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Q&A with Michael Sarnoski and Vanessa Block

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Pig.

The cinematography was so beautiful and was really enhanced by the sound design. Can you talk about those two aspects?

Michael Sarnoski: Pat Scola was our incredible cinematographer. We got coffee with him right after seeing his reel, and he just does a beautiful job. A lot of people have asked me if this was shot entirely with natural light, but it wasn’t. And Vanessa and I actually asked him if he shot mostly with natural light, and he said “no, but I’m good at making it feel like that,” and he really is! That was something that really drew us to him. He really understood the film and really cared about the film.

Vanessa Block: He also had the really unusual background in both independent film and really big budget commercials. So he had the ability to seamlessly move between those two things and you see it in the work. There is a heightened reality to what he does, but then there’s also a grounded, raw, textured realism in the forest. That meeting of a more stylized look with something intensely naturalistic was something we really wanted and it’s not something that many people can do effectively. He was perfect and in our first meeting he described the pig-napping scene as a oner, with the same visual language that Michael and I had spoken about it prior to—unprompted, he had the same creative vision. It was this moment of alchemy where we realized it was kismet and we had to use this guy.

MS: And we always knew sound was going to be hugely important. The biggest struggle we had was with time. We had a week in the sound mix from creating the design through mixing it fully. Since it was such a tight schedule, we needed to have a really clear idea of what we wanted to do with those scenes.

VB: Finding the marriage for this sonic tapestry between music and sound… Alexis Grapsas and Philip Klein were our co-composers and did an exquisite job, really nailing this meeting between high and low. It was a little bit genre elements of western, kind of noir, but also very sparse, very grounded, very natural. That marriage between their work musically and the sounds of the forest and the sounds of the city, all of these sound palettes were so iconic and representative of the space. It reinforced this movement between realms for our main character. Leaving the sounds of the forest behind, which was silence and crickets and wind in the trees, and then moving into the city, which is very overwhelming sonically with sounds of commerce and machinery, we had to weave the music into that. This film really required a meeting of picture and sound that was really connected and very concerted.

That meeting of a more stylized look with something intensely naturalistic was something we really wanted

Do you think Nicolas Cage’s casting creates an expectation with the film? And if so, did you intentionally subvert those expectations in any way?

MS: I think it does create an expectation. Certainly, people have certain types of films that they associate with Nic Cage. And I think that combination of the basic storyline and then having Nic Cage, I understand why people would think those things. But we never set out to subvert anything. I think if you make a conscious choice to subvert something, or to make a quiet Nic Cage movie, it’s going to ring false. All we set out to do was make the movie we had written and do right by the characters in this world. Baked into that is a lot of subversion, but it’s not for the sake of subverting. We wanted to tell a quiet character story and this was our way into it.

VB: Nicolas Cage came to the process after the script was written, so we wrote the script with no actor in mind. He was brought into the mix via WME and it felt like a really wonderful choice because he’s so talented. But what drew us to him as the character of Rob was all of the amazing quiet character studies that Nic has done over the years. I think people have certain associations with him that don’t always reflect the breadth and scope of his filmography. He’s an actor that really can’t be boxed in and I think this film is reminding people of how incredible his acting chops really are and there’s so much range there that is often forgotten. We definitely didn’t set out to subvert but it ended up being the critical casting piece that really elevates our film to something even more interesting because of that expectation and the mythic proportions he exists in. It becomes even more interesting that it’s played by a person who carries so much weight.

MS: I think people imagine we had to rein him in to make him do smaller stuff. But he really understood the script. He just got it. He really understood the character, he really related to the character, he liked how quiet it was… it wasn’t like there was some bigger version that we had to whittle down. He just really embodied that character. I don’t think he thinks of his acting in the way some audiences do, like this is going to be a big Nic Cage film or a small Nic Cage film. He thinks of it as, I’m doing this character and I’m going to do it right, and really did it right with Pig.

Being an independent production, did you face a lot of hurdles making this film?

VB: We’re making a movie here so nothing can be easy! It’s always protracted and riddled with challenges and this one was no different. It was a very challenging production. You would think that Nic Cage’s involvement would catalyze everything, but we ran into issues all along the way. We had so many locations and so few days to shoot. This was a twenty-day shoot. We had a number of secondary characters that we needed to work with to get performances. Luckily we were able to rely on Nicolas Cage always bringing his A game because he’s so incredibly focused and he always showed up with grace and knowing the role he was playing. It was a very ambitious shoot and every step of the way presented its own unique challenges. The pig was untrained! We couldn’t afford a properly trained movie pig. Michael and I went on some early financing trips prior to the film… it was important to us to meet a lot of people in the local restaurant scene and get a texture of this place in a very thoughtful and purposeful way. In those trips, we toured a bunch of pig farms and pig breeders to find our perfect pig, and Brandy—who we ended using in the film—was the cutest pig we were able to find, but it was tough because she wasn’t trained. She bit Nicolas Cage a few times, and me as well!

MS: But it worked out. We found out if you just put food in certain places, they’ll learn. Nic tried; he had a day where he went out and spent time with the pig and got to know her but it came down to food most of the time. Pigs are smart enough that they know if they do something, eventually they’ll get food. So she was willing to play by those rules.

Q&A with Adam McKay

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Don’t Look Up.


How did you arrive at the very specific tone of the film?

Adam McKay: It was always going to have comedic elements to it. But in the editing process, the tone was very tricky. So we were constantly dialing it up and down and sideways… and kind of tweaking it. It was always going to be funny and have satyrical undertones to it, but in the end — once we really started finding the right kind of rhythm and feeling to it — parts of it got a lot funnier.

the President of the United States did legitimately float the idea of ingesting bleach

Is it true that you had to go back into the script during the pandemic and make it 15% crazier?

AM: I’ve always felt that this time that we live in is such a strange mixture of feelings. I was saying the other day that it’s sort of like living during the peak of the Cuban missile crisis while at the same time being in the greatest time-share presentation ever. So you’re being sold to constantly, yet there are these seismic, massive issues that are going on. Obviously I wrote the script before covid and the pandemic, and then was kind of gobsmacked at how crazy some of the reactions got to a really serious situation. So I did have to go back and tweak the script. And it wasn’t anything major— it was certain lines of dialog, the comet-denial was always in the script, but I pushed that a little bit further, along with some of the reactions from the President and the powers that be. Yeah, it was an interesting thing to try to do! And then once we started screening the movie (it’s a pretty wild one, obviously)… We did a couple test-screenings (for vaccinated, distanced audiences) and they would sort of react as if the movie was too crazy! And it became this very interesting exchange between how people are viewing reality versus how reality really is (how strange reality really is), and what the common experience of that is for a movie audience. It was definitely like no other movie I’ve worked on, and I’ve worked on some movies that play with tone quite a bit! But this was the most challenging. For example, regardless of who you voted for… the President of the United States did legitimately float the idea of ingesting bleach (on national television) to deal with covid. Once a moment like that happens… where are you, exactly, in terms of your relationship with reality? It was strange, because we were sort of working the movie itself while working the audience’s connection with the movie, while dealing with our own experience of reality. All I can say is, thank God my editor Hank Corwin is brilliant and very very patient.

Your films always involve some degree of improvisation. How did that work in this instance?

AM: Everyone knows the way I work, I like a lot of improv. But Jonah may have improvised one of my favorite moments in any movie I’ve ever done, which is his “prayer for stuff,” towards the end of the movie. He did one take where he threw out the idea and I was like, “Jonah, you have to do that.” And sure enough, it ended up becoming one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Talk about summing up an era! “There are a lot of people out there praying for people, and I commend that… but I want to say a prayer for stuff. Dope apartments, sick cars…” I was on the floor. When it comes to Jonah, you go back and forth but ultimately you trust his instincts, they’re always so good.

There are several cathartic moments in the film that just feel great for the audience, and really leave a lasting impression. Can you talk about those scenes?

AM: I had the same feeling when we were filming those scenes. And it really made me think about the fact that, God, everything we encounter these days is so poll-tested and focused-grouped… and that everyone… when you hear from our leaders, when you look at the way people express themselves, it’s all being filtered through some sort of degree of, “what will play? What will not play?” And we’re so used to a kind of particular cadence. You can hear it when you listen to debates or when you listen to our leaders speak. They speak in this way that has a certain tone, because that’s become the accepted way to “communicate” with a mass-audience, and that style has poll-tested very well. And the same thing, to some degree, applies to broadcast journalism, by and large. When we filmed those scenes, there was such a release… you could feel it even from the crew, when Leo [DiCaprio] cut loose, when Jen [Lawrence] cut loose, we were all hungry for a degree of real, honest, emotions and real anger and real fear. Real righteousness. Usually when you film, you hope to have some of the feeling of what’s going to end up being in the final cut. But in those instances, we felt it on the days we shot them, too. It was exciting for us.

Q&A with Asghar Farhadi

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of A Hero.


What was your writing process like, as this idea has been with you for a while?

Asghar Farhadi: When I was developing the concept of this idea in my head as a student, I was never thinking about writing a story. That only happened a couple of years ago. The writing process was the same as in the other movies I’ve made, which is writing in my heart—I let my subconscious work and I write anything that comes into mind. The main part of my writing process is my subconscious part. After that, I just have to find a way to put all those parts together and make sense of it. I always start with the story, and then the characters open up. I feel like it’s the story’s narrative that reveals who the characters are… I have to find the different points of the story, put the characters in those points, and that’s where you find the characters. It’s like the ropes that people put clothes on to dry; hanging the clothesline is the beginning of the film, and at that point I have to have the start point and the end point before putting the clothes on. Now that I have this rope, I know how many clothes I can put on it. And those clothes for me are the different scenes in the film.

I wanted to make a film that looks like it has no script, no cinematography… that looks like real life

The characters in the film feel so natural, and the family dynamic is so strong. How did you work to create that environment?

AF: This comes from our lives in Iran as well. Especially with the people from the smaller towns, like me. Family is very important. Something notable of these kinds of families is that we don’t have the concept of “this is just your problem.” Everyone’s problem is everyone’s problem. That’s the key to the problem of this family; when an issue comes up, everyone gathers together to solve it and sometimes that actually causes more problems! When we talk about families, the children are part of those families, and in most of my movies, the children are the observers in the fights amongst the adults. They are more involved from an emotional perspective. This is my first film where the child actors are involved, and at the end of the film, they have questions. The last question that comes up in the film is a question from a child. She asks, “what is the prison like?”.

Can you talk about the cinematography?

AF: It follows a pattern, like other parts of the film. I wanted to make a film that looks like it has no script, no cinematography… that looks like real life. Making a movie that way is so hard because you have to do so much stuff to make sure no one sees those aspects. I worked on the lines and the dialogue for many months to make sure that it feels like there’s no writer, director, or actors saying those words. The second pattern is the character traits—who are these characters? In this film, our main character is a very simple man who is in a very complicated situation. I try to show the simplicity of this man in the camera movements as well. We don’t have any complicated camera movements in the film. We don’t have any compositions that really draw attention to themselves, that show off. This also comes from the heritage of Eastern art. It’s said this is the highest level of making art. Basically, when the audience would look at art, they didn’t want them to think about the creator of the piece, but the piece itself. Many of the art pieces that we are looking at right now, we are thinking about the person that created them. That creates a gap between the viewer and the piece itself. That’s why I try with this movie, and with all my movies, to make sure that the directing and all other aspects are as if it’s just life happening, that’s how it is.

I love how you introduce our “hero” who arrives at the excavation site in a beautiful continuous shot as he goes up and up. Then we meet his girlfriend as she comes down. Can you talk about approaching these shots?

AF: I’ll try to explain a bit, though I don’t love explaining this stuff! When he gets out of the car to walk the monuments, he’s very close to the camera, like a very big man, like a hero. But as he goes further down towards the monument, he becomes so small that we can’t even see him anymore. That’s the summary of the whole movie, of what happens to him throughout the film. In the next scene, same thing. He goes all the way up to the monuments and comes down right away, more foreshadowing. For me, it wasn’t just about the main character, it’s that this couple is coming down together. It’s a very simple story of a couple going up and then they’re going to fall down. But even if the viewer doesn’t get this subtext, they won’t miss anything while watching the film. Basically, there is no meaning behind these choices, but there is a feeling they add—when you watch these scenes, you feel something. Because these are realistic films, you can’t really say there’s symbolism behind everything, but we can call these things signs. The difference between symbols and signs is that the signs have to be in the movie continuously and when they repeat, they start to gain meaning. For example, in the movie, we keep seeing stairs. The repetition of that creates a feeling for the viewer.

How did you use social media as a factor in the film? Many of the major plot points are revealed through it.

AF: This wasn’t my idea initially. I wasn’t planning to make a movie where part of it was about social media. To be honest, when I was writing this script, I didn’t think that was going to be much of the focus. It comes into play because when a character goes off into society, it’s a part of our everyday lives. There were a lot of voices that were silent before, and now we can hear those voices. It has lots of good aspects, especially for countries like Iran. At the same time, it also has some dark points to it and we haven’t found a way to solve those yet. I think social media can be too concise, and being too concise can cause misunderstanding and fuel anger. Just imagine they say someone in a metro killed eight people, but they say this in fifteen words. Saying that in fifteen words can cause a lot of misunderstanding. And although we find about the news and what’s happened, there’s a lot of gray areas that we don’t see.

Q&A with Amir “Questlove” Thompson

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)


You start on Musa Jackson, and just in that opening scene, the emotion on his face signals to the audience that they’re about to have an intense experience. Can you talk about the decision to begin the film that way?

Questlove:  I will say that the emotional core of the film — the heart of the film, especially with the interviews — those were actually candid, unplanned moments. And in the case of Musa Jackson, he was one of our very first interviews. And when he came into the building, I thought to myself, “wait… this guy’s younger than I am!” And we checked— we said to ourselves, “wait a minute— 57 years old?! What kind of emotional depth would a five year old even have, to take it all in?” So, initially, we were sort of like, “alright… well, let’s get this guy out of the way and then we’ll get to the folks who were teenagers at the time and who were there for Sly and the Family Stone.” We thought that was going to be our goldmine. We just had Musa talk with absolutely no context whatsoever: we didn’t show him any footage, any photos, or anything else. You know, just as a precautionary measure (because I knew, even for myself, not even believing this event had happened… they had to convince me that this happened when they first pitched it to me), since I knew there was nothing available online about this concert, until we announced the movie. But back in 2017, there was almost literally zero about this concert online. We just asked, “what do you remember from it?” Kind of expecting that his answers would be a quick ten minute recap: “Aw, I was five years old… I don’t remember too much…” And he started out by saying that this was his very first life memory. At the age of five. And when he started describing everything to a T, he started describing scenes that we knew no one was aware of and that we had actually just gotten processed and viewed three or four days ago (it took five months for us to transfer the film over)… so he was talking about things that have never been seen in the last fifty years. And we started looking at each other, like, “Ok: He was definitely there. And, he’s telling the truth!” And then it just so happened that we had The 5th Dimension footage. And we showed it to him, and when he started tearing up, I realized… oh wow. This is much more than just, “I remember going to this thing.” This is our chance to give him back his life, in some sense. Because imagine… even the way I put feelers out on social media when we were looking for interview subjects was sort of like (I couldn’t imagine anyone 75-80 years old being on social media)… I just said, “hey, do you have that crazy uncle who always tries to tell you that story about how he once saw Stevie Wonder and the Staples Singers, in Harlem, at a festival that was kinda like Woodstock?” It was almost like no one believed anybody when they said that they went to this thing. They just thought you were a liar. So for us, to get that emotional outpouring from Musa Jackson, instantly told me on the first day that this isn’t just about a concert. We’re about to give people validation, we’re about to give people their memories back. Even when we’re talking at the very end— I thought the cameras were off. I just wanted to tell him, “wow, man… we felt your emotions.” I am so glad the camera was still rolling, because we had wrapped by that point, you know?

it’s my destiny to tell this story

As a first-time director, it must have been daunting to be handed this treasure of never-before-seen footage. How did you tackle that?

Q: Here’s the deal: Once they came to me with tangible evidence that this event actually happened, and that there was film (over forty hours)… think of the opening credits of The Flintstones where she puts that rack of ribs on the car and the car just falls over. That what it was like to get forty hours of this footage! And, you know, I had a five to six month period just to absorb it before we even started figuring out what we were going to do with it. So my whole thing was like… in my bedroom, my kitchen, my bathroom… I had monitors all over my house, and I kept the footage playing on twenty four hour loop. Even when I was asleep, I’d wake up and check in to see where they were in the show. During those five months, on that twenty four hour loop, if something gave me goosebumps, or made me stop what I was doing (because I didn’t want to do the thing where, you know, “for three hours I’ll watch… I’ll take notes… I’ll watch some more,”), because then it would have been a real task. It would have been a job. So for me, it was keeping it on twenty four hour loop and if something magic happened, I looked and I took a note. And when I had thirty of those goosebump moments, then I figured, “ok, we have a foundation to stand on.”

Can you tell us about when you found the concert footage? Was there an “ah-ha” moment?

Q: It actually started when The Roots first went to Tokyo Japan, my translator took me to a restaurant called The Soul Train Café. And they’d show different Soul documents and what not on monitors all over the place, as you ate. And unknowingly, I watched ten minutes of the Sly and the Family Stone footage, thinking to myself, “this must be at the Montreal Jazz Festival.” Like, I thought it was some foreign, outdoor jazz festival. So, cut to twenty years later. My two producers (Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein) got a note to the woman who is my manager now, but she was my assistant then… they got a note to her saying, “we want to meet with Questlove about this Black Woodstock event.” And, you know, being the music snob that I am, I immediately got defensive: “I’m the all-knowing Questlove; what concert event!?” I really didn’t believe them. I was calling Nelson George: “You know about some so-called festival that happened in Harlem, with Stevie Wonder…?” Googling it… and there really wasn’t anything out there. And we live in an age where, you know, if it’s not on the internet it didn’t happen. It took about three weeks for them to convince me to take a look. And when they finally brought in the hard drive, that’s when I had all the fear in my heart! I asked them, “do you really want a first-time driver taking this eighteen-wheeler across the country to tell this story?” And I’ll say that, for me, this film did a lot for me personally as a human being, and helped me to recognize my place as a storyteller. Because apparently everyone knew that I had the knowledge and the wherewithal to do this film except for me! So it took me about three months to not duck calls, and to really accept that the fact that it’s my destiny to tell this story. And I’m really glad I did it because I was so scared in the beginning. 

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW ANNOUNCES 2021 AWARD WINNERS

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THE NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW NAMES 2021 HONOREES

New York, NY (December 2, 2021) – The National Board of Review announced today their 2021 honorees, with top awards including Licorice Pizza for Best Film; Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Director for Licorice Pizza; Will Smith for Best Actor for King Richard; and Rachel Zegler for Best Actress for West Side Story.

NBR President Annie Schulhof said, “In a moment of transition and uncertainty, there is nothing like Licorice Pizza to remind us of the joy, hope, and exhilaration that great cinema can inspire.  The NBR is honored to award the movie as its Best Film of 2021, as well as its brilliant creator, Paul Thomas Anderson, and all of our other awardees.”

The 2021 awards continue the NBR’s tradition of recognizing excellence in filmmaking, which was established in 1909.  This year 221 films were viewed by a select group of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, professionals, academics, and students, many of which were followed by in-depth discussions with directors, actors, producers, and screenwriters. Voting ballots were tabulated by the accounting firm of Lutz & Carr, LLP.   

The National Board of Review’s awards celebrate the art of cinema, with categories that include Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Actress, Best Original and Adapted Screenplay, Breakthrough Performance, and Directorial Debut, as well as their signature honors the Freedom of Expression Award and Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography.  

Below is a full list of the 2021 award recipients, announced by the National Board of Review:

Best Film: LICORICE PIZZA
Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, LICORICE PIZZA
Best Actor: Will Smith, KING RICHARD
Best Actress: Rachel Zegler, WEST SIDE STORY
Best Supporting Actor: Ciarán Hinds, BELFAST
Best Supporting Actress: Aunjanue Ellis, KING RICHARD
Best Original Screenplay: Asghar Farhadi, A HERO
Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel Coen, THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
Breakthrough Performance: Alana Haim & Cooper Hoffman, LICORICE PIZZA
Best Directorial Debut: Michael Sarnoski, PIG  
Best Animated Feature: ENCANTO
Best Foreign Language Film: A HERO
Best Documentary: SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) 
Best Ensemble: THE HARDER THEY FALL 
Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel, THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH
NBR Freedom of Expression Award: FLEE

Top Films (in alphabetical order)

Belfast
Don’t Look Up
Dune
King Richard
The Last Duel   
Nightmare Alley
Red Rocket
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story

Top 5 Foreign Language Films (in alphabetical order)

Benedetta
Lamb
Lingui, The Sacred Bonds
Titane
The Worst Person in the World

Top 5 Documentaries (in alphabetical order)

Ascension
Attica
Flee
The Rescue
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

Top 10 Independent Films (in alphabetical order)

The Card Counter
C’mon C’mon  
CODA
The Green Knight
Holler
Jockey
Old Henry
Pig
Shiva Baby
The Souvenir Part II

ABOUT THE NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW
Since 1909, the National Board of Review has dedicated its efforts to the support of cinema as both art and entertainment. Each year, this select group of film enthusiasts, filmmakers, professionals and academics of varying ages and backgrounds watches over 250 films and participates in illuminating discussions with directors, actors, producers and screenwriters before announcing their selections for the best work of the year.  Since first citing year-end cinematic achievements in 1929, NBR has recognized a vast selection of outstanding studio, independent, foreign-language, animated and documentary films, often propelling recipients such as Peter Farrelly’s Green Book and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road into the larger awards conversation. NBR also stands out as the only film organization that bestows a film history award in honor of former member and film historian William K. Everson. In addition, one of the organization’s core values is identifying new talent and nurturing young filmmakers by awarding promising talent with ‘Directorial Debut’ and ‘Breakthrough Actor’ awards as well as grants to rising film students and by facilitating community outreach through the support of organizations such as The Ghetto Film School, Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, and Educational Video Center. With its continued efforts to assist up-and-coming artists in completing and presenting their work, NBR honors its commitment to not just identifying the best that current cinema has to offer, but also ensuring the quality of films for future generations to come.   

Join the conversation @NBRfilm

Contacts:

SLATE PR
Andy Gelb / Shawn Purdy / Julia Rossen
(212) 235-6813
andy@slate-pr.com / shawn@slate-pr.com / juliar@slate-pr.com