Home Interviews Actors and Directors SQUEALER: An Interview With Andy Armstrong and Danielle Burgio

SQUEALER: An Interview With Andy Armstrong and Danielle Burgio

By
Glen Dower
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THEATRICAL POSTER FOR SQUEALER.

Introduction

Tyrese Gibson (The Fast and the Furious franchise) and Theo Rossi (Sons of Anarchy) star in Squealer, a terrifying thriller inspired by real events. When young women start disappearing in a small town, a police officer and a street-smart social worker follow clues to a remote pig farm, where they discover the local butcher has been bringing his work home. Enter the world of a serial killer and experience for yourself the bloodcurdling horror of a film that’s bound to take your breath away.

In Theaters, On Digital and On Demand on November 3rd, from Lionsgate. Filmmaker Andy Armstrong has designed, coordinated, and directed some of the largest and most spectacular action sequences that exist in cinema history. Andy’s notable credits include The Amazing Spiderman (1 AND 2), The Green Hornet, Thor, Hoffa, Stargate, Planet of the Apes, Galaxy Quest, Catwoman, I Robot, Charlie’s Angels, The Firm, as well as many TV series episodes for Jerry Bruckheimer TV and Warner Brothers TV.

Andy and his brother Vic created Armstrong Action, which now consists of three generations of family, making it the largest privately owned Stunt and Action Facility Company in the World. Andy is a published author of several action books and has lectured on the art of action movie-making in colleges and film schools. He is also a multiple award winner and proud member of SAG, DGA, and BAFTA, and one of the founding members of both the Taurus World Stunt Awards & Foundation.

Triple threat Danielle Burgio transitioned from Broadway dancer to Hollywood stuntwoman, and now, successful actress/producer. Born in Andrews Airforce Base, Burgio booked her first job only two weeks after moving to New York City, making her Big White Way debut in Starlight Express. After breaking in her skates on Broadway, Burgio moved to Los Angeles, where she became one of the industry’s most sought-after stunt women, appearing in over one hundred films and TV shows, including fanboy favorites like Blade, Batman Forever, and serving as stunt double to Carrie Ann Moss’ iconic ‘Trinity’ character in the Matrix sequels.

Squealer
Ronnie Gene Blevins in a scene from “Squealer” (2023). Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.

Burgio’s winning streak continued with a book, ‘The Stuntwoman’s Workout,’ and an invitation to co-host TBS’ ‘Worst Case Scenario,’ where, as ‘Gear Girl,’ she performed some of the most thrilling stunts of her plane-jumping, car-crashing, skyscraper-dangling career, and got the opportunity to display her daredevil skills during appearances from Entertainment Tonight to Good Morning America.

In addition to her career as a top stunt woman, the host of the Women Kick Ass podcast has become a successful actress in her own right, appearing in nearly fifty credits, most recently stealing the opening scene as ‘Soccer Mom’ in Zack Snyder’s instant cult classic, Army of the Dead. The expert martial artist has also channeled her creativity behind the camera, writing, directing, and producing two short films, Lucy Falls and Girl Trip, which screened at festivals across the US.
Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower recently sat down with Director Andy Armstrong And Co-Writer, Actress, and Producer Danielle Burgio to discuss their new feature film, Squealer. They talked about the multi-year evolution Squealer had from concept to screen, paying homage to the horror genre, backstory, and why audiences love a good serial killer story, among other topics.

(Edited for content and clarity)

Interview

Glen Dower:
Mr. Armstrong, how are you, Sir? And Ms. Burgio, how are you, Ma’am?
Andy Armstrong:
Good, thank you. Thank you for joining us.
Danielle Burgio:
Excellent. Thanks for asking.
Glen Dower:
Great. We are here to talk about Squealer today. Your new serial killer, and I will say, is quite a hardcore movie. For instance, I watched it with my wife…and she bailed out after the first 10 minutes, it got too much for her!
Andy Armstrong:
I’ll take that as a compliment!
Danielle Burgio:
I hope that’s a good sign.
Tyrese Gibson in a scene from “Squealer” (2023). Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.
Glen Dower:

Absolutely. She did not know what we were in for. But Mr. Armstrong, this is his feature debut, after decades in the industry and other directing projects. Why was this particular story the first feature film you wished to make?

Andy Armstrong:

To be honest, I directed a movie back in the nineties. But then I really couldn’t get anything going that interested me after that. So I went back to doing big action on other people’s movies and I basically sort of got bored with that process. Then Danielle and I started talking about doing something together and this story evolved out of just something that I’d spoken to Danielle years before. And we decided to write together and it turned out to be a really constructive process. So since then, we’ve got a couple of other movies that we’re going to hopefully get going after the strike ends. But yeah, I mean it’s a strange movie at first glance to come at from my background. Obviously all big action stuff. But we both felt this was a sort of good pure, and lean way to start.

It was good, something fresh for both of us. Neither of us is a horror aficionado, but we just felt this story was a story worth telling. And it is such an odd story really, but it’s odd, even though this sort of thing happens all the time, it happens in suburban areas, it happens in towns, it happens all over the place. Weird stuff happens and you always sort of see the interviews with the people like, oh, I had no idea he was killing people or whatever. It was that sort of flavor that really attracted both of us. Something that’s just weird, but it’s happening under people’s noses and nobody does anything about it.
Danielle Burgio:

Yes, Andy had first told me about this story maybe seven or eight years ago, and it had stuck with me, and our careers were on different paths and we knew we always wanted to do something together. And it was literally years later that the stars aligned and it was probably like seven years later and I was like, I’m still thinking about that story about that pig farmer who was a serial killer. So we were like, all right, let’s do it. Let’s do it and let’s do it in a different way.

We wanted to, I mean the story itself is so powerful and so fascinating, but we made a very conscious choice that we wanted to infuse quite a lot of fiction into it. We wanted to be respectful to any surviving families and victims or anything. The story itself is not that old. So we wanted to be thoughtful and respectful in that regard. We also wanted to pay homage to the horror genre and the fans and lean into some of the filmmaking aspects. So it became a bit of a hybrid and kind of wrote itself really once we decided to do it.
Ronnie Gene Blevins and Theo Rossi in a scene from “Squealer” (2023). Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.
Glen Dower:
The story itself, we are saying is based on the real-life case of Robert Pickton.
Andy Armstrong:

Inspired by more than about him really. It was his life story that first attracted us to it. And in some ways, his story is in a way even darker in places, but we didn’t want to go there. We wanted to keep it sort of very, very lean and we didn’t want to copy his life story completely because it is obviously quite recent and there are still victims, families, and all that sort of thing. So we wanted to be detached enough that it could be inspired by him, but not about him personally or any of his particular victims.

But the main attraction was the same though. The fact that he operated in a beautiful part of the world just outside Vancouver where tourists go and have beautiful winters and beautiful summers, and people go for the ski and they go for the water and everything. And he was only forty minutes outside of town and he operated for years under people’s noses. So there’s also a little bit of social commentary there.

And his victims were all people from a walk of life that a lot of other people just simply don’t care much about. And there’s a sort of, I hope the film operates on both levels, both on the sort of sensational level just visually, but also on a little bit of a social commentary about how we perceive the value of lives that are not necessarily as productive as other people might think are, right? A lot of the women that he picked on had just had tough stories, tough reasons to be there. They were definitely reasons they were chosen and taken by him.

He had a whole process. There was no door handle on the inside of the passenger door and all that sort of thing. Once they got in the truck, they were done. I think one of the things that really attracted us is that this horror was happening under people’s noses and nobody, whether they believed or not, cared enough to do something about it. That’s really the theme of the movie. The character of Lisa, played by Danielle in the film, has to convince people to care that this stuff is happening. So we wanted to make a movie that had a little bit of a message there but also operated on a very basic level as a horror film.

Wes Chatham, Sydney Carvill, and Danielle Burgio in a scene from “Squealer” (2023). Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.
Glen Dower:
We have horror tropes, of course, and you have spoken about the influences, such as The Silence of the Lambs with the recognizable Buffalo Bill-type character, even the opening is very Hammer Horror with the mist in the meadows. All really nice touches. But like you say, the female lead provides so much heart. And she is very much up against the three ‘poster boys’ of Tyrese or Wes or Ronnie. Was she an original character? As I imagine you had the horror aspects and the gore, but the audience needs someone to follow. Was that a conscious decision?
Andy Armstrong:

Yes, it was. I think it is important to have a character that you are prepared to follow through this story, to go on the journey with them. I think movies operate on a purely spectator level where this is all happening, which happens with a lot of sort of spectacular action movies and things. Or you have a character that you relate to and you follow that character through the story and you understand the pitfalls of ups and downs that they have.

And that’s what we were going for here, is that every character in it is sort of flawed, but I hope they’re also flawed to a level that you still can forgive them and you sort of follow them through. I don’t like perfect characters because they don’t exist. We all have these flaws. And I think the overall journey that she goes on, as well as catching and beating him, she’s also overcoming her own demons.

Danielle Burgio:
And we wanted to give her a real personal relatability to these women. Her past and her backstory really empathize with them and what they’re going through. They’re very much like her. She’s very much like them in a lot of ways. So that was something very conscious and something important to us that we wanted to portray.
Glen Dower:
Definitely really comes across for sure. Back to the horror aspects Mr. Armstrong, when we see the first full attack on screen, with the drugged victim, you do not hold back at all. So the knife goes in and it stays in, and once I remember thinking ‘Wow, this is still happening’. Other directors may have cut away at certain points. Can you talk about those directing and editing choices?
Andy Armstrong:
Well, we have a saying that ‘If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly! I think doing those things, sort of half-throttle is a copout, really. I think if you’re going to go down that road, go down it flat out. That’s been my thought for life really. But I think it’s important with this sort of movie that you don’t winch away from that stuff.
Danielle Burgio:

We also talked a lot about it, because it’s the first victim. We had a lot of conversations about if we really lean in and we really show it the first time, then the audience’s imagination can take over after that. Once you’ve set it up, then you can just tap on it. And their imagination is really in hyperdrive. And I think that hopefully adds to the horror of it and what they’re expecting and what they might be afraid to see down the line.

Glen Dower:
That worked for me. And one last question for you both. Why do we as audiences love a good serial killer movie?
Andy Armstrong:

I wish we knew. I’m addicted to all sorts of forensic files and all these things. I don’t know. Probably if I knew that I’d be a much, much wiser man. But I don’t know. There’s something, it’s a morbid fascination that we all seem to have with it. I thought I was at one point, one of the only ones that thought that way. But then the more you talk to people, you realize everybody watches these things. And it’s fascinating whether it’s that thing about because you can feel more secure because it’s not happening to you.

I always remember talking to someone who had been in battle. They said that when someone next to you dies, your overwhelming thought is, thank God it wasn’t me. And then your next thought is guilt that you thought that you had that thought. But that seems to be a recurring sort of theme. So I think it’s in us as humans that we are fascinated by that sort of stuff as long as it’s not happening to us.

Glen Dower:
What do you think, Danielle?
Danielle Burgio:
I know that, with me, I have a particular fascination with the human psyche and what makes people tick. I mean there’s a certain amount of norm that we all live by. And then when people step out of that norm, I find it quite fascinating. The psychology behind that and why that is. And I think that there are many answers…and there are no answers.
Theo Rossi in a scene from “Squealer” (2023). Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.
Glen Dower:
What a perfect way to end, and Squealer is another worthy addition to the genre. Thank you so much to both of you for your time and best luck with the film’s release!
Danielle Burgio:
Thank you, Glen!

Squealer will be released in select theaters across the country and on digital platforms on November 3, 2023.

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