Interview with Paddy Considine - 27th October, 2009

Promoting: Le Donk & Scor-zay-see
Venue: Warp Office, London
Interview type: Round table


ViewLondon (VL): Who were your influences as a kid? Did you grow up watching films? Are you a bit of a film buff?

Paddy Considine (PC): Yeah. I'm not a film buff now, in terms of, you talk to some people about a film and they can tell you when it was directed, what film stock it was shot on, who did the catering and all that, but I was hugely influenced by films and television. When I was really young I was just totally obsessed with the escapism of Star Wars and the Superman movies, Clash of the Titans, things like that. It wasn't till I got a bit older, when I saw Rocky, that was the first film really that I watched and kind of went, 'Oh, wow'. Also, on TV there were things like Walter, Stephen Frears' film, I still remember that, the night it went out, on Channel 4, the first night of Channel 4. And then it turned into a lot of sort of drama, Alan Clarke's stuff, which was speaking a bit more about where I was at the time. And then the world opened up when it got into the Scorsese stuff and Coppola, who I think is the most astonishing film-maker living. Why he doesn't make films now, I don't know. And then the more realist territory, that kind of work. Ken Loach's Kes, for example, is my favourite British film ever made. I think when you see such naturalism in the performances, you're growing up in that kind of place, it speaks to you.

VL: Can you talk us through how Le Donk came about? You'd made short films with the character beforehand, hadn't you?

PC: Yeah, we did. We'd had him for a long time. I was just mimicking guys around the music scene in Burton-on-Trent, the little town we lived in. I just started mimicking these characters for mine and Shane's amusement and then after Shane started making films and I did Romeo Brass with him, we found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands, really – I was back on the dole and stuff trying to get work, so in that time we found ourselves making short films and I just put on wigs and put in teeth and would just do characters. We literally had nothing planned, we'd just grab a floppy hat and a wig and some teeth and create characters – it was liberating to do that, to go into town that day and say, 'Can we get into Burton Albion football ground?' to do some filming and that's how the short films came about. Le Donk was like that, it was just literally put the hat and wig on, let's go for a drive and see what happens. And we would go round people's houses who weren't expecting us to be there – it was a bit unfair, really, on some of them, but Le Donk would just pile in the house and away you go. And we always found it funny, but we always just thought it was just an in-joke and would only be funny to us.

VL: When did you decide to use him in a film?

PC: We tried to do something bigger with him before – we wrote a film with him as the main character but it didn't work. Whenever you tried to script him or anything, it was just bad, it just didn't work. He just has to sort of be alive and let this stream-of-consciousness come out of his gob and let him get on with it. But he wouldn't go away and so we got the opportunity to be at this Old Trafford gig where the Arctic Monkeys were playing and we just took him up there and made a story up and it just all fell into place. And it really was how it happened, Scor-zay-zee came on board, all the stuff about him walking around and plugging in a keyboard is true. And it was really liberating – I think I'd got a bit fed up of waiting around for other people to tell you when you can go and be creative. There's a process with making films and a certain way of doing things and with Le Donk we just thought, 'We didn't use to have to do this, we didn't use to have to have script meetings and wait for you to give us the go-ahead' so we just did it off our own backs and hoped that people liked it and if not, it was just an expensive in-joke. Well, not dead expensive, but a fifty grand in-joke.

VL: Speaking of in-jokes, I love the gag with [co-star] Olivia Coleman's baby. You didn't just think, 'Well, let's just use a different baby?'

PC: Oh yeah. No, it was just one of those things of like, if that's how big it is, we'll just have to get around it. And it's part of the charm. Because a lot of references have been made to things that have influenced this film, like Saxondale, and it wasn't that at all – I've only ever seen half an episode of that. I was working in Canada years ago and it was more stuff like the Trailer Park Boys and this Canadian film called FUBAR, which was also all improvised, like Le Donk. I thought that was fantastic and I showed it to Shane. So it's more from that than anything we've seen over here, although someone made a reference to Paul Calf's Video Diaries, which was fair enough – he was a bit ahead of his time in terms of how reality goes and everything.

VL: Since you mentioned Saxondale, someone mentioned at the Edinburgh Q&A that Steve Coogan ripped Saxondale off Le Donk because he'd seen the videos. Is that true?

PC: Well, the truth of it is, we'd shot the short films and when I did 24 Hour Party People, I gave Steve all these shorts that we'd done and he watched Romeo Brass and he watched these shorts and he really liked them. That's as much as I know about it. And then when it crops up years later as a series about a roadie in the Midlands it's like, “That's Le Donk”. I'm not kidding you – I had about a dozen calls and texts that day, who knew, going, 'Have you read this thing? It's Le Donk.” So you can call it coincidence. I think the point from us is, I don't care if Steve saw Le Donk and digested it and somewhere in his head then forgot it and came up with a great original idea – I don't care about that. I think our annoyance was that we want people to know that we did not rip off Saxondale, that's the only important thing.

VL: What have you got coming up?

PC: I'm doing a film called Submarine, with Richard Ayoade. We're shooting it in Wales and it's a great little character, a bit of a David Icke-style guru. It was just fun to do and with Richard, who's directing it, there wasn't a second thought about doing that film. I just really wanted to work with him.

END

Interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt - 21st August, 2009

Promoting: (500) Days of Summer

Venue: The Soho Hotel, London

Interview type: Round table

Question (Q): Can you relate to some of the experiences of the film? How do you mend a broken heart?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (JG-L): Of course, everybody can relate to both sides. Everyone’s been Tom, everybody’s been Summer at some point or another, to some degree or another. I certainly have. That was really our aim with this, to not just make something that’s funny or pulls at the heartstrings, so to speak, but is actually heartfelt and honest.

Q: Have you ever been that low, though?

JG-L: I’ve been pretty sad!

Q: Is sad British pop music big in America? Was that something you could relate to?

J-GL: Yeah, the Clash, the Smiths, those bands are definitely a very big deal.

Q: How refreshing for you was it that it’s the guy who’s the romantic fantasist and the girl’s the cynic? It’s usually the other way around.

JG-L: I like that neither of the characters fit so neatly into any gender box, that both exhibit traits that would typically be assigned to either one or the other, in like our parents’ generation of love stories. I think it’s a sign of the times that we as a people, and we as a culture, are kind of becoming more ready to be individuals and have less of a need to strictly adhere to any conventions or stereotypes.

Q: What are your music tracks for those falling in and out of love moments?

JG-L: Well, it all depends. I’ll tell you, when we were shooting (500) Days of Summer, what I listened to a lot was [co-star Zooey Deschanel's band] She & Him. Everyone loves it in the States.

Q: You’ve done a little dance video to that, haven’t you?

JG-L: Yes, I’m pleased to say that, because there’s a dance number in the movie and Zooey isn’t in it, which is a tragedy, because Zooey is built for dance numbers. So we made this little short film that’s out online [on Gordon-Levitt's own site, http://www.hitrecord.org – see below], the director and Zooey and I, to one of her songs. Every morning on my way to work, I listened to She & Him, and to hear her singing her songs, and her voice, with these beautiful melodies, made it very easy to play smitten and have these songs in my head.

Q: What’s your karaoke track?

JG-L: Oh man, I can’t tell you, that would ruin the sneak attack!

Q: Has there been a Summer in your life?

JG-L: Of course, there’s been one in everyone’s.

Q: How was it working with Zooey again?

JG-L: The cool thing was Zooey and I have known each other for a long time, because we did a movie together called Manic, almost ten years ago. It was a very different movie from (500) Days of Summer, it’s one I’m really proud of actually, it’s a very heavy, dramatic movie, and we’ve stayed friends since then. The chemistry and the comfort and trust between two people playing a love story like this is key, and to have a friend that I could trust, and whose sensibilities I already understood, made it so much easier, and is a big part of why it all looks natural on screen.

Q: Was it never awkward, being such good friends, doing those intimate screens together?

J-GL: No, it’s the opposite, it’s so much easier when it’s someone you know. It’s weird when it’s a stranger, but when you’re friends - we’ve done this before, we’re both actors.

Q: At one point in the film you say that ‘60s women had the right idea with style and dressing - is that something you personally believe?

JG-L: I do like fashion from the ‘60s, some of it. I think in that particular scene Tom’s being more of a curmudgeon. It reminds me of myself when I was younger actually - because I used to like to do a lot of that shit and be like, “Oh, everyone’s so stupid today, how come nobody has any taste anymore?” and I’ve sort of gotten over that notion. I actually don’t buy into the glory days thing. I think every time has its great things to it. The ‘60s were such a glorious time but it’s easy to forget that there was all sorts of bullshit too. There’s an early Frank Zappa album that’s all about mocking the ‘60s. I remember when I heard that, when I was 15, he’s just taking the piss out of Haight-Ashbury, out of hippies, out of everything. I was brought up to glorify the ‘60s, my parents grew up in them - there was probably bad stuff then also.

Q: What’s great now then? What's great about this era?

JG-L: Now is so exciting. Right now a lot of the best stuff you see are things that just some kid somewhere in Japan made. Like I watched this video recently by a band called Sour, they’re a Japanese trio. It’s a cool song, but they made this video with hundreds of collaborators, people who liked their music, who were all obviously very organised and co-ordinated, and made these beautiful images that really wouldn’t have been possible before the Internet allowed for that kind of organisation and communication, which allowed all these people to upload their videos to one website, so someone could download them and cut them together. This is the kind of thing that would have been nearly impossible even four years ago, and is a beautiful work of art today.

Q: I assume a film like this is dearer to your heart than something like G.I.JOE. Did you do G.I.Joe for the money, dare I ask?

JG-L: Actually no, to be honest, G.I.JOE’s not the best-paying job I’ve had at all. I did that movie for fun. I got the opportunity to do this cool character with this mask and crazy make-up, and costume and voice - it was a blast. I go in for diversity and an eclectic mix of creative challenges, and G.I.JOE was really fun.

Q: Was there anything cut from (500) Days that you hated to lose?

JG-L: There used to be a sequence that was sort of the antithesis of the dance number, The Best Morning Ever - there used to be a Worst Morning Ever, which was really funny, and fun, but I think you always have to take some stuff out if it’s slowing it down or whatever. They were going to play the same music but have terrible things happening instead.

Q: Are you a natural dancer? Did you watch any old musicals to train for it?

JG-L: I wouldn’t make any comparisons! But I do love a Gene Kelly movie, or a Fred Astaire movie. But those guys spent a lot of time practising dancing, which I haven’t, but I had fun doing it. [That sequence] took me by surprise when it actually arrived, and there I was in front of 30 choreographed dancers who were all doing the same thing as me. It was a bizarre experience. We all picture ourselves doing that; we’ve all sat and watched the making of Thriller, I certainly have and I never thought that that would be me.

Q: How did you avoid the pitfalls of the child star going off the rails? You went to school and disappeared for a couple of years… Was that a way of dealing with that, or were you just quite grounded anyway?

JG-L: I don’t know if I am quite grounded. But I seem to have you convinced, so we’ll leave it at that!

Q: Are you musical too? Did you and Zooey jam together? Is there a YouTube video of you guys singing your heart out in a bar somewhere?

JG-L: There isn’t. I just made a short film that played at Sundance and it’s going to come out on a DVD compilation of short films. Spike Jonze actually has one on the same disc, which tickles me. The movie’s called Sparks and I adapted it from a short story, and I directed it, cut it and scored it. It’s really the first time I’ve been public about music that I make. But yeah, I've always loved music.

Q: Is that a taster of things to come, directing features maybe?

JG-L: I don’t know. I don’t have a feature I’m working on now. But I do stuff all the time on this website called HitRECord.org. I put up little videos or pieces of audio or writing or photos and then invite other people to do the same, and we all sort of re-mix each others’ records and collaborate and make collages. It’s really fun.

Q: One critic called the film the first great cinematic romance of the Facebook generation, it sounds like you’re into all of that - how would you say the Internet has changed your life?

JG-L: One thing I love about HitRECord and getting to make stuff and putting it up online is how instantaneous it is. I love (500) Days of Summer, I loved it when we shot it a year and change ago, and I love it now, but it’s very different to be talking about and finally showing a movie to audiences that was shot so long ago, whereas online you can make something and that day, put it out and have people see it and respond to it and maybe change it and collaborate. It’s just a different kind of vibe - it’s instant and it’s resonant. It allows for a kind of resonance that’s impossible in the older kind of media. That's also why I do a Twitter page ( https://twitter.com/hitrecordjoe ), so that I can link to HitRECord.org.

Q: There's a British movie currently shooting (called Love Lost) that has a live web-cam on set. Is that something you'd ever consider doing?

JG-L: That's interesting. I don’t know if I’d do that exactly. To me, a movie set is a movie set. I like the idea of doing stuff that is live like that, but I’ve never been a huge fan of behind-the-scenes stuff on movie sets. I always feel like you definitively look like a bad actor - because you’re acting to this camera, and there’s this other camera over here that’s showing the audience that you’re faking! But traditional movie-making is a very particular process, and it’s not the only way to make movies anymore. It used to be, but it’s not anymore, and that’s what’s exciting. I’d rather do something totally new. In my backpack I have what you need to make a movie, and distribute it. I have a camera and a computer, and there’s wi-fi here. It goes with me in my back pack.

Q: Do you smash plates when you get upset? How do you vent your anger?

JG-L: Loud music. Loud is good. The drums are really good for venting.

Q: Was there ever any studio intervention for a traditional happy ending?

JG-L: I don’t think there ever was, and I think that speaks to one of the many reasons why this movie turned out well, because the priorities were in order, the director was in charge, not a bunch of executives on a committee. Fox Searchlight who put out (500) Days of Summer also put out Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, and Juno and Borat - all these great movies, and they get it. They get that if you make good movies, respectful and dignified movies, that they can meet with quite a bit of success. They're outstanding and I've never really felt that about a studio before, to be honest. I'm really impressed with them.

Q: There are so many wonderful scenes in (500) Days of Summer. Do you have a favourite?

JG-L: The split-screen sequence with reality and expectations – I might cite that one. It really gets at the heart of the movie. Here’s a guy who’s built up all these expectations based on this music that he likes, and movies, and what he’s heard from friends and others, rather than engaging with reality and being present, he tries to project these expectations and deify this girl.

Q: Are you a cynic or romantic at heart?

JG-L: I think a healthy balance of both is important, but I’d probably lean more towards the romantic side these days.

Q: It’s such an inventive film, was all of that in the script, or was there anything that came out of improvisation or whatever?

JG-L: A lot of it really was in the script. I've got to say, this one actually looked a lot like how I expected it to look. It was really what I hoped it would look like, and what Mark the director described. He’s very savvy, technically, he’s shot so many videos, he knows how to gets what he wants. The surprise, of course, is that he’s also an extremely humanistic story-teller. He’s obsessed with story and character, and not just making it look right, which is a double-threat that’s rare in directors. You usually get one or the other, you get someone who knows how to tell a story but they don’t necessarily know about light and camera and rhythm, or you get someone who can make beautiful images but they can’t necessarily tell a great story. He does both and I think he’s going to be one of the film-makers that our time is remembered for.

Q: It reminded me a lot of Annie Hall. Was that one of the influences on it?

JG-L: Sure, that’s one of the greatest movies ever. More than anything, it’s honest, Annie Hall, it doesn’t feel like a bunch of punch-lines, it feels almost like a drama, except it’s hilarious, and I think that’s what we were going for with (500) Days of Summer. Not a bunch of gags, but that the humour would come from catharsis and identifying with human beings.

END

Interview with Henry Joost and Nev Schulman, co-director and "star" of Catfish - October 24th, 2010

Promoting: Catfish

Venue: The Mayfair Hotel

Interview type: Round table (but only two of us on round table)

ViewLondon (VL): If we accept the story at face value (and I assume we can), then what was it that made you think there was a story in the paintings by the little girl? I assume you'd seen My Kid Could Paint That?

Henry Joost (HJ): Uh, yeah. Actually, we hadn't seen it, but we knew of it at that point. It was really Rel [co-director Ariel Schulman], Nev's brother, who started filming and had the instinct to do that. I mean, I think it's a lot of reasons – one is that we're kind of full-time documentarians, like there's no moment in our lives when it's not appropriate to film each other and that's kind of the agreement that we have. So if anything interesting happens, it's okay and expected that one of us will film it. The other thing is that Rel always wanted to make a film about Nev, because he's just like a story-generator, you know, he's like a magnet for people and experiences and he has this way of living that we wish we could live that way sometimes. So I think he had this instinct that was like, 'Oh, this is probably going to turn into something because it's Nev', you know? So in the beginning, we thought, 'Oh, Rel's making a short film about Nev meeting this painter online and it'll be like a cute, short film'. And that was about it.

Nev Schulman (NS): Yeah, I mean, to his credit, it was pretty unusual. I mean, how often does a little girl from halfway across the country send you fan art? That was strange and interesting, so he thought, 'Why not film it for a little bit?' Whatever happened, it was obviously like -

HJ: Something's going on.

NS: Plus, I was also really excited about it. That's what I was talking about.

VL: So is the self-documentation still going on?

NS: Oh yeah. We filmed ourselves on the BBC this morning. We were on the breakfast show and then they kept us and we were on, like, just the news, I guess. But it was fun, because we filmed that stuff [shows off tiny camera with footage of from-the-sofa BBC interview].

VL: So how many hours of footage of yourselves have you accrued at this point?

HJ: Oh, God.

NS: How many hours? Oh, my God. There's probably more of me.

VL: What do you do with the footage?

HJ: Most of the time we don't even watch it. We keep it – we're all organised about it and we have it by year, by month on hard drives. Sometimes we thematically organise things.

NS: I also try to put, like, key words on things when I'm out with my camera.

VL: I see from YouTube that the story was picked up by the news networks in the States. What kind of impact has that had on the film?

HJ: Well, the biggest thing that we did was the news show 20:20 and that was a full hour about the movie and totally was full of spoilers for people who hadn't seen it. I think it had different reactions – one was that people who had already seen the film who just, like, couldn't believe it and were so interested in hearing Angela interviewed and stuff like that and there was lots of stuff that wasn't in the film that we gave them, that they used. And then other people were disappointed because they were like, 'What? How could you tell me the whole story in this TV programme?'

VL: Do you think the controversy generated over whether or not it is a documentary has helped you or hindered you?

HJ: I don't know. It's more people talking about the film, which is probably good. I don't really like being lumped into like a fake documentary category, just because it's not, that's not what it is. It's not Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch. And I don't know if that turns people off or turns people on, really.

NS: We like the idea of people seeing the film and being sort of raw and not expecting anything. But the whole kind of 'Don't find out anything about the movie! Is it a thriller? Is it a horror?' - that was more sort of the built-up ad campaign in the States, which, you know, has goods and bads. Certainly the good is that people are maybe expecting something completely opposite from what you get so you're kind of left even more surprised in a weird way.

VL: The film has lots of different elements at times, like, mystery, thriller, comedy and so on. Was that a stylistic choice?

HJ: That's just real life, I think. Real life doesn't follow genres, you know? I don't really feel like we had control over the tone of the film but the tone changed for us personally as we were through the experience. Like, in the beginning it was fun, then it got mysterious and actually got very scary in real life and then it kind of became profound and the jokes stopped.

VL: What was the approach to filming, especially with things like the phone calls? Are you just always there or does Nev say, 'Okay, I'm going to be making a phone call in five minutes – get the camera ready'?

NS: Yeah, sort of. Rel had basically said to me, 'If you're going to call Megan or if you're going to open a package - if I'm not there, call me and give me like 20 minutes to come or if I'm there, then let me know and I'll just turn on my camera. And you know, I didn't always do that, of course, because I talked to Megan almost every night. And then he would just get really close, because the speaker phone on the phone was not great. And then we actually figured out that if I used my cellphone with headphones, I could put one headphone in my ear and the other headphone on the microphone hole on the camera and that was the best way to record the conversation. So that was sort of a breakthrough.

VL: But presumably Megan didn't know she was being recorded, so did you ever question the ethics of that?

NS: I think we never thought about that because the storyline had not evolved and there was no intention. We weren't making a film – Rel was just keeping track of this story as it unfolded, because he thought maybe, eventually, it would turn into something worthwhile, but no-one ever considered that this is where it would lead. He joked that he was going to be making a montage - a short film to show at our wedding, you know? In which case, she wouldn't mind that he was filming, it would be charming.

HJ: Or like we would surprise them one day with the film and Nev would meet Abby in real life and that would be the end of the film.

NS: Right. And I'd actually talked to them about us sending a camera to them, during this, so that they could be filming on their end. But yeah, we never expected it to go the way it went.

VL: Obviously you shot tonnes of footage, so when it came to the editing, what did you cut out that you hated to lose?

HJ: Oh, there's a lot. There's a lot of stuff.

NS: One of the frustrating things during the editing for me was that it certainly made me look like a total dope, in a way. And that I just sort of willy-nilly, blindly went into this thing and never stopped to think, like, 'Hmmm...maybe?' Which is not true. There were little things along the way where all of us said, like, 'Huh. It's good music, but...you know...okay' or 'The painting is really good, but...' but something would always come up, like Abby sold a painting and they sent me half of the sale price as like a thank you for all of my support. So I was like, 'They sent me money, so I guess they're not trying to scam me or anything like that'. So all along the way, if there was a question that I had or a concern, there was always either an answer or an overwhelming amount of new information that would distract me. And those things I wish we could have put in but when they tried that early on, as soon as you introduce a sense of curiosity or scepticism, immediately the viewers just assume like, 'Oh, I know where this is going', whereas if you just focus on the love story and you leave that stuff out, it allows you to kind of focus more on the love story and not on the feeling that something isn't right.

HJ: It was also just too complicated. It's one of those things where all of that information is much more interesting after you've seen the film, because in the beginning you don't really know why you should care about that stuff. But I think we're going to have some great DVD bonus features.

Interview with Jesse Eisenberg - June 21st, 2009

Promoting: Adventureland

Venue: The Apex International Hotel, Edinburgh

Interview type: Round table (with Gail Tolley and Amber Wilkinson)

Question: Although this is quite familiar ground in terms of subject matter, it felt really fresh to me and I wondered if you enjoyed it and if that was something that attracted you to the script?

Jesse Eisenberg (JE): Yes, the most appealing thing was how the characters were so authentically drawn. Because this could easily turn into a genre picture - like a broad comedy or a coming-of-age story - and it wasn't that. All the characters were depicted respectfully, even the smallest of parts seemed somehow three-dimensional.

Q: You were four or five at the time when the film was set, in 1987, so did you have to go away and look up the period?

JE: We did a lot of improvisation in the movie so I wanted to make sure that if I had to say something that referred to anything specific in the period that I didn't get any of the names wrong. So it was mainly practical research for that, as opposed to any kind of big sociological trends because that was less important and, because it is not that different from when we filmed it.

Q: Can you say a little about how the improvisation worked?

JE: I'm not sure how much actually stayed in, but we did so much because... at the time I thought: "It's because I'm so brilliant and he wants all my lines to be in", but in retrospect I think he probably cut everything we made up out and just let us improvise to create a naturalistic tone, so it didn't feel like we were just making, like, these three jokes in one scene and then going on to the next scene. Some stuff stayed in but, ultimately, I think his script probably won out. But I think the idea was just to create a naturalistic comedy - not having to hit jokes on the head. Every time there was a joke I said: "This is a little cheesy." He'd say: "I know, throw it away, just mumble it." So any time there was a joke I'd just mumble it.

Q: There's some great performances in the film. I wonder if you could tell me a little about working with Kristen and Ryan Reynolds?

JE: Well, Kristen, I was so shocked when we started working because she was 17 at the time and I didn't know how a 17-year-old girl would be able to play such a character that seems so dark and mature and jaded and cynical but also warm. She was just, like naturally so perfect for it. And Ryan Reynolds - they condensed his schedule into two weeks - so it was two weeks every day with him and it was great. He's also a very funny guy, in terms of improvisation, he also likes doing that. He's great for the part, too, because you want to hate that character but, again, what you were saying about all the characters being three-dimensional, it's hard to hate that actor - he's so charming and seems like a genial guy, so it makes that character more authentic.

Q: The director said it was partially based on his own rubbishy summer job, so, inevitably, we have to ask you what was your most rubbish summer job and did you draw on any of those experiences for this?

JE: I've never been able to describe anything I've done as 'rubbish' because we don't use this word, but I've done a million shitty summer jobs, er, I mean jobs, but most of them were acting in awful things. The only thing really similar was when I was 15, I acted in this thing and then I got too old for it so they had us do the lighting for it and stuff. And we all hated doing the play but it was a really good bonding experience because we hate what we were working on so we had to find something redeemable, so we ended up enjoying each other's company that much more.

Q: You've talked about the improvisation being cut out a lot, was there anything cut out that you really hated to lose?

JE: Yes, my favourite scene... this movie takes place during the Iran-Contra scandal and there was all this funny stuff and he cut it out. I liked it because my character was interested in the politics of the day and I was trying to talk to the other people at the park in the parking lot one night, and everybody was standing around drinking, I said: "Did you guys see this, I can't believe this stuff." Talking about being fed up with Iran-Contra because it was a huge scandal in the States and they're just like "Okay". I loved that scene because it was a perfect indication of that culture clash and now it's cut. So I was upset. But... all the kissing scenes are in. That's good.

Q: In the past you've worked with veteran actors. You're the lead here, how does that responsibility feel?

JE: It feels good. But you feel the pressure but at the same time it was good because it just felt like we were all playing real characters, it didn't feel like: "I'm supposed to be a leading person therefore it must be A, B and C." It just felt like, play this character normally and it will come out well. I hope it comes out okay, I've seen the movie but I hope that plays okay, it's not like a typical movie, I think, where people are expecting certain things that maybe the movie is not offering them. I didn't feel the same pressure that I would feel if like... like, Ryan Reynolds just came out in a movie called The Proposal, that was a romantic comedy, I didn't see it but if it was like that kind of movie then I'd feel more pressure, because it's romantic comedy and it's very clear what you have to be. But this was not very clear, so I didn't mind.

Q: The character that you're playing is a little bit younger than you are and it's all about first love. Did you find yourself tapping into those things, was it harder to act 'younger' than yourself than older?

JE: In some ways I felt the character was more mature and experienced than I was. Because I've never had a real job like this for an extended period of time. He's also trying to reconcile being naive in the world and being educated and being really smart and having these goals for himself - lofty goals of going to grad school and travelling to Europe and being a travel essayist. But I feel like personally, like, I want to do like these great things but then you're, like, doing a silly movie or auditioning for some stupid movie. So I feel that conflict all the time, but I think everybody feels that way. Like I want to be a novelist and yet I have to go to the set and do this stupid thing today. But everybody has that, the difference between what you feel you deserve to be doing and the thing that you're actually required to do, or hired to do.

Q: You mentioned a favourite scene that was cut, do you have a favourite scene that's in the film?

JE: I only saw it once, and I tried to look away because I'm embarrassed to watch myself, but the scenes I like the most are the quiet, talking scenes with Kristen because those felt like the most sincere parts of the movie to me, when I was filming it, at least.This feels like the heart of the movie, this sweet relationship. They're not the funniest scenes but they felt like the most enjoyable for me.

Q: I thought the scenes with the other actress were just as sweet?

JE: Margarita Levieva? She's also great because that character could have also been, and in someways is, the hot girl at the park. But on the other hand she has her own thoughts and her own goals and they're not typical of that kind of character. So even a character like that that could so easily have been this stereotypical thing becomes a fleshed out character.

Q: Where do you place this film in relation to others? Do you see it as being more part of the American independent scene or do you see it as being more like Superbad and those sorts of movies?

JE: I saw the movie as an independent movie - and that's how it was made. It was not made for a lot of money. The only difference was it was made with a distribution company - Miramax was going to put it out. But in terms of the way it was made, shot and cast it was all independent. They didn't have to cast famous people, we didn't have a lot of time to shoot it, we didn't get paid any money. It was made like an independent movie. The best part was they didn't look over the director's shoulder. I would never have been cast in the main part if this was at a major studio, so he got to make the movie that he wanted to make because the Superbad movie was so popular. So I see it as an independent movie, it was done like that.

Q: You talked about your favourite scenes – what about your least favourite scenes? You seemed to get drowned every ten minutes. You're in the swimming pool in one scene and get covered in water in another. How long were you shooting that for?

JE: Oh yeah, that was the worst thing. We filmed, like in November, end of November, beginning of December, even, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and they made fake rain. And when you make fake rain in movies, you have to make the drops bigger, because little drops, like real rain, don't show up on camera. And it was so freezing, it was torture. And then we had to reshoot it because it didn't come out good or something, it didn't look like New York City or whatever. But, yeah, it was terrible. I don't know why it has to rain at the end of every movie, because it's so hard to do that. I've been in many movies where it's rained and it's just torture. They try to put on scuba gear underneath but it doesn't work.

Q: Had you seen [director Greg Mottola]'s other films? Had you seen The Daytrippers?

JE: Yeah, I saw that a long time ago, because I knew this actor in it, Campbell Scott, so I rented the stuff he was in. And I really loved that movie and then when I read the script I didn't know anything about Superbad, because it was before that. I felt like, 'Oh, this is great and it's from that great director' and then when Superbad came out, I understood why they would let him make this movie, because that movie was so popular, they trusted him more.

Q: So was that part of the appeal of taking the role, was to work with Greg?

JE: No, I just liked the script, I mean, yeah, that was like an added thing, but I never really think about that because I don't really fully understand what directors do, so I can't – I mean, I do, but like everybody does it differently, so it's like, you know, if they've made a movie that's successful, doesn't always mean they'll make something that's good again. But I think he's proven he has like a really nice handle on it.

Q: So it's script first for you, then?

JE: Yes, absolutely, yes. Also, the best director can't make a movie good. I mean, I've read scripts that, like, my agent is saying, 'So-and-so, like, the greatest director is going to make this', and I'm like, 'But it's terrible' and then it always comes out terrible. And that happens all the time, I mean, good directors make bad things. I mean, not that my opinion is always what happens, but I always agree with my opinion later down the road, like, when the movie comes out, even if people like it. Well, it doesn't matter, but yes, if the script's not there, usually it's hard to make anything good out of it.

Q: Just to follow on from that, have you ever been really wrong and gone, 'Oh, I wish I'd made that movie after all'?

JE: No, even with movies that are successful, I still feel like, 'Yeah, I hate it'. I know Greg too, he got offered some movies that turned into, like, huge movies and I'm like, 'Oh, don't you regret it?' and he's like, 'No, I still think it's terrible'. I mean, the only thing is, like, I've not done movies that have become very successful and then it would be easier to make the movies that you want to make, because you're a bigger name. But then if you did something stupid, you wouldn't want to be in that, so, anyway...

Q: Apparently Greg used to be an actor. Does that come through with his approach to film-making?

JE: I think he was an actor in a Woody Allen movie, because his wife was Woody Allen's assistant. I think Woody Allen needed to have somebody play a movie director, so I think he asked him, but I don't think he acted. He's like an extremely shy guy, so I don't think he would ever act. But he was the most sensitive director I've ever met, like, to actors. As I said, he was letting us improvise and I think that, in retrospect, that was just to make us comfortable, I don't think it was for new ideas. And so I think, yeah, he was really sensitive and I've met directors who were actors and sometimes it's like they really do want to be actors so that kind of colours it like they're a little bitter, so I've seen that side too, so I don't think it necessarily makes them more sensitive. But he also once told me he thinks acting's such an emotionally difficult job and it is – you have to be in like an emotional state for fourteen hours a day, even if it's a light scene, you're still emoting, somehow. And so he always expressed a sensitivity to that and it comes through in the movie, all the characters are seen to be dealt with sensitively, even if they're doing something bad.

Q: The film was at Sundance and Edinburgh. How's it been to take the film on the festival circuit rather than go straight into release?

JE: I prefer that. Like, I did a Sony movie that's coming out in October and it's like a big movie and we're already doing publicity for it and I don't really like that. I mean, not that I want to go get lauded at film festivals, but I like that movies have to prove themselves at film festivals and then when the movie finally does come out, it's already kind of over some hurdle, whereas like a bigger movie, there's so much money and resources behind it that the movie's quality is somehow secondary, so when they put the movie out, it's almost regardless of its own merit.

Q: And how do you find the interaction with the people at festivals, going to the screenings, doing the Q & As and so on?

JE: Yeah, it's okay. I mean, I don't really like talking about myself, even though that's what I'm doing now, but you do it because you're supposed to promote the movie. So I could live without it, quite frankly, I'd prefer to just be acting somewhere, doing something else or whatever. But, yeah, it's nice. It makes you want to do good movies though, because if you have to talk about it so much, you know, you hesitate before you do something bad.

Q: Having said all that about choosing roles based on the script first, are there actually any directors you'd particularly like to work with?

JE: No. No, because, erm, no, because I feel like if somebody's really great, I don't want to be in their movie, because then I'll just feel like I'll screw it up. I don't want to screw up somebody's movie.

Q: Why would you think you'd screw it up?

JE: I don't know, I hate myself in movies, I feel like I've ruined all the things I've done, but I still like doing it, so I don't know... I don't know, I feel conflicted, but like, I don't know, if there's somebody like Steven Spielberg, I wouldn't want to screw up a Steven Spielberg movie. I mean, not that I want to screw up Greg's movie either, but he chose me, I didn't pursue it like, you know, actors pursue Steven Spielberg or something, so I felt like it's his fault if it's bad.

Q: I was just thinking you'd be perfect as the lead in a Woody Allen movie, as the kind of Woody Allen substitute character.

JE: I love Woody Allen, he's the greatest. As I was saying, Greg's wife was Woody Allen's assistant and Woody Allen saw the movie and sent Greg an email, saying how much he liked it. He said, “I imagine the box office receipts will be in inverse proportion to its quality”. (laughs) That's very funny.

Q: So, hypothetically, if Woody Allen had a script he said was perfect for you...?

JE: Yeah, I guess so. No-one ever says no to him, I guess, right?

Q: How does it feel when you get a plaudit from someone you respect like that?

JE: Yeah, it was great. I was shocked, like, I can't imagine Woody Allen sitting there watching another movie, just watching something and paying attention to it. But, yeah, it's like a great honour.

Q: What's your next project?

JE: I'm supposed to do a few movies but the one that I think is most likely to happen is called Midnight Sun and it's about these two young guys at Columbia who got recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb, in New Mexico. And it's a true story, it's like this incredible, very tense story. And there's an English girl in it, playing my wife – Felicity Jones. So it's like the three of us are the main characters, going to New Mexico and starting to work on this project. It's really an interesting movie and the Pentagon is letting us film at Los Alamos. It's written and directed by Chris Eigeman, from Metropolitan.

Q: It'll be nice to see you play someone who's married too, after so many coming-of-age movies.

JE: Yes, I've finally tied the knot.

Interview with Charlie Kaufman - May 12th, 2009

Promoting: Synecdoche, New York
Venue: The Mayfair Hotel
Interview type: Round table


ViewLondon (VL): The film has as its main themes mortality and existential angst – are these anxieties which were specific to you at the time of writing it or is it just something that interests you?

Charlie Kaufman (CK): I think that mortality is a concern of everybody, isn’t it, on some level? Or am I just imagining that? But yes, it is. I don’t want to single myself out and say it’s a concern of mine, but it is a concern of mine, yes. I tend to write about the things I’m thinking about at the time. Perhaps I was arriving at an age where it was becoming more of a middle-aged experience where you’re dealing with your body changing and also watching people you know dying. Not to be dramatic about it, [but] as you get older, you’re surrounded by more of it, at least that's my experience. So I thought I'd write about it.

VL: How was your experience of directing your first feature? Do you have plans to direct again?

CK: I enjoyed it, I mean, mostly. It was a lot of work and it was hard but not overwhelming and I will do it again if anyone lets me do it again. It's not entirely up to me, but I would choose to do it again if I can.

VL: Following on from that, you've directed two plays in the past and this film is about a theatre director who is, ultimately, seeking direction. How much of the film stems from self-analysis of being a director?

CK: You know, it's interesting that when I start a project -and it happened in this case too- I sort of know what the character's going to be but I don't necessarily know what his or her job is. So I have to choose a job and in this case, I knew that the couple were both going to be artists of some sort, because it was important that his work not be respected by his wife. So I had to think what kind of artist he would be and I'd used a few different careers before and I couldn't use them, so I thought about a theatre director, not really realising where it was going to lead. But it did lead into a lot of things that were interesting to me. And I think that's how I work, I allow something to sort of, like, be explored. So I didn't set out to make any big pronouncements about myself or about being a theatre director, is what I'm saying.

VL: You’ve said that a big part of directing is about being a grown-up…

CK: (laughs) I did say that. Where did you read that? I haven’t said that recently.

VL: That was on YouTube. I wondered, therefore, do you feel that writing is actually removed from being a grown-up?

CK: Yeah, what I meant when I said that is, as a writer on other movies, I’m a shy person who gets really awkward around actors. I could go off and sulk on the set if I wanted to. It just became clear very quickly that, as a director, I couldn’t do that. I have to be the person whose mood is constant. I have to take care of the problems of the actors who tend to need to go off and sulk. I have to solve those problems, so I felt like it was similar to being a father, which I am, of a young child. You are constantly deciding which of your terrors you should/could reveal. You have to feel safe; the child has to feel safe. And that’s what a director has to provide for the cast. So, I guess that’s what I meant by that. It’s a good exercise for me to do that, because it’s a discipline. There were times, especially late in the day, when I really didn’t want to be the grown-up, but I was.

VL: Is it hard to be a shy director?

CK: No. I don't think it's hard. I think maybe the thing I've decided is that you use the thing that you are. If you're an honest person, then you use your personality, like you would in any endeavour. I mean, I need to be able to talk to people but I don't need to be mean to people or lord it over people like some directors do -and maybe very effectively- but it's not what I do and I don't have to do it.

VL: Now that you've directed -and I know that you've been unhappy with the direction of at least one of your screenplays in the past- do you feel you'll ever be able to give one of your scripts to another director again?

CK: You know, mostly I've been pretty happy. I was unhappy mostly with the George Clooney movie [Confessions of a Dangerous Mind], just basically because he cut me out of the process of making it and he changed my script and stuff. I'm very happy working with Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry and I would do it again. I think if I was going to write something that someone else was going to direct again, I would probably go to one of those two guys, because I know who they are and I know what I'm going to get by working with them. But right now, I'd prefer to try to do it again myself. So that's what I'll do next, if I can.

VL: Did you always envisage Philip Seymour Hoffman as Cayden or was it something that came to you later on?

CK: No, I didn't. I don't write with actors in mind, at all. For me, it's not an effective way to create a character, because I start to think about what I've seen the actor do and then I'm not really creating a character anymore, I'm writing a role for Philip Seymour Hoffman, so that, added to the fact that I wasn't going to be the director of this movie when I was writing it, makes the answer a resounding no. But as soon I was going to be the director, Philip was the first person I thought of and went to. He was my choice.

VL: Was that because of seeing him in other films or had you worked together before?

CK: No, I'd met him briefly but we hadn't worked together before. Yeah, I remember seeing him in Boogie Nights. That's the first time I was aware of seeing him. It's a very small part but every time he was on screen, that was all I wanted to watch. To me that's always a good quality in an actor. He was great to work with.

VL: Can you say a little about the casting process for everyone else, especially as you have different actors playing the same characters. Particularly in the case of Samantha Morton and Emily Watson?

CK: Well, I cast Samantha – she was my first choice for Hazel. And when I was looking to cast [the character who would play Hazel], Emily is also one of my favourite actors, so, you know. But I think that there's a quality that they both share, or at least, they share the same space in my head. So I went after her to see if she would do it and subsequently found out that they're often confused, by many people. And Sam told me that she was hired by a director, who, at the table reading for the movie that they were doing, he told her how much he liked her in Breaking the Waves. But that's why I cast them. And I cast Tom Noonan to play the Phil Hoffman part because I love Tom Noonan and I thought the idea that Cayden would cast somebody who was so physically wrong for himself because he was trying to look past the physicality and he's trying to be brutally honest and this person, even though he looked nothing like him, he was going to cast him and it ends up being, for me, visually fun.

VL: Oliver Stone was once overheard telling his lead actor that he had to keep it simple because the audience wouldn’t understand. In that respect, I was just wondering what acting notes you gave Philip Seymour Hoffman in this.

CK: I didn’t really give notes on this. The way that Phil and I worked together is that we did a lot of rehearsal beforehand, which consisted mostly of talking. We went through the script and rehearsed it, but mostly it was talking about the character, talking about issues of ageing and children and illness and all these things, so that we could come to an understanding. And once we came to an understanding, he was Caden as far as I was concerned. So working with Phil was kind of like - I don’t want to say it was easy, but he was definitely a self-starter and he’s definitely self-critical and he is definitely completely committed. The biggest thing I tried to do with Phil, as much as I could, was not make him do too many takes. Sometimes it’s so excruciating what he’s going through, I just don’t have the heart to ask him to do it again. And he’s told me that he thinks that the difference between stage acting and film acting is that film acting happens in the first take and it’s not repeatable; it’s got to be fresh. And stage acting is something you have to figure out how to make fresh each time. It’s a different process and knowing that’s what he thought, I tried to be very prepared – not only technically, but so that we understood each other by talking through things.

VL: There’s a perception of you as a cerebral screenwriter and a lot of the critics commented on the fact that this film is quite an uncommercial film. Do you think, firstly, that that’s fair and, secondly, do you think that commercial considerations ever come into play when you’re coming up with a new idea?

CK: I try not to think about commercial considerations, which basically means trying to figure out what people will like. I think that’s the way you have to do it. I feel that if I’m not going to do something honest to myself, then I might as well be selling potato chips because that’s what you’re doing. On the other hand, though, if no one goes to see my movies then I won’t be making them anymore. It’s tricky, especially with this one, because it opened in the United States and it really didn’t do much business. Someone said to me, ‘What I love about you is that you really did a big fuck you to the system; you said, I’m going to make a movie that no-one’s going to go and see’. And I said ‘No I didn’t. I would never do that.’ I’m a nice guy. I would never take somebody’s money thinking that no one’s going to see it. I guess there’s always a chance of that, but I wouldn’t ever set out to do that. It put me into a weird situation, because the other movies I’ve done haven’t been giant box office successes, but they’ve been commercially viable so I could keep doing them. I felt okay about keeping on doing them. But now I’m thinking, you know a movie costs this amount of money, and if there’s only 40 people watching – and those 40 people are really important to me, by the way – then maybe I shouldn’t be making movies. I should be writing books or something that doesn’t cost so much money up front. So it’s put me in a bit of a pickle. We’ll see.

VL: Did you have to cut out anything from the film that you really hated to lose?

CK: Yeah, there were a few things. There were a lot of things. There were things that I loved, there were moments that I loved, but the movie didn't support them. It's a weird thing, you have to find it out when you're editing. It's like, 'Okay, we have to move here' and it's very hard to get to that moment where you're willing to do it. But there were moments and scenes; there were long sequences with some of the actors that I loved. And I feel bad about it – I protected them as long as I could. I feel bad about it for the actors because it's like, 'Oh, no, this is their big scene'. And then there was like a whole little sort of story with Samantha Morton's character where she finds a dog that's been run over by a car and it's completely flattened in the middle but it's not dead and it looks like it's going to die but it doesn't die and she keeps the dog for the next 40 years, she calls him Squishy. And we couldn't keep it – we had to let it go. You can see a little remnant of him behind her at the box office at one point.

VL: Might some of those scenes end up on the DVD?

CK: No. I feel sort of strongly -maybe wrongly- but strongly that this is the movie that we made and that other stuff, as much as I like it, it's not the movie and I don't know what purpose it serves to put it out there.

VL: When I’ve seen your films, I’ve listened to other cinema-goers’ comments and it’s often, “I’m not sure if it’s a work of genius or not.” I’m just wondering why someone would be confused as to whether it’s great. Do you think it’s the surreal nature that might play negatively to people?

CK: Um...I have no idea. I don’t know why people think what they think. Maybe with this movie I’ve seen it more, but I’ve seen it with other things that I’ve written. I think people are really, really afraid of being conned. There’s a thing that I’ve read about; maybe because I get so much attention and people think it’s justified, they talk about me like the Emperor’s New Clothes. I think that if you thought that through, as a human being, that criticism, the idea that I would spend five years of my life trying to trick people…why wouldn’t I spend five years of my life trying to do something that interests me? What type of person would do that? I can understand them thinking that about a movie that aims to go out and make 200 million dollars because then there’s a motivation. That isn’t to say my movies are good; I’m just saying that my motivation is not to con people. People are so afraid of being conned and, I think, kind of rightfully, because so many people are being conned all the time.

Seven: What do you mean by conned?

Kaufman: You know, like movies do. Not that this movie is equivalent to that because it’s a different type of movie, but we’re constantly being sold things and movies are things we’re being sold. Get people into a theatre any way you can, with crap. Or, in my case, get people into the movie because ‘you have to see it because it’s an event and it’s an important cinema milestone’, and, you know, it’s not. They’re like, ‘fuck you; that’s not what this is; I’m not going to believe that.’

It’s almost meaningless anyway to me, to decide whether it’s a work of genius or not. If you don’t like the movie, you don’t like the movie; it’s fine. If you do like the movie, you do like the movie. I’m not suggesting my movies are smarter than anybody else’s. I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just trying to do work that interests me and I guess I have a hope that I can continue to do that and support my family while doing that. It’s a fairly honest thing I’m doing.

But I tell you something. Quite frankly, I have had a much more uniformly good reaction over here than in the United States for anything that I’ve done, so I don’t feel that over here. I’m sure it exists, but people have been very nice to me.

VL: What’s your next project?

CK: I’m writing something that I hope to direct. It’s kind of too early for me to talk about; it’s going to be a comedy of some sort. I spend a lot of time not writing. I walk a lot; I think a lot. The thing I’m working on now, I haven’t written a single page of script yet, but I have 60 pages of notes. I just don’t feel like I know what I’m doing with it yet. I just need to figure out this world. I don’t outline in a conventional way. I get to point where I don’t know where I’m going with it, so then I get stuck and then it takes maybe a few weeks for me to find something in it and I get back into it. I think that’s why it’s taken me so long to write these scripts. This one, for instance, has taken me two and a half years. It’s way too long; I’ve got to work out how to do it differently. If I’ve learned anything from Synecdoche, New York, it’s that I don’t have a lot of time left (laughs).

Interview with Bill Nighy - January 21st, 2009

Promoting: Valkyrie
Venue: The Dorchester Hotel
Interview type: Round table


Question (Q): Were you a World War II buff before the film?

Bill Nighy (BN): No, I'm not a World War II buff. I know a little bit about it, I was taught the other side of the story, majorly, in school. It was unfamiliar to me, the idea of a German resistance and it was considerable. And my character, Friedrich Olbricht, for instance, it's suggested, was involved with the resistance from as early as 1937, which is an incredibly sustained period, therefore, of personal heroism on his part, because he risked the lives of everyone he was associated with, including his children. I knew there was a bomb and a table, I knew that Adolf Hitler didn't die, but that's about as much as I knew. It was a revelation to me, this script. It was a great script, as you can see from watching the movie, but it was almost all new information, apart from those bare facts.

And I think it's really important, you know, because like any story that tells you that it wasn't black and white, in any culture – you know, what happened in Germany, it occurs to me, could have happened anywhere. Anti-Semitism and Fascism have a long and mysterious and bewildering and poisonous and vile history and it's not exclusive to the Germans. It was the extraordinarily weird and surreal set of circumstances that led to this lunatic being delivered into the Chancellorship of Germany. And these were very honourable military men, they were not members of the Nazi Party, - they had sworn an allegiance to Hitler, because they required to do, in order to just continue their lives – but they were appalled and disgusted, not only by the Nazi Party and the obvious vileness of that, but the fact that their Commander-in-Chief was an incompetent nincompoop and they were losing men. And, you know, Stauffenberg came from nine generations of military men, he was like the epitome of what was German then and what being a soldier meant.

Q: We know what happened to Stauffenberg's children, they survived. What happened to Olbricht's children?

BN: I believe that Olbricht's children survived also. As we know, you know, the Nazis were pretty merciless and they did kill a lot of people who were on the periphery. Olbricht was a very - - well, they all were, they always say, 'He was a family man', well, who isn't? Kind of thing, you know?

Q: Did you give him that nervous tic that he has? Was that something of yours or was that documented?

BN: Er...I have a coffee problem. (Laughter). Er, no, you see, this is odd. I'm not aware of it until it's over. So it certainly wasn't a conscious thing. I have no sense memory of what happened when I was there. It's not because I go into any fancy altered state or anything, it's just because I'm getting old. But, you know, I must have made a decision, because I am quite, you know, like any actor, I'm meticulous about that. So it was in order to act in the moment -- this sounds so lame, go directly to Pseud's Corner - - but in the moment, I stand by it, in as much as it was there to express a part of the story.

Q: And a man living right on the knife-edge?

BN: Yes, exactly.

Interview with Eddie Izzard - January 21st, 2009

Promoting: Valkyrie
Venue: The Dorchester Hotel
Interview type: Round table


Question (Q): You're quite a history buff, aren't you? You throw various lines into your act. Is World War II a particular interest?

Eddie Izzard (EI): I feel I am encyclopaedic on World War II. My dad took me to D-Day beaches when I was a kid. I was there four years ago – every five years they have a remembrance on D-Day beaches and I would have liked to have been there and done my bit. As Tom Cruise said in an interview yesterday, and Bryan Singer too, that everyone wanted to, essentially, kill Nazis. I mean, it sounds a bit extreme, but you do, you think these are the -- if evil's an over-used word by a previous President who just got into a helicopter recently -- but if anyone's evil, they got it, the top guy, you know. The SS, that was it, that was evil and you just wanted to kill them.

Q: So were you familiar with the Valkyrie story beforehand?

EI: Yeah, I knew about the plot, the bomb in the briefcase, I knew about that, I knew that when things went wrong, a number of them were executed with piano wire and it was filmed. And I've been to that place – it's just a simple building but a lot of people died there. So it's great to - - you know, we have The Great Escape, we've grown up with The Great Escape, if you think, if you're from the UK, if you're from America, we've grown up with these films where we went and did this thing to the Nazis and German kids have grown up -- anyone under the age of 75 has nothing to do with this -- and they didn't grow up with anything. And now they've got a film, an international film where they can watch Germans try to kill Nazis and I think that's great for them. Hopefully they'll like it. And that's the end of my answer.

Q: Bill Nighy referred to Hitler as an incompetent nincompoop, earlier. Is that an assessment you agree with?

EI: Unfortunately, for my mind, I wouldn't say he was incompetent. I would say that he was a sociopath, which I prefer to call anti-sociopath, because, you know, they don't seem socio at all, these sociopaths. You know, he went around with kids and you know, he was obviously - - you think, friendly with kids, oh, that's - - but he was, you can see it from these pictures, he was going out, he was asking them questions and with dogs and his dog Blondie and all this kind of thing. And anyone who was on his side, and everyone else, he was happy for them to be killed in the most merciless ways. It's sociopathic behaviour. And they were – they were unfortunately very organised, very driven, and Goebbels was very clever. These were not unintelligent people. And that was the bloody trouble, they spent so much time and effort on this. Most people just want to live their lives and there's politicians, they'll make some decisions and try and make their lives better, but these people they're just desperate for power. He is a cracked personality.

Q: Everyone that met him first-hand, they always say how charismatic Hitler was.

EI: Well, yeah. I mean, Hitchcock did this with all his bad guys, they've got to be charismatic. Because we do think of him, he built himself up in Germany by being evil, well he didn't actually show that side. He went round writing books saying we've got to, you know, deal with the Jewish people - - I'm not putting it - - you know, he said very negative things about the Jewish people, but he would spend a lot of his time once he became the politician of saying, “I will be strong for Germany, you will get jobs and work and stuff”, which seemed pretty positive after the '29 crash. Because the Nazis did come up in the '20s and then go down towards the late '20s and then because the Weimar Republic started getting its thing together and then the '29 crash sent unemployment spiralling and then they came back in.

Q: And even then, they never got 50% in a legal election, did they?

EI: No, until they went to these referenda, um, the endless referenda. Germany no longer has referendums because of what Hitler did. Because once he got in and removed all the Communists, by putting them all in prison and started shooting Social Democrats, and so there was really no opposition at all, he said, “Do you like what I've done?”, because everyone was not allowed to say no, for one thing, and were getting jobs and whatever and if you disagreed and went on strike you went to prison. So everyone was just saying yes. And things were coming round, they were using certain economic methods to get everything going and then they had a referenda saying, “Do you like this?” and they were getting 90% “yes”s. And that was part of the problem, that's what led to Time Magazine giving him Man of the Year in 1937.

Q: Speaking of Germany not having referendums, I think Mrs Merkel would prefer Europe not to have them as well.

EI: Well...you're talking about the European question? Well, that's a separate thing to Nazis, you know.

Q: Yes, but what you said about the Nazis, if you want to prevent that happening again, Europe seems to be the answer.

EI: Well, yes, that's how I feel. For my money, that's why I believe in Europe, I think everyone fought – in Europe, from Alexander the Great to World War II, we've made wonderful, beautiful things in Europe, every fifty years, we down tools and say, “We haven't killed anyone for fifty years, let's kill the guys over there with the blue hats. Yes, the blue hats this time, much better.” Because we used to be on the side of the Germans all the way through, against the French and now they're with the French against the Germans, then we can be with the people from outer space, against the blue people, you know, so I think the European Union, for my money, is about the idea that we don't ever go to war again at them, we try and stop it happening. And now all the Balkan countries are choosing to join the EU, which I think is a vote for peace and a vote for trade and jobs and stability and against the violence that came out of that region.

Q: Can I just ask about the accents? Were you relieved not to have to do the normal Nazi accent or disappointed?

EI: No, I've done two films with German accents and I find there is a way you can do it so it's not too overblown. We've seen a lot of films that way. There's less films, er, World War II films with people just doing it in English. And of course, as the director, Bryan Singer, was saying, when German people were talking to other German soldiers, they weren't hearing accents, they were just hearing someone speak the same language, so I think it gives an immediacy for British audiences, for American audiences, just to see it in that way. So I didn't mind either way, they just chose that way. I thought it was going to be with German accents, so...

Q: Well, you could have done it in German, with English subtitles.

EI: I could have done it in German, but then I'd have sounded like an English guy doing it in German.

Interview with Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck - October 27th, 2008

Promoting: The Baader-Meinhof Complex
Venue: The Sofitel Hotel, London Film Festival
Interview type: Round table


Q: You must both have been very young when the events of the film took place. What do you remember about that time?

Moritz Bleibtreu (MB): I don't recall anything about this time. I recall the wanted posters in the post office and the strange haircuts and colours, but that's about it. I first started getting into it when I was going to shoot this movie. I knew the hard facts, but all the detailed stuff, it was wow, wow wow all the time.

Martina Gedeck (MG): I was very young, I didn't know what it was . I know that there were a lot of riots in Berlin and demonstrations, which frightened me. I never went to them, but some of my friends went to fight for -- I don't know what.

Q: How have people reacted to the film?

MB: Recently I spoke to some American friends of mine who just saw the movie and they can hardly believe it's a true story. We didn't exaggerate any of it. It happened like that. Just look at what these people kicked off. Especially if you look at it at this time. Germany was, in fact, quite a calm country. I mean yes, we had to face the fact that your postman might have been affiliated with the SS. So there was still this strange situation where one generation would fight the next one because there was huge conflict involved. But on a daily, basic level, Germany was quite a quiet country at this time. The country was rich, unemployment was not really an issue and you could do basically what you wanted. But still these guys started a war. They declared war on a state, which was so strange. If I looked at Germany right now, for instance, you have a big financial crisis, unemployment is everywhere, people don't really have options for their lives. It's hard to find something for them, so on every street corner I see ten more reasons to start a revolution today and nobody does anything any more. I think this is the important thing about this film. It's about a time when people did believe in the possibility of change. They really believed they could change something. I think this is something that got lost. I think the younger generation has a hard time believing they can change something.

Q: What conclusions did you reach about why Ulrike Meinhof thought she could effect change through violence?

MG: I think she just had these ideals, especially the post-nazi generation had their own ideals. To have an ideal, to believe in an idea and devote your life to it, these were the same ideas, it just repeated it from the other side. But it's the same, it's left radical versus the right radical. To lose your own human instinct and follow the idea. They continued it. It was like Che Guevara, it was Mao, it was all these people. And they had their systems and their theories and took what they wanted . They thought they had to confront violence with violence to overthrow (the system).

Q: Can you understand why they did what they did?

MB: Why they did what they did? No. Once the violence got involved, once people died then no, I cannot relate to that. I think that it's never going to work out. Trying to change something by killing somebody else, I think only one thing will be changed and that is yourself, because you will become a murderer. That means that you give away the most important part of yourself and that's your humanity. You will never change the world by a war or by violence, I don't believe in that. But the original ideas and ideals were very noble and very smart and they still are. It's just the how that doesn't work. Violence will never be an answer to that.

Q: Did you feel a lot of pressure in portraying Ulrike?

MG: I felt a lot of pressure towards Ulkrike Meinhof. I don't really care about the reception, or criticism from people who were there. I knew that I couldn't be her, I just had to show some aspect of her character. As the British say, I learn my lines and try not to bump into the furniture. In a way I felt responsible, which is the difficulty: not to judge or interpret too much. I wanted to show what happened and other people should make up their minds about her.

Interview with Vera Farmiga and Rupert Friend - September 11th, 2008

Promoting: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
Venue: The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Kensington
Interview type: Round table


Q: What research did you do for the roles?

Rupert Friend (RF): I read Rudolph Hess's book, but my main priority was trying to understand what might make a young man of my age believe that his actions were not only acceptable but desirable, because obviously they're opposite to what I believe. And I found a book written by a girl who lived on the same mountain as Hitler's lair, who was utterly swept along by the Nazi propaganda machine, to the point where she was believing that it was necessary to do it and not evil, but quite the reverse. And from that, I was able to try to understand how ambition might play a part in explaining away your actions, particularly in light of my character's father having been a deserter – there's that sort of secret which you're constantly trying to compensate for, because you're aware of the consequences, as we see.

Vera Farmiga (VF): I tried to accumulate stuff on the internet and someone found me books and documents and testimonies and online I found journal entries and diary entries, not only Frau Stangel and Frau Hess, who were the wives of Treblinka and Sobibor and Auschwitz, but other ladies of the Third Reich. Emmy Goering, Magda Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl, Paula Hitler, both of Hitler's significant relationships, which ironically ended both in suicide. And focus on the propaganda of motherhood, the ideology of the time, what it meant to be a dutiful German wife. And Rudolph Hess also, he talks about his wife and what she provided him and what emotional stability she provided for him.

Q: Did you watch any movies from the past with any resonance to the role?

RF: Personally, I wouldn't have found it useful to watch somebody else's interpretation because I think one of the great things about the way that the story looks at the Holocaust is that it's utterly unique in its perception and I think we all wanted to do something that was completely fresh as a take on this period and with that in mind, it was very important to me to not do anything that was a rehash of the way we think of Nazis, or even of baddies, because the whole point about this story is that yes, they committed this incredibly brutal atrocity, but the point about the story is that it's a family – it's a father and a son and a wife and children – and that they all had this credo that was so terrifying but they were doing family things as well. So I think there was a certain amount of wanting to come at it from a fresh angle.

Q: Were you relieved not to have to do a German accent?

VF: (Laughs) Yes, but at the same time, an English accent as well. It's always terrifying, any accent is terrifying, especially doing it with an entirely English cast, I mean you feel like you've got a whole cord of wood that needs to get chopped and everyone's using steel axes and you're up there with a fish. The first couple of days, we didn't have much rehearsal and most of the rehearsal was spent just developing a sense of family, it was very important to the kids to befriend them and create a sense of safety and love and closeness. So there wasn't much rehearsal and eventually, the accent, I could forget about it.

Q: What have you got coming up next?

VF: A Rod Lurie film called Nothing But The Truth. It's a story about the Constitution in crisis and a woman who goes on a crusade to defend it. And also a Nikki Caro film, based on a novel called The Vintner's Luck, by Elizabeth Knox.

RF: I've got a film called Cheri coming out at the end of the year, which is based on the Colette novel, with Michelle Pfeiffer, that Stephen Frears directed. A sort of Belle Epoque French courtesan's son having an affair with a woman twice his age.

Q: Poor you!

RF: I know, it's tough.

Interview with David Thewlis - September 11th, 2008

Promoting: The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas
Venue: The Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Kensington
Interview type: Round table


Q: I heard you on the radio recently talking about the research you did with one of the real commandants of a camp. Can you tell us about that?

David Thewlis (DT): Well, not with him personally, obviously. Rudolph Hess, who was one of the commandants of Auschwitz. It was just very useful for me that this document existed – it's an autobiography of his time at Auschwitz. It brought home to me the reality of it and also the detailing of his time with his family: his love of his children and his relationship with his wife, who did not know for two years, the truth of what was going on, even though it was an extermination camp as opposed to just a labour camp. And some very awful and graphic descriptions of what he was perpetrating. So it couldn't have been more of a gift to have and it was very useful. (153)

Q: I like the fact that the accents were all British accents rather than German. I know that you enjoy the opportunity to do a good accent. Were you annoyed at not having to do a Nazi accent?

DT: (Laughs) I wouldn't say I enjoy it! No, I wasn't disappointed. I thought it was good. As the director said last night (at a Q&A), the main reason was not to burden the children with an already very, very difficult job to get those parts right, which they do beautifully. And I don't think it would be the film it is, had they also have had to take on the accents - their performances would have suffered and if their performances suffer, the film suffers and you won't have the same film, so once you've suspended disbelief - because really we should be speaking German, not German accents. So I was very, very happy to do that, because actually I don't enjoy doing accents at all! Well, not many of them.

Q: I'm basing that on the fact that you enjoyed doing the Welsh accent in Basic Instinct 2.

DT: (Laughs) I did enjoy doing that one, yeah. I did that one because there was not much else to do with the part and I thought, well, he's a detective and most of it was 'Where were you on the night of the fifth?' and I thought, well, that sounds nicer if you say it in a Welsh accent. But not much deep research behind that, really.

Q: Being a parent, do you think your response to the material in the film was that much stronger than it might otherwise have been?

DT: Yes, I suppose so. Certainly, in shooting, I mean, the worst thing one can imagine as a parent is losing a child, so that's certainly what I was thinking about, directly, as we were shooting. But I was also having very bad dreams at the time, when I was doing all the research and immersing myself in this period and the ugliness of it, I often dreamed about my daughter being taken away, to the point where I actually stopped doing the research because it was getting a little weird.

Q: What projects have you got coming up next?

DT: The next thing I've got coming out is a film based on a Paulo Coelho novel, called Veronika Decides To Die. Another cheerful one. It's all set in a mental hospital and I'm the psychiatrist. It's directed by Emily Young, who's this great British director – she did Kiss of Life. And then there's this little sort of independent thing called Harry Potter.