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Angelina Jolie, Christopher Nolan and more Directors on THR's Roundtable | Oscars 2015

May 08, 2020
great

directors

and Masters Of Control chaos, the control chaos that is behind any film from inception to release, join us as we talk to some of the brilliant minds behind most of this year's M movies in this episode , we have Angelina Jolie uninterrupted Mike Lee Mr. Turner Richard link latest Boyhood Bennett Miller Fox receiver Christopher Nolan Interstellar and Morton tium the imitation game welcome to the Hollywood report around

directors

I'm Steven Galloway and welcome to the Hollywood Reporter

roundtable

s the directors I would like to welcome Bennett Miller Morton t Christopher Nolan Mike Lee Angelina Jolie and Richard linklatter I want to start with the precise moment when each of you really decided that directing was your path.
angelina jolie christopher nolan and more directors on thr s roundtable oscars 2015
I started making movies when I was about 7 years old. Super Eight, you know, epic and I remember I was about 12 when I ranked them. I started to discover what the job of a director was and I thought that's what I consider making a movie. What is the job of a director? Making a film, simply knowing how to put the images together well, but it is abstract because the thing is. You go to a set and you know that I don't film the movie, I don't record the sound, you don't know, you sit there in the middle of everything trying to be a conductor or something I don't know, try. be helpful try to be a lens for everyone else's input and focus on which aspect you are most comfortable with and which you are not probably a jack of all trades and know a little bit of everything, but not enough about one thing to specialize I'm pretty comfortable being an instant expert in a lot of different things without going too deep.
angelina jolie christopher nolan and more directors on thr s roundtable oscars 2015

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angelina jolie christopher nolan and more directors on thr s roundtable oscars 2015...

I think being a director is a great job for a mediocrity, it's like you know it because you have to know a lot of different things and you get along with people, do you agree with that? Mike, absolutely, to answer your first question. I was 12 years old. It was snowing. My grandfather had just died. Everyone was in the house. The old men carried the coffin down the stairs. There was a guy with a very long nose, a very long drip and I remember thinking this is making a great movie, this is what I want to do.
angelina jolie christopher nolan and more directors on thr s roundtable oscars 2015
I want to make movies about things like this. Well, so you made movies about things like that? Yes, and I've been making movies. about things like that, but I mean, I think we probably all share the impulse to tell stories, to make things up, to make people do things, to put on shows, to be funny, to horrify people, to confront them with things that you know I want to say, That's all really in your DNA and I think, if I'm honest, I've been doing it since I was so high. Mr. Turner seems to have taken his leave of form.
angelina jolie christopher nolan and more directors on thr s roundtable oscars 2015
Together, Turner clearly lost his sight. A masterpiece. I'm here. gift that Mr. Turner just sent you are also a writer what aspect of writing do you prefer what I well that is for me they are indivisible I mean they really are I can't tell you where one ends and but Because I don't write formal scripts and I make it up everything with the actors and we film it and make it up as we go along, I can't really define the difference between the two parts of the process, but I just said, I mean. It's about every aspect of the whole process We don't make films we make them alone We collaborate with a lot of other people Are you afraid when you make films?
Yeah, I've never done a movie where I didn't do it. I think this is the disaster, absolutely this is it. I mean, you know every time you see the first edition it's the worst. That is. I mean, you're terrified and you watch the assembly and you think I don't watch the assembly. That's exactly why I've never seen it. I just couldn't face it for four hours as the bad version of what you've done. It's funny because editor Kil talks about one to call it the editor's montage, but it's ridiculous. because they, the poor editor, have to cut every day, put it together, put it together and what's at the end and nothing can be removed, you know, everything has to be in the film, it's long, it's terrible and you hate it and it's it's it's the worst experience seeing your first it's so comforting to hear it's not scary it's it's it's scary it's never as good as the dailies and it's never as bad as the well-cut First Assembly why are you asking them to do a rough cut if ?
You're not going to see it right because it's there as a document to tell you if you're getting everything you need and Lee, my editor, calls me and if there's something he doesn't understand, why didn't he do it. You get this shot, why didn't you get that one? and then I'll watch something scene by scene, but it's like he knows everything we have and he gives me his opinion and we sit there and look at the papers every night and he talks about it, you know whatever, but then when we get in in the week's issues, we'll look at some scenes from ago and then we'll go back to the dailies, look at all the dailies and start putting them together.
I'll be back when I love you forever The potentially habitable world is within our reach could save us from extinction Here we go You can't just think about your family now you have to think about something bigger I'm thinking about my family and millions of other families, actually Are you fairly new to directing? Did the figure become

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or less small when you made the first big uninterrupted film? It was a different kind of fear, yes, I got into it. I think to answer the question about how to get into it. This was accidentally and I'm one of those actors who say you do a live show and I always said no, absolutely not and um, I wanted to learn

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about the war in Yugoslavia, so I wrote something that was a project that was really private.
I didn't think I was going to show it to anyone, so it was this little script that I used as an excuse to send myself back to school and study an era in history and then someone said, "You know, it's not that bad, I should be a movie." and I was so excited and then the idea came up of who would direct it and I was worried that someone else would turn it into something else, so I volunteered to direct it and I thought, Oh, what am I going to do? Wow, but only for I protected the material and then I realized that I loved it, but I was afraid of that one because it was the first one and I was afraid because the war was very recent and there was a lot of hostility in the country and it would flare up. new new violence, so I was actually very concerned politically.
I was very worried because it was something bigger than I had ever done and it was way beyond my abilities when I started and I had a lot to learn and the subject matter. He was my friend and hero who I desperately didn't want to disappoint, how did that project come to you? It was on an open address list, so again it came to all of us, oh really, I was the crazy one who thought I'd read some of the above. drafts and then I read Laura Hillen's book Brad. I had the good fortune to have this extraordinary book and the way she writes is so visual that as you read it you can't help but want to see it, but I didn't know what it was about when I first got involved?
I thought it was about heroic acts and a man who could do extraordinary things and I wasn't that interested and then I realized what it was about and it's about strength of the human spirit and it was inspiring and I and I wanted to follow in his footsteps and I wanted to take that journey and I'm glad I did because that's how it happened. I learned a lot. You learned? I learned to be better. Even more open person to my fellow human beings to understand and see the other side that when you have hate and anger and you let it devour yourself it only hurts you, it doesn't hurt your enemy and I learned that when we watched the news. today and we see all the things that happen in the world and we feel that everything is lost.
Indeed, there is great strength in a strong heart, an indomitable will and an unbreakable spirit that exists in each of us. He made me face every day. and each challenge differently will make me raise my children differently, specifically because that fire that we see in our children is a great thing and I was certainly one of those people who thought that this inner fire was maybe a bad thing and I think there is From beauty to discomfort and struggle and we have to channel it in the right way we have to teach our children to channel it in the right way we need to know why we have to fight that is valuable that is the right thing to fight in this in this world when Louis had an obstacle, no matter what it was, he thought fantastic, there was a new mountain to climb, no matter what it was, no matter the pain that would come, I'm going to, I'm going to rise up to it and I'm going to make myself better.
I'm not going to let it get me down I'm not going to be broken and broken it's not about failing broken it's about getting discouraged and losing the sense of who you are and letting life take you track or darken you and uh so apart from all that Are you a good director? Yes, exactly, I don't know, that is, British cynicism has to come to light. What I mean is, are you going to keep going and do more? I would love to be, but I think I have to be. It's about the message for me. Maybe that's my answer.
No. It's not about the idea of ​​making a story. It's not about saying that I made a film. It's not about how it looks. it's about yes, what it's about, what it means by choice, so if there are no more stories to tell and I think you know there are enough great directors in the world to tell stories, so unless there is one , I think I can do it very well and uh and my heart is in it, so I will fight for it, why do you bother? I'm rooting for many oceans, many oceans incoming 3:00 damn, my brother used to think I could do anything and that I was better than you.
Keep going, you end up on the street, did Fox Catcher change you? It broke me, yeah, oh wow, how, mmm, I'm kidding a little, it was close and it was one of those that I thought I had gotten myself into. I go too deep just because it was difficult. I think this has been true in all of my films, where you get to the cut and you have that moment where you let go of all your ideals and you have to just take the time and look at what you actually have. My first cut was 4 hours and 1 half.
I saw it for the first time. I thought you could see a montage of a film I had made. I thought it was strange. I thought it's pretty visible, but um, it's, you know. I can't make a 4 and a half hour movie, but you know the editing took about a year and at one point I was alone in a closet, editing with no windows. The editors were on a brief hiatus and, um, it was like New York and frozen December and um, I just thought how am I going to win this like you're going a little crazy, there's a key for you, also the big house is outside the limits, okay, Coach Dupon has a vision and would like Fox Catcher to be the official one. training site for the national team, what does he get out of all this? what are you thinking?
This is it This is all we have What we've always wanted Mark You've been living in your brother Shadow your whole life It's your time How? You cut for so long, I'm sorry S, I just wanted to like when you take when you're a year old because I've never had that much time to make a movie. Do you go in every day and fight? You don't take a break and leave. far, no, so you're literally banging your head against the Avid and you think you can still be something like being objective, something like feeling and taking, I mean, that's the hardest thing about Ed, he's like you.
You've seen things so many times and do you see what the audience will see? I mean, what do you take away from yourself? I think so because I think you become an expert at it. I agree and I don't believe. I'm working on seeing it as an audience. I think it's more like an actor doing a play, the notion of doing that play over the course of eight months, eight times a week, and how do you keep that fresh and there? It's some kind of discipline. I believe you were close friends with Philip Sim Hoffman. Did you talk to him a little bit about how to keep it fresh during that period of time?
I mean, he had the rituals of him and went to the theater. and he would just sit on stage and have a moment and similarly in the editing, you know you have to take a breath and you've seen the scene thousands of times, but does this sound pretentious? No, but I'm going to ask you. What movie caught your attention when you were a child? I didn't discover film or consider it my own medium until I was 20, so it came to me much later. I think I always had the urge to tell stories, but movies were just what was shown at our place I lived in a small town in East Texas and every week a new movie came out every Friday it was real Last Picture Show then already you know John Wayne the evil Cowboys channel you know whatever we're showing that's the kind of movies you call me making no but I love movies all the movies I saw as a kid 2001 I saw them when I was in first grade and it blew my mind, but I didn't think I could make a movie, not that that wasn't the case.
I didn't realize it until much later. I was always writing, you know, short stories and, as I got older, plays, but it took me a while to realize I could make a movie. Was there a moment when you realized this is for me? I think I saw Raging Bull and thought, "Oh wow, a movie can go to that place."about period films is that the moment you say that people say, well, let's modify the language, let's make it more contemporary so the audience can understand it, let's not use women wearing bras because it's not sexy, etc., I mean , you throw the baby out with the bathwater, so our job was to be as precise as possible and enjoy the detail of the look.
The language, everything else and all the details about Turner, but at the same time. Time to Be is not a documentary but creative and inventive is what attracted you to him, a great painter, a cinematic painter. I thought about doing it right after we did Topsy Turvy in the late '90s and then I started looking at the guy and I thought this is a great Mike Leil character, you know, and I both worked at Epic and this eccentric guy seemed like be a good reason to make a movie. There's something about what I find. This is the first time I'm making a film about real events and real people. who lived and the big difference, I mean, is, is, it surprises me because before your character was yours, you own them, you have complete control of fictional characters, you can do with them exactly what you want, you can change them , you can, it's like you have that freedom and now you have a responsibility to do justice to someone who lived and achieved great things and there's a responsibility to someone's legacy and that really got me when I'm doing this, it's actually serious, it's You better not upload this.
This is someone who deserves to have his legacy spread. This is someone who did amazing things, suffered great injustice, and that responsibility became more than the movie. Somehow, did you get up somehow? I like to think not, but it's Of course, you have to focus, what's important, what kind of story you want to tell, what's important to me as a filmmaker and then it's the objective story, which is the true story of this man, so than these two. You will always know that things will collide and drag, but surely, like me, you discovered that you absorb and assimilate the real person, his life and his work.
I mean, I suspect your sense of responsibility will be slightly different than mine. because it is more recent and was also a victim. Turner is in some ways more robust. Turner is interesting when they are real life movies that categorically distort the story to what extent you are free to stray from the truth we read and I researched Turner until it came out of our ears, but the truth was only in our heads, so so you interpret that there are now scenes in Mr Turner which are, for all intents and purposes, very accurate reconstructions of famous things that happened, particularly the scene at the Royal Academy, where he comes in and puts a red stain on his gray paint next to a painting very red Constable, but if you get into a time machine and go back, you can be absolutely sure that what you would see would bear no resemblance. to what's in the movie because you know well, let's take something more recent like, I mean Angie, when you were dealing with World War II and the Japanese, how did you deal with that ethically?
What questions did you ask yourself? I wasn't making a story. about World War II for me I was making a story about a man in his life and his life was beyond World War II and the meaning of his life certainly expanded beyond that and his personal relationship with the Japanese was what that was important to our story and their personal relationship was very particular. He is a man who ran, enjoyed and had camaraderie with the Japanese during the Olympic Games. He is a man who was later held captive by the Japanese and went through a lot of torture, but he was also in Japanese prison.
The guards feel sympathy for him and help him and he credits some of them with saving his life, so he had a very different view. He came back full of hate. He changed that view through his faith and his understanding that hate would only destroy him. He then he left. I stood back and shook hands with the guards holding him captive, so I think about that story without having to make a personal decision about how I represent a country. I love this story and this man because that is one of the aspects of his life and it says a lot about how we should be open and see The Human Condition What is the most difficult decision that each of you had to make ethically as a filmmaker? ?
Why are you looking at me? Steve, we're all looking at you. Why are we all? Looking at you, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, it's not difficult for me to ask the question, but choose one. I'm going to give you the answer I have. It's not difficult for me because I make a fairly clear demarcation between all of these facts and the literal impossibility that Mike is describing. , which of course there will be invention, you know, of course, there will be fiction in it, so it starts with, you know. reality whatever it is and there's no way to communicate, you know, a perfect distilled reality, there's a big question about what's the hardest ethical decision you've ever had to make, but why, why, but Sten, why? what ethics, I mean, I tell you, I tell you why, like this So here's something that interested me.
Kazan wrote an article about what you need as an M director and was talking to Kazan's Modern RIT Pro director who had a falling out with him during the McCarthy era and Marty said the one thing he doesn't know. I'm not talking about ethics, so yes, it's important that you're dealing with a little boy in Boyhood. Did you think it was going to affect this child's life? It's a good question, of course, I thought not only is her life my own daughter in the movie and the adults in the movie were making an adult career decision, but I'm dealing with a seven and nine year old and they're making a commitment. with this long-term project, you know, but my hope was that it would be something positive in their lives and that it would be a fun artistic thing to do every year and it ended up being that way, but I was pretty sure I would turn it into something fun.
You know, kids are kids like movies. sets up a lot of food, you know, so, and I think halfway through Eller Crain, you know, my lead actor, he realized the bigger picture and was more of a complete collaborator and seeing him and my daughter Laura, already You know, coming into your own artistically in that process, but I felt like there were no big risks and this is my own ethical thinking: when someone sees this, at least they will be adults and they will be able to deal with this with an adult mindset in At least, but it I was, I was still worried.
I'm a little worried, but you got it. I mean, on some level, it's an ethical question when you decide how faithful I am to the science and how far I stray from whether you're "Doing Interstellar right, yes, to a certain extent, but I think everything we've been talking about with stories of the real life, you know, in terms of feeling responsibility because other people will feel ownership of it and it's like trying to make a Batman movie, believe me, them." They will come and burn your house down if they like what you have done. And there's a sense of responsibility in Interstellar, it's about the science in Batman, it's about people's commitment to the character and their enthusiasm for that's what gets the movie made in the first place, so I think everyone we have to balance that of what makes a great story is the only answer.
I have come up with this sincerity if I really believe what I want. What I'm doing is giving the audience the best experience possible and I think in some ways that shows, that's the only guideline I've ever had. I think we should recognize that artists are by nature deviant and uh and no and no. It has no relation to um, you know, the Criminal Mind. Truman Capot said that the most dangerous person is the artist because in reality he will only be obedient to his Vision. It doesn't mean that the creative mind is necessarily criminal, but there is a willingness to abandon a conventional way of thinking and a conventional morality.
Do you completely agree with that? I mean, I think you know you have to be obsessed with it and you have to feel like your gut is the only thing that can guide you. You don't have anything else, you don't have anything but instincts, it's like it's right or wrong, there's nothing almost right Anie, are you deviant? I have been, but no longer am, very capable of being a democrat. I don't disagree with B, but but I also think that you can be an artist and socially responsible, but there are many different things, we are all different things, we are all artists, but we are also other things in our life and whatever our responsibility is, whether it's our kids our politics our faith or you know, we have things that we hold to a higher standard than just how we break them, which is not what you were saying, I know, but how we break them, that's probably true for everyone but for me, because I don't really do it. have a life or whatever, I know it's true, all that fuel in the narrative means yes, but I think there's something like that when you ask about the question like, for example, did you choose someone and I'm torn, very conscious of choosing to the Japanese actor.
He is very aware of how his country would relate to him, the decisions he would make, who he is, does he understand the responsibility? It's my ethical responsibility to be thoughtful about what I'm asking people, artists, to do and what that will look like. affect the country even if I plan to protect it I need to be honest and responsible as best I can because sometimes art can influence in a very beautiful way and sometimes we can be very harmful, so when we can be it is ethical, but if we can be responsible for something that we think matters there is a responsibility that I think goes hand in hand with can I?
Absolutely yes, this question of morality, you know, moral dilemmas, I mean, I think it's absolutely true that we are completely deviant and it's absolutely true that you can't make a decent movie unless you're motivated by caring about people. those things are not mutually exclusive. I never had any moral dilemmas about my naked movie, but there were decisions to be made because it's a very tight balancing act between gratuitous violence that it's not about and having the audience support and understand the way he behaves. people in a way that can be perceived as a deviant way within a social context and is about men and women. and power and all kinds of things you know and truth speaking in a deviant character who is a truth speaker exactly.
I think it's the intention to make your intention to make Fox pick up on your intention to get naked, what if the intention is just to understand the boundaries? of human nature and the different ways people are, then I think if your goal is to put light where it hasn't been before and if it's just about the truth, that ultimately it can't hurt you and I personally don't have a political agenda, but if there is something that I think can be exposed and if there are new terrains that a film can take from a stylistic point of view but also in terms of communicating and transmitting an aspect of life and inner life, that is what that about the means to the end, I mean, for example, uh, I wouldn't kill anyone, so where would you stop?
So, then, it has gone to Claus Kinsky's head, would you do that Bennett thing that happened to Fitz Coraldo? I think You're right, I think it happened throughout the movie, by the way, I think it was KY who put a piece of gum on his head, so you might want to save that one for the Actors Roundtable. Would you do that to get your movie? In other words, what happened? it means to the end how far you would go, wait, but that's very important, Vera wouldn't do that and he didn't, therefore it's outside the scope of this conversation, well let me ask you, if you do that to an actor Would you have support? gun to a of course no why would you do it how do you not know how you would eat another human being until you are in a situation that you are not sure when you did um um imitation game where where did you do it you don't agree with benett , did you have conversations with benett where you said okay, this I can accept this?
I can't accept how that worked out, yeah, but the big discussion I like to have before you start shooting, I mean, that's me. I'm a big believer in rehearsals and having time for 3 weeks of rehearsal, you know, that's the time when you allow yourself and the actors to get up and that's when you do all the things you shouldn't do when filming and I really wanted to find out how How does this man's mind work, so we spend a lot of time talking and rehearsing and trying to figure out from the inside out who this man is, who this character is, and as a director, I mean, how does it work?
If you don't agree with an actor, how you know it is, it all depends on the individual act, find a gun to his head, you can, or you can go and say this is how I want it and this is how you're doing it, you know? sometimes you have to trick them, you have to convince them, I mean, everything is individual, the situation is individual, I mean, it's the complete opposite, but you started this round table by asking us what you direct, apart from anything else, you must taking responsibility because it's your job is to create an atmosphere of conditions in which people are creative and positive and you know that directing is many things, I mean, it's telling the story, sure, it's making visual decisions, sure,do all those things, but it's also about parenting it's about being a nurse, he said it's about being a bully in some ways, but you have to find ways to do it that are conducive and not confrontational, so in a way The thing about the guns on the actors' heads is completely irrelevant and it's not even something responsible to think about because that's not what it's about, it's a trip.
Making a film is a journey where you don't start with a fixed place and then just try to get to that place as if you were already there because of the way you did it. then working on it becomes something else, by definition, that will be just as good, if not better, probably better, as you say, it charges the atmosphere, you know with the right energy, that unexpected things can happen and that the actors can be everything what they could be, as long as they are all so you get the best. everyone, uh, it will never come through coercion, but the only time you could get into a conflict is if someone acts selfishly or if someone acts out of fear and then it becomes another problem, how to fail anyway, but the level trustworthy? you have, I mean, it's actually a unique relationship that you have with an act during a shoot.
I mean, it has to be like this crazy level of confidence. It's almost like Beyond Marriage in a way. It's like that's how it is. Something unique where he has to believe that the actor will catch him if he falls. I mean, you need that trust for him to let you go and you have to trust your actor and send him and trust him to deliver and make these characters come to life, I mean, it's something very, very unique and very intimate, one of the great pleasures of being a director. Is there a director or a film that has particularly marked you?
Did it influence you? It's an annoying and difficult question. syney oh interesting eh one movie in particular or The Hill yeah that's a brilliant movie wow why I love that movie. I was struck by the way it was executed, the way it was made, the way it is. Perfect movie for me, but many of his movies. of his films and you had to know him no no I read his book I kept it I keep it with me I often like to reread it and um and I've learned a lot about I've talked a lot of people have worked with him to tell me things about him and his process and how he worked with the actors and how he approached the material and how you came to see the hill because it's one of my favorites, but you can never find it anywhere when I found it, I got a lot of copies I gave them to everyone in unbroken everyone had to see police exactly no, I just discovered it was on TV one night on the BBC late at night.
I had no idea who directed the finale. I was like the one who loved all his movies, but then I didn't know about the hill, but have you seen the offensive theme? There is nothing about the offense. Now you have to see that yes, he wants another one with Sean Connory. He did it in that period when he was in England. Is incredible. And you? Chris, I'm going to assume you're going to say 2001, oh well absolutely, I mean that pivotal movie for me, they re-released it after Star Wars was a huge hit, so my dad took me to see it at Luster Square when I was 7 years and I've never forgotten that experience, but in science fiction and it's George Lucas and Ridley Scott and, well, Ridley Scott in general.
I think for me, if you looked at Alien and Blade Runner, different actors. different stories, worlds, but the same mind behind it and I remember figuring it out and it going well, that's this guy, Ridley Scott, whoever he is, he's the director, maybe that's the job of that movie, to be the filmmaker behind things, what about you, right, that's one of those? overwhelming questions I started a Film Society a long time ago just to watch as many movies as I could and it depends on my mood once they asked me for a top 10. I wrote like 250 movies so pick your mood and I'll tell you my favorite director .
Right this second I think of a one-room movie, I see this afternoon as if I were doing a comedy. I'd like to see a Hal Ashby comedy. I don't know why he appeared in my head. I love it, that's life, what I've never seen. a movie that wasn't in English until I was 17. I watched movies all the time in Manchester, they were all Hollywood or British movies. I went to London when I was 17 and World Cinema was fantastic. I realized that you know, I had been sitting on The Pictures as we called them we thought wouldn't it be great if you could see a movie where people were like real people and all of a sudden he started to discover that that actually existed and had been doing it for some time. time?
That was Abu's moment. Duf, that was the moment when the first Shadows Cetti movie materialized, that was the moment when, I mean, all the new new vag was happening, so there are movies that inspire, there are movies that you remember, there are movies that They amaze, you release a movie. That's what I still think is remarkable, that's the tree with wooden clogs. Oh yeah, that's a miraculous movie made without a professional actor. Yeah, he filmed it himself, directed it and edited it and he actually has his own camera, you know. I mean, and it's a phenomenal film without a moment that is the documentary Quai is a real emotional dramatic study of this entire community over the course of seasons at the beginning of the last century Bennett Miller Morton tium Christen noan Mike Lee Angelina Jolie Richard link Thank you very much for participating The Hollywood Reporter rounds up the directors thank you, thank you, stinky, thank you very much, excellent

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