How ‘Navalny’ filmmaker Daniel Roher’s post-Oscar creative depression inspired ‘Tuner’

For Daniel Roher, making things is kind of a compulsion. Perhaps it’s not surprising for someone who was able to direct two movies at the same time: A documentary about artificial intelligence, now streaming on Peacock, and the heist thriller “Tuner,” in theaters Friday.

But he is the kind of person who is constantly creating, if not movies, little sketches, doodles and paintings, often while he’s in conversation with someone else (including this reporter). That’s not to say he’s not engaged and present with whomever he’s talking to — his mind is just one where it can all happen simultaneously. If he were to describe himself in film editing terms, he’d be a montage of a human being, he said.

A post-Oscar creative paralysis

That’s why it was so alarming that not too long ago, sometime after he’d won the best documentary Oscar for “Navalny,” that tap turned off. He was 29 years old, had just won filmmaking’s top honor and was paralyzed by the question of what to do next.

“There’s a pattern of young people winning and then sort of struggling to figure out what’s next,” Roher told The Associated Press. “I was really scared about that and really anxious … about the sort of specter of this film looming over me like a giant monolith for the rest of my life: ‘Oh, he’ll never top this. He’ll never do anything better than this. Like this is it, you should just retire now.’”

But somewhere in his own creative depression, as he struggled with the possibility that he couldn’t make films anymore, an idea emerged that would become the basis for “Tuner”: What if you can no longer do the thing that makes you you? Who do you become?

“It could have been a chef who can’t smell or a painter who can’t hold a brush anymore,” Roher said. “But I was drawn to this auditory world of the piano tuner who maybe can’t play for whatever reason.”

A chance meeting with a piano tuner

While he was on what he called the “new boyfriend tour” with his future wife, meeting all of her friends around Los Angeles, he came into the orbit of a piano tuner. He peppered him with questions, shadowed him at work and had an epiphany about safecracking. He’d always loved films with a criminal element and stories about good people who have to do bad things. His new piano tuner friend said it wasn’t far-fetched: A lot of his peers dabble in locksmith work on the side.

“It was like OK, maybe this is like a, you know, a classic movie, movie conceit that I could turn into something really fun and propulsive and musical and romantic,” Roher said.

And he was off to the races. Though he had never written a narrative screenplay or directed an actor, he was motivated again. The tap was back on.

Directing Dustin Hoffman

“Tuner,” which premiered last year at the Telluride Film Festival, is the kind of movie people like to say isn’t made anymore, blending elements of crime thriller, romantic comedy and character drama into a clever, entertaining package — the spiritual descendent of a “Good Will Hunting.”

The piano tuner at the heart of the film is Niki, played by “The White Lotus” season two breakout Leo Woodall, who is apprenticing alongside Dustin Hoffman’s veteran Harry Horowitz. During a job tuning a piano in a mansion, Niki stumbles upon a robbery and, to save his own life, helps the criminals crack the safe. He doesn’t have any intention of making it a side hustle, but then Harry ends up in the hospital and suddenly there are bills to pay. He’s also just met a beguiling pianist played by Havana Rose Liu.

“It has what I want from a movie. It’s entertaining and it’s a simple story, well-told. And it’s plot-driven, but also very character-driven. And it’s fun and it’s quick and it is satisfying,” Woodall said. “I finished the script the first time and I was like, ‘oh, that was a perfectly packaged story.’”

When Roher and Woodall sat down for coffee for the first time, Roher asked his lead actor how he liked to be directed. It was a disarming moment for Woodall, something he’d never been asked outright before, but a gesture of trust and faith that would continue through the shoot. Hoffman, too, took to Roher immediately. There might have even been a Mike Nichols comparison or two thrown his way.

“Daniel, unlike most of us, myself included, wasn’t intimidated by Dustin. He has the most respect and love for him. But I loved, you know, if Dustin was going a little too far off piece improvising, he would go ‘Dustin, Dustin, let’s do the lines now,’” Woodall laughed. “And Dustin would respond perfectly, like ‘yes, sir.’” I was like these two are a good fit.”

A creative explosion

Roher already has several new films underway as well, including a project in Rome where he’s relocated temporarily with his wife and baby. And he’s happy the creative funk is a thing of the past.

“The last few years have been an extraordinary creative renaissance, let’s say, or explosion for me, doing ‘Tuner’ simultaneously with this AI documentary,” Roher said. “Having to balance both of those films at the same time was a very profound creative challenge. And I’m really glad that I’m on the other side of it because it’s kind of overwhelming. I’m very proud of both of those films and they were really good counter programming to one another.”

The professional and personal contentedness exists in stark contrast to his worries about the state of the world over the past 18 months, but, he added: “I appreciate the fact that my own little teeny weeny pixel on the giant mosaic of existence is happy and busy and creative and fulfilled and optimistic and inspired and holding the multitudes of everything all at the same time.”

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