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Q&A with Julianne Moore, Jaden Michael, Oakes Fegley, Brian Selznick, and Todd Haynes

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

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. On the set of Hugo, I had become friends with Sandy Powell and it was her idea to bring Wonderstruck to Todd Haynes. I then worked on the script for a couple months with John Logan, the screenwriter for Hugo. I only had only thought of this idea as a book, so that adaption was difficult for me. In the book, Rose’s story is done entirely and drawings so it’s a visual experience, while Ben’s story is told all words and no pictures. The interaction between words and pictures wasn’t something you can do on screen, so I had to find a cinematic equivalent for that. I thought of the idea of telling Roses’ story like a black and white silent film so we feel like we were watching the silence because we actually only later find out later that she’s deaf.  Then we have Ben’s story which is told like a traditional ’70’s film.

“we walked around the city with noise canceling headphones”

How did prepare to portray a character who loses his hearing?
Haynes: We did a number of things. We talked about it and we had this day in pre-production when we walked around the city with noise canceling headphones and experienced life the closest way we could to would be like to sense New York City without hearing. It provided an insight for how the senses get scrambled and how the hierarchy of the senses get shifted.  I just remember how visually clear the city looked in that exercise. We were touching walls as we walked along and the sense of touch was heightened. Afterwards I did feel like it was a little grayer when I took off the headphones as it was like the vividness was lost. We also talked to a guy named Tom who became deaf when he was six years old and Oakes asked him a lot of insightful questions.

Oakes Fegley: You don’t think about your senses individually when you think about your senses in the world around you. They all just blend together, which leaves your brain to just kind of figure it out. When you lose one, it changes the way they are mixed together and makes each individual sense heightened. That was something I really noticed in our exercise, so when I took this experience into my character, I made sure to utilize sight. I was always looking around trying to get visual cues from the environment. Throughout the film there’s so much that I’m trying to hear that I can’t because my character is adjusting to life without the ability to hear. It’s difficult for him because he knows that talking makes a sound, so he’s searching for the sound and it’s not there for him.

To craft the relationship between Ben and Jamie, did you get a chance to hang out before shooting?
Jaden Michael: We had a few weeks before the shoot where we just kind of hung out. During the costume fitting, we went to restaurants and just got to be friends. It really helps when shooting because we were already close and had more of a connection during the shoot. The fighting scene was a lot of fun to film because we just got to yell at each other, especially because Todd kept on pushing us to yell louder and get angrier.

Fegley: It was really awesome being able to meet Jaden and get to be friends before shooting because that carried into the movie. The first time I met him was my first day in New York and is very similar to the first time Ben sees Jamie.

You had the challenge of playing two roles in the film. How did you prepare each role?
Julianne Moore: I was, in a sense, trying to learn two languages: one being the language of silent film within a silent film, and the other that of deaf culture. Both required a considerable amount of research since neither of them are things I’ve been exposed to before. I had only watched a few silent films. Todd put together this wonderful compilation to look at for research and it was beautiful. We based her off of Lillian Gish, who was the most naturalistic and expressive silent film stars, so we heavily researched all of her films. In terms of playing someone who is deaf, I started working with my teacher on ASL. I watched Millie a lot too since my character is based on her actual physical being, so I asked Todd to send all of your dailies to see how she held her body and how she moved. She’s incredibly expressive and still. Her eyes are always moving and she keeps her mouth closed a lot so she’s unusually observant. The most important thing for that was believing that we’re the same character once the reveal is made.

The editing in weaving the two stories together flowed seamlessly, how did you accomplish this?
Haynes: It was an exercise from the formal concept of Brian’s script and playing with the contrast of these two historical time frames. It required setting up how different New York was economically, and how it had a different energy. We wanted to obliterate the differences and to find parallels between the two children’s destinies, since I consider this film a single organism.  So, it was trying different combinations and figuring out how long to stay in one story and when to leave one story to get the audience involved. The music became the foundation of how the edit was built. Early on, I realized we couldn’t put two clips together without having a temp score to see how the silent parts work, so we had to curate a temp score before we could even put pictures together. We ended up with a very ornate and subtle temp score between the two stories and then it was Carter Burwell’s job to execute and bring it to life.

Q&A with Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Phyllis Nagy, and Todd Haynes

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

How did you all work together during the rehearsal process?

Rooney Mara: We had two week to rehearse before we started shooting in Cincinnati. Really those two weeks just consisted of the three of us [Blanchett and Haynes] sitting around the table and reading through the script with a lot of the other actors. But it’s not like we spent the rehearsal time acting out the scenes; it was more about talking through the movie and forming a relationship and a bond and a trust.

Cate Blanchett: There was a shared understanding of what function every scene had and marking the depth of the subtext. It was also just developing a shared visual language. Often in a film of this scale, a director can feel frustrated with the time that’s having to be spent away from the actors doing location scouts or that the actors have to be called away for costume fitting, but Todd understood that all of those aspects were really a part of an actor’s element of creating a character.

“There was a shared understanding of what function every scene had.”

Todd Haynes: Cate was also spending extracurricular time hanging out at the house of Rindy – her daughter in the film that was played by twins. I shared in some of this, but she went beyond and had dinners at their house. We really loved the whole city of Cincinnati and the generosity of the people, and the quality. Our first reason for shooting there was the look of the city, but the people, the extras, and the day players who all contributed were so rich and diverse.

You’ve been with this project for 18 years. What’s the process been like?

Phyllis Nagy: There’s pre-Liz Karlsen [producer] and Number 9 Films and Christine Vachon, and post. The film you screened today came together in about four years from attachment and Liz purchasing the rights to the novel, and today. So relatively quickly, all things considered. But before that, the film was actually developed in the UK with the help of Film4 and primarily Tessa Ross, who would inject money into it every so often for a new script or when it stalled. But really, until the current team came aboard, there was me and a computer that sat on idle for five years. I’d have little spurts depending on who was interested in doing it. But there was no clear…I’ll use the word “vision,” and I don’t mean it pretentiously. Once the current team was in place, then we had that vision.

All the physical interactions were so delicately rendered that a light brush of the shoulders has a strong impact. How much of that body language was in the script, the direction, and the performances?

Blanchett: It’s a dance. You put your hand on the table and then Rooney moves hers away and you think I shouldn’t have put mine on the table, what am I going to do with my hand now? It’s a push and pull thing. There’s so many of those beautiful observations that are often very dangerous and dark in the book, which were peppered throughout the script.

Nagy: All the script can really do in that is suggest a road map for their road trip. But all the rest of it is in the attention to detail and pacing that Todd and the actors and the camera provide. I think it was a happy confluence of all elements. Like a baton handoff in a race and it all worked. And accidentally too. Sometimes things happened on the day of the shoot.

Haynes: It was a combination of all the accidental things you mentioned and then very very specific contact that is often non-verbal. Carol putting her hands on Therese’s shoulder as she plays the piano. That moment was just an adjustment in the camera position that Ed [Lachman, the Cinematographer] and I initially thought would be omitted since we were just adjusting for the next part. But something strange happened and you could feel your stomach shifting in the frame when that hand goes on the shoulder and the camera is doing a re-position. Because the camera doesn’t move much in the movie, you take notice when it does. And we kept it in the cut and it conveyed something bigger that was important for that moment.

This film really beautifully portrays female camaraderie, especially in the scene where Sarah Paulson’s character, Abby, drove Therese back. Can you talk about that scene?

Nagy: Abby doesn’t drive Therese back in the book. Therese drives herself but takes a detour, and she takes on jobs, where she isolates herself to make herself stronger. So she does that apart from Carol in the book. They’re not in the same place, and then she goes back, and we proceed from there the way it does in the book. So, yes, it was an opportunity to actually address the female friendship aspect of this, which is a strong running theme.

Blanchett: Sarah had little screen time but used every second so potently and beautifully. And the lack of ownership that Abby – even though it’s very clear in that it wasn’t a sense of ownership over Carol but a sense of care and investment in her well-being – shows that their relationship might not have necessarily run the way she wanted it to.

Haynes: You remember, Cate, when you saw the first cut, I think it was that scene that really broke you up.

Blanchett: Yeah.

Haynes: That one moment in the film, there’s something Sarah does with her mouth, kind of purses her lips, and there’s just…

Blanchett: It’s that well of stuff she’s sitting on.

Haynes: And you said something about how it just made you think anew what women at this time in history had to deal with, and what their lives were like. It’s just so interesting how an actor can convey so much, as Cate said, with such economy, in such a brief moment.

The film is interesting in how guilt-free the women seem to be over their feelings, for this time period. Can you talk about Therese’s exploration of those feelings?

Mara: Therese doesn’t really have the language to describe the feelings that she’s having. To her, she doesn’t have any judgment on those feelings because it’s so outside of her realm of possibilities. I think there’s a line in the book where she’s talking about Carol and how she couldn’t possibly be in love with Carol because Carol’s a woman, and that doesn’t happen, that’s not possible. I think she’s very naïve about her own feelings.

Blanchett: But there’s a level of exposure I think that they’re both experiencing. You might not necessarily call it love. But I think there’s a nakedness; they feel exposed to one another. Those feelings kind of get tossed around like a washing machine. Often you don’t know why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. It’s just uncontrollable.

Haynes: And there’s a motor that’s kicking in, even when the pieces of those feelings don’t collate. All of a sudden you realize you’re following the motor, and the engine is driving you, and the desire is literally pulling you from place-to-place, completely, sometimes inexplicably, and against all better judgment.