You all shot for a few nights on the actual BART platform where this tragedy took place. Can you talk about that experience?
Diaz: It was one of the most intense things. You can still feel the ghosts there, the presence of the pain and violence and fear and everything that went down that night. That day was special. We started off with a prayer. It was powerful.
Talk about the inspiration for this piece.
Anderson: There’s this writer Stefan Zweig, who I had never heard of up until six or seven years ago. I read “Beware of Pity” – which I loved – and I thought about trying to adapt this book. But then I read more of his fiction and I kind of liked many of the pieces, and then his memoir, “The World of Yesterday,” ended up inspiring the whole setting of the movie. So I ultimately decided to do something Zweig-like, instead of adapting only one of them.
The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of The Hateful Eight. Where did the idea for this film come from? Quentin Tarantino: It started because while I didn’t really want to write a sequel to Django, I did like the idea of maybe a series of paperback books like […]
What was your experience working with the author of the memoir on which the film is based?
Oliver Hermanus: The first thing I did, when I was certain I would tackle it, was I met with [author Andre Carl van der Merwe] a few times.
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.
Why did you want to be in this film?
Redford: Because he asked me! In all honesty, I’ve spent many years building an organization to promote independent film, and yet no one has asked me to work in their film.
When did Ip Man first come into your life?
Kar Wai: In 1998, I had a chance to meet with the family of the Grandmaster Ip Man. And they showed me a short film of him – which you can find on YouTube now. His son recorded it just a few days before Ip Man passed away. And you can see that it’s almost like a home movie; he’s very sick and quite thin.
There have been other stories about the cartels and the drug war. Why did you want to tell this particular story?
Denis Villeneuve: For me it’s not a movie about cartels. I don’t think anyone will learn new things about cartels from this film.
The way you build tension throughout the film is incredible. How did you approach that?
n a very organic way, it’s a girl against time. Suspense comes naturally from that premise, by using the DNA of the true story.
You did almost all of the work on this film— what was that experience like?
Jessica Kingdon: I did have a close cinematographer, Nathan Truesdell, and we shot it together. But, yeah, it was very much a film that was coming out of my own mind.
Your relationship with Akira Kurosawa dates back to the beginning of your career. Can you share how you first encountered Kurosawa’s work and what drew you to reimagine it?
Spike Lee: People always assume that this film is a remake of Kurosawa’s High and Low, but it actually began with Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom.
What draws you back to these Western stories? What is it like when you develop a project over the course of many years, as you’ve done here?
Kevin Costner: I think it’s the idea that it’s not a part of Disneyland: it was part of our history.
Can you talk about the decision to set the film in 2013, and why that specific year was the right choice for this story?
Austin Peters: If you think about where we, as a country, were at in 2013… It was such a different time.
Congratulations on this powerful and sensitive film. When did Alexandra Fuller’s book first come to your attention, and what made you want to adapt it and take on so many roles?
Embeth Davitz: I read the book when it came out in 2003, and it just stayed with me.
Can you tell us how you first learned about the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program?
Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin: One night, I was going into the yard, but it got closed down, so everybody got directed to the theater. And while I was in the theater, there was a play going on—One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I believe, with my brother Dino Johnson. I got to witness these brothers doing some creative work that I didn’t expect, because I know them from the yard. I’ve seen them in the yard, I’ve seen them in the gym, I’ve seen them everywhere. But when I see them up on stage, the camaraderie that they had with each other was a beautiful thing to witness and I wanted to be a part of that