Joel Edgerton Anchors Train Dreams: A Spokane Set, a Producer’s Decade-Long Pursuit, and a Photographer’s Vintage Lens
On a smoke-tinged plain near Spokane, a battered portrait sits on a table in a recreated farmhouse—its sitter, the novel’s quiet protagonist, captured for the camera by Daniel Schaefer. The actor Joel Edgerton appears in that frame as Robert Grainier, a man whose life the film traces across decades. The image, shot with century-old glass, anchors a scene that feels salvaged from history.
What made Train Dreams a project producers and a director fought to realize?
The film began as a stubborn passion project. Ashley Schlaifer, producer, who had been running Kamala Films at the time, pushed to adapt Denis Johnson’s novella and stayed with the project through a long development arc. Schlaifer explains the improbable path: “It’s wild and it’s such a dream. It’s not like when I read the novella I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be what happens. ‘” She describes the production as independent through and through until a larger partner joined late in the process. The Clint Bentley-directed film premiered at Sundance in 2025, was snapped up by Netflix, and went on to collect honors at the Independent Spirit Awards, while Adolpho Veloso, director of photography, also received recognition from BAFTA and the Critics Choice Award. Schlaifer’s account underscores the many roles producers must play on an indie film, from shepherding rights to assembling the creative team: she identified Clint Bentley, director, after seeing his prior work and paired him with co-writer Greg Kwedar, co-writer.
How did the production create historical authenticity on location?
Eastern Washington’s varied terrain supplied the physical canvas the filmmakers needed. Daniel Schaefer, IATSE Local 600 stills photographer and location scout, highlights the region’s range: “We have woods, we have rivers, we have cities, we have streams—pretty much anything you can find. ” That geographic versatility allowed the crew to represent multiple eras within the same broader landscape. To deepen that sense of period, Schaefer relied on optics from different decades: “I was able to source lenses from the late 1800s, the 1920s, the 1940s, and the 1960s, ” he says. One prop photograph in the film—the portrait of Robert Grainier and his wife Gladys—was shot on those period-correct lenses and used directly in the production. For large-scale sequences, the crew married practical lighting and effects: local gaffers Kevin Cook and Mike Vukas assembled an extensive bank of theatrical PAR cans gelled in flame colors, while Ryan Roundy, VFX team, added smoke, ash and sparks for a climactic forest-fire scene. Schaefer notes the eerie reality they built on top of land still smoldering from a real wildfire near Medical Lake months earlier.
Who are the voices behind the scenes, and what do they say about the film’s human center?
Ashley Schlaifer, producer, frames the project as rooted in story: she says her initial draw was Denis Johnson’s writing and that the film’s quiet, interior focus made the adaptation a challenge. “I think it always just starts with story, ” she reflects. Daniel Schaefer connects the production practice to the film’s themes: “In photography, we are anchoring memory, taking these moments and distilling them into a single frame. Train Dreams is a story that is anchored in memory—this man’s memories of his time in the Pacific Northwest. ” The production team listed alongside Schlaifer includes Marissa McMahon, Kamala Pictures founder; Teddy Schwartzman, producer; Will Janowitz, producer; and Michael Heimler, producer. Their combined efforts brought the work from a lapsed option to a film now honored across major awards circuits.
Back on the plain near Spokane, the portrait of Robert Grainier gleams with the soft aberrations of old glass—a private artifact made public. The frame that holds Joel Edgerton’s face in the film is more than a prop; it is a device that ties the production’s painstaking craft to the story’s insistence on memory, loss and the slow accumulation of time.
