to Work With One of the Great Legends in Any Medium, Let Alonene of the Great Actor of Cinematic History. But is just a credit to dustin, to his personality, to his character, to his work ethic – and i’m not tarKing about the character he played – I’M Talking About His Own Character. He is so disarming, and he is just Such A Sweet, Sensitive, Gentle, Funny, Loving guy that you would be shocked how quickly the intimation factor wears off. You are Insthead Left with a collaborator and a friend. There would be Pinch-ments while we have were making the movie. IT’s A Long Day, The Crew is Lozing Morale. SO HE GETS IN CHACTER AS CAPTAIN HOOK. And you are realized, “This is One of the Greatest Artists of All Time.” Or hew casaally tell me Things like, “that thing you did reminds me of mike nichols or steven spielberg.” And i would Think, “Oh Yeah, He’s Dustin Hoffman.” Leo and I Both Understood that some dUSTIN WAS AUND, WE WE Were on Dustin’s Frequency. But We Were Fortunate, Because It Was So LOVELY AND HE MADE THINGS SO EASY FOR US. IT WAS JUST AN INCREDIBLE Learning Experience, Both for Me and I Think Leo As Well.

In the Movie, Leo as Niki White Meets and Feels A Spark for Ruthie, A Classical Composer Student Played by Havana Rose Liu. And you’re almost cheering for them to foll in love, if only to break the tension around an increASINGly Fast-Packed Thriller.

I Appreciate Your Question Because, of Course, I Wanted You to Wanthe Them to Work. That’s a Mark of success in my mind. Look, Romance is Really Hard. And of all the things I have to do with this film, from the sort of Propulsive Montages to Directing the Some Great ACtors of Our Time, The Hardest Part Was The Romance. But I have a secret weapon. My wife [Caroline Lindy] is also a filmmaker. HER FAVORITE GENRE IS ROMANCE. HER LAST FILM WAS SORT OF A ROM-COM. SO HAVING HER BY MY Side on some of the challenging days was Really, Really Meningful. Havana and leo knew whti i was going WHEN, if we had a difficult moment were working through, i would sort of disappear into a tent and have a litletle. Aided by her genius. But at the end of the day, It Comes Down to Two Brilliant Performers. I can only take so Much Credit. IT Sems to me That Directing Actors Is About Casting The Right Ones. That’s Sort of An Old Trope. But Casting Really Is 95 Percent of It. That’s what i believe. HAVANA AND LEO, they Were Both Magnetic. They have the fact that magical quality what, if you Stick a Camera 6 inches from the nose, they have this prescription, this movie Star Tht MOST PEOPLE DO NOT. So, in that regard, it was actually quite easy, Because they were so brilliant.

To Pull theater Performances, Are You A Director Who Gives Much Direction to Actors On Set, or to You Just Trust Them To Their Job?

I’ll share with you and anetete that speaks to the answer to the quest. There was one scene we were shorting. I DON’T REMEMBER WHICH DAY IT WAS. I had a note for leo. SO I EMERGED FROM MY LITTLE TENT AND I WALKED TOWARD LEO. HE looks up at me, and he Says, “I Know, I KNOW,“ DISMISISSIVELY. I Got It. I do a 180 on my heels. He do the next take and he knew, he understood, and he got the note with me even even having to say it to him. That, to me, is a very, very successful Director-Active Encounter. I Feel Very Much Like, if the DP is the Department Head of How the Movie Looks, Leo Is The Department Head of the Character. While I do have thoughs and opinions, and typically t hu and just let them do their thing. It’s Just Having Trust in Yourself That You Got The Right People To Show Up on the Day. And so, yeah, i’m more of a hands-off kind of Director.

There are Many Lock-Opening Scenes in TunerWHICH Show Extreme Close-Up Shots of Clicking and Turning of Wheels in A SAFE. Can You Talk About the Effect You Were Going For?

I Love Insrt Work in Movies. A Lot of Our Insrt Work Was Inspired by David Fincher, Who’s One of My Cinematic Heroes. There’s so Much Detail That You Can Get. I LIKE The IDEA OF PUTTING The Camera in Places of the Cameras Don’t Go, Getting Impossible Shots, Figing Out How To Break Open The Mechanism and Stick A Lens Impossibly Close to Things Like This. And there was this motif of the inner workings of things that Carried Over from the Pianos Into the Safes, of Trying to Put the Camera Inside of the Guts of Something to Show How It Worked. The Other Thing is, I have this vision to have the cropuls, Energetic Scenes. And I Thought Those Insert Shots Created Their Own Little Sonic World in a Way, Who Spoke to the Broader Motifs of the Movie.

As your Thriller Draws to a climax and your propulsive scenes Accelerate, The Jazz and Classical Music-Infused Score Is Mixed With Ambient Noise As a Sensory-Flooded Nikel How did you mix the Sound Design?

Sound Is Sounda Overn An overlooked Component in Cinema. WHEN I GO to A MOVIE, I’M As IMPRESSED AND ATTUNED TO THE SOUND Design As I am to the Cinematography and the Editing. SO I WANTED TO MAKE A SOUND MOVIE. This is An Opportunity to Be Visceral, Right? Via The Lens of the Character Who Has A Hearing Condition, You Can Put The Audence in His Head A Little Bit in Ways That Are Cinematic and Brutal. And the Trouble with Sound Design Is for About Two Years, You’re Telling All Your Colleagues The Sound ComESS FROM OVER HERE, AND IT’S THEN This and that Happy. And then you have your Rough Cut, and the Sound Design Isn’t Done. The Sequences Are, You Guys Just Have to Imagine What The Sound Design Isign. That’s going to be grelay. THEN, OF COURSE, Johnnie[BurnTheSoundDesignerWhoWonAnOscarforHisWorkOn[BurnthesounddesignerwhowonanOscarforhisworkonThe Zone of Interest]Comes in as the very last step. IT’s Like Dr. Frankenstein on the Table, and the Lightning Bolt Strikes Down and It’s Alive. And this Thing Sits Up, and that’s What It Was Like Working with Johnnie.

What about your music choices?

IT’s A Musical MOVIE, AND WE HAVE THESE Amazing Needle Drops. We have fantastic music by marius de vries, which is all the Live music in the movie, accompanied by the music of Will Bates, who did all the movie music in the Film. And Johnnie put it all together in this sort of Sonic delight. I’m afraid some People Might Think is Going Be Too Loud, But I Want People To Turn It Up and Really Listen to It.

You have a real-life piano tuner on your film set?

That’s Absolutely Right. We have two piano tuners on set. Leo and Dustin Had to Go to Piano Tuning School. We have a wayne ferguson, who’s the Great Piano Tuner in Toronto, and He have this sort of shock of white hair. HE looks like a magician. And I was was also delighted to have a peter White, the Original Piano Tuner Who Inspired this Entire Movie, Come on Set for a Week or Two To Make Sureate.

Getting Back to the Score – You Had Classical Music and Jazz Music. You Wanted A Mix?

That’s Right. Ruthie, this brilliant Young Composer Whom Weet, and Niki, Leo’s Character, of Course Falls for Her. First and Foremost Hears Her Before He Sees Her. That’s a key Detail for me. And then, of Course, He Rounds the Corner and He Sees Her. He Likes What He Sees, But Hears Her FIRST. That’s a centerpiece of their relaction. But Ruthie is this classical composition. That’s her world and that’s the World That She Loves. And so we wanted to have the movie infused with her work. WHEREAS Harry and Niki Are Jazz Guys. Dustin is An Old Jazz Hound Who Name Drops People Like Herbie Hancock, and that’s The World He Came Up in. And what we found, and what we hoped, is that the movie music – a whoh is not jazz and not classical, it’s almost like minimist, this incredible sound and the classical. All of Those are complemented by these Needle Drops – Nina Simone, Oscar Peterson. I These digffrent musical ingrents that we threw into the gumbo. I’m Really delighted with the Musical Identity of the Film.

You’re going to premiere Tuner AT Tiff. With your Two Feature Docs, You Were This Young Guy from Toronto and Everyone Was Wondering How You Persuaded Robbie Robertson and Ten Alexei Navalny to Agree To Be FilMed. Now, with Tunerpeople won’t be talking about this young guy from toronto. They’ll be taiging about the Oscar Winner Daniel Roher.

Somehow, I’m Feeling Less and Less Like that Young Guy from Toronto. But I Think It Speaks to the Core of Who I Am. And the one of the things that i’ll Say is i think a lot about botth alexei and robbie. They Both Passed Away in Sort of Proximity to One Another. And I Remember Robbie, I HAD LUNCH WITH HIM WHILE WE Were Promoting that Movie, and He Said Dismissuely, “Enough of This Documentary Stuff. You’ve Got Toho Find A Script Into. ” I DID TAKE HIS Advice. I Went Off and Found this Navalny Film. But his words, I Never Forgot Them and They Always Inspired Me. I THINK About TOSE TWO GUYS A LOT. I OWE THEM BOTH EVERYTHING I HAVE. I Miss Them Both. And I Think Robbie Wound Be Proud of This Movie. He would love the music. I THINK HEWD DIG IT.