You’re a prolific writer, but this is only your second time directing a feature. What motivates you to direct one of your own pieces?
Mike White: I knew the tone was going to be particular, so it was just going to be hard to help another director interpret what I intended for film to be.
Steven, how did you conceive of Jacob initially?
Steven Yeun: When I read Isaac’s script, it was really honest from all perspectives and that was really the foundation of it all.
Can you talk about how the idea for the film came about? I read it was somewhat autobiographical.
That sounds weird off the bat. I have not committed fraud.
How did you get on this project? How did it come to you?
John Krasinski: So I was about to start pre-production on Jack Ryan, and some of the producers on Jack Ryan were Platinum Dunes, and they said, “Would you ever act in a genre movie?” And I said, “Oh no, I can’t do that, I don’t do horror movies.”
Mr. McConaughey, how did you approach Cooper?
I always saw Cooper as a man out of time.
How did you go about conceiving two characters who would ultimately converge?
Jason Reitman: I always thought of the movie as being like those lenticular posters, where if you look at the poster and you kind of move your head two inches, the image changes.
Fisher, I understand that this film had a pretty unique origin story?
Fisher Stevens: Leo [DiCaprio] called me and told me he was in Brooklyn, and that I should come meet him for lunch at the racetrack in Brooklyn. I told him there was no race track in Brooklyn!
Can you share some of your songwriting process with us?
John Carney: Well, I would say first and foremost, I am a hobbyist when it comes to songwriting. I’m an amateur. I do it because it’s fun.
When you’re talking with Cillian about that and how you’re going to essentially be inside of his head for a lot of the film, what do you discuss about him embodying this man?
Christopher Nolan: I think the first and most important conversation was the one where we both agreed that we were not interested in some kind of impersonation.
Can you both discuss how this film came about?
Benjamin Ree: The film began with me researching art robberies.
You did almost all of the work on this film— what was that experience like?
Jessica Kingdon: I did have a close cinematographer, Nathan Truesdell, and we shot it together. But, yeah, it was very much a film that was coming out of my own mind.
I understand this film is based on a story that really resonated with you?
Sergey Loznitsa: The film is based on a story by Georgy Demidov, who was arrested in 1938 and spent nearly fourteen years in prison camps.
When did you decide to make this project together?
Ariella Mastroianni: Well, Ryan and I, we grew up together. We’ve known each other since high school, and we immediately bonded over films.
Can you talk about the decision to set the film in 2013, and why that specific year was the right choice for this story?
Austin Peters: If you think about where we, as a country, were at in 2013… It was such a different time.
We’d been trying to cast Sam for months. And we were having a really hard time. My younger sister was, at the time, an eighteen-year-old senior in high school. Almost as a joke, I asked her, do you know any actors? Like, help me out here! And that was how I found Lily. I still can’t believe that’s our story.