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

Interview with Nitin Ganatra - June 22nd, 2009

Promoting: Mad, Sad & Bad

Venue: 13/1 Cornwall St, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Film Festival

Interview type: One-on-one

ViewLondon (VL): What's Mad, Sad & Bad about and who do you play?

Nitin Ganatra (NG): I play Atul, who's a writer, a sitcom writer that's suffering from a dignity crisis. That's the first time I've ever said that, that's actually great, he's in dignity crisis and he's decided that – the catalyst is having a crush on his best friend's wife and trying to get into bed with her and then finding out that she's shagging his boss has left him kind of challenging his own dignity, so he wants to give up writing crappy sitcoms and go into something more noble like writing an opera.

VL: About cheese?

NG: About cheese. And he gets to fulfil that desire. So Mad, Bad & Sad is about dysfunctional characters generally. I know [writer-director] Avie's an academic and a shrink and is very highbrow in his way of looking at things but basically it's the Three Billy Goats Gruff and they're crossing the bridge to get to the greener grass. It's a fable about people wanting their lives to be better. But it's about looking for that and discovering what that is. Heh. He's going to be so pissed off that I said that. But really, he's just ripped off Three Billy Goats Gruff (laughs). And it just happens to be centred around an Asian family because that's Avie's point of contact. A lot of these characters are based on – he's a prolific writer so a lot of them are his psyche. I mean, playing the writer in a movie where your director has written it, you just have to watch him a little bit. You start observing things about him and then you realise, 'Oh God, I am playing him'. Because he's a manipulator – Atul – I play a manipulator who's always got his own agenda and of course a writer-director has got to be a manipulator. So the whole thing, maybe because it's set around an Asian family, because it's a family and because it's dysfunctional, is what's making the whole thing quite universal.

VL: Was the cheese song a large part of what attracted you to the script or was there something else?

NG: The cheese song is one of those things where you – I can't play guitar and I can't dance and I can't sing and yet I'm doing all of those in the film. And being asked to improvise them as well. So imagine, you learn a few chords and I was improvising this cheese song and it was getting quite rude. And I think because of copyright, Avie was actually quite clever and said, 'Actually, I don't want you to improvise, I'll give you some lyrics' and wrote them. Which is a very crafty thing to do, just in case I get some money. But improvising a cheese song is not an easy thing, especially if you can't play or sing.

VL: Did you draw on Flight of the Conchords?

NG: (laughs) I wish I had, actually, but mine's certainly not as good as that. But yeah, it's quite a nice quirky thing. Having seen the film, I think it could have been a bigger number, the whole cheese opera – it would have been nice to have really made it an opera. Had it gone that way, I think it would have been spectacular.

VL: Was there anything cut out that you really hated to lose?

NG: Yeah, there was lots of stuff, mainly to do with me (laughs). There was a scene – it's only because it sticks with me slightly because there were some plot devices that were set up. I don't play squash either, but there was a whole squash court scene with Tony Gardner, who I think is the gem of the film. I think he's impeccable in his timing and I really enjoyed working with him. Anyway, we did a whole squash court scene where we set up stuff like 'You should meet the wife, Roxy' and Atul goes, 'Oh, I don't think so' and it's kind of like, 'Well what's your problem?' and stuff like that. So for me there's a kind of editorial, a plot line thing and as an actor, you play that plot line and then you find that then I don't get it, why I'm suddenly behaving like that.

VL: Do you have a favourite scene in the film?

NG: I love watching Tony and what he does on screen. The way he sets up – the funniest moment is during the burial, where he talks about the make-up and what he does. And his timing, it's very underplayed but so typically English. That gave me a big laugh and I think I enjoyed working with Ayesha (Dharker) a lot. There's a scene with Ayesher and I where we were really just bouncing off each other. Actors, we all have to kind of negotiate each other's egos all the time and everyone's different methods. And everyone's got different ways of approaching their work. Some people can take up a lot of time on set and then produce something that doesn't really warrant taking that much time. If it means taking an hour talking about how to walk across the room, you just kind of go [makes a face]. I'm of the school that you don't waste people's time on the day, you do your homework. And also you get some actors that give to a scene, some actors take away from a scene, they suck the life out of you, whereas Ayesha, there was a scene with Ayesha and I where she comes round and I describe what happens in this opera and the timing was working beautifully and Ayesha was catching that ball and throwing it back and we could overlap and we could play – but still keeping to the script, you know – and that, to me, is one of those moments when you do a job where you kind of go, 'I remember that', I remember that giving, in a film, where you really are bouncing off each other and that's one of my most memorable moments of the whole shoot, other than Tony.

VL: You were briefly in Shifty. Do you have any other film projects coming up, EastEnders schedule permitting?

NG: Well, Shifty was before I was on EastEnders, so after that, I joined EastEnders and then did Mad, Sad & Bad and then I did a show called Mumbai Calling, which is on at the moment. But no, I'm writing now. I've got another couple of projects that I've pitched and treatments that I'm writing so fingers crossed.

END

Interview with Andrea Riseborough - June 22nd, 2009

Promoting: Mad, Sad & Bad

Venue: 13/1 Cornwall St, Edinburgh, Edinburgh Film Festival

Interview type: One-on-one

ViewLondon (VL): What's the film about and who do you play?

Andrea Riseborough (AR): I play a manic depressive, Shoreditch-type clay sculptor. I'm not sure that's a very good description but Julia is a very fragile, very loving, very naturally artistic soul who happens to be in a relationship with a guy who – they're like yin and yang and I think when you watch the film you think 'How did these two get together?' and one of the things that attracted me to the project was that very fact, because so rarely is it depicted on film how extraordinary couples can be.

VL: Were there any other elements that attracted you to the film and how did you get involved?

AR: Firstly what I was saying before about their relationship being so unique. But I suppose what attracted me to it initially was just reading it and then closing it and thinking 'That is a lovely film'. You know, like, it's incredibly uplifting. It's quite an extraordinary thing because I don't really know where to – what I like about it is that you can't really pigeon-hole it. It's this real independent film but it's like super-uplifting. And it's also really accessible – in a brilliant way, it's accessible to a big audience, but you also can't pin it down.

VL: Was the part written for you?

AR: No, no, no. It was already written and then I think [writer-director] Avie was just really open to finding out who this Julia would be and then I went and met him, we talked about it, we did a bit of work and he offered me the part. And she really grew, or rather, we excavated what he'd already laid down, just as much as possible, to see exactly where all of that came from. And I really liked the fact that Avie wasn't scared to take Julia to this other place. We met so well, I think, in terms of how we perceived Julia. After, we went through a series of improvisations which we did through psychoanalysis, because he's a psychiatrist, so he put us all in therapy as our characters, which was brilliant and then we had group sessions and couple guidance sessions.

VL: What was Avie like as a director?

AR: My relationship with Avie throughout the shoot – and beforehand, in pre-production, when we were improvising – was such a great one. I felt thoroughly supported by him and challenged, you know. Because he has a very good way of noting you, you know, giving you notes, because he's a psychiatrist. So he kind of just cuts to the bone.

VL: Were there any scenes that were cut that you hated to lose?

AR: When you make a film, there are always so many scenes that you do and then they might not get in. Originally, my character ended up with Zubin's character. Or there was a spark, some kind of strange spark, like this repulsion, but ... So there were scenes that we shot, but they didn't work. It works much better this way. But Zubin and I found it hard to let go of this, because we were like, 'But that's what happens!' It's like when you say goodbye to a character - and you don't generally get much time to do it at all because you're straight into the fray with the next thing – and you have to be very good at letting someone very close to your heart just completely go. And you leave them in a certain place and then I saw Zubin somewhere and he was like, 'You know we don't get together in the end?' and we were both like, 'Oh my God!'. Even though we'd finished the film - and actually, in terms of the film, all we want is what's best for the film and we completely trust Avie – it was a strange thing to find out because you just think that that's what's happened to that character and you kind of play out their post-film fantasy in your mind a bit. So we had to reassess our post-film fantasy, but that's fine.

VL: Speaking of the post-film fantasy, how attached do you get to your characters generally?

AR: Like I said, I think you have to really be good at putting them down. I would never say disposing of them, because I think that would be too harsh. And impossible, because so much of yourself is in them – you are essentially your own tool. But there are certain times where I've wanted to have some sort of like mass exorcism, where we all burn them on something like, I don't know, Hampstead Heath, and all the possessions they had and all the thoughts they had. But other times you can learn so much from them. I know it's strange, because I'm talking about them like they're real, but they're so real to you. Some of my characters have introduced me to different things that I never thought that I would like. I've found sympathy or empathy in things that before were completely alien to me.

VL: Like Thatcher? [Andrea played Margaret Thatcher in The Long Road to Finchley]

AR: (laughs) Or I've made a journey to somewhere else in my mind that I would just never have got the chance to go on had I not been an actor. Because it's very specific, particularly being an actor, that you read something and then you become so – it's such second nature to you, to go there, emotionally, to completely surround yourself with it and your mind instantly makes a picture, you know?

VL: Did you take pottery classes and stuff for preparation?

AR: Oh, my flatmate was just at her wit's end – there was clay everywhere. There was clay in the tea, there was clay on the kitchen table, there was clay in the living room. She'd be taking a book out of the library and she'd be like, 'There's clay in the book', I'm like, 'I'm really sorry!' And then I made this little succession of little creatures, clay creatures, that I then proceeded to -when I needed some anger or whatever- these lovingly crafted creatures that I'd then smash up on set with a mallet. But also, with Julia, a lot of music was very helpful, especially the Velvet Underground. And Tracey Emin's Strange Land was a really, really useful book. It changed so many things in my life, that book. It really helped me with the character.

VL: What's your next project?

AR: My next project that I'm doing currently, doesn't have an official name. It's called We Want Sex but it's also called Dagenham Girls. It's me, Sally Hawkins, Miranda Richardson, Bob Hoskins, Rosamund Pike, John Sessions and Danny Mays. And it's about the 1968 petitions for equal pay at the Ford Dagenham factory.

END

Interview with Joel Hopkins, director of Last Chance Harvey - May 26th, 2009

Promoting: Last Chance Harvey

Venue: BAFTA, Piccadilly

Interview type: One-on-one

ViewLondon: It's been six years since your wonderful debut feature, Jump Tomorrow. What have you been doing in the meantime?

Joel Hopkins (JH): I've been trying to get films made, really. Jump Tomorrow did quite well in terms of getting me out there and if anything it did too well in that I got quite a lot of attention and was sent scripts and didn't know what I wanted to do. And then a couple of projects I was attached to, the financing didn't come together, so just in development on projects that didn't quite happen and before you know it, six years have gone by! But I also write, so my bread and butter is that – I've been doing an adaptation of a children's book (The Big Bazoohley, by Peter Carey) for someone and also script work, drafts and rewrites. But all the while, on two levels, one, trying to present myself as a director on someone else's script and two, just trying to write my own thing. And then finally it sort of gelled.

VL: What's Last Chance Harvey about?

JH: Well, the pat answer is that it's never too late to find love. It's a character driven piece and it's these two characters who are very different in some ways but they both, for whatever reason, are at a particular place in their lives where they're kind of stuck and they can't connect with people. And they accidentally collide one weekend and unwittingly provide what the other person needs, in a way.

VL: Where did the idea for the film come from?

JH: It's character driven, so it's basically about finding the characters. When you're creating these things it's very unromantic, the way you construct it. I had an “in” with Emma – I went up for the job of directing Nanny McPhee, which I didn't get, I came second, apparently. But Emma saw Jump Tomorrow and really liked it, so she took a meeting with me and said, you know, 'I'd love us to work together' and I sort of went away thinking, you know, that doesn't happen every day, I should do something with that. So I literally sat down and thought, okay, Emma Thompson, a character that she could play, boom. So I came up with the Kate character and then, okay, love story. And initially, I'd been working on another script with a Japanese character in it, so I thought, 'Okay, I'll just take him from that script and use him here', but it very quickly became about not being able to understand each other and it was a different sort of movie. And I'd been living in America for 12 years, so the whole American thing was a big part of my life and I thought, no, what am I doing, he should be an American. And then suddenly, with the shared language but these lovely nuances, these differences we have, you could have fun with that, so that was the next big key to the puzzle.

VL: At what point did Dustin Hoffman get involved?

JH: Pretty early on. I wrote a ten-page treatment and what I'm very proud of is that the structure of the film from the ten-page treatment is there in the final film. I write treatments that are quite sophisticated. I'm not one of these writers who can start writing and then see where it goes, you know? I have to know exactly what happens, because when I do get stuck on a scene, like I said, I can just write through it, hop over it onto the scene that I'm excited about writing, but I can keep going. Anyway, I wrote a ten-page treatment that I sent to Emma and I think I was hoping that she was going to turn around and say “Joel, I love it, let's write it together”, but she didn't, she said, “This sounds really interesting, I can't wait to read the first draft.” So I then went away and a couple of years went past for whatever reason, other projects, blah blah blah and then I finally saw Emma and Dustin in Stranger Than Fiction and I emailed Emma the next day saying “Remember me, I've still got that project” and she was like, “Yes, of course”, but I knew from the tone of her email, like, okay, I've got to deliver something this time. Anyway, in that email, I said, “What about Dustin for Harvey?” and she said “Brilliant idea, I know him” and so I then wrote the first draft and I sent it to Emma and she sent it on to Dustin so they got on board pretty immediately. So from the actual idea there was a big sort of gap but then when I actually wrote the first draft it all happened quite quickly.

VL: Did you cut anything out that you hated to lose?

JH: Yes. We had a more elongated third act that I had to cut down, basically, the classic sort of 'Okay, let's wrap this up' note. And there were a couple of lovely scenes there that added detail that I would have loved to have kept but in the bigger picture they didn't work.

VL: Do you have a next project lined up?

JH: I don't yet, no. I'm reading scripts as a director and then I'm writing something but it's in the very early stages.

VL: How did you come to use [musicians] Kitty, Daisy and Lewis?

JH: Oh, my music supervisor turned me on to them and they're fantastic. And they drive around in this family hearse they've got with their gear in the back and everything. They're wonderful.

VL: What's Tunde Adebimpe [star of Jump Tomorrow] up to?

JH: Well, on the acting front, he was recently the groom in Rachel Getting Married. But his music career has really taken off - he's in this band called TV On The Radio and they're on their third album, they're huge in the States. David Bowie did backing vocals on one of their songs, he loves them. And I went to a gig here in London and I thought I'd better go and support my friend Tunde, you know, his little band sort of thing and I got there and it was packed to the rafters and they were all shouting “TUNDE! TUNDE!” and I got really possessive and was like, “You don't know him like I do!”

VL: Dustin and Emma have really great chemistry. Were you surprised at how strong the chemistry was between them?

JH: No, I mean, I got an inkling of it in Stranger Than Fiction, I thought they had a nice feel together. I always felt, you know they're obviously physically very different and that for me was part of the attraction but also, in terms of their type, like when they do comedy, I always feel there's a slight tinge of sadness in their comedy and when they do serious stuff or pathos, I always feel there's a bit of playfulness in there, so for me they share this duality or whatever. On paper you think they're very different but actually, if you imagine the marquee, you think, 'Oh yeah, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, that's interesting' and that's been the response I've had when pitching it to people.

VL: It's quite unusual to see a romantic comedy about middle-aged people. Was that part of the appeal of making it?

JH: I think so. I mean, as I said, the genesis or whatever was very mundane, I've got a connection with Emma, let's find something for Emma and Emma is the age she is. But I never sat down and thought, 'Okay, I want to do the romantic comedy for older people' sort of thing. I mean, to be honest, as a writer, older people are so much more interesting to write and they're also a lot easier to write. They've got literally more baggage, they've seen more, they've put up more defences. If the story's about two people coming together and peeling back those layers then older people are just more interesting. I keep getting sent scripts right now, because I've made a romance, I'm getting sent a load of romantic comedy scripts from L.A. and they're all about 20-something girls who are panicking, they're not married yet and they're having this sort of crisis and there's all these people in their late 20s having mid-life crises and I just can't bring myself to sort of worry and care about them. I mean, you know, come on, you're in your late 20s, relax!

VL: Film reviewers often complain about London continuity errors, such as characters walking over Embankment bridge and then there's a cut to them walking towards Embankment bridge on the South Bank. There's a lot of this in your film, so would you like this opportunity to defend that?

JL: (laughs) Well, I'm not making this film just for Londoners and that's the least of my offences in this movie. The one I'm going to get called on and the one I'll defend – the montage of them walking where they start off in Paddington and they end up on the South Bank, I did have a shot where they get on the tube and they come up at Piccadilly Circus, so that was the rationale in my head – they get off at Piccadilly, walk through Trafalgar Square, go down to Embankment and cross over. But I'm not doing my job on other levels if people are complaining about that. I'm asking people to go on a bit of a journey and if they are sitting there going, 'They're going the wrong way!' then something else is not working. The film is riddled with things like that and I'm sure it will distract some people and I'll lose them.

VL: Have you seen any films recently that have inspired you in any way?

JH: I have to say, the last film I saw was Anvil, the documentary. I saw it on the plane and it had me in absolute tears, I was completely moved by it. So I would say Anvil.

VL: Have you considered making documentaries?

JH: I'd love to, yeah. I made one at college as a second year project, we had to make a documentary. There's nothing more emotional than the truth, in a way.

VL: A documentary about Kitty, Daisy and Lewis, may I suggest?

JH: (laughs) There you go. Maybe. They're such an extraordinary group.

END

Interview with Roxanne McKee - December 13th, 2010

Promoting: F

Venue: My house

Interview type: One-on-one (phone)

ViewLondon (VL): What attracted you to F and how did you get involved?

Roxanne McKee (RM): Well, I like horror films – I always have done. I've been keen on them since I was little – I actually used to love, like, all the Freddie films. I don't know – there's something about them, sitting on the edge of your seat and having a shock and feeling the adrenaline rush that's exciting, so to be a part of something like that, I thought would be fun. And it was, it was really interesting to get involved and have all the prosthetics applied. And yeah, it was just nice and it was just a small cameo role so I wasn't ... what's the word? It wasn't going to impinge on my time or anything like that. And it was just – yeah, it was lovely to be a part of it. And I thought it was a good script and that was it. And there were great actors involved as well, like David Scofield and Ruth Gemmell, you know – it's a privilege to be a part of anything like that.

VL: Had you been looking for something like that?

RM: No, I hadn't specifically been looking for horror. I had made a concerted effort to try and look for stuff that was just different when I came out of Hollyoaks, just because that was my reason for leaving Hollyoaks. Because I had a fantastic time there but I wanted to try new things and open up the path a bit for me and see what else was out there and play different sorts of characters. So when this came along it was just something interesting and different.

VL: How did the experience of working on F compare to working on Hollyoaks and other stuff you've worked on?

RM: It's - I mean it's totally different, because when you work on a soap you can do up to like twelve scenes a day, whereas when you work on a film you do like one scene. People don't realise how hard soap work is, so you've really got to give credit where credit's due – soap actors are learning twelve, thirteen, fourteen scenes of an evening and then going in the next day and doing them and then that carries on each day. Whereas with a film you work, say, over a two week period and you might be in three days. You know and obviously for me, with this, I wasn't – you know, it's a cameo role so I'm only in it a small amount, so the filming schedule's a lot lighter. But the nice thing and the thing that's similar is the meeting different crews and making friends with different people and, yeah, establishing friendships. The other thing is, with a soap you establish friendships and then you keep your friendships because you're there a couple of years. But when you're doing jobs sporadically, it's not quite the same – you establish these friendships and then you kind of don't necessarily see people so much again. You maybe see the actors but not always the crew or maybe you go on another job and they're there, which has happened with me recently, which was nice. But obviously you don't have that long-term friendship in quite the same way.

VL: You play the character in the gym, is that right? That prosthetic that you had to wear was pretty hideous. What was that like?

RM: Yeah, it was crazy. It was amazing. That was so enjoyable, because it was so different to anything I've ever had – I mean, I've had bruises applied (laughs) and arm bandages and things like that but never a full-on ripped-off jaw. So I had a whole head-cast applied and that was weird, sitting underneath that and not being able to breathe properly. It was amazing – it was an exciting, really exciting experience and I still have the jaw. But the bloody annoying thing was that when we were all finished up for the night after we'd filmed that scene, it took them a good few hours to remove everything off of me, because I had cuts all over my body, you know, this fake skin that had been applied. I mean it looked amazing – even for me to look at it, I was like, “Jesus!”

VL: It looked really nasty in the film, I agree.

RM: Yeah, well, you know that scene where I die at the end? I couldn't breathe. So I'm crying – because you have to keep your mouth closed, because otherwise you'd see my mouth. And then obviously that wouldn't work, for the fact that the bottom half of the jaw is hanging right down. So I had to keep my mouth closed and then cry and so I couldn't breathe! So I'm not breathing in that last scene. I don't think I've told anyone that yet. I'm not actually breathing. (laughs) So if everyone could really feel for me, that would be great!

VL: I was going to ask what was the hardest scene to film, but I assume that was?

RM: Yeah, the not breathing. And then also when I was crawling along the floor it was really bloody painful, because that was a – you know one of those sticky floors that you can polish? I call it a sticky floor – you know what I mean though. Sort of that shiny floor that you can polish. And I'm crawling along with obviously shorts on – so I've got bare legs and the blood is sticky and sweet, as well, actually – not that I was eating it, but it was obviously in my mouth. So when you're crawling along, you're sticking to the floor and your skin is almost ripping along the floor. So as I'm moving along, that genuinely is painful.

VL: Obviously, the scenes you did are one thing but do you have a favourite scene in the film otherwise?

RM: I do love Finlay Robertson – I just think he's hilarious. I think they all are – they were such a nice bunch of people. I was quite excited when I saw David Scofield and Ruth Gemmell as well, I knew. Let me think. I like the scene where Finlay is on the front desk and he won't let Eliza use the phone – or he lets her use the phone and then he's a bit weird and pervy with her. I find that really funny. I just find all his facial expressions really funny. So any scene with him. NOT the scene where the guy is in the wheelie bin and on fire – that's horrific! That's absolutely horrendous. What else do I like? There's another one with David Scofield that I thought was really good. Oh and I liked the one – you know the other one, the Scottish actor? I worked with him on Lip Service – I didn't actually work directly with him but he was on something else that I did. And I liked the scene with him walking through and shouting. Again, that comic element appeals to me.

VL: I thought it was really interesting that none of the deaths actually happen onscreen.

RM: It was an important part of the film as well. I think that was Johannes's intention. I don't know, actually – I think at the beginning, maybe he wanted that to happen and then he kind of realised, maybe when he was editing it, that it didn't need to happen.

VL: So did they film more of a death scene with you that didn't get used?

RM: No, they didn't. I think there was more – no, I remember Johannes saying that there was more – he didn't want to show the deaths but there was more violence. But certainly not with mine – I mean, with the jaw thing, I don't think you needed any violence. You could see the result. But I think there were more gratuitous moments than were shown, originally, but he chose to keep them out when he edited it because he felt it wasn't necessary and I don't think it was necessary. I mean it was good the way it was – he did a really good job.

VL: How long were you on the film for?

RM: Not very long. It was filmed over night shoots so – I don't know – you film over – you're booked for a certain period of time, say a couple of weeks and then you go in the odd couple of days over those weeks but I don't strictly know how many times I went. A few times, you know, whatever it takes to film a couple of scenes – it's not a huge amount of time.

VL: You don't really interact with anyone else in the cast, do you?

RM: No, I don't. No. Just Ruth and David. Ruth, to me, is one of those faces – she's a jobbing actress and she's somebody that pops up in lots of things and I think she's great. She was really, really nice as well – they all were. A lovely, lovely bunch of actors.

VL: What are you working on at the moment?

RM: I'm working on an HBO drama called Game of Thrones. I'm Doria, the kind of ex-courtesan hand-maiden – actually still kind of working as a courtesan, but you know.

VL: There's a lot of excitement around that. Is that the George R. R. Martin thing?

RM: Yes, it is and I've met him and he's lovely. And it's so exciting. It's so exciting to be a part of such a huge project. And the sets – oh my God, you've got to watch it. It's incredible. It's out of this world. It's amazing, so watch it.

VL: Have you got anything else coming up?

RM: So...no, because that's what I've been contracted to so I will hopefully have other things coming up. Maybe it would be nice to film something in hotter climates next year - that would be good. So I'll keep my fingers crossed and if you could say a little prayer for me, that would be great.

VL: Well, we'll put it in the interview and see if anyone has any Sahara Desert-based projects or something.

RM: Maybe the desert would be a bit too warm, but Morocco, maybe?

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.

Tweets from Christian Marclay's The Clock

Tweets from The Clock

@TimeOutFilm I did 13 uninterrupted hours - 7.20pm till 8.20am, then dozed, watched mid-day then left at 12.15am. Amazing. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 15:28:02 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone in reply to TimeOutFilm

Only 4% phone battery left so signing off now but basically hoping to snooze a bit, catch the high noon shoot-outs then head home. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 08:26:53 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

"THOSE AREN'T PILLOWS!" at 8.22am! #helluvagame #helluvagame #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 08:23:22 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

At this point even Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut has gone to bed. In fact, he went hours ago... #theclock #zzzzzzz

Sun Mar 06 2011 08:20:51 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Hopefully, at some point in the future, Christian Marclay's The Clock will be available on a 24 hour loop on YouTube. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 08:13:33 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Nic Cage movie count just went up by one again but I couldn't place the hair. Might have been Next. #theclock #cagecount4

Sun Mar 06 2011 08:11:43 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

ENOUGH WITH THE ALARM CLOCKS! #theclock #seriouslyitsbeennearlytwohoursofalarmclocks

Sun Mar 06 2011 08:03:10 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Back to the Future opening at 7.55am. Lots of breakfast scenes in general now. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:56:04 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Apologies to those of you waking up to wall-to-wall FilmFan spam in your Twitter feeds this morning... #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:49:53 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Only 10% of phone battery left... #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:44:54 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

If you're in London today, I strongly recommend you catch some of Christian Marclay's The Clock at the Hayward Gallery. Entry = free. Pls RT

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:44:02 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Things I never thought I'd see at 7.39am: Hugh Grant and Julianne Moore in a clip from 9 Months. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:41:24 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

There's no way I can do another 12 hours though... #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:33:15 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

7.30am. I've now been watching The Clock for 12 hours straight. Still not bored. Still not slept. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:31:56 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Great shaving scenes montage at 7.23am. #theclock #christianmarclay

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:24:50 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Really getting a bit fed up of alarm clocks now... #theclock #christianmarclay

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:20:49 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

In 20 minutes I will have been watching The Clock for 12 hours straight. No sleep. #theclock #hardcore #woo

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:11:21 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

It's essentially a 24 hour long montage of film clips but each clip corresponds to the actual minute so film is also a functioning clock.

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:08:25 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

7am weirdly dominated by cuckoo clocks and automated machinery. And shower scenes. #theclock #christianmarclay

Sun Mar 06 2011 07:04:24 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

At this point, I'm starting to resent the people on screen who are still asleep... #theclock #elevenandahalfhoursandcounting

Sun Mar 06 2011 06:45:50 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Turner and Hooch at 6.11am! Yay! #theclock #turnerandlooch (@cassamlooch)

Sun Mar 06 2011 06:13:21 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

6am is also lots of people being woken up by their alarm clocks but they're a bit happier about it than they were at 5am. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 06:06:39 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Nic Cage movie count just went up by one too: Bring Out The Dead. #theclock #cagecount3 #cage

Sun Mar 06 2011 06:05:06 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

It's Groundhog Day! #theclock #groundhogday

Sun Mar 06 2011 06:02:02 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Something really horrible involving a space-age metronome happens at 5.44am. You might want to look away. #theclock #ewww

Sun Mar 06 2011 05:47:40 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Coens count just went up by one. The Big Lebowski at 5.42am. #theclock #lebowski #coenscount4

Sun Mar 06 2011 05:44:20 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Ah. More Vertigo dream sequence (with music this time and much more of it) at 5.38am. #theclock #vertigo

Sun Mar 06 2011 05:42:06 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Charlie Sheen at 5.22am! #charliesheen #charles #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 05:24:39 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Still, I think that's my cue to investigate the all-night cafe... #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 05:22:29 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Vertigo dream sequence (parts of it, anyway - it was weirdly edited with something else and missing the music) at 5.18am! #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 05:21:29 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

This is giving a whole new meaning to the idea of watching the sun come up... #theclock #christianmarclay #gettingabittirednowactually

Sun Mar 06 2011 05:14:56 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

5am is mostly people being woken up by their alarm clocks and not liking it very much. #theclock #christianmarclay

Sun Mar 06 2011 05:04:55 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

I think we're down to about 30 now. The sleepers next to me in the back row gave up and went home. #theclock #hardcore

Sun Mar 06 2011 04:49:50 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Still here... #theclock #christianmarclay (@ Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre) http://4sq.com/gFL6ie

Sun Mar 06 2011 04:40:17 (GMT Standard Time) via foursquare from Southbank Centre, Lambeth

Another recurring "all-nighter": Emilio Estevez in Stakeout. #theclock #emilioestevez #stakeout

Sun Mar 06 2011 04:25:50 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Popular 4-5am activities include: bank-robbing, safe-cracking, breaking & entering, drilling, being in prison. #theclock #christianmarclay

Sun Mar 06 2011 04:24:06 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Might be an emu, actually. #theclock #notanostrich

Sun Mar 06 2011 04:09:16 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Ostrich in bedroom at 4.02am! #theclock #ostrich

Sun Mar 06 2011 04:08:05 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Drop Dead Fred! Again! #theclock #christianmarclay

Another recurring "all-nighter" character: John Cusack in 1408. #theclock #christianmarclay #cusack #343am

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:44:13 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Nic Cage movie count so far: 2. Moonstruck and Leaving Las Vegas. #theclock #christianmarclay #cagecount

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:40:42 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

“@Despirito: @FilmFan1971 http://t.co/5ObPfKf” // Thanks! [Twilight Zone episode identified]

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:34:52 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Lots of creepy dream sequences / nightmares between 3 and 4am. But where's the one from Vertigo? #theclock #christianmarclay

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:33:41 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

@EthanRunt Yes. Lots of people being kept awake by *neighbours* having sex though. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:32:03 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone in reply to EthanRunt

Heh. Kevin Spacey's Mena Suvari / rose petals fantasy sequence at 3.26am. #theclock #christianmarclay #americanbeauty #spectacular

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:30:17 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

RT @existence50 Check this video out -- Christian Marclay mini documentary http://t.co/gZ9w2Dc via @youtube

Sat Mar 05 2011 15:57:55 (GMT Standard Time) via Tweet Button

Retweeted by you

Whatever it is, he's obsessed with it because he thinks he'll die if he lets it run down. Anyone? #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:16:06 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Can someone please tell me the name of the movie with the old man who's obsessed with the clock? Could be a Twilight Zone episode? #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:13:47 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

In contrast to 2am, 3am mostly people trying to sleep, being woken up and saying, "It's 3am - go back to sleep!"

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:11:06 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Drop Dead Fred! #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 03:09:20 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

E.g. Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, Griffin Dunne in After Hours, Steve Martin and John Candy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles etc. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:59:46 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Another thing I like is the continual reappearances of characters from those films where everything happens in one night. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:57:03 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

The sound editing on The Clock is extraordinary. I love the way the sound often spills over from one scene to the next. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:53:27 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

That shit will wake you up, believe me... #theclock #christianmarclay #dali

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:38:30 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

The Dali dream sequence from Hitchcock's Spellbound is used at 2.33am, more or less in its entirety. #theclock #christianmarclay #genius

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:37:19 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

There's about 50 of us here altogether. Some of them are asleep though. Phones on screen keep ringing and waking them up. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:30:09 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Hmmm. If I go home before noon, I'll miss all the gunfights. Might have to rethink... #theclock #christianmarclay #highnoon

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:22:49 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Or sleeping. Lots of sleeping. Lots of sex too. Except for Will Ferrell in Melinda & Melinda. No 2am sex for Ferrell. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:11:01 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

2am largely dominated by people saying, "For God's sake, IT'S TWO O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING!" I know how they feel. #theclock #christianmarclay

Sun Mar 06 2011 02:08:49 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Coens Count: 3. Hudsucker, Miller's, Fink. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 01:56:43 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Ooh, the Titanic is in trouble! #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 01:55:34 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

The three guys next to me all have costs over their heads and are trying to sleep. Lightweights. #theclock #15hourstogo

Sun Mar 06 2011 01:51:13 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

When I said Valentine's Day earlier I meant He's Just Not That Into You. #theclock #CORRECTION

Sun Mar 06 2011 01:35:21 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

In all honesty, I don't think I'll make it through the full 24 hrs. But I feel I should at least do 12 hrs and stay up for Groundhog Day.

Sun Mar 06 2011 01:16:07 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Things I Have Learned From Watching The Clock. 3) Vincent Price is pretty much up to no good 24/7. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 01:07:14 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Things I Have Learned From Watching The Clock. 2) James Bond has several very nice watches and never wears the same one twice. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 01:06:14 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

Things I Have Learned From Watching The Clock. 1) There is no pleasing Joan Crawford, no matter what time it is. #theclock

Sun Mar 06 2011 01:04:47 (GMT Standard Time) via Twitter for iPhone

I hadn't realised there were TV clips in it too. Spotted so far: Matlock, MacGyver, The X-Files, 24 and The Prisoner. #theclock

12:54 AM Mar 6th via Twitter for iPhone

Some very odd films included in #theclock. Like that awful Danny Dyer / Maggie Grace movie and Valentine's Day. #christianmarclay

12:51 AM Mar 6th via Twitter for iPhone

@Phil_on_Film @jigsawlounge I am still here and haven't slept yet! Toilet nearby. Regretting not bringing food... #theclock

12:40 AM Mar 6th via Twitter for iPhone in reply to Phil_on_Film

Yay! Hudsucker! #theclock

11:54 PM Mar 5th via Twitter for iPhone

First NYE party scene: 11.45pm. #theclock

11:46 PM Mar 5th via Twitter for iPhone

Really looking forward to the montage of midnight scenes... #theclock #christianmarclay #genius

11:37 PM Mar 5th via Twitter for iPhone

RT @MarvMarsh @FilmFan1971 Tell them that if they do it again they'll find out what time it is alright: FilmFan time.

11:34 PM Mar 5th via web in reply to FilmFan1971

Uh oh. We've got some overlaughers in... #theclock

11:34 PM Mar 5th via Twitter for iPhone

Most popular time to get murdered: 11.07pm. #theclock

11:09 PM Mar 5th via Twitter for iPhone

It rains a lot at 10.35pm in the movies... #theclock

10:43 PM Mar 5th via Twitter for iPhone

Tweeting from the now empty back row of Christian Marclay's The Clock so no-one can see screen. It's amazing so far. Well worth seeing.

9:39 PM Mar 5th via Twitter for iPhone