For Maria Bello "World Trade Center" Is Very Personal

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For Maria Bello "World Trade Center" Is Very Personal

(from TimesSquare.com 8/23/06)

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One would think from the title of Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" that his picture would be an epic detailing one of the biggest events in history minute by minute and giving it a political slant. Surprisingly, it's instead a budget-conscious, intimate film about two gallant real-life Port Authority police officers, John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Will Jimeno (Michael Peña) who were trapped beneath the rubble, the heroic men who rescued them, and their worried but strong-willed wives, Donna McLoughlin (Maria Bello) and Allison Jimeno (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

Maria Bello

Bello at the New York premiere of "World Trade Center"

For Bello, this is another super performance on a resumé that keeps getting better and better. Add this to her critically-acclaimed turns in "The Cooler" (the picture that really made people take notice), "Assault on Precinct 13," and "A History of Violence" (for which she deserved Oscar consideration), and she has become one of the top leading ladies in Hollywood, an A-list star.

I was a Maria Bello fan dating back to her short-lived 1996 TV series "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," and believed she had star power. But I remember thinking she was making a big mistake when she left a secure role on "ER" to take a shot at being a movie star. I'm glad she proved me wrong.Q: Do you have any specific memory of the Twin Towers?Maria Bello: I lived in New York City for seven years, before moving to L.A., to Venice Beach, about ten years ago. I lived in the West Village and I would run, a few times a week, down the path on the West Side Highway, all the way down to the World Trade Center. So that was my picture of them...and suddenly they were gone.

I was in New York that morning, staying at a hotel on the upper West Side. I was on the street getting a pack of cigarettes at a newsstand. And everything was so quiet. And a woman turned to me and said, "I haven't smoked in eleven years, but do you have a cigarette?" I asked, "Why?" And she said, "A plane just went through the World Trade Center. When I got upstairs, my mother and I saw the second plane go through. We couldn't believe it.Q: I've read that you went to St. Vincent's Hospital with your mother, who is a nurse.

MB: My personality is such that I said, "We've got to do something!" They called for doctors and nurses to go downtown, so we took an ambulance to St. Vincent's. My mom, who is a nurse, stayed there the whole day. I stayed for a couple of hours waiting for people to come in and no one came in except for firefighters for smoke inhalation and small cuts and bruises. Then I left because I had a six-month's-old baby back at the hotel. They were talking about other bombs going off and anthrax, and I had this mother-lioness-protector feeling come over me and went back to be with my baby.

I walked up Sixth Avenue in a sea of people covered in gray dust and saw the most astounding moments between individuals you'd never think would be together. I remember seeing a homeless man in a pink tutu holding up a man in a business suit who was crying and bleeding. I think that's what that day represented, when the whole world came together to support us.Q: Did that experience influence you in regard to the movie?

MB: It did, because I walked away not only with the tragedy of that day but also the intense "humanity" that I felt when so many human beings came together. It was very big in my heart.

 Q: What was your reaction when you were first offered a film with this subject matter?

MB: Oh!!!! I read the script by Andrea Berloff and was so incredibly moved by it that I was just bawling at the end. And I said I had to do it. I met Oliver Stone and he offered me the role right then, in the room we were in. I stood up and hugged him so hard, and went, "I have to do this movie, thank you so much, I'm dying to act for you!"

Q: Do you think American people are ready to see this movie?

MB: I really do. I think it's time, I think it's an important part of our history that needs to be told, And I think the way the story is written, in that tone, is the perfect way to tell it. It's not about the tragedy of that day but how we came together as human beings. And I think Oliver is the perfect person to tell this story.

Maria Bello in "World Trade Center"

The real life John McLoughlin

Q: Why do you think that?

MB: Not only is he brilliant and eccentric, but he also has a huge heart, which was needed for this movie. People don't know about his gigantic heart or his spiritual life, which is such a big part of who he is as a man, as a human being. I think he's very enlightened in that way and people are going to be really surprised to discover that. He was amazing to work with.

Q: Do you think people around the world are expecting from Oliver Stone a movie with political view of the whole event and will be disappointed?

MB: I know what you're saying. Oliver is known for having a strong point of view politically in some of his movies. I think it shows his growth as a filmmaker that he was inspired by the story and had to do it they way he did. I think because of how moving the picture is, people around the world are going to appreciate that it's about human beings more than anything else. I think personal is very political as well. There's a line between love and fear and I think he made a statement in that.

Q: I know you and Nicolas Cage talked extensively to John and Donna McLoughlin before filming began. What was that experience?

MB: We spent a week or so with the McLoughlin family. Nick had a more serious approach than I did, videotaping John and getting his stuff down. From the get-go, he was so intent on getting every single characteristic of John McLoughlin correct, from his limp to the way he talked to his past history and how that informed the rest of his life. My feeling was that just by being with Donna, I would get to know her essence.

The first time we met them, Oliver, the producers who had become friends with them, Nick, and I went together to their home. The funny thing is that when we got to the McLoughlin's house on Long Island, it was like walking into my parents' house. John had a whole spread out, with his "famous" steaks he makes on the grill; and Donna and I ended up doing the dishes and putting the dessert out--so I kind of got to know her as we did simple things and chatted.

She reminded me so much of my mother. As soon as I met her I thought, "Oh, my God, I'm playing my mother." And I do look like my mother in the movie! I have the same hair and the same blue eyes--I wore blue contacts--and the same weight because I gained about fifteen pounds. This was probably the scariest role I've ever taken because I was playing a real person. I wanted to do it right and do Donna justice. I felt that to embody her was such challenge because I liked her so much--she's such a good woman. So I prayed to God every day that I could understand and portray her essence.

Q: You say you found her "essence." What is it?

MB: Love. I think it's that simple. She has a huge amount of love and such a kind heart. I was so in awe of her self-possession, her patience, and her love for her children and her family. It was about finding that. My mom has that as well.

Q: When Donna McLoughlin saw the film, did she think you got her essence?

MB: Yes, when she saw the film, she told me that I got it. And her accent! Donna did say she wasn't as angry as I was in a couple of scenes in the movie--like when she pulls her son from the car and when she loses her temper in the police station because she had received wrong information that John was safe--but we needed that for dramatic purposes. She was probably a bit more subdued when those things really happened, but Oliver pushed me to go far in those scenes and I think they really worked.

Q: Oliver Stone has said that you captured Donna's calmness. Were you consciously trying for that?

MB: Yes. For her, at the beginning, it was all about keeping her children and family calm and being patient and not breaking down. She never broke down that whole day, except at the very end when she met that black woman whose son was missing at the hospital. She was trying to keep it together for her family and for her friends.

She said that being a cop's wife, she experienced this every day of her life. When he left each morning, she didn't know if he'd come back. So this was another one of those days. She was trying to keep positive and think he was still alive. It wasn't until she arrived at the police station and was told he was still buried and no one knew what was going to happen that she realized, "Wow, this might be it."

I think she has moments of dread when she's alone, when she's smelling the sheets and having memories, and when she's in his workshop and thinking about what a great father he is. The emotional stuff came out during such moments when she's not with her kids.

Q: Did she really smell the sheets that day?

MB: She really did. What you see in the movie, including dialogue, happened almost exactly like it is in the movie. Oliver would even ask John if the words were exact. We were in awe that he involved the families and the actors the entire way with the project. At our first reading he said we needed more about Donna, so we ended up adding a couple of scenes, including that scene where I stand next to the grieving woman. Donna told me that story and we incorporated it into the script. She doesn't know that woman's name but wants her to know she changed her life. She says she opened herself to her in that brief meeting in a way she never opened to another human being.

Q: How was it for you to play that scene? It seemed so spontaneous, but did you have to do it more than once?

MB: It was emotional. We did have to do it over and over again. We rehearsed it quite a lot. Her story was so moving that every time she told it, I broke down because of her beauty and pain. It was about Donna getting outside of herself and her own pain over her husband being lost, and touching someone else and allowing herself to be touched for the first time.

Q: Did you know that Oliver Stone was going in and out of focus on each of you?

MB: I had no idea. Did you like that?

Maria Bello

Bello in "A History of Violence"

 

Q: Well, you are both in focus when you come together and hug, so it kind of works.

MB: I remember seeing that for the first time and saying, "Is that a mistake?!?" Then I realized Oliver did that because the focus really needed to be on the woman as she told Donna the story, and for us to focus on her pain rather than Donna's.

Q: This film is about people helping one another. Did the actors playing those people help each other?

MB: When I saw the film I was inspired by the acting. It was because it was a real ensemble piece and nobody was trying to be a movie star. So Nick Cage wasn't Nick Cage and Michael Peña wasn't Michael Peña. They really became John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno and that had a lot to do with giving so much to each other. We were so engrossed in our characters and trying to play off each other. For my character, it was about giving so much to her kids, focusing on them rather than focusing on her own pain.

Q: You and Maggie Gyllenhaal played the wives of the two trapped men. Did you compare notes about playing Allison Jimeno and Donna McLoughlin?

MB: We talked quite a lot. I fell in love with her not only as an artist--she's an incredible actor--but also as a woman. We did our parts differently. She didn't try to mimic the woman she was playing, I tried to take on externally who Donna is. We went at it from opposite ways.

Q: You only have a brief moment with Maggie in the movie because the women are strangers. And in truth you don't have much screen time with Nicolas Cage, although he plays your husband. But how was it working with him?

MB: He and I have only a couple of scenes together but we sure had fun doing them. It was incredible working with Nick. I was so inspired by the unbelievable job he does in this movie. To be stuck like that beneath the rubble and not have use of his hands and legs and to have all the emotions there in his face and eyes--that was astounding.

Q: The marital problems of John and Donna seem minor to me, but in the movie they are magnified (at least in John's eyes), perhaps as a plot element. Were you forced to play to their having problems at all?

MB: You know what I played to? To anybody who has been married twenty years and has four kids. It's what Donna says to John when she goes to him in his dream and he asks if he loved her enough. She says, "It was in the moments." I think that's what life becomes in a way, if you're smart enough to see it--it comes in just the tiny moments that make up life. I do think they had a lovely life together--the beginning passion may have been gone but they created life out of friendship and common interests. They don't have major problems in real life, and I think we showed their relationship to be like that.

Q: Was "WTC" shot in sequence?

MB: No. We shot the New York exteriors in five weeks and the rest was done on a soundstage in Playa del Rey in Los Angeles.

Q: Did people come up to you in New York?

MB: Many people would come up and shout, "Hey, what film are you doing?" Others would come up and share their stories, saying where they were that day and what happened.

Q: Did you go to the Ground Zero set?MB: I...did. It was incredible. It is what Ground Zero looked like that day, down to the minute details, including every water bottle on the street. It wasn't hard for me to be there--it was all inspiring. I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it.

 

NIcholas Cage as John McLoughlin in "World Trade Center"

Bello and Ja Rule in "Assault on Precinct 13"

Q: What was the atmosphere like on the set? Were people solemn or giddy or did they exhibit the whole range of emotions?MB: The whole range of emotions. They flew out fifty firefighters and policemen and their families so the guys who were actually in the rubble on 9/11 were in the film doing what they really did. So that was a very emotional time. But I talked to a bunch of the guys and they felt being part of the movie was a real transformation for them and a great, really healing thing to do. So there was solemnity but the rest of the time we were joyful at the love that we were playing on screen.

Q: Nicolas Cage speaks of the film being healing.

MB: Especially with what's going on in the world right now, I think it's important to remember the lessons of 9/11 and the kindness of human being to human being. That's important step right now.

Q: What is the most important lesson you took from this film that you can apply to your own life?

MB: I always bring something away from roles that I play. With this role, I took away a softness and gentleness I never had before, and more of a patience with my own child. I have found myself connecting with family and friends in a way that I hadn't before, and finding myself on the phone with my mom and dad every day and saying I love you over and over again, as if it could be the last time. Some days I lose that and get back into my "world" and my own self-involvement, but there are more days than not that I remember to connect again.

Q: How was coming down from this movie different from coming down from, say, "A History of Violence?"

MB: Oh, my God, after "A History of Violence," I was in bed for three months. I was so anxiety-ridden during the process that and I shaved off my hair because I needed to get rid of that character. Every single moment of that film, I had such anxiety and a high threshold of pain. I always had said that I wasn't a method actor, but I surprised myself when I discovered that I am a method actor after all. I completely took on my character. Even the weight loss I experienced throughout the film was real and not planned. It was just the stress and anxiety that drove me to that. But this film, I left with a calmness I never felt before. I felt I was leaving with a deep love that I had never felt going away from a previous film. So it was the only time I walked away from a film feeling great rather than wanting to shoot myself.

Q: When you look back at this film ten years from now, what do you think your reaction will be?

MB: I'll think the film is adocument of what happened that day. I will have huge pride. I've never been so proud doing a film and being part of a story. I feel really, really lucky that I got to do it. I see it as a milestone in my career. It's not just my character but the movie as a whole. I'm just incredibly proud to be a part of it.

***

Maria Bello at the Music Cares James Taylor Tribute

Danny Peary: One thing, on a personal note. I saw you in Los Angeles this spring at the Music Cares James Taylor all-star tribute. It was a fabulous concert but I noticed you walking toward the exit early in the evening. Did you leave early?

Maria Bello: I did... You know why? Bruce Springsteen was one of the performers and he was my idol and I was going to get a chance to meet him for the first time. I was so excited. I was introduced to him and said, "I'm from Jersey, too!" And he went, "Oh, heh, heh, that's nice..." I'd had these dreams of saying "Bruce, I'm a Jersey girl!" and he'd say, "Oh, my God!" and wrap me in his arms. But he didn't and I was a downtrodden little girl walking out of Music Cares...

"That Obscure Object of Desire" Criterion Liner Notes

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"That Obscure Object of Desire" Criterion Liner Notes

(Laser Disk 1990)

Luis Buñuel’s thirtieth and final film was adapted from Pierre Louys’ 1898 novel La Femme et le Pantin, about a respected gentleman who gives up everything, including his dignity, because of his obsessive love for a manipulative, heartless young flirt. The inspiration for Mérimée’s Carmen, this story has been filmed several times, most notably in 1935, by Josef von Sternberg as The Devil Is a Woman with Marlene Dietrich, and in 1959 by Julien Duvivier, starring Brigitte Bardot. That Obscure Object of Desire, however, is distinctly Buñuelian.
The 77-year-old surrealist master injected his version with the biting subversive wit, symbolism, originality and surreal touches that distinguish his finest achievements. Characteristically, he made bizarre choices in the story line and casting. He changed Louys’ Spanish protagonist to a French gentleman, the fiftyish Mathieu, then cast Spanish actor Fernando Rey in the part, only to have him dubbed in French by actor Michel Piccoli. Buñuel emphasized the “two-faced,” unpredictable personality of the 19-year-old Conchita by randomly using two different actresses—sleek French beauty Carole Bouquet and sultry Spanish vixen Angela Molina. Both were then dubbed by a third French actress!

Obscure Object gave Buñuel one last opportunity to present a decadent, dying world characterized by political unrest, twisted values, and moral corruption; and to vent his anger on the idle rich. The droll, urbane Rey, who had already suffered much grief in Buñuel’s Viridiana, Tristana, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, is once again aggravated and humilitated without respite. Terrorist bombs explode around him, street musicians rob him and urban guerrillas beat up his chauffer and steal his automobile. Even nature is hostile in this film: a fly that has been eluding a waiter for a week plunges into Mathieu’s martini; and a mouse dies in a trap at precisely the moment Mathieu pays Conchita’s mother to deliver Conchita to his house. Yet all these travails are insignificant compared to Mathieu’s obsession with the unyielding Conchita.
The movie begins with Mathieu calmly dumping a bucket of water on the bruised Conchita who has followed him to a train station to beg him to take her back . . . again. Mathieu explains his strange action to his fellow passengers in a train compartment (including a midget psychologist who gives “private lessons”). He relates his tale of unrequited love for the beautiful Conchita who led him on, took his money and always claimed she loved him but never relinquished her professed virginity—despite constantly promising the frustrated Mathieu this would happen in time.

The tendency is to feel sorry for the benign Mathieu and detest Conchita for being a sexual tease, but Buñuel is on her side. She is just making sure that Mathieu doesn’t consume her. Conchita must cleverly figure out how she can take Mathieu’s money without letting him buy her. Whereas he tries to trap her, she enslaves him instead. When he tries to put her in the humiliating position of being a kept woman, she humbles him by controlling him—even pushing him out of her life whenever she feels like it. By refusing to marry her, he doesn’t completely fall under her thumb, as does Rey’s bourgeois character once he weds poor Catherine Deneuve in Buñuel’s Tristana. Mathieu reasons “If I marry her, I’ll be completely helpless.” Similarly, by refusing to sleep with him, Conchita doesn’t allow him to possess her; “If I gave in,” she tells him, “you wouldn’t love me anymore.”
Conchita is one of Buñuel’s enigmatic, not-particularly-sympathetic heroines who understands that rich men try to take advantage of powerless women. As long as these men aren’t offering wedding rings, women must withhold sex to keep their pride and power. By not making love to the man she may indeed love, she keeps him from owning her, thereby controlling the nature of their relationship. Clearly, Buñuel, in Obscure Object, presents love as a power struggle. As Vincent Canby wrote, “in this upside-down romance . . . Love, Buñuel seems to be telling us, is a devastating act of subversion.”

Elizabeth Olsen on "Silent House"

Playing in Theaters

Elizabeth Olsen on "Silent House"

(from brinkzine.com 3/08/12)

Elizabeth Olsen (photo by Danny Peary)

Almost everybody was startled by Elizabeth Olsen's award-worthy performance as young woman trying to escape from a dangerous cult in Martha Marcy May Marlene. It turned out that Ashley and Mary-Kate's younger sister--I didn't even know they had one!--could really act. But even after she more than proved herself in her movie debut, I am once again surprised by her riveting portrayal of another troubled character in Chris and Kentis and Laura Lau's nerve-wracking one-take thriller, Silent House. It's a good thing she's "riveting" in the best way because she's on-screen the entire film Here too, in a remake of a 2010 festival favorite from Uruguay about a girl alone in dark, scary house, she inhabits a complex, frightened, desperate character, Sarah. Again she moves forwardno matter what is revealed about her character and what toll it takes on her as an actress. Yeah, yeah, there is De Niro and Bale adding or losing weight and Cruise doing his own stunts, but this young actress goes through the ringer for her art as much as anyone. To say her performance--where she comes up with bumps and bruises, is increasingly covered with filth and a blood-like substance (yet looks sexy thanks her to her wardrobe choice), and reaches into her depths in order to portray fear to its nth degree--is gallant is putting it mildly. Forget the character, we need to protect this actress! In anticipation of this Friday's release, I took part in the following roundtable with Olsen. It follows a previous post with Kentis and Lau. I note my questions.
Q: Chris Kentis and Laura Lau said they were interested in you only because you had a serious theatrical background and could do the long takes required on this film. Why did you want to study theater in Russia?
Elizabeth Olsen: That was the question for my essay while I was at NYU. Why do you want to go to a conservatory for a liberal arts degree? When I was fifteen I became fascinated by how Russian theater affected American theater--Marlon Brando and actors like that come directly from Russian teachings. Russian theater became my favorite type of theater, so when I found out that I could go there while I was at NYU, I took the opportunity. It was an incredible thing to be thrown into for three months. Studying Russian theater is totally different from anything else I've done in my life. It's all very physical. In Russia, the theater students are professional fighters, and singers and dancers as well as actors.
Q; How did you find out about Silent House?
EO: I was just beginning to audition and this was the third job ever offered to me. So I took it. I was filming Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene when I got the job offer and my friends who made that film had seen La Casa Muda in Cannes that summer and told me that for the first hour they had never been so terrified. I'm a scary movie fan and love being scared so it sounded exciting to me. Also I was excited figuring out how to navigate a story like this. It seemed like a humungous challenge and [laughing] then it presented itself as an even bigger challenge than I could have imagined!

Danny Peary: Were you asked to watch other movies to prepare for the role, like Repulsion?
EO: No. I haven't seen Repulsion. I saw the one-shot Hermitage film, Russian Ark. No one told me too, but I saw it because I went to Russia.
Q: Did you see the original film or read the script first?
EO: I saw the original film just because I was interested in seeing it before we started filming. I think our film is very different, it's just the same concept. Q: The original script was only 60 pages long, so were you able to tell what the movie was going to be like or did they have to explain things to you?
EO: It was pretty clear. All the choreography was really in the writing and the first thing we did every day on the set was to run through the choreography. Laura always was me and Chris was always the camera. Igor Martinovic, the cinematographer, and I would watch their choreography and then figure out where to quicken it and where to draw it out. We'd figure out the pacing of the movie while we were making it, which is a really strange thing. And I was kind of being a gaffer part of the movie, with Igor telling me, "Light something over here and light something over there," as I was walking through the house and he was filming. He'd actually talk to me while we were filming, saying, "Slow down" or "Raise it higher" or "Raise it lower." His voice would be taken out later. It was like a dance where he'd tell me something and I'd do it. Maybe on the next take he wouldn't have to instruct me again because I'd remember. You'd figure out how to do things that you'd never have to do on another film. Like with falling. Usually when you fall, there is a cut and you land on a mat. On this, I'd just fall. Padding would have been very obvious in the costume they put me in so I didn't have any and just fell about twenty-six times a day. [Laughing] Since this was only the third movie I'd ever worked on, I thought, "Well, if this is what making a movie is like, then it's much more challenging than I imagined."
DP: Were you told before your long takes to do things, like walk in front of the camera, to disguise where cuts would be?
EO: Yeah, we always had very clear stitching points. The stitching points were thought out way before the first day of shooting. So I knew I had to open a door at a certain speed if that was a stitching point or walk by a place quickly if that was where a stitch would be. The stitches were all different; they never used the same technique because they wanted to challenge themselves, which I thought was kind of cool. I'm not sure of the final total of stitches because of the reshoots but we did thirteen shots. It's impressive that there are that few. It's funny but when I look at the movie I'll forget where we had a stitch because it looks so seamless. When we had to come back to do reshoots, those were the hardest stitches to duplicate. If I was in the background I was literally in motion when there was a stitch so I'd have to start the scene we were reshooting by doing this weird twisting motion. I'd have no idea why I was twisting my body four months before. I had to cut my hair again and I wondered if my face looked different.
Q: What were the pros and cons of filming a movie in this way?
EO: The nicest thing about it was that the crew that I was making-believe with consisted of Igor, who was doing all the camerawork, and John [Sember], our boom guy. That was it. So I didn't have to look around this space and pretend things were happening with all these people around me but in a very infantile way I could scare myself in a haunted house and let my imagination run wild. The difficulty was that we would film one chunk over and over and over again in a day. At first I was giving 100% every take but I learned not to do that once we realized we weren't going to get it right technically for the first half of the day. For six hours of the day I'd give it my all but for twenty-six takes only two might be usable. So it was like, "Goddamit, I just gave you everything in that take..." Also, if we'd be in the seventh minute of a take and I'd be mad at something I did, it didn't matter, we just kept going instead of trying it again. So it was hard to create an arc without editing to your benefit. Let's say we were doing thirteen takes and we are on shot seven--you know you have to be somewhere more extreme emotionally at shot thirteen but you find that shot seven is just as devastating and after doing it twenty-six times it comes across as being even more devastating than you meant it to be because of what is coming up. So it's very difficult to keep within the perimeters you give yourself because you have to get somewhere else later. It's hard to create an arc and not repeat beats based on the nature of what she's going through in each scene.

DP: If you had to do a shot many times were they almost exactly the same?
EO: They would slowly become more tiring. If you looked at my face you'd clearly see I was more exhausted by the end of the day. So sometimes I'd wish we could use an early take, but we couldn't because of technical reasons. So you start to think that nothing is precious and you have to be able to have an even temperament and just say, "Oh, okay, that's not going to work, let's move on." It was just like, "Wow, I'm in every frame of this movie." That meant we couldn't cut away to, say, a curtain blowing because a window is now open. We couldn't show something ominous is about to happen because the camera is with me. It was so strange. Another hard thing was that there was no down time, so there was no need for a waiting room.. I kind of found solace on the staircase until they came and got me. It was very bizarre.
Q: I'd think in some cases it benefited the film that you were so drained from the whole ordeal.
EO: If it helped, I don't know. I wish there had been more variation from early takes to later takes but the nature of filming was just exhausting. It was an interesting challenge to have. When I watch it, obviously I'm going to nit-pick every single thing I did. But I find watching myself an interesting step in making movies--because I'm so new to everything I can go back and learn from what I did. I'd rather watch and learn and see what I might have done differently than avoid watching myself. It helps me figure things out.
DP: How much thinking did you do during takes? Were you in your mind or her mind and were you relying on muscle memory?
EO: With the choreography, it became muscle memory. With the performance, it was like when filming anything--how much you think you're crafting and how much you're in the head of the character. For me right now, what I'm trying to figure out, especially with this, is what my character feels. SPOILER ALERT What does she feel when she finds her father almost dead? That's an extreme thing really early in the movie. So you imagine that it's your dad lying there, but it's her dad and she has to go somewhere later in the movie in regard to him. END SPOILER ALERT I tried to create a balance, trying to see what's happening in her head while acting in it.

DP: On the movie's poster, we can see you at your height of terror in the movie. Before you did a scene like that where you scream without making a sound, what were you thinking?
EO: I'd just sit on the staircase and collect my thoughts. What happened is that I would think as if I were the character, and she'd think, "Well, there is a man who could possibly kill me and the closer he gets to me I'll want to scream more but if I do he will find me." It was like when you need to make a noise but can't so you cover your mouth or bite on something. That was kind of what happened. What I did wasn't something I thought about beforehand. People have asked me if I made faces in a mirror to make myself look scared in the movie--well, if I did, my face wouldn't be in so many awkward positions! [Lauhging] If I were aware of some of those expressions, I probably would have been more conscious of it and not done them. Because I feel very uncomfortable watching myself doing those things!
Q: In the press notes it says you played weird games in your head to get into the troubled state of the character.
EO: Yes. I have a fatalistic imagination. When people ask where I go to be terrified, I say, "Well, I'm not going to tell you my deepest, darkest secret, but I'll tell you that I definitely have a vivid imagination."
Q: Did you do similar things with Martha Marcy May Marlene?
EO: No, Martha was a totally different thing. Martha was about someone who thinks she's more aware than anyone else, but no one will believe her. So everything was beneath the surface; but with this everything Sarah is feeling is right there in the open. One's repressed and the other is completely extroverted. One, psychologically, doesn't think she's suffering and believes what she sees although no one else will, and the other has absolutely no idea of her psychological state until the end of the film. SPOILER ALERT Sarah still doesn't really know at the end--she slowly knows but then she has this multiple personality disorder because of childhood trauma that she has hidden all her life. END SPOILER ALERT They're very different, but they both experienced trauma and we see how that psychologically manifests itself.
Q: Have you experienced psychological trauma in your life?
EO: I am very interested in it. I think someone having psychological issues is the most terrifying thing to imagine. A Beautiful Mind is the hardest film for me to watch. Just being a product of my generation, I can watch movies where people are mutilated--and be kind of grossed out but always know it's a movie. But for me the most terrifying thing is someone losing their understanding of reality. That's real, as opposed to seeing a girl's boob cut off on a movie on fearnet.com, which I started watching at too young an age. It's much scarier, I think.
DP: How was this version of Silent House different from the version shown at Sundance?
EO: I think in the Sundance version we had three dialogue scenes back-to-back, so based on the audience reaction, we took out a dialogue scene and stitched it together. And we changed the ending. SPOILER ALERT It's the same ending but it's now clearer that Sarah's a victim, not a monster. That's why I think this ending is better. END SPOILER ALERT
DP: And she survived in the first ending, too? In the original story all three people are dead.
EO: She survived in the original, too. I think the character survived in La Casa Muda also, or it was uncertain. Then at the end, it said, "This was based on true events." [Laughing} Not really, you read a headline!

Q: I checked the list of films you have scheduled and you are going to be incredibly busy making movies with a lot of amazing talents.
EO: Yes, I have a lot coming up but they are all independent films and they aren't long shoots. For instance, I'm filming for just a week on Kill Your Darlings. I'm not in every frame of any upcoming movie! None of them are blockbusters that will have wide releases. Hopefully, they will get released. They're all totally different and terrifying because I haven't done anything like them before. For the first time in my life I'm in a position where I'm being offered jobs and it was my dream to be a working actor. I want to work and I want to work a lot and I want to work on things that are stimulating and I can learn from. I don't have a mortgage to pay or kids to send to school, so I'm just happy doing these interesting projects right now. I'm very happy and thankful for these opportunities to do things that are different.
Q: You opted out of seeing Open Water because...
EO: ...I have a huge fear of the ocean.
Q: Could you be persuaded to make an ocean-set movie?
EO: Lakes were terrifying when I was filming Martha. If I have to swim in the ocean in a movie, fine I'll do it. If I have to swim in the ocean with real sharks in a movie, I won't do. Absolutely not! Because that is when I'd die. When you sign the contracts or the insurance papers on a film, you're supposed to write, "It is okay if I die on this set." I don't think I want to sign any of those papers!

See the earlier post of an interview with Silent House's directors, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau.

Kentis and Lau Talk About "Silent House"

Playing in Theaters

Kentis and Lau Talk About "Silent House"

(from brinkzine.com 3/08/12)

Because it tapped into my primal fears, I admit that I, like Elizabeth Olsen, intentionally stayed clear of Open Water, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau's hit 2004 indie film about a bickering married couple who find themselves stranded in the ocean and surrounded by sharks. It didn't help when word got to me that only the sharks survive. But I still can't imagine that it was more unnerving than the duo's new fright film, Silent House. A remake of a horror film that was Uruguay's official entry to the Oscars, it is a psychological thriller in which Sarah (Olsen), a vulnerable, traumatized young woman, suddenly finds herself stranded and threatened in the dark, spooky house where she grew up and had been trying to pack up with her father and uncle. You may spend your time trying to spot where the directors spliced together a baker's dozen long takes to make it seem that we're watching all 88 minutes of Sarah's journey through hell in one long, continuous take--and let me say that the technique is brilliant and worthy of the word-of-mouth it's receiving. But chances are better that you'll be steeling yourself for the next jolt, figuring out the twist-ending mystery the terrified Sarah herself is unraveling as she zooms around the house at breakneck speed, and marveling at the extraordinary, complex performance by Olsen, who confirms her stunning, star-making debut in Martha Marcy May Marlene was no fluke. My Q&A roundtable with Olsen will follow in the next post. But below, in anticipation of this Friday's release, is a roundtable I did with the directors, Kentis and Lau, who also scripted the film. I note my questions. KEEP IN MIND THAT FILMS WITH TWISTS, PARTICULARLY AT THE END, CAN'T REALLY BE DISCUSSED, SO EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE SPOILER ALERTS YOU MAY WANT TO WAIT UNTIL AFTER YOU SEE THE MOVIE AND THEN READ THE FULL INTERVIEW.
Q: What is the reason that it took so long between Open Water and Silent House?
Chris Kentis: We had a few passion projects but they were expensive to film. One was about Hurricane Katrina and another was for Warner Bros. about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis during World War II. We also put a good number of years into some other spec scripts. And the truth is that the more money that is involved, the harder it is to get a project off the ground, especially if you want to do it in a certain kind of way.
Laura Lau: Once the budgets get bigger it's nearly impossible to get any movie made. We were indie filmmakers still writing and filming our own stuff and we went to Hollywood and ran into that issue. Then there was the strike and the recession.
CK: Everybody was interested in us because we made a film for little money that did really well. They thought we could make mainstream movies on low budgets but when we got to Hollywood and told them how we did things they weren't interested in that. What they wanted us for, they wouldn't let us do, and their way made the films too expensive to make.
Q: How much of your initial interest in making Silent House was born out of the challenge of making a one-take film? Hitchcock did it with Rope. So is it in some way a challenge to top other filmmakers?
CK: No, it certainly wasn't a consideration to top anybody, let alone Hitchcock. When we were first asked if we wanted to do this, and we were told "single-take," we thought, "Wow! It's an exciting challenge to try do something new, making a film in a different way." The subject matter isn't a safe bet, and the way we had to make the film wasn't a safe bet. But that was the whole point of doing it. Because it's so hard to have any new cinematic experiences any more. I started out as an editor and my idea of making a movie was to gather all the good stuff and put it together in the cutting room. But on this film, we had to make decisions while filming and live with them, in regard to pacing and even performances. Usually a good performance or a mediocre performance is made much better in the cutting room, but not on this film.

LL: Before we began the writing, we watched a lot of horror movies, haunted-house and home-invasion movies, and psychological thrillers. We watched Polanski and even Bergman. We felt the single, continuous take would give the viewer a different experience, but for it to be unconscious. If we're successful, nobody is going to be paying attention to it being one-shot. Movies are about story and character not technique.
Danny Peary: But aren't you also thinking that by doing it as a one-take film, where we don't see the cuts, that you're going to heighten the horror?
LL: We felt that because we couldn't cut, we really had to inhabit our character's experience. Because she's really terrified and you can't get away from her, we hope that you experience her terror. You can't get away, there's no cutting, you're trapped. Just by cutting to a long close-up we'd give you a break, but we never give it. It's a character trapped in a terrifying situation and you're trapped with her. That amps up the level of the intensity.
CK: I guess you could call the one-take approach a gimmick, but I think of a gimmick as "Scratch-and-Sniff" or maybe 3-D. For this particular story, where we're really trying to inhabit a character and tell it exclusively through her point of view, we thought it was a good marriage of a new way to present a story and the content. What excited all of us, including the crew, was participating in figuring out how to do things. It was a different role for the crew. Everyone was active in getting the perfect shot as it was happening live in front of them.
DP: There's not much dialogue in this film and I read in the production notes that your script was very short.
LL: It was 60 pages, which was really short because you're supposed to have a page for every minute of film. We didn't really know about length because nobody had made a movie in this way and we didn't get the script for the Uruguayan film La Casa Muda--all we had was a crappy DVD. The original was based on a true story. What I was told is that the writer-director [Gustavo Hernandez] was struck by a story about how three bodies were found in a house, all mutilated. There was a girl, a father, and an uncle. SPOILER ALERT And incest was involved. They stayed away from that a bit, going toward an abortion thing, which I don't think justified why she'd kill her father. The first thing I asked myself is, "What would have to happen that would cause her to murder him?" So I did research and discovered that when incest is involved under age ten it can cause serious mental illness; children can put up such a defense that it fragments their identity, as a way of saying it's not happening to them, that it's happening to someone else. You fragment yourself as a way of surviving the trauma. END SPOILER ALERT So when Sarah comes back into that house of her childhood, all that she suppressed is suddenly coming back up and she's still trying to suppress it. We are actually going on this journey of her own discovery of what happened to her as a child. We play with time where there are flashbacks SPOILER ALERT and moments when her own fragmented self is now perpetrating violence but she's fragmented so is not experiencing it. END SPOILER ALERT
CK: Although we were impressed with what they did in La Casa Muda, we wanted to make a movie about real horror. That's what mattered to us most going in.
This is where our passion in the story lies. It's about real horrors and we had to figure out how to frame them in a conventional genre piece.
LL: The whole film is really experiencing one woman's reality. I did a lot of research into traumatized reality and that's what inhabits Sarah. Part of the difficulty in talking about this film is that you can't talk about what it's really about without giving away the ending. The fact of the matter is that when you're a traumatized person like Sarah, you're really terrified. SPOILER ALERT Can you imagine being a child and being chased around by your father? This happens all over the world, it's a widespread problem. END SPOILER ALERT
CK: We're dying to talk about these kinds of aspects but can't because they're spoilers.
Q: Was Elizabeth Olsen your first choice to play Sarah?
CK: We went to casting directors we've worked with before and they took one look at the script and said we know who to cast. They had previously cast Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, so we trusted them. Lizzie had her audition and was great, but we thought it was too easy. She was our first choice but we saw other people because we didn't think it made sense to just see one person. She was always the one to beat, it was always her part.
LL: She was everything we were looking for. She was a luminous actress who had the necessary charisma so that we'd care about her character. She could bring the needed complexity and emotional depth of the character, but do it in a subtle way because you don't know until the very end of the movie what it is really about. At the same time she had to have technical craft skills because of the long takes. So we were looking only for someone with a theater background. Lizzie had studied theater in Russia so we knew that she was a very serious actress--although there was no tape of her at that time, nothing. Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene was not finished yet. She couldn't even talk about it and they didn't know what they had until they finished cutting and got into Sundance. In fact, we heard only about Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding, which had just wrapped. She was a complete unknown. We knew that the film would rest on the actress's shoulders, so we were lucky to get her!

CK: It was a difficult role. It was incredibly challenging for all of us to get these long shots because they were very complex and for many takes Lizzie had to maintain an emotional state. People compare the single-take experience to theater; in truth it's much harder because she'd have to bring it every time and really be there, and you can see how rattled, intense, and emotionally broken down she is. We'd have to go well into the teens with takes and sometimes in the low thirties before we'd really nail it. Everything could be perfect and she'd be spot on and somebody misses a lighting cue and we have to stop it and start over because the whole take is worthless. If it wouldn't hold up to scrutiny it went into the garbage. "Guess what, Lizzie, you have to do it again."
LL: Right, if anyone blew it, we'd have to start over. Sometimes Lizzie would give an unbelievable performance and somebody would make a technical error and miss their cue or be in the shot. And I know Lizzie would be thinking, "I just killed myself and you blew it!" There were a lot of cues, as you can imagine. The house was pre-lit, the dimmer-board operator had to be ready, keeping the shot in focus was very, very difficult. All those people had to be on the ball or the take was unusable. Lizzie was always aware that Sarah is a seriously damaged person, so she was aware of that while playing her, yet Sarah herself doesn't realize that. Sarah doesn't know what's going on. Are there home invaders? Are there squatters in the house? Did her father and uncle do something? Part of her illness is that's she's going to be experiencing auditory-visual hallucinations, but she doesn't know she's ill. Lizzie does know it and goes with it.
SPOILER ALERT
DP: When the father tries to hide the pictures on the bed from Sarah, that's when I and I'm sure other people realize it's an incest story. Are we supposed to think that at that point or do you want that to happen later on?
LL: We want it to be later on. The idea is that you know something is up, that the father had done something--maybe he'd stolen something. We didn't want you to think incest, that's kind of a big leap at that point.
CK: Although a lot is planted even before that, even with the first dialogues in the film. When she first comes into the house and says she has a headache and the father says, "Well, we've heard that one before."
LL: Even before that, when he says, "I was on your Facebook." That's creepy. What's he doing on her Facebook page? That's a weird thing. And the uncle is inappropriate with her physically. There are little hints throughout.
CK: Metaphorically, there is all kinds of things going on as well. But what's interesting as a filmmaker is creating a balance. We prefer to be subtle but some viewers pick things up very quickly, and some don't get them at all--so in post we find ourselves having to plant little lines to help explain the film to them. It's interesting that everyone has a different point and time when they make that discovery.
END SPOILER ALERT
DP: In Repulsion, Catherine Deneuve's young, troubled woman lives in a real apartment and eventually starts having hallucinations. In this case, do you want us to think that the whole thing is an illusion from the beginning or is the house real?
LL: It's not an illusion. It is her absolute experience. It is all real, but from the perspective of a deeply traumatized person whose reality is fragmented and sense of time is discontinuous.
CK: We're experiencing this ordeal as she experiences it, and that's based on our research.

DP: In the publication notes, you are quoted as saying the house represents her...
LL: Yes. The holes in the wall, what's hidden, even in the kitchen scene where she thinks if she covers up something no one is ever going to know. She doesn't want herself to know what's festering, and what's been hidden and what's being spread. That's why it's Silent House. So many times when these kinds of traumas happen, they are suppressed in the family. Nobody talks about it, it's a big secret. That really makes people crazy because you can't move on.
DP: Although you don't see it this way, she can be in a mental hospital and be thinking of this house.
LL: Yeah, I don't see it that way, but she could do that and it works on a metaphorical level--SPOILER ALERT because on a psychological level, you have to kill your parents to leave your childhood house and move into the world. In the movie, she kills her father and leaves the house, but the door is open when she leaves because you can never escape your childhood and past. END SPOILER ALERT
Q: While shooting Elizabeth Olsen, did you have to dub over any direction, like when you'd tell her out loud where to walk?
CK: We absolutely had to dub that, and footsteps as well. Part of the challenge is that we weren't able to be in proximity to the actors because the camera would change directions and we already had a cameraman and a boom operator in that closed space and out of sight. So we were in Video Village. Luckily we had a fantastic cinematographer, Igor Matinovic, and we were on the same page. Igor handled where Lizzie had to be at each moment. He'd whisper to her, and we'd take it out later.
LL: Actually, sound was very challenging to us.
DP: In terms of how well you use sound, I like how you use silence.
LL: Thank you. Sound was very important, not only to use the sound effects and score to, again, reflect Sarah's internal reality. Her internal reality and external reality are switched. I worked with the production design on that, too, which is why we used a lot of animals in the wall paper because of this whole theme of what is on the inside is coming out, and what is on the outside is coming in. So we were working on many levels.
Q: If an actor forgot something, would they be able to improvise so you didn't have to stop the action?
LL: We had a small budget and fifteen days to shoot the film, so we rehearsed and choreographed everything ahead of time. It was all about getting the shot. There would be no editing, so to make a change at the last moment would be dangerous-- it could affect the pacing or something else that we wouldn't even realize at the time. So we were very disciplined because what we shot is what we would use--it would be difficult to change anything later. Between the technical demands and where the story had to go, we didn't have a lot of space in which to play with anything once we started shooting.
CK: The real horror of this movie is that we were always approaching overtime, it's midnight, and we still don't have the shot and we have to get it that night or we don't have a movie. So everything was very meticulously planned with tons of rehearsal and nothing was left to chance. Luckily our actors, especially Lizzie, brought it take after take until we got it right.
Q: So what was a bigger challenge: swimming with sharks in Open Water or this kind of shooting?
CK: I like swimming with sharks, so that's just fun. Open Water took a long time to make because we worked on weekends, we financed it, we were the crew. It was really like a home movie. We didn't know what was going to happen with it so it was a shock that it actually went anywhere and did well. This was a completely different challenge because Open Water still adhered to the basic rules of filmmaking in terms of coverage. Here it was a whole new ballgame.
LL: There is room for every kind of movie. For us as filmmakers, we want to challenge ourselves. With Open Water it was like, "Okay, Dogma 95, totally inspired, people doing a lot of talking, talking heads; where can we take this that we haven't seen yet?-- let's go to the water." It was the same thing with this. People were very excited because though there had been the movie Russian Ark, when had there been a one-take genre film since Rope in this country?
CK: It's funny that we find ourselves being in this space of being "horror filmmakers," which is so ridiculous although I totally understand it. Open Water I saw as a drama. I'm a diver and I'd freaked out reading this true story about a couple being left behind by the boat while they were underwater. So we made the movie and it went out into the world and we were thrilled to get a wide audience but hoped it lived up to audience expectations because we thought of the movie differently than how it was marketed. I saw it as the ultimate talking heads movie, because with the two people you literally saw these two heads above water and not their bodies.
Q: You've shown a lot of ambition in your two projects, so how will you raise the bar the next time?
CK: We're not trying to raise the bar, just make films we're interested in, which are films we haven't really seen before. So far they have been projects that have been difficult to make on a certain level, but it's really about finding stories we like and figuring out the best way to tell them on the budgets we have. I will say, however, that our next two projects are thrillers that are different from anything that we've ever seen!

See Elizabeth Olsen interview that follows