Ron Howard‘s Eden is a true-crime thriller, and while it was ripped from the pages of history, it is packed with metaphors, philosophical suggestions, and moral underpinnings. Lead host George Edelman discussed the deeper, darker side of Eden, as well as the very clear modern-day relevance, with Howard, screenwriter Noah Pink, and star Jude Law.
George Edelman
I’m going to hit you with a Nietzsche quote, because it seems applicable to this movie. He said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” And I think with the fact that there’s so much to this that’s true, but there’s so much we also don’t know. It’s a bit of a Rashomon, in a way, and you chose to tell it a certain way.
Ron Howard
Well, I love the quote, and it does certainly apply to any movie made based on real events. Interpretations are like a journalist writing about an event; it’s going through a filter. And to deny that there’s a filter is to misunderstand the medium and what it all means. In [Eden], there was so much that was known, and then also there were these sorts of big, giant question marks, but Noah Pink and I worked very hard to include as much detail as we could so that there was this honesty around it.
Then we simply sat around, it was almost like a parlor game, ‘Well, what could have happened? And he could have- and she could have- and this-‘ and we literally chose the couple of versions and twists and turns that felt viable and also most revealing for the characters and the best ride, because this is a true crime thriller. Yes, there’s an element of mystery, and we’re going to put forward what we think could have happened, but it’s a movie. I wanted it to be fascinating and to surprise people, and I hope it does.
George Edelman
Jude, your character is a real person, but he’s a fascinating person. He goes through quite an arc. How do you feel about where we leave him in terms of what he’s abandoned, his ideologies, showing us the process of someone letting go of what they believe?
Jude Law
In many ways, you could say he starts out with incredible clarity in that he’s tested his body, pushed himself so that his philosophy, his thought process, is clear enough to somehow access an insight that he’s hoping to save the world with, which starts off sort of nobly. I hope to answer your question. I think what fascinated me was that, you know, here’s a person who wants to build a blueprint for a new society, and yet the one thing he can’t handle is other people.
Let’s not forget, he survived, of course — with Dore, his partner — he survived very well on that island. It was the inclusion of others, neighbors, different ways of living, and other perspectives that ultimately destroyed him. I think that’s what I found fascinating. Also, something that came up just as you track the arc of the script is the drama in each moment. He was hungry. You know, when you are really hungry, your Nietzsche goes out the window. All his philosophies are gone. The guy just wants a steak!
Ron Howard
I also like that the Baroness calls out Ritter at a certain point, in that she wants to be famous. She’s very superficial, but so is he. He wants his story to get out there.
George Edelman
Yeah, he was loving that attention too.
Jude Law
Her ego did infect him. Yeah.
George Edelman
Jude, you’ve worked with so many incredible directors, and Ron’s now one of them. And I’m curious what was unique about the experience of collaborating with Ron Howard for you in your career.
Jude Law
That’s a great question. You know, the greatest aspect to being an actor who gets to work is the opportunity to see this medium through the eyes of different directors. When you’re led by someone who is so passionate and yet inclusive and leading from the front in a way that is with their heart, it becomes an incredible experience. I mean, imagine my good fortune. I read the script and I knew that Ron was going to lead us. Honestly, it was the sort of familial embrace of the whole experience. We knew that the right way to do this was under a certain budget. Ron just led with passion and warmth. And I keep coming back to that word inclusion. It just felt like an incredible team effort.
George Edelman
Ron, you’ve worked on so many great projects, but you’ve been around; you’ve seen legends of this field for so long. And I’d love to know a couple of stories, like from the John Wayne era to now. Are there a few things you’ve seen and heard that are special to you?
Ron Howard
I directed Bette Davis. She was bigger than life, very demanding, and I learned a lot through that experience. John Wayne was, you know, also kind of bigger than life. And, actually, was in a huge conflict with the director, Don Siegel. I was in a situation to watch these two cinematic titans, you know, and they still made a good movie. I witnessed the waste of energy because they weren’t dealing with each other in a very open way.
At the end of the day, what I learned from starting off as a child acting with some greats through directing, whether it’s Henry Fonda or Glenn Ford or, you know, some of those amazing people, is that the people who endure and build the big careers outwork everybody else. Whether it’s John Wayne or Bette Davis, whether it’s Jude Law or Cate Blanchett, or Tom Hanks. The people who endure are the ones who have enough respect for the medium and the audience to give it their all. They’ve got talent to bring to the medium. They also demand that of others just through a kind of leadership. Sometimes they’re more verbal about it, that this process be respected, understood, and that we’re in it to win it, which means we’ve got to do good work.
I’ve tried to create an environment where elite actors have as much support as possible to flourish. I am thrilled when those circumstances present themselves, because that creative mix, that swirl, is what keeps me wanting to make film after film. It’s a new adventure every time, and it’s a creative journey.
George Edelman
Obviously, this happened, or some version of it did. I’m sure you studied the texts that exist, but then you and Ron Howard had to make certain decisions about the version you tell. How do you feel about the meaning of the version you’ve told? There’s so much biblical, religious, and philosophical stuff in here. What’s the message that you feel your choices leave audiences with?
Noah Pink
Wow. You’re going deep real fast.
George Edelman
I’m sorry, that’s just the way I am.
Noah Pink
No! It’s good. I think at the end of the day, there are two things I wanted to leave audiences with. One is that, as alluring as it is in troubled times to imagine yourself running away from society and just starting anew and living in paradise, that is a fantasy. There is no running away, because you cannot run away from yourself. So if we want to fix things, then we’ve got to stay put and we’ve got to fix things. Because what these people did, spoiler alert, doesn’t really work.
So that is one side of things, and the other side of things is a little bit more hopeful. And that is the sheer power of a family, whether it’s chosen or real. Sticking with your family in troubled times and working together to get through them. It’s not always going to be easy, but if you do that, and you’re pure, like, true to that, then you will survive. I felt like that was like those two things. I wrote this during COVID. It was like those two things I felt, you know, will really resonate with audiences, modern-day audiences today. Even though this movie took place, like, almost 100 years ago, it is, I feel like, in many ways, a modern-day story that could be happening right now.
George Edelman
Yes, super relevant, right off the bat, the way that you obviously wrote it, but the way that Ron Howard chooses to show us things in the beginning, the titles, a lot of it’s clearly pushing this, and the things you’ve explained as your meanings come through. So it worked. I definitely got all that, and I think that one of the interesting things throughout the movie that I’d like to talk more about is the idea of ‘wherever you go, there you are.’ So maybe wherever we go, we bring the ugliness of our humanity with us, destroying our Edens constantly. Did you see all of that in the original texts?
Noah Pink
Yeah, I think it was all there. I think this is an evergreen kind of story. We’re always going to new places and exploring and thinking that if we just go to this new place and start over, it’s going to be great. But we bring our s**t with us, that’s just the reality. I say it’s ‘evergreen’ because it’s a story that’s been told before, and it’s definitely there when you read these memoirs. The pettiness definitely comes through.
George Edelman
Everybody’s always pissed at their neighbor. It’s just a truism.
Noah Pink
It’s the equivalent of ‘you planted a tree over our property line,’ or ‘you didn’t move your garbage.’
George Edelman
There is a trifecta of women leading this story. Threes are always important. These three very different, distinct women played by these massive current stars in Sydney Sweeney, Vanessa Kirby, and Ana de Armas. Can you talk a little bit about those characters and how you draw them in contrast, and how the plot rotates through them?
Noah Pink
It’s interesting. That was a bit of a discovery in the writing. When choosing how to anchor this story when I wrote the first draft, I always knew it was going to be kind of the Whitmer story. I didn’t quite realize this was Margaret’s triumphant arc. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever written before, because it’s so hard to write a character who doesn’t have agency at the beginning of the story. The only person who actually had agency at the beginning of the story was the Baroness, who was like, I am going to go do this, and I am going to be the best, and it’s going to be the most exclusive, and it’s going to be the greatest. And in a weird way, I believe, you know, if not for the Baroness, she wouldn’t have sparked this. She wouldn’t have sparked the other two women to realize the agency they have.
George Edelman
She’s an agent of change. She’s a true antagonist.
Noah Pink
Yeah, so as the drafts progressed, I realized, ‘oh my gosh, this is very much a story of female empowerment in a time when that was just not a thing, and these women really finding their voices and going to literal extreme lengths to achieve their goals.’
George Edelman
Can you talk about what’s surprising about Ron Howard? He’s worked for decades. He’s made a ton of great movies. This is a really interesting person to collaborate with, I’m sure, and I’d love to hear you talk about that.
Noah Pink
Yeah. It’s so fun. Just spending a day scouting with him is just so fun. Because he has an entire life, literally, of stories with people, and he wanted to be a director quite young. So he just solicited advice from the best directors in the world, because he was a star when he was 19 years old. This is one quote that I remember him telling me when we were working on this, when he was giving me notes in the script. He’s like, ‘Mike Nichols gave me great advice. He told me, ‘You need five great scenes if you’d like for a movie to work; there need to be five really original, memorable scenes. If you have that, you got a movie.’ I was like, ‘Okay, I think we’re almost there.’ When you go back and look at the movies you really love, he was kind of right.
George Edelman
Are there any other stories that came out of working with him that you would share, that he shared over the decades of wisdom?
Noah Pink
He told me about his experience working on American Graffiti. Working with George Lucas and studying how he directed, and how he had everything kind of planned. One other piece of advice he gave me, which I thought was interesting, through his career of working as a director, he’s like, ‘Look, every actor approaches the material differently. Some like to rehearse. Some, don’t. Some like to talk for hours about the role. Some literally don’t want to talk at all. Your job as a director is to meet those actors where they are and do everything so that everyone feels extremely comfortable on set, but at the end of the day, you have your idea of how the scene should go, and they have theirs. Let them do their idea, because whatever they’re thinking, it’s gonna turn out better. Because they care, and you hired them because they’re good.’
Eden is in theaters on August 22.
Eden
- Release Date
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August 22, 2025
- Runtime
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120 minutes
- Writers
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Noah Pink
- Producers
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Brian Grazer, Karen Lunder, Patrick Newall, Stuart Ford
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
