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Adam Wingard and Crew Talk THE GUEST

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I’ve added another of my favorite films from Sundance, The Guest, to this delightful series of Q&As that’ll give you a peek into the process of how these great works are pieced together as well as what you can expect when these films eventually hit theaters. If you appreciated Adam Wingard‘s early work (You’re Next, V/H/S) be sure to slot The Guest high on your anticipated movies list, as it’s easily his best yet and a snarky splatterfest thrill ride from start to finish. Listen to Wingard and his cast, including Downton Abbey‘s Dan Stevens, talk about writing the piece, inspiration from 80’s movies and getting pierced by exploding shrapnel.

Adam Wingard: We actually explored doing an action film in South Korea, and we went down the road of that a little ways, and it didn’t really work out because the whole film is just one nonstop action scene, we thought that would be kind of the experiment of that movie. Ultimately, it just never came together because, you know, when you’re doing a nonstop action scene there’s not really character development, things like that.

Simon Barrett: I said I’d wasn’t able to make it.

AW: So this one night I was just sitting around, I had a stack of Blu-Rays at this new office, and I just happened to watch Terminator and Halloween, the original, and I was watching it and I called Simon up the next day, I mentioned I’d seen those two, and I told him I wanted to do a Sci-Fi, action kind of thing, with an android and stuff like that. And Simon’s like, I have an idea that could fit into that. Maybe you can pick up from there…

SB: This is actually unique to our process, because usually Adam comes up with the type of movie he wants to make and I come up with the story. I’d started an old script that was going to be a really depressing drama, with kind of the same premise as this film, but it was a PTSD drama. Ultimately, we’re pretty big believers in the idea that art, unless the point of it is not to be entertaining, that art should be entertaining. So I stopped at around page 35 because I was like, literally no one in the world wants to see this film. (Laughter) I’m not enjoying writing it, and it’s not good. It was about this guy who comes back from the war and kills his friends and family. Ok, cool. And so Adam called me up and I was like “You know, if for some reason he was kind of bit of a malfunctioning robot, suddenly that script is actually awesome.” Not only awesome, but it’s funny, if we’re playing it for the laughs of it, and it’s not just like punishing. And then I just completely started at page 1.

AW: Well, no, it was literally like, we had that discussion, I mentioned that stuff to Simon, Simon said all that stuff, he’s like and then we’ll call it “The Guest”. I said, “Ok do you want to write that?”, and he said “Sure.” And he just went off and did it. It was like suddenly after all this time we spent on this other idea, when we really sat back and said what kind of story do we want to tell, not just saying we want a bunch of cool crazy shit, you know, it was like, you know, it was just took like a little moment, to kind of rest, and there it was.

Q: How long did it take you guys to film it?

AW: It was a thirty one day shoot, I think.

SB: And we did a 2 day reshoot in Los Angeles. Because of corporate stuff.

Q: I’ve noticed that music is pretty essential in a lot of your movies and it seems like with “You’re Next”, you have a little bit of a sort of Carpenter-ish driving electronic music, and with this it was just like a totally different kind of grittiness. I was just wondering, do you curate that or do you work with someone who does the music?

AW: Well, “You’re Next” was a totally different group of composers. It was a little bit more hodgepodge. One guy did the synth stuff really well, and one guy did atmospheric stuff. This film, for me, just spoke to me that it was like an 80’s Cannon action film, as a matter fact we wanted to actually just put the Cannon logo at the beginning of the film, you know, that’s why we do the Snoot logo kind of in that style. So, it tried to process the way to go about that. I feel like after Grindhouse there’s a lot of really good imitations of 80’s films and 70’s films. I really like Grindhouse but the post effect of that is that it’s become a sort of parody almos.? And that’s exactly the opposite of what I wanted from the music out of this. Actually going back to my very first film I did, called Homesick back in 2003, I worked with a band called Zombie. And we had a really good experience working together, they’re very prog rock, very Goblins inspired, John Carpenter stuff. Since then, one of the members of Zombie, Steve Moore, he started a solo project, and the solo project is still kind of him doing that old school thing, because Steve uses all vintage synthesizers and all that stuff. The interesting thing is that he’s just making his version of whatever music he wants to make. It’s a very modern kind of thing, but since he’s using vintage synths, then it has that quality to it. But it’s still something new and it’s not pretending to be it. From the beginning I called Steve up and we had a lot of conversations. A lot of the soundtrack, the starting point was basing it on Halloween 3 and the original Terminator soundtrack, both really great, incredible 80’s synth scores. And it kind of just went from there.

Q: In a couple of scenes, it seems that the camera angle is just really focused on David’s stare. Did you intend to make the audience feel like he was trying to break through the fourth wall in a way?

AW: Um…no, not really, I mean, I felt like those are just key moments that stood out to me. To me, I just wanted to be able to watch David process, because we never really know what goes on in his head. And I felt like I liked the idea of picking these moments where the movie’s not telling you what he’s thinking ever, but I wanted to give the audience that moment to be able to kind of put that on there. I think Dan has such brilliant physical acting that he can hold on screen just a bit longer than necessary, or would normally be done. That just kind of came out of that.

Q: Actors of course have to have physical training. Was there any other physical training, like martial arts, involved?

Dan Stevens: Yeah, there was actually, training for well over a month. Doing like weights and stuff in the morning and martial arts in the afternoon. It was a big old transformation for me actually.

SB: Our action choreographer, Clayton Barber, who worked on “You’re Next”, worked out with Dan. They like hit you a lot. We don’t really know what happened.

DS: I don’t want to talk about it.

Q: Dan, did you have a favorite action sequence to shoot in the film?

DS: Yeah I had my ear pierced by a door.

SB: Yeah, when Dan is running by things that are exploding, that’s not a stunt double sometimes.

AW: Yeah, early on, we did some shots were Dan is running by some splintering wood being shot to pieces. For some reason, I felt like that was important that you be in that shot. And that was the last time, because a piece went through Dan’s ear. It basically made a perfect little piercing in your ear.

Q: Where did you find this guy (Dan)?

AW: On this little known show, Downton Abbey. When going through the casting of the film, I knew I wanted someone who had a very calm, cool aesthetic to them, but who was naturally likeable. I talked to a lot of actors going through the casting. And Dan was actually one of the first people I talked to. He was just so nice. I could just see the character in him. From the very get-go he was my top choice.

Q: How long did it take to write?

AW: Probably two months.

Q: There’s a lot of scenes that you guys got laughs for, that, if done a different way, could have been straight up creepy. How do you find the balance between those two?

AW: Yeah man, it’s hard to say. I don’t know, it was weird. Going into it, I wasn’t sure. The first few days of shooting, how much I did want to play into the creepy side or more the humor of it? Because when I first read the script I was laughing my ass off the whole time, especially when it got to the bar scene the first time. I just really enjoyed going through that. It was just one of those things, as soon as I saw Dan on set and everybody interacting. Because the very first scene that we shot was, you know, the sequence where he gets the guns from the guy and ends up shooting a long distance, impossible missile shot. But it just instantly kind of clicked that it was a funny movie to me, and that’s the direction that we took. And the movie kind of plays homage, by the end of the film, to our roots, coming from horror and stuff, there’s even a jump scare but it’s a manufactured way. It wasn’t se-f referential but more, yes, this is where we come from but now this is a different context. Instead of playing out a horror film throughout, now suddenly we put you in this ridiculous haunted house at the end.

SB: I’d also say that everyone, and definitely our producers, we all have a sarcastic sense of humor. Finding jokes that aren’t really winking at the audience, just kind of assuming you’re smart enough to get it.

Q: For the ladies, or for all the actors really, what was it about Adam that said ‘Yes I want to work with this guy’?

Sheila Kelley: Just so much about him. I was offered the part and I got on the phone with him. He’s not a simple director. He has a lot of layers for the way he wanted the character played and how he wanted the film to unfold. And that was really exciting for me, personally.

Maika Monroe: I went through the auditioning process and I remember the first time meeting Adam. I think Jess was in the room, one of the producers and, just how he would work on the scenes with me, how he would direct me and change things I would never have even thought. There was just something so special, I was like I have to work with this guy.

Brendan Meyer: I was huge fan of Adam and Simon for a long time, so working on this was a huge dream for me, it was really surreal. It was so much fun, I had the best time. Adam’s the best what can I say.

Leland Orser: I can’t add much more than that, Adam was really really good. He really knew what he wanted and the direction was really specific and great but not in the way that he was giving you a ‘No’ or you felt like you were doing it wrong. But in a real collaborative way and you could tell he had a vision. It was really exciting and cool. You could tell he could see the movie in his head.

Lance Reddick: The funny thing for me is that I don’t remember exactly what it was about, because I was also offered the role. I was in New York at the time so Adam and I met on the phone and I told him one of my hesitations was, I don’t want to be the same Top Cop in a suit because I’ve done that for so long. I didn’t want to be the guy just doing exposition and on the page I wasn’t sure if it was going to play like that. I remember we talked a lot about film. I can’t remember exactly what it was that he said, all I remember is we ended the conversation and I said “Let me sleep on it, I’ll get back to you.” As soon as we got off the phone, I called my agent and said, “I’m going to do this film.”

AW: I just told Lance you’re going to wear a really cool trench coat and he said “Alright man, that sounds good.”

DS: Adam just cast a spell on me man. It was one of the funniest scripts I ever read, I was laughing my ass off. As soon as I read it, I made phone calls, some to people who mattered, some just phone calls. And within days we were talking, and I saw You’re Next and watching You’re Next blew me away. I was like I wanted to work with that guy. And I realized it wasn’t that guy, it was these guys. All these guys, the whole Snoot team is unbelievable. Really special bunch to work with. Obviously I didn’t know that at the beginning but I know now.

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Richard Linklater and Cast Talk BOYHOOD

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Even if you won’t be able to see Richard Linklater’s stunning Boyhood for another five months or so, the epicly elongated process that went into making this film is undeniably amazing and certainly worth a read. Shot over 12 years as a young boy grows from age six to eighteen, Linklater’s ambitious project is truly one of a kind and the product reflects his thoughtful dedication. Alongside his cast, including Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, daughter Lorlei Linklater and debut star Ellar Salmon at his side, Linklater took to the stage at Sundance’s Eccles Theater to answer a host of questions after the world premiere of his sensational film.

Richard Linklater: We couldn’t imagine any place else to show this film to its first audience so it’s really special for us. We started this film 4,208 days ago. So thanks for coming along with us. I’m just so proud of these guys! We’re here to answer any questions you might have.

Q: Was it all your idea and script Richard, or do you collaborate with what’s going on in their lives?

RL: Very collaborative. It’s kind of outlined. But every year we would work out the scenes. The great thing of having that gestation period, roughly a year between shoots, so I could think about it, you know, fourth grade, fifrth grade, and then we would get together and just work on it, sometimes really quickly. It was very intense, like three or four day shoots every time, about a year in between to think about it. That’s the way I always work. At some point, the ideas merge, as the kids got older, at some point Ellar was writing with me much of it.

Q: How did you approach casting?

RL: Casting. Well, you know that’s the key. That was the lucky thing. I mean, I talked to Ethan first. We’d worked together and we’re friends, we run ideas by each other. So he jumped in. Do you guys wanna talk about how you came aboard?

Ethan Hawke: It all started with me. (Laughter) No, sometimes I think that Rick either has a lucky star or sold his soul to the Devil, because this movie couldn’t have worked without Lorelei and Ellar. And you couldn’t really know that they would be able to contribute the way they did. Except for the fact, for your writing question, one of the ways that Rick likes to write a movie is to invite his performers to be a part of the filmmaking process with him. It’s very clear the way he wants to make it and he lets it be incredibly open to us. So Lorelai, what’s going on in her life could inform what is happening in Samantha’s life and vice versa. For all of us, a lot of it was talking about it for us, what it was like in fourth grade, but now a lot of us are parents of fourth graders or have been. So we could benefit from having both points of view. I mean, Lorelai signed up for something…what age were you when you agreed to do it?

Lorelei Linklater: Eight.

EH: Eight. He held you to that promise for twelve years? What was the year you decided you no longer wanted to be involved in it?

LL: Maybe around the fourth year. I asked my Dad (director Richard Linklater) if my character could die. (Laughter) He said it would be too dramatic.

Patricia Arquette: Another thing that Rick did during the process, in regard to the writing thing, sometimes I think Ellar would be a little more advanced than Mason would be, because Ellar’s parents are really cool experimental artists and musicians, incredible people. Rick would say, “So here’s where Ellar’s at, but Mason’s a couple of years behind, so we’ve got to cut his hair, make him look not so cool.” So we had to uncool Ellar. Yeah, the coolest seventh grader on Earth happened to be working on our movie. But when Rick called, we met at Ethan’s hotel at a little party for ten minutes–

EH: In 1994.

PA: So he called me and said, “What are you going to be doing for the next twelve years?” I don’t know, hustling, trying to get a job, unemployed, what I’m doing now. “Ok, wanna do this movie?” Absolutely, coolest opportunity on Earth.

Q: Ellar, do you remember being cast?

Ellar Salmon: Very vaguely, I remember being a variable in an audition process. And, I remember having a distinct feeling that a large part of why I was cast was because of how cool my parents are. He knew he wouldn’t have to deal with those kind of parents. But I don’t remember it. It goes in and out. There are things early on that I watch and remember really clearly and then there are other things that I just have absolutely no memory of.

EH: It was fascinating to see Ellar develop as an actor. Because when he was a little boy, it was like playing with a kid and trying to capture moments. And when I came in, I would miss two years at a time sometimes. We had a camping trip scene, and that was the first time you had agency in the writing, bring in where he thought the character would be. You really wanted to talk about this Star Wars thing and talk about girls. So watching you learn how to act and how to collaborate as a filmmaker as a participant in this film. You learned how to improvise and how to be in character. And that just started growing. And the process of making it felt differently because Ellar was becoming a young man.

Q: With a three hour film, I’m curious if there was something that was a little difficult to cut that the audience would be interested in hearing about?

RL: All of my scenes. There was quite a bit on the floor.

Q: What was your favorite scene that you cut?

RL: Well it would be in the movie if it was my favorite. It was an interesting editing process. You got to spend all those years. Two months ago I trimmed something from Year 2. I had ten years to think about what I wasn’t totally happy about. Everything about this movie was odd. But there’s nothing. The movie’s long but it had to be. I never made a movie over two hours but this one had to be for a reason.

Q: As far as it how it was shot, seamlessly, it looks so beautiful and has incredible the production value but I was just curious about the technology involved. Did you keep using the same camera or was it changed in post?

RL: That’s a good question about technology. That was a big issue upfront. So we shot it on 35mm, negative, I wanted it to look the same way. I knew it’d look a lot different if we jumped into the digital, hi-def formats. So I don’t know how many 35mm films are at Sundance this year, but we’re one of them. Can I give a big shout out? There’s a hero in this film. It’s the crazy guy who took a leap of faith. Obviously, this whole thing, we all took leaps of faith. It was a lot of belief in the future to commit for something for so long. But it’s the strangest proposition to ask someone to help finance something for twelve years, in our industry. So I want to really thank Johnathan Sirak, at IFC. He doesn’t make a lot of films, and as years went on, I’d run into him and he’d say “Well, we have one film in production.” (Laughs) Every year, I just had a board meeting. Everyone asks what the hell this is on the books. He had to lie, every year. But we have to thank him so much for his support.

Q: You guys wanna let me know about any other films?

EH: You’re gonna be in the next episode. This is part of the movie now.

RL: We started a reality show actually. (laughs)

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Talking With Bob Nelson of NEBRASKA

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Continuing a tradition of excellence, Nebraska is Alexander Payne‘s seventh film in 22 years and has all the earmarks of a Payne project. But behind the landmarks that we’ve come to expect from an Alexander Payne film is a script boiling from the page courtesy of Seattle native Bob Nelson. Perfectly blending melancholy drama and high comedy, Nelson writes Nebraska from his life experiences, here seen through the lens of a middle class family trying to rediscover their pride on a Midwest road trip. Using his own family as a diving point for this unassuming host of characters, Nelson has an understanding of Middle America unlike most. His childhood in Seattle was punctured by frequent trips to the dusty plains of Nebraska, giving him an acute portrait of the land’s mysterious ethos. Both an insider and an outsider, he’s able to find the humor in the tragedy and the tragedy in the humor.

 

I talked with Bob about how he came to work on Nebraska, his recent Independent Spirit Award nomination, what he was doing over at Pixar, and some of his favorite movies, working with Alexander Payne and the creative process. Read what he had to say below:

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I found Nebraska deeply, deeply funny and a lot of that came out of this idea of banality as humor. What is it about these unassuming Midwesterns that’s so illusively amusing? 

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Bob Nelson: I grew up in the Seattle area but my family’s from the area of Nebraska where we shot. Going back on trips when I was a kid, those uncles and aunts you see in the movie are very similar to my relatives. They were all great people and the thing about them is they were also very funny with a dark sense of very wry humor. I inherited some of that from them and relied on that when I went to Almost Live, this show on Seattle I was on. When I was writing this, especially when I was starting out when I’d never written a screenplay before, I fell back on the comedy segment and came up with most of those first before I added the dramatic scenes. A lot of that came from that Midwest lowkey sense of humor.

This being your first screenwriting experience, what was it like rolling with the punches as various changes were inevitably made to your script? Did you ever feel like someone had taken your baby and was raising it in a hostile environment or did you feel that the people who you handed it over to really foster its growth in the long process as it was changing and growing into a film?

BN: I had an experience that few get to have in Hollywood because the only person in charge of the script after I wrote it was really Alexander Payne, who’s one of our best directors and one of the best writers. He’s even won a couple of Oscars for his screenwriting. To have your script go to someone like that, you usually don’t worry. I think my script was a little softer and he toughened it up and really made it into an Alexander Payne movie, which is something that I’ve always enjoyed watching. I was thrilled and very lucky. He came up with some of the scenes in there. The Mount Rushmore scene is his. He changed the professions of the brothers to give them a little bit of a rivalry and a story arc. That was the kind of thing he did. He also came up with some lines in almost every scene that elevated it. I’m very lucky and I know that will never happen again so I’m enjoying it for now.

Even though it does sound like you had a great first experience, it’s no secret that it took forever. Payne was working on Election back on 1999 when you finished the script. Was that at all disillusioning for you or was it just part and parcel of the system?

BN: Well sometimes it just takes a long time to get movies made. Ten years is longer than most but all of that came down to Alexander and when he was ready to shoot this. He told us in 2003, About Schmidt was about to come out and he was going to shoot Sideways in the fall and Nebraska will not be the other movie after that because I don’t want to do two movies in a row that are roadtrip movies. And he kept his promise. We didn’t know, and he probably didn’t know, that it would take seven years to live up to his commitment but we were the movie after that. He kept his word and all during that time he would reassure us that he was still planning on making Nebraska. That’s really all we needed. There was a worry that he would pick up the script and re-read it and go, “What was I thinking?” and drop out of the project. But he kept telling us, “I just read it again, I’m still onboard” so we didn’t worry too much.

As I’m sure you’re aware, you’ve just been nominated for Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards so, first of all congratulations.



BN: Thank you

…and in my humble opinion you’re in a pretty good position to take it home, but I don’t want to jinx you or anything. Is that something that you saw coming or did that take you by surprise?



BN: A lot of names have been bandied about in the last few days and my name was one of them so it’s not a total surprise but still, you never know. It is the Independent Spirit Awards, and we had a small budget by studio standards with 13 million, but they also like to pay attention to movies made for one or two million dollars. So it is great. I think Nebraska ended up with six nominations.

Yeah, right behind 12 Years a Slave with seven.



BN: I didn’t see that coming. That’s great. Bruce and June and Alexander is all great but I’m really thrilled for Will Forte because I thought that he’d been overlooked in this process. These reviews coming out lately are finally catching onto the fact that he played a role that didn’t have a lot of the showiness to it but he played it faithfully and gave us exactly what we needed for David in the story.

Let’s talk about the performances a little bit. Is Woody a character based on anyone is particular or more of an amalgamate of worn-out Midwesterns that you’ve seen or researched?

BN: Woody started with my Dad. As I wrote it and as it was played, he’s much more cranky than my Dad was but that was all for dramatic purposes. But the kernel of it was my father and some of the things he had gone through. Some things are from real life. My Dad was a mechanic, he did have his air compressor stolen, he served in WWII and he was shot down and didn’t talk about – his kids didn’t know about it for many years. Many things like that started with my Dad. Some of the other characters also didn’t end up being the people they were based on necessarily but just by starting with them and taking it from there helped to shape the characters while giving the movie an authentic feel that people watching could relate to.

How closely did Bruce Dern hem to your original vision of Woody?



BN: Very close. He even kind of looks like my dad. When I was watching it the first time, it was almost too much. He’s the perfect guy to be playing Woody.

When you were writing this, did you have any actors in mind as you were writing the screenplay for Woody, Kate, David, and Ross?



BN: The only one that I had in mind, and I wasn’t necessarily thinking that I could get him if the movie was even made in the first place, was Robert Duvall because he’s one of my favorite actors and he’s one of the actors working who looks the most like my dad. I did kind of imagine him in the role.

So you’re working on various scripts spread over various studios, can you tell me a little more about any of the projects that you’re most excited about right now?

BN: Well I have some at the studios but that really is development hell for many reasons. You work on these things and you rewrite them and you don’t know what stage it’s at or even if it’ll ever get made. I did take a break from that in the last couple years. The first script that I’ve taken out has Joel McHale of Almost Live and he stars in it. That is called The Tribe. We hooked up with the producers of Juno, a company called Mr. Mud, which is John Malkovich’s production company, and right now we’re trying to raise the money to produce that one.

I also saw from the press notes that you spent six months over at Pixar as a writer in residence? Can you talk about what you were doing over there and what projects you might have worked on?

BN: It was a script called Newt. I haven’t really kept in touch with them. I was the second writer on the project and they usually go through a few writers. I don’t know if that will ever get made because I haven’t heard any more about it.

I’ve heard on a number of occasions that being part of Pixar’s creative team is kind of ideal. Was that similar to your experience there or do you have a different opinion?

BN: It’s very supportive. You have a lot of help. When you’re writing a Pixar script, it’s not just you coming up with the ideas, the director is usually also a writer and they have storyboard artists, usually half a dozen at any one time working on it, and they came up with not only visual ideas but story ideas. It really is very intense but it’s fun because you’re working with really good people. You sit around the table and you can work on one scene for a week trying to get it exactly right. Then you storyboard it and show it to all those geniuses at Pixar, the brain trust they call it, and then you go back to the room and sit around while they give their feedback. It’s quite painstaking but that’s why they make good movies. It’s a two year process for each one.

So let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about your own connection to the movies. Can you name a few of your favorite films of all time?

BN: Well there’s quite a few. If you narrow it down, a lot of people in my age really started out with To Kill a Mockingbird, which was adapted by Horton Foote for the screen. He also did Tender Mercies and The Trip to Bountiful and if you watch those movies, you’ll see a lot of Nebraska. So Horton Foote was always an inspiration. I also grew up watching Billy Wilder movies. I love The Apartment, it’s almost perfect in its structure and its mix of comedy and drama. Later, Harold and Maude. What they all have in common is the ability to have a drama with quite a bit of humor. Those kind of movies. I grew up with The Graduate and Dr. Strangelove. Month Python and Woody Allen came into play. In the last ten years, Little Miss Sunshine. Things like that.

So what have been a few favorites of yours this year?

BN: Well of course I liked the new Woody Allen ‘Blue Jasmine’. This year I’ve been so busy that even though I’m at film festivals, I get so busy that I don’t get to see movies. It’s all about publicity. So I haven’t seen a lot. I did see Before Midnight and I’m really looking forward to the new Coen Brothers movie because they’re a big influence on me. I haven’t got to see 12 Years a Slave or Gravity yet but I do want to see those on the big screen rather than screeners. It’s been a great year for movies.

Was there a  particular turning point in your career where you said, “I want to write Hollywood movies?” or was it just a natural change?

BN: I always had at the back of my mind that I’d love to write a screen play but I never had the idea that I thought was worthy. I talked to a friend in LA who was working in television and he was trying to help me get a job down there and he said, “Besides writing another Simpsons and Everybody Loves Raymond, they like to read screenplays as well to see if you can develop characters.” I had this one little kernel of an idea that I’d heard about with people showing up at sweepstakes offices to claim their prize. That actually happens in real life. For a long time, I thought that might make a screenplay but I never figured it out. When he told me that, I finally took the time to sit down and try to figure out a story around that.

How long did it take you to write Nebraska?

BN: I jumped in and wrote 20 quick pages and then realized I didn’t know what I was doing so I had to step back and educate myself about the structure of movies. I watched a lot of movies and read a lot of screenplays. Once I started writing it again, it took a few months and then did a lot of polishing. Before I showed it to anybody, probably a year.

Was Nebraska always the name of it or was it ever called anything else?

BN: It was. I called it Nebraska because I thought people in Hollywood would remember that name over something generic like The Day After Tomorrow or something that they’d forget. There was no other reason really. I couldn’t think of any other title that I thought would stick in people’s minds. But when people think of Nebraska, they think of the state. Alexander Payne the whole time he had it said he was gonna change the title but when it came down to it, he said, “I can’t think of anything better” so we called it Nebraska after all. Originally, he didn’t want to stick it with that label because he also doesn’t necessarily want to be known as the Nebraska director. He went to California and Hawaii to get away from that. He finally just said, “Let’s call it Nebraska.”

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Talking with Oliver Hirschbiegel of DIANA

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There’s probably not a person on Earth who couldn’t tell you who Princess Diana is, and yet public knowledge of her is only surface deep. Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) aims to settle that score with his biopic Diana. Known for his unblinking film biographies of historical figures, famous (Princess Diana) and infamous (Hitler) alike, Hirschbiegel hopes to unearth the humanity in these people, digging deeper than the surface snapshot we so often focus on. Set to turn an icon into a person, he tucks into Princess Diana like she’s a girl next door who just so happens to live in a castle.

 

Together, Oliver and I spoke about how the universal love story of Diana transformed the princess’s humanitarian work, why Naomi Watts was the only choice to play Diana, how he didn’t even recognize Naveen Andrews as Lost‘s Sayid until filming was done, the Royal family and filming right at the gates of the castle.


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In making a biopic of such a superstar and massive international icon, what did you think was the more important aspect: making the story as entertaining and engaging as possible or strictly adhering to the facts and nothing but the facts?

Oliver Hirschbiegel: Well while reading it, I really was surprised because what I read was a truly universal love story. That became the main goal, whenever in doubt. I knew these characters by heart and I knew the story that I wanted to tell. At the same time, I did research for about a year, getting into these characters and finding out about all these aspects of the story and making sure that, as much as I could, that I was truthful with what I was telling. Of course, and this is in regard to certain incident like her getting into the boot of her car and aspects like that, but when it comes to the very intimate scenes when you have two people in a flat or something like that, you can just go by what you know about the character and the descriptions. There were descriptions of encounters of Hasmat and Diana and how they dealt with each other. You try to hit the spirit of that relationship. You try to hit the spirit of the characters.

You say that this is this “universal love story.” Watching the film, you definitely get the scene that that aspect is the focal point. It’s not so much about Diana’s life but this one relationship at the end of her life and how much that affected her emotionally. Why did you choose this topic as the focal point?

OH: Well the thing that happens through her finding that love is …. At the beginning we see her isolated and lonely and sort of aimless. She’s separated from Charles and not officially divorced yet but she doesn’t really know what to do with her life. In real life, she had cut off most of her friends really. She lives rather aimlessly and then finds that man. Finally, after being deprived of love from that very first years of her childhood on, she finally finds that love and opens up and through finding love and getting love, she sort of reinvents herself, which is a very important part of her biography. To me, it’s the most interesting because she becomes a new Diana. It’s not only when it comes to the whole fashion icon thing because she reinvents herself on that level as well but, for me, that is less interesting. The more interesting thing is that she becomes a stateswoman in a way.

She’s not just the head of the charity, she’s not just supporting a charity, she becomes the motor of charity work on a rather political level. To put her clothes to auction for the AIDS charity, in those days that was a very bold move and a very smart thing, it was actually William’s idea originally, and was unheard of. Also, the land mines  campaign. They fought for more than 20 years, politicians and very powerful institutions like the Red Cross and the UN. They had all fought to ban land mines on an international level and they hadn’t gotten anywhere. She takes that on and changes the world within three days. That’s astonishing and very impressive. That had been forgotten really. If you go on YouTube and look for that documentary on her going to Angola, there’s only like 15,000 people who have seen that. We’re talking about the most famous woman in the world. But what is she famous for? She’s famous for being the princess and flying around the world and hanging out with Dodi on a yacht and dying in a tunnel. That really needed correction.

For you, what was the most challenging aspect of the story to bring to the screen?

OH: Well to get it right. In all my films, my guide is this truthfulness and authenticity. I don’t want to play games with the audience. Of course, I want to entertain, I don’t want to bore them, but I don’t want to play dirty tricks on them. I try to do all the research and try to get it as right as possible. At the end of the day, it’s a piece of art and it’s my vision but it’s really based on formal research.

Why did you think that Naomi Watts was the perfect Diana for this story?

OH: As an actress, she is simply the best in her category. I wouldn’t know anybody would who pull it off. That was the first name I ever put down: Naomi Watts. And she proved me right.

What is it about her that really captures the spirit of Diana?

OH: She, more than others, makes me forget that I’m watching her impersonating a character. She becomes the character. In any film she does, regardless of genre, she becomes that and makes me forget that. She’s amazing really. Physically, if you look at her, she doesn’t really look like Diana but yet she becomes Diana and makes me believe that I’m watching Diana.

Similarly, why did you cast Naveen Andrews, who is most known for his role in Lost as this action hero, as your romantic lead. Knowing what we do about him, it is an unexpected choice.

OH: I didn’t know that Naveen did Lost. I looked at Bollywood actors and never really got The English Patient out of my head. I remember that story of that Indian soldier, I think he was a Sikh, and Juliette Binoche in The English Patient, touched me so much. It was so authentic and real. I looked them up and found out that it was Naveen Andrews. It sort of rang a bell but I didn’t put one and one together. So I looked him up on IMDB on realized he is that Iranian guy on Lost…and I loved Lost and watched Lost. I just didn’t recognize him as the same guy. We Skyped for an hour and we connected. As a director, you’re talking to an actor and you just know immediately. I knew I had my man. When I put the two together in one room, I just knew the chemistry was right. He’s not Pakistani, he’s Indian but from the North of India, which is a similar area. I think he’s the perfect match for Hasmat.

In the process of making the film, was there any pushback from the Royal Family about the story that you were telling or were they onboard?

OH:: No, they’re never onboard really. They basically stay out of it. They don’t want to have anything to do with it and they never comment either. Regardless of which story you want to tell, you’ll never be allowed to shoot within the vicinity of the palaces but they suggested for us to shoot at Kensington Gardens when there was a problem at Hyde Park, because of the Olympics games, but they allowed us to use Kensington Gardens and the palace as a backdrop. They even allowed us to shot at the actual gate where all the flowers were put down. The only thing they asked us to do was not put flowers down there because, for obvious reasons, that would have been sort of terrible for the sons. We draw in the flowers with CGI.

So you haven’t heard anything from either of her sons in terms of a reaction? Do you know if they’ve seen the film?

OH: Well, I don’t know. They never comment really. You never hear anything. It’s their policy for hundreds and hundreds of years. They keep their mouth shut and never issue any statement. Maybe one day but I find it doubtful.

One of the most distressing elements of the film is how the paparazzi and journalists are constantly in her face, snapping photos at her most susceptible moments. How did you try and approach that from a dramatic standpoint to express just how much pressure she was constantly under and how that pressure changed the course of her life?

OH: Well I enhanced that elements quite a bit. It was not in the original script. I just wanted the paparazzi to become sort of their own character and be constantly there and a constant potential threat. It’s something Fellini did in La Dolce Vita and I’m sort of bowing my hat to Fellini with that. Her life was like that. Today, it’s more common that that happens but the paparazzi, sometimes hundreds of them, being around her was a first in those days. That had never been the case before. I tried to get that out with a maximum powerful effect.

What was the hardest part of doing this story for you emotionally?

OH: To stay objective, if you will. In this kind of story, of course you connect with the characters, and I have to admit, I quite like Diana. The more I found out about Diana, the more I liked both of these characters. As a storyteller, you want to be careful that you keep your distance. I think it rings through that I like these characters but I think that’s the most difficult thing. You’re emotional involvement doesn’t take over your artistic expression.

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