Irish-American Actress Saoirse Ronan Goes from "Brooklyn" to the Oscars

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 26 February 2016 19:16

Written by Brad Balfour

Once Brooklyn debuted at the 2015 New York Film Festival, it was on the path toward major award notices. There’s a universality to this story of Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) an Irish immigrant who finds freedom and self by coming to America during the 1950s. People can plug into it as a simple love story, but it’s also resonates as the journey of the immigrant that makes America great.

As a nation of immigrants, everyone has a story to tell somewhere along the lines of this film. Directed by John Crowley with a screenplay by famed author Nick Hornby, the film is based on the novel by Colm Tóibín. It showcases some best Irish talent besides Ronan including Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters, with the able production team of Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey. 

When Ronan set out on this journey within the film, the national dialogue about immigration wasn’t what it is today, which is now seeded with an antagonism that reminds us that every class of immigrants, at some point, faced racism or racist stereotypes about who they are. 

While two-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Una Ronan was born in The Bronx on April 12, 1994, she landed in County Carlow when she was three years old. The only child of actors Monica and Paul Ronan, they tried  New York City at the time of her birth but came home. Then as a teen, she ended up in Howth, County Dublin.

The Irish-American actress made her screen debut on Irish TV’s RTÉ, in the 2003 prime time medical drama The Clinic and then in the mini-serial Proof. She had auditioned to play Luna Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix but it went to Evanna Lynch.

At 12, Ronan attended a casting for director Joe Wright's 2007 adaptation of Ian McEwan's 2001 novel Atonement for the part of Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old aspiring writer who accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he didn’t commit. Starring alongside Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, Ronan impressed Wright on-set who then made her the lead in his 2011 spy actioner Hanna.

Her other film roles before Brooklyn included City of Ember (2008), The Lovely Bones (2009), The Way Back (2010), Byzantium (2012), The Host (2013), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Receiving two Oscar noms — this year for Best Actress in Brooklyn and for Best Supporting Actress in 2007 for Atonement, she's also snagged three BAFTA Award nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and one Satellite Award.

From her 2015 NYFF premiere on, Ronan's been happy to talk about this role that celebrates something of her own personal histroy as filtered through the experience of an earlier generation of Irish newcomers to the U.S.A. As she explains in this Q&A conducted at a MoMA screening, it gave her a chance to look inward and learn from it -- something that helped her prepare for her upcoming Broadway debut in the revival of Arthur Miller's award winning The Cruciible.

Q: This wasn’t a typical award-oriented film…

SR: We had no idea that was going to happen. To this day, [being nominated] has been one of the highlights of this whole adventure. It’s a very traditional type of film, not exactly edgy and raw, there’s nothing cool about it.

Q: Your character has an amazing journey, but you’ve taken one as well. In the year that you’ve been on the road promoting this movie what have you learned about her or yourself?

SR: When I learn something about her it helps me. So I learn something from realizing all these layers she seems to have and it's taught me. One of the main lessons that Brooklyn, and John [Crowley] particularly, has taught me is that I could be quite lazy, just read the script and learn the lines and play a character, but I realized that the more and more I read from this that there are so many secrets that can come into the mix that you can delve into. 

When we started to actually talk and share with people, that’s when we began to realize the power of development. Journalists were coming up to me, and usually it gets pretty repetitive when you’re dealing with press all the time and talking about the same thing, but with this, the reason we haven’t gotten sick of it isn’t that it’s done so well so far, but also that every journalist has had such a personal attachment to it. 

Every single one has said, “I’m in a long distance relationship, so I relate to it for this reason” or, “I’m a parent who was left alone when my kid went to college.”

People are able to appreciate [this film] from different perspectives. But one of the things that I loved about Éilis Lacey and I realized more was that this is… One of the qualities I love the most about her is she’s got such a strong will. There’s a real echo in here and it goes with her little top knot.  

She has a really strong sense of self and it’s important to see a female character [like that] on screen. We don’t see it much when a young man comes up to her and says, “I’m in love with you, don’t worry, let’s get married”, she doesn’t melt and go, “Ok, let’s do all the things you suggest we do.” She needs time to think about it. 

It’s not that she doesn’t have feelings for him and reciprocates this love, but I like that she’s created this world for herself and she doesn’t necessarily want to compromise that straight away. So that was something that was very helpful for me to hold onto, even when dealing with press and becoming more and more apparent in the industry side of things. It’s a weird world and it’s a world that, ironically, filmmakers aren’t actually used to.

Q: She goes through an arc, committing to her immigration to the United States. How did you work out the racism and other elements into that character set a while ago.

SR: It was a while ago, but I don’t think it would have been right to look at it, and I know that’s not what you’re saying, political standpoint. It had to be incredibly personal and intimate and I think that’s why [it works] right now, because it’s an incredibly heated discussion, as it always should be, but it is right now for the wrong reasons. 

To have a film where people can at least empathize with one person and apply that to the mass of people that are fleeing their homes. I was in London before Christmas doing rehearsals and I saw migrants just in the park, there was about 40 of them under a tree, it was cold and they had nowhere to go, and it baffled me. Especially Ireland, some people have had such a strange reaction to it. 

We’re a nation of immigrants — it’s something I can personally empathize with and it’s something I hope the film will do, so people can look at it in a more intimate individual sense and give some heart to the stories of these people that are making the exact same journey, if not worse, right now.

Q: Did you know any Irish immigrants of that generation before or speak to any in preparation for this role? 

SR: I didn’t know any before, but I’ve met a lot since and heard stories from people who ultimately went back to Ireland and who are at home [there]. There was one woman who’s actually from [Eilis'county], and, I think it was around 1951 or '52, that she decided she was going to go to America. She actually had a very good job, so she was going to go over there and going to work, which was just unheard of then. Even when my family went over, that’s what I drew from because it was their story that I grew up with.

Q: Your parents immigrated...

SR: I was born in the Bronx as I’m sure you can tell; you got that from me. My story is in reverse of Eilis. My mom and dad went over in the '80s; there was no work at home in Ireland and a lot of people say the recession back then in Ireland was worse than it is now, though it was pretty bad a few years ago.

A lot of young couples and young people left. My dad and his friend went ahead of my Nan over to New York, and then herself, and the friend’s girlfriend followed. 

They went there to work and spent about 11 years here. I’ve taken my mom to places in Manhattan since then when they were just in the Bronx. I’ve taken her to places in Manhattan she had never been to before. 

So I grew up appreciating what the struggle was like, but certainly didn’t realize the longingness and grief that came with it until I knew it. I was in a much more fortunate position than Eilis, getting a nice flat in London.

And it was in that time, maybe a year before I did the film, before I signed up and there was a year where I moved away. But it’s a completely different perspective when you’re in the middle of it and trying to overcome… We don’t know what it is. 

It’s like being in this new city, now what do I do; exist in the same place? But I didn’t have a purpose there. Brooklyn gave me that. So to go back afterwards really help me to overcome all the fears I had before I left to do the shoot.

Q: You’ve done historical dramas and fantastical films. You worked with Joe Wright on Hanna to great success and then you did a fantastical film with Wes Anderson. Does it   charge you to flip back and forth? 

SR: I wouldn’t want to be known for anything except working consistently. That would be one of my great fears, apart from forgetting my lines, is just being known for one role. The first one I did I was 10 and a couple years later I had a taste and that was around the time Atonement came around. 

I got this other action film and I knew I didn’t want to go down that commercial route just for the sake of exposure, even when I was a kid. I always felt like I had to do something that makes you feel something. 

It takes me in different directions, whether it’s the action genre or a romance it means you’re stretched all the time. I feel that as an actor I wouldn’t be method or anything like that, but I learned the most working with different types of directors where I stretch myself and adapt; that has helped me learn so much. It's kind of like when you actually play a character, you’re getting to know and pick up so many new perspectives.

Q: Any secret stories you want to tell us about the shoot working with John Crowley?

SR: It’s been great [nervous laughter]. John and I almost fell out forever one day. We did so many bloody dinner scenes, over the course of two days we must have done eight dinner scenes; we ate so much. We were properly eating too, it wasn’t like in a movie where you dance around with a fork and pick it up and put it back down. I hate it whenever I see people do that. We were properly eating. It must have been the third dinner scene of the day, which is a lot. 

When you’re doing a dinner scene you have to coordinate with six, seven, eight people, multiple different angles, everyone gets a bit tired and a bit angry near the end, and that’s where we were. We were also near the end of the shoot as well, and we were eating stew. 

We had a fork, a spoon, and a little knife for bread. So Jane Brennan and myself, who plays the mother Mrs. Lacey, we went to eat with our spoons, and, I don’t know about you, but when I eat soup, I do it with a spoon, I don’t do it with a fork.

John came up to me — he was getting a bit grumpy, and I was getting a bit grumpy — and he was like, “Do this, do that, it’s easier for us if you’re using a fork when you eat the stew.” 

I looked up at him and said,“What?”

“Just use your fork.”

“Hold on a minute.”

So we get into this huge argument about whether to use a fork or spoon, I ended up using the fork, but to me, it doesn’t make sense at all. So if I look bitter at all in that scene it’s because of the director.

Q: Using a fork makes no sense.

SR: It makes no sense! What are you supposed to do with soup? I don’t understand.

Q: You had two dashing men — Emory Cohen as Anthony "Tony" Fiorello and Domhnall Gleeson as Jim Farrell. Gleeson’s now in everything; he’s having his Star Wars moment. Each one has a distinct character with a different frame of mind, so what was it like having these two actors informing your character? It seemed fun.

SR: It was for different reasons. We started in Ireland, so we did the beginning and close to the end was three weeks. I had to fall in love with one actor then another. Domhnall has the same sort of attitude as me towards work, we had good craic. That’s not the drug [but the Gaelic word for fun].  

Domhnall and I knew each other for years and there were a couple of little things we tried to do together and it just never happened.

When Irish people get together there’s a very familial atmosphere, it’s very personal and familiar with each other even if you never met them before, so it was very relaxed. 

With Emory and I in Montreal, we had the girls for a few days but then it was just me and him and we had so many scenes were it was just the two of us. The scenes I shared with him were some of my favorite to shoot, dramatically speaking, because they are some of the most life changing moments for her.

And he’s wonderful, really magical. He was so committed and would have done anything to make John happy. He had a lot of integrity and I really respect that. But we work in different ways. 

We’re both coming at it from very different angles and because we have that yin and yang dynamic it really worked. The characters have that on film — they’re very different from each other and come from different sorts of backgrounds — and they get together because of that, so that’s where the attraction comes from. I can definitely identify with the conflicts she has as an Irish person in America. 

I’ve certainly felt that, even from being on film sets. You can kind of own your Irishness a little bit more when the person you’re with isn’t well up on Ireland or where you’re from. You can milk it a little bit. It gives her this charm and extra bit of confidence that she steps into when she meets this guy, it’s pretty instant.

Q: You brought that inner strength to your interactions with him.

SR: As soon as we met I was pulling him up on everything. He took it but he had no choice really -- to be honest. The dynamic just naturally established itself instantly. Whereas with Domhnall we had known each other for a period of time and we were very familiar with each other anyways, and that really worked for our characters because in this film Domhnall represents home and that total security to her and familiarity. It really was like life imitating art when it came to the dynamics.

Q: So romance is still cool — who knew?

SR: Who knew? Cool is cool. We had a screening and [at the time] it wasn’t necessarily the one to watch but people were intrigued by it. The response we have had from the very beginning was so amazing.

Legendary Director Ridley Scott Launches The Martian

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 19 February 2016 03:19

Written by Brad Balfour

When an established award-winning director like Ridley Scott makes a space movie — something associated with serious drama — humor isn’t expected from its star. Yet in The Martian, where Matt Damon stars as American astronaut Mark Watney who’s been accidentally left behind on Mars after a mission disaster, humor humanizes the situation.

At first, no one knows he’s alive so what would seem to be a totally despairing situation is relieved by Watney’s incredibly determined instincts to survive until he can let them know back on Earth he’s alive.

So from the moment this film screened, first at The Toronto International Film Festival and then debuting in the USA at the 2015 New York Film Festival, it made an impact, proving to be more than a proto-documentary.

Based on 2011's eponymous novel by Andy Weir, the film -- scripted by Drew Goddard (who at first wanted to direct it himself) -- is the ultimate survivalist story conceived by the smartest science nerds in the world.

As helmed by this veteran director -- who established himself as a master of sci-fi by doing both Blade Runner and Alien -- authenticity was at the heart of this feature. If audiences didn't buy it, then the film would never succeed.

To insure that, the cast is loaded with Hollywood's A-list of thoughtful movie stars such as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, and Jeff Daniels; and it was shot on one of the largest sets ever built.

In rooting for the hero, one has to believe in human intelligence and ingenuity -- as the most “uplifting” film of the year, it defied expectations of an award worthy film. Yet it culled an enormous list of nominations including various Oscars.

 The Martian is sort of radical for a Hollywood film where the only antagonist is the environment itself -- there are no real bad guys -- so audiences see the conditions he fights as obstacles we  can survive with the right knowledge. 

Sir Ridley discussed the film several times in NYC and this Q&A is culled from several of those conversations.

Q: What went into the decision to make this survival movie feel like something so effortless even though so much effort went into it?

RS: That’s what we do. [It’s from] experience. Effortless?  When you get a screenplay from a gentleman like Drew [Goddard] it’s like [having] the blueprint of a building or the architecture of what I’m going to do, so I can trust it and get on with everything else. 

It’s trust in the script which was so good. My only significant question to Drew was, “This is pretty comedic, right?” I hoped he wouldn’t look at me and say, “No, it’s a drama.” But it is a drama that’s actually pretty funny. But it’s organically funny because it comes out of the cause and effect of the situation.

Q: You must get offered a lot of space movies after having done Alien. What made yo cast those aside to work on this one?

RS: I don’t get offered a lot, actually. And they stopped offering them to me because early on I realized a good script isn’t going to land on your desk because you have to develop your own material. So if you go off and develop your own material people kind of get used to being turned down, so they say, “Fuck you” and never send you anything. 

So you’ve got to make sure you don’t run out of work. This one actually landed on the desk because--you tell the story better. It landed on my desk, I read it and went, wow. My first question to him was, “Why aren’t you doing this?”

Q: Matt Damon was already attached to it when you got into it?

RS: I auditioned for Matt. 

Q: How does Sir Ridley Scott audition for anyone, let alone Matt Damon?

RS: He says, “How many takes do you do?” I said, “Two.” He goes, “That makes you twice as better as the guy I worked with recently.” I can’t repeat that one. When I repeated it, Clint got really pissed off! 

Q: You told Matt Damon how much work he was going to have to do?

RS: Well, Clint gives one take, and Matt said, “Can I do another one?” and he said, “Well, if you really must waste everybody’s time…” So, I give him two.

Q: When did you realize that you only had to do one or two takes as a director? You’re known as a director who moves incredibly fast. This was shot in something like 72 days. That’s really quick for a movie like this. 

RS: Tell that to Fox. It could’ve been 130 and I would’ve gotten paid twice as much. No, we’re really fast, and it’s to do with the superlative team I’ve got. It’s probably one of the best teams in the business. You find them out over the years, and the great thing is that they come back for more punishment, which means they’re vaguely enjoying themselves in the process. 

On top of that, you’ve got a really great cast that worked most certainly on track because it was an ensemble cast, which means there’s no one with a particularly big part in it — except for Matt Damon. And everyone else -- this cast is fabulous — and they came in to play these individual roles as an ensemble, which is really nice, as a nod to the screenplay. 

Q: As a working director, you must trust your instincts more than ever at this point.

RS: You better, or I should’ve given up 10 years ago.

Q: Was there ever a time where you didn’t?

RS: No. I did, I think, 2,023 commercials, both in New York, France, Los Angeles, et cetera. In those days, I could do -- on a good year — 150 commercials personally. So, today they think they’re busy if they 20 commercials -- any commercial makers in the room? If you’re only 12, go find another job. 

We learned. It’s the best school I could possibly had, because there was no film school when I was 20. There’s no film school at that point. i found my way almost accidentally into doing advertising, and was lucky enough to catch the wave, the beginning of serious advertising in the UK. At that moment, they’re completely enamored by the Madison Avenue Mad Men era. 

We started to do it pretty well, and so I enjoyed the actual wave of some of the best advertising ever. I did Steve Jobs’ commercial in 1984, that was one of the 2,000 I’ve done. By the time I’d do a movie, it was pretty easy.

Q: Many have commented that this is a more upbeat, humorous movie for you, done in the style of films you make. Even some of your darkest work, like The Counselor, can be humorous at times.

RS: That’s because you’re intelligent. There are so many silly people out there that actually, you look for humor in everything you possibly do. Even in Alien there’s humor. When he said, “Stop complaining,” “I like complaining.” There’s a lot of humor. I’m always looking for humor, If you can, because that’s part of life, of people, who they are.

Q: Did this feel different when you finished your cut and screened it for the first time? Did this feel like it was landing differently than everything else you’ve made before?

RS: No. Funnily enough, this landed better than anything I made before. So I think it’s partly due to the screenplay.

The cast did enjoy themselves, so everybody was enjoying themselves doing it. It’s a danger, because if you’ve got a comedy, and everybody’s laughing their ass off thinking it’s funny, the danger is that when you get the cut, it’s awful because everybody thinks you’re doing this great piece of work. You’ve got to always have that position in the back of the room, looking at it with a cold eye, saying, “Is this right? is this wrong?” You learn to do that.

Q: It felt like Matt Damon and the crew were like a band of filmmakers trying to make a movie -- solving problems along the way. Did it feel that was the case  — kind of metaphor for filmmaking?

RS: It’s a metaphor for good filmmaking. There’s a lot of guesswork and confusion. Everyone has their job on the floor, and if you’re a director, that’s what you are. You walk on the floor in the morning, you’ve got to have anywhere from 50 people — and  in my case — 500 people to 700 people, all turn and say, “What are we going to do?” You better know what you’re going to do. And you’d better be running by nine o’clock with five to 11 cameras.

Q: You’re making two movies a year — two very large-scale movies in a year.

RS: I wish. I cross over more in prepping now in Sydney.

Q: You’re already prepping. What does prepping look like in terms of getting to the day? What does the crew get from you — from prep to start shooting on the day?

RS: There’s key personnel. Lighting, camera is very important to me. Design is very important. Set dressing is incredibly important as well and so is wardrobe — incredibly important. Makeup and hair become extremely important in certain kinds of movies. They’re all keys. Oh, and head of construction. I run a film like a company, like a corporation. 

And when I begin, I always have Monday morning meetings. Everyone’s sitting around the table, all the key heads with their few bits, it’s about 40 people around the table. And I’ve got, “Okay, page one, problem? Page two, problem? Page three. You’ve got a problem. What’s the problem? Have you talked to engineering?” “No.” “Well, bloody do so. Page four.”

Q: You’re a boss.

RS: You have to be. So, by the time you’re through the third week, you should be running like silk because people don’t talk to people for help, because either ego gets in the way, or something’s not being constructed, which case you gotta have his head slapped. And by the time you’re running, everything’s flying. 

Q: You're a nuts-and-bolts sort of boss -- it’s a business. At the same time, you’re known as a maker of the most beautifully composed shots with incredible art direction. With Blade Runner, Alien, and The Martian — you’re an artist leading the set, not a nuts-and-bolts boss who’s just making sure everybody’s doing their jobs. 

RS: You hide that, you don’t let that out. I never talk to an actor about what shots I’m going to do. Never. I used to do that when I was doing live TV; and I once caught an actor rolling his eyes. Never talk about what you do, talk about what they do, what they’re gonna do. You are a boss, that’s the very terminology, you better be a boss.

Q: When you get on set and are working with Matt Damon every day, and he’s the only actor there, does he really need that much work at this point?

RS: Well, he’s on set with only 500 people that could actually get him a cup of coffee. The only asshole he’s got to talk to is the guy on the other end of the walkie-talkie who wants to give him two takes. He’s sitting there, sweating it out in this space suit, the temperature on the set is about 40, so he’s the only warm guy in the room, he’s doing all right. 

But I always work with many cameras and this instance, I didn’t need more than four. I learned way back when that an actor, when he comes in, if he’s worth his salt, her salt, have come fully prepped with their own ideas. 

The key thing is to let them run the ball initially, to show you what is in their mind. So, I’ll come in with the geometry of the scene saying we’ve got to hit this, that, and that, and we’ve got to hit this point right. 

And I say, “you want to do it?” 

“Right now?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Really?” 

At a point, I noticed that way back when, you always got the best takes in take one or two. Any actor worth his salt comes in prepped, so locked and loaded, that when you talk to him or them, they’re going to say, “For fuck’s sake, shut up, let me do my take. “

Don’t get in my head. “I’ve got a plan!” 

There’s nothing worse than a wedding speech. Don’t talk to me before I do a wedding speech, I’ll try and change it. So, it’s very important to just let the actors fly. I sometimes will go, wow, because what you’re looking for as a director, in parentheses, I never thought of that, I’m sitting there waiting to get surprised. If the surprise is great I’ll go out and give them a big, fat kiss and ask them if they want one more take. 

Q: When it comes to the actors doing a scene that’s mainly dialogue or actors just working -- say it’s Matt Damon alone -- do you see how he blocks it out in his head and then you think about how you’re going to shoot it? Or do you have your setups and then he’s going to play in that?

RS: I don’t do formal rehearsal anymore, and my formal rehearsal is, well first of all, The Counselor, it was all about dialogue. The whole thing is dialogue. Therefore, it was essential [to] sit down and group them into their groups in the scenes that they’re doing and separate them. So, I spend all day with Javier Bardem’s and Cameron Diaz’s scene, and Javier Bardem with Michael Fassbender. 

And you sit at the table with a cup of coffee and just chat and they start talking about who they are. Once that starts to evolve, talk the scene inside out. And in the scene there are targets, milestones, emotion, funny, real emotion, tears maybe. And I say, “You’re happy, want to move on?”

“Yeah.”

Never read it. Never read it. I know what they’re going to give me. I never say, “Right, do you want to read it?” or Michael might say “I just want to try something, can I read it?” 

“Yeah, read it.”

[We’ve] gone through this tactic, [we’ve] talked our way through the movie, so that the actor is a virtuoso of themselves. He’s the best violinist of himself, better than me. And therefore, the key is to cast really, really well. I’m a very good caster. If you can cast well, that’s going to come with a whole bundle of stuff, both emotional, technical, creative. They’re going to do a lot of work on my behalf, having talked about it at the table.

Q: Sir Ridley Scott knows his shit. You are an incredible multi-tasker. While making this movie, were you in preproduction, working on scripts for several other movies?

RS: Well, yeah. You have to keep things moving, and you keep things going in the background. There’s a lot of television. I do four TV shows. “The Good Wife” is not mine, it’s Julianna Margulies', but it’s our show, she’ll have seven years of that. “The Man in the High Castle” has just gone out, we’re doing “Mercy Street” which has just gone out.

I’m doing a show right now with Tom Hardy about the East India Company in 1813, when slavery was an industry. So, we do a lot of that, and they ask me to read stuff occasionally or say, “Here’s the cast, what do you think?” I get in that far…

Q: You do these things while you’re in production or while you’re in production on a movie like The Martian, do you just have to laser in?

RS: No, I have to. I get up early and I sit there and I’ll talk with London, I’ll talk with LA. You know, if you keep up to speed every day, it’s only 15 minutes. If you let it go for a week, it’s a nightmare. So, I just keep it up and go on set. I believe the key is to be prepped for what you’re doing so I can walk out that door. My prep is an old friend of mine I knew in England, and he always had the brains at school, and I was seriously non-academic, and I saw him like, 20 years later, 30 years later, he said to me, “Hey Ridley, are you still pushing a pencil?” 

And I said, “Frankly, I am.” My whole life is drawing. I draw everything. Once I’ve gotten a script, I draw everything about the way the film’s going to be, so I’m filming it on paper. It won’t be stick figures, it’s really is--I studied art school, so I’m a very good draftsman, I can draw really fast, and I’ll be going through it, and if I get stuck on a scene, it’s a bit like having a blank sheet of paper in the Olivetti typewriter. I’ll just draw the room, draw the thing within where you’ve got to be, and then I’m already moving, and I’ve started to film it on paper. I walk in in the morning, and I’m set. 

Q: If you’re drawing the script as you’re reading and get to a scene where you’re stuck, and don’t know how to draw it, does that indicate a problem with the scene itself? Sidney Lumet always said that when he was shooting, if something bored him or if he didn’t know where to go while watching the actors, that meant that there was something wrong with the writing and he had to fix that.

RS: I’m glad that you picked Sidney Lumet, because I think he’s one of the great unsung directors in American cinema history. Remarkable, and not ever acknowledged enough in my opinion. 

Q: So understated...

RS: He’s incredible. I always admired everything he did. So, he would plan location hunts, walk around a few months prior, say, “Right. The chair’s going to be there, mic’s going to be there. Going to walk in there. Next!” It’d already been in his head. Two months later he’s got the chairs there, lights there. But I still think he was special with actors. Something happens and I think that some actors...

I thought you were going to say “doesn’t it not leave any room for your actor to come and make suggestions?” which is a good question, it’s a good question. Be sure that you know what you’re going to do, because i have done that with actors. Any actors in the room? So, I have enough actors, and they say, “Let’s show you what we’re going to do,” so I go, “Okay, action,” [humming noise] and it usually ends up with two people standing at either end of the room talking to each other.

And I say, “Cut,” and the star said to me, “That was fuckin’ boring,” I said, “That’s right.” So, I’ve got a good intuition about geometry and leave the performances to them.

Q: Geometry is in the momentum, essentially. 

RS: Movement, if it’s required. No movement if it’s not required. That only comes from experience. 

Q: Besides Sidney Lumet what other filmmakers are you inspired by?

RS: Oh, you know, a little bit of the best of them. Kubrick, Kurosawa, interesting Scandinavian director, The Seventh Seal. All of his social stuff later was incredible. They were all in the days when I was trying to get-- I couldn’t get going.

I didn’t make a film until I was 40. So, those filmmakers out there who are still 30 have got a long way to go. I hadn’t made a film until I was 40. But, I saw a lot of cinema. And it was nearly always visually-oriented. 

Orson Welles was a master of everything. As a director, he was interested in the lights, in the suits, as well as the words and the lighting...the whole thing. I always thought that those are the best films, that live longest. 

Same with David Lean. David Lean was a kind of master. Kubrick was that, Kurosawa was that, Ingmar Bergman was that, and if you can get that and take that all on board because you love it, love the details, I love the details. God’s in the details, as well as the performances.

Q: If you could ever travel to Mars, would you do it?

RS: Are you kidding? No way. I think the beauty about filmmaking is you get to go where it takes you. The 16th century, or you know, the future, or the present. I think that’s the journey. Yeah, I don’t need to do it. 

Q: We see Damon’s character has lost some weight and there's a reference to his family. Did you write more of that and decide to pull back a  bit, to not go that far into the depths of his despair?

RS: No. I got in more on the fact that once the guy was into a self-learning curve which I sort of relate to The Right Stuff. The Right Stuff is fundamentally the definition for courage under pressure, courage under fire, courage when you’re in a steel tube and you’ve got cobblestoning…

He’s talking really cool, he’s about to break up...and that’s where the Chuck Yeager Right Stuff came out, because I think every air traffic controller’s cadence was super cool, any pilot was super cool, and I think it’s partly to control your emotions when you’re against the gun. And the Matt Damon character could have taken the pill and killed himself. There is a pill, they don’t let you hang out there and say, “Oh, God, what am I going to do?” 

You could always walk outside, and it would be horrible. But you could take the pill, it would just put you to sleep. But then he realized he had to stay alive and do his job. By doing it, as he finds the inspiration to stay with it, that takes over and that takes over for the fear. I always think the guy who’s not brave, who’s terrified, does the job. The guy who’s not terrified is just fuckin’ crazy. 

Q: What happened when NASA read the script?

RS: I discovered also the book had become a bit of a secret reader in NASA, I called up and said, “Can I talk to somebody?” I got the head of NASA. “Are you guy from the movies?” I said, “Yes,” and he said, “Oh, we like your science fiction movies. We really like the space suits, what are you doing next?” I said, “Well, we’re doing this thing…” They were right into it. They showed me everything. Their habitat, their new space suits, which almost look like Teletubbies. I said, “We can’t do that,” He said, “We don’t like them either,” but they shared everything.

I would go to Pasadena and walk around the back lot, it’s pretty casual, a lot of flip flops and long hair. As opposed to NASA’s dress code, ties...because they’re putting human beings in space. These guys in Pasadena are putting machines into spaces. So I walked around the back and what’s that thing. The land...the crawler… Pathfinder. There’s a Pathfinder lying in a garage...

The doors opened and I fully expect to see a ratty old Volkswagen, but it’s a bloody Pathfinder lying in there, amongst Coca-Cola cans and rubble. That’s it? “That’s it.” We copied that. Everything you see is absolutely copied. 

Q: How important are awards to your filmmaking?

RS: That’s a big question. Well, everything’s a war, really. People say “you like Westerns?” but I’ve never done one. Almost everything’s a Western isn’t it? Man against the environment, man against, you know. Who is it that said there’s only seven stories? Is that true? No. But war to me is not--it’s only interesting because you’re taking human beings into a situation that’s entirely unrealistic, and you’re dealing with that, and you’re dealing with how they’re going to function in that environment.

One of the things I did in war is obviously something I did called Black Hawk Down, because I’d done The Duellists, and I’ve done -- The Duellists was interesting because it was about mindless--the great thing about The Duellists is they’d forgotten at the end of it what the argument was about, which is kind of wonderful, really. But Black Hawk Down was a real thing, no more than celebrating a certain kind of soldier, who will go in there, for the right reasons, not oil, none of this, it was actually fundamentally to stop genocide.

And that’s why they were put in there, and Bill Clinton came in two weeks later and yanked them, because he did not want to get stuck with a Vietnam. We got stuck in northeast Africa. And he pulled the guy out and the army was furious. But I just love the dilemma. It’s a pocket war, and for a good reason. There’s never a good reason for war, that’s one of the best reasons.

There was a good reason for the second World War, it’s a bloody good reason, because this lunatic called Adolf Hitler doing shit. And you do look at these people in history and think, MI5 or MI6 went to Wilt Chamberlain in 1936, don’t quote me on the date, and had said, “This Chancellor is going to be a  huge problem. We think we should do something about it.” He says, “What do you mean?” He says, “You know what I mean,” He said, “That wouldn’t be gentlemanly, would it?”

Three years later, he walks into Poland. You know what I’m saying? That’s an extreme way of looking at things, but sometimes you can save the world a lot of problems.

Q: Except for possibly dying on Mars, there’s no villain in the film and that’s refreshing. No one at NASA is slowing things down for his own bureaucratic reasons. The closest to that is Jeff Daniels' character, who  is doing things for the right reasons, to a degree. In the beginning there’s a line, a guy says, “I just lost my best friend, I don’t want to lose my commander,” which is a great way of setting up who he is, and how human he is.

RS: He says it’s not about one person, and the other guy says, “Yes, it is.” That’s the key, that one guy. 

Q: You never succumb to having a corporate villain or a villain on the ship in the narratives going on within the film. Were you tempted towards that? It was not in the novel so you could stay away from it?

DG: Yeah, and consciously I made a decision to push it even further, because Jeff Daniels’s character in the novel is more as you described, to give an antagonistic relationship... one of the things that excited me about the book was the aspirational quality of the piece. I kept saying early on, the villain circumstance. Everyone else gets to be a protagonist. 

RS: Mars is the beautiful monster, killing you 16 different ways in three seconds. He almost falls in love with Mars. That’s why we used the music at the end, it was Bowie, going off on his long drive, a kind of ode to Mars, in a way, because of its beauty. Would he go back there? No bloody way.

His Doc "Being Canadian" is in Director Robert Cohen's DNA

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 01 October 2015 15:06

Written by Brad Balfour

Canadian humor -- an oxymoron?

Not really, especially if you've attended the recent mini-festival, Canadian Cool, celebrating the comic cinema from up North.

Opening the festival was a documentary titled, Being Canadian -- a celebration of all things Canadians and the Canadians that love being so even if they live down south. It features interviews with the likes of SNLer Mike Myers and Dave Letterman sidekick, band leader Paul Shaffer. 

Its roots lie in Los Angeles. When Canadian Robert Cohen moved to LA to become a comedy writer, he quickly realized that his American friends and colleagues knew nothing about his homeland of Canada. 

After years of frustration, the 48 year old director embarked on a personal quest, nearly traveling from one end of Canada to the other, to prove that being Canadian is more than maple syrup, Mounties and “Oout and Aboout.” 

Being from Calgary,Cohen is the pride of the Canadian Rockies with more than 20 years of work in sitcoms, sketch comedy, variety, improvisation, animation, and films. His feature film contributions include the Austin Powers films, all three Shrek films, Dodgeball, Madagascar; Tropic Thunder, and Anchorman 2. Cohen’s comedy writing stints include The Ben Stiller Show (for which he won an Emmy), Just Shoot Me!, The Big Bang Theory, The Wonder Years, Saturday Night Live, MADtv, and The Simpsons.  

Rob also works as a commercial director and has produced/directed pilots and short films for MTV, Comedy Central, and HBO; eight episodes of the critically acclaimed IFC series Maron; studio feature campaigns for Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros., and 20th Century Fox; a music video for Aimee Mann; and multiple promos starring Tom Cruise, Ben Stiller, Mike Myers, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis, and Robert Downey Jr. Rob’s turn-ons are honesty, cold pizza, and moderately short bios.

As the visual inspiration for Bart Simpson’s best friend Milhouse — whom he still bears a striking resemblance — he really established his pop-culture credibility. 

But none of this has assuaged his frustration so as a misunderstood Canadian, he made this film and established himself as Canada's unofficial ambassador.

Q: Now that you’ve raised the media profile of Canada, are the Canadians going to give you a plaque or some special reverential position?

RC: I will happily accept it, but so far nothing has come through on my email [laughs].

Q: As long as they don’t require you to eat hockey pucks.

RC: Well, I’ve done worse. 

Q: Do you think this movie will help reposition or redefine Canada as sort of a not-America, or as not an also-ran, but in redefining Canada in a positive light, will people realize that the real actors are in Canada, and the real directors really come from the North — and do you get more Canadian financing than we down in America get?

RC: Well, the goal was never to redefine anything. It started with me trying to solve a problem I’ve been dealing with since college; and my producers are here, what they’ve been dealing with their whole life being outside of Canada… but hopefully at the end of the movie, it just shows how cool Canada is now; that it’s really coming into its own. It’s a country that’s just -- no pun intended --  very cool. 

Q: The funny thing is, Canada has produced some of the better television shows, and we Americans steal from them all the time. You have a duty in your future part two, to let us know it.

RC: if you join me in making part two, we’ll do it [laughs].

Q: When you made your wish list of those you wanted to interview for this film, how long was it? You said before that only one person refused, but there’s a lot more people that were on it and in the film when you start to add up the list.

RC: The list came about in a different way. We started off with friends of ours that we knew we could sit down with, and would give us some of their time. Then [we] had a separate list that was really like our dream list. Like Jeff from the band Rush, or Malcolm Gladwell, or a former prime minister. 

Then as we started adding to the first list. The second list, for the most part, became more realistic because we sat down one day and thought, “Who do we really appreciate and respect and enjoy from all different walks of life?” 

It wasn’t just comedy people, maybe they didn’t have to be famous, but that they would round this out so it would feel like it’s a movie about Canada, not just Canadian comedy or Canadian celebrities. So we just laid out index cards of everybody that we really would love to speak to, and started the process of reaching out to them.

Q: Was the toughest thing trying to figure out who to use of the non-celebrity Canadians that you interviewed, or the non-Canadian people in Canada that you interviewed?

RC: Again, we were really fortunate that Ben Stiller, Conan O’Brien and Kathy Griffin, who are in the movie and very American, were so on board with helping us out, but we also… 

One of my producers, Colin, had some great people that helped us get people in Bangladesh and in Britain, and we shot some stuff in Japan, and so that was sort of the easy part. I know when I was in Tokyo filming people, I was trying to explain what I wanted, which was very difficult, but when I said, “Canada” they really just started laughing and smiling at me.

Q: Just like I did.

RC: Exactly. So, that helped grease the wheel a little bit.

Q: This film is a great résumé for builder for you to have your own talk show,  you’re going to be on the air all the time, your face in front of the camera?

RC: Oh you know that’s my favorite thing of everything. Chocolate is number two, and that would be number one. I just love it!

Q: I don’t know, I think you might be getting offers. I think you’re in trouble now.

RC: Sadly, other people have mentioned that, but I think this is my debut and my swan song [laughs].

Q: It could also be that now people now one will ever confuse you with Rob Cohen the horror director. Or maybe they will confuse you even more. 

RC: Look, that guy would be very fortunate to be thought of as a Canadian, but it’ll still happen. I need to identify myself more. 

Q: He doesn’t have any Canadian roots, huh? So there you go.

RC: No, he’s all-American. 

Q: When this was shown in Canada, did you have to make apologies to Canadians for the things they felt were omitted, or were there things that were included that even they were surprised?

RC: Well, the honest answer is when we premiered at Hot Docs, we were one of the opening films there, and we had two shows that sold out far in advance, with lines around the block. The weather was actually pretty cold then, not surprisingly, but people were very, very enthusiastic. 

I think a lot of people had no idea we have a secret maple syrup reserve in the country, and we apologized beforehand for people spending their evening with us, but the response was great. You know, Canadians definitely always point out where we didn’t go in Canada, and that’s something I think is just based on pride more than nitpicky-ness, but overall, everybody’s been really cool.

Q: There’s a lot of great films that have come out of Canada, yours not withstanding. What would you consider the classic Canadian films that are about life in general, and particularly about Canada, because there’s some films that people don’t realize are Canadian, and then there’s [those] Canadian directors that have been emerging.

RC: I would say the two that pop into my head are that we identify as a Canadian movie is Meatballs, because it was made in Canada, directed and produced by Canadians, with a few Americans in there. But I would also say, as far as great Canadian movies, there’s Strange Brew.

Q: Sometimes Americans don’t know what North American — I should say, United States — citizens don’t know what to do about Canada. It was really peculiar that a hit Canadian movie like Starbuck — about a guy who bonds with the hundreds of his children born because he was a very effective sperm donor — could be distributed directly in the United States, yet someone still thought they had to do an American remake, Delivery Man starring Vince Vaughn.

RC: Right, right.

Q: You’ve hit on a strange thing. We Americans don’t quite know what to do with you guys, because we don’t quite understand the conflict between the French and English. It sort of adds a wrinkle to what Canada’s all about. It’s only beginning to get understood here. And I think maybe the whole phenomenon of extreme sports adds a whole other wrinkle to understanding Canada. What do you think?

RC: The thing is, you know, this whole movie is just our view of what it means to be Canadian and covers hopefully a million different topics that are very Canadian-centric, like curling and maple syrup and comedy and things like that, but I just think because we’re so close and we appear so similar to Americans that we’re never really thought of as exotic. 

When people find out that Canada has a lot of its own unique cultural history, they have to take a step back and realize that we’ve been around for over a hundred years, and it is its own place, so that’s one of the things that we love to brag about, but also be frustrated about. 

Q: In all seriousness, I think you may have something ongoing. Do you see something expanding from this? Maybe some kind of an ongoing web series? Or do you want to explore this in any other ways or do more docs? Or go back to doing what you’ve done in your path already?

RC: I would say we’ve already been approached by somebody that wants to expand this and do some sort of TV concept, which I don’t even--we’re not even discussing it right now, just because we’re in the middle of it. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad move, but you know, the other thing that’s been really nice is a lot of schools and colleges in Canada and the U.S. have been requesting us to come, and sort of give a crash course on being Canadian using the movie. So that’s sort of a cool benefit. 

Q: You did do one cop-out. You didn’t make your way to the Northwest territories or the Yukon to prove your total Canadian journey. Did you take the soft route so you didn’t freeze your butt off.

RC: You’re so right. We didn’t visit Newfoundland or Labrador, none of it. We were wussies, basically. We intended to cover a huge area, and we’d have loved to have gone everywhere. It just mathematically wasn’t possible, but it’d just be…. 

Again, we were lucky enough to speak to some native Canadians and Canadians of different ethnicities and genders and leanings. We did get fortunate when we would go through larger cities, that we could get a cross-section of people, but physically, I would have loved to have been everywhere.

Q: You didn’t have any protests from Inuits; there wasn’t a lot of Inuit presence in it?

RC: No, actually, there’s at least three Native Canadians. We interviewed a lot more. 

Q: If there was anyone you could have put in the movie or you weren’t able to get or isn’t alive, who would you have put in the film?

RC: I have such a respect for Lorne Michaels. If we were able to work that schedule out, it would have been a huge thrill.