Directors Panel: Directors On DirectingWould more money have made the film better?| 00:00 | (audience chatter)
| | 00:05 | Male Speaker: Good morning everyone, and welcome!
(Applause)
| | 00:10 | Male Speaker: Thank you! Welcome to the Director's Panel.
| | 00:15 | I need to thank lynda.com, our
first-ever--thank you--our first-ever presenting sponsor.
| | 00:23 | Without their generosity, we
wouldn't be able to do what we have done for the past week.
| | 00:28 | I also need to thank Fielding
Graduate University for sponsoring the Director's Panel.
| | 00:36 | And let's start right away.
| | 00:38 | Please welcome Lee
Unkrich, Director Toy Story 3;
| | 00:45 | David O. Russell, Director, The Fighter;
| | 00:51 | Tom Hooper, Director, The King's Speech;
| | 00:56 | Debra Granik, Director, Winter's Bone;
| | 01:02 | Charles Ferguson, Director, Inside Job;
| | 01:07 | Darren Aronofsky, Director, Black Swan.
| | 01:13 | And please welcome our moderator.
| | 01:16 | He has been moderating this
panel for the past few years.
| | 01:21 | He is part of the family here at
the Santa Barbara Film Festival.
| | 01:25 | He is the Editorial Director of Variety,
and he is a long-time communist, and he
| | 01:29 | is also co-host of Show Business on NBC
in LA and San Francisco and San Diego.
| | 01:35 | And in the house, on the Encore
Network across the US, Sundance channels
| | 01:41 | across Europe and Asia.
| | 01:43 | Please welcome Peter Bart!
| | 01:55 | Peter Bart: So everyone you see here is both
exhausted and also, I think, delighted to be
| | 02:04 | here in this island of civility where
people actually pay attention to cinema
| | 02:11 | and not just to the awards buzz.
| | 02:15 | So having said that, I realize--
| | 02:17 | (applause)
Thank You!
| | 02:23 | I was saying that I realize at
last year's panel we had a sort of
| | 02:27 | domestic, domestic nuances taking place
because next to me was Jim Cameron, and
| | 02:33 | next to him was our Kathryn Bigelow and--
| | 02:42 | Charles Ferguson: No.
Peter: And as you remember--
| | 02:44 | Peter: And as you remember there was a
sort of an interesting little subtext of
| | 02:50 | tensions, and I guess I should ask
folks, has anyone here hooked up with
| | 02:57 | anyone else?
| | 03:01 | I am glad.
| | 03:05 | So what all this is about is, folks,
is this thing, which most people don't
| | 03:11 | see arrive today.
| | 03:13 | This is the Oscar Ballot, and I
have been a voter for some 30 years.
| | 03:18 | And the Oscar Ballet's fascinating. There are
really some obvious things to decide on,
| | 03:25 | what, ten best pictures.
| | 03:27 | You folks are familiar with that list.
| | 03:29 | But as an Oscar voter I am also
expected to vote on sound mixing.
| | 03:34 | Like Salt is on the list of sound.
| | 03:37 | I remember, when I saw Salt, I
didn't leave thinking, "Boy, was that
| | 03:41 | mixed beautifully!"
| | 03:44 | And makeup, one of the three
candidates is Barney's Version.
| | 03:49 | Now, Paul Giamatti is terrific.
| | 03:51 | I don't think his makeup was that great.
| | 03:54 | But that is what we get, and it arrived
this morning, and the 5,000 plus
| | 04:01 | voters like myself are expected to
fill it out religiously, which we do.
| | 04:07 | So what I am going to do this
morning, folks, is to throw out my usual list
| | 04:12 | of inane questions.
| | 04:14 | And if it's directed at one person, I
would be delighted if others also responded
| | 04:20 | and maybe took issue with anything
that I said or any of what else has been said.
| | 04:25 | But well one question I couldn't
resist is simply this: since most of you
| | 04:31 | here--Lee Unkrich, this is not for you--
| | 04:34 | most of you here really made films on
extraordinarily lean, disciplined budgets,
| | 04:42 | I am tempted to ask you--starting with
you, Darren--if you would had twice the
| | 04:49 | budget and twice as long a schedule,
would your picture have been better?
| | 04:53 | Darren Aronofsky: That's
always the big question.
| | 04:58 | We actually went out looking for--I
think the original budget was about $28 or
| | 05:01 | $30 million for Black Swan, and
we ended up with 13 in the end.
| | 05:07 | So it would have been better for
me because I would have gotten paid,
| | 05:10 | because that's always the first
thing to go above the line, is like,
| | 05:17 | okay, that's chopped off now.
| | 05:19 | Let's start seeing how
many days we can do this in.
| | 05:22 | But I think, that's always the boundary.
| | 05:24 | That's the game for all
of us of independent film.
| | 05:27 | We've all come from that school.
| | 05:29 | You find out where your restrictions are,
and then you sort of create a visual
| | 05:33 | language that works within that.
| | 05:36 | When I had $60,000 to do Pi, we chose
to do black and white because I knew I
| | 05:41 | couldn't control the color palette.
| | 05:42 | I just didn't have enough resources,
and I knew black and white would sort of
| | 05:46 | cut that out of the equation.
| | 05:50 | Actually, the black and white we
shot was more expensive than color film,
| | 05:54 | because it was black-and-white reversal,
but I knew we would be saving money
| | 05:57 | because of all the savings we'd do on that.
| | 05:59 | So it would have been a
completely different movie.
| | 06:02 | You create a film with
the amount of time you have--
| | 06:06 | in this case it was 40 days.
| | 06:07 | And we knew every day was going to be
a struggle, which it was, and we just
| | 06:12 | tried to push the limit of
that $13 million every single day.
| | 06:16 | Peter: I remember running into Mike
Nichols the day after he finished shooting
| | 06:20 | The Graduate, and he said to me, "You
know, I think every time that I had to
| | 06:23 | compromise because of cost I think
the scene was better because I was desperate."
| | 06:28 | Debra, you, what, your budget was 2?
| | 06:33 | How the hell did you do that?
| | 06:35 | Debra Granik: Well, it depends on
who is going to go down there with you.
| | 06:42 | You have to go with a group of people
that want to work in that way, and who are willing.
| | 06:46 | 24 and a half days means that some of it is shot
in a documentary style in a sense that
| | 06:55 | that's what the crew looks like
and that's how they are moving.
| | 06:57 | It's not that it's documentary
techniques, but the actual structure,
| | 07:00 | infrastructure, resembles a very agile,
mobile situation, and there are no sets,
| | 07:08 | and the lighting package is tiny.
Everything is about being adroit and swift
| | 07:12 | moving and low impact.
| | 07:14 | Had we had more money, we would have
crushed the very piece of land that we
| | 07:19 | were invited to work on.
| | 07:20 | We would have rolled
over the local participants.
| | 07:24 | We would have been seen even more
as outsiders as we already were.
| | 07:27 | We were outsiders. And so the connection
of our team with the local team I think
| | 07:33 | would have been inhibited and marred
by a kind of money that would be both
| | 07:39 | intimidating and seem
egregious, maybe unconscionable.
| | 07:43 | It would have been hard to defend
coming down with any more resources than we had.
| | 07:49 | And I don't think it would have made it
a better film, for all the reasons of--
| | 07:54 | we didn't need to alter.
| | 07:55 | We needed to be very quite and careful
about what we were filming, where we
| | 07:58 | were filming.
| | 07:59 | So I think for this production, I
think the missing is like the 2.2;
| | 08:05 | the .2 for the two producers that
deferred their--above-the-line situation.
| | 08:14 | So I think in this sense, a frugal
budget was commensurate with the
| | 08:20 | story we were trying to tell.
| | 08:21 | Peter: Just for the sake of the
folks here, he who defers, never sees.
| | 08:25 | (laughter)
| | 08:27 | Debra: Except when you have a transparent,
honest, hard-working distributor like
| | 08:31 | Roadside, who will absolutely make
sure those two women receive their...deferment.
| | 08:40 | (applause)
| | 08:44 | Peter: Tom, do you want to speak to that issue?
| | 08:46 | Tom Hooper: Well, I definitely think one of
the differences if we've had more budget--I
| | 08:52 | mean we made it for about $14 million, our film. 1.4--
| | 08:58 | there were some people I collaborate
with a number of times, and it is tough to
| | 09:02 | keep going back and saying, "Would you
work for less than you should?" and keep
| | 09:06 | putting in those favors,
and particularly in post when
| | 09:08 | we really ran out of money,
Particularly on the sound side, it was very tough to
| | 09:13 | do what we had to
do to get the picture made.
| | 09:15 | It would be nice to feel like you
could pay people generously when you work.
| | 09:20 | So that would be a difference.
| | 09:22 | But I think the key relationship is
the relationship between budget and
| | 09:26 | scrutiny, or oversight.
| | 09:28 | And in my head, one of the bonuses of
working on a low budget is the level of
| | 09:35 | scrutiny you are under from the
financiers is much reduced, because no one is
| | 09:39 | hugely anxious about it, because no
own stands to lose a ton of money.
| | 09:46 | And I think in the end, I have learned
over the time I have been directing, the
| | 09:49 | most valuable thing you have is your
freedom, and I would always work for less
| | 09:55 | and less budget to have that freedom,
and that trade I would make every time.
| | 09:59 | Peter: Well, I wonder if one
advantage to scrambling for the financier is
| | 10:04 | simply that there is no studio to
tell you what to do because there are a
| | 10:08 | bunch of financial entities.
| | 10:10 | Now David, I kept trying to follow
how The Fighter came together, and I lost
| | 10:16 | track, so I don't know who
you ended up answering to.
| | 10:20 | David O. Russell: Well, it was at
Paramount, and then it felt apart many times.
| | 10:26 | Mark Wahlberg carried it for about 4-5 years.
| | 10:28 | Brad Pitt was going to do it.
| | 10:30 | Matt Damon was going to do it.
| | 10:31 | They had a $60-70 million budget.
| | 10:34 | We ended up financed by Relativity.
| | 10:39 | Darren was going to do it at one time.
| | 10:40 | That was with Matt Damon?
Who was not going to be with?
| | 10:45 | Darren: Brad Pitt was involved for a
little bit and then Matt Damon.
| | 10:47 | I went through a few actors on it.
| | 10:50 | David: And then when that didn't happen,
then you went and said, "I am going to make
| | 10:52 | this movie called The Wrestler," right?
| | 10:54 | Darren: No, no, no. I --
(laughter)
| | 10:57 | David: Why is that so funny?
(laughter)
| | 11:06 | Darren: I read The Fighter and thought
it's an amazing story, and Scott Silver who
| | 11:13 | wrote the script, I went to film school
with, and he is from Worcester which is
| | 11:19 | right near Lowell, and so I begged
him to do it, and he eventually did it.
| | 11:21 | And then went through few actors and
then The Wrestler came together, so I did that.
| | 11:25 | And then it was like,
more Bengay or girls in tutus?
| | 11:30 | Okay, so David.
| | 11:36 | How's that Bengay? How you handlin'
that Bengay there, it's okay?
| | 11:39 | David: So by the time it came together
Relativity financed it, and when we had 11
| | 11:43 | below the line.
| | 11:44 | 33 days, 3 days to do the
fights and 30 days to do the rest.
| | 11:48 | It was the closest to my first film,
Spanking the Monkey, which was more like
| | 11:51 | Winter's Bone in scale.
| | 11:53 | We shot that in 25 days.
| | 11:55 | I frankly liked the level of focus
and leanness and no-nonsense-ness that
| | 12:01 | it gave us.
| | 12:02 | And I think necessity breeds invention
and keeps ego out, and we were unified
| | 12:07 | in a humble kind of love for the
people of Lowell and for the story--and that
| | 12:11 | all came from Mark.
| | 12:12 | So that was an asset from
a creative point of view,
| | 12:15 | and it caused us to be disciplined at the
script phase because the script must be
| | 12:19 | gotten below 110 pages if you
are to make a movie in 33 days,
| | 12:24 | I mean for me, and really,
really do each one of those scenes.
| | 12:27 | Peter: That's only 100 pages shorter than Social Network.
(laughter)
| | 12:33 | So Lee, I must ask you, since you
worked at Disney and Pixar with limitless
| | 12:39 | amounts of money, but --
| | 12:40 | Lee Unkrich: But you know what I got a--let me cut
you off. The thing is, yes, I made a film that cost a lot
| | 12:49 | more than any film at this table, but
when you are making an animated film,
| | 12:52 | because they take so long,
because they take years and years--
| | 12:56 | I worked on Toy Story 3 for over four
years, and with a very large crew--so
| | 13:02 | naturally that means it's going to
become expensive. But I don't anyone to feel
| | 13:07 | like we have an open
checkbook to make this movie.
| | 13:10 | In fact, we were shielded quite a bit
from the money that was being spent, and
| | 13:14 | we were allowed to just completely
focus on the creativity of making the film.
| | 13:18 | And as everybody is pointing out, you
always make better decisions when we have
| | 13:21 | limitations, when the sky is not the limit.
| | 13:25 | And every step for the way, we had
limitations upon us, many of them
| | 13:29 | self-imposed, because we knew that we
would come up with smarter ideas if we
| | 13:35 | had those limitations.
| | 13:36 | So I mean I know that's, like, that
doesn't mean a lot when you've made a
| | 13:38 | movie for $2 million. But I mean it's --
| | 13:43 | Peter: So let me ask you
a really stupid question.
| | 13:48 | How do you handle adulation?
| | 13:50 | I mean everybody must come up to you
and say, "Toy Story 3 is my favorite movie
| | 13:55 | in the history of mankind."
| | 13:57 | So did you ever just say
to somebody, "Oh, shut up. I've heard that before."
| | 14:00 | (laughter)
| | 14:03 | Lee: No, I love it.
| | 14:04 | I spent the first year and a half of
this movie waking up every morning feeling
| | 14:08 | like I wanted to throw up over the side
of the bed, because there was an
| | 14:13 | enormous amount of pressure on me to
not only be making the new Pixar movie
| | 14:17 | after a string of ten that had all
been very successful, critically and
| | 14:21 | financially, but to be making a sequel
to the Toy Story films, which have been
| | 14:26 | beloved for a number of years
by people all over the world.
| | 14:29 | I just knew there was a very real
chance that I would go down in history as
| | 14:32 | being the guy who made the crappy
sequel to the Toy Story movies, a very real
| | 14:36 | possibility that could happen.
| | 14:38 | And that fear drove me each and
every day to not let that happen, or to do
| | 14:43 | everything in my power to not let that happen.
| | 14:47 | So yes, I love the adulation because my
crew and I worked really hard for a long
| | 14:51 | time, and it could very well have gone
the other direction, so we drink it in.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with actors| 00:00 | Peter Bart: See everybody on this stage,
it seems to me, the pictures you made moved
| | 00:05 | the needle.
| | 00:06 | They really had a significant impact
in one way or another, except for Mr.
| | 00:12 | Ferguson, because the fact about
Inside Job is that in the world that you
| | 00:17 | depicted, nothing ever @#$&^% changes.
| | 00:21 | You've got--do you feel that way or not?
| | 00:25 | Charles Ferguson: Well, this part
of the world isn't changing fast.
| | 00:32 | That's for sure.
| | 00:33 | The Obama Administration has been
a gigantic, tragic disappointment.
| | 00:38 | I think the Obama Administration will
go down in history, at least in this
| | 00:42 | domain--with regard to things like
Egypt and other matters, the verdict might
| | 00:47 | be very different--
| | 00:48 | but with regard to these issues,
which are very important issues about the
| | 00:53 | structure and future of our society.
| | 00:57 | When Barack Obama was elected, he had
an extraordinary unique chance to do
| | 01:02 | something about these questions.
| | 01:04 | He had an incredible mandate, a heavily
Democratic Congress. The country was in
| | 01:09 | deep crisis. And he had a moment,
and many of us, including myself, were
| | 01:17 | hopeful based on the things he had
said during his campaign that something
| | 01:20 | would actually happen.
| | 01:22 | It was a huge disappointment when he
took that moment and used it to appoint
| | 01:27 | as his economic and regulatory team a
group of people who had in fact caused this crisis.
| | 01:34 | Peter: You might say he
really had casting problems.
| | 01:40 | Charles: Very, very severe casting problems.
| | 01:43 | Yes, and the new cast isn't any better.
| | 01:49 | The people who've just come in as
the replacements for the first set of
| | 01:52 | people who left,
| | 01:54 | they are not any better;
| | 01:55 | in some cases they are worse.
| | 01:56 | There are several people at senior
levels of the administration who arguably
| | 02:00 | should be in prison.
| | 02:01 | That's disturbing. That's very disturbing.
| | 02:03 | Peter: Well, I feel you should get an Oscar.
(applause)
| | 02:10 | I felt you should get an Oscar for
making the most depressing movie of the year.
| | 02:15 | (laughter)
Charles: Thank you so much.
| | 02:18 | Peter: So Darren, I read, it was in New York
Magazine, I think, that you changed during
| | 02:26 | the course of this picture from
being a control freak to being an out-of-
| | 02:31 | control freak,
| | 02:32 | which struck me as a very interesting description.
| | 02:34 | Would you explain that?
| | 02:36 | Darren Aronofsky: I have no idea
what that writer was writing about,
| | 02:39 | so I think he was trying to make a
point about probably what happened
| | 02:49 | between The Fountain & The Wrestler.
| | 02:52 | I think. But definitely my
approach of filmmaking changed.
| | 02:55 | I don't know if it changed radically,
but it was definitely going from a film
| | 03:02 | where everything was very, very--
every shot was very, very symmetrical and
| | 03:08 | controlled, to taking on this sort of
cinema verite style, and sort of allowing
| | 03:14 | the actor complete freedom.
| | 03:16 | It sort of came out of a necessity of
working with Mickey Rourke, who doesn't
| | 03:22 | really respect marks or lines or
directors or filmmaking, just sort of--
| | 03:27 | (laughter)
Peter: He is wonderful, but he is lazy.
| | 03:31 | Darren: He respects the square footage
in his trailer, and that's about it.
| | 03:35 | I love Mickey, and he is
one of the great actors,
| | 03:37 | but it definitely changed the way I had to work.
| | 03:43 | Then I tried to bring that with sort
of the formalism, because someone like
| | 03:46 | Natalie Portman is incredibly
disciplined and technical, as well as being
| | 03:52 | really talented.
| | 03:53 | So I could bring back some of the
other type of filmmaking that I had done
| | 03:56 | earlier and combine it with some of
the lessons I got from The Wrestler.
| | 04:00 | So maybe that's it.
| | 04:01 | Peter: I think what the writer was also
suggesting that you wanted, in a sense, your
| | 04:06 | actress, Natalie, to lose control
of themselves and to be out there.
| | 04:11 | Darren: Well, I always talk--it's funny,
because people sort of accuse me of pushing
| | 04:17 | actors, and I don't really push them.
| | 04:21 | I just sort of I kind of remind them
of why they've started in the business.
| | 04:26 | If you go down to an acting school
on Melrose Avenue, all you'll see is a
| | 04:30 | bunch of student actors screaming "Stella!"
crying their eyes out, doing anything
| | 04:37 | Darren: to emote.
Peter: Yeah.
| | 04:38 | Darren: I think in the Hollywood system,
it's sort of--people forget that.
| | 04:43 | I've had actors on set when they're
like, "Well, I can't do anything more than
| | 04:47 | three takes," and I am like,
"What are you talking about?
| | 04:49 | What do you want to do? Sit around the craft service
table and wait for them to light for another
| | 04:52 | seven hours. This is our chance to just do stuff,
and this is--it's our set. Let's have fun
| | 04:59 | and let's push each other."
| | 05:01 | So I don't find actors ever lose themselves.
| | 05:04 | I mean Ellen Burstyn or Natalie Portman
or any of the other kind of psycho trips
| | 05:10 | my actors have taken, I think they're
always in control, and acting on film,
| | 05:16 | it's a 30-second burst of
intensity and then you call cut.
| | 05:20 | And all the actors I've worked with,
when you call cut, they are back to being
| | 05:25 | who they are, you know, because there
is a movie camera there, and there is the
| | 05:28 | boom person there, and there is a
makeup person in their face, and you take a
| | 05:32 | breath, and then you go back into it.
| | 05:34 | I think the intensity of the
physicality of Black Swan, with the kind of
| | 05:41 | emotional stuff with all the training
Natalie had to do was really, really
| | 05:44 | tough on her.
| | 05:47 | But she never got that close
to the edge, I don't think.
| | 05:50 | Peter: Debra, when I run into Jennifer
Lawrence, I rarely have seen an actress
| | 05:56 | who in person seems more of a
contradictory character than the character that
| | 06:01 | you had her play.
| | 06:03 | That was an extraordinary
performance and an extraordinary movie.
| | 06:07 | Did you do a great deal of rehearsing with her?
| | 06:10 | Debra Granik: Jennifer was very willing to
come down to Southern Missouri before the shoot
| | 06:16 | and spend a week on the location.
| | 06:20 | We were shooting in a family's holler
using their homes, the various homes that
| | 06:24 | were in that family property.
| | 06:25 | She was willing to work with the
young girl that lived in the house that we
| | 06:29 | were going to be filming in, getting
to know the animals on the property,
| | 06:33 | learning things.
| | 06:34 | We did skinning workshops.
| | 06:37 | She learned all the things that she
was going to have to perform in the film,
| | 06:40 | and she was extremely amenable to that.
| | 06:41 | She wanted to have that time, and she
was also willing to go back to Kentucky,
| | 06:44 | her home state, prior to that, and just
reorient, listen to the dialect, just get
| | 06:53 | herself re-steeped into things
that she had known and observed.
| | 06:56 | She obviously does not come from any
circumstances that resemble the film,
| | 06:59 | but hearing voices of people who were
using the dialect from the region and the
| | 07:04 | accent--huge help, just to have that in her.
| | 07:09 | Peter: So when you said cut, I can't
imagine that everyone just went back to their
| | 07:13 | basic characters in that environment,
because those were kind of characters.
| | 07:17 | Debra: This is exactly for self-
preservation what Darren is speaking about.
| | 07:23 | I mean actors absolutely do.
| | 07:26 | They retreat to, many-- I mean, my
experience is limited, but they retreat to a
| | 07:32 | place that is to recharge, to get ready
to go again, to contemplate what might be
| | 07:38 | done differently, to respond to
something that I might be asking of them.
| | 07:44 | So it's a very, it's a very lucid,
precise kind of retreat that they perform,
| | 07:50 | and I think this is--it's almost
like the only way to go.
| | 07:56 | I also think that it varies very much
between the actors, in terms of how they
| | 08:02 | actually regroup before the next performance.
| | 08:05 | Peter: You bet.
| | 08:06 | But Tom Hooper, is the game changed when
an actor--in this case, Geoffrey Rush--
| | 08:12 | feels that he really discovered and
developed, nurtured the material, and I
| | 08:16 | guess transformed, helped the process
of transforming it, as did you, from a
| | 08:22 | stage play into a screenplay.
| | 08:25 | Does that change the
relationship between director and actor?
| | 08:28 | Tom Hooper: I think, actually, I think
probably Geoffrey felt rather unanchored in
| | 08:37 | Tom: the character.
Peter: Bit louder. I can't quite hear you.
| | 08:39 | Tom: Geoffrey felt rather unanchored in
the character at the beginning, because we
| | 08:43 | knew so little about Lionel
Logue, and we had no photographs.
| | 08:48 | We didn't know how many kids he had
or what they were called.
| | 08:50 | We didn't know where he grew up in Australia.
| | 08:53 | He was a character consigned to the
footnotes, the marginalia of history,
| | 09:00 | because the English famously aren't very
relaxed about the idea or the need for
| | 09:05 | therapy, unlike here in the
State, good State of California.
| | 09:10 | (laughter)
| | 09:14 | I am sure the Royal Family were a little
embarrassed by it, and so it's not surprising
| | 09:17 | it was kind of push the margins.
| | 09:21 | I think despite his involvement from
early on, I know it was only when we discovered
| | 09:29 | the papers of Lionel Logue belonging
to the grandson, when we suddenly had
| | 09:32 | photographs of him, and we could see
his handwriting, and we could see the way
| | 09:36 | he wrote, and we knew how many sons he
had, we knew about his wife, and we knew
| | 09:40 | fragments of his biography, that
Geoffrey finally felt that rather than inventing this
| | 09:47 | character that there was these
wonderful clues to go on.
| | 09:52 | So, but I certainly think it gave
him a strong sense of ownership on the
| | 10:00 | project, and I do remember, I do
remember one rather interesting moment when his
| | 10:05 | representatives were fighting for his
rights to arrive six days before the shoot.
| | 10:10 | He got on the phone with me and said,
"Well, it's five weeks before. I am not
| | 10:14 | doing anything. Why don't I hop on the
plane tomorrow," and that kind of thing.
| | 10:18 | When he is on the other side, and knows
that it would be much more helpful for
| | 10:21 | him to be there five weeks out in the
same city as you, and then turning up and
| | 10:25 | saying, "Why don't we start rehearing,
because I am sitting in my hotel room."
| | 10:29 | That kind of--when you can form that
kind of alliance with an actor early on
| | 10:33 | that he is carrying it with you,
that makes a huge difference.
| | 10:36 | Peter: So David, I think the most
discussed bit of casting certainty of any film is
| | 10:43 | Christian Bale, who I notice in his
acceptance speeches, always responds in a
| | 10:49 | different type of Cockney accent.
(laughter)
| | 10:53 | So, how did you get to that place where
you decided he was right, and Mark was
| | 11:03 | certainly a part of that too, because
he--Mark at some point, Mark Wahlberg
| | 11:07 | had to say, "He has got the better role."
| | 11:10 | David O. Russell: I think what happened was
Christian so fell in love with Dicky--to answer
| | 11:15 | your awards thing, about the accent--
| | 11:19 | he so got into Dicky that his whole
accent, way of talking sort of morphed with
| | 11:26 | Dicky's way of talking.
| | 11:30 | He said he hopes that people don't
mind if Batman speaks like Dicky, because
| | 11:38 | he just loved it.
| | 11:39 | I think one of the reasons he loved it
is that we have of two types of casting
| | 11:44 | in the picture, which are
against type, which I love to do.
| | 11:47 | It is very exciting for any director,
and very exciting for any actor.
| | 11:51 | When you add to that, you're playing real
people with big hearts, that makes it
| | 11:55 | all the more exciting, which is
that Christian had never played such a
| | 11:59 | garrulous, warm, outgoing guy, which Dicky is.
| | 12:05 | He stayed in character all
the time, and he loved it.
| | 12:09 | Lowell is a very--I hope you can
feel from the film--it's a very warm, real place.
| | 12:15 | No pretense, real people, and they
really love each other, and everything is on
| | 12:19 | the surface right there.
| | 12:20 | Their every emotion, every failure,
every desire, every anger, every love, is
| | 12:26 | right there, and that's
what I loved about the people.
| | 12:30 | That's what I fell in love with.
| | 12:31 | Amy Adams, same thing, had
never played against type like that.
| | 12:35 | So she was excited to play
such a powerful sexy tough woman.
| | 12:43 | Mark did bring Christian to the table,
because both their daughters go to
| | 12:48 | the same school.
| | 12:49 | He'd had the idea from seeing
Rescue Dawn and The Machinist,
| | 12:55 | he knew that Christian would
disappear into a character.
| | 12:58 | When I was speaking to Matt Damon
recently, he said, interestingly, he said,
| | 13:02 | "This goes to show that the right
person is supposed to play the right role at
| | 13:05 | the right time," because I don't
believe that Matt Damon believes that he would
| | 13:08 | ever have disappeared into
that role as Christian did.
| | 13:12 | I am fortunate enough to think that my
producer Mark Wahlberg says the same as
| | 13:16 | me, that Darren would have made a
beautiful film no doubt, and for whatever the Gods,
| | 13:21 | the movie Gods decided, this is the film
that got made, which got changed into a
| | 13:25 | different voice for whatever reason.
| | 13:27 | Peter: Unfortunately, Mark then did
Hereafter, where he was really wrong for the role.
| | 13:32 | David: Oh, yeah, I did ask Mark.
| | 13:35 | I said, "Do you realize that you're giving him the flashier role, right?
Peter: Yeah.
| | 13:40 | David: He said, "Yes, I understand
Christian is going to get the flashier role."
| | 13:45 | He said, "I am okay with that,
because I want to be in the ring.
| | 13:47 | I want to be fighting, and I"--and he
played a guy closer--he takes the quiet guy,
| | 13:52 | the James Garfield style of acting where
you are just grounded and emotional and
| | 13:56 | real, which allows
Melissa and Christian to be big.
| | 14:00 | That's a very generous actor that gives
you that bed of emotion, and it was Mr.
| | 14:04 | DeNiro who said to me he felt that
Mark's performance was perhaps the most
| | 14:09 | underrated of the year, because it is so quiet.
| | 14:12 | It's nice to know that Mr. Quiet himself, Mr.
| | 14:15 | DeNiro actually felt that he wanted to
say that--like he made a big deal out of
| | 14:20 | it to me and to Mark.
| | 14:21 | He doesn't make a big deal
out of much, so that was nice.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Staying focused| 00:00 | Peter Bart: So, I would like to ask each
of you, as we go down the row--starting with
| | 00:03 | you, Darren--what effect do you
feel that being involved in this ritual,
| | 00:10 | how has it affected you, how it will
affect your filmmaking plans? And talking
| | 00:16 | about yourself constantly night and
day, how does this--does this build a
| | 00:21 | certain self-loathing within you?
| | 00:23 | Darren Aronofsky: I think
the self-loathing is important.
| | 00:28 | I remember after Pi, I used to write
in my journal, "I don't know anything.
| | 00:35 | I don't know anything. I don't know
anything." after the success, just to try
| | 00:37 | and keep tough.
| | 00:39 | And I think it's important that
with all the good stuff you have to
| | 00:44 | remember that the reason you got here
is all of the hard work, and all the
| | 00:49 | doubt and stuff.
| | 00:51 | And there was tremendous doubt.
| | 00:53 | I mean, four weeks before we started
shooting Black Swan, the money fell
| | 00:57 | apart, and I literally was going to
give up except for the threat of being
| | 01:01 | beat up by Natalie Portman.
| | 01:03 | So, and I was willing to give up
because I had doubts about the project,
| | 01:07 | which I think that you always forget.
| | 01:09 | I don't know. Every time I go to a film,
I get all the big doubts all the way up to the
| | 01:14 | beginning and then you forget those doubts.
| | 01:16 | It's important to write down all
that fear, so you could remember;
| | 01:20 | it's going to come up again.
| | 01:21 | And I think, if it doesn't
come up, it's a bad thing.
| | 01:23 | So, I don't know.
| | 01:24 | It's, the whole circuit I think has been--
| | 01:28 | the best part's been the
friendships that I've had.
| | 01:31 | We were joking backstage that I could
play Hooper and Hooper could play Russell,
| | 01:35 | and we could do each others lines
because we have gone to, we have done a bunch
| | 01:38 | of these and we know each
other's answers at this point.
| | 01:42 | So, all of us are trying to be
fresh and tell new stories and--
| | 01:45 | Tom Hooper: He is just
currently doing me, by the way.
| | 01:49 | (laughter)
| | 01:53 | Darren: So, well that's been part is
that there has been some, I think probably
| | 01:57 | lasting comradeship
between the filmmakers here, which has been a
| | 02:03 | good part of it.
| | 02:04 | And I think as quick as possible, on
February 28th we are all going to get
| | 02:08 | back to work, so...
| | 02:09 | Peter: Charles?
| | 02:11 | Charles Ferguson: Well,
I am kind of new to this.
| | 02:17 | This is only the second film I have
ever made, and this is certainly the first
| | 02:20 | time I've had this incredible
immersion into the anthropology of Hollywood,
| | 02:27 | which certainly is different.
| | 02:30 | It's not MIT.
| | 02:35 | I've enjoyed some of it, I have to say.
| | 02:37 | I've been to a couple of really nice
parties with some very, very good food.
| | 02:44 | And I have met a number of wonderful
and interesting filmmakers, both feature
| | 02:52 | filmmakers and the other documentary
filmmakers, who are very interesting
| | 02:56 | guys. I met--not all guys, excuse me.
| | 03:01 | I recently met the two
very guys who did Restrepo.
| | 03:07 | And my previous film was about the
occupation of Iraq, so it was interesting to
| | 03:12 | see their sense of a different war.
| | 03:18 | I have enjoyed a lot of things, but it
is also true that it has been very hard
| | 03:23 | to carve out time to write and to work.
| | 03:28 | I love making movies and I am very eager to--
| | 03:33 | Peter: Now I know you are thinking of
doing actually a dramatic, a theatrical movie next.
| | 03:39 | Does that, do you think that's been
stimulated by your proximately to infamous
| | 03:44 | characters like David O. Russell?
| | 03:45 | Charles Ferguson: I, with all
due respect sir, no, I'm afraid not.
| | 03:53 | I've wasted a very substantial
fraction of my life from a very early age, like
| | 03:59 | seven, reading and watching
thrillers, and I love them.
| | 04:05 | If I could make Chinatown or
something like that, I would be just in
| | 04:09 | heaven, just in heaven.
| | 04:11 | Peter: Debra?
| | 04:12 | Debra Granik: I think something very
positive that I am feeling about participating in
| | 04:19 | this season is, sort of seeing-- it's
really where you started the panel with,
| | 04:25 | seeing that there is a crop of films
that are being made differently and finding
| | 04:30 | kinship with other films
that are made on small budgets.
| | 04:34 | I think it gives me a lot of hope, actually.
| | 04:37 | I feel like it's a little bit
of hopeful season, this one.
| | 04:41 | I think the awkward thing at the
beginning of the season was sort of just
| | 04:47 | the female, the woman question was awkward.
That set me in so often a weird headspace
| | 04:53 | because it's hard to answer that one.
| | 04:57 | Is there an effect from last
year and what does it mean?
| | 05:02 | So, that one I am so glad but
that's not actually being raised.
| | 05:06 | But that, I had trouble even coming up
with good answers on that, but otherwise,
| | 05:11 | I feel like another thing that
was extremely rich about the season was
| | 05:16 | seeing journalistic support for
small films and seeing what they could do,
| | 05:19 | how far they could go.
| | 05:21 | With writing contextualized interesting
information about films to actually get
| | 05:26 | an audience for paperless, for a film
that had no billboards and no advertising,
| | 05:32 | that to me is also, it's just a really
hopeful sign, and so I feel inspired by
| | 05:37 | this time that we are in.
| | 05:38 | Peter: Well, I think the only answer to
the question, 'why aren't there more women
| | 05:45 | directing?' is just simply to say, well,
why don't you ask Charles Ferguson
| | 05:49 | why does Obama keep on
appointing people from Goldman Sachs?
| | 05:53 | There is no answer to that question.
| | 05:56 | One hopes that there will be
a lot more women directing.
| | 06:00 | And in the early days of Hollywood, as you
know, women were in a real leadership
| | 06:03 | role in writing and directing.
| | 06:05 | They were the principal forces.
| | 06:07 | Mr. Hooper sir, do you wish to comment on
the general thesis as to how has this
| | 06:12 | ritual affected your life
and thoughts and self-regard?
| | 06:16 | Tom Hooper: I feel a bit like Darren.
| | 06:25 | I mean, it's--what is that, I think it's
Uncle Vanya, Chekhov's play,
| | 06:30 | which ends with the line "Work, work, work."
| | 06:32 | And I kind of feel, unfortunately in my
family, that's a little bit of mantra.
| | 06:36 | Whenever any one is having any kind of
emotional roller coaster, the general
| | 06:40 | medicine is "Get back to work."
| | 06:43 | And I kind of feel that's the key.
| | 06:45 | Having observed I suppose
aspects of the award season from the outside
| | 06:51 | over the years, I think the great
risk is that you as a director become
| | 06:55 | paralyzed by it, and you start to
think, how can I do better than that,
| | 06:58 | or how can I would be back in the
same place, and I think that's absolutely
| | 07:02 | chasing a false god.
| | 07:03 | I think I didn't make this
film to be in this position.
| | 07:08 | Being in his position has been this
extraordinary, wonderful journey and stroke of
| | 07:14 | chance, but I made it for that story.
| | 07:17 | I made it for the love of that story.
| | 07:19 | And I think you have to go back and
connect with the stories you love and
| | 07:24 | make another film to make the film, and
if this happens, it happens, but I don't
| | 07:27 | think you can chase it.
| | 07:31 | Peter: David?
| | 07:32 | David O. Russell: Yeah, I would echo that.
| | 07:33 | It's a constant prayer of
humility every day to keep you awake.
| | 07:37 | Because every day you say that, but
then every day, all day you are getting
| | 07:42 | saturated in this experience,
because what I said at the start of it is
| | 07:46 | "Everything I'm going to get from this
film, I already got," and that was my
| | 07:50 | mantra from the start.
| | 07:51 | I got to make this film with these
beautiful people. I love the film.
| | 07:55 | I am going to get to make
another another couple of films period.
| | 08:01 | But then every day you're talking to
these guys and you are talking to these
| | 08:04 | audiences, and you can't help but get
sucked into the whole thing a little bit.
| | 08:10 | I think getting back to
work is the best way to do it.
| | 08:12 | It's hard to do work in this climate
though, because I was supposed to be
| | 08:16 | finishing a screenplay right now and
it's such a strange change to sit down to
| | 08:21 | write from being in this milkshake all day.
| | 08:25 | But I will say I'm extremely grateful
for it, because I had a bumpy couple of
| | 08:29 | years that I am grateful.
| | 08:31 | And when you get, it's like anything,
whether you are an athlete or anybody,
| | 08:33 | you are grateful to be back up on your
feet and you intend to stay there when
| | 08:37 | that happens. So, I am looking forward to
doing some more good pictures.
| | 08:41 | Peter: Lee?
| | 08:43 | Lee Unkrich: Well, first of all, I think, I
hopefully that goes with that saying
| | 08:46 | I find it an incredible honor to be
sitting next to David and Tom and everybody
| | 08:50 | here on this panel, because I
admire and love their films so much.
| | 08:54 | As Darren said, this whole season is a
great opportunity to just to get to hang
| | 08:58 | out with people and talk to other
filmmakers whose work we admire.
| | 09:04 | We're in a little weird position at
Pixar because we are up in Northern
| | 09:07 | California. We're in a bit of a
bubble in this kind of filmmaking Utopia--
| | 09:12 | which is great, I wouldn't trade it for anything--
but it can be a little insular sometimes,
| | 09:18 | and we don't have the opportunities to
interface with a lot of other filmmakers
| | 09:21 | as much as we would like to.
| | 09:23 | So, the season has just
been a great way to do that.
| | 09:28 | But above all else, it's just been an
honor for us to be a part of all this,
| | 09:34 | for me to be sitting on this panel
with these other directors and to have
| | 09:39 | received the nominations and been a
part of these different events, because in
| | 09:46 | animation we are often kind
of pushed off to the side.
| | 09:48 | That's kind of been the history.
| | 09:51 | And from day one at Pixar with Toy
Story, we have tried to make films that
| | 09:56 | transcended anything that hadn't been
done in animation prior, and we tried to
| | 10:01 | make films that were cinematic
and that had new stories to tell.
| | 10:07 | And we can we think of ourselves
first and foremost as filmmakers, so it's
| | 10:11 | really just the ultimate honor for us
to have been invited to be part of all this.
| | 10:14 | Peter: But I feel that you guys would do
the community, the creative community, a
| | 10:19 | great favor if you made
one real miserable bomb.
| | 10:25 | Because to have a totally impeccable
record sets of bar that no human
| | 10:29 | being can really aspire to.
| | 10:31 | Lee: I wish somebody would so
that I don't have to be the one.
| | 10:33 | We have these friends.
| | 10:35 | Whenever they have a dinner party, the
people who host the party knock over a
| | 10:39 | glass of wine on the tablecloth so
that nobody else has to be the one to get
| | 10:43 | embarrassed doing that.
| | 10:44 | I have kind of feel like
| | 10:45 | we need to just, yeah, purposefully
put out a cruddy movie and get it out of the way.
| | 10:50 | I don't know that the
studio would agree with that.
| | 10:56 | David: That's a funny, that's a funny
premise for a movie, because if you had like
| | 10:59 | a Pixar guy, like the opposite of
Springtime for Hitler. Oh, it is Springtime for Hitler
| | 11:04 | because he'd, you got to make a
bomb and that you just can't help it.
| | 11:08 | David: It just keeps becoming a hit.
Lee: You know it would be our biggest film.
| | 11:12 | Darren: It's like the Producers of Pixar.
| | 11:13 | Tom: It would be a tough pitch, wouldn't
it, saying, I need to do this film,
| | 11:18 | I want you to pay me to do this film
| | 11:20 | so I can like make it really bad.
That would be good for me.
| | 11:24 | I don't think anyone would go for that.
| | 11:25 | Peter: So, if you were--I think the worst
moment of the whole process are acceptance
| | 11:35 | speeches, because you always feel at
these dinners, you will all accept, all of
| | 11:40 | you on this panel, have accepted
something in the past month,
| | 11:43 | and it seems to me that when people
give acceptance speeches, they suddenly
| | 11:47 | freeze and they feel, I
can't say what I really think.
| | 11:50 | I have to mention my ex-wife and my
agent and my proctologist and my lawyer
| | 11:58 | because this is my moment in the sun.
| | 12:00 | So, I'm curious, and
I will ask this to each of you.
| | 12:04 | If you really forget the TV cameras,
if you really were to give a totally
| | 12:10 | candid acceptance speech, who would you thank?
| | 12:14 | Darren: I have to go first again?
Peter: Yeah, yeah.
| | 12:18 | Darren: Start down there.
Let me get think about that one.
| | 12:21 | Tom: You can do me again Darren.
| | 12:23 | Peter: Because, it is tempting to
simply say thank Harvey or thank whoever put
| | 12:30 | up the money.
| | 12:31 | I mean that's what it's based on.
| | 12:34 | Darren: I don't know. I am not sure that's true.
| | 12:40 | I think actually people do want to
thank because it's weird that we get the
| | 12:45 | credit, because now I am
going to sound like I am making one of
| | 12:47 | those &*&^#@$ speeches.
| | 12:48 | But it's true though that filmmaking
is so collaborative, and it's just such a
| | 12:55 | collection of so many people.
La la la la la la la. But it's true! It's true!
| | 13:01 | (applause and laughter)
| | 13:03 | It's unfortunate but--I mean, we can't,
as directors, we really aren't good
| | 13:08 | any one good thing.
| | 13:09 | We're just sort of
dilettantes in a lot of things.
| | 13:12 | We could sort of draw, we could sort
of work with actors, we could sort of
| | 13:16 | schedule, but we have all these
specialists that really know what they're doing.
| | 13:21 | You have a DP who really understands
what 7,200-degree temperature means for
| | 13:27 | a light bulb.
| | 13:28 | Well, I don't even know if it
tungsten--I don't even know, I forget.
| | 13:32 | I learned it in film
school, but I don't remember.
| | 13:33 | And we are like, yeah put the 12
millimeter on, but we don't really know what
| | 13:37 | it's on till we put our eye on a lens
and go, oh yeah that's what it looks like.
| | 13:42 | So, you are working with all these
people, so it's appropriate to thank those people.
| | 13:45 | I am not paying for my movies
either, so I understand.
| | 13:50 | So I don't know, if I had to give a
candid thing, it would be probably, at
| | 13:55 | this point, I think, there is like this
postmodern thing because you feel like
| | 13:57 | you're not supposed to thank people
because the Academy made a big thing about
| | 14:01 | a few years ago where they wanted you to
go backstage and do all your thanks on
| | 14:05 | Darren: the Internet.
Peter: Exactly.
| | 14:06 | Darren: And then to do something
creative in front of the crowd to really cry.
| | 14:11 | Peter: Yeah.
| | 14:14 | Darren: So I don't know, I don't
know, maybe they--I don't know.
| | 14:18 | Peter: Or to do the famous Jane Wyman
thing when she accepted an Oscar for Johnny
| | 14:23 | Belinda and said, "I got this award
for playing a mute; therefore I'm just
| | 14:27 | Peter: going to zip it up."
David: Ah! So genius!
| | 14:30 | Darren: And then Joe Pesci did
the great one where he just sort of said,
| | 14:34 | I forgot what he said, but it was
like three words, and he walked off.
| | 14:36 | Peter: That's right. That's right, but on the
other hand, a director could thank a particular
| | 14:43 | Peter: filmmaker whose influence particularly influenced him.
Darren: It's a good idea.
| | 14:46 | Darren: Hooper, you can thank me
when you are up there, okay.
| | 14:53 | Feel free.
(laughter)
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Giving thanks| 00:01 | Peter Bart: Mr. Ferguson sir, is there in
your field, is there someone who particularly
| | 00:05 | inspired you, whose
work you would express appreciation for?
| | 00:14 | Charles Ferguson: Well, there
are some in documentary film.
| | 00:17 | I would say, actually, my principal
inspirations have come from people who
| | 00:26 | are really ballsy about biting the
hand that might want to feed them in
| | 00:33 | order to shut them up.
| | 00:35 | And the thanks that I give to Sony,
Sony Pictures Classics, in this regard is very real.
| | 00:44 | I mean, they're not--I have to say that
they are not loose with a dollar, which
| | 00:51 | kept our crew very small, which makes
it easy to thank people, because there
| | 00:55 | aren't very many people to thank.
| | 00:56 | But they said they would give me
final cut, both contractual and real, and
| | 01:05 | they %$@#$ did.
| | 01:07 | And if you've seen this film--
| | 01:08 | Peter: Thank them, just thank final cut.
| | 01:10 | Charles: Yes. Final cut, yeah.
Peter: Absolutely.
| | 01:13 | Peter: Debra, I'm curious what your feeling is?
| | 01:17 | Debra Granik: Oh God! I think Darren, we maybe, we
interchanged this then, because the collaborative
| | 01:26 | thing that's like my big word, because
it is just like there is no "a film by."
| | 01:34 | I don't feel too good about that term.
| | 01:36 | I feel like I really appreciated it one
time when filmmaker wrote a film by and
| | 01:40 | there was a colon and then everybody
that made the film with him were listed.
| | 01:44 | That felt appropriate.
| | 01:45 | That felt real.
| | 01:46 | There is no filmmaker that
makes a film by him or herself.
| | 01:49 | And so the thanks has to be there.
| | 01:51 | People got in the trenches with you.
| | 01:52 | It is the most severe kind of--
The English language gets paltry when it's
| | 01:56 | that kind of thanks.
| | 01:57 | It is a gratitude that hurts.
| | 01:59 | It's a gratitude that swells up
inside you, and you spend a year trying to
| | 02:04 | give it back.
| | 02:05 | Your emails always are scrambling for
that kind of words you want to use. Even for
| | 02:11 | the people in Missouri,
| | 02:13 | it's been very hard to bridge that
level of appreciation--to communicate the
| | 02:17 | appreciation that we do feel.
| | 02:18 | And so the thanks comes from
this kind of desperate attempt.
| | 02:23 | The thanks exceeds what you're able
to communicate, and you spend a year
| | 02:26 | trying to do it.
| | 02:27 | And it's an awkward position.
| | 02:30 | Peter: Tom, how do you feel about that issue?
| | 02:34 | Tom Hooper: Well, looking back at the speech
that I made at the DGA, I feel the guy I
| | 02:38 | really should have thanked if I was
absolutely candid is Darren Aronofsky.
| | 02:43 | (laughter)
| | 02:51 | I don't know why you're laughing.
| | 02:53 | I mean, when I was 12 years old and
decided I wanted to become a film director, there was this
| | 02:58 | 14-, 15-year-old kid living in New York, and
he was making the most extraordinary
| | 03:03 | films as a teenager, and I managed to
see one of them, and that's where the
| | 03:06 | journey began.
(laughter)
| | 03:14 | No, in all seriousness--
| | 03:16 | David O. Russell: Just so you're
clear, that didn't really happen.
| | 03:20 | Tom: Before I get on to David O. Russell. I don't know.
I do think speeches aren't--they are not all about us.
| | 03:30 | I mean, they are--most of the people
involved never get, in any scenario, will
| | 03:36 | never get the chance to be on that stage.
| | 03:38 | And it matters hugely to them to be
name checked, and it isn't all about me.
| | 03:42 | And although people think it's your
moment, it's actually the one moment you
| | 03:47 | have to acknowledge the people
who will never get any attention for it.
| | 03:52 | And for me, the DGA, to have my Dad
there to be able to thank him and honor him,
| | 03:56 | that meant more to me than anything else.
| | 03:57 | David: I can't beat that.
(laughter)
| | 04:04 | I always wanted to thank like a kabillion
people, but then I also feel like when
| | 04:09 | I'm watching those events
that's when I glaze over.
| | 04:12 | So I also just want to speak from the
heart and know that those people know that
| | 04:18 | I love them and thank them all the time
| | 04:20 | anyway, so, I always trying to remember
them and then I end up just having more
| | 04:23 | of a spontaneous reaction.
| | 04:28 | And really, in this case it is a--I don't know.
| | 04:32 | The people whose lives at home were
changed by this--you know, like the people
| | 04:36 | in lower Massachusetts--I think it's
all for them, because it's been a nice
| | 04:40 | thing for them to change the
legacy of their whole community.
| | 04:43 | It's been a beautiful thing for them.
| | 04:48 | Lee Unkrich: Well, this question of who you'd
like to thank and who you can't thank or who
| | 04:55 | you don't thank...most films, the
crews are very transient, right?
| | 05:02 | They're just kind of, they jump
from film to film, and you have this
| | 05:04 | intense experience.
| | 05:05 | And talking about live action, when you
have this intense experience together as
| | 05:09 | a group and then everybody goes off on
their ways. At our studio, because the
| | 05:13 | films take so long to
make, it's a very family.
| | 05:16 | I mean these are people that are
working together not only for over 4 years on
| | 05:19 | one movie, but many of us have been at
the studio for 16 years, and we've been
| | 05:23 | really intimate parts of each others
lives, and we've seen each others kids grow up.
| | 05:27 | And one of the things that I always
like to do, we all do when we have the rap
| | 05:31 | parties, where we have our crew, final
big crew screenings of the films, is we
| | 05:36 | really make an effort to thank the
families of the people that work at the
| | 05:38 | studio, because they are very
often the people making the sacrifices.
| | 05:42 | They don't have their husbands home,
they don't have their father's home on
| | 05:45 | the weekends sometimes, or all night
sometimes, and this goes on for a very
| | 05:48 | long period of time.
| | 05:50 | I mean those of the people that I
want to thank, because they are really
| | 05:53 | never getting the credit.
| | 05:54 | And they should, because they prop us up,
and they let us do what we want to do
| | 06:03 | and allow us to live the dreams that
we dreamed about, let us have the
| | 06:08 | careers that we dreamed about having.
| | 06:10 | So yeah, I mean that's who I would
like to thank, but I haven't, and maybe I should.
| | 06:15 | Peter: Well, I hope each of you wins, but
when you do make your acceptance speeches,
| | 06:22 | I never understood why people always
invoke the pluperfect subjunctive and say,
| | 06:26 | "I would like to thank."
| | 06:28 | Why don't they just say,
"Jesus, thanks Darren Aronofsky?"
| | 06:32 | Lee: This is, you know what, Peter, I
guess my wife, she told me, like, if I did
| | 06:36 | nothing else, I was never
allowed to say, "I would like to thank."
| | 06:39 | She said that's the worst possible thing to say.
| | 06:41 | You're right. Everybody says that,
"I would like to thank," rather than just
| | 06:44 | saying, "Thank you, thank you for this."
| | 06:46 | David: I like that he
said pluperfect subjunctive.
| | 06:50 | (laughter)
| | 06:55 | Tom: It didn't go unnoticed.
| | 06:59 | Peter: So another question, related
subject, and since each of you has hit a
| | 07:05 | home run, it's always an interesting
issue as to what degree does success
| | 07:10 | advance or inhibit you?
| | 07:12 | I remember running into a
great guy named Cuba Gooding Jr.
| | 07:17 | who said that the worst thing that
ever happened to him was winning an Oscar,
| | 07:21 | because he said, "It changed
the way I thought about myself.
| | 07:25 | I wanted, I felt, I wanted only
roles where I got the girl and was the
| | 07:30 | leading man.
| | 07:31 | I wanted more money than I deserved."
| | 07:34 | He said that, "Really like a
significant setback of my career was
| | 07:38 | success and an Oscar."
| | 07:40 | So to what extent do you think the
fact that you guys did hit a home run this
| | 07:45 | time will help or hurt your future?
| | 07:52 | I don't know. I always pick on you Darren. I'm sorry.
| | 07:53 | Darren Aronofsky: My strategy has always been
to double-down, which is, I have been lucky to
| | 08:01 | have success with most of the films and
then I just try to do something equally
| | 08:07 | as difficult if not more difficult
| | 08:11 | so that everyone's says no to me again,
and that gets me angry and then I got a
| | 08:15 | really struggle to get it made.
| | 08:16 | So that's kind of been the strategy is
just constantly keep saying %^$# back, and
| | 08:22 | let's just try to make
something really, really hard.
| | 08:25 | After making The Wrestler, we
needed $6 million. We couldn't get it.
| | 08:30 | You know everyone was like, why are
you destroying your career with Mickey
| | 08:33 | Rourke and making a film about
wrestling, which no one is interested in?
| | 08:36 | And after its success, it did pretty well,
we thought doing a ballet movie with a
| | 08:41 | real, legitimate movie star like Natalie
Portman would be easy, and it just came
| | 08:46 | down to one investor and one studio
on the entire planet that would do it.
| | 08:50 | So that's my recommendation, everyone,
is make something equally as difficult
| | 08:55 | and put the success that you have now
on the table, so that more interesting
| | 09:00 | stories will hopefully come out.
| | 09:01 | Peter: So if someone came to you and
said, "Take the easy road. Do a sequel."
| | 09:04 | Darren: Yeah.
Peter: You wouldn't do it.
| | 09:06 | Darren: No comment.
| | 09:07 | David: He is going to do it.
Darren: No, I don't know who you are talking about David.
| | 09:11 | Darren: No comment.
David: He is kind of doing that yea, but not to your film.
| | 09:18 | Peter: Who wants to talk a lot? David?
David: Mr. Bigmouth over here.
| | 09:22 | David: Oh, I was going to say I was
actually speaking to Colin Firth at your party,
| | 09:28 | and we were speaking about how--I
was saying just how it's a blessing--
| | 09:33 | I just say it again and again and
again and again--to be working in this
| | 09:36 | business even is a blessing, and to
be part of this is a great blessing.
| | 09:41 | And having said that, it does become a
very strange experience where you get
| | 09:45 | seduced about like, how you're
going to get recognized or not.
| | 09:48 | It's very strange, and
you've got to kind of watch out;
| | 09:51 | it can affect you.
| | 09:52 | And Colin told me the story of William
Styron, the novelist, who won a French
| | 09:58 | literary prize and it basically sent
him into a suicidal depression that haunted
| | 10:04 | him for the rest of his life.
| | 10:05 | And I was reminded last night by
Alexander Payne of an essay written by
| | 10:10 | Tennessee Williams called "The
Catastrophe of Success," which Alexander gave to me.
| | 10:16 | And I just think you've got to keep--
and I will quote from final quote, it will
| | 10:21 | be Darren which is a--you said you got
to pull your head out of #$%, because
| | 10:26 | you can't, you can't--I have had
my head up my #$% the last few years.
| | 10:28 | I'm going to quote everybody up here, and
this guy said, just get back to work.
| | 10:33 | You know, so that the best way to keep
your head out of your #$% is to just get back
| | 10:37 | to work and just focus on that stuff
and keep it as simple and raw as you can, because
| | 10:42 | all the other stuff, like
in some Greek mythology, man,
| | 10:45 | they will melt your wings or something.
| | 10:47 | (laughter)
| | 10:53 | Peter: Anyone else who
want to take a whack at that?
| | 10:55 | Charles: I think Noel Coward said,
"Beware those twin impostors, failure
| | 11:02 | and success."
| | 11:04 | I think both can be damaging.
| | 11:06 | Tom: Right, indeed!
| | 11:09 | Well, I have certainly found that there is
sort of slightly strange thing in this
| | 11:12 | season where people say things like,
"Wow, now you're really in a position to
| | 11:16 | make a successful film."
(laughter)
| | 11:24 | And you kind of think wow! Yes, or
now you can do anything you want, and you kind of think
| | 11:27 | this is maybe what I have just
done is is exactly what I want to do.
| | 11:36 | And this idea that it's a passport to
the film you really wanted to make,
| | 11:39 | rather than what you've just done
being what you really wanted to make, I find
| | 11:42 | quite a strange conundrum.
| | 11:45 | David: It does buy you a little bit of cred.
| | 11:49 | You're only as good as your last picture.
| | 11:50 | So, you get another whack at the pinata,
and you better make sure it's a good one.
| | 11:58 | is what I learned.
| | 12:00 | Make sure you pick it good, and it
can give you a chance to make a buck if
| | 12:06 | you've been struggling. It can help you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Showing the movie for the first time| 00:00 | Peter Bart: I would think in some ways the
most painful moment as a filmmaker is when
| | 00:06 | you take your picture and you show
it to an audience for the first time.
| | 00:10 | And I know Darren, I read somewhere
that there was nervous laughter. Audiences
| | 00:17 | were uneasy a bit at some, a couple of
the scenes, and you were pleased by that
| | 00:22 | nervous laughter in a way, because it
you are obviously making the audience
| | 00:26 | uncomfortable which
was part of your ambition.
| | 00:30 | But that first--I wonder if--I would
love to hear from each of you about what
| | 00:34 | that first screening is like for the public.
| | 00:40 | You never had a bad screening, did you?
| | 00:42 | Darren Aronofsky: Well, our first screening was,
we opened the Venice Film Festival this year,
| | 00:46 | which was an amazing honor.
| | 00:51 | On one side was Natalie who hadn't
seen the movie, and on my other side was
| | 00:55 | the 82-year-old President of
Italy and his 84-year-old wife.
| | 01:01 | It was very--I started to
feel the sweat pool in much jacket.
| | 01:06 | And I turned to the--it wasn't the
Prime Minister of Italy, but the highly
| | 01:12 | respected President of Italy when he
walked in there was like a 20-minute round
| | 01:17 | of applause for him.
| | 01:18 | He was, like, deeply, deeply
respected guy, and I just bent over to him and
| | 01:24 | his wife and I said, "I'm really
sorry about what's about to happen."
| | 01:28 | (laughter)
| | 01:35 | I didn't know what to do.
| | 01:36 | It was just--and I looked at Marco who
runs the Italian festival and he had this
| | 01:41 | mischievous smile on his face, and
Natalie said something really just--she said
| | 01:45 | something about smelling like
her dogs #$%#$% or something to me.
| | 01:49 | That's how she felt.
It was really disgusting, and I was like, sh!
| | 01:51 | The President is right there.
| | 01:55 | So the movie started, and it's a very hard audience that
| | 02:00 | first film festival audience, but
afterwards he said to me, he said, "I tried to
| | 02:06 | be Italian and not to feel, but I felt it,"
and it was very--it was nice and his
| | 02:10 | wife was all full of smiles,
so it turned out okay.
| | 02:14 | Peter: It would have been much more fun to show
it to Berlusconi and a room full of his girlfriends.
| | 02:18 | Darren: Actually, I wouldn't have
been sitting next to Natalie then, so I
| | 02:23 | would have been everyone.
| | 02:24 | But it was--the first real
screening I had was at the Philadelphia Film
| | 02:31 | Festival. I happened to be there.
And that's when I sort of saw what an American
| | 02:36 | crowd would react to it, and
that's really always exciting.
| | 02:40 | But I don't think you
really ever know what you have.
| | 02:42 | I mean, every time, you know, there was
no way we thought we would be heading
| | 02:48 | towards $100 million with this movie.
I would have been happy with 20.
| | 02:52 | And so you don't know, and the
same thing with The Wrestler.
| | 02:56 | We finished it the day before
we showed it at Venice that year.
| | 02:59 | We have no idea that people
would react to Micky that way.
| | 03:02 | So you are pretty blind until
you really start to show it.
| | 03:05 | Peter: Charles, to whom did
you show the picture first?
| | 03:10 | I hope it wasn't Goldman Sachs.
| | 03:12 | Charles Ferguson: Well,
that was interesting, actually.
| | 03:16 | So before the--until the film was done,
I would say, less than 20 people in
| | 03:23 | the entire world, including the people who
worked on it, had seen the film--a very
| | 03:28 | small number of people.
| | 03:30 | And so first, we showed it to the
people who run Sony Pictures Classics, and
| | 03:37 | they were nervous but happy.
| | 03:41 | Then we invited everybody who
was in the film to come see it.
| | 03:49 | And Frederick Mishkin, for those of
you've seen the film, sent in his place a
| | 03:58 | public relations executive, which he
needs. But the people who were in the
| | 04:08 | film liked it.
| | 04:10 | Of course, some of them didn't
attend, but the rest of them liked it.
| | 04:14 | Then the next time the film was shown
was in front of 2,000 people at the Cannes
| | 04:18 | Film Festival two days after Wall
Street 2 had premiered there, and five
| | 04:25 | seconds before the lights went down,
Oliver Stone walked into the screening.
| | 04:32 | I was nervous, but it worked out. It worked out.
| | 04:34 | Peter: Debra, what was your first screening?
| | 04:38 | Debra Granik: Ours was Sundance.
| | 04:41 | That was the first time it was
shown publicly, and very similar.
| | 04:47 | There is no estimate, there is no
calculation about how an audience is going
| | 04:50 | to respond.
| | 04:51 | And I think, people say, don't you
know something is going in to it.
| | 04:58 | Do you feel confident about some things?
| | 04:59 | And some things you do feel confident about.
| | 05:01 | You know that you have responded
for a year in the editing room to your
| | 05:04 | DP's photography.
| | 05:05 | You know that the editor has been
stimulated by a performance the whole time.
| | 05:11 | He or she's never gotten tired of it.
| | 05:13 | So those things are excellent litmus
tests to know that something about the
| | 05:17 | film has like a tenacity and a verve,
but again, will it hold together, with
| | 05:24 | the decisions you made that
| | 05:25 | you sweated out about the ending,
about choices that both seemed really
| | 05:31 | appealing, but you had to pick one,
| | 05:33 | did you make the right one?
| | 05:34 | Those things all get, so they just hang there.
| | 05:36 | They hang there. They are so heavy that first
screening, and it's very hard to breathe, very hard
| | 05:45 | to--you are ice cold.
| | 05:47 | It's not--physiologically,
it's not a positive experience.
| | 05:51 | (laughter)
| | 05:54 | And so then, and then if it does take
light and if members of the
| | 05:58 | audience do respond, then you are
willing to take the rest of the journey.
| | 06:03 | That first night gives you this light
about whether you are strong enough and
| | 06:09 | can go ahead and sort of follow, be a
companion to the film and follow it and
| | 06:14 | take the leap with it.
| | 06:15 | Peter: I agree, except the first night
can be totally wrong, in that you may just
| | 06:24 | have the wrong audience at the wrong time.
| | 06:27 | I will never forget as a young
executive at Paramount, the first time I showed the
| | 06:32 | Godfather publicly, the first person
at the end of the screening who came up
| | 06:36 | to me was the head of distribution of
Paramount Pictures, and he said, "Kid,
| | 06:40 | nothing happens in this picture.
| | 06:42 | There is no action, and ain't no one
going to see it," so you've got to be
| | 06:48 | prepared for anything. Tom.
| | 06:51 | Tom Hooper: The first--I mean apart from
my editor, the people I always show my work
| | 06:58 | to is my brother Ben, my sister Rachel,
my mom and dad who always watched my
| | 07:02 | film first since I was a kid, and
they're just great, because they are
| | 07:06 | incredibly tough.
| | 07:08 | And whatever happens to me, they don't #&^$% me.
If they kind of like it, then I know I
| | 07:14 | am probably haven't &^#$ up.
| | 07:18 | So that's probably the most nerve-
racking first time I screen, and I
| | 07:22 | should say, I show the first
screening to them, before I even screen it to
| | 07:24 | my producers.
| | 07:25 | And then I suppose on The King's
Speech we had a proper school-carded test in
| | 07:33 | New York in April.
| | 07:34 | It was the first I had ever done it,
and I had heard terribly bad things about
| | 07:39 | the process from a lot filmmakers,
and how the information might be used to
| | 07:43 | manipulate what you are meant to do in
the edit. And we screened it around 21st
| | 07:50 | 22nd street in this basement cinema
where I heard, you could hear the irritable subway going
| | 07:56 | through every three minutes, and the
air-conditioning was so noisy and I tried
| | 08:00 | to kind of pull out of the screening and say
can we not do it somewhere else, and it
| | 08:03 | just felt like the most depressing
place to screen my film, and it got 93%.
| | 08:10 | And 93%, I mean Tariq Anwar, who cut
my film, has cut many films
| | 08:16 | like American Beauty and said, in his
life he'd only got one film in the
| | 08:20 | 90s, and I was, of course, was immediately
suspicious and thought maybe this is a New York thing.
| | 08:25 | Maybe this is the audience.
| | 08:26 | So I said, "Can't we
test it somewhat different?"
| | 08:29 | So we tested it in Kansas City, and we got 93%.
| | 08:36 | Still, I wasn't sure quite what to
make of it, but it did obviously--
| | 08:39 | The good thing was it meant that I
could proceed with editing it as I was
| | 08:44 | wanting to, and so it seem to be
supporting the way I was cutting it overall.
| | 08:47 | So probably the most precious thing
was it didn't dismantle what I had done.
| | 08:50 | But in the end, for me, the true
highlight of the process was the very first public
| | 08:56 | screening in Telluride on the first
Saturday of September at 11:00 in the
| | 09:01 | morning, ten-and-half thousand feet
in the Chuck Jones Cinema, and I sat
| | 09:05 | between Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.
| | 09:10 | And that's the screen that was
particularly special, because I think the
| | 09:13 | surprise to all of us was the humor and
how the humor played, and I don't think
| | 09:16 | any of us realized that the humor
would play like that, because we weren't
| | 09:20 | really--we didn't sit around rehearsal
going, "How do we make this funnier?"
| | 09:23 | I mean, it was really just not a
conversation we were having, and to get that
| | 09:27 | response from that audience, that was--
| | 09:30 | And also, I had Laura Linney in the
audience who is a good friend of mine since
| | 09:34 | John Adams, and she took me down the
mountain, sat me down for coffee and said,
| | 09:38 | "You do know what's going to happen to you now."
| | 09:40 | Then I said, "Laura,
what are you talking about?"
| | 09:44 | And she just looked at me, and now
I know what she was talking about.
| | 09:47 | Peter: David, I'd love to
hear from you on that subject.
| | 09:51 | David O. Russell: Our first
screening was in Woodland Hills.
| | 09:57 | It was a test screening, and it was
about 300 or 400 people, and my dad and
| | 10:06 | my stepmom who I am very close to were
there, and my son who is the toughest
| | 10:12 | critic of all who is 16, with his best friend.
| | 10:15 | And he doesn't mince his words, and
he lets me know when he thinks I suck.
| | 10:24 | It was these 400, 500 strangers, and
then you have Mark come in with kind of his
| | 10:29 | family, like his brother and his entourage.
| | 10:34 | And we just kind of hung out in the
back, and I remember looking at the
| | 10:38 | audience and thinking, "God! What is going
to happen? This is so interesting."
| | 10:41 | And my editors were there, and the
executives were there, and within the first
| | 10:48 | three minutes I could feel
that they were in with both feet.
| | 10:55 | When Dicky's fists were coming into the
frame at Mark, when he is raking, they
| | 11:02 | were laughing with like recognition and
pleasure, and I said, "Oh my God, it's so
| | 11:07 | early in the movie and they already
know and love Dicky, and they get the whole
| | 11:11 | dynamic," and afterwards
we had--the shocking thing.
| | 11:19 | I kept telling the studio not to market
it as a fight film, because I see it as
| | 11:24 | a family story and an emotional story
that has fighting in it, and the test
| | 11:30 | results showed that.
| | 11:32 | The women were at 96, which I'd
never been in the 90s period, and the men
| | 11:39 | were at 90, so the women were at higher than the men.
| | 11:43 | That did not stop them from doing
their male-oriented boxing campaign.
| | 11:50 | My son, it's the movie that he has been
most proud of, which meant the world
| | 11:55 | to me, my dad, and my stepmom.
| | 11:59 | So that was a beautiful thing.
| | 12:01 | So that was my first experience.
| | 12:05 | Lee Unkrich: We have a luxury at Pixar in
that we regularly screen our films while we are
| | 12:11 | making them over the course of the years.
| | 12:13 | It's just part of our process, but
it's very internal and sometimes the
| | 12:18 | screenings are complete disasters
and we have to rip the films apart and start over.
| | 12:22 | But, in Toy Story 3 we
somehow were--we were very lucky.
| | 12:26 | I kept waiting for the other shoe to
drop, but from screening to screening,
| | 12:29 | they were all going well internally.
| | 12:31 | But, there is always that day where
it comes time to show it to the outside
| | 12:34 | world. And Disney was feeling very good
about the movie, and they decided that
| | 12:40 | they wanted to reveal the film and show
it in its entirety at Show West in Las
| | 12:45 | Vegas, which is a big
convention of theater owners.
| | 12:50 | I was kind of against it initially
because the film wasn't done yet.
| | 12:53 | We still had some animation to do.
| | 12:55 | The film hadn't been scored.
| | 12:56 | There was just a lot not done, and I
hated the idea of the film being judged by
| | 13:02 | that huge audience in that unfinished state.
| | 13:05 | But, they finally convinced me that
they felt the film was strong enough and
| | 13:10 | good enough that it would play great there.
| | 13:12 | So we went and showed the film, and I
spent the entire film with my hands like
| | 13:18 | this, like blinders, literally because I
couldn't bear to see even the slightest
| | 13:24 | bit of physicality of the people
around me, because I read so much into it.
| | 13:29 | I was like, "Oh my God, they hate it. They hate it.
| | 13:30 | They're not getting this.
| | 13:31 | They are not laughing at this," and,
like, Debra, like you said, it can be
| | 13:35 | absolutely excruciating.
| | 13:36 | It was just, I felt wrung out and
terrible at the end, except for the fact that
| | 13:42 | it was huge, and it played great
really when all of a sudden done, and the
| | 13:47 | audience really loved it.
| | 13:50 | The thing that was best about that
screening was at the end we had a reception
| | 13:53 | afterwards, and I had so many people
come up to me and tell me that it was their
| | 13:56 | favorite of the three films, which
meant the world to me because that's all I
| | 14:00 | ever wanted was not to be better than,
but to make a film worthy to be sitting
| | 14:05 | alongside the first two.
| | 14:07 | Then also that so many people were crying.
| | 14:08 | I had people crying, talking to me
about the experience of seeing the film, and
| | 14:13 | we would often cry as we
were making it, when we watch--
| | 14:17 | We did.
| | 14:18 | But just by watching the film as well,
I mean there were scenes that they were
| | 14:22 | emotional to us for lots of different
reasons. Part of it was that we'd been on
| | 14:25 | this journey with these characters, and
at the studio for a long time, and they
| | 14:30 | meant a lot to us, and for us it was
kind of a saying goodbye to them as well at
| | 14:34 | the end of the film. But we knew that that was us,
and that didn't necessarily mean that the people
| | 14:38 | out in the world were
going to find it emotional.
| | 14:41 | So there has been so much written about
how emotional the film is, but that was,
| | 14:46 | we wanted the film to be emotional, but
we never expected the kind of outpouring
| | 14:49 | of love for how it made people feel that we got.
| | 14:54 | That first screening at Show West was
the one that I really felt like we had
| | 14:59 | something good on our hands.
| | 15:00 | But, of course, I immediately flipped
over to being paranoid that I was going to
| | 15:03 | somehow screw it up as we came around
third base and were coming towards home,
| | 15:07 | because we have so much left to do,
so much really important stuff.
| | 15:10 | Peter: Can I close by quoting my crazy
friend, Quentin Tarantino, who once said to
| | 15:17 | filmmakers, "Do your best work when
you're young because no one over the age of
| | 15:23 | 60 should be allowed to direct."
| | 15:24 | Now, I don't agree with his thesis, but to
everyone on this stage, you have done
| | 15:30 | great work, and thank you for participating.
(applause)
| | 15:35 | Darren: Thank you. That was great. Always great, Peter.
Peter: Thank you!
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