Archives

Q&A with Peter Cattaneo and Steve Coogan

Posted on by

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

When you were first pitched this story, what really clicked for you? Was there a moment or scene that really convinced you that you wanted to make this?
Peter Cattaneo: Well, it’s based on a memoir, and I think what felt really exciting was that you would never dream up this set of facts. It’s a real story in a particular time and place, and there’s this friendship with a penguin: it’s interesting what animals can do to humanize human beings. And then there is this idea of this kind of walled piece of Britain sort of landing like an alien spaceship in the middle of Argentina! It just felt like a really heady mixture to dig into as a filmmaker.

Steve Coogan: When Jeff [Pope] first described the project to me, my initial reaction was, “I don’t want to be in a cute penguin movie. It sounds horrific.” But I talked to him more and more about it. I thought, “well… maybe.” And I thought about how if you don’t want to do something, sometimes that’s a sign that you should do it. And I thought, well, I’m kind of a little cynical, so let’s make him super cynical, a bit more cynical than the real Tom Michelle. Let’s make him someone who doesn’t like penguins or animals and is cynical about his own existence, basically. And then we’ve got a little journey to go on and with the penguin. So at that point I was like, “okay, this sounds like it could be fun.”

What is really brave is to feel the fear and still do the right thing


I understand that the story changed a little bit from the book?
PC: Yes, that’s correct. The Michell in the book was in his mid to late twenties. But the story of the penguin coming to the school as kind of a catalyst for good and hope was very much in the book. There was only a little bit of the political situation, but of course the truth is that wall around the school did keep it quite protected from what was going on outside. So the key things that developed from the book to the screen were making him older, and making the political element more prominent. The politics felt like they were sort of underserved in the book, and it felt very difficult to do a film set in Argentina in 1976 without building that out more. Like, we either needed to change the time period, or we had to deal with it. And then of course we’re not saying it’s an in-depth study of all sides of that conflict. Of course it’s not. We just felt we couldn’t make a film which didn’t at least deal with it in some way.

Did having so much professional experience with the screenwriter allow you to have conversations with him that you wouldn’t normally be able to have as you were preparing the role?
SC: Yes, absolutely. Because I’ve written several films with Jeff, and I always meddle with what he’s done. I mean, I’m going to be saying the stuff that he’s written, and so we just… by our very nature, we sort of collaborate that way.

PC: It was kind of exciting because I love the work those guys had done together before, and it was funny just to overhear them saying stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear between an actor and a writer, like, “no, that’s shit.” Things like that!

SC: Well, the thing is when, when you know someone really well… I know Jeff well enough that I don’t… it can save a lot of time. Because normally, when you’re trying to tell someone that you don’t like something that they’ve done, you have to do a dance around the politics of it so you don’t get canceled for bullying them. Whereas Jeff and I just say, “that’s crap.” And, and we know each other so well that we don’t take it personally. We just sort of say, “that’s terrible. I don’t like that.” “Why?” “Because of this.”

Did you anticipate how relevant this story would be to the time it’s being released?
PC: No, not at all. We were just talking about that. I think being European, and having my parents who lived through… my dad left Italy to get away from fascism. So I think we are very aware. Personally, my fascism radar is very, very hot. Um, so suddenly, yeah, it feels quite relevant to what’s going on, and not just here, it’s globally. But yes, that’s coincidence, really.

SC: I think the thing that resonates with me right now is the importance of not being cynical. It’s so easy to feel this cynicism in the face of a nihilistic world… it’s quite an easy place to live in, to wash your hands of it all and just not engage. I mean, I’m, I’m as guilty of it as anyone else: I’m just going to check out, which is what my character is doing in the film, when we first meet him. But then he is humbled by young people who have a conscience. That was key, I think. Just the notion of, you know, that you can’t save the world, but you can be nice to the people you meet. You can try and make a difference within your vicinity, within your immediate world. You can make a difference. You can choose to be cruel or kind at certain times in your life. And that will have some sort of ripple effect. We usually think of bravery as being bullish and not feeling fear. But to me, that doesn’t seem to be real strength of character. What is really brave is to feel the fear and still do the right thing. That is the noblest thing I think a human being can do is do – the right thing, even though it might seem futile.

Q&A with Gints Zilbalodis and Matiss Kaza

Posted on by

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

What is it like finally bringing a film into the world after you’ve been working on it for close to five years?

Gints Zilbalodis: Well, I finished the film like days before going to Cannes. It was a very stressful few weeks get it to the finish line. And I hadn’t even seen it with an audience, only with the team, which is not a very objective audience. It’s been very intense, and very strange, sitting in a room by yourself for such a long time and then going to twenty or thirty places and meeting crowds of people. But it’s cool. And it’s being distributed widely. I think it’s the most widely distributed Latvian film, which we’re very happy about.

Matiss Kaza: We’re very proud that this movie can represent Latvian and Baltic Cinema on a larger scale because these countries are sometimes ignored by the bigger festivals. That’s because they don’t have like something like a wave associated with them, like Romania had in the 2000s or something like that. What we’re hoping for is that this will be the first of many films from the Baltics to get noticed internationally. I hope that this can start a new movement in that direction and that people will pay attention to movies from our region. And for me, it’s the first animated film I produced and co-wrote, so everything is new. But that’s what’s interesting. And we’ve made some mistakes along the way, but now we know what not to do next time!

The animals need to have agency

If you made mistakes, I didn’t see any. It’s remarkable that it’s your first animation. Tell us more about that.

MK: My experience before this film was mostly live action and documentary films—directing, writing, and producing. Gints initially asked me to come on board this project as a co-writer. We worked on the script, and he initially didn’t trust me to produce this film because I’d only produced live action and documentary, and animation is something different. And it is different in the sense that, for example, live action features are extremely chaotic and hectic for the shooting period of maybe thirty or forty days if you’re lucky, right? Whereas this is very calm, but very long. It’s five years, but you can always go back and change something or tweak it if it doesn’t work.

GZ: It’s not at all calm.

MK: Well at the end it wasn’t, but for the most part of the five years it was very calm.

GZ: For you, maybe!  

I read some interviews that you’ve done and it’s remarkable that everybody, it seems, has this desire to interpret the film for you or to hear your interpretation of the film. And I understand that there’s no dialogue, no humans, it’s a cryptic piece in some ways. And I’m wondering how you as filmmakers react when people ask you those questions?

GZ: Yeah, I guess it’s a little bit like asking a comedian to explain why a joke is funny. I often try to explain not the meaning, but how these scenes came together and my intention. I do like to leave some things open. It’s very interesting that some people are very sure that it’s about a certain thing. I never say that it’s not; I allow them to think that. It’s ambiguous because there were certain things that I didn’t care as much about. The things I care about and wanted to focus on are quite clear and definitive, which are the characters and the relationships. I didn’t want to explain the backstory, I didn’t want to waste time doing that, or leaving the cat’s perspective, which would maybe be required to explain certain things. It was important to stay in the cat’s subjective point of view, because the cat doesn’t know where the people went or where the flood came from. That’s where I wanted the audience to be.  

Matiss, as a producer, how is it different talking about the project now than how it was years ago.

MK: Well, now we can show a lot. Back then we had limited material to show. We had the development teaser, and afterwards we had an animatic, but that is also not true to what the final film is. But this is a film that’s better to experience firsthand than to have to listen to someone describe it. When I talk about it now, there’s lots of stuff I can reference. There are also fun anecdotes that I can talk about from the production process because of the unusual approach to a film about animals. In the sense that, it’s kind of opposed to say the Pixar or DreamWorks style of having animals walk on two legs, talk, dance, and sing. There are a few anecdotes that go with creating a movie where the animals behave like animals. They’re semi-anthropomorphized, of course, but still behaving mostly like animals. The French co-producer had to pay people to watch cat videos to do research for the film. And capybara videos! Because many of the shots use footage of animal behavior to make it more naturalistic. And then of course, there’s the story of voicing the animals. Gints, maybe you want to share that fun anecdote?

GZ: There are real animal voices. We didn’t use humans mimicking animals. Our sound designer would try to record his cat. And his cat would actually talk a lot, but whenever he pointed the microphone towards the cat, he would get self-conscious. Such a cat. He had to hide microphones in his closet. It’s interesting because cats actually have different voices. We couldn’t use different cats—they’re very distinctive. For the most part, it’s one cat. Also, with the capybara, our sound designer tried to make it vocalize something, but they’re very silent. So they had to tickle the capybara to make some noise. But that was a very unpleasant sound. It was a very high pitched, kind of anxious voice, which didn’t fit this character. That’s an example where we had to take some artistic liberties. And we cast a different animal! It’s actually a camel that’s voicing the capybara. Sometimes if you represent reality exactly as it is, it can take you out of the moment. Sometimes fiction can be more real than reality.

He sounded just like I thought he would! You guys had to tickle a capybara? Where can we watch this footage?

GZ: I don’t know, it was in France.

MK: See, that’s one of the mistakes we’re going to not make! We’re going to have a lot of behind the scenes footage for the next one.

I love watching the film because I never feel that there’s a rigid set of rules about how the animal must do things. Did you have any internal compass about how they’re going to act compared to real life animals?

GZ: We didn’t have any rules for that. I thought in the beginning of the film that they should act in a rather naturalistic way. And that’s a word that we used, naturalism rather than realism, which means that we’re not copying real life, we’re interpreting it and kind of telling a story. But as the story grows, we gradually have to have them make decisions, because the way we understand these characters is through the behavior and the decisions they make. The animals need to have agency. They can’t just stay in the boat. I wanted them to have complicated decisions where there’s no easy answer.

We also did look at similar situations where they might push something or behave in a similar way. Even for small moments. We would look for references of them just turning their heads or the ear movements. I didn’t know that cats actually don’t move their eyes a lot. They just look around with their heads, and they might just turn their ears, which can be very expressive. We’re telling a story, a personal story, so the behavior of the animals starts out with them being kind of archetypical, or kind of the stereotypical. You’ve got the happy dog and the grumpy cat, and that’s how I start, but then I try to break the stereotype and have them act in contradictory ways, which makes them more interesting. I wanted each of them to be relatable as well, and hopefully they’re flawed in their own way, but there are no antagonists. There are only flawed characters.

Except for that one bird!

GZ: Yeah, but even the bird was just trying to protect its little bird.

This is your second feature, but the first film you’ve done with such a large crew. Can you talk about making that leap?

GZ: It was intentional to tell a story about that experience of me figuring out how to work together, but we wrote the story before production. There was a lot of anxiety, and I was predicting a lot more conflict than we actually ended up with. The process was much smoother than what we see on the screen with the characters fighting and arguing. They say write what you know, but I thought I should write something that I was going through at that time. It’s not something in the past. I had to figure out how to articulate my thoughts, because before I could just have an idea and visualize it myself. This time I had to find words, which can be helpful in making it more intentional. But it also can be tricky because I tried to avoid over explaining certain things. In certain moments, I had to ask the crew to trust me that it’s going to work when we put the music in and when it’s animated. But I can’t really explain certain things. There are certain moments where it was easier for me just to show my intention. We didn’t have storyboard artists, and I designed the shots myself. In those cases, it’s easier and faster just to show rather than explain it to someone else because, also, sometimes I didn’t know what I wanted. It’s a process of discovery. I have to try different things and see if it works. I can’t explain certain things which I don’t know myself. That’s also why I’m doing the music. Because music is so subjective—it could be interpreted very, very differently. I do the music while writing the script, which kind of gives me ideas for the story. But then we brought on another composer, Rihards Zalupe, who has a lot more experience than me and added more layers to the score.

But it was nice not worry about the technical aspects as much as I used to, since we could delegate to other animators. And there are many things that I couldn’t do myself, like the water, which technically is really complicated. It’s for people much smarter than me.

Q&A with Bong Joon Ho

Posted on by

The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Mickey 17.

This is a wonderfully imaginative film that has so much to say. Can you talk about your adaptation process?

Bong Joon Ho: So I first read a ten page treatment of the novel, and I was just immediately fascinated by the concept of human printing. I had this desire to continuously print out an actor that you kind of feel sorry for! The concept of “human printing,” it’s like two words that should never really be combined. Printing out human beings as if they are pieces of paper…and already the idea encompasses so many different sorts of emotional and ethical issues. And so I started thinking what would it be like, for me to be printed out? What would it be like to watch someone that I love or know get printed out from this printer? I found it quite sad and funny. So before thinking of it as a sci-fi tale, I found it to be a very human story where you can almost smell the pit stains of the characters in that world, and that’s what I was trying to go for, which is why I changed a lot from the novel. In the original novel, Mickey’s character, he’s more of an intellectual. He’s a historian. And with Timo (played by Steven Yeun), he’s more of this, like, popular hotshot guy. But I wanted Timo to be more of a grifter from the streets, and I wanted to bring everyone down to reality and even make the timeline closer to our own.

I think we all have a 17 inside of us

Can you talk about the design of the ship? There is a sort of central bubble where the working class exists, and there is a whole different section for those in control.

BJH: So the production designer and I talked a lot about how when you go to these luxurious department stores and hotels, everything seems fancy and sleek. But the minute you open the door to the employee-only places, then you see pipes hanging from the ceilings and the floors are rough, and the atmosphere of this space changes instantly. And most of the ship, I guess, is the staff-only place. Marshall and Ylfa’s rooms are the only exception in the spaceship: for them, it’s opulent, and you see these weird art pieces displayed. And everyone else has these dingy rooms that are like those staff-only places. And then you have Ylfa making her sauces in her luxury rooms!

Was that an invention on your part? Where did that come from, about the sauces?

BJH: In the novel, we only have Marshall. So the character of Ylfa is a creation that I added, and I added her because, you know, historically we’ve seen dictators move as couples and they feel even more ridiculous and more horrifying when we see them do that. Kind of like the Ceaușescu couple from Romania back in the day.

Of course reprinting oneself is a crazy act and it requires an incredibly versatile actor to pull off, like Robert Pattinson. Can you talk about developing the characters of Mickey 17 versus Mickey 18?

BJH: I think we all have a 17 inside of us where, you know, sometimes we get taken advantage of, and we kind of miss that perfect moment to get angry… kind of like how 17 says thanks for dinner after he’s been horribly abused. We say the wrong things. And so all of that pent up anger is just kind of inside. And in those situations, I think a lot of people, including myself, we imagine what it would be like to have a twin, like an 18 who just comes out and beats up the bad guys for you, who screams at all the people who made you angry. And you know, 18 is kind of the manifestation of that desire that we all have.

I know you do editing while you are on the set, which is very different from how movies are made in Europe and America. Can you discuss that approach?

BJH: So it is pretty standard in Korea to have an onset editor, perhaps because we’re so impatient, we just need to see you right as we’re shooting! We want to know right away how it would cut, and when international actors see it for the first time, they’re all a bit… disoriented and surprised, but they quickly get used to it and they’re constantly coming to me saying, “oh, can I see what we shot yesterday?” And with this sort of temporary cut, they get to see how their performances and the tone connects, and how the movie is coming to life.

You’re known for not doing much coverage, and for editing on set. Are you able to do that because you’re so familiar with the story and the script that you can see every shot and every cut? How are you approaching the visual language and shot progression?

BJH: So it’s not that I construct all the shots as I’m writing the script, I only have sort of key images in my mind. For the storyboard to be actually applicable and practical, you kind of have to have all the locations and spaces constructed and confirmed first. So after the sets are designed and locations are confirmed, I start doing the actual storyboards and determining the camera position and the tracking, and I do it myself. And that’s how I avoid shooting coverage. Sometimes editors who have never worked with me before, they find it a bit boring, because they feel like there’s not a lot of room to play around in the editing. But no matter how tight the storyboarding and the shots are, there’s always room to play around with things in the edit. With Mickey 17, I worked with the editor Jinmo Yang, and it’s my third time working with him. We also did Okja, Snowpiercer, and Parasite together. So even if I don’t have coverage, he always finds room and feels quite free to do his edits. That was true for this film particularly with the vaccine sequence, when they first arrive on the planet and Mickey’s exposed to the virus in the atmosphere. And he becomes this lab rat dying for the vaccine test. With that montage in particular, it’s really Jin’s work. It’s quite different from the storyboard. I just kind of let him do what he wanted.

Q&A with Sean Baker and Mikey Madison

Posted on by

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

Sean, you always treat your characters with such humanity and respect. How did you come up with a character like Anora?
Sean Baker: The origin of this story goes way back, about fifteen years. Karren Karagulian—who plays Toros in the film—is a good friend, he’s been in all of my films, and we were trying to figure out a story that took place in the Brighton Beach/Coney Island area for a very long time. I heard a few stories that involved the Russian mafia in that area and there was one story about a woman who married the wrong man. She realized she married a gangster, someone irresponsible, and the seed of the idea sparked from that. Anora was a character that I drew on from many of the sex workers I had met over the years. I wanted her to be a very strong protagonist with a strong New York attitude. I always thought of her as a scrapper, somebody who could hold their own in a fight if they got themselves into one. Somebody who’s independent, and who is fun. When we were moving forward with the film, I had my eyes open for somebody who could be our Anora. And this happened to be right around the opening weekend of Scream. I had seen Mikey [Madison] in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I loved her performance in that film so much. She really stole the last fifteen minutes of the movie. She was in my head already as a potential somebody that I wanted to work with at some point. And when I saw Scream, with the combination of those two performances, she showed me everything I needed for Anora—the range, the intensity, the attitude. I turned to my wife and producer, Samantha Quan, in the theater while watching Scream, and said, We’re going to call Mikey’s reps the minute we step out of the theater. I was that convinced. We had a meeting, we connected, and I was able to then go off and write this screenplay while knowing that it was going to be Mikey. I had her in my head as I was developing this character.

nobody is just angry or wanting to fight—there’s pain underneath that.

Anora is such an intense and ferocious character, but there’s an understated vulnerability. How did you weave that into the performance?
Mikey Madison: I always saw her as someone who was deeply vulnerable on the inside but is constantly protecting herself by covering it up with anger and spunk. Because nobody is just angry or wanting to fight—there’s pain underneath that. I was very aware that that needed to be on the inside. It comes out in some private moments where you get to see the facade crack a little bit, and see some of that vulnerability, which is needed for a character like this.

I imagine the preparation was fairly intensive for this film—from the accents and the dancing to the general cultural environment.
SB: I’ll just start by saying that as a director, I was blessed with an actor who was beyond dedicated to taking on the accent and taking on pages and pages of dialogue in a language she doesn’t know. There were like four pages of Russian dialogue she had to learn. And then, of course, all the physicality. Mikey did her own stunts in the home invasion scene. And the dancing—she took months of pole dancing classes. We also had to choreograph the erotic dance that she gives on that second date when she goes to the mansion. There was so much preparation.  

You also hired a lot of strippers to act in the film. How did you work with them to help portray this world accurately and honestly?
MM: There were some amazing consultants that we had on the film and I was able to talk at length to them about what their work is like. I think that was vital to my performance. I also shadowed dancers at the club, observed, got some dances… I was taught by a dancer named in Kendi in Los Angeles how to get a lap dance, how to twerk, how to dance on the pole. I really wanted to go upside down. I wanted Anora to seem like she was very seasoned, like she’s been dancing for years. I had a handful of months to really master that, but I’m very stubborn and I was determined to get her to the place we see in the film. Then obviously there’s amazing women who are actresses and real dancers in the film, for example, Lindsey [Normington] and Luna [Sofía Miranda], who play some of the girls in the group.

SB: They play Diamond and Lulu.

MM: Yes, Diamond and Lulu. They were amazing and were able to offer so much insight into the kind of work that they do. I think that really helped create a realistic environment.

SB: Our chief consultant was Andrea Werhun, who wrote an incredible memoir called Modern Whore. It came out a couple of years ago and it was so insightful. It was a reflection on when she was younger, being both an escort and dancer. So it really applied to this character of Ani. Mikey was able to consult with her. Andrea read our script and gave us notes and details of the world that only you would know being in that world. It was incredibly vital to have consultants on board—for accuracy, but also to make sure that the representation was responsible and respectful. Hearing their feedback throughout all stages of the production was invaluable.

MM: It was also a catalyst for me as an actress to want to study and do as much research as I could and completely dive into the character in an even bigger way than I have before because everyone around me had similar lived experiences to my character. I wanted to seamlessly blend in; I didn’t want to stand out in any particular way. I didn’t want to look like an actress. I wanted it to look like I was really a dancer. To be around that kind of energy and to be in the club, listening to what the girls were saying, I was able to implement that into the improvisation as well. It was wonderful.

SB: Yeah, these women brought the vernacular, the slang, and they also helped us with the soundtrack. Like saying which songs are of this world and that will really show that we know what we’re doing. There were a few songs there that came directly from our consultants telling us that we must have a Slayyter song in the film.

The first five minutes of the film really puts the audience in that place and it feels so authentic.
SB: That’s all Mikey. That is probably the least scripted section of the film. Basically, I just wanted to set up the mechanics of the club, a night in the life of Ani before she meets Ivan. I had Robert Altman on my mind while we shot the opening. We had to have the club up and running. I mean, of course, they were all our people, but there were also background actors playing our clients and the dancers interacting with them. The music was blasting. We had our producer Alex Coco literally DJing and that’s usually a no-no, because you can’t marry music with dialogue. But like I said, I wanted the vibe of the club. I wanted to see people moving to the music and feeling like they were in this environment. Having to raise their voices over the music so it’s very realistic. We had a wireless mic on Mikey and we just followed her around with a telephoto lens for thirty minutes. We were shooting on film. We had a ten-minute mag, and another ten-minute mag, we just ran out the whole ten minutes one at a time. She had an earpiece, and I would say, okay, now approach the man on the right. And I would just watch her, having done so much research, it was incredible to see that she was giving the exposition to her improv. She was hitting all the beats I needed to really set up this world in that short four to five minutes before she meets Ivan. She’s incredible.

All the locations in the film are fabulous, but we need to talk about the mansion because it’s insane that house exists in New York City.
SB: I was sitting in my West Hollywood apartment writing this thing, and we were getting close to production and I was like, I’m going to need to find this mansion. So I literally just googled, “biggest and best mansion in Sheepshead Bay.” And it pops up! And it happened to have been on the market a few years ago. I’m going, Oh my god, this is the location. I told my incredible location manager, Ross Brodar, who had already locked these other incredible locations, Get that pie for me. It was actually designed for and lived in by a Russian oligarch up until the beginning of Covid. And then he sold it off to a local Russian American who grew up in the neighborhood. He was very proud of the house and was very happy with us shooting there and was extremely gracious by allowing us to shoot there for about three weeks. It’s in Mill Basin, actually.

Shooting the home invasion scene took eight days. Can you two break that down?
MM: I think the most challenging part, or the most time consuming, was just trying to block all of it. To choreograph the stunts because it’s such a big sequence with so many different characters and moving parts. We took a lot of time in rehearsal to block out where we would be at each point, when this next scene needs to happen, and then we’d go through it all kind of half speed. And then you just have to jump in and shoot. Nothing could prepare me for what that might feel like, I have to knock over this lamp and turn that vase over… I also had to know, in terms of stamina, how many scenes I would be able to do at full speed, at full energy, so I kept that in mind. I tried to get it right on the first take.

SB: Also the screaming, right? After like the fifth take or sixth take of the big screaming, Mikey was like, we should probably stop for today or we’re gonna lose my voice. Everybody had to be on board, you know? The cast and crew understood that this had to play out in real time. So we had to have our coverage. And there was a lot. I think that’s probably the difference between this sequence and the other sequences in the film—I had to over cover myself.  The other thing is that we’re shooting over eight days with all that glass. There are going to be some weather changes. And it’s not always going to be that overcast, the way it’s supposed to be throughout the film. Sometimes the sun will pop. But my wonderful cinematographer, Drew Daniels, and our gaffer, Chris Hill, they got it. They were even like calculating and timing when the sun would pop, and we’d use those sections. Hopefully it’s subtly worked in, but there are moments where the sun will shine through, and, for example, Toros runs by with the scarf, and that allowed a big flare into the lens. There was a lot of thought put into it. I really have to thank my incredible crew and cast for making it happen.

The sequence is so funny because she’s outwitting and outfighting them… but also, there are three strange men that are trying to physically restrain her, and that seems terrifying. It’s a balancing act.
MM: I think that’s one of the reasons why Ani fights so hard. She’s fighting for her life in every single sequence because she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her. But at the same time, playing her, I know that these scenes will be funny just because of the situation that she’s in. But Ani doesn’t think it’s funny. That’s one of the things I really appreciate about Sean. He takes a scene like that, which could go such a different way, such a dark way, and he makes it something that nobody expects. He inserts his sort of dark comedy into it, which I love. I think we share a similar sensibility in terms of what we think is funny.

Q&A with Jesse Eisenberg, Jennifer Grey, Will Sharpe, and Kieran Culkin

Posted on by

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

Jesse, what inspired this story? I understand it was a long road for you, between the initial idea and getting it up on the screen?
Jesse Eisenberg: Yeah, I’d been, like, sitting with the seeds of this movie for twenty years. My wife and I took a trip to Poland to see where my family’s from; turns out her family’s also from there, so we were kind of visiting both sites. And we essentially went to all of the stops that the characters visit in this movie, and ultimately wound up at the house in the movie, which is the actual house that my family lived in up until 1939. And, you know, I was standing outside the house (this was 16 years ago), expecting to have some amazing catharsis… and nothing was coming, and then I realized I was just a weird, invasive person standing outside a house in Poland. And it was that feeling, that strange dissonance, that kind of always stuck with me. Why didn’t I feel something? Why was I so disconnected from something that’s not too far off, historically? And so you know, as I wrote different things throughout the years, I would touch on these kind of themes… the materially comfortable privilege being disconnected from, from real world historical pain. And so that’s kind of where the seed began for this.

When you work with brilliant people, they come up with stuff like that.

What excited you about the script and got you on board with the project?
Kieran Culkin: I mean, I just I loved the script – it was beautifully written. It was one of those rare things where I read it and just loved this character and got excited about getting in there and having fun and jumping in. I think the character was just so surprising and spontaneous. I didn’t really know what he was going to say or do next! Just when I thought I had a good sense of who he was, he would do something else entirely. And I just wanted to go in there and do it, and not really prepare it, and see what was going to come out. That was sort of the exciting part. It’s a great script.

Jennifer Grey: I loved every word of the script. And I saw the movie when I read it, and I loved the movie when I read it. And I just wanted to be part of the journey with these incredible, smart, talented people that I admire. And it’s gotten to the point in life where, when you’re offered something this beautiful, you just think, “oh my god, gorgeous things are possible in life.”

Will Sharpe: I mean, I second everything that’s been said already. It was a really fully formed, precise script. One of the most beautiful scripts that I’d ever read. I felt like the tone was so clear. It was making me laugh, but there was also something profound that was being asked of the reader and now the audience. I felt like, even though they were quite complex, kind of nuanced questions, I felt like I knew exactly what Jesse was trying to say. So, yeah, I was just excited to talk with him about it and to be a part of it.

The tonal shifts of the film are incredible. It has a seriousness to it, but also incredible humor. How did you all create the relationships that we’re seeing throughout the film?
KC: I mean, to me it was all there on the page. And sometimes you get lucky, I guess, when you can actually just do what’s there. You don’t have to fill in any gaps. And that’s what happened here. There wasn’t a lot of work from us, right? I mean, it was right there.

JG: I met you, and you talked to me, and I felt that kindred spirit… thing chemistry that has to do with feeling seen, and seeing into somebody and I just saw your magic. I saw it before I met you, but then when I met you, I was like, it pierced me, your magic. And it was really exciting, and all I wanted to do was just play with you all the time!

KC: It was in the script. I’m just doing my job. I don’t know… what’s cool about Benji is, he just tries to get right into people, in a way, and tries to find the best avenue in there, which, as it turns out for our scenes, was just by being… I don’t know, I called you a fucking loser. And just to get in there and make fun of you. Yeah, maybe I was being flirty… fine, if you want. But then it took a different turn when it came to talking to [Will’s character] because, like, it was hard to penetrate that guy because, you know, he’s our tour guide and he’s pretty seriously smart. So that came out in the form of, like, criticizing him and berating him and telling him how he’s doing his job. But it got to the real person, and that just, like, worked and was a lot of fun.

WS: Yeah, I mean I think the tonal shifts were inherent in the script. And I feel like so much of the humor and the kind of light handedness was all there in the plan. But what I felt as I read it, and what I feel as I watch it now, is that that kind of light handedness sort of allows for a space for the more serious, profound questions to flow through. And that seemed to me like a kind of, almost sort of magic trick. It just felt like such depth in filmmaking. So if you’re asking me to explain that magic trick, it wasn’t me who did it!

JE: We just got really lucky. The actors just understood the exact tone, and I guess, to me… it’s my taste, so it seems like the most obvious thing in the world, but it is an unusual tone. And so, we just got so lucky that everybody kind of understood it. That’s something that, you know, if it’s one percent too comic, it would make the movie feel too light and irreverent, and then if it’s one percent too serious, it would make the movie feel kind of deadened and academic and kind of… you know, like the movie is kind of asking the audience to pat it on the back for being about these important themes.

One scene that really impressed me is kind of at the end of the trip, when James wishes them farewell and has this long, dramatic goodbye with Benji. And to David, he literally just waves and walks away. And it had the same kick for me the second time I watched it: I just laughed even more. How did you guys go about that scene? Was that an improv?
JE: Yeah. So the scene was this long, scripted, thing where Will is just, you know, pouring his heart out and Kieran is just saying like, “what? I don’t remember saying that…That sounds great.” And the point was that he’s just this frustrating, adorable character who kind of goes through the world and yells at people and doesn’t worry about it. And then when they tell him that, “actually when you yelled at me you changed my life,” he’s like, “oh, that sounds awesome.” As though everything’s new. You know, the dog who forgets that he just ate. And so in that scene, Will was supposed to just kind of walk off, without acknowledging my character. But in the last take, and it might have even been the only take, Will (a comic genius), turns to me and goes, “thanks David!” and abruptly leaves. And I was off camera, which was lucky because I was laughing so hard. And I turned to the producer and I was like, “that is so unbelievably funny… and will be nowhere near the movie.” Because I just thought it was too funny. And I thought the movie couldn’t support a joke like that. And then the editor and I are sitting in the room six months later… And I was like, “oh yeah, go look at this really funny thing.” And he was like, “yeah, it’s great, it’s great.” So it’s in the movie and not only is it great as a one-off thing, but it’s also great where it takes place in the movie because we’ve just been on this kind of long journey to this camp and it’s been quite somber. And it gets you back into this sly tone. It gets you back into the sphere of the kind of lightness of the character’s relationship. I’m so indebted to Will for that moment. It’s great. When you work with brilliant people, they come up with stuff like that.