It is obvious from the first frame that a tremendous amount of work went into this film, even by the high standards of feature animation. Can you discuss the seven year process?
Tomm Moore: The story development went hand in hand with the art development.
The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Hold Your Fire. The film took place in my old neighborhood—I lived a block and a half from where those events took place, right on the J line. It’s a major intersection, a very busy hub. To me, this is […]
How did you find this story?
David Lowery: It was a true story about this guy whose life was too good to be true in terms of a narrative.
Randall, what gripped you about this story and these characters?
Randall Park: I first read the graphic novel when it came out back in 2007, and I was just mesmerized by it. A lot of that has to do with Adrian’s writing, but also the style of the art.
There’s an incredible attention to detail throughout the film, from the dialog to the set decoration. Could you describe how you approached these aspects of the film?
Robert Eggers: New England was the most literate part of the Western World; you had to teach your children how to read– it was against the law if you didn’t, because you had to read the bible in English.
There’s a lot of complexity there. Did you really see it as love story? I kept questioning whether he loved her.
Absolutely. And her too. How much did she know? She must have sensed something.
How did you two come to work on this project together?
We started working on what we thought would be a triptych, looking at sex, birth, and death on screen from a women’s perspective. We started the one about sex and it was an avalanche of ideas and people and different actors that we wanted to speak with, and that’s really where it began.
Sometimes as a documentarian, you don’t have total control. But it this film you were able to script things and envision scenarios.
Kirsten Johnson: Honestly I was trying to engage in not being in control.
Can you talk about playing someone who is emotionally disconnected or doesn’t show emotion?
Casey Affleck: I don’t often think myself about how much emotion I’m showing in real life.
How did you get on this project? How did it come to you?
John Krasinski: So I was about to start pre-production on Jack Ryan, and some of the producers on Jack Ryan were Platinum Dunes, and they said, “Would you ever act in a genre movie?” And I said, “Oh no, I can’t do that, I don’t do horror movies.”
Can you talk about the germination of this idea, for you?
Jeymes Samuel: The film has been in my head since I was a kid.
How did you translate the stage direction into the performance?
Edgar Wright: When I gave the script to the actors, they had all of the music as well, so they could read the script with the right music playing.
How did the project begin?
David Petersen: So it began at a dog park, where all projects have to start!
What was the process like between you two as you developed the screenplay?
Well the the screenplay developed in a really, to use an overused word, organic way. I knew he was a fine writer. I gave him a premise that I had been sitting on for about a decade. He did the writing, but we developed the story and the feel and the texture of it together.
What was the process of getting in sync with each other? Was there a lot of workshopping or did you wait until the outset to really work out the scenes?
Viggo Mortensen: I don’t think we workshopped anything. When Vicky was doing something that worked really well, I didn’t say much of anything. But when I had a different thought or wanted to try something different, I would say something. But mostly, I thought she always understood the character really well, which was great.