Daniel Goldhaber on Making the Move from 'Cam' to 'How to Blow Up a Pipeline'

 If you’re looking for an excellent movie to watch right this very second, might I recommend the 2018 horror movie, Cam? It features a phenomenal performance from Madeline Brewer as Alice, a cam girl on the rise who’s itching to become top-ranked. One morning she wakes up to discover someone else using her account — an exact replica of herself.


After the release of Cam I was mighty eager to claim director Daniel Goldhaber for the horror genre, but at the Toronto International Film Festival this year he threw a curveball. I’d love to see more horror from Goldhaber one day, but it’s even more exciting to see him deliver a wildly different sophomore film that shows off a wide-ranging skillset suggesting he’s capable of tapping into any genre, presenting complex narratives, and tackling productions of any scale and scope. Goldhaber’s second film, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, couldn’t be more different from Cam, and it’s just as impressive.


Inspired by Andreas Malm’s book of the same name, Goldhaber’s film follows a group of young climate-change activists who decide that if the law won’t punish those guilty of contributing to the climate crisis, they will, so they set off to blow up a West Texas oil pipeline.


With How to Blow Up a Pipeline celebrating its world premiere at TIFF 2022, where it found the perfect home over at Neon, Goldhaber and cast members Ariela Barer, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck, Jayme Lawson, Marcus Scribner, and Olive Jane Lorraine all swung by the Collider Supper Suite and Media Studio at Marbl to discuss their experience telling this story.


Goldhaber isn’t kidding about beefing up his collaborative team because How to Blow Up a Pipeline features an especially large roster of main characters. One of the film's greatest feats? It manages to offer up a significant amount of history and purpose for every single one of them, bolstering the shared importance of this risk they’re taking together.


In an effort to tease all of How to Blow Up a Pipeline’s main players, I asked the cast for their characters' greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses when trying to complete this mission. Scribner began:


Gage plays Logan, one of the bigger wild cards of the bunch. He noted, “I think Logan's biggest strength is his fearlessness, and it's also his weakness because he's an impulsive, sometimes thoughtless guy.” That impulsiveness and Logan’s relationship with another member of the group, Rowan played by Kristine Froseth, is bound to keep you especially on edge as they get further and further into the mission.


In addition to serving as an executive producer on the film, Goodluck steps in Michael, the group’s bomb-making specialist. When the strength/weakness question came his way, he absolutely nailed his answer; “I would say Michael's greatest strength is probably that he could do this by himself … but I feel like that’s his greatest weakness as well because it just would have blown up in his face, probably.”


Barer wears multiple hats on the production as well. Not only is she a producer on How to Blow Up a Pipeline, but she also co-wrote the screenplay with Goldhaber and Sjol, and she stars as Xochitl, the individual responsible for getting this operation off the ground:


Looking for more on How to Build a Pipeline? You can check out our full conversation in the video at the top of this article!


Special thanks to our TIFF 2022 partners A-list Communications, Belvedere Vodka, Marbl Toronto, COVERGIRL Canada, Tres Amici Wines, Toronto Star, and Blue Moon Belgian White beer.

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