The Iron Bull
After finding the girl of his dreams, Joe must win his university’s arm wrestling tournament.
Directing the Film (dir. 2024)
The Iron Bull (2024) was an exciting opportunity, inspired by some of the greatest underdog and sports drama films.
However, directing this film meant making it unique. There are a million underdog stories, so why should this one be told? Thus, the film leans itself into the more comedic, absurd aspects of the underdog genre, and allowed the actors to have fun in their roles while still providing serious, emotional moments when necessary. It won’t make you cry, but that isn’t the point. It’s meant to make you laugh, to love, and to realize that being the little guy isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Part of the fun of directing this was leaning into the creativity and flexibility necessary to be a director. You can plan for months, but what do you do when a lead actor says the scene just isn’t working? You need to rebuild it, you need to improve it, and you need to work together.
This film was shot with a maximum of four people on set at a time, which absolutely wasn’t ideal, but led to a creative process that was consistently open and full of inventiveness, leading to a film that each individual person was proud of.
Designing the Poster (desig. 2024)
Inspired by so many classic films, THE IRON BULL’s (2024) poster was intended to be an homage.
Drawing from the world of entertainment wrestling, the background-less portraits, with our main character front and center, quite literally bigger than everything but the title. This sort of design was pivotal in the “golden age” of film, and given the melodramatic nature of the story, it made sense to go all out, which works in a comedic sense for those who’ve seen the film, and also for general audiences who are simply intrigued by the dramatic, tense portrait of an underdog.
The title treatment was inspired by early works in the film industry, specifically from the black and white era, but even some from the early color era. Additionally, some pieces of the design were motivated by Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw (2023), which was the biggest inspiration for the style of the film as a whole, and very clearly needed to be involved in some way in the process of the design.
