When did you first start noticing a disconnect between Yogi Berra’s reputation and the player the stats showed him to be?
Sean Mullin: I think that’s what this was all about. When I started doing the research, I was like, wait, this guy was criminally overlooked.
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.
The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. You chose to make this film fairly soon after Anthony Bourdain’s death. Did your perspective change over the course of shooting? Morgan Neville: Well yes, it changed because there was so much I learned. […]
The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of The Mitchells vs the Machines. This film has been long in the making and is clearly a heartfelt project. Mike, can you tell us how it all started? Michael Rianda: Sony had approached me about making a movie and because […]
Michael, how did the script find its way to you?
It came to me through Arlie [Day], our producer and casting director. What I like to think she saw it in for me was that the great subject of the film was empathy. It’s about how to look at other people’s lives and experiences uncolored by any sense of judgment.
Would you have made the film any other way, looking back?
Having been in this industry for a long time, trying to get movies made is very challenging under any circumstances.
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.”
As a producer on the film, can you talk about the struggles of shooting abroad?
JR: Turns out you can’t just march into Yosemite with some horses and light some fires. It’s a lot tougher to shoot in some of the places we were looking for.
Most of your films are connected to specific real-world locations. How did you approach this film where you created the place of Leisure Land?
Alexander Payne: Well it’s simply what the screenplay required.