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Q&A with Abdellatif Kechiche and Adèle Exarchopoulos

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Blue is the Warmest Color.

Can you each talk about how you each came to the project and how you approached the adaptation of the graphic novel?

Kechiche: I came upon the comic book by chance and I was seduced by the drawings. I saw the possibility of developing a theme – or several themes – that have to do with this complete, absolute love story. I wanted to examine what this character goes through because of a pivotal pre-destined moment and how she emerges out of it, what happens to her. Of course, I saw a lot of possibilities in this. In the book version it goes towards death, but I preferred to leave our ending open to let the character evolve.

Exarchopoulos: I was called for casting and knew the work of Abdellatif. I loved The Secret of the Grain, the long scenes of foods, the power of so many things in that film. For my audition, I had to do an improvisation of the scene after I’ve met this girl on the street and become obsessed with her, where I’m ashamed to tell my best friends in the movie. I met a lot of different casting people, and then one day I was invited to meet Abdellatif for coffee. We spoke a bit, but were mostly silent. And then we met again and again at the coffee shop, and then one day before the new year, he told me “it’s you” and I quietly said, “Oh, thank you” and when I left the coffee shop I was like [fist pump!]

“To me, Adèle’s voice is constant music. I hear everything you would hear in a musical score in terms of her emotions.”

Is it correct that the film was shot in chronological order? Why did you fight for that? And as an actor, what was that process like for you?

Kechiche: More or less. For logistical reasons, sometimes I couldn’t shoot in exact chronological order, but before they meet and after they live together were shot separately and chronologically. That method is really the ideal for most filmmakers. It allows for a natural and logical progression of the characters and the story.

Exarchopoulos: Yes, it helped to start with scenes in the high school, then to have the meeting in the street, and then to follow the process of seduction when I meet her in the bar. We need to enter this relationship together, and it was much more organic because we played the relationship from the beginning, step by step.

How did you approach the use of music and sound in the film? The only time that we hear soundtrack music in the film is in that beautiful end scene.  

Kechiche: I find it very difficult to underscore or illustrate my scenes with music. However, as strange as it sounds, I hear music all the time when I am creating my films. I hear it when I watch my characters faces, when they move. To me, Adèle’s voice is constant music. I hear everything you would hear in a musical score in terms of her emotions. Everything about her is translated to music. So in fact, music is there all the time for me, even if it’s so seldom used in the film.

Is it true that you shot 700 hours of footage for this film?

Kechiche: There really aren’t 700 hours of film because everything is shot digitally. I try to slate the scenes as seldom as possible because I don’t want to heighten the tension the actors are feeling. There are plenty of pauses where I’m discussing with the cast or the crew, so of those 700 hours, you can chuck about 2/3 of that in terms of film material. When there’s a take that really works, it’s evident to the cast, the crew, to everyone, and those are the ones that go into the editing room with me. After that it’s a balancing act of what to put together for the film. There’s also failed scenes, for whatever reason, and those of course get tossed, and then there are some scenes that are successful, but if they don’t work with the structure of the story, those go by the wayside as well.

Q&A with Paul Greengrass, Tom Hanks, and Barkhad Abdi

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

You were shooting in environmental conditions that were extremely difficult. Can you talk about those challenges?

Greengrass: The first day we shot in the lifeboat was really intense. The boat pitches around and drops. The seats are really low and it stinks of diesel. Tom [Hanks] was in there, the four other actors were in there, our DP Barry was in there with the focus puller, and Chris Carreras, my AD. I was in a little boat next door with a walkie-talkie. They started the scene and it’s going well, and then Chris goes “I don’t think the focus puller looks very good.” I said, “Don’t worry about that, keep shooting.” And then a second later, it was “The focus puller has thrown up all over Tom.”  And I said, “Keep shooting!” And then it was “Barry doesn’t look very good.”

Hanks: The first time I actually saw the human form of Barkhad [Abdi] was when they were in the skiff out on the water through binoculars, literally how Phillips first sees him in the film. So I say to Paul, “Hey I saw the stunt men down in the skiffs getting that shot.” And he says, “Those weren’t the stunt men, those were the real fellas.” So Barkhad has to talk about learning to drive that boat in the high-pitched seas, it was crazy.

Abdi: We went through about a month and a half of training – swimming, fighting, weapons, and the skiff. I had to learn how to stand in the skiff, and also how to drive someone around. It wasn’t easy, and there were times I got seasick. But we all had the dedication. This was something I always wanted to do but never had the chance, so I made the best of it.

“At heart, performance is about removing all those inhibitions, and then you start to tell stories.”

What was the most difficult scene to shoot?

Greengrass: All of it! Well, I think my favorite is that scene at the end [after Phillips is rescued]. It’s so superbly played and it happened in such unusual circumstances. It goes a bit to the heart of what filmmaking actually is, which is a collaborative experience. That was a scene that Billy wrote originally to take place hours later, after Phillips was saved and showered, and he was sent up to the quarters to phone home. The idea was that he would find that the safety would leave him in shock. So Billy was right, we needed that moment to complete the film. When we shot that scene during the day it was fine, it was okay, but it wasn’t “it”. Then you hit that bit of filmmaking that is always crucial, which is chance, and it happened that the real Captain Castellano was on the ship that day and he said “Oh that first happened in the infirmary.” So we went down the infirmary to have a go at the scene there. Then you hit the next level of filmmaking, which is blind panic, when you go “Let’s try this, it’s 5PM, and we only have an hour left.” That can be a good place because pure instinct takes over. And we went down and there was a young medical officer, and I told her, “It’s just a very straightforward scene, imagine an exercise, and don’t worry about the fact that it’s Tom Hanks!” And she looked a bit perturbed. And then we shot the scene and it worked.

Hanks: So much of this movie was procedure. The crew was great at explaining everything they do on the deck. Learning all that and the language was a luxury because there was always a specific thing to do and a specific reason for it, and it helped with realistic timing. After that came the other hard part of our job, which is behavior. And that last scene was the perfect mixture of both procedure and behavior. It was definitely a procedure practiced by the Navy crew there, and it was the behavior of something we had been working on for about 12 weeks, so we were able to let it roll.

How was it to act the part of a Somali pirate, having grown up in Minneapolis?

Abdi: I was born in Somalia and left there when I was seven years old. I witnessed the war for about a year. And I still see people that come to Minneapolis from Somalia and they have all sorts of stories. I kind of have a feel for how piracy started and the main motivation that these people have to do it. And Paul was there to help me and talk me through all the scenes.

Hanks: When we were shooting the scenes, there was a substantial amount of improv and immediacy to it all. I didn’t know what Barkhad was saying to the other actors until I saw the movie and could read the subtitles. And the accurately translated vernacular was “What’s wrong with you stupid?” and lines like that. As soon as we stopped shooting, they’d all start arguing in Somali about the scene they just shot.

How do you create a safe environment for your actors?

Greengrass: I think you need the confidence to know it can happen. When I was young, I used to imagine I was physically behind the camera, because I was very confident in using a camera. I was less confident about the process of performance. You have to psychologically inhabit the space where the acting is done, and remove its power to inhibit. When we are children, we make believe easily. When we grow up, we grow inhibitions. At heart, performance is about removing all those inhibitions, and then you start to tell stories. You let your actors feel the fun of trying something, and then make the ask bigger, and try different things together. It takes time, rehearsal time, but then you see the company of actors start to make sense, and it’s magical moment. It’s a bit like conducting. Slowly you create this ballad, this dance, and everyone starts to make it real. It’s the most thrilling thing.

Q&A with Directors Martha Shane & Lana Wilson, and Dr. Susan Robinson

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

Dr. Robinson, what was your initial response when you were approached to appear in this documentary?

Dr. Robinson: I said absolutely not. We were not interested in doing any movies or press of any sort. It’s not about us; it’s about the patients. But then as time went on, we got to know [the directors] Martha and Lana, and it began to look like it might be nice to work with them. And then that whole Kermit Gosnell business came out, that creepy guy in Philadelphia doing all that illegal stuff. And we suddenly thought that if we’re not willing to get up and show our face and explain to people what we do and why do it, that Kermit Gosnell will be the face of third trimester abortion. He was a filthy guy, and this is not a filthy practice, this is a practice of compassion. I think it’s important for people to know that. These are patients that need love and compassion and respect.

“This is a practice of compassion. I think it’s important for people to know that.”

How did you choose the particular patients to feature in the documentary? We do not see their faces, but we hear it in their voices and see it in their body language.

Wilson: We actually gave all the patients that agreed to be in the film the choice of showing their faces or not. And almost all of them did not want to show their faces. They wanted to stay anonymous because they were going back to their communities and were afraid about people finding out and we wanted to respect that. And I think that anonymity does give them a power, it makes them more of an every woman that the viewer can relate to, but I think it also helps to visualize the sigma around abortion. We did a lot of audience testing to figure out the best way to feature a wide spectrum of patients from fetal anomalies to maternal indications. But the ordering was really tricky and what we eventually landed on that worked was first starting with a very ambiguous case that you didn’t know a lot about, the girl who’s crying in the operating room with Dr. Carhart. That’s something that puts you right in the emotional center of the story. To say, this isn’t easy for anyone. And then we went with a case that was the easiest to understand first, to get people over that hump, the idea of third trimester abortion. And then we gradually made them more and more complicated, ending with that sixteen year-old girl’s case. It’s amazing how if you take one of those cases out of context, for example if we just showed the sixteen year-old girl, people would react abhorrently. But if you put it in the context of the larger film, not just the other patients but Dr. Robinson’s explanation of why she made that decision to do the abortion and putting it in the larger context of women making decisions for their lives, people come away from the film really getting it. The ordering was really important in getting people to be on the same page as the patients.

You can’t retire because they aren’t enough of you that are trained to do this procedure. What is the future of third trimester abortions for women that are going to need them?

Dr. Robinson: I shudder to think. We just finished training a wonderful thirty-five year-old doctor. A couple of other people have expressed interest. It’s a long training. The real issue isn’t going to be finding the doctors because the doctors who come and spend any time with us get hooked into this very quickly. They see you are able to help every patient that walks in the door, which is unique in medicine. Here comes a patient with a very clear-cut problem that we can fix. She’s always sad, she’s always surprised – of course, no one ever thinks they are going to have an unexpected pregnancy. So the doctors come and see you can actually spend time talking to your patients, and that’s a great luxury that most doctors don’t have. I get to sit in the recovery room and just yak with my patients sometimes. And I think we can ease this awful time for them by talking and listening, and listening and listening, and doctors see that and say, “I would love to do this work.” The problem is the number of venues to do it. When Dr. Tiller was assassinated, Shelly and I thought about starting our own clinic. But then you have to fundraise, you have to run a small business, and I’m not a businessperson, I’m a doctor. So we gave up on starting a clinic. There are only three clinics that are willing to take on the hassle, which includes protestors and all the legal complaints they file. I don’t know what’s going to happen. What about the poor woman from Brownsville Texas that doesn’t have two dimes to rub together and already has eight children to feed, and can’t get birth control, let alone a trip to an abortion clinic that is twelve hours away? That’s the killer. The well-off middle class women will always be okay. The poor women are the ones that are going to suffer.

 

Q&A with Director Steve McQueen and Chiwetel Ejiofor

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of 12 Years A Slave.

Your character experiences some of the darkest things a person can experience. During your preparation and filming, was there anything in particular that helped you connect with him?

Ejiofor: While I was reading Solomon’s autobiography, I wanted to find out about who he was. I thought there was something about him that was too remarkable. I couldn’t let that slide and play something that was not specific. In the book, you recognize so many moments where you’re not necessarily going to make the same choices as him. There’s something in his attitude towards life and that’s why he’s able to survive this with his mind intact. He wrote a small part about being hung from that tree, and it’s blistering heat, 100 something degrees, and he’s hanging there for hours. He says in the book, I would’ve given more years of servitude if they had just moved me a few feet into the shade. And I thought, well this is the key to this guy, there is something about him that is completely unbreakable, there is something about his soul that is uncrushable in a certain way, and he can even articulate something like this so many years after he’s come out of the experience. I was aware in trying to find Solomon, he was always going to be the thing to hold onto during my search for this extraordinary man.

“There is hope in this film. This film for me is about love; it always has been and it always will be.”

The moments of change didn’t always coincide with the savagery. One of the most affecting scenes for me was the graveside song.  You see this change that your character goes through and it’s a gentle scene. Can you talk about the role of violence and how it’s not always pinned to when your character changes?

Ejiofor: It’s interesting you mention that song because there were a few moments of real shift for Solomon. Obviously there’s violence because you have to see why someone’s psychology is adapting to the circumstance, especially that first beating with Burch in the dungeon, which is a moment of complete change. And then the tree, again, was another moment, a very different moment, but it helps you understand his will to survive. And then the graveside scene, which can be perceived as a gentle moment, but is also a very dynamic shift in psychology which is something I feel very strongly about in terms of his journey. Some people interpret his song as a kind of abandonment of hope, but I see it as him deciding it’s the only was he was going to survive. And it re-energizes him to survive and become part of that community. In that sense, there is something bittersweet about it. But again, it reflects a person who is going to do what it takes to keep himself and his mind alive.

Clearly, the scenes depicting Solomon’s horrendous experiences need to be shown. As a filmmaker, how did you calibrate the levels of violence?

McQueen: I made a movie about slavery and everyone seems to be embarrassed about it. I made a movie about Bobby Sands and a hunger strike, that story was covered after 27 years. I made a film about sex addiction, which no one wants to speak about. And now this is the other one, which is not my choice in a way. This is what happened. We’re either making a film about slavery or we’re not. I’m not going to apologize for the torture, the brutality, the cruelty that was done to African Americans in this country. That doesn’t mean people are guilty for it here, that’s what happened in the past. We had the recent situations with Trayvon Martin’s unfortunate killing, we have a black president, the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, the Voting Rights Act being taken away, the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. It’s a perfect storm for the conversation. The conversation cannot just be about the brutality. It should be about what happened and why it happened. So as far as balancing the situations of violence in the film, there has to be a situation where you’re telling the story, and it’s not just people being beaten, whipped, tortured both physically and psychologically. If you take the violence out of it, you don’t have a movie. Part of it is about the suppression of people. But also there’s hope in this film. This film for me is about love; it always has been and it always will be. Solomon finds a situation where he comes out of himself to join the congregation during the funeral. His heart swells with some kind of hope, more than hope. This is tradition. People have used religion to have some understanding and hope on the world. It’s such a complex question where the violence becomes so minute within the whole aspect of what we’re talking about here. This is what happened.

You’re so decisive as a filmmaker and that wide shot where Solomon was hanging from a tree with everything going on in the background was amazing. Do you get close-ups, coverage, or do you know what you want going in?

McQueen: No I don’t do coverage. I know. Why should I tax my artists and tax my crew for something that I won’t use? I know what I want. It’s pinpoint accuracy. I’ve worked with Sean Bobbitt for 13 years, who’s amazing, the DP. And we are absolutely precise in what we want and how we want to do it. I don’t do coverage; it’s a waste of time. You have to go in there with an idea – how are you going to portray this? How? So the hanging thing, from one shot we’ve got the people coming out of the cabins. What does that mean that not one of them cuts him down to help him? You start to understand the psychological significance and you start to understand that this is a common occurrence to some extent. You can’t touch him otherwise you’re going to get involved in it yourself.  Yeah, I like directing.

Q&A with director Shane Salerno

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

Let’s start by talking about the unique backstory to making this film.

Salerno: I grew up in a house where Salinger was a church. My mom was a huge fan and turned me onto his work, but like everyone, I had no idea about the man, I just knew the work. I started researching this project and found out that J.D. Salinger landed on D-Day, that Salinger participated in these horrible battles, that he lost the love of his life, Oona O’Neill, to Charlie Chaplin. There were so many things I didn’t know – that he was in a mental institution, that he married a Gestapo agent. I had to make this movie. When I started I was so naïve I thought I’d spend six months and $300,000. And I spent ten years and $2 million dollars. It really took over. I was thirty when I started and forty when I finished. It’s been an unusual process.

“J.D. Salinger walked into that concentration camp, and he never walked out. War made him as an artist, but it broke him as a man.”

Can you talk about some of the stylistic choices in this film, from the editing to the riveting soundtrack?

Salerno: I had a day job so we’d have to shoot for a month or two and then stop. The best tip I can give is to wait until you finish shooting to start editing. We edited during this process, which was tough. Then you get your editor going “It would be great if . . . “, and then you go out and try to get that stuff. Not a good idea.

The music was by a composer named Lorne Balfe, the co-composer of Frost/Nixon, and Inception. I couldn’t afford him, so in order to convince him to take the project I told him he could have the rights to the soundtrack. He worked on the film for three and half years, and there were certain sections of film he couldn’t see so he was composing blind, like the ending. I told him “There’s this big thing at the end and it needs to be really dramatic” and he asked “What’s it like?” and I was like “Uh, it’s big news and make it really dramatic!”  There are some pieces of music in here that I really love, particularly the one that plays over Oona. When I read about that love triangle, it really hooked me to do this movie – a love triangle between Charlie Chaplin, J.D. Salinger, and Eugene O’Neill’s daughter! There were so many things about his life that were like that.

How did you conception of the man and the artist change as you made this film?

Salerno: Here’s something that I learned editorially that was really fascinating. When we had the veteran that served in the fourth division alongside Salinger talk about seeing bombs fall in his living room, when that scene was earlier in the film, people had a negative view of J.D. Salinger. When we moved that scene later in the film, people understood that J.D. Salinger walked into that concentration camp and he never walked out. That’s really the thesis of the film, that the War made him as an artist, but it broke him as a man. We wouldn’t be talking about J.D. Salinger if it wasn’t for World War II. All of the stories for which we know Salinger – Esmé, Bananafish, Nine Stories, Catch, Franny, Zooey, they were all written after the War and deeply informed by his experiences. That was an astonishing thing, to see how much the War imprinted him, and how before the War, Oona O’Neill imprinted him. Meaning that he lost Oona to Chaplin when she was eighteen and Chaplin was fifty-four. Salinger tried to repeat that with multiple young women, so by the time he got to Joyce Maynard, he was fifty-four and she was eighteen. His life had literally come full circle. He was well into his fifties and still fighting a fight with Charlie Chaplin that he had lost in 1943. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have the woman you loved more than anything in the world marry the most famous man in the world and to read about it in a newspaper. That was a moment, like three or four others, that I was desperately trying to tell in the film, that level of pain. What’s astonishing about the War is that it was one year, and in that one year, he completely changed. J.D. Salinger went into the War as a Park Avenue rich kid, and he came out of the War as an incredibly battle-damaged vet. Today we see soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD.  At least now we know what it is, but back then it had no name, and this guy was unequivocally suffering from it.