How directors Aaron and Adam Nee leveled up for The Lost City

American independent film may face commercial uncertainty in the streaming era, but low-budget storytelling can still offer a viable career path. Witness Aaron and Adam Nee, whose “calling-card film” Band Of Robbers enjoyed a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it theatrical release in 2015.

The brothers’ inventive crime comedy, based on Mark Twain’s The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, didn’t break through to mainstream audiences. But it still opened doors that led to their latest film, The Lost City, starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum.

The adventure-comedy recently debuted to generally positive notices at South By Southwest, providing a full-circle moment of validation for the Nees, whose micro-budgeted directorial debut The Last Romantic premiered at the festival in 2006. The A.V. Club recently spoke with the brothers about their inspirations, their next high-profile project, Masters Of The Universe, and where they slot amongst fraternal filmmaking tandems.

Aaron Nee: Band Of Robbers was aspiring toward something like this. We took the budget we had with that and pushed that as far as we [could]. And one of the things that we found was that no matter what budget level you step up to, you’re still going to be pushing it to the very limits of what it can handle. So a lot of the experience was very similar—you just have a larger team.

Adam Nee: Yeah, I feel like the job is the same, in that every day you’re just trying to keep people focused on the vision you have, and keep people making the same movie. One of the great benefits is that you suddenly have access to all of the greatest craftsmen and performers, everybody, and you can just elevate that level of production value and things. But like Aaron said, you are still pushing your budget to the absolute limit. I mean, you never really have enough money, whether your movie is a million dollars or $100 million.

AVC: What constraints did COVID impose on the production—while you were shooting in a jungle in the Dominican Republic?

Aaron Nee: COVID slows everything down because you have these zones that people have to now operate within, and protocols that you have to put into place in order to get into those different zones, and testing regimens. Being in that sweltering jungle heat and humidity with K95 masks and so on, COVID just complicates every aspect of making a movie.

Adam Nee: I think there are some obvious things, like crowd scenes where we only have a certain amount of people because of COVID protocols, and those are very, very easy to see limitations. But I think the biggest one really is the way you connect with each other on a cast and crew level. Because everyone is behind a mask, it’s not quite that normal experience on a movie where you just have that instant relationship with people because you’re mirroring each other, and all these things that you do with normal human interaction. You just have that wall in between you, and that’s a challenging hurdle. But we I think transcended it because there was this group on this film that was so grateful to be working in this time, and was so gung-ho and so invested that we were able to overcome those limitations.

AVC: You both take a screenwriting credit on this film. What changes were there to the script from Seth Gordon’s first pitch and Dana Fox’s draft?

Adam Nee: The script we read was Dana’s and we ended up bringing up Dana back to keep working with us too, because we think she’s terrific. Our approach really was that we read the script, and I think it was maybe leaning more into the romantic comedy zone, maybe just slightly broader. And our take was, let’s make this movie as if we’re making Raiders Of The Lost Ark, let’s really have a real adventure set piece. And so we put that through and tried to focus on the character story of Loretta [Sandra Bullock’s character] and what she’s going through in her getting over a grief, and re-learning to live and have new adventures in life.

AVC: Whose idea was the pink sequined jumpsuit, which basically becomes Loretta’s one costume?

Adam Nee: I think that started with Sandy [Bullock], actually. She loves a jumpsuit, and we loved the idea because it was like, “What can you put her in that’s the most impractical thing on a jungle adventure that also captures a character that is being ripped out of their cocoon in life?” So put them in the most uncomfortable thing in the most uncomfortable situation.

Aaron Nee: And yet is strangely beautiful, and fits in almost like a forest flower. That’s part of what’s great about that jumpsuit—it both stands out like a sore thumb and doesn’t belong there, and yet also strangely makes for great imagery.

AVC: You mentioned Raiders. Growing up, what movies of that genre inspired you guys, and when you want to tell a tale in that genre, do you dare revisit those films or do you just draw from memories?

Aaron and Adam Nee (both): Oh, that’s a good question.

Aaron Nee: Yeah, that’s interesting. For us, films like Raiders Of The Lost Ark or Goonies or Romancing The Stone, those types of popcorn adventure films were such a formative part of our early filmgoing experience that it’s engrained in us. We’ve watched those movies so many times we wore out the VHS tape. Like, it’s deeply embedded in our psyches, so it came naturally to be bringing those elements in, and what was exciting to us in this project was the prospect of swapping the characters out. So where in Romancing The Stone you may discover Michael Douglas as a very capable, experienced person living in the jungle, we wanted to put a cover model in there, and instead of it being Indiana Jones discovering these clues and going on this adventure, it’s Sandy Bullock as a novelist who’s been shut away in her home for years all of a sudden thrown into this situation that she doesn’t belong in.

Adam Nee: I think there would be times when maybe we would go back and revisit films sometimes for coverage clues, because we had a very limited schedule. We had the aspirations of something like Raiders, but we did not have anywhere near the time or money. So it would be looking sometimes for inspiration for the bare minimum of coverage that we could do to really tell the story and still live up to some bigger action stuff—just going back and revisiting the greats and how they pulled off some of the stuff, and then us going, “Okay, well now if we take away half of those shots how would we tell this story?”

AVC: Your leads have great comic timing. Did you have the time and ability to let them improvise?

Adam Nee: Certainly with some scenes. There are at least some sequences that you just schedule out [because] you know that this one really needs to breathe, we really need have to have time to play. Them on stage at the Romance Convention, for instance, we took time with that and covered it a lot. It was a very long scene and it’s pared down in the film, but we played with a lot of different stuff to make sure that we got things. And we only had Brad Pitt for a week on the movie, so we had to shoot his stuff really fast, and that just happened to be when it started raining. So there were things like that where you wanted to have more time to let it breathe, but it would rain every hour, and you’d have to wait and as soon as it let up a little bit you’d be like, “Okay, go, go, go!” and you’d shoot it and you’d be done. So what the jungle allowed was a big part of it.

Aaron Nee: I would say that even with that Brad stuff, where the schedule constraints that we were starting with were magnified by the weather, he was so, so game and Channing [Tatum] and Sandy, that talent is so capable, that we still managed to find space to be throwing new ideas at them, and doing these explorations and making new discoveries with them.

AVC: Brad Pitt is obviously very selective, and this is a lighter lift schedule-wise for him, as you noted. But what does it take to get him involved in a project like this?

Adam Nee: I think there were so many factors at play that it was like a perfect storm to get Brad Pitt, because we talked about him in the very beginning. It was like that thing where you go, “What about Brad Pitt?” and everyone goes, “No, he’s never going to do it, it’s never going to happen, so let’s not waste our time.” But Sandy doing Bullet Train and them sharing a hairdresser was a huge thing. Because Janine [Thompson], their shared hairdresser, really helped to broker this, I think. She helped to get Sandy onto Bullet Train and Brad onto ours. I think there’s also just a lot of goodwill between Sandy and Brad, they’re big fans of each other, and friends.

And then you could feel from Brad also that same hunger that I think audiences have—to do something light and fun and escapist. I think we all, after these past couple years, are just so eager to have that joyful escape that you can get from cinema. I think he was in that same headspace, of thinking this is just going to be fun. And that’s how he came into the project. From the day he showed up he was just there to have fun, and it was a truly joyful experience.

AVC: Did you test the film with audiences before release, and if so was that your first experience with the emotional roller coaster of fine-tuning?

Adam Nee: We believe in testing very much, and with Band Of Robbers we would show friends and family almost every single week, because we really believed that feedback is very important. And you start to get consensus, that’s where it’s good—you’ll obviously get feedback from someone that it doesn’t feel quite right, but within that consensus you start understanding what’s working and what’s not. So we tested this movie three times, and it was incredibly helpful. And obviously it’s terrifying because it’s a big movie, and there’s a lot at stake. So if you’re hearing things in a testing process that surprise you, or that people didn’t expect to hear, it can rattle you. But we had such an amazing team, and the studio was so supportive, that when there was something that wasn’t working it was just like, “All right, let’s hunker down and figure it out.” So it ended up being a very safe process, and a very helpful one. But your first test [screening] is a terrifying thing.

AVC: You have an even bigger movie on the horizon with Masters Of The Universe. Given there are so many iterations of that material, what sources are you drawing from? And do you take inspiration from the live-action and animated adaptations about what to do or what not to do?

Aaron Nee: For Masters Of The Universe, the primary inspiration is that childhood experience of playing with those toys. When we were asked what our take on it would be, when we first went in to pitch on it, that was our main focus. Just even in Adam and I’s conversation with one another beforehand, of going back to that experience and trying to hold onto what the story was to us as kids, what it was that was appealing to us was that feeling of excitement and empowerment and possibility, of the expansive universe where anything can happen. Those aspects were the primary inspiration we were trying to capture—what did it mean to us as children.

Adam Nee: And just holding on to the funny, bright, vibrant irreverent tone of that material. To us it’s like, yes, it can have some big epic scale that maybe you would get from a Lord Of The Rings-type thing, but really you couldn’t throw Snout Spout and Ram Man into the middle of The Lord Of The Rings. It needs to have a little bit of that Thor: Ragnarok tone. It is a fun, comic book-y type film.

Aaron Nee: We don’t want to shy away from those wild, colorful aspects of it that were part of what made us fall in love with it as kids.

AVC: What does an actor like Kyle Allen bring to a movie like Masters Of The Universe?

Adam Nee: He’s incredible. Kyle Allen I think is going to be one of the discoveries of his generation of actors. He’s not only a terrific actor who has great depth and vulnerability and easy access to true emotion, he’s incredibly funny. I think he has the charm of a Michael J. Fox or Tom Holland or Chris Pratt, but he also is trained in every different martial art, and he is trained as an incredible swordsman and an acrobat and a ballet dancer. He’s so rounded as a talent.

Aaron Nee: From day one of us telling Kyle we wanted him to be a part of this, he was sending us videos showing sword work, just going, “What do you think about a sword of this weight and this size? And if I had this, then I can do that,” and then just doing demonstrations for us, and I was like, “My God, I didn’t realize he already knows how to handle a sword that well.” He brings a kind of wide-eyed zeal to it as well. We’re approaching this as something of an origin story, and couldn’t imagine a better person to take audiences on that journey, because he has that kind of excitement and zeal of discovery that we want the audience to experience.

AVC: Finally, in a steel cage match between you guys, the Safdies, the Duplass brothers, the Coens, the Russos, and the Farrellys, what goes down, who wins?

Adam Nee: Well, in terms of fighting, I think we might win! We’re athletic guys. But I think in terms of filmmaking we still have a long way to go before we match many of those filmmakers. Obviously the Russos have been incredible for us, they’ve been like mentors to us. The Coens are heroes, and I think the Safdie brothers are maybe the most exciting young brother filmmakers out there. So we still have a way to go, but I bet I could beat them in an arm-wrestle.

Aaron Nee: Yeah, I think we’re going to maybe try to get as far over to the edge, and then just watch and learn.

Adam Nee: But also you could arrange a fight, because that would be great. I would watch that.