SCAD film leader explains how he landed role in ‘One Battle After Another’
In any field of study, it’s one thing to learn by the book and it’s another to learn by doing.
D.W. Moffett, chair of the Savannah College of Art and Design’s film department, knows this to be true. Moffett got his start in the film industry as an actor and still takes roles when his schedule permits. That means he gets to experience the year-to-year changes in the industry firsthand and report back to his students.
This year marks the release of the highest budgeted, and perhaps buzziest, film in Moffett’s career: Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.”
The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former member of an activist political organization and Sean Penn as a military officer chasing after DiCaprio’s daughter. Moffett plays a character named Bill Desmond, who is a member of a private white supremacist organization called the Christmas Adventurers Club. The organization is vetting Penn’s character as a potential member.
His time working on the film, from the casting process to witnessing its distribution, was a treasure trove of new experiences he brought back to the classroom.
“It’s wonderfully demythologizing for my students to see a movie that is so hailed and held in high regard, and then to walk down the hall and there’s me, I’m in the movie,” Moffett said. “It helps cement their conviction that ‘Oh my God, I can do this. It’s just people. It’s just human beings making art. It’s not like some magical kingdom where only Leonardo DiCaprio creatures make great movies.’”
Set in California, “One Battle After Another” did not film in Georgia. Instead, it set up shop all across California and in El Paso, Texas.
The film was a big swing for Warner Bros. Discovery, commanding a production budget of about $130 million, far above any of Anderson’s other films. It’s three hours, R-rated and tackles politically divisive subjects. As of Oct. 23, the film has grossed $167.9 million worldwide, according to numbers from Box Office Mojo, but it must make at least $300 million to break even.
Still, “One Battle After Another” has been reviewed favorably and is a front-runner in a number of early Oscar predictions. WBD has had plenty of other releases that went gangbusters this year, including “A Minecraft Movie,” which grossed $957 million on a $150 million budget, as well as the Atlanta-shot “Superman,” which grossed more than $600 million — which can offset losses on other films.
Being in “One Battle After Another” allowed Moffett to observe a very different production model, he said. Anderson shot the film on VistaVision, a widescreen film format that runs film stock through a camera horizontally, instead of vertically, which results in much clearer and higher quality images.
After mostly fading into obsolescence in the 1960s, it’s enjoying a resurgence after the release of “The Brutalist” in 2024. The camera is loud and cumbersome, the foil to shooting a film digitally. Think: lawn mower or leaf blower.
This was Moffett’s first time working with Anderson. He has a key scene toward the second act, when the Christmas Adventurers are discussing evidence brought to light about Penn’s past. The set, Moffett said, looked like a diorama from an issue of Outdoor Life from 1964.
Moffett initially auditioned for the character played by Tony Goldwyn, another Christmas Adventurers Club member, named Virgil Throckmorton.
After a lengthy Zoom audition with the casting director, Moffett didn’t immediately hear back. Three or four weeks later, he received a text from her that said Anderson loved him, Moffett said. This was a good sign, but he didn’t know what it meant. She then called and said Anderson was giving the Virgil role to Goldwyn, but he loved Moffett so much he was writing him into the film.
“I was like, ‘What?’ Doesn’t he have bigger fish to fry than write D.W. Moffett a scene in his movie?” Moffett said.
The casting director then said Anderson would call him the following day. That day, however, was SCAD’s annual open house for prospective students, and Moffett fretted Anderson would call him as he was delivering a spiel to hundreds of hopeful young artists and their nervous parents.
“I was like a girl waiting for her prom date to call her,” Moffett said.
But caught up in the inevitable hullabaloo of preproduction, Anderson did not call. And thus began another period of waiting. At least a month passed, and Moffett began to convince himself the role was cut.
Moffett splits his time between Savannah and Los Angeles, and when spring break rolled around he went back to the West Coast. As he was pulling into the Ralph’s grocery store in Malibu, Moffett saw a familiar face pull in front of him in a Rivian truck: Sean Penn, with whom he worked on a short-lived television show called “The First” in 2018.
“He gets out of the truck and he goes, ‘Oh my god, I was just talking to Paul about you,’” Moffett said. “And I look over at my wife and say, ‘Well, I guess I am in the movie.”
More waiting. April, May and the early summer passes. In July, while on a family trip to New Mexico, he gets a call from his agent, who tells him he has a wardrobe fitting and a shoot date scheduled in California.
This back-and-forth was a lesson in itself.
“I tell my students, it just goes to show, you have to show up, do your best and come what may. At many points in that journey, I could have gotten all bitter and ticked off that he didn’t call me,” Moffett said. “It’s the kind of stuff we talk to our students all the time about: the absolute necessity of staying positive and staying engaged when you get the opportunity, and then, you know, see what happens.”
About the Author
Savannah Sicurella is an entertainment business reporter with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
