Interview by Greg Carlson

The Fargo Theatre’s Centennial Film Series opens this Tuesday evening with a special 30th anniversary screening of “Fargo.” Nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, “Fargo” received two Academy Awards: Frances McDormand was named Best Actress in her role as indefatigable Brainerd Chief of Police Marge Gunderson and Best Screenplay honors went to brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.

In the film, Peter Stormare’s taciturn Gaear Grimsrud may not deliver many lines of dialogue, but his onscreen presence is indelible and unforgettable. HPR film editor Greg Carlson spoke with Stormare ahead of his “return” visit to Fargo. The actor will participate in an on-stage Q&A following the April 14 screening. Tickets are available at the Fargo Theatre.

GC: We look forward to welcoming you to Fargo. Not only will you be reunited with the woodchipper and also see our Marge Gunderson statue, you are coming to a place with a very high concentration of people of Swedish descent.

PS: Yes, I see by your name that you’re not a Norwegian or a Dane with an “s-e-n.” You do it with an “s-o-n.”

GC: You grew up in a really small town in northern Sweden. How did you make it from a little village to the Royal Dramatic Theatre?

PS: I don’t know. When I was five years old, I told my parents that they weren’t my real parents, like every kid does. But I also said to my mother that my real mother lived in California. And when I get older, I’m going to reunite with my real mother in California.

My folks always teased me about it. “Oh, when are you going to move to California?” I said, “Stop teasing me about it. It’s real. I’m going to work in movies.” “You will have to take us out there one day once you make it there.”

It was a dream I had deep inside. I never talked much to anybody or my friends about it. But I told my parents when I was young, and I kept the dream alive.

GC: Did your parents encourage you or discourage you to follow that dream?

PS: I think they thought I was a little bit loony. They just shook their heads and laughed it away and said, “Yeah, he’s strange. He’s sitting in the attic in the dark, just looking at stars. So let him be. Let him fantasize while he’s still young.”

Eventually, I made it down to Stockholm. I started walking, more or less. And by a fluke, I got a ticket to go to the theater. I had just turned 20 when I saw my first play. It was like God had opened the gates for me and I came into heaven.

We have academies in most European countries, where you have ballet and opera singers and actors together with painters and choreographers in something like an academic community. You get a grant from the state to go to school.

It’s a great thing to be part of as a young person. I was only 21 or 22 when I got accepted. The first National Theater play I was in received rave reviews and became a huge hit that ran for several years. That was a great start for a new guy in town. And then I met Ingmar Bergman and started working with him in his productions.

GC: Bergman directed you in three big shows, right?

PS: More than three, but the big ones were “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Miss Julie” and “Hamlet.” I mean, those were three giant leaps for me. And you have all the lines in your head at the same time while you’re rehearsing a fourth show during the day. So you have to hold four different scripts in your head.

GC: At this point in time, you’re performing “Hamlet” in Swedish. The Britt Hallkvist translation had been commissioned for this production. Did you prefer Hamlet in Swedish or in Shakespeare’s original English?

PS: We did a two-week run at the National Theater. I got to meet a lot of actors, like Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, and Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Peter Hall. Big, big stars I looked up to. They all wanted to see this completely new translation of Shakespeare.

Bergman really idolized Hallkvist. She had previously done many translations of Shakespeare. It was very special for me to contribute and be involved with the brand new “Hamlet” she wrote for us.

GC: What was different when you directed your own version of “Hamlet” at the Tokyo Globe Theater? 

PS: In Japanese, instead of rhymes they might use alliteration, which felt very strange at first. So I worked very closely with my assistant director, who was fluent in English and Japanese and also knew German.

It is easier working with a translator when you don’t have only one word but can circle a feeling with four or five different words. The translation we did was so poetic, so dreamlike.

The ghost was influenced by the old “Ugetsu Monogatari.” The ghost comes as three guys in white, with bandanas and white masks and a bow with arrows that are shot right over the audience, up to a styrofoam board. They speak their words simultaneously, which becomes very eerie.

Hamlet sees his father from the front with the three ghosts standing behind him. In Europe we have a harder time making a ghost believable. But that is not the case in Japan.  For them, it’s part of life.

GC: Right, things like yūrei and kami.

PS: One of my first questions to the translator was, “How is the ghost for you? Does the way we handle the ghost work for you?” And he said, “In my family, my father’s ghost comes and visits me. We have no problem dealing with ghosts.”

That production became a big hit. Japan appreciates and understands Shakespeare. When the box office opened, I looked outside and saw 200 kids between the ages of 16 and 24 lined up to buy tickets. And the shows usually sold out.

I’m married to a Japanese woman and I’ve spent so much time in Japan that it feels like I belong in Japan. Like I should have been born there. I think Shakespeare would have loved to see his plays being performed today in Japan.

GC: One of my favorite things that’s been said about you comes from the Fade to Black YouTube channel. I am paraphrasing, but it is this idea that you are like a stone dropped into still water. And that over the course of your career, you have mastered the art of creative disruption.

PS: I can have a long beard. I can have a shaved head. I can have a strange walk. I can be different in every part and have a different accent. I don’t want to fall into the trap of just being a money-making machine stuck in the middle doing the same thing over and over.

That has happened to too many American actors and it’s very sad to see. Some of them try to do different things but when they get bad reviews it’s back to playing the same old guy again.

GC: You also do so much with so little screen time.

PS: I don’t need to be Wayne Gretzky. I want to be the guy who passes the puck to Gretzky and makes the best assists. I want to come into a movie and not have the heaviness of carrying the whole thing. I don’t want the burden that if it flops, I’m dead. Or the pressure that if it’s good, I’ll have to do the same part again. I want to be the secondary guy who can really be a character.

GC: You’ve played Lucifer and Dracula and plenty of murderers. What is the appeal of the darkness?

PS: I think it comes from the stage. I don’t know if you direct as well, but if you put, let’s say, 100 actors on stage and ask them, “Who wants to play the Prince of Darkness?” you’re going to have 99 stepping forward. I think it’s very boring to do Prince White, the good guy.

A long time ago, I had a conversation with Harrison Ford and he said to me, “I’ve tried to play bad guys but when I do, nobody wants to see me in those movies. I always have to be on the good side.”

GC: You’ve been featured in movies by Joel and Ethan Coen, Steven Spielberg, George Romero, Louis Malle, Terry Gilliam, and Lars von Trier, to name just a few. How do you like to be directed? 

PS: The best thing for an actor is when they’re properly directed. I learned this from Bergman. He built you a corral and said, more or less, “You’re a wild horse. And I’m not going to tame you. But this is your corral. It’s pretty big but I want you to stay inside it.”

He said, “My suggestion is that you do this and do this and do this. If you don’t like my suggestions, that’s fine, but don’t jump out of the corral. Don’t destroy the corral. You’re only one color. And there’s other people on stage, not just you.”

Like the Coen brothers, Bergman was very specific, like, “Lift the glass here” or “After you say that line, take the knife and then put it down and then say your next line.” But at the same time, if I didn’t like the way things were working, he would tell me to try something else.

GC: Not too many actors can say they have been directed by Ingmar Bergman and Michael Bay.

PS: When it comes to Michael Bay, as an actor, you can be an actor. Bay has been criticized and looked down upon, as if all he can do is stage action. I think he’s a very good director. He’s just as specific as Bergman and the Coens and he’s very thorough and he prepares like crazy.

Sometimes he just takes over the camera, starts to move it and says, “I’m shooting now, John.” And John [Schwartzman, the director of photography] gets pissed and says, “No, I want to shoot this one. You take the B-camera.” Bay knows exactly what he wants in every shot.

GC: You have more experience than some of your directors.

PS: It can be hard with younger, modern directors who have not done their homework. They have a digital camera. They can shoot 47 minutes without saying cut. And they have not done any prep.

It’s like you think you’re going to play soccer and then your coach announces you’ll be playing on ice. “Ice? Then shouldn’t we have skates? Shouldn’t we be playing hockey? What do you mean? We’re playing soccer on ice?” That can make you very insecure as an actor. And usually the results are bad.

GC: You’ve played scenes with some of the biggest stars in the business, from Robin Williams and Tom Cruise to Jeff Bridges and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Keanu Reeves and on and on. Who are some of your acting heroes? 

PS: I will choose two icons, one departed and one who is still here: the late Spencer Tracy and Clint Eastwood, who is still alive and kicking. One a legend and one a living legend. Inspirations for as long as I can remember, since I was a kid and started going to the movies.

Clint has something phenomenal in his way of being. From “Rawhide” to his films with Sergio Leone, you can observe him just breathing and believe that he will be able to say a lot without the need to use many words or talk all the time.

GC: The descriptive phrase that gets attached to you maybe more than any other is “quiet menace.”

PS: The audience will come to me if I’m quiet. Even if I only have two scenes in a movie, I try to work something in so the audience wants to see more of me. If nothing else, they go out after the movie ends and say, “Oh shit, I wish there were more scenes with that guy.”

My aim is not to steal the show but to at least make an impression. When I was younger and working with Bergman, there was a saying that if you take a question mark and you hang it upside down, like they do in the Spanish language, it becomes a hook. Don’t be afraid of being a question mark up there on stage or in front of a camera, because people tend to bite onto that hook.

Bergman might not show a face 100%. Maybe just half a face will be lit so the audience can use their imagination to add what the rest looks like. He would say, “Don’t give the audience everything because they have paid money and they want to use the fantasy and be co-writers of the story.”

GC: Are you a cinephile? Do you go out to see a lot of movies?

PS: No. I have claustrophobia. I’m afraid of people. I’m like a hermit. I don’t like movie theaters. I get annoyed if someone eats an apple like three rows away from me.

GC: Or talks or looks at their phone.

PS: Something inside of me turns anxious. I can occasionally go to a cineplex in the middle of the day if there’s only three other people in the auditorium and I can sit far away from them. I really should be fighting more for movie theaters but even as a kid it was hard for me to be among a lot of people.

These days I mostly watch documentaries because for me to see episodic series and movies, having been in the business so long, I recognize locations, I recognize people. “I’ve worked with him. I’ve worked with her. Oh, they’re in Toronto and pretending they’re in New York. That’s Vancouver. Oh, I know that spot. That’s Atlanta. Okay, now it’s Bulgaria standing in for New York.”

GC: Do you watch anything with your family?

PS: No, my wife and my kids don’t look at those kinds of movies. They have their own preferences. I think it can be hard to see certain things with your dad. My wife is more into Brazilian and French movies and has, you know, Japanese taste.

GC: You’ve described your wife Toshimi as an incredible chef. What’s your favorite meal that she makes?

PS: Something called oden, a one-pot stew with boiled vegetables that you eat with hot mustard. It’s like a peasant dish, a winter dish. But you can eat it all year round. It’s really great with an ice cold beer and daikon and all those good things they have in the broth. Oden connects you to the roots of Japan and what people ate in the old days when you cooked whatever vegetables you could find and made it taste good.

GC: You are a musician and I’ve seen a photograph of you wearing a Jesus and Mary Chain shirt and a more recent image of you in a Thin Lizzy shirt. What are the bands you can’t live without? 

PS: There are three bands for me, although Thin Lizzy might come in fourth. My life would not be as rich without the Beatles, the Clash and Nirvana. Those three bands have something in common: they broke new ground.

They wrote their own material and explored new avenues in music without just repeating what was previously successful. Unfortunately, Kurt Cobain took his life. He could have done so much more. But, just to dare to put together “MTV Unplugged in New York” … what a gift.

GC: Yeah, stunning, spare and transformational. It’s a timeless artifact.

PS: When you listen to the White Album, it sounds like it could have been recorded today and not close to 60 years ago. The Beatles were workhorses who would do it every day for up to fourteen hours. Even when they were fighting like crazy, they came in and made music together. In little more than 7 years, they released 13 albums. Where do you want to go? “Revolution 9” together with “Honey Pie.” What is going on here? How the hell could they do this in three months?

With the Clash, “Sandinista!” is one of the best things I could listen to. It’s innovative and improvised. It’s so in the moment and it turned out to be gold nuggets. With both the White Album and “Sandinista!,” some were saying, “No, no, this is too much, too many different directions.”

GC: I watched Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary and marveled at the band’s working process. I gained a whole new level of love and appreciation for Ringo.

PS: Ringo is going to be the surviving member. As a kid, he was nearly declared dead several times. He doesn’t need to die anymore. I think he will survive to his hundredth.

GC: I hope so. I want to wrap up by saying we avoided talking about “Fargo” because you’re going to have a great Q&A when you’re here in a few days. And people are ready to hear your stories about that particular moviemaking experience. 

PS: Yes! We will let some new ones out of the closet.

Interview by Greg Carlson

Filmmaker Elizabeth Chatelain returns to the Fargo Film Festival with the new feature “Bigfoot Woods,” screening on Saturday, March 21 at 1:30pm at the Fargo Theatre. She will be joined by several members of the production team for a conversation following the movie. HPR film editor Greg Carlson spoke with Chatelain about moviemaking, physical media, film studies, and their shared admiration for Richard Linklater.

Greg Carlson: How did you get into film? Can you tell us some formative early movie love stories?

Elizabeth Chatelain: I grew up going regularly to the movies. And one of my formative movie experiences was “Jurassic Park.” I sat in the dark of the theater and was just in awe of what I was seeing on the screen and just the magic of it. I know a lot of filmmakers have had similar experiences. That’s why we go to the movies.

GC: I can’t begin to imagine how many people have been inspired by seeing a Steven Spielberg movie on the big screen. Did you always want to make movies?

EC: It wasn’t until late in high school that I realized I wanted to pursue filmmaking. At the time it still felt sort of early to me because we didn’t have specific film classes at Fargo South High, which is a pretty big school. South did offer drama and music and other programs. And YouTube had just started.

GC: What was another movie that made an impression on you?

EC: This might sound like a weird reference, but I saw Richard Attenborough’s “Gandhi.” It has its problems, but I felt so moved by it. I was just a high school kid. The film is a giant biopic done on this massive scale and explored a world that I didn’t know very much about. I hadn’t yet traveled outside of the United States and Canada.

GC: Movies as windows to the world. When I was 10 years old, I begged my parents to take me to “Gandhi” in the theater. The depiction of the assassination gave me nightmares, but I did not want to tell them out of fear that they wouldn’t let me watch other “grown up” films. Fantastic that “Gandhi” inspired you to make movies. 

EC: Yes, I think I want to make films! As I was learning about it all, at first I thought I wanted to just produce, because I was pretty good at economics and I really loved movies. So maybe I’ll do that. I chose Middlebury College in Vermont because they had a film program, but it was more of a film and media culture studies program rather than production. But they did have a few production classes.

I took all the production classes that you could. And discovered that I really enjoyed making documentaries because it was the most accessible form of filmmaking.

GC: Had you made anything before Vermont? 

EC: My friends and I did a couple shorts on VHS, edited in-camera. One was for our orchestra class. We made a mockumentary about Beethoven, which was hilarious. I mean, to us, it was hilarious.

GC: I would love to see it. When did you make the leap to really understanding how to shoot and edit and put together a story? 

EC: As an undergrad, I took a lot of film analysis classes. I studied how film started, from the beginnings in the late 1800s to how editing evolved, how camerawork evolved. That was eye-opening for me. After that, it was just getting my hands on a camera. I think one of the biggest steps is just going out and working with the equipment.

And then when you find a story that speaks to you, that you feel like you have to tell, I think that’s really where you realize the impetus to move forward with the story and telling it in the form of film, which has sound, visuals, acting, movement, editing, all these different things.

GC: What did you watch in film class that stuck with you as a lesson for making your own movies? 

EC: Kieslowski, because of his use of visuals for storytelling and his use of abstract visuals.

In addition to the beauty of his work, there’s always this humanist element where all of the characters are struggling with something morally or ethically or philosophically or existentially. And he’s able to communicate that through extremely interesting visuals and sound. The Three Colors trilogy and “Dekalog.”

GC: I saw “The Double Life of Veronique” at the Fargo Theatre during my first year of college. Later, I also went to see all of the Three Colors films there. 

EC: And he started from a documentary background, which I feel like you can see in his work with the humanist element. He was very influential.

GC: Do you still collect movies? 

EC: I collected DVDs through college. And then I lived in India for a year, so I did not have my collection. I’m going back to buying DVDs, because I feel like what happens now is, I want to watch a movie and then I have to rent it for like $3 online for two days. I would rather own the physical DVD if I am going to watch something more than once.

When I came back to Fargo, I worked at Cash Wise Video and I collected a lot of DVDs during that time, because we would get discounts. After a couple months, when the rentals fall off, they downsize the extra copies. We could get them for really cheap. I acquired a lot of DVDs then. I have a lot of Criterion Collection. I remember those originating on LaserDisc, a format that was only around for a quick minute.

GC: I still have my LaserDisc player. My first experience with accessing audio commentaries. I collected a lot of Criterion discs. A really good audio commentary enhances your love and enjoyment and respect for the movie. I still listen to audio commentaries a few times a week.

EC: They’re so great. I remember specifically, when I was in college, I got the extended versions of “The Lord of the Rings” films with all the extras. You look at everyone working towards the creation of this amazing world, Hobbiton, and all these different places, and the armor and stunt work.

Everybody was so invested in making it come to life. And there’s something that’s super magical about that. So that was inspiring for me to watch, because I think sometimes we don’t know how much work and passion and care goes into something. Even on a small movie like “Bigfoot Woods,” collaborators share the vision.

GC: How do you accomplish that? 

EC: This movie was a little bit different for me, because for the most part, I direct films that I’ve written. I felt like it was incumbent on me to put forth the vision of the material that was in the script and be true to what the script was saying and asking for.

“Bigfoot Woods” definitely deals with some difficult themes and situations, but in general, it’s much more lighthearted. I challenged myself to think about how that would translate to a visual style. What visual style is best for telling this story?

GC: What was the first movie you bought with your own money?

EC: The first movie that I purchased on VHS was “Meet Joe Black.” Do you remember that one?

GC: Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. Inspired by “Death Takes a Holiday.”

EC: Yes. I haven’t seen it in years. But at the time, to me, it was just a film that was a little bit weird.  I remember it being a little outside the standard film and that appealed to me.

GC: You must have had some of the staples as well.

EC: Of course. We grew up watching “Star Wars” and so many 80s classics, like “Stand by Me” and “The Goonies,” which  I watched a million times.

GC: What was a movie you went back to see multiple times in the theater because you wanted to chase the endorphins? 

EC: I feel like I’m totally embarrassing myself, but it’s “Titanic.”

GC: No, you should be proud! “Never let go.”

EC: It was a shared cultural experience. I went back multiple times with friends. Everybody was going to see it. The theater experience felt so different. I must have been 13 or 14. I could go and see it without my parents! It was larger than life. Those state of the art visual effects. And that love story!

GC: A phenomenon, for sure. You later lived in Austin, Texas, a great cinema town. 

EC: I loved living in Austin. I think it has changed a lot in the last 10 to 15 years. But one of the coolest things I did there was work on the “Slacker 2011” project for the film’s 20th anniversary. A bunch of directors in Austin did different sections.

I was part of a group of young women at the University of Texas working on one segment. I was producing and someone else was directing, but I also worked on a couple of the other parts. And then they brought it all together and played it in theaters. It was a really cool experience because Richard Linklater is such an amazing filmmaker.

GC: He’s done so much for the Austin film scene.

EC: He has contributed so much and inspired so many filmmakers, really in multiple ways because he made super low budget films and then went on to make larger movies. He always gave back to Austin and co-founded the Austin Film Society and enriched Austin’s film community and independent filmmaking specifically. Very few filmmakers of his status have given back as much, especially to a specific place.

GC: Linklater had a really good year last year with “Nouvelle Vague” and “Blue Moon,” two movies that are so completely different stylistically. And yet they are both totally, wholly riveting.

EC: Absolutely. What a filmography: “Dazed and Confused” and “Boyhood.”

GC: And the genius of the “Before” trilogy. 

EC: There’s such range. He’s always experimenting and finding things that interest him and pushing himself and challenging himself and exploring things.

GC: Like the animation: “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly” and “Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood.”

EC: He’s such a generous person as well, with his time and his resources and his connections. He’s definitely a filmmaker I look up to. Because of the idea that you don’t have to be stuck in a box and make only one type of movie over and over.

GC: Since you’d previously worked from material that you had written, how did you come into contact with the “Bigfoot Woods” script?

EC: Megan Huber, one of the producers on the film, had read some of my work and knew I was living in Minnesota, up here in Hibbing. Another director had been attached before me and a lot of things were lined up for making the film. They had the cinematographer and the costume designer and the production designer and were about two months from shooting.

I figured Megan was reaching out to talk about post-production because that’s usually what people call me about. She said, to my surprise, that they were looking for a director. I met with executive producer and co-writer Bruce Pavalon. He wrote the movie with his son Abel and I thought it was a story that needed to be told.

GC: Coming of age stories can feel urgent and vital. 

EC: My sister’s kid is in a challenging place right now. She’s 14 and figuring out her identity. There were a lot of things that I saw in my sister’s child that resonated with me in this script and through the main character of Bridget/Jonah.

I really liked Bruce and Abel and I felt honored that they would consider me to direct the movie. Bruce looked at previous work. I’ve worked with kids a lot. And I’ve worked with non-professional actors, often in North Dakota or Minnesota. And “Bigfoot Woods” is based up here. I think all of that spoke to him and he liked my vision. I also did a look-book and a pitch. I have to say, if I wasn’t living in Minnesota, I don’t know if they would have reached out to me.

GC: Right place at the right time.

EC: Exactly. You never know what’s going to come up.

GC: Ambrose Velasco Jenkins is really incredible as Jonah in the film. Was Ambrose attached to the movie by the time you came on board?

EC: They had started the casting but hadn’t finished. We went through several rounds for Bridget/Jonah. And Ambrose just really stood out to us as embodying this character and he had also gone through a similar transition.

He felt very close to the material. He hadn’t done a film before. He was very much a theater actor and had just started college. Now he’s probably 20, but at the time he was 18. Really smart, really bright, really emotionally attuned. And just had a very, very real connection to the character.

GC: How did Rich Sommer get involved? 

EC: The producers had some connection to him, probably related to the state, since Rich was raised in Minnesota and went to college there. All of us thought immediately that he would be perfect for the role. Just reading the script you can totally see Rich as this character.

I believe the material spoke to him. And he was game to go and shoot a movie in Ely. It is beautiful there. It was such a pleasure working with him. He’s so experienced and professional. Nails it in one or two takes.

GC: What is the rollout for “Bigfoot Woods” going to look like? We are excited to have it as part of the festival.

EC: The Fargo Film Festival is our world premiere. And then it will play in Minneapolis and Duluth. It will screen in Poland in April in four different cities. And we’ve submitted it to a bunch of other festivals, including some that are LGBTQ-focused.

Distribution has changed a lot in the last few years. I have been talking with a few other documentary filmmakers about coming together to see how we can collectively distribute our films. Maybe work with independent theaters to have screenings and also how to go about digital distribution. Online distribution is still a very new world.

GC: What are your hopes for the movie?

EC: What’s important to myself and to Bruce and Abel is to get the film out to kids and families going through similar experiences. The most powerful thing that Bruce told me when Abel first came to him and said, “I’m male and I want to transition,” was that his first thought was of “Boys Don’t Cry,” which is the biggest nightmare a parent could ever have. That story confronts you with the kind of danger faced by trans kids.

He wanted to make a film that was positive and hopeful and affirming for kids who are gender nonconforming and trans. Something where they’re authentically reflected. It’s a really difficult time to be a teenager right now. One of the best things that could have possibly happened was when my sister’s kid watched a rough cut with me and at the end, asked, “Can I show this to my friends?”

Tickets for “Bigfoot Woods” are now on sale at the Fargo Theatre box office. You can find more information about the 2026 Fargo Film Festival here.