Michael, how did the script find its way to you?
It came to me through Arlie [Day], our producer and casting director. What I like to think she saw it in for me was that the great subject of the film was empathy. It’s about how to look at other people’s lives and experiences uncolored by any sense of judgment.
How did you develop this story?
Aaron Sorkin: I like claustrophobic spaces and compressed periods of time, especially when there’s a ticking clock. I like being behind the scenes, in this case literally behind the scenes.
here did this idea come from, and how did the project get moving?
Max Walker-Silverman: Umm… that’s the most reasonable question in the world, and I’ve never figured out the cleanest answer to it.
How did you guys come up with the idea for this project?
Max Barbakow: It was a hipster death bender movie.
The scope of the film is massive. How did you approach this subject?
I should say that I’m kind of obsessed with hidden histories and forgotten biographies.
It was fascinating to learn that you had already been in the process of making a film about wildfires when the camp and woolsey fires occurred. Can you tell us about that?
Lucy Walker: That’s right. The reason I was able to really embed, and I knew what I was looking at and could just jump in, and start asking the right questions was because I’d actually been working on the film already for about a year at that point.
Did you set out to make a film about Stacey Abrams? How did this story come together for you?
Liz Garbus: For us it started when Stacey reached out.
Mr. Weitz, did you write this role for Ms. Tomlin knowing she’d play the part?
Paul Weitz: Yes, I— well, no, I didn’t know she’d play the part!
How did you two come to work on this project together?
We started working on what we thought would be a triptych, looking at sex, birth, and death on screen from a women’s perspective. We started the one about sex and it was an avalanche of ideas and people and different actors that we wanted to speak with, and that’s really where it began.
How did that expansion work? How do you open up that short story?
Kogonada: I had the best experience a filmmaker can have with an author.
This is a somewhat personal film for you— and it’s your first feature. Can you discuss how you came to make this film?
Kathryn Ferguson: I grew up in Northern Ireland. My father, actually, was a huge fan of Sinéad’s in the late ’80’s, when The Lion and The Cobra came out
What attracted you to this project?
Kate Winslet: When I first read the script, I was really taken by the physical demands.
What was the process like to bring this film together?
Julie Goldman: This is our sixth film together, so we have an established and unusual machine that works for our flow of producing.
What was it like adapting your book into your first screenplay?
Brian Selznick: I started writing the screenplay secretly at night when I was illustrating and writing another book.
How did you develop the particular visual language of this film?
It was really challenging. There were things that we felt were important early on that ended up boxing us in.