Meet the 2018 DGA Nominees for Feature Film

ladies and gentlemen please welcome the five nominees for outstanding director of a feature film by the Directors Guild of America here are some remarkable filmmakers please welcome here we have them as we get them wired in for those of you please you'll take your seats for those of you been here before you'll notice much more comfortable chairs up here this year don't think you can't give sort of outstandingly different from the years of our past as we a wire ourselves up here I was thinking this morning of a quote from a famous environmentalist the Henry David Thoreau who said it's not so much what you look at that matters it's how you see and in every one of the cases of these directors of you filmmakers you have a distinct vision that is so outstanding that that's why you're up here as you know this is an audience of people who are themselves part of the directorial team so hopefully our conversations will stimulate some of the things that make it a little different from the conversations you have to have about your film all these last number of months but let me introduce you first just in case we don't know to my right is Martin McDonagh of three billboards outside a being Missouri and the hour mode the Tarot of the shape of water and Greta Gerwig ladybirds Jordan Peele get out much hopefully I'm still on and we have Chris Nolan from bunker you know as we're sitting in these very comfortable chairs I was actually curious where each one of you positions yourself when you get on set so I want to start with you Chris of course you've got three different locations you're in the air you're in the land and you're not see but where do you want to position yourself when you're on set I'm always beside camera so always get as close to camera as possible I don't use chairs we don't tend have chairs or a video village on set so we tend to just try and keep the energy moving so I I tend not to sit down during the day so and I'll stay right by camera and try and watch with my eyes what's going on and take in as much as I can that way I wear a little UHF monitor around my neck so I can just check framings or use the the one mounted on top of the camera but basically I stay by count when you were dealing with certain issues like being in those airplanes I know that the airplane had a double seat in order for you be able to photograph where were you able to be decision yourself to watch Thomas Hardy do what he did well we I mean very different for different setups as sometimes I could be in the plane running the camera sometimes are on the ground and waiting for the actor to come back from a sortie and then watch the tape with them and most of the time we were in an arrow store which is a very fast twin-engine plane following the following the planes with my DP and our aerial DP and and an amazing pilot Craig house King who was effectively operating the camera using the plane so he would literally steer and frame using the plane which at times gets a little bumpy and when you were in the water literally for example in the scene we just saw if you were wanting to be able to get as close to for example fumes before it heads before where were you there when we were in the water I mean we spent a lot of days just floating around with the actors and you know and a noise of an item on my director of photography had been really really keen to break down the sort of a barrier you know traditionally in photography you're out of the water or you're under the water it's very difficult to sort of be on it and so he had these sort of wet bags designed that we could put an IMAX camera in and we could basically use a boogie board or a noodle we float around on noodles and had the camera on a boogie board kind of so you could dip the lens below will be there and be right there there with the actors floating around so yeah I mean it was it was a lot of fun actually I mean at first it was sort of daunting but then when you do it day after day you get you get better in it and I think everybody found a very challenging but I think kind of enjoyed it Jordan where do you position yourself well first of all already and I reckon I recognize these chairs by the way and you're planning to send me some sunken place I'm it it feels like I'm a little bit of everywhere uh-huh yeah I definitely spend a good amount of time by the monitor and I'm running back and forth between the set and the monitor I attempt to feel more comfortable at the monitor than I do is sort of in the set with the the performers with the actors I think mainly because I you know I'm trying to experience it as the audience will in the best way possible I also you know feel like I don't want to be a distraction a lot of the time on set is spent taking walks with the actors individually and you know I feel like the the we sort of have to come to an agreement about what the emotion at any given moment in in the in the scene is identify flaws in the way I had been thinking about it in in the script and and and and ultimately you know I think I think for every character in the film I I had to I had to sort of play the role myself in talking to them so I had when if you wanted if you're at the monitor and you want to give an adjustment let's say even the scene we just saw and there's an amazing performance by Daniel in that particular scene if you wanted to give an adjustment how do you work that do you walk onto the set will you what's your methodology yeah for that particular scene and the way I approached every actor from the get-go was I you know I said to them you know this is probably gonna be the what what sinks me because it's too difficult but what's your ideal process describe it to me every actor has a very different process Daniel is the type of actor who likes to he's a completely immersive actor and he's reactive he doesn't like to over talk over think he likes to know the emotion that he's he's feeling and then we let him go so for that scene he did his part of it all the way through probably about five times after each pass each and each time he did it was flawless beautiful and different nuanced performances and he would need you know understandably so he would need a break so he would he would he would do a pass of the scene I'd come on I go okay Daniel take a walk he would go outside and sit and think and feel and then after about five ten minutes I would come approached him I'd say how you feeling you know I'm I'm loving what I'm getting but let's let's talk through any other nuances any moments you're not feeling any moments where you want to do but and then you know eventually we would talk we'd get to this point where he go oh alright let's go let's go you know and he would tell me we're ready and wife why did you do it reputedly for yourself because you knew you were getting it why go on well it's it's it's one of those things where if someone nails it on the first pass you just like what does that second pass look like you know is this is it would be a mistake I mean a seem to point out where this was the case was the scene with Betty Gabriel who played Georgina the housekeeper and this really classic beautiful beautiful performance she did up in roses bedroom where the character that's buried in her sunken place almost you know emerges due to the force of her own will but of course the you know the woman that's operating the body you know suppresses her so that scene we did about eleven times the first one where she's going no no no no no no and the first time it was just perfect and so I went and I said I was like look that I love it you know maybe like let's let's try dialing up the crazy a little bit when it gets crazy she went back and she did it again and it was it was a little bit better I was like well this is okay let's try it again give me a little bit more great did it we did that 11 times it kept getting better and at the end I realized well [ __ ] we could do this all day and it would keep getting better and I said okay well I'm good you know we're good I'm glad we did all these times because each one you know and I said unless you want one more and she goes give me one more and that's that's the one that's in there Wow thank you thank you I'm positioning Greta where do you put yourself on the Senate well to just sort of highlight the Surrey ality of this moment had read because I before I directed I've talked to lots of people I have read a lot of interviews and one of the things that I read was that you don't sit down on sets mr. Nolan and that was the thing that I was like well got it got it model yourself after someone I I have Apple boxes it's if I but I don't like video village is also comes from the fact that I've been an actor and a lot of different sets and I find as an actor there's nothing worse than feeling like there's a committee it's a little away that's judging every everything and so I like to keep it kind of moving and fleet and so I'm usually by the camera because I like to be it's I like to be sort of a one-person audience in that way for the actors that they're kind of getting the performance to me and the camera at the same time and I'm usually up and and walking and just in the flow of what's happening gemo where do you position yourself you know I I am same different different scenes called for different things if if the camera is very mobile by the way I would have chosen another clip but that clip illustrates the beautiful part of what I'm going to talk about is the the actor needs to feel you that you're there I think that the actor needs to feel that your eyes are there with with him or her on the scene that you're watching not through a monitor if it's possible what I do is I have what we used to call a clam shell and the clam shell I can I can go and avert my eyes to the clam shell for a technical crossing of the camera and the actor or moment or intersection and then I lift my eyes up so the actor knows he or she is being watched I don't think it's intrusive I think it's the opposite and I think it's very intimate and is it's truly the loneliest two places in we said our useed and the actors standing there there are the loneliest other than the [ __ ] for their actions is the most horrifying but that is the Sun completely but I think when when you know you have company on both sides is really necessary to do it III have I also share I do sit but I do sit on an Apple box I don't carry the chair I don't like to be in video village I don't like the remoteness but if I have to like if the camera is gonna be so mobile and the space is so tight I go to the video village and I choose the biggest monitor I can and I I tape at the bottom a row of heads cut out of black tape remind me of the scale of the the image on a movie set on a movie theater you know I got it and I put it there like a like a row of seats if I have to go there I at least want to have a different perspective not have the same because you can scale down if you're watching on a monitor now because so much of the movie is fluid camera yes where were you position yourself in on the sets where you could be by camera I made the decision on shape of water to keep the camera moving the entire time to float that's why the opening and the closing were done in dry for wet with the camera gliding I wanted to shoot it like a musical and therefore I was moving a lot with the camera or I would position myself on the blind spot of that blocking correct but I would stay on the set because I feel that you know you can also instruct if you're in media village you are seeing the result of the intersection now get there anybody viewer are there during rehearsals and the first couple of takes you can see why the dolly grip is not reaching the mark you can suggest something you know you can you can be mechanically oriented and performance oriented in a much easier because there's so many cam is moving so often would you and I see where you are would your initial moments be I'm watching even if the clam shells here that move to know that that's working and then we constrain your performers or was a combination well what I've had since I was a kid and I started shooting super 8 and he'd you know when I have is I know what what the lens is looking at even if I didn't have the clam shell I know what the movies gonna be with a dolly with a mini G but you know so I can I'm there even if I'm in a corner and I don't have the clamps on I wouldn't know Martin where do you position yourself I think kind of like Jordan and I'm kind of at the monitor a good deal but kind of close enough to get straight out there to to talk to the actors as soon as I possibly can but I think I take a lot of notes during each during each take and I think kind of distracting for the actors but I kind of note off almost each line to know if we've got on it if the motion is there do you actually have sides or something yeah just just on the sides and I go through like a whole bunch of them each day but but but it puts me at Morrie's I think to be looking at the image and just seeing those details I mean I think I should learn to do it do it a little bit more like Christopher about the process which which is when you're making those notes do you look away in other words are you I'm up and down here and then I'm back mostly I'll be like just literally making a mark at each line to to know if we've got it or not but I think that's probably coming from you know a writing background and being in a writer's head and and maybe I need to get over it but but but it but it kind of works with me and then once I've narrowed down what we haven't got then those would be the lines to concentrate on with the actors to know to get that emotion this is actually a unique experience for us here because this is a belief the first time all five directors actually are in fact the writers of the material so the transition from being writers well you can blame yourselves too because I was thinking how many times you turn to the right here and say why don't you just give me I don't know I turn this in that means that yourself in the mirror so the question becomes that transition process from writing what you've written to bringing that into a cinematic visualization I'd like to just talk about the openings in the movies because each one of your opening is incredibly powerful and I don't know what was in the script initially and I know you worked on your script for many many years before you actually shot this and there's very specific fact it's totally imagistic in terms of the very opening in terms of how you've done it how did it emerge from what was on the page to your transition of I'm now the director and I need to visualize well I I'm writing the script I'm not thinking about it in terms of visuals too much it's usually in terms of character and dialogue and plot once it's finished I usually it's a whole separate process to go away on my own and storyboard the whole thing literally every every scene even even they're just the talky scenes that opening though was always all image but there's a lot of nuance to what Francis was doing in it too I mean it's all about making that decision seeing that decision and holes are having that whole backstory they're present with her in the car so that was a combination of storyboarding and and sticking to what was in the script but of course there was no dialogue so it was it was quite heavily shot based and when you say storyboarding are you making these images are you sharing it with yeah yeah and it's a little they're really terrible and everyone laughs at me apart from the DP which is how we keep working together I guess but he doesn't mind and and it's actually good shorthand for us but of course he'll he'll kind know what I'm trying to get her and then he'll come up with something that all save you know doing something in three images when you can do it in one or in one move or something and establishing though in that opening you've got those billboards before we find her in the car how did that evolve because they actually set a mood there's even a kind of weather feel that we get this is before you introduced early yeah yeah we were lucky we went out that morning to shoot you as you're supposed to see these these three billboards uh on a lonely road before you know before the movie opens we were locked out that it was a completely misty morning the only one we had and we just turned up and it was it was perfect the fog was there and it just lasted for the two hours that we we needed it to but then it was all about you know picking the best and the bleakest sore the most beautiful angles of those already established billboards on the road but then it was all all about getting in the car and seeing how many how much we needed to be with Frances and I remember it seemed like a simple scene but we took I remember saying to the first ad me Peter Cohen that we needed from twice as much time because it was not just about location and establishing billboards it was all about really being in France's head and seeing that decision when you were watching that now again I'm there's the moment when she sort of surfing do you remember when that evolved and did you a number takes and did that become the thing that you said boy I like that let's do that we it's funny enough we Fran was I loved the way that brando used to scratch and and and she loved the little intricacies of John Wayne and that's what should we I think those are the two things were kind of those two opposing forces we were trying to bring into thinking about her character so you know in a lot of the takes and the shots there was even more scratching and a more that Brando kind of stuff and you both have we've talked about this yeah yeah yeah but a lot of that kind of fell by the wayside in the Edit but little little remnants and shadows of that is still there and I think that's that's one of them in positioning again this is now I'm not sure what was on the page that described her car coming and spotting the billboards and considering what's going on but positioning the cameras because there are a series of inside the car outside the car close to it where and how did that was that part of the storyboarding process we that was all the part the storyboarding yeah and then getting on set and and having van again come up with a couple more interesting angles but then it was almost about cutting you know as we know there's not a lot as much time as you you ever need sort of four shots atop the boards looking down and you know from the nearby cliff didn't really come to fruition but again it was almost because we need it to be with Fran I always have problems shooting through wind screens and having you know reflections get in the way so most of those shots I think are in through the side or even from the back of the car just but just being in with her and seeing that decision being made in on the page was it a couple of paragraphs yeah and it was at least a two days shooting I suspect no it was so long well well the the the establishing foggy ones was it was a separate morning but no it's probably just half a day I think Guillermo you worked on this since you were six years old this particular script and in terms of the transition of being the writer and with some page and then visualized for example even and I was thinking about the opening and closing closing if you're looking at both of those what was on the page and your process of going through making the decision I'm gonna shoot this not in water how did what what's that process from writer to directory well in my case it is seamless until the actors come in because I think when the actors come in they could write and and rightfully so you know they the the what I try to do is never write anything that cannot be proven by image or sound meaning every time you objective eyes on the page that objective you better be able to back it up with light color design sound because often times you read screenplays that are written in a literary way and function on the page but how do I do this you know and and I think that the other thing I do which is very peculiar is I break I break the lines if it says she enters through the door the room is dark I can say she enters break through the door the room is dark and I'm thinking already and it's broken because what if I if I do one line if the the length of the page to screen is gonna be much longer like if I write a hundred and twenty pages but I write like that and I know I'm gonna go to the ends being two hours and a half you know so when I break it down I know I'm gonna do a POV and only I know it but it's broken down like that on the page from the beginning and it gets to a certain rhythm he holds on to the edge of the car you know it's it's it's that breaks it I tried to be as a specific on the images I described what objects for example in the opening I know I start on a river and I go into a corridor which is an impossibility and then I'm gonna go through somatically in the opening of a shape of water I wanted all the elements that were gonna be in the entire movie to be in her dream about water and the movie is about love the water and time so I knew I was gonna start in the water and end up in the close-up of the rock and and so planning it it's a nineteen point three million dollar movie I couldn't do tank work and I remember I used it once on Hellboy I remembered an old theatrical technique called dry for wet and I decided that's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna pop it here or everything I'm gonna puppeteer every object on the screen wires for everything wires for everything open ceiling on the set and I'm gonna have 10 to 12 puppeteers moving the objects in front of the camera it's included her on the couch her the couch we came up with the the idea of creating a fiberglass mold of her sleeping so she could be held by exactly her shape you know all the technical solutions seemed logical because it needed to be very theatrical and I wanted I believe in symmetry and most of my movies all of them open and close echoing one and the other and I wanted to open with her dreaming or being in water and closing with her being in order you know some of the challenges this is I'm passing that you're saying what I'm writing I know can be done were there moments when you're writing and I want this but I'm not quite sure how this is going to be done no no one yes and no question and it came out the wrong way it is when I've written something in the past very early on that I didn't understand I end up not understanding it like I try or somebody all the solutions technically need to come from me I need to know drive for weight I need to know what what housing for the camera I need to know that's why I'd like to experiment with little things on his movie to get new tools you know in this case I knew that the driver where would work I had done it before but I really wanted it to be very painterly and and and they required a camera we we try different mounts and we ended up with the steady on the dolly the setting arm on the dolly which gave me the fluid the fluidity and the position what you didn't have the XY axis all over the place but it allowed me to go through doors and correct not in a nodal way it I could float the head around the corner as opposed to having the nodal Tilton or men you know so it is finding those tools yes that happens a little later but I need to know the basic taking on things thank you got it for you in terms of transition from the written word and I know that you wrote hundreds of pages for this before it became the script that it did what's that process specifically let's look at the opening because I have no idea what was on the page at the opening versus what we now see which has even if I remember clearly wasn't even a jump cut from the tool in the bed to them making the bed so you've got a time transition right off the bat did that evolve where are you in the process of writer to director that was all on the page I mean I would say by my movie is almost entirely on the page even the cuts are on the page I I think it's it's the way my mind works it's I mean it's different than the way you're talking about but it's it's like I need to know what the rhythm is in an editorial sense on the page already I don't like the feeling but when I've done other things like I don't like finding it in the edit in the same way that I think that's that's a useful tool for someone else but for me I like to kind of know how like we're gonna cut from this to this and what that rhythmically will do to the words in a way because for me even the cinemas obviously visual language words matter a great deal to me and the way they sound and the way they interact with the editing so that sort of that they're in the bed and then they're making the bed and and then they're in the car and we go from their backs on the bed to out the window in the car and they're in the same position like that was all thoughts through and it was all I didn't write it into the script but it was all in I mean I wrote the cuts into the script but I didn't write the shots into the script but for me it was I like I love symmetry what you were talking about and I also love I love in movies when it feels like the opening of the movie is the entire movie in a scene and then you basically watch that entire thing play out and that dynamic and even the lines so the opening lines are do you think I'll like I'm from Sacramento you are from Sacramento are you ready to go home I'm ready and I wanted the language both visually and literally the language that they were saying to be both simple and plain but also has the ability to be poetic in its own plane this so with the camera I had a very I was like I'm not I'm not I'm I want it to be static as much as possible I mean I was influenced by various things I want it to feel like photographs like presented presented presented almost like and I'm like it's like a triptych or a nativity scene or like it sort of unfolds in front of you in that way and yeah that that opening I always knew that those were the first lines and I always knew that them in bed together sleeping was this first moment of them being able to be sweet with each other when they're unconscious now you're hearing this as a writer you're hearing this in your mind you're visualizing it you even written in that down in terms of the structure of it as you now bring in your actors even in that first scene for example the scene in the car and you do this a lot the the overlapping dialogue that happens in terms of the way those performances are there because it's that familiarity and that's what we do yeah there how does that evolve for you now as a director having heard this as the writer I it's well um all the overlaps are written in I mean it I there's that I spent a lot of time reading plays actually when I was growing up yours my I'm this is all really crazy for me but um there's a playwright I really love Caryl Churchill who does great overlapping dialog in the way she indicates overlapping dialogue with it there's a slash and then you're like this person starts while this person finishes this line like that sense of creating a cacophony deliberately is something that I've always loved and I think it was a love of theater and and reading and watching plays that I was interested in trying to make that deliberately and then but once the actors do it it it does become something different as it should there's nothing it's like I hear it in a rhythm in my head but it has no personality it only has rhythm and then when an actor does it it it transforms and it's like it's it's almost as if you recognize it but you you've never met it before and that's when it feels right is it it's something familiar but somehow it's not what you could have imagined if you want to adjust now if if it's your show and and Laurie at that moment doing this and now you're hearing it in a new way yeah anyone now make an adjustment with with either of them what's happening to you as the once rider is say wait don't touch my writing I'm thinking play your playwrights in some degree and now this is something you know another process and evolving process well I didn't adjust the words at all I actually I had a very great playwright it was I'm in my film and a great writer in general Tracy Letts procedure and he said to me I was doubting something one day and he said one of the best things to me he said can I give you my two cents and I said yeah Tracy Letts and he said you have to trust the person you were when you wrote it you're actually not the same person anymore and it took you a long time and actually now you have to direct it so if the if if the words aren't working for you anymore as a director you know you need to take that into account but like respect the person who wrote it and that was a very helpful way to think about it and in terms of adjusting actors I I think for me I never want an actor to feel like they have to hit a target that's in my head I want them to feel that what we're doing is trying to create as many possibilities as there there are and is that as many because there's an actor I know the feeling of when a scene opens up to you it's like a key fitting in a lock and you didn't know there this entire world on the other side and I can see it happen to actors and it's the opposite of hitting a target it's like they're completely empowered to to make wild swings and choices because everything is right because it's all coming out of something that makes sense to them but for me I feel like when I make adjustments by the time around set because I do a lot of rehearsal and I like rehearsal and it's not even literally working on the lines it's like getting them together it's getting a dynamic going it's getting them to feel free with each other and with me and to create these connections but I'll hear it I'll hear it or I'll see it on their face I if they don't if there's a lack of specificity I think that that's the thing that I am most sensitive to because it's what I can actually help them with it's like you know it's it's this it's this is and you give them the most specific thing and then you all you watch it click in and it's not a result it's knowing what you're knowing what you're doing knowing what your goal is knowing what you're driving at knowing what that position is and so I think that's what I'm always on the lookout for is is are they muscling through it with something that because they don't understand it because I haven't done my job so just getting in there and getting very specific well-spoken well-spoken thank you gonna the opening scene in Jordan in your piece is quite an amazing single shot if I remember correctly what was it on paper well the earlier draft of the scene had a lot more going on there was a you know I originally in a draft there was there was a family inside a house who's having a conversation a white family having their dinner and having a you know conversation about Disneyland and and this incident happens outside their house they never realized and I was kind of like you know I was basically trying to do too much I was trying to I was trying to start the movie with the the protagonist that you expect a horror movie to be started with and sort of fear that and then the the guy that's walking down the black guy that's walking down the street you know outside too you know hopefully put the audience in a position of fearing him first before we realize that he's our actual protagonist I I decided to strip it way down because I felt that you know the first scene in the movie is very important and it's very important not to do too much what you're trying to get across is a feeling and in the case of a thriller I felt like you're trying to offer the promise to the audience of what is to come and and so I wanted to ultimately it became much more important to for the audience to be immersed in the experience of being a black man walking down the street in a white neighborhood and I felt that if I could out of the gate get everybody on that page and feel that feeling and feel that specific fear of oh [ __ ] this is the we're the wrong person to be in this neighborhood that is you know obviously it through other eyes idyllic and and welcoming I felt like if we could start there the audience would receive that promise and from that point forward know that race is the monster that we're fearing and every other scene after that would be colored with the the terror which you know is the most important form of fear I believe in a horror movie is is the the fear of what's to come you know you can you can show monsters and you can show as much blood as you want but those moments when an audience is imagining what's around the corner I find is always way more impactful you know the audience you're never gonna beat the imagination of the audience well your choice now to make this into that particular shot how did that evolve because that's a very directorial choice well it part of it was you know recognizing that there's a certain elegance to it we did it with a Steadicam and and you know I in the beginning before in the pre-production process I I made a decision about what each camera technique would be used for the Steadicam for me was this is the feeling that of Terror is the feeling that something's lurking there's and specifically that that feeling that the audience and the protagonist or the the character in the scene have that that that nagging feeling that they're being watched or that something's wrong that that's that's what I get from the sort of ethereal motion you know of course you know you know masterfully done by Kubrick in the shine Johnny but that that feeling of there's another presence and it is a kind of an unearthly presence following us you know aging in staging that because it's a complex move because he enters the frame he could the camera moves around him if remember correctly he changes his directions at the camera doesn't number moves how did that evolve you know we well we started doing practicing it and you know yeah you find many details you're not expecting sort of a rise you know there's moments where you have to be like okay you know it was look he's Stanfield the you know the brilliant actor who played Andre in the film you know there's moments where do you have the cameras got to go past and you gotta say okay look you got to pretend like you're walking straight but you actually have to veer all the way up into the grass and then kind of come back and there you know there's all kinds of illusions and sleight sleight of hands that you're you're doing and you know you do it a couple times and begin to at some point you go [ __ ] we should have shot that it wasn't perfect but we should have shot it and then and then you start shooting it so that we ended up doing that but that seemed probably about 13 times and there was several of them you know the little variation here and there there were several of them of the shots that worked for different reasons and you know at that point you know you in the Edit of course you're you're faced with okay do I get do I use the one where this moment works better or do I use the one where this moment worked better and you have to just make this you knew you had to own those that space though those two blocks or three blocks that's you're there and then the corner so that was already in your mind in terms of the corner and turning yes yeah yeah I mean we we we I knew where I was looking I knew where we were going to look the the things that sort of surprised you on the day are just a little bit you know you need the actor to be natural and to an extent the the actor and and your your Steadicam operator are doing this dance and you know you can't tell an actor at this point at this word you have to be here at this word you have to be here that'll talk you know you have to kind of let the actor lead at a certain point and you know hopefully you have a talented steady camera operator as I did who can make these little adjustments so so yeah the the what I was surprised by because that was the the first we shot that later in the process we shot that scene and I was I was pretty petrified of the you know the difficult you know long shot I found it was more fun and and easier than I thought it was because because it it became but it was a a single project you could focus on for the the night it didn't it cut down a certain but you know you you get you know you can do work for an hour and realize well we just got through six of these you know it's it in this particular case it was it it took less time then I believe the original intention of getting coverage here getting coverage getting this sort of massive amounts of mound of setups and yeah and and so it was fun great this value thank you Chris the opening of the movie uses titles you make a very specific point of view which is everything that's dangerous is behind us when it finally starts how did that of all from what you had written because I know this screenplay was very short write something 70 pages remember or something and here you have incredibly complicated sequences so what's your process and even looking at the opening if you take that as an example well as he said script was very stripped down it was very short about half the length I usually do it was 76 pages and it was mostly stage directions a very little dialogue and I'm always looking in the opening of a film to try and have a sense of calm about what the filmmaker is doing where you create a symbolic representation and what the films going to deal with in some way in the case of Dunkirk it had to be expositional to a degree and I wound up using titles which I hadn't done before into cutting with it just to give the basic piece of information and then free the imagery up to sort of immediately start telling them what you the story but the idea or having me I wanted to make it very clear that you're never gonna see the enemy the enemies on scene but so I thought a lot about what it is we're trying to say with the point of view the film the human experience and ultimately the idea was the random nature of the violence and so the idea that we would see the group of soldiers from behind and not see their faces and just see them killed one by one other than one who then becomes a protagonist but the idea behind it is you don't know which one of the could be could be any of them and it's irrelevant and then you pick up the guy who happens to to survive and so when we came to shoot it we had a shoot on an electric tracking vehicle with a stabilized head sort of chasing the guys and it was difficult to do it safely because they're having a drop and then they'd be in the path of the vehicle if we weren't careful so had to be carefully choreographed but we wanted it to have a very scrappy and random quality to it and so the take--let's in the film is not the last one we did it was the one where it was the most uncontrolled and then we cleaned it up but we did it three or four more times and got it sort of perfect but I think both loiter and myself knew that when we looked at it in dailies we would choose the one where you can tell of the camera operator doesn't know who's gonna get shot first so second and she was slightly missing it and and sure enough that was I mean I don't think we ever even tried the other takes in in the car and so there's even I mean even to the extent there's a mistake in the shot you know there's a there's a squib that didn't go off but went off rather the script goes off and the guy keeps running and stuff and we just left it all it's crappy in that way because it had energy and and ultimately the random quality of it is sort of the point you want to tell people right at the beginning this isn't about heroic deeds it isn't about good people being rewarded about people being punished it's just about the random random quality of violence in the script versus that evens that scene did you have had you seen that locations already as you were writing so you kind of knew yeah I think this we can use this area or yeah and once you were in the position of being on that set what would be the process of even setting up this opening now well it was a very unique situation for me because of dealing with historical truth and so before I even wrote the script I went there and I walked the streets and I looked at where things had really happened and I walked out onto the mole you know the structure that heads out to the sea and I walked and I see up and down the beach it's all the vastness of it and so I had all that in my head from studying the history and then walking it and then as I wrote the script I was able to be quite specific and so then one we went to scout the location you know bring my head to Department I could show them an exact so we're gonna run out of this Street I think I'd actually shot the street that he runs out and sees the beach' with a super8 camera that I brought with me and I you know you're already kind of with a friend of mine just kind of filmed that and sort of seen what that would look like and which bits you'd see I'd said we started to put the sequence together that way and the difficulty was explaining to the different department heads the ADEs in particular that the beach was not a location it's a whole world it's it's basically 14 miles long you know we used about seven miles of it and so you couldn't schedule and walk in moving on sand is very very difficult very time-consuming and so you had to schedule it according to very specific areas of where you would be you know when you would be up in the town overlooking the beach when he would be down on the beach right below that when you'd be over near the base of the mole because just to move from one to the other to move the whole company with the hours so in your writing process it feels like this may be true for all of you but it feels like you are also the director in process writing meaning that you've been to this location now I know what this may look like already seen a scene that then I then yeah I mean it's well it's been interesting listening to everybody talking about that as writer directors I started working in no budget films here my first film cost $6,000 and so I wrote only what I exactly knew how I could film I wrote exactly what I had access to I wrote to this apartment from this restaurant where I knew I could get a couple hours shooting time and everything and then as the budgets got bigger and as I progressed as a filmmaker to larger things that became a point where I started to have to not do that I have to sit down I have to write things that I don't know how to do if the right things are gonna challenge all my heads of department challenge me things that I really don't know because the more experience you get and at this point I've made films up mountains and underwater or and then wilderness and it cities and well yeah and so it becomes harder and harder to sit down as a writer and say exterior it's snowing because you know for God's sake you know that you have this this wealth of experience that just tells you you shouldn't do it but see you you sort of you know reach a point where I don't say no I'm going to write things that I literally don't know how to film I have no idea how to film them and then we'll figure it out and the advantage of the large budgets that have been working with over the years I mean you never have enough time you know I've had enough money those things are also but you do get more preparation time you get more R&D time if you like you get more time to sit with your group of collaborators and throw ideas around about okay what possible ways are there to do this you've got to do that all upfront because once you're shooting it's the same as on a tiny film you just don't have enough time and you whatever whatever experiments or decisions you made months ago you have to stick by them what were some of the challenges that you recognized either beforehand or during this pre-production but I don't know how we're going to do this well I mean you know I'd done extensive aerial work before and I've done a lot of work with large extras counts before this film so those were things that you know they frighten you a bit but you know okay the we'll get through it as a way to do it I know the people who can help me in my ad team can help me put that together and wrangle that boats I had never done and you know I called Ron Howard who had just done filling the water I've met at one of these events actually and he gave me a lot of very useful information about what do they want not to do and well some of the things were were confirming things that I had already slightly supposed which is it's he was basically about the use of tank work versus the open water because what I think I started a notice in films is when you do date on tank work the tank doesn't seem to help you in the slightest because you're having to use visual effects to put the horizons in and the horizon is always exactly where you're looking in the frame so the whole thing that comes a visual affects it it's alright well why don't you shoot in a parking lot and we're on very much confirmed that he said where you you need the tank it's for night work he said because going on the open water there are ways to do it in the day you could put a good team together we have a terrific team of people we were able to shoot the vast majority of the film on the open water but Ron pointed out quite right and you can't light it out on the open water because when you then light it just looks like a tank anyway because you're only your art you're having to artificially light it because you're out in the middle of nowhere and so that that was an incredibly useful piece of advice also the thing that I also heard from Steven Spielberg or so called up and asked about it is handheld camera on boats is really a fantastic we're getting a lot of footage very quickly it's the most versatile camera platform that you have the difficulty we had is we were shooting for 6500 camera but at this very strong Dutch cameraman who was prepared to just pick the thing up and I read recently that the Dutch apparently are the tallest people on the face of the earth very big strong guy and he did it just did an incredible job out in the open water when the tank you know there are a number of times where the soldiers are caught almost drowning inside these vehicles and the you know it's and there's water in the scene yeah how I mean that was new I suspect for you how yeah what did you learn how to do these there were variety of different approaches taken from submerge you know having a set that would submerge into a tank or having a set piece that would roll down underwater we have various different gimble's and gags and you know we had a lot of resources making this film but quite a lot the budget was quite a lot lower than you would really comfortably want for a film of this scale and it was really because we had no Americans in the film so we don't really feel we go to the studio and ask for the full on you know tentpole budget so we did the film for I mean about a third of what we we would usually spend on something of this scale and what that meant was we had to come up with ways to you know simulate I mean in the scene we showed earlier you know there are various angles of a destroyer with guys on it you know sinking below the water and what we wound up doing is designing and building set pieces to do that that will force perspectives so they only wear to plan the camera angles exactly and we literally built the set piece itself specifically for three or four different camera angles where it looks perfect from there but if you you pull the camera back from it it looks small and ridiculous and silly so it was things like that that we we were not developing these kind of in camera approaches and the actors when they're in a position and I want to talk about casting necks for all of us but when they're in a position of you know almost drowning yeah what's happening here oh it's the safety precautions and what's that well the safety aspect it's extremely tricky the the because the difficult thing with water is it's very very deceiving the danger when you get up in planes everybody's so aware just on a non instinctive level of the danger with water everybody will happily swim around swim around and then you start seeking the set and and your brain your panic very very quickly it's it's a line you cross that you're fine you're fine you're just having fun and then there's this this moment of sheer panic and so we had to plan very carefully how we're going to put actors and crew members in that in that position I say crewmembers very emphatically because of course huge amount of it is paid to the actors and the safety actors because they're right there in everyone's look you know we had to be thinking about you know the electrician who's over there were in a scuba tank who needs to be protected and things like you have to think about okay if you're in interior on a stage what happens if the generator goes out and you you know you're in the dark it would be you say you put luminous panels in and things like that and the thing we weren't up coming up with that made me comfortable about filming in that in that way was that all the ceiling panels that we we were not building them on a very lightweight plastic it was actually something had developed on inception for we had to shoot a lot of actors in a van that was underwater we made these very lightweight plastic panels and they're just attached by velcro so you can be you know the water can be right up there and if you have any trouble you just push it and it's very light it got a so there's no barrier there so it looks substantial but there's no actual there's nothing will actually hold you down and you show people that when they come onto the set come on but its waters you know extremely perilous has to be done and done very very carefully the let's talk about cast and I'm not talking about your leads because obviously you have wonderful actors that we well know and I suspect asking them to do the part is where you are but I'd like to talk about audition process where you're casting people that you need to meet and what your process is I don't know if that happened with Fein Whitehead are some of the boys in the piece who were at least new to so many of us but what is your process when you're meeting an actor what do you do how's it now does it go if I were an actor walking into your room to get the part of the moderator and what would it be like what would you be saying well you'd have it sewn up 27 years on don't cook it was a very different experience for us we got to do it in a very old-fashioned way because we were looking for unknowns in the leads and people of the right age people at the age that these soldiers really were when they weren't listen up to fight so we were looking for 18 and 19 year olds and so it was people who didn't have a agents it was you know Tomlin Kearney dropped out of drama school to do you know so we were looking at thousands of people on tape and then hundreds of people in the room and when in the room talk about that when you decided I like this person I like we've worked with the same casting director for many years John Papp Sedaris a terrific casting director and he's one of things I love about John is he's very good to the actors I think walking in and doing an audition there's one of the most terrifying things I could imagine doing and I heart goes out to all the actors who walk through that door but we have to get through massive numbers of people and said John let's everybody know up front you'll come and it'll be one read five minutes done and then you're out and that's how we do the first round so I can see many many people and then we bring people back we take a little more time over it but we still try to be quick and efficient to see as many people as possible and then as you start to hone in in the case of Dunkirk as we started to hone in on our key choices we would bring them in in groups and have them read the scene together and then try different combinations of them have them take different parts look at that combination and over a period of of weeks we gradually settled on the combination we liked so there were a lot of scenes that actually that happens I mean one of the scenes I guess is in the last boat that they're in and that would be allow that what made you decide on I guess it's might head for you I did well how'd it what said to you this is the actor for me well in the case of Dunkirk you're looking very specifically for a visual sense of empathy you're looking for a performer who you can immediately care about and worry about because when you see him for the first time in the film and he's getting shot at he's reacting to it you have to understand immediately that this is not somebody who's gonna go out and win the war single-handed it's just human being a kid that you need to care about but so you're just looking for that openness that quality that the movie stars have that just will take the audience on whatever their emotional journey is and it's not the same as naturalism or documentary realism there has to be great actors have this very mysterious quality of empathy that they draw the audience in and the choice on him right did he have that for you the minute you met him or did ya very much I mean I think I think you often feel that the minute somebody great walks in you you feel that quality it's then a question of is it the right presence you know is it is it does it fit the part essentially and that's why it's so heartbreaking to watch actors audition because you know 90% of it is before they even walk in the door it says of what your preconception is about you know what has what they're having to fit in with in order to get the part choosing the boys on the boat Ryan was his son yeah I'm there George what was the process there were they were challenging were you receiving repeatedly what happened they're very much the same process because we were looking really four countries about the same age and and Barry Keegan very key audience oh I've been mispronouncing his name for years now very key again he looks younger than he is which is a tremendous asset to to him and to us so he could play a 16 year old me and there's a few years old but very much with this project it was about how do you feel even just looking what's the presence of these people they don't say along they don't talk a lot about who they are or where they've come from or whatever so it's really about how you feel about them almost almost visually what are that what do they get across in terms of in the K in Barry's case it was really a sense of I think naivety you know Jordan if an actor's walking in I don't know if all your you had to audition anybody for any of the parts I suspect maybe the group of white people that come to the party they may have all been people that you needed to tell audition but what's your process my process is very much focused on that the comfort of the actor and you know there's there's several things you need to find figure out what about an actor to know if they're the right right for the role you know there's that there's their presence there's there's how they look if they're going to you know feel right but then of course there's how how you communicate with them do they respond to adjustments you make I'm you know having been an actor and going to so many of these awful awful this brutal masochistic sadomasochistic events it's very important to me to to engage in an actor and in such a way that even if they don't get the role they feel like they've they've been worth this this experience was worth something and that we both achieved something even if it's it was just in that room how do I engage with them very directly and I it's part of it is about being present i between you know I let them do it several you know I had the the benefit in this film of you know have several auditions to be able to allow several auditions to go longer than they probably should have so you know I would get up and talk to them let them do do it many times make adjustments sometimes even after I knew it was not the right person for the job we'd still do it and I'd be learning about the character I don't know if that is a guild violation no no it's part of the process here you're fine but Writers Guild uh it you know you you what I found for this movie was that you know every character has a duality at play and so the most the thing I was looking for out of every performer was that they possessed both sides of that duality that in the case of say Betty Gabriel who played Georgina again you know is can I get the the pleasant disarming side can I also get the scared-shitless side so did you did she bother my comforter or did you guess she did and what do you remember that audition I do I do I I remember all of them and she came in and in in that audition I remember my first you know the first reaction to her and I'd seen a bit of tape so it was it was sort of a second round as Chris was was talking about and I remember she has this quality where I was like okay that could be an old white lady in there you know you know I was like this rare quality you know and so that was like okay this is exciting and then she comes in she's she is a she's a very brilliantly trained actor I believe she went to Julliard she's also a dancer so she has a very movement based in a very physical process which I latched on to and so part of it felt like choreography in that I was giving her very physical energies to play an experiment with in the audition so in the audition because by the way those that you know the characters of the the housekeeper and the groundskeeper the sort of post-op characters in the movie where everything in this movie if we know if we don't nail that it's not that that's the thing right that's those are and I don't know in writing the move the the screenplay I don't know that I had the I knew exactly what their quality would be several points in the screenplay I think it's it sort of takes different shapes at some point there's like you know it's as if there's a distant lobotomized effect at other points there's a Stepford wife vien thing going on in the screenplay but I also I knew this couldn't be Stepford Wives this was a different thing so part was trying to figure out this balance between the the the the the presentation and the the the disarming first glance at these people and then figuring out that what how that dark side would play and I believe in the in the audition with Betty you know I we hit this that moment where you know it's the sort of the first stage of me starting to dial up the crazy in that one moment and saying you know I knew at that point of the of the movie we needed the the scariest seen so far and it's just a scene between two people it's just this check-in so I knew that this was the performance was what was going to get us there and it was in that scene where I remember telling her do it again but say no more say no no more times just to kind of get her into this idea of like something needs to be off balance and wrong about the way this feels and she did it again she said no no no and I was like okay this is we're on we're going somewhere cool give me no more more just more knows just whatever happens when you're in there it's it's crazy it's creeping me out it's and she did it again and and then you know we did it a third time and I was like now just say no like a tomb any times and it got to this thing and that you know of course is like this this moment that was not it was not scripted I think there's one probably one two three knows in the script but in that audition I sort of figured out that we figured out that it needed that was where we were going to go off on our it's scary mom fascinating in a way the it does happen that in an audition not only are you discovering something about through your script of course but you're discovering something about the character and potentially something about how you're actually gonna make the scene and you wouldn't have known and if actor had not walked in and done that now sometimes I know the situations that's not the actor you cast but you use the technology that you just heard in that scene but in this case she was there and and there was what were there any parts that you found even more challenging for you in the audition process that parts of the audition process that I felt challenged you know it was it was it was a I didn't find the challenge I found I was very engaged and very relieved you know I I looked at the this is my first film my first my directorial debut so this the audition process was as much of an audition for me myself working with actors and what did you learn about yourself you know I I learned that I needed to emotionally connect with the the character as much as I needed the I'll take know I needed to experience the emotion as much as the performer day and and it was you know many many times in the the audition process and or several times in this process many times in the actual film in working with the actor I would get to this point of crying for the for the emotion that I was and it was about trying to figure out how to articulate what's going on and I would have a catharsis sort of with the actor at the moment of what's actually going on here there's so much darkness in this in this film and I I came about this project in a very mischievous way you know it was about it was about being provocative and doing what you're not supposed to do and and scaring the [ __ ] out of people and when I got in the farther I got into it the more of the reality of what the film was about hit me in several stages and you realize what you would I've been neglecting in terms of the emotions and and the what the victims of racial violence or the victims of you know a self-imposed psychological chamber that for instance you know Chris puts himself through even connecting to the characters of you know the crazy Rose and what I'm hearing is you became these people as well as them becoming absolutely and you didn't know that was gonna happen no no I I didn't know and and and it wasn't macaw related with the the performance that we needed so when if the performance wasn't getting there it was because I wasn't getting there and in how I was dealing with the actor and so that's why we would have to kind of take these walks and talk and you know we did this movie in like twenty three days it was like we had no time but the whole illusion that I like to present to actors is we've all the time in the world to get that to get this right and none of this other [ __ ] means anything if we don't get this moment right so let's take a walk I'll smoke it most of all got up you've been in that situation too of being auditioned so what's your process particularly for let's say the smaller role if you will that someone where you want to be how do you go about your casting process well I yeah similarly Jordan I've been in a lot of us audition situations which are just just dreadful and by the way why are they dreadful oh they say well you better be a good actor if you wore overalls yeah [Laughter] warning to every actor in the house never where you betcha [Laughter] no I have this like I mean for me like auditioning actors I'm so sympathetic to where they are I have the same thing I would spend a long time with people and and I think you know i think in in with some actors it was it was you know they they sort of said yeah let's let's do that III feel like when you're auditioning all the time and it becomes a way hopefully the good experience of experiences of auditioning is you get to you get to act that day and that's something you don't get to do all the time and so I try to make it into an experience where they get to act that day and they get to and we get to work on something we get to see what it is so that when they leave it feels like they got to do something and be part of something creative and so I had a casting directors in in New York and Los Angeles I had these two casting directors who work mostly at the in theater at the public theater a Heidi and Jordan they'd actually never cast a movie before we worked together because I go to the theater all the time in New York I love I love going to plays and I was interested in trying to as much as possible fill it with theater actors I had a sense of that and then because we're shooting mostly in California had Allison Jones as my casting director right here and she's she's incredible at fit she's got amazing taste and and and when she likes an actor it's always it's always right on but so a lot of the cast I'd worked on collecting who these people were in New York and so and I cast them early and I part of casting them early was I wanted I wanted these opportunities to get everybody together to get them to me get them to exchange numbers to be connected to each other because I think so much of acting work it's like laying down sediment and it's your unconscious works on it a lot and I think of course I like rehearsal but I also think there's a way in which these these things grow invisibly so I tried to cast as much as possible early and then with parts that were coming in for a day or two I'm I think that's the hardest thing to do as an actor I think it's a hardest thing to audition for I think it's the hardest thing to come onto a set and do because you're stepping into a place where everybody knows each other they all they're all they've been working together from you know weeks and and you have to inhabit a whole person in this reality in a couple of days or a day and so that's part of the reason I one of the things I did on set was sort of having I had everybody wear nametags including myself full especially for the day people who came in for a day or two days because it's too many names to get to know but yeah if an actor's coming in yeah and for one of these parts are you working with them as an actor do you read with them are yous where are you in the process and what do you ask them to do yeah I will have them I mean for the smaller parts I I prefer not to read with them because it's I feel like I'm a bad scene partner when I'm reading with them because I will I'm looking at them I'm not being I'm not playing off of them what I like about Alison is that she's a great scene partner I think for me having a casting director was a great scene partner is invaluable because it allows the actor to play with them and to build something and I think particularly for roles that don't have lots of lines or I don't have a run of things sometimes I'll write scenes that don't exist and say read this because because I'm not it's not about oh they said those two lines exactly correctly about who this person is so I'll have them yeah and and I actually like I like giving I like giving them that seems like that and say just go out in the lobby and come back in and read the scene that you've never read before because it takes off the pressure of that they have to have it set it doesn't make it a performance they're not performing it for me this is not what they worked up over a week of agonizing in their apartment which I can I know I know what that is I don't I like to I just want to see them work I just want to see their minds work I want to see their sort of creativity work and I think the other thing that it relieves for them is the need to either feel like they're off-book completely or approximated because I don't like it I don't like approximation I like and and if they've just got the scene they don't feel self-conscious about looking down and saying oh that this is the word that that never bothers me and I like kind of creating an atmosphere where it's it's a workshop type of that if you're gonna give an adjustment to an actor who's done that what kind of adjustments will you do in the casting scene itself in the casting scene itself casting session armies I mean it's will you yeah yeah yeah I'll give specific things I mean it it's honestly it depends on what it is I think it's usually about redirecting their attention if they're not if it feels like they're they're doing it in some way that's not connecting it's it's like instead of you don't want to give like I mean you can give faster slower but that's usually not useful things like in the goal in this scene is make yourself understood or something like that like like be very clear what is is the person that you're talking to understanding what you're saying or are that like change their objectives like when you direct their objective because then you get to see their wheels turn about how do they do that you're not giving them the results you're giving them like an intention this is this the intention of this and then and then you get to see they can come out it from different ways and then when usually it's an actor you end up casting is you you start feeling it all go together like then they'll do something that'll give you another idea but like for example mister what they wanted the teacher is mr. Bruno who the character of Julie has a crush on and the audience knows that and he doesn't know it and it's this sort of secret secret world and and it's not even clear that Lady Bird knows it I always like that in movies when when the main character doesn't know something that the audience knows it's a nice feeling but I didn't a ton of people for that because I was like it has to be very clear he's not interested in her but you could see how she would mistake it you just like her but you're not creepy but but you have this way about you and I felt like I would talk a lot metaphor like when I was auditioning people I was like you're you're the coolest guy because you're the youngest teacher at an all-girls school so you know all your jokes land so say it like you know they land and like but right but you're not in the world a person whose jokes land directions and I find it mostly it's people's juices they're like no I know that I know exactly what that is and then they'll do it in this wave it embodies all those subtleties and yeah I feel like I end up talking more like that like objectives and kind of metaphors of who those people are was a part of Julie Simon that you knew or did she come in no I didn't beany Feldstein auditions for me she she remember her audition yeah I remember she said she walked in I felt like I knew right away I I had that like kind of she was just right away she was so perfect she the way she dressed herself I mean she was she knew what it was to she felt she was perfect I mean she later told me she was like if I don't get this I don't know like hey she had a very strong sense of it and I remember when we were I mean every scene was kind of exactly right I I didn't I never it was just it was you knew right away as Chris you mentioned many times it's been mentioned that you almost know instantaneously now you learn more yeah and sometimes you learn that innocent affirmation of even more and sometimes maybe it's yes but not right for this role yeah I mean I think what I look forward to is like actors who feel like they have mm and that's why I think I avoid the auditions that feel like performances because I don't want to see that all you've got I want to see the beginning of what it will be because if you can give me all you've got right now I don't it's not as interesting to me as like it's a it's a sketch it's a it's an opening it's an opening gambit for what this relationship will be and yeah beany Feldstein was right away just just right away and she said to me we we were reading and how to read the scene when that happens we're at they're at the After Prom at the bridge and she's talking about her summer plans I heard yeah her summer plans and her dad who showed up and and what that is and I remember saying like I remember saying to her it's it's the kind of conversation you have you don't even need to be looking at each other because you're tired you've been up all night and it's that intimacy where you you you don't you definitely don't need to make eye contact the whole time and and you can keep your voice lazy and keep your voice lazy and she said oh it's like my best friend and I we call it our pillow talk because again it's just that it's exactly that and she said it's like when you're drifting off and that feeling of I'll tell you something because it's because we're so tired and it's and it's been a whole night thank you you know mo meeting an actor for the first time what's your process you know I in this in the case of shape of water I wrote the parts for most of them I mean I knew them either even the small parts I find that in the work we do is symphonic and one terrible note is one terrible note in the symphony it doesn't matter if it's a part with three lines he can actually ruin the movie the experience of the movie and I think that having work in Toronto for now almost seven years consecutive I I knew most everybody and it was hard to find somebody new but for those that I knew I would write even for the small parts I was the part of the wife was she an actress you'd work with before she actually had read for the main part of the series the string and she had gotten it but she couldn't get out of her contract and I said note to self but the the thing is when doing that I wrote it for Sally I wrote it for Shannon I wrote it for Octavia though Jones and so forth and mmm you know I watch everything they do even the small part ii like with sally the key for me was a movie called submarine which in which she plays a secondary character which is a character was the most interested in and what I do is mostly I cast the eyes I cast the eyes because we spend most of the time in a movie seeing a character see see each other see a thing so for me 90% of you if you align the eyes of Octavia Spencer Sally Hawkins Richard Jenkins and Michael Shannon you have right there you have a symphony of notes completely different ways of looking at the world and to me to put these eyes looking at this ice is already interesting and I start with that and the second thing I look for even in the additions is listening because the misconception that exists somehow is that a great actor that delivers great lines but a great actor listens to great lines and looks at great acting and is there and and in the eye you know I've been doing this for now 25 years and when I go through the process the first few times I audition I only wanted to make tea for them and comfort them and ambi and I find that being brief but there is the best way for me to audition even for a small card meaning be very present if it's if 90% of the addition is is done in the first five seconds of walking in the room that's true and if that is so I tried to say well what am I going to try and I I asked the actor what would you like to try with this if he seems or she seems wrong I say what would you like to try with this how do you instead of looking for a specificity because the person walking in is wrong I'm not gonna direct them to be right so I might as well try to be surprised so I say what would you like to try with this in and sometimes they reveal something or not ordering from a catalogue but asking a fabric band or show me your finest silk and they can try and then sometimes it surprises you in have you change in the process of casting for yourself through the years yeah oh yes oh yeah I think that again I think me brief the instructions need to be very very concise and useful we redirect in a in an audition scene if someone comes in and they're there reading for you will you give them and you like what they did what will you do next well what I what I think is beautiful the way Greta put it is if I am intrigued if there's some if there's some beginnings there and you know it right away then then you say what do I feel like it's an analysis of you as much as the actor a really great actor can be really wrong for a part so it's not about their ability is their suitability to what you're trying so what you say is is you you analyze what you want out of a part what do you need because is symphonic is a note and sometimes that you may redirect Andrea accommodate and and I've had actors what happens is for example in this movie one of the actors are got the pie vendor he's a guy is the guy that was the reader for the casting office in Canada and every time he would read I would say this guy's really the other 30 actors didn't get the part but he was really good I mean I you know we over seven years I read with him for 20 projects 20 episodes of TV if I movies whatever and I kept fake no I ended up saying I wrote the part for you that's great well was there any role because you said you wrote almost all these roles for actors you knew wasn't any role where he was still a little more amorphous for you and I'm not sure well there is a there's a particular shot that was really delicate for me it's a single shot in the Cadillac dealership and it was a single shot of a vendor that takes Michael Shannon from not wanting to buy a car to wanting to buy a car and it's a single shot on a dolly on a dance floor and I needed a guy that that could sell and and I knew this actor he had done a part on the strain and I he was not particularly suited for that part on the strain but for this one I thought maybe and he surprised me by coming in and he was just absolutely convincing and beyond what I thought he would be and and the reason is he was not trying to sell well he was not trying to do what great I said beautifully he was not giving me his own he was selling it was a 20th time he had given that speech to her a person in that floor but he had the chops so he was hitting the the like there's a moment where Shannon says I'm just looking he says I'm just talking that that that and I'm just talking that that that little exchanged nobody else nailed that was the point of inflection he nailed it in your email and emailed it on the audition and and from then on it was I mean it was since he was a say you've all been in the position I wanna hear this but where you actually said in an audition you've got the part auditions over oh yeah yeah a little rel Howery got it he came in to read for you he came in to read he's the character he played rod and this was one where he left I actually ran out after him to tell him he got the role because he was that was that was the one where I didn't it was as if the character just came in and existed that was exactly what who I was what I was picturing I although I didn't know it but he came in his audition was pretty rough around the edges he didn't have you know he kept stopping doing oh I'm sorry and it was like don't even worry man that happened to me in a movie I did called Devil's Backbone the main the main actor the main kid came in to read for an extra he came in to read for the group of kids that are in the background and I saw his eyes and I said can you would you read this line and he read the line and he said well now tell me the same thing your way talk to me about it I'm here talking about it and before he let the roses here which is a cool it's not like they go oh I got something yeah come from the theatre so you know what the process is and then auditioning for theatre is it different and how does it go for you no it's exactly the same and it's very similar to what Gretta and Chris was saying I think always hope if you care about actors especially even those you know from the playwright side you really hope that everyone who comes in he's going to get the part is going to do well and nothing you're going to do is going to screw up their process at the same time sometimes as soon as someone comes in you just don't feel they're right and they'll probably never get there but you you you I think if you've got any sort of humanity you want to do it two or three times and and and you do learn little things and and it and it does it's probably selfish but it does help you kind of focus down on them what it is they're doing that isn't quite right but what you do need and if you're redirecting and actors come in and you're asking him or her to do it a couple more times what's the reader towards what's the kind of language that you might be using well it's used because that process is so short and quick you it's usually about there maybe having taken a completely wrong choice about about the person so the only adjustment is to sort of convey maybe where you were thinking that character was when you were writing them or you know if there were an angry or a gentler type of person and and adjectives with them yeah yeah yeah it's I mean it's basically being open to even if that's the wrong way of doing it as a director being open to that and trying to find that the right words and and the process for for direction in terms of you work process here on the movie what were the more challenging roles that you found where you were auditioning people sure well similar to gamma like two of the parts of written I mean Sam Rockwell's and Francis as part of written for them and I think about six or seven of the actors the other actors involved that he ever worked with before or I really wanted to work with like John Hawkes Peter Dinklage and Caleb Landry Jones so so most of the casting for free billboards was was in the much smaller smaller roles Lucas hedges hadn't seen him munches that haven't come out at that point we're moving things similar here we have dears and two movies we have lips into movies and Lucas Hodges into and actually and seriously into a movie so there are common ah so but go but speak to how you would go the butch ones one of the challenges I think the thought Francis's daughter that was like a very tricky character in scene because it's a one scene it's there's only one scene in the movie and and it was a character that you didn't want to you know paint as this you know perfect perfect victim almost you know it had to be some someone who's just a completely real you know teenager who fights other mom all the time and we saw Katherine who's in the film and and she was great but I felt like there was a couple of other colors that I needed to see and what do you feel at least is if you remember that she wasn't showing you at that moment I think she nailed completely the anger and I guess I was just wondering if there was another hint of something else to find but strangely when I where they saw a couple of actors who were all that to all the softness and the light I kind of went back and had a look at Katherine again she came in again and and I think I just kind of hinted it there could be a touch of that and she showed that brilliantly too so but also comedy you know they even in a scene as cuts of dark and angry as that it needed a touch of comedic timing too and Katherine was brilliant that any other parts that were also were well in terms of offering a part to someone straight away sandy Martin who played Sam Rocco's mom in the film she had a small part in Seven Psychopaths that didn't make it but she was brilliant in that so I called the back for this and I felt like an idiot for even having her audition because at the you know end of like one line reading she she'd nailed it and and I was able to offer it to Sandy there I think she's amazing did you tell her in the room yeah you know so there we have another example that you talked about rehearsal process particularly because that's something you know well yeah what about rehearsal process for all of you and the I'm interested in seeing how you what you do in rehearsal process but talk about yours IIIi like trying to do as much of it as possible on this we probably didn't get quite as much cause Francis was quite determined that she wouldn't rehearse with any of the cops in the film so she wouldn't even though she loves Woody and Sam she didn't want to become friendly with them before the shooting started and as an idiot I was thinking can we just do a little bit just to just to make me really being in the room with three movie stars but but but she was right and it shows in the film that that was unnecessary but she she was open to like the family dynamic so we had a couple of weekends with Francis and Lucas and Kathryn and John Hawks as well rehearse them and what would you do in the rehearsals what's a rehearsal process um basically just let them go at it like let them go at the scene a couple of times and then well with Francis I went around to her place like months before she had the script like a year before we made the film and we D mail over the course of that year but maybe the prep we I went around and we just read it sitting across from each other and I think it's in those times where I feel it's the most useful for me because I as the writer it's almost Morris that was the writer than anything I can convey exactly why every scene is there every line is in there and and even though that doesn't mean it has to be that has the scene has to convey that emotion at least that discussion is opened up at least they know where you're coming from and the roots that we can go from that place same with Sam you know we've got a history we did a play together before we're sitting down reading one-on-one with Francis were there moments because it's such a specific character she creates I don't know if she'd already gotten there when you were doing that work were there moments where she would ask or she would do and you would say this could go this way how would you at what what's the kind of language again that you would be universal well we it was straight he was the the comedy was was one of the one of the things we had kind of conflicts about even in that very early reading I was pushing to I'm always pushing to keep every single line in but but and she was kind of the font that's the lines that she was finding uncomfortable for the character were the comedic ones that said we kept everything in but I think there was a there was a little dance that we needed to make to find out what that was all about and I don't know and it was it wasn't quite comfortable but it was okay and it never quite became comfortable and I but I think that's what's still in the film is that she is witty and she is funny but she's not ever displaying it but it's it's there and it's uncomfortable uncomfortably behind that fierceness I guess and that's what we ended up with but in the in the rehearsal we're in the talk we never actually found that solution or that compromise that was fine then in terms of but in terms of rehearsing it's just like let them go at it suggesting you know other places that we're a character could be angrier or but it's always about finding a truth so if anyone's ever playing it actually for a straight laughs even in rehearsals it's more about letting them know that it's just about finding the truth and letting me and the DP and and and the Edit to worry about comedy and who's in the rehearsal room it's just me and them how long will you do a rehearsal will be a couple hours will be yeah couple couple of hours is usually I mean on in Bruges there was a whole different kettle of fish we me and Collin Farrel and brendan gleeson we're in a room for like two weeks in Bruges just just reading over and over again and we all thought that that would kind of kill it but it but somehow because they're sort of playing an old married couple in that film it kind of that's what drew out of that room and one of the things that happens in rehearsal particularly in a spec writer this may have been part of the issue issues dealing with it is particularly if there's prior circumstances there's a family there's a relationship that exists way prior to whatever's happening here obviously there's a family in in in your movie was that one of the issues that came up when you were working with the lab yeah certainly I think between Francis and Lucas and Catherine that needed to be like an instant instant family with John Hawkes it was a little different because you know he's on the outside and he's been a an [ __ ] anyway so it didn't matter if that closeness was there but I think especially between Francis and Lucas and what you do to do that or what did you create a robot they just tie it it's almost just about time just about spending those two hours every couple of weekends together but we filmed in in Asheville and we're all staying in the same same town so we'd see each other in the evenings as well and I think that's as much a part of rehearsals as anything else just establishing that camera camera Audrey and that ease you know when you get on set I mean that's part of what I think rehearsals are is that having the actors feel completely comfortable with you and how you work so that when when they come in you know they're not acting in front of strangers and when there's obviously two sets of rehearsals there's a rehearsal that you may have done beforehand if you've had that end there there's today this morning we're about to do this shoot what are we how we handling at what what's the first thing you do on set in terms of and do you quote rehearse a scene and how does that work well I find that like the pre rehearsal the rehearsal before the film starts that solves a lot of those issues so once you get get on set everyone I've always found because of that process they know what the character is about and they know what the scene is about so it's just about blocking it and jumping straight into it so that that early rehearsal I think an awful lot of time so it bonds you together but it means that I think the actors know exactly where they're going when they tell and having written these characters and this is true for all of you when you're talking to an actor and particularly in this let's say they are the first pre pre rehearsal time about character what language you're using these are people that live in every one of you you've created them but now you're asking these performers to recreate them what are you saying to them about character for me it's just about conveying the place I was in when I wrote that person and those lines and then seeing where where they can take that you know with with how they've lived their lives and how they've acted before so it's it's it's theirs I've tried to I try to be as open I'm not really about open about line changes but in the in the does the writer talking but in the delivery you know there's a hundred ways a scene can go with the lines that are that are there so you're open to that to to the way the scene yeah got it I'm so interesting because when you said the character you know as you wrote when you wrote it where you were but is it where you were aware the character that you were writing was where you were right it's where the character was actually yeah yeah it's all about that person and then like I'll usually leave a script for like five or six years before making it so it's not just where they were then it's how I've heard those scenes over and over in my head in that in the intervening period but then the trick is not to get tied up and then caught in that being the only way to go I think you need an openness about that but I think if you love actors and you you you you you respect that process there's there's never been an issue so far yeah well rehearsal to me start table work and one of the things I generate for each of the actors is a biography which is between four and eight pages long eight four and eight pages long from birth to the beginning of the movie i annotate what they eat what they drink what they don't drink what they listen to what books have they read zodiac sign parents history everything and then I give it to them and they say do what you want I mean we'll talk about it and if you want to on table work I'll give you a michael stuhlbarg took it as if it was the Bible he his biography was he was from Minsk so he learned his Russian lines with a Minsk accent Richard Jenkins said this is great but I'm not gonna use it and and now every time we go to an award ceremony and he doesn't win I say if you only had read the back what but what we what what you do with that is you say this is my story of how I internalize the character now let's see what we do together that's a great beginning what what I do is again the instinct to segregate factions of the actress sometimes it works I did it with Michael Shannon on ship of water I said you and I have meeting separate you never rehearse with the group because the loneliest character in the film is him and I wanted him to be alone and not just for a fact of him being imposing well because his essence needed to feel sad and alone at the end of the day as an antagonist I wanted him to be alone the the one thing happened precisely in the scene that we just saw on that's the scene that Richard and Sally took to heart to rehearse not only with everyone but on their own because the rhythm at which he signs and he repeats you know the idea for me was to create a triple monologue her emotions which are beyond the words the words themselves which when repeated will tell you what she's thinking but then the introspection of Richard reacting to how it illuminates his own condition how about love that was the idea they went on rehearse rehearse they got it to a tee we started doing the takes and it was completely mechanical I felt this is beautiful but it's beautiful in a really preconceived way and the key to that was Richard is an actor that is very present he's always you need to be immediate he doesn't pre-planned we can block and I'll tell you what the process is for me on the blocking but I said to Sally hit him really hard and he looks at his watch if he if he looks at his watch because you never know hit him really hard on the hand and that's what the two takes that we got that is what is in the movie because he he really said did you hit me and you know you never hit me before yeah that was not one of the line no no that was not on the that was not only no nor was it planning the rehearsal I I said to her you really had to hurt him you know ma'am and and that will work the scene up I think that in what I do in the morning is I arrive and I would have before anyone I do it because I used to when I started I used to see the still photography and I would say this guy got a better angle and I you know and and so I arrived early and I walked the set I already storyboard it I already storyboard it but I arrived and I walk the said I sit down I bring a little ladder I go up I look around then you propose the blocking with the actors and the camera on and the cinematographer and you say this is what I'm thinking as a playground do you are just if there's any good ideas you are just to change I reboard really quick and then we go at it and it becomes a living thing but the rehearsal before is important more than anything for comfort for knowing for me the key is seeing what the actor says needs he or she needs and meeting what they really need because sometimes an actor would say in I I need the erection and they don't and they don't really want it or the opposite leave me alone for three tags and then in the process you find out that you really need to get in there in the second take or vice versa you you say you can only say faster slower and let them be alive and give you you know each of them is so for me rehearsal is not so much running the lines or finding the great fact but finding the dynamic between you and the actors what do they need a friend do they need a confidence do they need an enemy they need a father figure they can love or hate and then you become that and you use it are you ok playing those roles yes I am yeah ones are something I'm serious that's a variety of roles are some of you more comfortable with you know I'm Mexican I I'm pretty versatile I was trying to understand what that bed I'm really good at at comforting and I'm really good at confrontation whatever is needed I I think that that obviously I said is a living thing with everybody is a little society in which there's that beautiful saying you know in every movie there is one [ __ ] at least and if you haven't found it by the fifth day it's you it's something it's something I found out my god oh I'm the impossible one on this so you do the same for the crew you do the same for you know but you you you play different roles Greta for you where so you also come from traditions of rehearsal how did you do it on this particular movie yeah I like I like rehearsal I like rehearsal not so much that again I don't want to I don't I don't want to feel like we're setting it in stone or anything like that but just opening up avenues and and and about that the thing of the dynamic of feeling what the dynamic between these people are and I think as actors I mean I think your greatest fear is always it you it's gonna be it's gonna be terrible and it's gonna be wrong and you're gonna be on set and there's gonna be all these people and equipment and you're it's wrong and that that's a terrifying feeling and so what I try to create in rehearsal time is this space of a play and safety and investigation so that it doesn't feel like they're in front of the firing squad once the camera goes on a night I mean I had one of my actress this is so so great Laurie Metcalf who plays Mary Ann she's she told me really early in the rehearsal process she mostly does theater she does television but she mostly does theater and she said I'm terrified of the camera and she said I'm it's it's scary for me I I don't know I'm not sure what my relationship with it is and search is the opposite she's just done a play on Broadway and she said I missed the camera I miss it I miss knowing what my really and and so they were coming up from it from totally different places and then I was like you we're like Tracy Letts and Laurie Metcalf speaking to family dynamics they've known each other for 30 years in Chicago because they're both part of Steppenwolf but they never actually worked together but they had 30 years of history and I but but sincere she was not how did she get to be part of that family what did she do well she was luckily she was in a play in New York and I started being able to have these rehearsals these sort of casual rehearsals where they'd start building that and inertia I mean she's as a person able to just cut through and she's not a dishonest bone in her body and she's also I mean she's very she just folded straight into Laurie and Tracy but yeah I mean with it like in terms of create holding a space and it's like I never needed Laurie to be different actor i knew i knew right away we did camera tests with Lauria which isn't it's not rehearsal I was just having her walk around the set but I was I wanted to look and see how it worked and there was something just cinematic instantly of her just walking from the the washing machine over to the sink I was like that's a movie and you're saying so much and you're not doing anything and so sometimes the actors aren't you know they they don't know that how well they're working with the cat you know for her is she didn't know that it was already creating an alchemy that was tremendously exciting did you even the rehearsal would you specifically be working on scenes or would you work on scenes that in fact didn't even exist in order to create something else as I see it in certain situations I would do both I would work on I would work on scenes that didn't exist if people wanted the biographies I thought I had invented I would give it to them if they didn't want it if it didn't help them I'd be like all right you don't want it but I would if I was part of your homework what that's part of your homework yeah and I would create I created I know as an actor it helped me I created leading lists for everyone's movie watching lists for everyone playlists biography anything that because I think loading up with everything that you possibly can as always it's always been helpful for me and like like with Timothy Salome's character and the scene I had him watch my night at mods because there's a character of a young man talking very confidently at a woman about all of his ideas and it's just it's just if to me it's like that is that guy he existed then he exists now he's not bad but he's just young and really certain and and and I those things are helpful for some people it's not helpful and they'll tell me when it's not but it is you know I want to jump to something here because there's an amazing scene near the and where the camera literally is in Laurie Metcalf face yes she's driving from the airport around talk to us how did that happen knowing that not maybe she was getting used to it but you know well originally I mean originally I had an idea there were many things that I had I mean I've this is the first one I directed so you know I I covered I covered myself but there are there were a scene ideas that I had I was like I want to do it in one like that actually the opening fight car scene I wanted to do that and when I watch that scene in Paper Moon when they're fighting and that one take and then I'm lucky enough I know Peter Bogdanovich a little bit and I like to talk to him and he was like that took five days of shooting so much of our schedule I can't I can't do that also it's much easier to shoot one of those scenes when a car doesn't have a top because you can see more of the landscape there's great car stuff and Clea from five to seven also that car doesn't have a top no car tops are hard anyway but I so I had these ideas of doing these wonders and then I was like okay no you're not gonna do the whole thing like that but I had an idea of wanting to do I I've sort of tried to create a way I was like how could we get a camera off of the car and into the airport and there was just no way on our budget with it so I had to I had to find my way to cut it up but I was like I want it to go I want you to be with her the whole time and then go in but the drive was too long and I couldn't figure out how to do that thing I mean I if I had how did you tell her so okay so her she she is the most relentless actress she's the most committed actress she could do anything she could do ten times she could do that standing on her head anything you wanted she could do and I do a lot of takes I tend to do a lot of takes actually because because I always like to see where actors go after they get bored with their own ideas because something interesting happens I don't know it's like a theme for me I think the other side of boredom is always where the good toughen because they I think you get really excited at first she nailed it everybody's happy it's good and then you kind of settle and then it gets boring and then you and then something else comes up and that got other side so I think I don't know why I think boredom is very instructive for me as a writer and as watching actors and then so with Laurie though she said to me because she knows I do I do a lot of takes she said she took me inside and she said I can do this twice i I think I can only do this twice it's too hard she's got kids she just was like I have to drive away like it I didn't she didn't even need to explain to me why she can only do it twice she said she could only do it twice and then I and and but that's not that's not her saying here's my limitations that's her saying I will meet you with everything I have twice so you have to meet me there too and and that's a very that's true I think for director and actor who can who knows themselves so well and they say this is what I need from you so then you can you can provide that and she did yeah you remember which take you used the first one she was just it just was there and she goes through its you know just that's that anger that creates a kind of certainty which is very dangerous that gives way to a little bit of doubt which then uncovers of course there's pain and then once the pain takes over them this hope of maybe I'll get back in time and then realizing it's too late no that did all that that's a cycle that you just said yeah just beautifully put did you know that then did you know that even when you were writing that or and would you if we had looked at the script and I had asked you you know the question what's the cycle going on and this would you said what do you send now yeah yeah I mean seeing it seeing Laurie do it it deepened and change because she also she inhabited the character in this very specific way and this that in some ways the the the the roughness that that character has as the defense for for fear for other things that that when that starts crumbling I couldn't have predicted how she did that but I knew that I always knew that scene sort of came to me wholesale of like you drive away and then you drive back in one question just about this did you discuss it at all or was this one of those moments both of you knew and she said oh good I'm gonna do this for you but twice but that's it did you discuss it we did discuss it we did I mean we did pretty traditional particularly me and Laurie Laurie did very traditional table work like like you do in theater where you sit around and every single line you talk through when you do this very it's not intellectual exactly but it is dramaturgical it is it is like are you using are you talking intention and character essentially yeah intention and character and backstory and what is this me you know like and she's very comfortable with that kind of work and she likes that kind of work so we'd talked about it in that and so and she knew that for me I never wanted I wouldn't be careful that the emotional climax of the film was usually an aggregate I didn't want it to happen on screen but more like the rush of moments altogether would give you a feeling but that moment I was like that is the moment on screen it's not happening in it's not happening in the in the hearts and minds and the vision of the audience it's happening for this character at this moment but we have to earn that because I'm not doing that very many times most of it I wanted things to happen for the audience that weren't happening for the characters if that makes sense and in that moment I needed it all to go together so she knew that and so she yeah she she knew what was coming I remember she said to me she's like it's like hey over me it's like a guillotine somewhere down the schedule but I mean I would do think like I mean to speak to just dynamics to just onset and how that becomes its own its own ecosystem like the the opening scene of Saoirse and Laurie fighting in the car I scheduled that for the second to last day of shooting because I was like they'll be so I just have this sense of they'll be so locked into each other by that point that they will have each other's rhythm so nailed that you will feel like you're cutting into the middle of just life as it unfolds and I just knew that no matter how much we rehearsed there's a substitute for those long days and hanging out and what that becomes it rehearsal for you I we didn't rehearse too much but we did have a there was a table read where it was just me and and them and and then we did this thing where we we we got this house we shot in Alabama we went we went down to got this beach house that was a friend of Catherine Keener so let us use it and we we were we went there spent the night there and the whole idea was we were gonna rehearse and we got there this was you know the principal cast I mean the family plus plus Daniel actually no one else was out there yet and we did we rehearsed a few scenes I would sort of you know it was kind of a hang session you know it was kind of like you know a bunch of artists chilling getting to know one another on one hand and then I would you know at some point pull a couple of the actors away into another room mostly because there would be some kind of question mark in my head or about how this scene would work so we did this with the hypnosis scene one I took Catherine and Daniel and we we went into another room and Catherine was there first Daniel comes in and Catherine just starts you know Daniel just goes Daniel just goes all right so what we going to you know what's the deal and Catherine goes I didn't realize you were English and he's he's oh okay yeah no I'm not I'm just and so they started improvising it was like this kind of interesting dynamic because of course it was you know the the much like the hypnosis it had already begun and he didn't realize it so we did that once and it was beautiful and he ended up getting to this wonderful place it was like great got it let's not do any more that's pure let's remember everything happened here with rose and Chris we we did a couple of scenes that was important to you know if the audience didn't buy that relationship wasn't rooting for that relationship the whole thing topples over so we really found what their connection was we we I mean we talked about it we did the scenes a couple of times and I you know I think of first couple of times we did did the scenes I was feeling like I wasn't believing they were in love and I at some point you know what the moments that worked were when there was a comedic moment when somebody said something funny in the other one laughed and so that was the thing was like that's it you guys are in love because you share a sense of humor and that's that's a love story everybody can relate to you know you can be from two different worlds you can be you know whatever if you are in love with you know how somebody makes you laugh then it reminds us of our love and our love of art so we focused on that my even we even you know started writing new moments to make make sure that that side of their relationship was fleshed out I'm you know as as far as the writing process to me it's it's so it's wonderful to direct something that I know so well because just because yeah you know you and for me by the way it's the the words are important but the ideas are what's really crucial and there are many many words many lines that could be replaced with other versions of lines that can get us to these same ideas but there are you know there are also certain things that you've discovered the three of you who discovered in rehearsal how to in fact connect the people because you saw what the problem was exactly exactly so so important and and so a lot of that little that experienced that experiment of taking the the cast to this house actually brought about much less technical actual rehearsal than I thought it would and I sat back I ended up really watching a lot a lot more how they actually interacted and that was you know if there were times where I was like oh my god what am i cuase ting our time okay well people are getting to know one another and then but then you'd look and you'd see wait a second okay Bradley Whitford and Allison Williams are totally bonding over musical theater over there and Catherine Keener and Caleb Landry Jones like keep popping out to smoke cigarettes and like you know weirdly flirt with each other or something okay there's a dynamic here that is not in my script but this I learned you don't fight the dynamic you know don't you don't have to make it that that's you don't have to write that into the script but what I feel like though that depth is felt in the script I I feel like you there there is a weird incestuous chemistry between Kathryn and and and Caleb in the thing there there is a father-daughter bond between Dean and and Rose so a lot of and so that was the the first stage of it very much for me it was like seeing and and the lines start to blur between the dynamic of the performers and the dynamic of the characters and there are times when you know there's there's even some sort of conflict that feels like oh this is you know these two people aren't agreeing on how this scene should be played or whatnot and it's to be uncomfortable and we awkward but I learned to not to try and solve that that that was life giving you the unrightable in a way nicely put and and and then we would also in the on the actual day we would also rehearse and I would continue to find things that just didn't feel natural or felt like we had to talk about them all the way up to shooting I mean I thought that the the dynamic what just wasn't was never done and and even into the editing Bay you know if if I could if I could go back and and do more there would probably be more revelations that I that I could find so it's for me it's it's just a countenance any consistently involving processes it literally just an involving Chris for you rehearsal and did you have some on this movie I mean it's been different for me in every film I think you come into filmmaking certainly as a non actor you come in with a quite childish idea what rehearsal is the idea that it's people need to say the lines again and again again didn't what to do and the longer you work in it the more you realize it's just about intention and it's just about making sure that everybody understands what the intention of the line is what the attach of the scene is so my what I've said evolved over time to try and just give the actors whatever they're comfortable doing so don't rehearse for me anymore or just rehearse for them and that is to say we'll booked a meeting we'll sit down one on one or two and you know whatever combinations we need and just talk about the scene and I'll get them to read the scene just so I can stop and say well this is what this is about this is what that's about and what I find is the actor that feels free to either rehearse more fully and perform it and stand up and walk around or whatever or it just stays at that level of okay we'll just talk about what's the intention behind the words and that's more or less my set a default process at this point and I've done films where we had a lot of time to rehearse through in months and I've done films we couldn't do anywhere else all we had to do it on the day as we who went the difficulty with that approach on Dunkirk is there were very few words to play with and that really only works for words so there isn't really much point in talking about when the explosions go off how you're gonna feel or never say you'll you'll figure that out when you get there let the exception was that the scenes on the moon stunt at the small yacht led by Mark Rylance and Mark is brilliant brilliant actor comes to the world theater he's one of the legendary British theatre actors and I'd wanted to work with him for decades and he really pushed me to a process that I thought was fantastic of getting onto the boat really just over a long day with the kids who really hadn't done a lot of acting before and killing my finger had and my work with performs for it comfortable with and what might really wanted to do was fill in the blanks the script was written with all of the cross cuts between the timelines and so it's always there's always a lesion and he wanted to explore with the other actors okay what would we be doing in between what would have happened in now is between this scene and the scene so we spent a day on the boat just doing that and just just fleshing out and I think it was a very very valuable process it also told me that the the physicality of the boat was going to be everything in those scenes and so there wasn't any point in rehearsing in any other way so in the end what we went up doing on the shoot cuz we shot for about three weeks on this boat it was a very small crew stuffed in shooting on the open water and to get to a clear horizon you know we had to motor out 45 minutes for an hour every morning on the boat it said what we would do is we would rehearse the scenes as we went and we would just rehearse and Heuser would watch them as we would talk about it and and just gradually we'd look up and say oK we've lost sight of land now might as well just shoot the next one and just sort of ease into it that way and that that allowed it to be quite spontaneous and quite intimate it's one of the more intimate films that section the film that that may I know you've mentioned there's a wonderful moment fact to actually see it here when the boy says to Gillian the kids okay which is not George is dead and there's exchange between father and son did you discover that in this process that you're just talking about as you were going out there well originally discovered it in conversations with Mark about how I'd written the script because I had omitted that moment I had just skipped over it and this is what I've always found wonderful about working with actors and bringing them on and I don't like you know gamer I don't write biographies for them I don't I kind of want them to do that I sort of want them to become an expert on their character and tell me and if it contradicts something I'm feeling about you know how that how that's could affect the story then we'll we'll get into it over that but broadly speaking I have my own set of answers and I'll answer I need to be able to answer any question they ask well what mark was doing in that moment was saying you haven't shown the interaction of my character with my son you know what do I say but I literally hadn't done it because my focus had been on a different character while I was writing the script and as I was imagining shooting it and of course it becomes a very very important moment and that's the beauty of working with really smart actors after me experience who understand the whole thing you're trying to do their character and the whole thing you're trying to do and so you you effectively surround yourself with experts on each character and they're able to flesh it out and kind of add to what you're doing but so that moment came about as a result originally of him pointing out a gap in the script and then on the boat you know sailing out to shoot it just talking about okay well what would it be and how would that work and and in the end it became and this is very often the case it was interesting when Martin was talking about not letting anybody change his lines which I said good luck without with some of the exercise it's an admirable position but what I found over the years is quite often I just sort of let a throw the corner down and say fine you figure out a different way to say it and as long as we all understand what's there to be said the actors either going to improve on what you've done or after a while they're going to come back around to to the way you've originally got it and so that that moment for example he doesn't say anything but it was very important to have the communication there and so it wasn't really about and this is the difference but I mean screen players are just starting points they're just skeletons of what the films going to be and there are things they're not very good at getting across and looks between people are one of them and we're all sat there and typed in you know he looks meaningfully oh look so it doesn't mean there's nothing there you know you have to you have to get there and the actors will feel something and make you feel something you know one of the factors that I could sit with you all now for the next couple of hours but I don't know if that's fair there are any of us here but one of the factors that that that I think is an interesting thing too for us to look at is the issue of the unexpected and how you deal with it and how it from sometimes becomes one of the gifts in the movie itself were there moments when you would say I didn't expect this to happen not necessarily that one that may have been one of them but and I know with an incredibly complex and technical movie that may not be you may not be able to have that happen but there may be times even within that where you would say yes I didn't expect this to happen we did this and then something else occurred and that's what's in the movie well with a with a I make complicated technical films and so they have to be carefully planned but the structure that we've come up with the way we've all well the way we've try to evolve the storytelling method when there is to plan the things that have them playing quite carefully and then allow within that freedom for serendipity it's one of the reasons why I try to do everything in camera and not use computer graphics for example because computer graphics that allow for serendipity they're not they don't allow for accidents it's you know animators are planning something you know prefer something where you don't quite know how the light is gonna fall or how something's gonna react physically or what that is and so you find I think even with the most carefully planned sequences you sort of find your flexibility that you've thought you find you know a playground an arena in which you know people can perform and do things and it's so for example you know from shooting anyway or another location asset or whatever we you know we start at 7:00 in the morning with just a rehearsal and I don't tell anyone where to stand or what to do we just say okay let's see what this is gonna be you know it's so the challenge for me over the years have been find a way to be able to always do that because that's how I started off is making films where you just have a little 16 mil camera and some actors and you wouldn't know where you're gonna shoot until the day before and I'd be like okay we're gonna shoot in this bar how do we do that and you'd go in and explore it and I love that and I want to I've always wanted to carry on doing that and so the bigger the film the less people are willing to accept that as a working method ology they see it as evasion so don't storyboard much for example but we storyboard enough to just tell everyone look this is not chaos we have a very specific plan but there are things I don't want to bother to plan I'm not going to sit down and write single single over to shot master you know I'm not gonna hand that to you every day as if that was some kind of you know rosetta stone it's like we're gonna figure this out as we go and have fun doing it and the one area that I let everybody know in the beginning of every film very firmly we do it is the weather shoot whatever the weather doesn't matter what it says in the script doesn't matter you know if it's raining we shoot it in the rain if it's sunny was [ __ ] in the Sun and we find a way to make that work and as a result I've developed a reputation for being very lucky with the weather and I'm not in this house with shot and some of the most appalling conditions but everybody sort of understands that up front it's like we shoot right to the point where the safety officer says the winds too high or whatever or there's lightning and you have to shut down but because something magical visually will come from that and the truth is if you don't take that attitude the weather gods will just laugh at you and laugh at your film anyway you do so but it's one of the the key areas where the entire visual patina of the film can be defined even by the unexpected so the specific example that were given Dunkirk is one of the more important visuals that we actually were not using in the marketing campaign everything was this bizarre foam that spread up the beach and it looked like snow it looked like you know something very odd and I that was a result of a set of scenes that we shot when we was shut down by weather to the degree that we couldn't go out on the mall set that we had built and it was being destroyed by the way so we went we shot some of the other scenes on the beach in really horrendous and miserable and awful conditions but it provided something that looked amazing that we never would have imagined I you know and couldn't possibly have planned and it became a very defining thing in the film why did they get all that sad stuff did they put all that in them yeah it just it just happened and and but I've had that in other films as well were you just you know it's like Marta was talking about earlier shooting the fog or you know I remember on on the prestige get it going to the foot of the mountain we were shooting out from the Mount Wilson Observatory and getting this call saying don't even bother coming up it's foggy you know like what are you talking about let's head in a car and go and shoot and it was magical you know and and that that for me is part of the joy of unexpected circumstances is they tend to be just making you look at things in a very different way see you differently for you were there any moments where you'd say didn't expect this and it is I'm yeah I'm having that moment right now well in truth you always are in that moment I think it's real observed that's right well that that's that that is a great point I mean you know as Chris said it's there's so much so much life so much beauty in those those moments and for you know this movie was did for 4.5 million dollars so we were consistently thrown curveballs and and very very early on I made this decision that the the curveballs the problems the the walls that get put up in front of my face we're gifts that any you know I could make the movie that I set out to make and that would be fine but every every time that you know the forces that be tell me nope you can't have this is an opportunity to make a stronger choice than I thought of then and then I originally had I can't give us an example that you can think of well you know so you know you realize okay you can't have 40 background performers at this party I pictured this big party where it was you get lost we probably ended up they said you can have something like I don't remember what you know 16 let's say so that to me and I you know I'd go well how do I make that how does that feel and how do I make that work for my advantage to my advantage so it becomes about placing them in a very in a very choreographed way so we get this uneasy sense that it's almost like everybody who's supposed to be just acting you know normal around the party is is actually following some sort of script and and so just just being you know if if I you know immediately went well [ __ ] the movie I can't you know if I can't have this huge party is that then that's that's not what I pictured if I if I did that I wouldn't be open to this idea of this contrived placement of this these people that ended up you know feeling very you know creepy and eerie and and sort of undescribable so that happened like 40 times a day something what happened good to be able to take advantage of what's being given to an unexpected always yeah got it for you would you would you say there are moments where never expected this and here it is and yeah well I think similarly to Jordan I had a very is a limited budget so so I mean a lot of unexpected things happen it's just in pre-production just as your as your leading up to the moment that it's happening and you just I mean I don't know about you but I think with smaller movies there's this feeling of like let's just get people shooting like and and it's that liftoff moment because I've been part of so many movies that are just falling apart you know it's happening then this happens and that and then everybody felt it falls apart and and so I mean I don't want to I mean there were days when it was just me and the ad my first ad Jonas and my DP Sam and there was no one else driving this ship but us I mean to the point of like let's just go scout grocery stores we've been in right now because we don't like if we don't keep this going there I don't because it's just that that's the nature of making very small move if things fall out and and things change and and I think that you have to be a bit a bit crazily relentless about it because there is no reason it should exist and on some level I always think about that the French word for directors are really - that's a terrible accent but but it always felt like to me to be a more accurate description of it that you have to realize it it's not it's not that it's in front of you and it's just waiting to be instructed it must be realized it has to be realized by you because you have it's impossible without a team and a support system but you are the one that has to keep moving that forward so in some ways to me once once we were shooting there were unexpected things that happened but getting up to that point of like we're shooting this this train is moving that everything before that moment was the most like oh god we've just lost this or this fell through or you know everyday garum Oh any any moments that you would say this is a magical moment hadn't intended here it is yes I mean and that is part of what Chris was saying about shooting in water that happens naturally with that element because it's Roberto Benigni of natural element just over eggs under eggs that happens a lot one of the scenes was underwater the scene in the bathroom right it presents its own challenges because you cannot rehearse that unless you have an unlimited amount of resources which we didn't have but I think that in general I think that when you haven't been doing it for long enough you understand that that there's there's two levels of artistry in what we do one of them is to create worlds that are color-coded shape coat and lining all the eggs all telling the story about the second half of our craft is orchestrating the accident to truly grab that and you are the only one that is holding all the strands and there's always one strand I often the saying the same thing which is the obstacle is the path you know you're the only one that holds all the strands that are narrative financial artistic and there's always one if you're if you've been doing it long enough then you go this is actually giving me the best version of this no matter what reputation I've developed with the weather is nullified by Toronto you know has its own reputation so we'll give you an example we have you know we shot with horizontal rain in sub-zero temperatures that was just absolutely brutal and still we needed to get through the day through the scene and that changes your solutions you know originally I have for example there's a scene where Shannon is interrogating stool burg in this in the sandpit and we have this huge sand sand mountains and we have hurricane level winds sub-zero temperatures which resulted in the coldest sandstorm ever witnessed by any human being it destroyed cameras in the sand and the water started getting between the land it just and then I came up with a solution I said okay a Buddha I'll do everything from the hot head on the techno and I'll just move it around and I was literally and there was real rain on top and top of all rain there was real rain and no one could get out so I was in the rain sub-zero temperature being hit by sand and they were being hit by sand and we were I was with the operator on the head of the techno using it like a floating Steadicam extend as extend retract and and we blogged it completely different and another example which I quoted and happened is when I scouted the exterior of the theatre I wanted to do a crane and this is very much the epitome of the right thing i scattered I I wanted a take know when Sally comes down the steps and I wanted to end end up here but there was a lamppost that I couldn't you know the city would refuse to move and so forth it came it came to shooting the scene we we have only one night for everything out there very complicated cranes everything was mounted on a hot head on an inoculum very complicated night everything started going wrong the we have a drone shot and the drone with the wind started flying away to the next city we have to improve we improvised the whole night but the main point of improvisation when came when Shannon who is an amazing actor who neglected to tell us that he didn't drive and that's when the core but yeah and then he arrived with the car and he take one is perfect the DP says like you always say do another one and I said no we do another one he puts the car but it never engages with parking so the Gary's having movie Shannon jobs tries to stop the car the car continues moving dragging Shannon he's having thread for media village and everybody says Ron I don't run ever next to me is a very slight little fella I imagine that if he doesn't die from the car I'll roll over him like Indiana Jones I'll kill him car is coming go through the first lamppost destroys it completely goes through some examples and stops because it's concrete and everybody is horrified and I come out I said oh now we can do the other crazy that's what we do god it is true is every crisis and and I I agree with Chris if this is a circus you are creating an arena you need to define prepare plan codify everything so within that space there's not such a thing as in unlimited freedom that's madness you need a limit to be free within that name so the more you prepare the more the accident will be benign what I think is that this answer is when you don't when somebody doesn't prepare and an accident happens the reason why we can have the strands and say this is the good one is because we were fully prepared and then you can identify the opportunity but if you don't the opportunity melds with with the disaster and you don't identify spoken for you and he would you say where does accident play I'm never gonna be that so I think I just got beat not just of a technical one but it's it's almost small about me being a bastard about the script and stickin to it and and when that didn't happen or once where there's a little scene between Francis and Woody Harrelson when he coughs blood in her face and in the script that was he says sorry and she says I know I know and then goes out but wanted it takes she she because they were so connected and so empathetic towards each other she just said that I know baby and she only did that once in the scene and it was just it was just purely a Francis moment and a purely and it's the only moment in the film where there's a proper gentle humane connection between them so it's less of a technical thing going wrong than an actor choosing something different that was completely right but you provided the space where this can happen I provided Francis McDormand quit this place you know I'm thinking about there's a very complex one or which ghosts from Sam Rockwell walk across the street and there are so many potential things that might not have worked yeah but that was it Jordan said about when you pre-planned all that stuff and it's surprising that it goes goes right and and you have actually so we had a great stunt coordinator Doug Coleman and great actually there's no visual effects but the people making the pickle ass and so it's all about stunts and replacing stuff quickly and a great Steadicam operator Steve Campanelli so we prepared it for like the early days of prep and and mapped it out and you knew you wanted to do it as a water yeah that was written into the script there's a one remember I think just following a character knowing he's gonna do something horrible but not breaking that with a cut it's just going and knowing it's going to be horrible but just and however long that takes let it take it and you know the we even kind of cast the town to have those dimensions so you could follow from one building literally up the stairs into the next and because we know that we know where the office is and we know where caleb is and but it was it was just about the stunt coordinator and the first ad coming up with the solutions to the problem which involved caleb getting hit going down the stunt guy swapping out in the same clothes being thrown out of the window at the same time as caleb is running back down and being bloodied up costume change and then following in the same time when he does that face punch to her just as he's coming back down what was the staging for that just to make as funny as possible it was no again it is about like timing the stunts and caleb has to do the blood blood pact himself but but in all anytime you're doing like a one or like that you do pre-planning I want anyone to do anything out of the ordinary Sam Rockwell's of course had practiced like this baton twirl and it's great spit that was completely news to us two things that could have easily gone wrong but every state every single we only did that five times and the first two or three couldn't be used but we could have used like Jordan we could have used four or five but the spit was best in the one that we chose all right my last question for you although I you know I'd love to talk to you all about music too because the music element every one of your films is incredibly significant and quite original in all the choices that you've made but we're gonna have to save that to another conversation but I do want to do the ask this question which was Chris you may remember a long time on this experience as the director what would you say was the worst part of the experience and what would you say was the best part of the experience as director honestly this is the happiest film filming process I've ever had so there weren't any any negatives mostly it was the camaraderie of going to a little town that we all loved and then becoming a team and and even though we're telling a dark story just having strangely a lot of fun doing it and do you think the fun is because you're having more and more experiences and getting comfortable with think so yeah but also working I like working with a you know a little repertory company of actors so it was basically like coming in to see old friends every morning for you Jeremy worse than the best on this movie oh there Lord well and you know the thing is as much as I know how I'm gonna sold technically this or that one of the things I did in this movie is actually before I did it I sat down and I said okay you've done nine movies why are you making a tenth one and if so what is what are you going to learn what are you going to change as a human being well that's just as a director and I I wanted to go to a place that was a celebration of movies and therefore tonally it was going to transition from thriller to musical to this and he needed all that control and then I can tell you this the worst part is one the first day we have one of the most brutal first days that for legal reasons I cannot disclose but basically it moved the entire production two weeks ahead we have to change the entire schedule two weeks ahead nobody and from then on it was saying I need to sustain tonally this beautiful song like breeziness through everything that comes every day we have I can actually respond the opposite we had one good day of shooting one which was the the the scene in the theater where the creatures watching the movies that was part of this a monster movie movie making is and so forth and the rest was every day we have nine shorten said every day we had at least two major crises everyday something you know a hurricane these are not an accident and I think I'm gonna answer the best part was that too because every time the the difficulties are like the sound barrier you you know you once you break through is the true art wonderful and I just want to add to this question the best in words if you can answer it how did this movie if it did change you have this movie changed you I think it's the first time where I felt comfortable actually being a director rather than a writer who directs let's major change and you know what that is now no let's see if it's still there for the next one person yes please that is a very good question is my mentor one of my mentors in Mexico director philippic ourselves was fantastic so the movie and he said you've been holding your breath for nine movies and you finally exhale and I agree thank you for you Greta best worse than how this movie change you if yeah I think I have to agree with the Guillermo like best and worst is flip side of the same coin for me because the what did when I think of the things that were the worst then I think of the the thing that we developed to work around it and then also the immense relief and satisfaction that comes on the other side of it is the best experience so it's hard for me to to break it apart like that because it all goes together I mean I think oh I think that I mean I I love I love cinema and I love movies and I love movies I love that they're fine a I love the the it cuts too black I can't think of a more upsetting thing when you've loved something and it goes away and you think oh that's I want to get it back and I think I think that you know I I knew this is an actor but there's nothing to learn it more as a director every single minute you spend doing one thing is in a minute you don't spend doing something else because it's one of the very few timed art forms and and and then it's true of all of life every minute you spend doing one thing you're not spending that minute doing something else but there's a vividness to it when you're making a film that you suddenly feel your own mortality in a great way and then I think when you go watch a movie that touches you some way you feel your mortality you feel that end you feel that that parentheses and I think that experience of that that clarity of the minutes as they fly is a very very terrifying very beautiful place to live and I think for me this has been the most utterly transformative saying I've been able to do and it's a thing that I've been working towards and I'd wanted to do for a very long time but I I can't it truly feels like a before and after didn't transformation can you define some of that I think it's it's I think it's it's it's like realizing that you I guess a because we've been talking about it's like realizing you have the ability to breathe underwater and you're standing on the edge of this ocean and you say no no I can't I can't go in I can't breathe underwater I can't breathe in water and somebody says well did you ever jump in and you say no because I don't want to drown and they say but what if you don't and then you don't nicely put Geordie a best and worse than how you've changed because of this movie so mine's very linked to all three of these stories I think I mean it's very it is about money and you know part of the part of the thing about time is that on a film it's it's it's got such a clear value and it's the most valuable thing in a film and so you know remember I was you know saying that I'd love to give the actors as much time as they need as we need to figure it out and you know about two-thirds I'd been operating that way and about two-thirds through of the way through the movie you know my ad is looking at me like today is not that day and and I looked at what we needed to get done and it was not that day and it so happened to be this day we were shooting this scene that is the it's the Keys scene so after Chris discovers the pictures of Rose she and real we all realize she's in on it there's a you know next four minutes is this scene that's in this nebulous territory where everyone knows everything but the tension hasn't broke no one said it and it's this very it's this dynamic this social balance and that crescendos into you know Rose holding up the keys and saying you know I can't give you the keys babe so in the beginning of this day this was the first day I came into the trailer and I said alright here's the thing I I know how we've been working and everything this day I know everything I need to get I see I've seen it I I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you guys to just trust me on this one this is not this is not we we have to move where we're not gonna make our day and it was like it was it was basically like the way to an get mutiny going is to like you know assert yourself in control of the situation so it was it wasn't this situation we're all you know all of a sudden I've got a bunch of actors who are like whoa whoa I'm used to this process where I know what I'm doing and now you're telling me that I don't get to have that luxury anymore and and furthermore it was like it was colored by this thing of like wait how how is it how is it going to work that you're going to reveal that Rose is a villain then we're gonna have this scene and you're gonna reveal that roses a villain again that doesn't work and it was this thing that was it was probably the hardest thing for me to describe why it would work I knew it would work I saw it I felt it and it was the most difficult day because you know I'm I'm asking people to trust me they they are but they're maybe I'm comfortable with it and time is running out and but ultimately I got them to do what I needed them to do and it came and you know that that final performance from Daniel at the end of that scene where he where he yells at Rose rose show me this gate is the one you know we did it several times at the end you know I I pushed him to this point where he exploded completely different than any other take and it was this moment that Guillermo is describing where it felt like we went through the darkest the the sonic boom and we got out on the other side and it was this beautiful performance it was this beautiful scene it's my favorite one of my favorite scenes to watch and it and so it was like these guys are saying it was the worst day and it was the best day it was the day I felt like okay now I'm a director how have you changed this movie this movie changed you you know I this is a been a dream of mine since I was 12 years old making a movie I've I've wanted this so so bad that it hurt it just it hurt in my stomach and part of what hurt is that I I didn't you know I knew it was just a rare privilege to get to make a movie and so few people did got to and I didn't know if I you know the confidence you know there were so many reasons I doubted myself and so to come you know many years later realize that in the rest of my life as I abandon my dream I never really actually abandoned my dream I've been working towards building the the the skillset to do this movie and I'm so glad I didn't try and do do it earlier thanks Chris best and worst and how was this movie changed you finishing is the best on the worst and as far as it changed me I'd never done a film about a real life event before and I don't I don't think it changed me in a filmmaking sense at all but I think I come away from the experience feeling that I had a very inadequate grasp of history and its importance and I think a lot of people do actually so I think in that sense it's probably changed me somehow well the work that the five of you have done have changed all of us we are incredibly appreciative of your spending the time and sharing with us your remarkable filmmakers and thank you you

Channel: Directors Guild of America

Views: 1,168,925

Rating: 4.8574924 out of 5

Keywords: DGA, DGA Awards 2018, Meet the Nominees Symposium, discussion, talk, advice

Id: FNAFHMyXBNA

Length: 173min 1sec (10381 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/auizon]

Much more interesting and indepth than the other roundtable. Del Toro and Nolan are fascinating to listen to. Would have loved to hear PTA or Villeneuve up there too but oh well.

[u/sanchez_]

Caution: There are some minor spoilers here and there for each movie. Especially for The Shape of Water and Get Out. If you haven't seen those I would recommend you to skip Del Toro and Peele.

[u/Rayhann]

thanks, especially since comments were disabled. I'd like to see how other cinephiles think about the stuff they said here. I think Nolan really turned a lot of heads in this discussion. He's talking about all the experiences he had with larger budgets the others never had before. And shooting larger ideas with bigger budgets, how that works, how he progressed and developed as a filmmaker... all very important stuff. Also, Greta Gerwig's discussion about being a very script oriented and play oriented filmmaker was quite fascinating and insightful. Her process of creating the story and being a different person when directing, it's very different from other auteurs.

very insightful discussion. Bonus for not having the THR Interrupter as the interviewer. That directors video a while back with Scott and Tarantino... ugh, really bad

[u/ExleyPearce]

5 minutes in and Peele cracks a sunken place joke 😊