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BONUS EPISODE: The Art of Writing Adaptations with Joe Wright · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
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Episode number one seventy two. Obstacles are what you see when you take
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your eyes off the goal. Anonymous broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in
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Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof
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Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
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to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
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Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
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host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.
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professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com. Well, guys,
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today on the show we have director Joe Wright. Now. Joe is known
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for directing films like Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, one of my favorites,
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Hannah, The Soloist starring Jamie Fox and Robert Downey, Junior, The Darkest
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Hour starring, of course, Academy Award winner Gary Olman, and his newest
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film Sirrao starring Peter dinklic Now, Joe opened up a lot in this conversation
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with me about his process about you know, feeling not you know, having
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imposter syndrome, which so many amazing artists go through, how he deals with
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it, how he deals with problems on set, how he works his whole
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process, and it's just a really really interesting conversation. So, without any
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further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Joe Wright. I'd like to welcome
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to the show, Joe right. How are you doing, Joe? I
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am excellent. Thank you, I'm very well. Thank you so much for
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coming on this show. I've been a fan of your work for quite some
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time, so I'm excited to kind of dive into the weeds with you on
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your career. So, first and foremost, how did you and why did
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you want to get into this insane business? I don't know. I mean,
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I think I'd like to be able to tell you a story that clearly
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illustrates a particular moment in my life when I knew I was going to be
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a filmmaker. But it was more incremental than that. I knew. I
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always knew that I wanted to be in drama. Somehow. My parents were
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puppeteers, and they did, you know, puppet shows for adults and kids,
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And so I grew up in this kind of fantasy world of fairy tales,
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which was no preparation at all for the harsh reality of contemporary life.
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I went to a drama club after school where you paid the equivalent of like
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ten cents a lesson, and you went and did improvisation workshops with other kids
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from the local area. That was an important kind of stepping stone. I
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hung around in a pub in Islington in London that was you know a lot
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of actors went there and writers and people, and there was a little theater
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upstairs where people put on shows. But running parallel to that was a was
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a passion for film from you know, the age of six. I remember
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asking my mum how films were made. And she happened, weirdly to have
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a long strip of cartridge paper and we we drew a picture. She drew
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a picture of a prince and a princess and then divided that to another square,
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and there was a dragon, and the dragon came and stole the princess
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and and told the story of George and the dragon. And then we we
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cut a hole in the lid of a shoe box and wound this paper through
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this aperture. And she said, that's that's how you make films. It's
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a it's storytelling with hi is one after the other. And and I guess
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that kind of set my whole imagination on fire. At an early age,
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was there a film that there was an idea to be an actor? I
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thought I might be an actor. You see and my plan was to be
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a very famous actor, obviously, because you're not going to plan to be
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a you know, out of work actor. Uh And and then through acting
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I was gonna I was going to move into directing. However, I set
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around on my ass for you know, a year, waiting for the phone
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to ring, and nothing much happened. And then my dad had a stroke
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and I thought, okay, I need to do something with my life.
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So I went to art school, and at art school, I was,
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you know, I gave up acting and I and I just started making short
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films. To answer your question, there are many films that that influenced me
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along the way. I think David Lean's Great Expectations was one of those,
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especially the power of the graveyard scene and when Pitt runs into Magwitch. And
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then, you know, when I was about fifteen, in the same summer,
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I saw for the first time Taxi Driver and Blue Velvet, and I
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thought, you know, I thought Blue Velvet was a comedy. Actually,
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I watched and rewatched those films over that summer, and I think they really
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had a huge impact on my understanding of what a director does. Actually,
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that's amazing, now, how you say you were doing shorts. There's a
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short called Crocodile Snap. How did you get that short off the ground,
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get the money, get the everything to kind of put that thing together?
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Well, I that was after I left college, and I'd made a short
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film at college which had won a prize. And the guy who gave out
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the prizes for Fujifilm, the guy was his name is Jeremie Howe, and
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he wrote to me saying he liked my movie, you know at my short
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film and he ran a BBC series called ten by ten, which was ten
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short films of ten minutes. And I called his receptionist every day, bugging
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her, and I think I bugged her to the extent that in the end
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she told me where he was having a meeting that day, and she said,
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if you want to talk to him, just go down there and talk
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to him. And I turned up and I hung around. It was the
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Royal Institute of British Architects, and I hung around this very imposing institution for
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three or four hours until he finally came out and I said, Jeremy,
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so I need to talk to you about this film and and he said,
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well, I'm very late, but you've got between here and Googe Street subway
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station to pitch. And so that four or five minutes of that walk really
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changed my life because I managed to persuade him to let me do this short
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film. And listen, I'm talking about three thousand dollars probably budget, but
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to me that was an astronomical amount of money and inconceivable for me to get
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hand in my hands off and he he commissioned this short film and then that
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got nominated for a Bafter And from there I was kind of on, we'll
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be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the
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show, the very early stages of some kind of ladder. Now, how
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did you make the jump from a three thousand dollars short to directing Pride and
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Prejudice, which is a bit more than three thousand dollars if I'm not mistaken,
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Yeah, well I was. I was very lucky. I mean I
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always tell sort of young filmmakers who are trying to figure out how to how
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to get into the business, how to gain experience. I always tell them
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to hang around actors and basically to find if there's a if there's a little
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fringe theater, if there's an actors workshop. If there's anything that involves actors
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putting on shows telling stories, that's your best bet. And as I mentioned
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before, there was this pub in Islington called the Old Red Lion, and
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drinking in this pub was this incredibly important character called Kathy Burke, who is
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an actor and director and writer. She won the Palm door for Gary Oldman's
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Nil by Mouth and she was very influential and every time I made a short
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film, I'd give her a VHS copy of my short film, and without
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telling me, every time I did that, she would pass that on to
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this producer friend at the BBC. And so one day I got a call
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out of the blue saying will you come in to the BBC to meet Catherine
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Wearing who is this producer? And I went along and it was in the
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days where you could still smoke in offices and I couldn't see her through the
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mist of tobacco smoke, although it did smell a bit odd, and through
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the smoke I heard this raspy voice say, so would you like to do
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a three part drama for the BBC? And I could have, you know,
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my heart jumped out of my mouth and I tried to play it very
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cool and said, yeah, well, it depends on the script. Less
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us for everyone learning. If you're in the room and they offer you something
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like this, you gotta act cool. You can't just lose your ear crap
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right there, right there. So it depends on the script. And and
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you know, she she sent me the first episode and I was actually bowled
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over by it. It was a really beautiful piece of writing called nature Boy,
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and I was suddenly directing at the age of twenty six. I was
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directing three one hour episodes, so three hours of television a budget of I
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think three point four million pounds, So that was a huge steep learning cove.
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And then I made about fourteen hours of television. I did about Yeah,
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I did three or four TV projects, each one kind of bigger than
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the last. And then one day I was asked to go and meet working
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title to talk about Pride and Prejudice. So yeah, so it wasn't like,
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oh, I just made a three thousand hours movie and they just give
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you Pride and prejudice. You had built a career. It was great.
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It was great because people say, wow, you're you know this, this
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is the first time film director, as if I was somehow you know,
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blessed from heaven with this kind of ability to make you know, to know
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how to make movies at that level, at that level, at that level,
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it was very hard, hard one and I and I didn't tell anyone
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that really I was quite you know, reasonably experienced in TV. I let
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them believe the myth of of of talent. But but yeah, it was
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the teacher that that that improvisation workshop always used to say it's ninety to nine
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percent inspira ninety nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. And I think that
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was that was very, very true. Now you've worked with some remarkable actors
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in your career, how do you approach it? Do you have any advice
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on directing actors because you've been able to you know, pull or collaborate on
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some amazing performances. Yeah, I mean, I think I think I think
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the fact that I used to act as a kid, uh means that I
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I never I never shrouded the craft in this kind of mystic reverie. Do
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you know what I mean? People people think of actors as almost being like
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witches or you know, warlock. This strange kind of alchemy happens and somehow
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they're able to do this thing, shape shift. It's it's a it's certainly
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an art. Acting is certainly an art, but it's also a craft.
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And I approach actors as crafts people, as collaborators. I am completely open
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with them about the process. I don't I don't expose my fears too much
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to them, because they need bolstering. They need to believe that you believe
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even when you don't. But I but I share the process. I tell
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them exactly what the story is that we're trying to, you know, trying
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to tell. I make them a part of it. And I I don't
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bullshit them either. Excuse language. I don't, I don't try and kind
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of, you know, I think they often get infantilized. And if if
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you treat actors like children, they'll behave like children, where you give them
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the respect of intelligence, then then they'll reciprocate intelligently. And yeah, and
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I think it's it's really it's really just talking straight to them and not not
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kind of you know. I remember, I remember, you know, there
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are tricks, you know. But I remember talking to Kieran Knightley on on
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pride and prejudice and and and saying listen, your head of department. Right,
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There's there's the camera department, there's the art department, there's the acting
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department, and it's a department like any other department in telling this story.
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And you, as the lead actor, the head of department, and therefore,
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as head of department, any new department member that comes in on a
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day to do a couple of lines, your job is to make them feel
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welcome and ask them if they're okay, and support them, you know.
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Uh. And that was a trick that really worked because it it grounded her
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and it meant that every supporting actor that came in therefore supported her because she
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had reached out as a you know, as the head of department. That's
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a that's an amazing ture. I've never heard that that technique before. That's
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a really great technique to you, Gary Oldman. That But Pira was only
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eighteen, so it also. I mean the other thing with actors is that
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generally they are all different and you have to figure out what makes them tick
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and then you know and then and then and then play to their specific yeah
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strengths and stuff. So so do you I always tell act I always tell
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filmmakers this is that as a director, you really need to create a safe
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space for the actor. If the actor doesn't feel that they're in a safe
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space where they can really go on out on a limb, you know,
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with their craft, if they feel they have to protect themselves, that's when
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the problems start. Is that is that your experience? I think that's a
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brilliant piece of advice. Absolutely. I think I think, you know,
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we're all exposed, We're all, you know, uh, scared of being
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judged. Am I a good director? Am I a good boom operator?
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You know? Am I doing okay? But for the actor there in front
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of the camera, and that's a whole nother level of vulnerability, And therefore
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you have to support them and and and create that safe space, which is
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one of the reasons why I do rehearsals. I do a lot of rehearsals
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prior to shooting two or three weeks for a movie, and that is partly
18:25
about learning each other's rhythms and so on, but it's also about just getting
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to know each other and getting to a point where they feel yeah, safe,
18:33
looked after, and comfortable and comfortable with each other. Because if there's
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going to be any issues I'd rather be in rehearsal. Then. As far
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as personality conflicts or techniques, one's method, ones not method. Things like
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that, You've got to figure all that stuff out in a much cheaper environment
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and much Yeah, your cheapest days of your rehearsal days. But also,
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you know, two other things. I think it's really important to like your
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actors. So when you're casting, you have to figure out whether you like
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this person because you're going to have to talk to them a lot. And
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I find it personally, I find it difficult to talk to people I don't
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like. One do I like them? And two do I respect their intelligence?
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Because there's a there's a kind of myth that goes around the you know,
19:21
the Airhead actors. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
19:30
and now back to the show. The most successful actors I've ever met
19:40
are the most intelligent people I've ever met, you know, to be that,
19:44
you know, Tom Cruise is incredibly smart. You know, Nicole Kidman
19:49
incredibly smart, Gary Oldman incredibly smart. These people are really really smart.
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They're not you know, And intelligence, as in you know, as with
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music or science or politics, plays an enormous part in the ability to act.
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Now, do you storyboard by any chairs, because I mean you paint
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on such big canvases. I storyboard when the sequence involves very specific ideas of
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montage. When I'm interested in how one image cuts to another, I'll draw
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those two pictures and put them next to each other on a piece of paper
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and see how they work together. If it's a long developing shot or a
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long steady cam shot, then I don't because I don't find it useful.
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But I storyboard everything I do, and often also what I'll do is I'll
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get plans of the set and then just mark out diagrams of the camera moves,
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the direction, the light direction in particular, so that my DP can
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pre light confidently knowing that that's the direction I'm going to be looking in.
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So I plan very very carefully, but not always storyboarding. Very cool.
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Now, there's one film that you made that is one of my favorites,
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and when it came out, I saw the trailer and it blew me away.
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Hannah. I absolutely loved Hannah, and it was kind of like a
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revelation when it came out. It was obviously a big, very big success,
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even spawned off a very successful television show at this point. How did
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you get involved with Hannah and and how did you bring that that energy that
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that movie has. It's so so wonderful. Thank you. Hannah. Happened
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because Sasha Ronan cooled me up and said, I want to make this film
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Hannah, and I want you to direct it. And I was like,
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great, all right, then let's do that. It was it. I
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mean, I'd worked obviously with Hannah on Atonement. I mean I'd worked obviously
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with with Sirsha on Atonement and she was eleven, yeah, she was a
22:11
kid. Yeah, and then she was sixteen when we made Hannah, and
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it was something that you know that that Focus Features had sent her, and
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I guess she liked working with me and asked me to ask me to do
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it. And I read the script and it was interesting actually that that that
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process because there was the script I read. There was two credited writers,
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one of whom was a guy called Seth Lockhead. And the script was really
22:47
uneven. It was really patchy. There were moments of kind of surreal flights
22:52
of fantasy that I'd never encountered in a kind of certainly not in an action
22:57
movie. This strange almost sort of hallucinatory experience. And then there were the
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there are bits that were like purely procedural kind of action spy thriller stuff,
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and so I kind of questioned what that was about and discovered that actually the
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studio had been scared of Seth Lockhead's original original script, which was the kind
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of more hallucinatory thing, and that they'd brought on another writer to write the
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more procedural stuff and kind of tame it down. So I I I basically
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went back to Seth, and he and I worked on developing his flavor and
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his ideas more fully but also kind of practically so that it was actually shootable.
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Yeah, and and and and I and I bring you know, I
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work very closely with writers. Every film I make is extremely personal and uh,
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and so there were elements that I was you know, there was stuff
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I was angry at the world at the time. Something had happened to a
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friend of mine, a woman who had been Yeah, something bad had happened
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to her, and so the film was a kind of m innocent outsider's view
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of this crazy world in which she was born into. And I guess those
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that horrible thing that happened to your friend in this script at the same time
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kind of came together at that moment where that energy and that anger you might
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have been perfectly fit that that film. I kind of I don't know.
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I don't you know, I'm I think things seemed to if you allow them
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to, thinks seem to happen at the right moment. I'm not much,
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you know, I'm not. I don't really I'm not. I'm not really
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into the idea of an interventionist god. But I do believe that if you
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get into the flow of things, things happen as they should. Yeah,
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I've been given the advice is like, don't push the river. The river
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is going to the river is flowing with little without you. You're trying to
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push it, It's only going to make you tired, exactly. It makes
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me. Really I've tried it. Oh yeah, I've spent a lot of
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my career trying it. Like, can we get this one little project pushed
25:37
a little bit more? Can we get just a little bit more money?
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Just let it, just let it happen, let it go. Now.
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As directors, you know, we always find I'm sorry, as they say
25:49
in Frozen, just let it just you read my mind oh oh god,
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I think either over that phase, oh my god, Oh my god.
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Anyway, anyway, anyway, so as directors, there's always a day that
26:07
we have that the world, we feel like the world is coming crashing down
26:12
around us on a shoot day or in the middle of a movie and and
26:18
oh my god, how are we going to get through this? Whether that
26:19
be the camera fell into the lake, we're losing the light, the actor
26:23
broke their leg, something happens that you feel like, I don't know how
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I'm going to get through this. What was that day for you? And
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how did you overcome that day? Is there a day in your in your
26:33
career that you can that you can say publicly? Usually usually right, it
26:38
usually happens at about four o'clock every day, every day, every day.
26:45
You think you're going along fine. You know, you've you've started the morning
26:48
with confidence in your plan, and and maybe you've taken a little bit too
26:57
long over rehearsals or setting up that shot or this shot, and and you've
27:02
got you know, three scenes to get through, and then suddenly you go,
27:06
oh god, it's lunchtime, and I've only done you know, half
27:08
a scene or one scene. And then everyone's a bit slow coming back from
27:14
lunch because they've had the apple pine custard and you're trying to get through.
27:19
And then at about four o'clock you go, oh, you know, oh
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no, I have you know, two hours left and I've still got to
27:30
do this three page scene. How am I gonna ever get through the day?
27:37
And you get through it by by economizing. Basically, you get through
27:47
it by figuring out what the essentials of that scene are and shooting that and
27:59
and off, and those end up being the most interesting scenes because you haven't
28:07
had the luxury of of you know, over articulation. So so I think
28:18
often you know, and and in a way I'm beginning to try and apply
28:22
that overall to the films I make, you know, to to just what
28:27
are the essentials, what's important, and and stripping away the kind of the
28:33
the the decoration if you like, uh, and and really listening to to
28:41
the story. So that's the kind of general answer for you. I mean,
28:45
certainly, the day that Mount Etna erupted whilst we were shooting the battle
28:51
sequence of Syrno, that was a fairly catastrophic day, you know, that
28:56
was the day I would say, We'll be right back after a word from
29:02
our sponsor, and now back to the show. The only solution that day
29:11
was to pick up the camera case and run. The hell with the day,
29:15
the hell with your day. Yeah. I have no other advice for
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young filmmakers who happened to be facing a volcano erupting other than to say,
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run right forget the shot. I mean, if you can get the shot,
29:32
maybe let the camera run for five more seconds, but then run.
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Yeah, and then run and then run and protect your head as well because
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they're projectile stones. Fruit. Well, you were that close, you were
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really there? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We shot a sequence and
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well, I mean, Jesus I laugh now right, but time I was
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literally crying. We had planned to shoot the battle sequence at sixteen thousand feet
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near the summit of Mount Etna, and four days prior to shooting there was
30:08
an unprecedented snow storm and our set got buried in two meters of snow,
30:18
including the one hundred foot techno that we've got up there, and the whole
30:25
thing was completely inaccessible. So with only you know, four days notice,
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we had to reconceive the whole very complicated sequence anyway down to eight thousand feet
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and that was interesting to kind of go, Okay, I've got no set.
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I've got you know, a bunch of guys dressed as soldiers. I've
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got no set. I've got a camera and a tripod, and that is
30:48
literally it. I've got no tricks to hide behind. You know, I
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can't even move the camera. I've got no track because I'm working on a
30:57
kind of vitigenous volcanic slope. And to really kind of go, all right,
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what do I need to tell this story? How can I tell this
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story with these very few basic tools at my disposal? And that was that
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was fascinating. But yeah, then the then the volcano actually erupted, because
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I remember watching that sequence in Sereno and I was it was I mean,
31:26
it was beautiful. And I'm thinking to myself because in today's world, you
31:30
just don't know how much is visual effects? How much is you know,
31:32
did he shoot this all on a green screen? Like how much of it
31:34
was real? And I'm like when you said, because I've been at twelve
31:38
thousand feet and it's I was having problems walking. I can only imagine trying
31:45
to shoot at that level. It was brut It's absolutely brutal. It's like,
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it's absolutely brutal. But those scenes that in Sereno specifically, they were
31:56
they were beautiful. There would be those war sequence but now knowing the back
32:00
story behind it, I'm like, Okay, this makes sense, but that's
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but that's the thing is And I feel that as as filmmakers, if you're
32:07
given two, if you're if you're if you, if you if I told
32:10
you Joe, all you've got is time and money, which would be fun
32:15
for a minute, but at a certain point you're just like, I need
32:17
limitations in those limitations are what help you chisel down the fat on a scene.
32:23
I've done it. I got time and money. I got you know,
32:27
they gave me. They gave me one hundred and eighty million dollars to
32:30
make pan right. I got, you know, all the tools I could
32:35
could possibly want. And it was the biggest disaster of my career. Uh.
32:44
Whereas you know, on a film like Atonement, for instance, I
32:49
had one day to shoot a montage sequence of the beach at Dunkirk. I
32:55
understood that there is no way I was going to be able to complete that
33:00
sequence in a single date, given the tide coming in and out. My
33:05
only solution therefore, which I thought was a pretty good creative solution was to
33:08
shoot the whole thing in a single steadicam shot, and that, for a
33:14
while was the was the shot that defined my career, you know. So
33:19
so I do strongly, strongly believe in limitations liberating us creatively and and and
33:28
and using you know, always having a kind of a positive solution based outlook,
33:37
because generally what we're doing andlex you know, is to is to find
33:40
solutions. There are a series of problems over the course of a day,
33:45
and our job as as directors is to gather these people together and marshall them
33:55
through the through the problems by finding solutions collectively. And those are creative solutions
34:02
as well as practical solutions. If you're living deeply, deeply in the heart
34:07
and head of the film, then those solutions will carry through the story and
34:13
the themes that you're trying to express naturally. So, you know, as
34:17
when you when you're on set, you know, especially at at the indie
34:22
stage, there's a thousand questions, but I can only imagine at these one
34:25
hundred and eighty million dollar stages. How do you what advice would you give
34:30
filmmakers dealing with that barrage. You know young directors who are being asked every
34:36
minute, what do you think of this? What do you want to do
34:37
there? How do you do this? How do you move that? Because
34:39
I mean, directing is essentially compromise, compromise, compromise. It's never what
34:45
you want, but you know what I mean. So as far as answering
34:47
and dealing with that kind of hurricane, because you're in the center of a
34:51
little mini hurricane on every day as a director, Yeah, how would you
34:54
approach? I love that. I love that failing I love be set.
35:00
Yes, the two the two very kind of practical suggestions I would make a
35:10
Well, I get up two hours before having to leave for set, and
35:20
I spend those two hours reading the script and writing a shot list. Every
35:25
morning I've done, I've already done, you know, first drafts of a
35:29
shot list and or storyboards with my DP earlier. But I spend those two
35:34
hours kind of very quietly contemplating what's really necessary and and what the story is
35:40
that I'm trying to tell. So that's one thing that grounds me and and
35:47
and helps me keep focused. And the other thing is when someone comes to
35:53
you with a question. The first or an idea, which can be just
35:59
as challenging sometimes, Uh is the first thing that comes out of your mouth
36:06
is thank you, and that buys you a window of time to one bring
36:15
your bring your panic and your ego down and just buys your little little window
36:22
between their question or their suggestion and your answer. It just kind of is
36:28
a magic word that breaks things down and then you can approach the question or
36:32
the or the suggestion with a kind of clear, clear of ego. Really
36:39
that's right, I say so, Nath, But it kind of works.
36:45
You should try it. I mean, you can try it. Oh,
36:47
no, it definitely, it definitely does be I mean I always, the
36:50
best advice I've ever gotten on set is, uh, don't be a dick.
36:57
Best advice in the business. Best you can get this, miss,
37:00
There'll be a dick. Absolutely absolutely, that's a fundamental piece of advice.
37:06
Now, you know, earlier in your career or I'm assuming throughout your career,
37:10
you've got to deal with rejection. How do you deal with rejection?
37:14
I'm sure there's projects that you wanted to get off the ground that didn't.
37:17
You know, a lot of people think that, like, oh, once
37:20
you get to a certain level, they just constantly all you got to do
37:22
is make a phone call. They give you fifty million dollars or one hundred
37:25
million dollars, and you just make whatever you want. And that's not your
37:28
truth. You know, after talking to so many filmmakers over the years,
37:31
I know that's not the true. But there's that kind of lore in the
37:35
of young filmmakers thinking that, you know, people have to have that opportunity
37:39
and they don't generally. How do you deal with those rejections? How do
37:42
you keep moving forward? Well? I think I think you're absolutely right.
37:47
There is no final destination. You don't. You know, there is no
37:53
there's no arrival. You don't get somewhere and oh great, I mean it,
37:58
I'm here from here and now people are going to let me make my
38:01
films. That's certainly not my experience. I think I find I find rejection
38:10
really hard, actually, and I haven't and I haven't yet found a very
38:21
healthy way of dealing with it. But I you know, this is all
38:30
I can do, right, Making movies is all I can do. I
38:36
haven't got, you know, wealthy parents to lean back on. I haven't
38:40
got any other source of income whatsoever. It's my job it's my vocation,
38:47
and it's my life, and it's my heart and it's everything I love.
38:55
Uh, it's also a spiritual practice, I believe. But but it's a
39:00
job. You know. I got put food on the table, and so
39:05
therefore I have to get up, dust myself down, and go back to
39:09
work. And that's all it is. You know, it's like, Okay,
39:15
that didn't work. Let me try something else. Let me try something
39:17
else, let me try something else. You know, we'll be right back
39:22
after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. Because
39:32
I don't have a choice, you know, I don't have the luxury of
39:37
going, well, that didn't work, and I'm really hurt my feelings.
39:39
I'm really hurt. So I'm going to just go and take five years off
39:43
and sit on my dad's yacht. You know, that isn't an option.
39:50
So it's just about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and keeping on
39:55
going. I mean, I had a you know, I had a terrible
39:59
crisis of confidence after Pan. I shouldn't talk about it too much, but
40:04
you know I had a terrible crisis of confidence after that. I called up
40:10
half on Son I said, I'm having a terrible time, and we talked
40:15
about it. And he's someone who I thought never experienced crisis of confidence.
40:21
You know, he's he's great, he's half He made you know, gravity
40:24
in Roma. He said, Oh, man, I'm having exactly the same
40:29
problem myself, he said, I'm going through the same thing. I said,
40:34
oh, you you know what, You go through that too? He
40:37
goes, yes, and man, I go through this too. You know,
40:39
it's it's hard. We all go through it, and and we you
40:49
know, and and we went and watched a couple of early Italian near realist
40:55
movies and felt much better. You know, I think, I think particularly
41:00
something you one can do is just go and watch the films that made you
41:04
fall in love with filmmaking in the first place. Remind yourself of what you
41:09
love about film, which isn't careerst bullshit, it is the art form itself,
41:20
and then put that into your work. You know, it's no coincidence
41:23
that having had that experience, I went and made Darkest Hour, which was
41:29
essentially about this little guy who had a crisis of confidence. You know,
41:34
his name was Winston Churchill, But fundamentally, for me, it was about
41:38
a guy who had a crisis of confidence, who doubted himself as others doubted
41:45
him, and so I was able to put all of that experience directly into
41:52
that movie. And you know, I think as artists, we all have
41:55
that moment, especially when you're on set. And I've when I've talked to
42:00
so many different directors as so many different stages of their career, and it
42:04
happens all the time that you have that kind of imposture syndrome. You could
42:07
have wanted ask her and you feel like, oh my god, someone's gonna
42:09
come in and go, what are you doing here? You don't belong here?
42:13
Security escort Joe out off the set. I mean that we all have
42:17
that. The only person who doesn't have that is in a Writu Yeah doesn't
42:23
have that. I don't think camera. I don't think Cameron has it either.
42:28
Maybe not Cameron, okay, but apart from in Aritu and Cameron,
42:36
maybe everyone else is imposts They're the only true guests. Is that you know,
42:43
what are you gonna do. You're gonna go to the party and go,
42:45
oh, I'm not an impostor. I belong here, and then there
42:49
lonely because you know, you think you're the only one that belongs. You
42:52
know, it's we all share, we all come, and you know,
42:59
we're human. Similarities are far greater than our differences, agreed, one hundred
43:05
and ten percent. And and and that's why I try to do when I
43:07
do these shows, and I speak to people like yourself as I want to
43:09
kind of break down the myths of so many because when I was coming up
43:14
as a young filmmaker, you know, I looked up on on the on
43:16
the mountain Mount Hollywood, where Spielberg and Cameron and Lucas and Copeland Scorsese lived.
43:22
It's terrified. Spielberg's terrified. Of course, that's not the man.
43:29
He's worried. He worries all the time, you know, and he's Steven
43:32
Spielberg and Stephen Spielberg exactly. It's like, I mean, my god.
43:40
And in a way, that's what the movie Sarahano is about. Hus see
43:45
what I did there. It's about someone who who feels like they're living in
43:51
the wrong body. He's an impostor. It's about feeling like you're different from
43:55
everyone else. It's what we're you know. It's what I'm trying to talk
43:59
about in the movies, is how do I fit in how do I communicate
44:04
with other people? Hannah is about a girl trying to go how do I
44:07
fit into this world? How do I connect with other human beings? Why
44:10
is it so difficult to connect? Why is it so difficult for me to
44:15
get past my own feeling of lack of self worth? Why can't I allow
44:22
people to see me really for who I am? All of those questions.
44:28
That's drama, and that's why I love making drama, you know. And
44:30
what I've discovered is that I have to make the movies that I love.
44:35
I've tried making, you know, movies, big CG movies. I've tried
44:39
making movies that are, you know, twisted, dark thrillers. I've tried
44:44
making movies that that aren't really expressive of who I am. But I'm messing
44:52
around the genre. I'm trying things. It was interesting, But the films
44:55
that work are the films that speak of who I am as an individual,
45:02
right and and you could absolutely tell that. And you know, I just
45:05
happened. I had the pleasure of watching Sierra No yesterday in fact, so
45:10
it's fresh in my mind. I absolutely adored the film. I think it's
45:15
wonderful. It's one of the best films of the year, without without question,
45:19
the performances are wonderful. How did you how did you bring that story?
45:24
What made you want to bring that story back? Because it has been
45:27
told obviously a million times before, because of Serra No the Burge rack.
45:30
What what made you want to come in and throw your your twist on it?
45:36
I would always have wanted to tell that story because I feel it is
45:45
I identify with with with Seraho. You know, I I, as we've
45:50
talked about, I feel like I don't fit in or unworthy of love,
45:55
incapable of connecting with other people. My my my insecurities, my fear of
46:06
intimacy are all expressed through that character. The question was that or the problem
46:14
was that it had been done before, and so there wasn't, you know,
46:17
an opening for me to I couldn't remake the nose version. And then
46:23
when I saw Peter Dinkliche play Cirino, and I think often a creatively successful
46:30
movie is about the right actor in the right role at the right time,
46:35
like you know Gary Oldman in in in Darkest Hour, or Cairo in in
46:39
Pride and Prejudice, or indeed Sirscha in Atonement seeing Pete in that role.
46:49
Suddenly the emotional weight of the story hit me in a way that I hadn't
46:58
experienced before, Because, however strong the suspension of disbelief might be, you're
47:06
always aware that gered Dppad is wearing a you know, big prosthetic on the
47:10
end of his face and at the end of the night is going to take
47:13
that off and go to the bar and get drunk. Whereas with Pete there's
47:19
a media authenticity. You know that Pete is is gonna be always be he
47:25
is. He's always going to be Pete. He's he's He's lived with that
47:30
experience, and he brings the weight of that experience to that performance. And
47:36
then to see him opposite Hailey Bennett, who is so extraordinarily womanly and feminine
47:51
and feminine, and and you know, she's not one of these kind of
47:54
androgynoust girls that kind of completely asexual. She's kind of She's got this extraordinary
48:05
femininity and sexuality and intelligence, and and so to see him opposite her seemed
48:15
like the perfect, perfect coupling. The casting was phenomenal enough, I mean,
48:21
it was absolutely phenomenal. I hope Peter gets nominated because he was.
48:24
It's a tour de force. It's an absolute tuti force performance on his part.
48:30
Now, I always wanted to ask, because I've never spoken to a
48:34
director who's worked on a musical before, So how do you approach directing these
48:44
large set pieces and musical sequences, Because it was just I've just I've never
48:50
directed a musical sequence. I don't even consider how you would even go at
48:54
that level with so many costumes and the locations and everything, frankly, like
48:59
you would any other sequence, you know. Uh, And and the choreography
49:05
is probably the biggest difference dance, but that is really very much like fight
49:12
choreography. You know. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
49:21
and now back to the show. Uh. It all has to be
49:27
very very carefully worked out and rehearsed endlessly for weeks on end. Prior to
49:32
shooting all of the We made a choice to have all of the singing happen
49:39
live on set, so that there was a level of intimacy and that there
49:47
would be a fluidity between the speech and the singing. Cut should you cut
49:57
between performances, Like so, if someone's singing here on set and someone saying,
50:00
are you cutting those performances or are you laying down like an ad R
50:02
track afterwards of them live on set? No, they're they're they're singing live
50:07
on set, and that's what we're cutting with. Okay, So they're wearing
50:13
earwigs so they can hear the music backing track, and if they're singing in
50:17
duet with another performer, we've got a temp recording of that other performer playing
50:23
in their ear and then when I go and shoot the other performer, I've
50:30
got what we recorded on set from the first performer playing in their area.
50:36
And sometimes we had live accompliment because we wanted the kind of you know,
50:38
we wanted to be off click as they say, so, so we could
50:44
so they could be more kind of they could move the written the melody around
50:49
and the rhythm around a little bit more. But but shooting the singing live
50:54
like that enabled a much a much more tender, fragile, intimate experience.
51:07
We're not seeing we're not hearing them through a glass panel. We're not you
51:10
know, we're not having them talking talking, and then suddenly needle drop and
51:15
we're into a it's a musical Uh, It's as natural as singing along to
51:22
the radio. Whilst you're doing them washing up and and I saw that right
51:25
away. I was like, oh, he's he's doing it that way.
51:28
I was like, oh, this is nice. And and when you see
51:30
Peter just starts singing like you know, in the middle of like he's having
51:32
a conversation, then just starts to sing naturally like you it was. It
51:37
was wonderfully done. It was really wonderfully executed. Thank you. I mean
51:43
that's also massive, uh, you know, massively helped by the band The
51:47
National who wrote all the music and lyrics and and their music has a kind
51:52
of contemplative emotionality that is yearning and and it's not kind of you know,
52:01
it's not I was about to say another film there, It's not. It's
52:08
not eighties musicals, got it? Exactly? Fair enough? Fair fair enough?
52:14
Now? When is when is here No being released? And where can
52:16
people see it? It is being released on It's being released on January twenty
52:24
first, in you know, selected theaters and then goes wide on February the
52:30
fourth. Okay, And I'm going to ask you a few questions. I
52:34
ask all of my guests, what advice would you give a filmmaker trying to
52:37
break into the business today. Oh god, I mean I think we've covered
52:40
that, haven't we. I think we might have. I mean, you
52:45
know, yeah, as I said earlier, find actors go to theater,
52:52
go to you know, there's a little room upstairs of a pub, go
52:57
and put a show on. What is the lesson that took you the longest
53:00
to learn, whether in the film industry or in life. I'm enough,
53:07
you know what? That is one of the most common answers out of all
53:10
everybody has a lot of people. That's That's a lesson that a lot of
53:15
people have learned. It's fascinating that in patience. Yeah, I still haven't
53:20
learned it, but that's the lesson I'm continuing to try and learn. It's
53:24
always that in patience. Patience is the other big one that a lot of
53:28
people have to learn. Still. Yeah, maybe we've all read the same
53:32
self help. Yeah. And lastly, three of your favorite films of all
53:37
time? Well, I can't even begin to my favorite films into just three,
53:45
so I'll just come with three off the top of my head. You
53:51
see, I can't even do that. You can do directors too, if
53:54
you like. I'm trying to be clever. I shouldn't be clever. I
53:59
should just tell you the films that a brief encounter by David Lean Okay,
54:06
Felini's Ama Cord and Visconti's The Leopard. Amazing lists are amazing lists. Joe,
54:19
Thank you so much for being on the show. It has been an
54:21
absolute pleasure talking to you. It was so much fun. Please continue making
54:25
movies. You are needed in the cinematic world. So I truly truly appreciate
54:30
you, my friend. Bless you. I want to thank Joe for coming
54:36
on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the show today. Thank you
54:39
so much, Joe. If you want to get links to anything we spoke
54:42
about in this episode, including how to see his new film sirrah No,
54:45
which, by the way, I have seen and it is fantastic. It
54:50
is a wonderful retelling of a classic, classic story, head over to the
54:54
show notes at Bulletproof, Screenwriting dot tv, forward slash one, and if
55:00
you haven't already, please head over to Screenwriting podcast dot com, subscribe and
55:07
leave a good review for the show. It truly truly helps us out a
55:09
lot. Thank you so much for listening. Guys. As always, keep
55:13
on writing no matter what talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the
55:16
Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.