Jane Campion & Sofia Coppola on The Power of the Dog and Filmmaking Process | NYFF59

[Music] oh thank you i'm so happy that i get to sit and talk to jane today and ask you questions and i think we're going to have questions from the audience at the end but um me too yeah i know that's funny to see and obviously jane is a hero but i i feel like you're like a big sister of mine in film and someone um that i admire but also that after meeting you i was so happy that you're so warm and encouraging and welcoming and um and of course your work means so much to me so i'm i'm so happy to see you and talk to you when i first went to um la i think meg was hosting me and she said would you do you like to invite or do you want to meet anybody anyone you want who do you want to meet now i said i want to meet sophia um because i love her film virgin suicides it's amazing and so yeah oh thank you [Music] thank you well yeah i'll try to gush too much and get to some questions but i you're such a hero and i just growing up in the 70s and 80s with a lot of macho dude directors and and then you know jane came out was like just as strong as them in her own way made such a huge impression on me and was so encouraging that um to tell my point of view so thank you for that for being a cool powerhouse um but i i was so thrilled to see your film last night to see it on the big screen it was so beautiful and um so intense and and it shows all these things under the surface that i feel like you you see in families in a life but you it's hard to articulate so to see that you're so great at at expressing that and and i really felt what the characters were going through and just so much with kirsten and her experience and i i remember years ago you talking about i remember you telling me about a book that you were trying to get the rights and you were thinking of and i it sounded like there was um a process it wasn't just obvious that you just got this book how did you find this book and and how and how and how did you start this process yeah so i think that like how how did it all begin stories is always really interesting when it comes to a film and i had the joy of just um reading the power of the dog as a novel um and that's something i found harder and hard to do so i find a novel that i just love how did you find it um my stepmother my dad's second wife sent it to me because she's a big she teaches english and she's a big lover of books and she just you know sent it to me in sydney and said hey you might like this and um i looked it went on okay and i just read it and when i say read it i mean i read it from beginning to end like really quickly because it has a really propulsive kind of uh storytelling in it but also had the feeling that the person who wrote this lived it and they had this wonderful afterward by andy prew who i adore i mean tits up in a ditch it's like one of my absolute favorite short stories and she put in perspective um who thomas savage was and as a you know gay man back and um born in 1915 um when was the book written in the book it's 1967. so um actually several people had tried to um or had owned the rights to the book but they never found that moment to make it and paul newman was one of the interested parties yeah um so i wasn't really thinking about making a film i was like exhausted from doing the top of that series and you know like you've just finished that and you're like oh [ __ ] that was like a lot of work just killed myself so i wasn't really but everyone else was talking about what they're doing next and i was feeling like left out i know that feeling yeah i know i mean i feel like i should have a better creation story like a better like attitude to it but there's this big unwillingness part of me and this big um what because once i get my teeth on a bone i can't let go yeah and you know that feeling like you're going to do it it has to be done well and it's going to take everything out of you yeah so you get your ginger i feel a bit gingery about like will i do it but i can i couldn't stop thinking about the themes in the book um like this book starts off with um how to cast how to castrate a cow you know a steer and um you know from the point of view of an experienced rancher and it just went like oh my god okay so we're muting masculinity you know that's pretty interesting like right off and and you know that was the beginning we did actually start the film that way too but it felt like it'd be better to use it as like they're doing that castration as peter arrives at the ranch was that real the film no um i looked away i looked away yeah no they're all fake things and and cow yeah it's like there's a lot of um protection and place for animals which i think is great yeah um so that um selfish greedy filmmakers can't just do whatever they want and when you were editing had you tried opening it with that and decided yeah we did try the script started with that i knew that but there was many reasons i just felt the beginning of the film was too long it's like someone was talking today about like how do you you you know once you've filmed your film how do you come to find the shape again in the editing do you always work with the same editor no this was a really a new experience with the guy called peters gibberish it was just amazing and we were doing it in the middle of the dammit so the relationship started like both of us felt quite shy because it's very intimate the editing experience or anything yeah and like you feel a bit ashamed of what you've managed to get yeah yeah you're like this is what we've brought yeah it always [ __ ] says there's always a lot of mistakes and yeah i i always work with the same one so there's a comfort and showing the the mess and they help you put it together but i can imagine yeah with someone like i'm like um like all these guys you know i was like just guys i mean i was you know what i think guys are just it's ridiculous the guy editor there were two guys yeah um guy assistant guy editor and i didn't know either of them so i got myself a sidekick woman oh yeah who was like a you know i was supposed to be mentoring but she's already like a genius anyway so to sit next to me and hold my hand more or less i mean you see what a baby i am but um no that's good to know that yeah and then like getting myself comfortable you know how hard it is like if i'm not comfortable i can't yeah i can't handle things yeah so i know to do that you know to just be a little bit weird and get what i need but are you more comfortable on set than in the editing room well i ended up being like super comfortable i loved peter in the end but you know all i got to know was like his head looking down because we had to have you know he was in i think sydney when we started melbourne you were doing it remotely we started remotely and then he had to come to new zealand and be for two weeks in quarantine and it was just sort of this head looking down as he was working wow and um we got kind of into this just gorgeous thing where it's just the work we're just going like i hate that shot like yeah it doesn't do much you know next one were you on the same same page right away very very much so we both had the same attitude like it's the work let's just do it but you like the same performances yes it does that would be scary yeah yeah that would be how did you ever had that um no i worked with sarah so long that we're on the same page but i remember having an editor once that didn't have i didn't have good rhythm so i'd always be like i wanted them to cut one place and it wasn't but um but not luckily i worked with the same one a long time but um how did you how did you pick him well i liked um the work that he'd done um for david me show um on i think it's the war machine and the king but more so that david mishow just said this is the best human being ever in the world and i love him and it's a reason why i can handle shooting um so i thought that was pretty high praise and um and when i when i met him you know he's a really funny guy and when we finally got in the room together even though there's a few shy moments um yeah he got in your group yeah it was really it was really fun and he's just an amazing human who looks after all his crew and such a kind and i don't say much from him he's such a kind person yeah and that's so cool but how did it work what would during shooting during the pandemic and didn't you guys get shut down how long did you have a break how did the shoot work the shoot worked like um we started off with our exteriors and uh as you can see it was an enormous build and it was really terrifying to me that you know like i think we started the build in september did you build january the round challenge last year oh wow and the um barn and um the yards the cattle yards i mean everything had to be aged as well as conceived as a 1920 russian 1895 kind of or 1885 building wow i was working with grant major who not only did an angel at my table that was our first what was the first project to go did you have you always worked together no but there was a second opportunity and he was like you're a big lover of the script so he really got him wrong dude he also did lord of the rings so you know wow quite capable so he had it yeah he had a team yeah i mean you know he's a legendary new zealander he's like um hillary you know edmund hillary he's just like so understated and um and and his work ethic is like scary he starts at 7am and finishes at 7pm no thank you yeah yeah but you want that kind of person on your team yeah you want the volunteer so you started with all the ranch and then how long did you film and how long was your break what happened was that we finished the exteriors of the shoot which was kind of extraordinarily lucky and i was very anxious going into it because we really had no where the cover i don't know if you've done a film with a lot of um weather issues it makes you very anxious because you're always going like are we going to be shooting this today or not today or you know yeah because the interiors were in another their interiors were going to be in auckland and we were we had one day we had shift around and there was a half day that we thought we might be able to shoot but actually we got through and the weather like gave us all its blessings and you know did you do a ritual before we did actually we've got a murray blessing oh god yeah by some um gorgeous married elders from the area and it does actually really focus everybody in such a beautiful way and honey and yeah they do prayer for us oh that's good they didn't couldn't imagine do a prayer for covert so yeah they fixed the weather okay and then when we finished that uh exterior um shoot i remember saying is it maybe to you time you're or to you ari um oh oh my god i'm so relieved that's oh yeah what can go wrong now no i really did say that and then two weeks later we were shut down i mean that happened so fast yeah even as remote as new zealanders we had a week in between and our crew went off to you know australia and america and the actors went back home yeah and then we were like oh my god some of them were gone and you know like oh no and now they covered them and then they took about three or four or five days to test for covered and but we thought we could get through but then i think um a few days into the shooting it just became more and more clear that this was a worldwide um catastrophe event that people were dying and you know yeah we were shut down and the whole country was shut down and it was like that for uh about 10 weeks but we have this amazing prime minister yeah just cinderella and uh she she just really got on and and and and organized it so that the shutdown was so thorough that in 10 weeks later the the country was clean and covered and you so you started right back after think it was more like three months was it wow but did you know when you were going to be able to start again you you're not exactly we had to do a little bit of like you know i tried to do some political work talking to ministers and begging and carrying on yeah like you know am i gonna lose my actors you know yeah i can't imagine that hitting in the middle of the shoot yeah i mean in some ways you're so exhausted when you're shooting like oh i can sleep yeah for ten weeks it's incredible yeah yeah maybe that should we should always and there was a part of the whole shutdown process for me that was like i'd never experienced before being so relaxed or just being just like not knowing what not having to do anything yeah and not knowing what i was going to do or knowing i wasn't going to do anything yeah but it was like a snow day for yeah you get to stand and not have to be productive yeah yeah like so like i always feel like a little anxiety in my body like what's next you know or like oh i'm late for this next thing yeah i'm supposed to i have told myself i'm supposed to be doing yeah it's hard to sorry i feel like it's hard to really take a day off i didn't know if that was universal but even like i even felt guilty seeing movies during the day even though i was like this is my job i should that should be work but i i hear my mother's voice saying it's beautiful you should be outside you shouldn't be inside watching a movie yeah they sort of like dissolved a bit yeah and you know hopefully that will stay with me forever now that you know i just don't have to have the next thing haunting me do you feel much looser now can you enjoy that you've made this beautiful film and and you can take a break or you do you have that pressure and anxiety of what's the next thing i don't have that at least not yet okay no i don't have that at the moment i i i think i feel like i learned i mean it's probably not i don't know if you guys are interested in personal stuff yeah but um i feel like i learned something making this film that was really precious to me and it was about um [Music] how i focus and you know like one of my ways of living had been like work really hard and then just like flop down you know yeah and like just you know like lose brain cells on a daily basis you know so i was like hardly able to put a sentence together by the end of a month or something so just one extreme to the other yeah one stream the other it didn't feel like it was um the greatest way to be but what i found about what i found about what i learned on this project was how how nice it is to you know cherish your focus and um keep your energy up and not have this idea of like flopping down i've got to flop down please let me know and just just really enjoying that actually you know to leave a life you need energy and focus all the time and and to piece yourself and like when you were shooting and actually it's not about the shooting but when i'm not doing this film now i i still use my you know energy and focus but it's it's just towards something towards something else yeah yeah so i'm never going to do that i'm retiring now oh i'm like unplugging yeah i'm de-powering them you know that but do you have answers to life but there are things you do to like charge your battery af you know in between things or you just well i used to just unplug yeah but did you feel when you when you were shooting it was a different experience do you enjoy shooting yeah sometimes it feels like such a marathon it's like yeah what scene is it to do yeah okay i remember always checking out really disappointing but i mean other times you know it's as much as it and if it's the scene you really care about that's really exciting to see it's really tough because you really want to enjoy working on but you know how crucial the scene is so you're just going like gee i hope we all get this together because the film will be [ __ ] if we don't i am no i love this the scene where kirsten and jesse are dancing that's the same thing oh my god that made me cry it was so touching did you was that in in the book yes it is in the book i mean they don't dance in the book um it's it's he just walks off a little bit and says that um and you just started i thought that in the day yeah oh that was so touching yeah i always had this sort of feeling of the little wedding the little wedding couple on top of the cake yeah and we were going to make it snow and then i just thought the colors were so lovely the way they were and yeah but um i mean i didn't know why i was worried you know when you work with jesse clements who's just so grounded and so present always he's just such a gift he's great and also with kirsten that um they just bring that you know beautiful energy and focus to things and yeah in the end we all had to shoot it within about an hour and a half that one's in yeah for the light you know oh it looked beautiful yeah and i was going like i wish i could think of a way of doing this in one shot like i'm such a failure why can't i think of things like that you know how you think like yeah why i wasn't in one shot you know like that's what a real director would do no i would figure it out but then i just thought oh yeah maybe i'm not a real director but i'll do it this way because do you do you one of the things that gives me the most anxiety is coverage and like the math my god i can't believe you're saying that because i sewed my your coverage it feels so effortless oh my god thank you i feel like it's like an algebra problem it's so um yeah that that stresses me out algebra looks so easy oh no thank you but i think that's the hardest the hardest thing i mean do you know i cherish the days when i didn't understand that there was such a thing as coverage when i first started making films yeah um i was like super eight and i thought if what i'm looking at is in the frame this is a success that's true and it's also um exposed yeah and we would actually go like hooray you've got exposure you know i'm just a great camera yeah and then i remember someone saying to me like who'd been to the london film school like this big guy he said he looked at it and you know i was like showing it to everybody yeah look at this i've done it and he said um have you thought about using some wide shots talking what's about matter with them they're all in the same frame yeah i just couldn't get that concept and then when i got the concept there's all these different lenses i was like oh [ __ ] oh this is destroying the fun completely uh i know i'm trying what a lot of choices and i've never got over that yeah yeah and i still if there's a dinner scene which i've done a million times i still have a panic still freaking out yeah with all the people around the table that's like how many sides do you have to shoot for the eyeliner it's so confusing yeah confusing and i spent hours thinking about coverage really i mean i re nice better months solidly just sharing the problem how oh sorry how did you how did you meet arie and um did you this is the first time you worked together [Music] yeah we did work on a commercial together ari was a friend of um an assistant of mine who's also a filmmaker um palomaribito does anyone know over here she actually is the most connected person in the world i'd be really surprised it wasn't someone who doesn't know her but um she told me about arie and raped me about her and how i had to meet her and then so i i only made one commercial it was so beautiful i loved how you shot the the chair coming out and the and the super like the real really tight close-ups and did you find the look as you were making it did you have an idea before of what you thought yeah does it look like ari and i really talked about a lot and um discussed actually we were looking at i think of dope following him and going like and he just talked about economy you know like just keep it simple here we are keeping it really simple but of course his idea of simplicity is so beautiful yeah but that that voice was really in my ear like you know just keep it simple and keep the shots going as long as you can yeah you know um yeah the economy of um storytelling yeah i think it's really what i treasure yeah i i love that about yeah but i'm so surprised to hear you struggle with that coverage yeah well harris um when i worked with harris we were like how do we do that how do we shoot something as as simply as we can with the least amount of coverage and we like made this assignment on my phone somewhere and it was it was so fun to think about how few shots we could actually tell a story in and and that was the part that bogged us down and i and i love his his idea of just keep it simple and um and how simply you can tell a story and um so it's a fun exercise i mean sometimes i also struggle with points of view like um i feel like our story because of the book um really zones in a different character's point of view so does it switch between yeah it does really a little bit and we certainly you know tanya and i were thinking about how best to um organize the script that to really take that in there like i love the sort of quality of the figure of eight that you get through switching continuously yeah the points of view um and telling the story that way so we had to keep like you know coming in on a character and also because um ben's character uh benedict cumberbatch's character is um like a very difficult character to like and a lot of people might say oh he's so awful i don't want to watch what he's up to i thought he was fascinating and he's so scary but then i love that you showed where his pain was coming from and you don't usually see the villain's uh wounds i think in that way and i loved how it shifted and i didn't realize that the boy would be such a central character when you were shooting a scene did you know like in this scene let's focus on kirsten okay this the scene's gonna be told from her point of view but did you know which character point of view you were in in a particular section yeah like a section would be begin like when kirsten arrived at at the homestead um and she um you know was getting to know the place so we took her point of view so we'd get to know the place you know through her eyes and you know the piano is coming in that whole challenge to sort of try and be someone who could play for the governor i love when he was taunting her with the banjo it was so heart-wrenching and awful yeah and that sort of underground um way of him ghosting her and my un unhinged and destabilizing yeah yeah you're so so good you're so good at that reminded me also harvey keitel and like just that character and in to piano like that you know that character so well it was is it is it based on and you know are they ever based on people you know um i didn't know myself for a long time how deep this story goes for me but actually had an evil nanny that was who was like from the age of five to the age of about um eleven my sister and i had to deal with her and she was um a real [ __ ] and she was a disturbed person and she would like separate us from our parents and you know not let us nail them and we were told we never allowed to say anything about her and and also she would get violent and she actually whipped me once you know wow with a horse whip and you know had welts on it and she said if you ever tell anybody i'm gonna you know blah blah blah so we had she lived in our house and you know it was scary like we had to handle this horrible other secret world that we didn't want to but we were so afraid wow i mean i was really afraid that even when i told my parents they wouldn't believe us um so in a way i understood that um yeah i realized oh i know phil well i really know phil i mean you know from the other side and you know i remember always knowing where she was in the house you know like i wouldn't i would think oh she's up on that virgin okay so i can be okay here oh that's so interesting yeah and so it was actually really haunting and you know she actually died um from some disease she was very tragic and horrible but we didn't care we were so happy she was dead who knew it was the scary nanny we just we and then my mom said to us because actually got on really well with my oh she was my brother's like you know another mother and you know it was all like love between them and just like we just it was a really horrible sort of made us hate him a bit too oh because the nanny was nice to your your brother but she came to look at him as a baby yeah and then um yeah when she did die my mom came into the room i can just remember her coming and saying like oh i'm really sorry to tell you this terrible news and you guys rejoiced iris is dead and it was like the looking witches died you know we were like and she had no idea we're happy you know and your mother had no idea she was like she was saying oh you girls and then she then she said well you know you were going to come to the funeral who said we will not we are happy she's dead we're happy the witch is gone yeah that's so interesting it's a big thing for our family i i think my parents never really wanted to acknowledge that it actually happened yeah i remember anyway yeah i'm sure intense um yeah and that's why i'm so weird and difficult but because it definitely feels like you're in touch with um the dark side in a good way but it's funny how you didn't i didn't see that until later yeah yeah i feel like but there's an attraction to it because you somehow know you know yeah do you feel like with projects you're attracted to them and then later you see why you were well or do you try to understand that i didn't get it until later yeah i mean not it was before i was filming but um it took me a while to get my actual personal connection with someone a little bit like oh no this is a good story yeah do you try to just denial about a lot of things i think that's a good state for director because then you just get into it later you analyze it yeah i totally like that i don't i don't unders i try not to understand why i'm into something and just follow that and then after i'm like oh that's be and then i understand it later but i try i think i don't think i think you don't want to be self-conscious when you're working you want to just get into the truth i think it's a little bit like falling in love you you know you're cherishing the love yeah and you don't want to pick it apart yeah or you know there's a mystery to why you love a person or why you love a story and yeah do you feel like with there was another project that you were thinking about doing that you didn't end up doing was it did you just do at some point you realize if you have a connection to it or not have you ever done something and had to get out of it or done something that you felt like you shouldn't know because you weren't totally into it yeah i mean like early on i did it's very um important for me to try not to have those feelings i like to get them to material that doesn't suit me yeah but you know yeah i've made i think it's called after hours and it was a short film that i made um for the women's film unit and i had such a great idea for them to do and they didn't like doing it because they wanted to do something with more like sexual abuse in it and um the story that i had was so poetic and they in order they you know decided that wasn't what they wanted to do my idea was um these uh be said and working women like you know going to the funeral of one of their colleagues um in a boat in sydney harbour like they're gonna scatter the ashes with the pimp in the boat the whole scene all dressed in black you know yeah and then just the sort of arguments and the discussions that came up out of that that's right that's cool i know it's cool i don't know why they didn't get it don't they know you're in a chain champion like you should do yeah so anyway i ended up doing this one which was sort of like more i think the themes were too obvious for me i didn't like them yeah but you know what's what said no sexual abuse is bad yeah yeah yeah it wasn't you knew that it wasn't yeah i just sort of i kept thinking like you know yeah that's a good good sign not yeah i mean you know the film was like people liked it it won the competition or whatever but yeah it was a lesson to me you know yeah and what about you i remember you talking about how you did maybe a commercial or something i remember you writing to me saying like i i did it for greed and i shouldn't have like you were aware of like that and i always remembered that that i have to be really aware of why i'm doing something that was the one that we did [Laughter] yeah we all have those yeah they always come up with these like corny excuses yeah like oh this is female empowerment you know like i said and said bank and these little girls giving out quotes yeah about that corny how bad the world is yeah and i'm thinking like oh this is quite a good reason yeah i know how much you pay me yeah i know but it's fun to do the short things that you get to work with people and try things out but but yeah you should be wait how did you meet tanya and have you guys been doing how long have you been doing films together her pretty producer that seems to be yeah thank you yeah that's a tortilla to get [Applause] she's the producer of cold war um a beautiful yeah um is it the first is this the first love yeah this is the first film you've done together actually we worked on bright star together in a way because as tanya famously says she yanked it out of the rubbish bin bfi and i go sure it wasn't actually in the bin tanya and she said as good as in the bin and anyway she championed that film into existence um and i didn't realize that until until later so it was you know thanks to her that that film happened and then she came onto the satin and a few times and there's a wild gypsy looking woman there she even came on her birthday which is like really super weird so i mean did you did you bring did you say i love this book help me figure it out well it was like um first of all you became friends like i i invited her to come to my house and you know well she says i just invited to sydney for christmas she didn't know whether i meant come to my house you know just like come see me yeah but i did mean come to my house and um so we we that was a beginning and we did a lot of funny things together as we got to know each other because we were both quite weird and i took her on these walking trips that he didn't want to do any walking she's not into walking i love walking but she wouldn't she would wouldn't say anything like would walk for 20 minutes and then she did this thing like i can't go on that's it i just can't go on i can't go on another step well we have to get back but she did go on and um we i think it's like one of the things that i find so important is it can be such a lonely process yeah working on a film it doesn't have to be and if you can um so i know that it's fun do so i don't want to do it in that environment and i you know like i want a producer that's with me every day if possible or on the phone or you know as much as possible sharing your interest in the excitement and um and and having fun together yeah and also another brain i mean and tanya um also worked on crown um the first series of it like working with peter morgan on you know how to structure that and you know she's really great with script and oh stuff like that too and it's incredibly helpful so as you were working on the script you were um now but i think i think it's so helpful to have someone that you can bounce ideas off when you're writing and it's oh my gosh it's tiny the first person that you're showing parts to and talking it totally totally and that's sort of like a big trust relationship yeah it's quite um it's quite full-on yeah and yeah i think yeah i feel like that's so important to have yeah yeah how do you deal with um all the self-doubt and that come up as a result do all writers i just wanna just like i said i feel like often like i'm a useless director you know where i often feel like what a useless director and at the end of the day i think why did i do that you know what did i forget that right no do you ever feel like that like oh my god yeah i think i just try to get through it and somehow yeah i don't feel the cheerleaders are important great or very good and you know filmmaking is about making mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake because you know basically you do many takes to get a [ __ ] you know yeah it's true something good so basically you're failing do they that makes you feel better yeah that's true do you but do you feel at the end like that your movie is what you set out to make ever it turns into something else i think it turns into something else but there you know the dreaming of it um the dreaming into it is like the marinading in yourself and and all the material as much as possible and your dream hope for it and then circumstance and the weather the actors everybody who contributes to the project um take over and influence yeah um what what in the end happens and that's i think the magical alchemy of it yeah yeah the actors were so incredible and you talked a little bit about how you rehearsed with them and they that you had them take dance lessons the brothers what how long will you tell us about that how long you rehearse for and and um and yeah i mean i have cool ideas about them do you rehearse about me um yeah i do but more like doing improv stuff and just having them spend time together like a family or whatever yeah i've actually copied your dad oh yeah well that's me too [Laughter] if i learned that i learned that from him and like to have the family actually make a meal together and just make 360 degrees sort of immersion feeling like that they feel safe and confident uh to be that character yeah and i like the ordinary ways like not to have to always do something you know amazeballs yeah and i like the idea that they that the actors make memories for the characters in the body yeah so helpful to i think a lot of the work is like creating circumstances and improvisations where they are able to make body memories that will help them obviously that's their job too too yeah but to do it themselves but i love that you had the brothers to the waltz last time i know it's sort of like you feel like oh what are they going to say like we don't want a walls together or you know like that you just go like oh now we're going to do the yeah that's so good and they have to trust each other in a way here's the choreography he's come all the way to do this did you do any other that's such a good thing yeah they love doing that and it was very moving watching them take it really seriously because i think when people arrive in rehearsal it's um very exposing for them and they're anxious like you know i could probably still lose the job yeah yeah the aren't starting pressure you know i like i like people to feel that i've got you know a really deep trust in their process because i don't expect them to be there immediately and yeah i've come to you know see that time and time again it is a process and that people take their take time to to find themselves in the space and obviously you chose them because you've seen them do lots of amazing things yeah did you when you're writing it do you picture actors in your mind not really have to say do you do that though i do i find it helpful and they always end up or or someone i know there's a quality it reminds me of someone i think of them i had the book there so yeah a bit different you know yeah and did you have to take a lot out of the book it seemed like there was so much with those yeah i did have to take we we took all the backstory out and just thought bronco henry was brought to henry a character in the book he was always like a ghost in the book as well like there was stories um told about him but um they were retrospectively placed so he was you know in this in the book he died in a kind of a stampede situation in the cavity yards and i always had it in mind in my imagination that he was really in love with phil and [Music] you know when it's awkward love affair and you're not sure the other person is returning the love um it really scatters your brain yeah so that he was like discombobulated because you know i would imagine that phil could be quite hot and cold yeah as a lover and that um yeah that he didn't have his wits about him and that's how he came to be i mean that's just my story but i used that one that's how he came to die um yeah so much yeah but i also really told myself that they had a very hot sexy beautiful time together [Laughter] like i love the scarf scene yeah like that that they really you know when you um when when the sexual feeling comes up or sexual urge comes up in relation to some somebody or something you know it feels so natural that it must be good right and if it's returned it must be yeah yeah like right they would know even though um you know homosexuality at the time was thought of as perverse and perverted and you know sodomy was illegal but they would know that that felt so [ __ ] good that um whatever anyone else felt it right they had it it was true and you know they had to hide it and that might even the secrecy around it would make it even sexier i think yeah yeah and did jesse's character know what was go going on in the in the book uh you know sometimes talk to jesse about that jesse's character in the book didn't seem to know are they they he seemed to think they had a special connection right yeah at the beginning if it was like a mentor yeah but i don't think jesse's character is i mean it's so cute he makes us one great move you know yeah and he gets this woman yeah that was so and so touching it was really touching and great to move away from phil finally and have his own life yeah yeah i was surprised that that yeah he had that strength yeah i guess you know he's spending his whole life moving to that moment where he didn't he didn't feel anymore yeah does the book have their child hood in it or it does and it's beautifully written yeah yeah but you had to yeah it must have been a big editing process to yeah i think we made it some early very big shapes decisions did you just you wouldn't go back we wouldn't show bronco henry right um physically that we have two i love how memory yeah it goes and that you find out that's as you go and the idea of having the different chapters was that how you wrote the script and there initially it was like a seasonal story like across one you know yeah but the seasons weren't very evident um we didn't really want to draw attention to them because you know we weren't able to shoot across a whole year right um so i felt the need to actually um have a breath you know and um just came up with those uh chapter breaks yeah they were great i loved that but i was wondering yeah how you how you decided to they were yeah he was influenced by that thought and i mean yeah i was thinking at the time that johnny greenwood would have some great piece of music oh yeah how did you um i heard that you did the music by zoom like yeah how did you choose the composer and um and was that something well i've always loved johnny greenwood's music but had you worked with him before no just admired him i mean you know like am i the hell out of him and everything that paul thomas anderson does like he's my hero so um and you know i feel like oh i'm his best audience you know i'm always going to love what he does oh that's cool but um there was a piece uh i was looking for australian new zealand composers first off because that was like part of our finance instruction did you get finance help from the government oh we didn't get i was like call it soft money doesn't seem that it's off to me it's quite hard to get oh well but it seems like they have it's if they have a more of a program than we get a little bit of a good thing going and anyway you also then have to get all your crew from australia and new zealand because it was a co-production so i i was looking around and i was looking at the australian chamber orchestra who are just freaking amazing with richard tonyetti i don't know if there's anybody here that knows that group but they're incredible and i was listening to a piece called water and um going like freaking hell this is so genius i this is this is this is the musical voice for the film and then i realized it was actually johnny greenwood working with them oh no and that he they yeah he had done um a whole c you know season of work with them and then i went like oh johnny groom's just got to be my person and so we sent the script and we got a concession to use them because you know like was going like well michael norman and you know him and he wasn't in australia i mean i think that it's back on my australian musical i know that you live with the musician so it's kind of really different but there's only a few musicians i really get you know yeah what is so different than we're visual people but um but i always think it's fun that part where you put that i like that part i like feeling really really like you know in their hands a little bit and yeah i think we talked i talked about it at one of the screenings and then on the process which he really creates a palette of instruments and it's a little bit like how a production designer might work that's how he goes and does he give you different pieces and then in the edit you figure out where to put them or does he gives you he makes it he'd first of all discuss gives you a band of discusses like the palette like instrumentally what he's thinking yeah that's very abstract to me like i know what i like but it's to describe the sound well i didn't really you know you know he'd say horns and i go oh yeah good sounds good yeah and biological actually do know what they are so um so friendly and then there was a mechanical piano which is like a very unusual thing that was how was it done digitally created or something like like played so fast you couldn't really barely work out what it was and he wanted to play with that and i look honestly i just went like you should do whatever you want johnny and you know thank you and it's the best to have someone that you yeah and just he created a suite of different pieces like about 30 or four or whatever and then you guys would try them as you were yeah that's right we just tried them and then they became like really linkedin and um embedded in it and it's really horrible if you use tent music you know yeah just something goes on that where you sort of fall in love with the way a piece of music yeah hits all sorts of little moments in the story visual storytelling and it's so hard to um have it wrenched away later yeah that's yeah that's the worst your whole brain has sort of it's gotten too it's gotten better yeah yeah so it was um super nice to work with you had it during the edit yeah because i've never done because there are some composers that they then they at the final movie they put the music on which seems like i've never done it that way but i did it once that way with portrait of a lady because michael and i'm in the end didn't do it but um he hadn't done the suite of stuff or anything as well and um that was um poetic killer who actually did your dad's film dracula oh yeah he's a part he was a fantastic polish composer and um he is really kind of genius and it did work because of that it was a different way of yeah after the fact yeah i mean yeah nerve-wracking but he came up with the goods yeah that's cool i wanted to ask but will someone let us know when we're supposed to switch to are we keep talking oh we should go to questions and i'm just curious because you've done tv and film and i and i never done tv and i wonder people are saying it's kind of blending together with lengths of things so i was curious is there a difference or what depends on how you like can you can you do something just like a long movie or once you're doing it in tv does it become a different thing [Music] um well we're just chatting about that before a tiny bit but um you know it's so obvious to me that everything ends up online anyway you know one way or another um and it's sort of about the length then and you know the the storytelling potential that i think you get out of series which is really fun but do you approach them the same way or is it different i think i you know i definitely feel like in series you can be a lot wilder than you can for some reason the feature culture is more conservative but in the um series culture you can sing very crazy and since i'm a little bit crazy that that was a really nice opportunity to to play in that field and also you know like i i actually love um murder mystery stories and all that sort of stuff too so it's fun to play with that and you know have an opportunity to you know try out lots of different scenes so that was what i enjoyed about series what i didn't like about it was so much freaking work you know did you direct all of them no i didn't direct them all i mean i'm a great believer in collaboration and so i collaborated on the writing with um jared lee and um collaborated on the directing on both series with um garth davidson one and um on the other and they're both like fabulous filmmakers i learned heaps from so they know that's cool but it does seem like a big undertaking it is a bit undertaking i mean people that do like adele's themselves and and yeah they're writing themselves like they're just dead at the end yeah i'll tell you it looks like i think it kills something off and then it takes a little bit to get over yeah really yeah yeah wait i'm kind of pretty clever about that i just i just i didn't like to hurt myself yeah wait is there any way that you protect your like your your spirit when you have to deal with like financing and the business side and also being an art sensitive artist is there how much do you get involved in that part is there anything it's really hard not to get involved somewhere yeah you know so um you send tanya out then get the money yeah but you get you're involved you have to everything you have to turn up so they can see you're not demented yet that's true that they can trust a conversation together yeah that's true maybe not on drugs or anything well i wanted to ask you about but but you know to be honest about it it um like i have the convenient personality that when i'm um you know like i'm a bit of a pollyanna like really hopeful that helps in filmmaking yeah i think so like i think things are going to go well you know yeah that's good yeah and um and i'm really enthusiastic and the time when i get really scared is like when you have to you know show it to people yeah i think totally scary because yeah um yeah yeah you're putting it out yeah that is and you are putting it out before it's kind of finished to get feedback and it's super important i think for all the filmmakers in the audience um to show it unfinished yeah like two um only one i think yeah really fantastic you know i think it's just like to get to build those muscles to be able to um hear feedback because it is a chance to fix it right yeah i feel like you feel it when you're in the room of what's working what isn't but um it is it is hard to to hear feedback but it's helpful yeah i think you're right though the feedback itself isn't as important as the energy in the room that you can feel when it's lagging and yeah people aren't um with it were you able to show have an audience while you were working on this in such a great way tanya watched a lot of different cuts yeah so did the other producers and of course the editor and you know like we were really relying on each other yeah mostly um until we got we got it to a certain point where it you just felt the energy pick up and the tension and the story it's like it's pulling a tennis shoe tight you know yeah that the what is so mysterious how they just movies sort of just come together at some point yeah and you think like well could you pull it even tighter the tension is so good and so uncomfortable and you really feel like you're there with them in this movie yeah i mean i just remember one time when we were watching it um you know you just get it slowly and together and um and you just i could feel my toes curling you know oh this is happening for me yeah i hope it's happy for someone else and i remember that you know the lights going up well went like yeah yeah yeah that's what it is it's really starting to happen but then you go like oh now the front's too long you know we have to go and fix that yeah but there's a lot of that sort of stuff but my editor's so great he just like keeps it all really light and goes like oh yeah okay we'll get a bit of stuff out of this don't worry about that that's good and do you know when you're done or is there is it hard to know when you're done it's really an interesting question i always feel like i do know when i'm done but then sometimes other people tell me i'm not done [Laughter] and and you know it could be better you know yeah what about you ah i can't remember but i think it's yeah it's hard i i asked friends like my friend tamara jenkins here um ask friends and look at it and yeah it's hard to know but at any moment they can really be honest with you because once it's finished yeah i'm going to say like oh that's pretty good you can't go back shorter yeah yeah so no it's helpful to show people that you and they know that things can still be done to it at that point yeah you know yeah yeah but often the things that people say like you know you it's actually something like it interpreted earlier that yeah actually you have to be like a uh analyze whatever you're saying it's diagnosed it doesn't mean what necessarily they think yeah yeah but you know that you've got some things that you can tweak that will make you make that about yeah that is a way to interpret okay we're gonna take questions i just had a quick one about when you said you loved those group of cowboys i loved the the gang of cowboys and i remember on top of the lake there was like a band of like cool dudes like is that something like did you grow up with like a gang of cool guys so you're just like having cool dudes around i went to old girls school okay i love i love the cowboys swimming with their their hats over them they're so innocent and they're you know like yeah and i mean they were gorgeous guys anyway and it's fun to have a some calories like a great chorus you know yeah yeah and like a very different energy in a sense too you know they're just enjoying their life on the ranch thank you feels great and yeah you know just a little uncomfortable when he was riding past them when they were yeah swimming or whatever yeah i love them yeah but um yeah they were in the book as well really you know yeah and i love that period i mean i just found these pictures of these cowboys from 1925 that really got me going with them and the big woolies which are those sheepskin things that they wear and with actually striped jumpers on so very different than them than the look that you know we traditionally think of yeah john wayne movies yeah i liked his fringe and they look like satyrs and you know like animals half animals and yeah they're really cool yeah they look cool it was yeah i never saw that i loved his other fringe okay well we will um i'll share jane for if anyone has questions oh my god that's so lovely um there was just two seasons and they were both six so it might have been seven in america seven yeah um yeah i mean it's just such a lot of work i mean for your party i mean but you know i'm so grateful that you you enjoyed them like that and i would love to see them go on to netflix or you know like a online carrier it's a little more maybe your collaborators can keep it going yeah maybe i don't know they've got their own stuffed own fish to fry yeah but um i would have loved it to be on something like netflix where i think they'd have more presents i'd love to you know i wish they'd go and buy them actually and netflix yeah yeah because i i still think um they haven't been seen that widely at all yeah and it's and you know i i do love that show yeah but thank you um right now my the first thing i'm going to do is like a pop-up film school so uh for free yeah i really hate how you know how the environment is like degraded but i also think the educational environment is degraded as well like when i went to film school we were actually paid to go not very much but we paid to go and it was free and like i'll join you where you're like i want that for people now you know i really mean [Applause] i'll be there [Music] i'll join you well maybe we'll you know like i will try a pilot and then you know get you to do one and i'll come join you because i won't take you forever no not online but my idea is that you you do like um you have you know say 10 students and they come every um to get together every couple of months and they have like challenges so it's just like facilitating them finding their boys like projects that will help them you know find advice and and and do things and you know i could i could see it being done in a lot of different ways but just i just can't wait to start um that's so cool yeah um yeah yeah cool thank you i don't know how to do it yeah i mean i'm working for free because i i just want to give back now that's a big deal for me yeah yeah i'll join you i don't know netflix can sponsor it well yes netflix is sponsoring it right is that true yes yeah are you doing it really yeah it's happening yeah and and the new zealand film commission are going to step up too that's so cool yeah i'll totally help if i can kate's just a legend you know as we no she's a really amazing energy and a beauty um i i mean it was did you first see her in heavenly creatures is that when you first saw her yeah i think probably there but she's um she's a great actor she's a really really great actor and you know i think we're only still seeing the tip of the iceberg so to speak titanic uh capacity of uh kate winslet yeah yeah i i really think she's extraordinary yeah no i i love i just didn't know there was a difference between like if they were filling a frame they're all like you know that big right it was like just that naivety i think i you know i didn't understand the different qualities of lenses really and um yeah i mean do we use a lot of wide shots i mean we often would shoot from a long way back you know to give ourselves a wider shot with a longer lens as well um probably more what we did right yeah because like stacking up um stuff and you know in a big environment is you know like we did that a lot on the piano like i learned from stuart dreiberg about that like it's really hard to cut with um wide shots with like everything's in focus um in between shots so like if you've got these long lenses then you're picking out the people and it's much easier to cut between them and sounds good so yeah i love the last shot yeah how you kind of tell the whole wrap up the whole story in that last shot was that designed to be the last shot yes it was designed to be that's it that's one shot i could actually work out yeah yeah yeah it was it was great there was a few shots in that end section i just knew how to do it but the last one really is poetic i think you got it there could you plan that i think you know like it was a couple of things happening there wasn't it was summer um and you talk about jeremy yeah um we definitely thought a lot about color i think that's one of the main things we spoke about right color nazis right yeah a bit difficult with willow trees and grass yeah but it's true that those scenes had a whole different feeling because everything else was well i think i think what we would end up feeling like this was a sacred place this was a special safe zone where it was sort of lush and um [Music] and private and opposite of the dry ranch and it was you know like it was watered you know it had you know the vitality of the river and um it and a sort of a beauty that you know that he could trust um there was a you know like there's a little spot near a place um that i live in glenorchy that i was you know it's like i was mimicking it you know with that bigger area like i took some photos of it it was just like you know the sun coming down onto the grass feeling so um beautiful and secret and you know like i don't know as a teenager is always looking for places to lie down and kiss boys you know and so it was like you know kind of feels like that you know like your parents driving along and they're thinking i don't know whether you think you're thinking about it but i'm looking out the window saying oh that's a good spot [Laughter] well actually it used to be that i used to pretend that i was riding my horse and that every time we come to a fence like over the jump turned into like finding good spots for kissing [Music] i had that feeling [Laughter] yeah thank you [Music] you

Channel: Film at Lincoln Center

Views: 16,356

Keywords: Film at Lincoln Center

Id: Ab0d1AT6XIo

Length: 62min 10sec (3730 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021