Interview with Vera Farmiga - 18th October, 2009

Promoting: Up in the Air
Venue: The Mayfair Hotel
Interview type: Press conference


Question (Q): It's a joyful script to listen to. It must have been a pleasure for you to read. How did you assess your character when you first read the script? Alex is a similarly free-spirited character, but of course with hidden depths that we discover later.

Vera Farmiga (VF): Yeah. I didn't have the luxury of reading the script without knowing what happens in the end, so I had preconceived ideas. And it was challenging to play a woman who was very much like a man. And oftentimes, when a woman behaves this way, it can be interpreted as – it was difficult for me to – it was a fine line, I found to tread, to have the softness and yet to sort of take control of her sexuality and unapologetically make demands that usually you see men making in scripts. And I really liked the male perspective on heartbreak that I hadn't read before.

Q: Obviously, unemployment features quite heavily in the film. Do you have any interesting experiences of being fired?

VF: I worked as an air-conditioning technician for Fedders & Emerson Fine Cool Air Conditioning, as a customer service representative, who repaired air conditioners over the phone, as much as I was able to tell them whether the VTU was too large a unit for the space they were trying to cool or whatever. And I guess I was too chatty on the phone. I didn't get fired, but they did want to demote me, take me off the phones and give me more of a clerical position, but I just shortened the chat.

Q: There were lots of real-life locations used in the film. Did that present any particular challenges?

VF: What was most amusing for me was to see the fanaticism that George attracts. I mean, that was overwhelming and so odd. For me, no-one ever knows who I am, they always think I'm a producer on the film, but watching George having to deal with that, and him having just to simply open a door and close it and then there's a standing ovation that goes for blocks! And he's so gallant and gracious and takes his bow. But I didn't think that it impeded any of the work.

Q: In the nude scene, was that really you? And if it was, how comfortable were you with it?

VF: I had shot this when I had about six pounds more trunk in my badunk-adunk. I was pregnant and I did do the scene. But I think my bottom had become too large (laughs). I didn't think so – I think that's a question for Mister Reitman, because I did attempt to do the nudity. I got to certainly choose my body double and I thought Jason did a good job of selecting someone that was pretty accurate – my body double, Trish has been in many films. Perhaps on the DVD extras...

END

Interview with Anna Kendrick - 18th October, 2009

Promoting: Up in the Air
Venue: The Mayfair Hotel, London Film Festival
Interview type: One-on-one


Q: It's a joyful script to listen to. It must have been a pleasure for you to read. How did you assess your character when you first read the script? Your character is a bit more explained from the word go, but we do discover a bit more about her and about her background. What appealed to you about it?

Anna Kendrick (AK): First it's that sort of rare thing, this girl who's so intelligent and complicated and her character does not revolve around a romantic storyline. And that was enough to make it fascinating in itself because it just doesn't happen, you don't read scripts like that. And I guess I'm normally so timid in real life that I get really excited by characters who get to kind of tell people off and telling off George Clooney was pretty awesome.

Q: There's a wonderful scene where you go to pieces in the airport after receiving a text message from your boyfriend. How much of that was in the script and how much of it was you on the day?

AK: You mean in terms of the crying? I don't really remember what was in the script exactly, other than that she just starts crying. And I knew that, like so many of the scenes that in some ways are really heartbreaking for me and for Natalie (Anna's character) and there's almost this desire to play it really heartbreaking and really unfunny, I think. I knew it was supposed to be funny but that it couldn't really be funny for me. And it was a long day of sort of trying different noises and it was kind of brutal, because I was so upset all day. And Jason would demonstrate occasionally, because he knew I was running out of juice, various squeaks and moans and wails and stuff and trying to find the right thing that was still not funny to me, but hopefully funny to other people.

Q: There were lots of different real-life locations in this film, including several different airports. When you had the meltdown, was that in an actual airport lounge?

AK: Well, actually, it was in a hotel lobby. It was a little uncomfortable. I guess because it was a hotel, we could sort of shut down the lobby, so there weren't that many looky-lous, but it was still just the space and the extras and even though they're part of the film, you don't really know them and it's still sort of embarrassing, but I think on that particular day it was less about other people and was just more about the space and feeling very – I wanted something to grab onto, it was a very uncomfortable day.

Q: Your character has her views of love and life deeply challenged in this film. Did it affect your own views on those in any way? Was it hard to resist them when someone as seductive as George Clooney is trying to lure you to the lone wolf side?

AK: I think obviously Natalie has really considered ideas about what she wants and what she expects and I don't have many of those same ideas, so I know that there are things that I want and expect from life that I won't get and refuse to accept just yet. But her views on love are not my views on love.

Q: You've gone from playing quite a small role in Twilight, which was obviously a huge success, to playing a lead role in this film, which will obviously be a big success too and against George Clooney, which is amazing. How did you feel when you got this role?

AK: I was sort of shocked beyond belief, because I thought Jason hated me. My audition was very strange and I think Jason was not trying to psych me out by not showing any kind of enthusiasm, but I thought he hated me and then when I got the job I was so shocked and I thought, 'Oh, he's just like that – he's just going to be a tyrant on set', but he's very, very nice. But yeah, I was very surprised and thrilled beyond words, I mean, the script is so beautiful. And I sort of didn't really think that George was doing it – for whatever reason, I just assumed that it was too good to be true, for a script to be this good and to be working with George Clooney. I just thought it was one of those things that was rumoured and then Jason told me the Italy story and I got really excited. And that was one of those moments where I was sitting at lunch with him trying to act like, 'Oh, right, of course I'm going to be in a movie with George Clooney, because I do that sort of thing'.

END

Interview with Jason Reitman - 18th October, 2009

Promoting: Up in the Air
Venue: The Mayfair Hotel, London
Interview type: Press conference


Question (Q): The film's based on a book, isn't it? If I read the book, would I recognise it in the film?

Jason Reitman (JR): Yes and no. The book is about a man who fires people for a living, this man Ryan, who obsessively collects Air Miles, but if I had directed the book exactly as it was, these two lovely ladies next to me (co-stars Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick) would not be here, because their characters are not in the book.

Q: That sounds like a considerable difference. So the book was source material but you were then able to fly with it, as it were, to take it beyond whatever's on the page?

JR: The way I use source material is, I kind of see it as a toolbox. Usually there's a story that I want to tell and I'm looking for the right words and I'll read a book, I'll read an article and suddenly it'll just be the language that I've been looking for to say something that I've needed to say or ask something that I've been meaning to ask and at that point it just becomes a toolbox of ideas that I can either follow literally or sometimes I take someone's dialogue and give it to someone else or, in this case, I really took the main character who – I liked his occupation, I liked his life philosophy and from there I built the plot around him to ask the questions that I wanted to ask.

Q: I read that you wrote the role of Ryan with George Clooney in mind. Is that correct?

JR: Yeah, I wrote the role with him in mind and with Vera and Anna in mind too. It's easier for me to write when I know who I'm writing for – that's often how I identify the voice of the character. I had met Vera before and seen many of her films and I knew the things that she was able to do that no other actress is capable of doing and it was because she's able to walk that very fine line of being aggressive and feminine at the same time that I was able to write Alex the way I did. It was because I saw Anna in Rocket Science and knew the kind of sparkling brilliance of her mind and how fast she is that I was able to write Natalie the way I did. And look, if you're going to make a movie about a guy who fires people for a living and you still want to like him, that actor had better be damn charming and I don't think there's a more charming actor alive than George Clooney. I was just very lucky he said yes.

Q: What would have happened if you'd written it with him in mind and he'd said no? Do you then go to a Clooney clone? A George Cloney?

JR: I don't think there is such a thing? I'd have probably just ended my career right there and then. The story is actually kind of funny – I'd been writing it for six years and I told his agent, 'Look, I'm about a week away or a month away from finishing it, but in the middle of that I'm going to Italy on vacation with my wife' and he said, 'Well, if you're going to be in Italy, you should just go see him!' And I said, 'That sounds like an awful idea. I don't want to go see him if he hates my screenplay' and he's like, 'No, no, no, just go, he'll love to see you'. So I said, 'Well, look, I'll send him the screenplay and if he enjoys it, then certainly, I'll drop by'. So I get to Italy and I call his agent up and I say, 'Did he like it?' and he said, 'Yeah! Go see him!' 'But did he like the screenplay?' 'Just go, look, here's the address'. So I drive there, I get to his address in Como and one of the first things he says to me is, 'So, what are you working on these days?' I said, 'There's a screenplay, it's called Up in the Air' and he said, 'Oh, I have to find that – I gotta read that' and for two days, my wife and I stayed in his home and I was just trying to prove that I was a man to George Clooney. I played basketball with him, I hadn't done that since eighth grade, I never drink, I tried drinking with George Clooney. He opened four bottles of wine between the three of us, so for an evening I – I don't know how I didn't die of alcohol poisoning and finally, about the end of the second day, he disappeared for a while and, I don't know, he walked into the room and he said, 'I just read it, it's great, I'm in'. And those are words that I feel changed my life and probably one of the greatest moments I'll ever remember from my career.

Q: One of the fun things about the film is that it balances against the darkness of everyone getting fired and then the optimism of these people finding new jobs and kind of the cherry on top of that is the song that came in at the end of the credits. Was that dumb luck? Was that something you were looking for? How did that come about?

JR: That was dumb luck. After Juno, I've gotten kind of used to teenagers sending me songs with the idea that it'll appear in one of my films. But I was speaking at a college in St Louis and a man in his mid-fifties came to me with the song. That was unusual. And he handed me a cassette tape. So, first off, I had to find a place to actually listen to this, but we found a car with a cassette deck and I really was ready for something ridiculous and instead on came this voice, which you know is in the credits now, and he introduced himself, explained how he had lost his job after being there for a decade, decade and a half and he was now in the middle of his life, trying to figure out the purpose of his life and he started singing this song that is not the greatest song ever written, but it's an authentic song. And I guess my feeling was that we're in the middle of one of the worst recessions on record in America and about a million people had lost their jobs in the last year, but we really have no experience of who these people are – they're just often numbers on newspapers' mastheads, percentages – and here was a guy who was able to sing, very authentically, about how he felt about it and I felt what better tribute than to end the movie with it. And I knew, halfway through listening to it that it was going to be in the credits.

Q: One of the pleasures / sadnesses of the movie are the interviews that are conducted by Anna's character and Clooney's character, with apparently real people. How was that done? Obviously J.K. Simmons is an actor, but were some of the others genuine people who had lost their jobs?

JR: Well, when I started writing the screenplay seven years ago, the economy in America was very different – we were basically at the tail end of an economic boom and I decided to write a corporate satire about a man who fired people for a living and I wrote comedic scenes in which people lost their jobs. And by the time it came to shoot this film, it just wasn't funny anymore and I couldn't go about shooting these scenes as written. And we were scouting in St Louis and Detroit and the idea just came to me, that we should try and use real people, so we put an ad out, in the newspaper, in the Help Wanted section, saying we're making a documentary about job loss and we're looking for people who would go on camera and talk about their experience. We had an overwhelming amount of response and we brought in a hundred people and twenty-five are in the finished film. So, outside of the people you recognise, like J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis and Pamela Jones, everyone else who loses their jobs in this movie is a real person who came in and sat down at a table with an interviewer and for about ten minutes answered questions about what it's like to lose your job in an economy where really, there's nothing available and you have to consider some very dire decisions. And then after that we fired them, so 'We'd like to now fire you on camera and we'd like you to either respond the way you did the day you lost your job or, if you prefer, you can say what you wish you had said'. And this would turn into improv scenes in which they would pelt our interviewer with all sorts of questions that he did not know the answer to, about their severance, about why they lost their job instead of Jeff and, you know, it just went on and some people were really angry, some people got emotional and cried, some people were very funny. And I'm so grateful for their participation in the film, because I could have never written the type of things that they said.

Q: You've got a history of writing strong female characters, like with Juno and then this film as well. Do you think there's a shortage of those in Hollywood right now?

JR: Yeah, I think that's why I write them. I like to write original films and I think many of the men's stories have been told and so many of the women's stories haven't and I've fallen in love with many really smart women over the course of my life – the most recent and presumably the last one being my wife – and I enjoy it and I enjoy spending time with my wife talking about these scenes. The best thing I've ever written, I only wrote half of and it's the scene in this movie where Vera and Anna talk about what they look for in a man at each of their ages and the only way I could write that is I asked my wife to have a conversation with herself at 18 about what she looked for in a man and so everything that they say is true to her, which breaks her heart every time she watches it, but I basically laughed at her for five minutes. But no, I enjoy writing for women and I enjoy working with great actresses and I've just been very fortunate, I've made three movies now and throughout all of them, from Maria Bello on Thank You For Smoking and with Ellen and Jennifer on Juno and then not only Anna and Vera on this one but also Amy Morton and Melanie Lynskey, I've just been surrounded by great actresses that I hope I can work with more and more.

Q: You mentioned that you started this script seven years ago and obviously you've had a couple of films come out in between that time – Thank You For Smoking and Juno. Does that mean you put this on the back-burner for a while, while you did Thank You For Smoking? How does the time-line work?

JR: The time-line is that no-one would make Thank You For Smoking and so I started looking for something else to write and direct and I found this book, I fell in love with it and I started writing it and then out of nowhere, a millionaire – one of the creators of PayPal, who had sold PayPal to eBay for one and a half billion dollars with his partners – decided he wanted to make movies, he read my script, he got it from a friend, he called my agent and said, 'Hey, I'd love to make this movie' and he wrote a cheque for six and a half million dollars and made Thank You For Smoking, so all of a sudden, I wasn't writing Up in the Air anymore. I made Thank You For Smoking, went back to writing Up in the Air and then Juno came into my life and was just this irresistible screenplay that I knew if I didn't direct, I would regret for the rest of my life. The interesting thing was that I basically finished the screenplay after Juno and about five years in, I had basically got to the end of the script having never gone back and reread what I'd been writing and as I read from start to finish, I watched myself grow up. You know, over the course of the six years that I wrote the script, I became a professional director, I bought a home, I got married, I became a father and I watched myself in the first act be kind of a cynical guy in his 20s who was really just a satirist and then over the six years I became, I don't know, a bit more sophisticated as a writer and I also realised at least what was important in my own life and that really changed Ryan's journey as I continued to write.

Q: There are lots of real-life locations in the film, including several different airports. Did that present any particular challenges?

JR: Oh, it's a total pain in the ass. Shooting in airports is very difficult and we shot in four international airports. There was actually a fair amount of access and because American Airlines was our partner in this film, basically our trade was that they were our airline and they gave us access to all their check-in gates as well as their departure gates, but still, all the actors had to go through security every day, on the way to the set. And I think they would, on purpose, put George through as much security as humanly possible. I'm surprised he didn't get pat down every time he went through. And you know, we can't bring our own food in there, we have to bring in our own electricity, we have to bring in our own wire for our generators through an airport – it was really tricky.

Q: Anna Kendrick says that she thought you hated her after her audition. Why did she think that?

JR: Well, one, I'm a mean guy, but two... I wrote the role for Anna and Anna auditioned against thirty of the best actresses of her generation. I needed to know that she could actually do it – I basically saw her in one movie. I thought, 'Oh, she's great, but I need to see her actually read the lines.' And when she came in, I didn't want her to get psyched out by saying, 'Hey, I wrote this role for you' because then she'd probably freak out and not be comfortable, because then it would be kind of hers to lose, but since I'm a horrible actor myself, in trying not to show that I was already a huge fan of hers, I probably wasn't as nice as I could have been. It's kind of like when you meet a pretty girl but you don't want to show her that you think she's pretty, so you're trying to act as straight as possible and then you're not acting like yourself and then pretty soon you're acting like a jerk.

Q: I just wanted to tell you how much everyone enjoyed the film. When Anna gets dumped by text and Clooney says the line “I guess it's kind of like firing someone over the internet”, the whole cinema was in stitches.

JR: That brings up something worth mentioning and that is that this is the first film that my father (Ivan Reitman) and I have actually worked on together. I'd avoided doing that with the first two, because I wanted to make a name for myself and once I'd made a couple of films there was nothing that would make me more proud. Now, my father wrote one line in this movie and that line is “Oh, it's kind of like firing people online”. It's a MONSTER line, it gets applause every time the movie plays. If the reaction to that is a ten, the next biggest reaction to a line is a four. So, I don't know, I'm a little jealous, but it's a really proud moment for me. It's as if he's a baseball player, he can just, like show up and go, 'Oh, you want me to hit one? Sure, I'll hit one' and then he knocks it out of the park.

Q: One of the pleasures for film fans is when well known actors turn up in tiny roles. You mentioned JK Simmons, who has a very unselfish cameo and also you had Sam Elliott in the film. How much explanation do they need?

JR: Well, once I gave them a great role, like the ones I gave to Vera and Anna, I presume that on the next film they'll come in free and do three or four lines of dialogue each. No, I invited all of them to come in and do those roles and they've all been very gracious and have done them. I try and keep strong relationships with them so that when I ask they come back and do these roles. When I started my career, my biggest goal was I want to be a director that actors want to work with. Actors make movies, not only fiscally but they make them work and I just knew that the only way I'd ever be a successful director in the way that I want to be a film-maker would be if good actors actually wanted to work with me. And I'm slowly working my way towards that and I look at people like Sam Elliott, who would show up for a day and do that role and that makes me more proud than anything.

Q: Could you talk about your choice of music in your films? Is that drawn out of your personal taste? What was the case with Up in the Air?

JR: I start up an iTunes library while I'm writing the screenplay and I'm very specific about music and there are some very personal things for me. I originally thought this movie was all going to be done to Hank Williams music and then I got into the edit and realised I was wrong and I started moving into kind of folk music, but yeah, it's very personal for me.

END

Interview with Kevin Spacey - 15th October, 2009

Promoting: The Men Who Stare At Goats
Venue: Vue West End, London Film Festival
Interview type: Press conference


Q: Did you approach the characters as if you were recreating a real-life person, or did you start from scratch?

Kevin Spacey (KS): To me it was all in the script. I mean, there are times when you're playing someone who really lived and there is a responsibility about trying to make that as accurate as you can and even if it's not an impression, to embody that person, particularly if an audience happens to know who they were. But in this case, nobody knows who any of these characters were, so you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want. And also, my character was the most fictionalised of all the characters in the film, unlike the other characters.

Q: Have you ever had any paranormal experiences?

KS: I think working with George Clooney is about as paranormal as it gets.

Q: Did you go home and practise some of the psychic techniques that you learnt, or were you actively encouraged to do this by the director?

KS: I can admit I ran into a lot of walls in Puerto Rico. I never got through any of them.

Q: You've been away from the screen for a while, focusing on the stage. I wondered if you were waiting for the right script before you take a lead role again or are you just taking a break?

KS: I don't know – I did three movies last year, I did two movies the year before, I did two movies the year before that. I don't know what this break is you're talking about (laughter).

Q: Well, obviously you had the voiceover in Moon and the supporting role in Men Who Stare At Goats, but I meant an actual lead.

KS: Oh, an *actual lead*. No, I don't do those anymore. (laughter) No, I just finished two films in a row in which I'm the *actual* lead. I did a film called Casino Jack, about Jack Abramoff, who was a Washington lobbyist and a comedy I just did called Father of Invention. But I suppose I've been focused on building the theatre company over the last six seasons and things are going very well there so I had an opportunity to go out and do a couple of movies that I really enjoyed – I enjoyed the scripts and enjoyed the experiences of doing them. But my priority for the next six years will continue to be the Old Vic and I'll make films when they both suit my schedule and also to suit what interests me.

Q: There's a documentary that's just come out, called Starsuckers, that looks at the way that newspapers run made-up or exaggerated stories about celebrities. Do you think the media's obsession with celebrity is out of control?

KS: I don't get it. I don't understand the notion of people who might call themselves journalists, or who are in the profession of that, who would just make up stuff. I don't understand it as a function as a human being, I don't understand why that's of interest to somebody, to write something that's absolutely false in the hopes that 1800 outlets will print it. Obviously we live in a time – and maybe we always have, I don't know – where if you even bother to say, 'Oh, that story has no whit of truth to it', then they don't write that that story is false, they write that you have denied that that story was true, which is not the same thing as saying 'What we wrote was absolutely wrong'. So there's some people who choose to fight these kinds of things in the courts and there's some who choose to just go, 'You know what? It's yesterday's news, it's fish wrapping and I'm not going to worry about it'.

END

Interview with George Clooney - 15th October, 2009

Promoting: The Men Who Stare At Goats
Venue: Vue West End, London Film Festival
Interview type: Press conference


Q: Were there long discussions about the tone of the movie?

George Clooney (GC): The book, and there was a documentary done as well which was also very funny, it had such a unique tone, and I thought Peter just nailed the script. This is a script that’s been around town for a while, and all of us have been aware of it for a bit, it was named as one of the best un-made screenplays, so we were all anxious to get our hands on it, and see if there was a way we could do it, and [director Grant Heslov] had the right ideas.

Q: What was it like working with Ewan McGregor?

GC: After the restraining order, it was really hard to actually work with him. (laughter) It’s sort of shocking how absolutely fun and normal he is. We talk about the motor-cycle trips he takes around the world and down through Africa. He fits into this group of actors that are really fun to work with, they’re all professional, they do all their work before they show up, and so by the time you’re on the set, there isn’t a whole lot of misery. There’s the work between “Action” and “Cut” and then the rest of the time, you remember the rubber band fights, it’s fun. Actual food fights. I’m a big fun of his.

Q: Did you approach the characters as if you were recreating a real-life person, or did you start from scratch?

GC: It was whatever the script called for. We’ve done films before, like Good Night and Good Luck, where we had a great responsibility for accuracy, but this is one where we thought there’s something funny to be had, and we could just do it.

Q: Why has it been so hard to make films about the Iraq war, and are we now in a stage where we can make war films that will work?

GC: Any topical subject, if it’s Hollywood, will be a couple of years later, because you’ve got to write it, produce it and distribute it, so automatically you’re never going to be right on the cutting edge of stories. I think that we’ve been a little too close to the situation, and at times it’s such a polarising moment that it’s hard to make films that directly deal with that subject matter, since we’re in the middle of it still. We didn’t think of this as an Iraq war film, it’s a very different story completely. I’ve done an Iraq war film with Three Kings, which holds up and seems to be still relevant. I think this one is just a glancing blow at Iraq, it happens to take place there.

Q: You can’t seem to stop working with Grant [Heslov], writing and producing. Directing you in this, what was that relationship like on set, and who’s the boss?

GC: Grant’s the director, he was the boss. That’s the fun of it, directors are the dictatorship. I had nothing but faith in him, he’s incredibly talented and smart, so I’m lucky to be his friend for almost 30 years.

Do you believe in the paranormal?

GC: I’m not a big believer in much of that. Everybody goes through déjà vu and things like that, but I’m not a big believer in many of those things, I find them to be mostly coincidence.

Q: On a similar note, did you go home and practise some of the psychic techniques that you learnt, or were you actively encouraged to do this by the director?

GC: We kept trying. Busted a few clouds. It’s funny, there’s things that are made up in this screenplay, but the wackiest things are actually the real ones. When you read the book and you read about them literally trying to run through walls, they really did that - they believed they could.

Q: The script had been around for a while. Was there a eureka moment which caused you to take the script on as producer?

GC: These screenplays after they’ve been around for a while - even when they’re really good screenplays, things get attached to them and they get harder and harder to get made. There’ll suddenly be 30 producers and other people brought on, and it gets this baggage to it, that it really requires everybody being willing to come in. (So we were lucky to get) Kevin and Jeff and Ewan all being willing to come in and play ball and have fun on a film that isn’t necessarily a slam-dunk. It’s not Transformers.

Q: How was it working with the goats?

GC: Yesterday I was a fox (at the Fantastic Mr Fox press conference), now I’m working with goats. I tell you, this goat was a particularly nice goat. We spent a lot of time together. He wanted to go over the dying around me, so we worked on that for a while. The funny thing is, the goat was a great actor. He’d work it and really stare at the camera. If we could get Ewan to do that, it would help.

Q: Do you think the media’s obsession with celebrity is out of control?

GC: I’m the son of a news-man, I grew up around news. I can understand the issue which is, as papers are losing subscribers and they’re getting less and less outlets - it’s a tricky thing. You’re going to have to sell papers. The problem is, there’s so little reporting anymore. Someone will write a story and it’ll be in 1800 outlets from one person’s story. You’ll have no recourse, it’ll be false and you go, “It’s not true,” and they’ll say, “We’re not saying that, a London tabloid has said it,” and they’re re-printing and re-printing things that aren’t necessarily true. I understand why it happens, but it’s certainly an issue.

END

Interview with Rumer Willis - 25th August, 2009

Promoting: Sorority Row
Venue: The Sanctum Soho Hotel, London
Interview type: Press conference


Question (Q): What attracted you to Sorority Row?

Rumer Willis (RW): When I read it I was really intrigued by how unique it was. All the death scenes, the way these girls were talking to each other… It was a female-driven cast, which I thought was great because most of the time in these horror movies all you see is a couple making love in the corner, then you see the killer outside the window, the girl ends up dying two minutes later. I was excited by the female-empowerment aspect to it.

Q: Had you seen the 1983 original film?

RW: They didn’t want us to watch it.

Q: You spend most of the film screaming and crying with snot hanging out your nose. Do you worry about not looking pretty on screen?

RW: God no, I would never want the responsibility of being the prettiest girl in the room. That would be too much. But after I did House Bunny I don’t think I could look any worse. I mean, I was in a metal back brace, so after that the snot and the tears were kind of easy.

Q: Have you encountered any total bitches like the ones in the movie?

RW: Definitely. All through elementary school, high school, middle school – they’re everywhere. How did I cope? You just don’t surround yourself with people like that, although it’s fun to play them in movies.

Q: You’ve had vocal training. Did that help when it came to all the screaming?

RW: I’m sure it did. I don’t know where the screams come from. I had no idea I could scream that loud. The sound guys by the end of the movie were not so happy with me. You definitely lose your voice afterwards but I like screaming, it’s fun. But I was a little jealous Briana got to do all these stunts while I was hiding in the closet the whole time.

Q: Did you research the great horror movies for your scream?

RW: I watched Scream and those other ones before that. Neve Campbell has some great ones in the Scream movies. You take things like that and keep changing it up.

Q: Have you played any pranks at parties?

RW: No, although I hear if you put saran wrap on a toilet it’s pretty funny. I always forget on April Fool’s Day to do stuff like that.

Q: How did you celebrate your 21st?

RW: I got to hang out with Briana, which was awesome. We went to Las Vegas, hung out, had a great time, Elvis sang to me… It was great.

Q: There was a lot of jamming on set, wasn’t there?

RW: We’d get back to the hotel at around 5 o’clock in the morning when we were done shooting. There was a piano on the second floor and we rocked out, which was fun. Maybe we’ll try karaoke while we’re here in London.

Q: What are your favourite horror movies?

RW: It’s so hard to pick one because there are so many different horror genres. I’d like to do something where I’m the bad guy, a good psychological horror film.

Q: Is having a famous surname a help or a hindrance?

RW: I don’t think you can ever look at anything you’ve come into this world with as either good or bad – it’s just what you get and you can’t do anything about it. Everyone has opportunities and different doors that are open to them in different ways to whatever they want to do. The thing in the end is if you’re talented you’ll get work and if you’re not then you won’t. It doesn’t really matter who you know in the end. You could go and get an audition but if you go in there and you suck they’re not going to give you the job.

Q: Are you parents supportive of your career choice?

RW: They’ve always been entirely supportive and extremely great in that way. I couldn’t ask for anything better.

Q: Did you ever consider any other careers?

RW: For a while when I was a kid I kind of wanted to be a doctor, but I don’t know why. It sounds like so much work. But I figure one day I could play a doctor in something and get that out of the way.

Q: Would you come back for a sequel?

RW: Providing my character makes it to the end of the movie, I would love to be in the sequel if that happens to work out for me. To get to try other things, other genres, would be fantastic but you can’t be too picky.

Q: What do you most enjoy about acting?

RW: Being able to connect with people. [Laughs] I hope people aren’t going through similar events to those in Sorority Row, but if you can connect with someone and they don’t feel alone because they saw something you were in. Or you can play a part that changes someone’s entire idea about something. And it’s like getting to play dress-up all the time and you get to do all these different things – especially a film in which, say, you have to learn a new skill for. I’m not a great dancer but if I got to do a film where had to learn something completely new, I’d love to do that.

Q: How was it filming in Pittsburgh?

RW: We had a great time there and found some great restaurants. I’d definitely go back.

Q: Was Ellie the character you most wanted to play?

RW: I actually went in for Jessica and Leah Pipes, who ended up playing Jessica, went in for Ellie. I’d love to play a character like Jessica – to really go for it. But I really liked Ellie and when I saw Leah doing Jessica at the table read I realised she was perfectly cast.

Q: Was she such a bitch in real life?

RW: No, she’s the complete opposite. She couldn’t be sweeter.

Q: Do you feel pressure as a young woman in Hollywood to always look fantastic and be in great shape?

RW: I miss being able to walk to the grocery store in my PJs, but what are you gonna do? But one of the most important things that I would love to do, if hopefully it all works out and I get to continue doing this, is to set a really positive role model for young women about their body image and about eating. In the past few years this idea of perfection that has come up in Hollywood, there needs to be a shift in that – especially in the younger generations. I have two younger sisters in high school and I hear about it all the time, and I would like to give out a much better body image message.

Q: And what would that message be?

RW: That girls don’t need to be stick-thin where you can see your bones through your skin. It’s not a good look. You don’t need that to be beautiful or to fit in. What you are is exactly what you should be. You can’t let other people dictate how you live your life or how you look. That’s not living. That’s another reason why I love being an actress. When you stop working you forget you don’t have someone to do your hair every day. You go on set and you look like crap and an hour later you can look beautiful. I could never spend that much time on all that myself.

Q: But isn’t everyone in the movie in incredible shape?

RW: But they’re just normal looking girls. We didn’t go in and hire a bunch of girls who had no body. But it is a bit ridiculous when there’s a shot of them drawing the fat circles on one of the girls – that’s just so ridiculous.

Q: How important is it to you to play strong female characters?

RW: Obviously Hollywood is still run by men and to be able to be in a film that is full of strong, empowered females is amazing.

Q: Are you any good at keeping secrets?

RW: I’m OK. My own secrets I’m bad at keeping, but other people’s secrets I can keep.

END

Interview with Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds - July 23rd, 2009

Promoting: Inglourious Basterds

Venue: Claridge's Hotel

Interview type: Press conference

ViewLondon (VL): Christoph, it has been said by Tarantino that the role of Hans Landa is the most important in the film, and there was some desperation that, if he couldn't find a suitable actor, he'd cancel the project. What do you think made you right for the role?

Christoph Waltz (CW): Well, every casting process ends with the part being cast. But, desperation? I don't know. When Lawrence tells me, or Quentin tells me, I'm deeply honoured, but I didn't feel any desperation. I found these very polite and civilised and accommodating gentlemen.

VL: Often actors prefer to play villains by latching onto a small redeeming quality in the character. Is that true with your approach to Landa? How could you play such a hideous man?

CW: Well, it's what you say, it's not what I say - because I can't play hideous, how do you play that? I leave my moral judgement in the cloakroom, and I look at it apart from my ethical preoccupations. If you'd asked Heinrich Himmler if he considered himself an evil person, I'm 100 percent certain that he would have not understood the question. Yes, coming from your point of view, I can understand what you're saying. But, from my point of view, I see it differently.

VL: Could you see anything in him that you could respect?

CW: Yes, of course. Apart from this very first thing, and apart from destroying beauty, there is not much that hints at any vicious, violent - he follows a different agenda, and that's part of why this movie and this part is so great, that you're being called upon to employ your moral faculties.

VL: How does Quentin compare as a director to other directors you've worked with?

CW: He doesn't infringe upon your choice. He manages to actually direct in the true sense of the word. He directs you making the right choice. He creates this flow, and that's why the casting was already part of the process. The reading, the actual opening the envelope to take out the script was already the initial point of departure for the flow, and that flow hasn't stopped to this day. And he manages to keep that flow going, and all you need to do is trust. It sounds a bit cliché and even a bit esoteric. But it isn't. It's actually very hands-on. He clears away everything, you know. Michelangelo once said, sculpting is easy, everything that's not the sculpture, you chip away from the block. And that's in a way what Quentin does, and you end up finding yourself being part of the sculpture, without actually knowing how it happens. He directs, he leads, and you only have to follow, and that's the beauty of the process.

END

Interview with Diane Kruger for Inglourious Basterds, July 23rd, 2009

Promoting: Inglourious Basterds

Venue: Claridge's Hotel, London

Interview type: Press conference

VL: Diane, when you received the script, at what point did you realise that this was not what it first seemed to be, and it was a more fictitious approach to history?

Diane Kruger (DK): Oh, I think it's pretty clear from the opening page, from 'Once Upon a Time...'. I never expected to see a World War II movie done by Quentin Tarantino that was going to be a classic, sob movie. And, the truth is, being German, as you can possibly imagine, I get offered a World War II movie once a week, which I've never wanted to do, because I never wanted to be associated, just because I was German, with that part of my country's history. And then this came along, and one of the very rare times where you read a script and go 'oh my god, he actually wrote this for me!', only it wasn't true at all. He probably didn't even know I existed at this point. But I really felt like I'd been born to play this part, and I knew it deep in my heart, that if I got the opportunity to meet with him - which took a long time and a lot of convincing - that, he couldn't hire someone else. I made sure, I just really felt like I could bring something to this character.

VL: In the course of a very short amount of screen-time, you are maimed in a shoot-out, tortured by Brad Pitt, and then throttled by a demented Christoph, so could you tell us about being put more through the physical mill than you have been before.

DK: Ah, just another day at work [laughs] Well, I loved it. It's for once, you get a director that loves women for what they can do. All the parts, especially in America, that I've been getting, have been queens or this object that's been put on a pedestal. And, Quentin loves women, they're fierce, they're a lot smarter than anyone else in the movie, quite frankly, and love treating the Basterds like they're complete morons. And so, I didn't find I was being tortured by Brad, I felt like I was taking it like a man, you know. And then the scene with Christoph, was completely terrifying, because he sits here and he looks all nice and sweet, but he has a terrifying look in his eyes at times, and it really threw me off. And a little known fact is, when I actually get strangled, it's actually Quentin, so I guess he wanted to tell me something there! I asked him if I could tell this story, because I wasn't sure if he wanted to, it just says a lot about who he is as a director, I think. [laughs]. No, he's so into it, he's just, he's on set, and he lives every character. He is Landa, and he is Bridget von Hammersmark, and he is Shosanna. More than other directors I've worked with, he's right there, you know. And when I auditioned he played Brad, with the accent and everything.

VL: How does Quentin compare as a director to other directors you've worked with?

DK: Well, I think one of the major differences is that I've never worked with a director who is basically a movie library. So he bombards you with movie references, and characters that he was inspired by, and then lets you make it his own. I must have seen 20 films that he wanted me to see. Women that he was inspired by. And then, you know, he loves to percolate. I actually would say that he was also the most precise director I've worked with, in terms of he's very attached to his writing, especially in English. He makes sure you say every word. Which is new for me, a lot of directors let you go on and, you know, approximate what's written. His writing is a challenge, especially in English, because it's very nuanced and very much between the lines. Every time you read it, you discover something else. And he doesn't let you get away with anything. He’s a director that sits next to cameras, no monitor, there's nobody on set that doesn't need to be on set, there's no video village, there's no safety net. He sits and stares at you, which is very unsettling at first, to me anyway, and he sits over his little headsets. And sometimes we had to break scenes because he was laughing too loud, and he takes such joy from hearing and seeing his characters come to life, that if he sees that you're there, and you're going his way, and you're that character that he wanted to create, he gives you wings, you can go so much further than you think you could.

END

Interview with Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds - July 23rd, 2009

Promoting: Inglourious Basterds

Venue: Claridge's Hotel

Interview type: Press conference

ViewLondon (VL): When you've had a project going on for 10 years, and have moved it from a novel to a miniseries to a film, what is the 'Eureka!' moment, when you realise it's got to be a movie, and it's going to go, after such a stop-start process?

Quentin Tarantino (QT): That's an really good question. One of the things about it was, when I decided to chuck the first storyline that I came up with, which was the one which was turning it into this miniseries idea, as opposed to a movie, and I came up with something that I thought would be more of a movie, which is basically the idea of the Frederick Zoller [Daniel Bruhl] film that becomes a premiere, which becomes about blowing the place up. I was still nervous that I could still make it a movie, so one of the things that I did was, I knew I didn't want it to be any longer than Pulp Fiction and the only way I could do that was to make sure that the script wasn't any longer. And that was something I had really gotten out of the habit of doing, starting from Jackie Brown through Kill Bill, I didn't censor myself at all when it came to writing - 'I'm not writing for the fuckin' production manager! I'm a writer, my shit gets published!' - you know, cut to Kill Bill Volume One and Two! [laughs] You know, I wrote a big novel, now I have to adapt it every day to the screen. So what I did was, I just had the script of Pulp Fiction just right next to me, so as I was writing my story, I'd get maybe 20 pages done, then I'd look at the Pulp Fiction script, and I'd ask so, where was I at page 42? OK, I was at this place, alright, now where am I now? And how much more story do I have to tell? It's the closest I've ever come to policing my work - but it was simply just in an effort so the thing wouldn't become elephantine. Especially since the fact that I knew I was trying to get done in time for Cannes, I knew I wouldn't have all the time in the world, I really did not have the luxury to shoot a bunch of shit I wasn't going to use - even though that happened anyway - but it wasn't going to happen with impunity. But literally, it wasn't until I got into the third act that I realised that, OK, I think this is going to work. It wasn't like I had another hour in front of me, no, I think I can actually wrap this up in a movie form.

VL: How Machiavellian are you about your career? Do you manage or plan what you're going to do next, based on your knowledge of other directors? Or do you just follow the stories you want to tell?

QT: That's a very insightful question, actually. It really, truly is a kinda mix of the two - which I guess is probably what it should be. You know, whatever turns me on to write the film, write the story, is whatever turns me on to write the story. But the thing is, there is an 'Oh, I'm interested in the story, and it excites me, and I want to do it', I am thinking about my career, and I am thinking about, well - fuck the word 'career'! - I'm thinking about my filmography. That's what I'm thinking about, that's the better use, I believe that a film-maker lives or dies by their filmography, and if you muck about too much, then you've just cheapened your entire artistic standing. I admire directors that retire at a certain age, so they don't just cheapen their filmographies with four limp-dick old man movies at the end of it. That was the kinda idea behind, you know, saying [Kill Bill ad slogan] 'The Fourth Film by Quentin Tarantino', you can say that was self-aggrandising - and maybe it is to some degree or another - and I'm not counting them that way any more, but it is very realistic to say. You know, your first movie is your first movie, and there's something very special about that, and your second movie is your second movie. And the fact that Kill Bill was my first movie in six years was a big fuckin' deal! So, I was thinking like that, and I probably will tend to think in terms like that, because I am a student of cinema and I see where directors have gone wrong - at least what I think - where they have gone off the track, or gone off the road - and there isn't that excitement about their work that happened before, and, frankly, I don't want that to happen to me.

VL: What were the films that, while you were making it, inspired Inglourious Basterds?

QT: Yeah, there weren't any really specific movies themselves that I drew inspiration from. It was more genres and sub-genres, or spirits of films that were inspiring to me. What was interesting to me, though, was, what was inspiring to me at the beginning became quite passe, and what I took true inspiration from was something I wouldn't have thought about - not stylistic inspiration, just inspiration. Like, for instance, when I first sat down, to write the film, I was thinking in terms of a bunch of guys on a mission genre, so the touchstones - all the films I talked about before I never even wrote the effin' thing, Where Eagles Dare, Dirty Dozen, The Devil's Brigade, Dark Of The Sun, movies like that, and I still love them, especially Dark Of The Sun, and that's why Rod Taylor's in the movie. But having said that, what I found so inspirational while I was doing the movie was watching a lot of the movies made in the 40s. People disparagingly call them American Propaganda movies, and I don't like that term, because I really like those movies - now, most of them are actually done by foreign directors, who are now living in Hollywood because they couldn't live in their own countries, because the Nazis had occupied them. And in that case you're talking about Jean Renoir with This Land Is Mine; you're talking about Fritz Lang with Man Hunt and Hangman Also Die!; you're talking about Jules Dassin with Nazi Agent and A Reunion In France; you're talking about Douglas Sirk with Hitler's Madman; and, one of my favourites, that I discovered, that I honestly hadn't heard of before, is a Russian director working out of France by the name of Leonide Moguy, who did Action In Arabia and a movie called Paris After Dark about the French Underground - and, uh, also something interesting about these movies is almost all of them star George Sanders. And the thing that was very interesting to me, was, these are movies made exactly at the time of World War II, when the Nazis weren't this theoretical, evil boogieman from the past, but was actually a threat, this was actually going on on planet Earth. And not only that, these directors, many of them had personal experience with the Nazis, and I'm sure all of them, now living in exile - I mean, can you imagine a world where Jean Renoir can't live in France? These directors actually, all of them, had people that they were concerned about back in their home countries. Yet, these movies are entertaining - they can be thrilling, they're exciting! Many of them have quite, quite amounts of humour in them. In particular, something like To Be Or Not To Be, by Ernst Lubitsch. So, the thing is, they're so literate, the dialogue in these movies is just so fantastic - and, any movie starring George Sanders is going to have great dialogue, because he's great. So, these were the movies that I got a tremendous amount of inspiration from - not that I did anything stylistically that was like them, I didn't shoot it in black and white, I didn't try to recreate them. I might be inspired by maybe their sense of set design, because that was kinda the way that I was going to go, was build sets. But, there's nothing stylistically that you could link my movie with theirs, apart from hopefully entertainment value, but those were the ones that I found myself very inspired by. Now, one other thing I would say in that regard, is, I've always been a big fan of German cinema of the 20s, but I ended up going overboard and falling - not overboard, but I fell truly in love with it - and I had the idea of doing a silent chapter, like a Pabst-style thing. Well, I got over that, I thought that was just too reflective, and I shouldn't do something like that, but I had a fun enough time exploring the idea. [laughs]

VL: The last line of the movie refers to Lt. Aldo Raine's [Brad Pitt] masterpiece [carving swastikas into Nazis' foreheads] - would you consider this film to be your masterpiece?

QT: Well, I didn't have that line until it came time to write that line. So, when I was writing that scene, that was the line that he said. So, yes, it was definitely the last line in the script - it was the last line that I wrote in the script. Not to be coy, it's not for me to say - it's not for the chicken to speak of his own soup. And, if I were to have that opinion, then that opinion would not be valid until at least three years from now, when I look back on it. But, I do believe that Aldo does believe, that where all of his engravings are concerned, this may be his finest.

[SPOILER QUESTION]

Q: Hitler meets quite a grisly end in the film - when did you decide that you'd kill Hitler?

Literally, it wasn't until I was pretty much up against it - just heading into the climax of the piece. I had no intention of doing that before. This is the way I write: you're writing a scenario, and as you're writing a scenario, there are different roads available to you as you're writing that the characters could go to and in particular screenwriters would have the habit of putting up roadblocks against some of those roads because, basically, they can't afford to have their characters go down there, because they think they're writing a movie, or they're trying to sell a script or something like that. And I've never put that kind of imposition on my characters - wherever they go, I follow. Now, when it came to writing this movie, naturally, I came across some of those roadblocks. And one of them was history itself. And I was more or less prepared to honour that. Until I came up actually against it. And I go, 'no, I refuse!'. I've never done that before, and now is not the time to start. And what I mean by that is this, I just thought that my characters don't know they're part of history - history has not been written yet. They don't know that there's things that they can and can't do. There's no can and can't, there's only action and reaction. People have asked me questions like, is this movie a fairytale. Well, the first thing I wrote was 'Chapter One: Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France'. So people have then said, 'Oh, so does that mean it's a fairytale?'. Well, you know, if you want to look at it that way, then feel free to look at it that way, and I think the movie works quite well in that regard. I personally do not look at it that way. The way I look at it is this - my characters change the course of history. Now, that didn't happen, because my characters didn't exist, but if they had have existed, then everything that happens is actually quite plausible.

[SPOILER QUESTION]

VL: When did you decide to include a film critic character in your film, and did you take any pleasure in killing him off?

QT: Not at all! I don't have any bone to pick with critics. In fact, if I wasn't a filmmaker, I'd probably be a critic - in fact, most of my bone is I'd be a better film critic than most of the film critics I read. And talk about there's never a time to kick a dog when it's down, I never thought that some of the critics I'd grown up admiring and reading would be going the way of the dodo bird. I think it's a very sad time for film criticism, what's going on for them now. But [Michael Fassbender's character] isn't just a weird flight of fancy, I vaguely based the idea on Graham Greene, who was a film critic and was also a commando in World War II.

VL: Which parts of the film are you most proud of, having thought about and lived with these ideas for so long?

[SPOILER ANSWER]

QT: I'll boil it down to the two match-heads. That would be the opening sequence, the opening chapter, that was everything I could have ever hoped it would be. And that's a three-way collaboration, because, yeah I definitely did my job when I wrote it but, it never would have been what it is without Christoph Waltz and Denis Menochet, they were just, it's impeccable. The other moment in the movie that I'm probably the most cinematically satisfied, where it's exactly the way it was in my head, and I almost can't believe that it got nailed to such a degree was the sequence in the projection booth, between Shosanna [Melanie Laurent] and Frederick, the music, the slow motion, the effect of the camera coming up and seeing this almost twisted Romeo And Juliet tableau on the floor, as the film reel continues to go on and they manage to still be alive, even though we see they're dead and they live on in film, I... - I'm sorry, I don't mean to get enraptured in my own fucking work, but [laughs]... That is the moment that I go 'Oh my god!'.

VL: Regarding the soundtrack, how early did the song choices come to you, and how do you choose what you use in your films?

QT: Well, music is very very important in my movies, and it kind of happens in a three way stage. In some ways, the most important stage, whether it ends up being in the movie or not, one of the most important stages is just when I come up with the idea itself - before I've even started writing - I go into my record room, I have a big vinyl collection, and I have a room set up like a used records store, and I just dive into my music, whether it be rock music, or lyric music, or my soundtrack collection. And I'm looking for the spirit of the movie, I'm looking for the beat that the movie will play with. And part of that is, I'm trying to immediately jump to the screening process, in a way, because when I find the right piece of music, with the right cinematic set piece - and it's usually big shit, the big stuff, like the opening credits or some set piece - I can actually just visualise myself sitting in a movie theatre, and watching it on a screen. And the images are provided by my imagination, and the music is right there, and I'm cranking it. And all through the writing process, I'm always going back there to reinvigorate myself, or to remind myself what it is I'm doing, and keep remembering that it's not just words on the page, because I'm a very precious writer, I can get a little caught up in that - remind myself that I am making a movie. And that process continues to go on during the shooting - and that's the second wave. And the third wave is when I'm editing, and sometimes there's a big moment or something that I've had in my mind forever. Well now it's just - ehh! - it's just not right when you put it up against the images. And so you find something else, 'oh my god that's so wonderful, I can't believe I was ever in love with that other thing!'. But what's interesting about doing it in the editing process, is it's less about the big moments, and now I'm thinking more minutiae, now it's more the smaller moments that need a little musical accompaniment, and that becomes really fun, is looking for these little small moments, and these small cues from some obscure soundtrack.

END