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Affichage des articles dont le libellé est London. Afficher tous les articles
dimanche 7 septembre 2014
samedi 23 août 2014
vendredi 15 août 2014
*INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson... for "The Guardian (uk)"... for "The Rover" uk promo...
...
from The Guardian
from The Guardian
There is a moment in The Rover, David Michôd’s futuristic western set in the Australian outback, in which Robert Pattinson’s character sits in the cab of a truck at night listening to the radio play Keri Hilson’s hit Pretty Girl Rock. The night is black and the radio tinny, and softly Pattinson begins to sing along. “Don’t hate me ’cause I’m beautiful,” he sings, his voice high and whiny, the lyrics muffled by lips that cling to dirty teeth. “Don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful.”
It’s a pivotal moment for Rey, the slow, needy, uncertain young man Pattinson plays, but it also feels like something of a reference point in the career of the actor himself; a small reminder for the audience of just how far he has run from his days as the pretty-boy Hollywood pin-up.
The Pattinson who walks into our interview this morning seems to play a similar trick, pointing out, two steps into the room, that the hotel carpet “looks like a Magic Eye picture”. And indeed it does – a bold, blurry pattern in stripes of cream and black. But Pattinson’s remark also serves to shifts attention neatly away from himself, as if he is weary of being the centre of it, the face that everyone stares at.
Pattinson was 22 when he was first cast as Edward Cullen in the Twilight Saga, the five-part movie adaptation of Stephanie Meyer’s best-selling teen vampire novels. Overnight he became one of Hollywood’s most adored young stars, pursued wherever he went by paparazzi and screaming fans. He was named “the most handsome man in the world” by Vanity Fair, and one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time. Amid all the fuss and the madness he embarked upon a tortuous relationship with his co-star, Kristen Stewart, that meant the young couple were rarely out of the gossip pages.
Early leading-man roles (Remember Me; Water for Elephants) have given way to more challenging characters – he earned impressive reviews for his portrayal of a young billionaire in David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, and will soon be seen in another Cronenberg project, Maps to the Stars – as well as starring alongside Nicole Kidman in the Gertrude Bell biopic Queen of the Desert.
But for now he is rooted in Michôd’s The Rover, a brilliantly dark story of a loner (Guy Pearce) in pursuit of a gang of ramshackle crooks who have stolen his car. En route, he acquires Rey (Pattinson), the brother of one of the thieves, whom they had left for dead at the scene of a botched robbery, and together they chug through the Australian desert, now a glowering, lawless land 10 years after a global economic collapse.
“I just thought it was strikingly original,” Pattinson says of first reading Michôd’s script. “Even in the way it looked on the page.
“David’s got a very specific way of writing dialogue. It’s very functional, the writing’s very harsh, it’s savage, but it didn’t feel just stylised writing – it was emotional as well. It just seemed so natural compared to something like No Country for Old Men. I always felt that was more like film writing. And this didn’t really feel like a film script – it felt like a dream.”
Pattinson has a very particular way of speaking: he will talk softly, intently about subjects you sense mean a great deal to him – Michôd’s writing, for instance, or the craft of acting – only to then sweep it to one side with a flourishing “It was crazy!” or a burst of wheezy, slightly wild laughter. It gives the impression of someone who has not quite yet settled into his skin.
He had to audition for The Rover – a process he loathes. “I’m quite good at doing meetings,” he says. “If I’m just meeting someone about a job I’m like a dog, especially if my agent’s said to me: ‘A lot of people want this job.’ Then I’m like: ‘Oh yeah? Then I will do anything to get it!’” What’s his technique? “I don’t know, I just become a bullshit artist!” he laughs. “That’s when I start acting! I’m really much better at doing it when the cameras aren’t rolling …”
But auditions petrify him. He has spoken of the good 45 minutes of “neuroses” he has to suffer before any audition can ever really begin. “I just can’t … I literally can’t do it,” he tries to explain. “It’s just me looking uncomfortable, trying to put on an American accent … or sitting in the corner, making myself throw up and punching myself in the face.” What helps get him past the neuroses, what happens after those excruciating 45 minutes that helps him perform. “Just that you think that someone actually believes you can do something,” he says. “That makes me sound like such an idiot. It’s crazy.”
But the joys of acting still outweigh these moments.
“For whatever reason, I think there’s something profoundly satisfying about being able to watch something you’ve done afterwards, or to just do a scene and feel like: ‘Oh, I just had an out-of-body experience for a second!’”
He pauses. “Just for one second,” he says gently. “And generally people don’t even notice. It feels literally like you’ve been asleep for a second.” He recalls such a moment while shooting this film. “It’s not the biggest scene, it’s not even in the movie, it was the rehearsal. And me and Guy had just been going so nuts – we’d been out in the desert and we’d become like crazy homeless people. And I turned around and looked at him and just realized actually, we’re not acting any more.” He laughs. “And why did that feel so good? It’s so weird.”
It’s easy to assume that being tethered to the long-running Twilight Saga held him back from experiencing such moments, from growing as an actor, but he argues that the role required more resources than most. “I think Twilight’s probably the hardest part I’ve done,” he says, “because to do it for five movies, it’s really hard to think of stuff that’s maybe not boring. Especially if you don’t die. Because what’s the drama? You’re not scared of anything! And that’s the whole essence of drama: life and death.”
Pattinson was born and raised in London, but many of his film roles have required an US accent. In The Rover, Rey is from the American South, and like many has relocated to Australia in search of work in the mines. It was the voice, he says, that led him into the character.
He recalls “losing my mind” during his first day on set. “It just didn’t feel right for ages,” he says. “And then there was this one little thing – I had this makeup on my teeth, and it kept rubbing off all the time. It was really putting me off – it meant I had to keep redoing scenes. So I started trying to do this thing where I covered my teeth with my lips. And it changes your voice a little bit, but I thought: ‘Oh, that’s really cool!’ And after that I started speaking like that ‘ouhhggghhh …’” he replicates the style, and then laughs. “It’s so silly, it’s so stupid! I was just kind of making the accent up, I don’t even know what state it is really.”
But for Pattinson, having the opportunity to play a grubby-toothed mumbler from an unidentified corner of the American South proved liberating, as did the fact that his character plays second fiddle to that of Pearce. “There’s something about Rey, and there’s something about not having to drive the story forward,” he explains. “You can just be the condiment. It’s really kind of freeing just being the sidekick weirdo.”
He is full of praise for Pearce, for his physicality and his ability to transform himself for the role. He speaks of how, for much of their time on set, he thought Pearce to be physically bigger, and of his strange surprise when filming ended to find him not only clean-shaven but also somehow reduced in stature.
“And I liked seeing that Guy, even after having done tons and tons of movies is still scared,” he adds. “I’ve worked with some actors who, having done so many movies, they just know what they’re gonna do. No matter what I would be doing in a scene they would have practised their part in a mirror already and that was it, whereas Guy is really trying to find it still. So that was why it was more fun – because neither of us really knew what the movie was about when we started. But he’s not afraid to let it happen. And there’s very few actors who’ve been doing it as long as he has that still approach it like that, that still have that element of danger.”
How did they find out what the movie was about? “I think it’s about the feel,” Pattinson says. “I think after I did Cosmopolis I realized that trying to psychoanalyse parts and trying to be all clever about it … well, it only really started with actors in the 50s, and for thousands of years before that it was just about voice and using your body as a performance instrument …” he gives a faintly embarrassed laugh. “So I generally think whatever feels nice, it’s probably right.”
What felt nice in this role was the language, he says. “It was all the little speech patterns. It was like a song — if you’re singing a song in a certain way you’re not trying to make it sound sad or something, it just is.” He frowns. “I keep trying to do that in movies, but it’s really difficult trying to find scripts that allow for it, that mean you don’t have to hit specific thematic beats.”
Occasionally he tries to write something himself. “I was trying to write a play the other day and I showed it to my assistant and didn’t quite realise how bad it was.” He laughs and laughs. “I was writing it totally by myself in the middle of the night thinking: ‘This is how you do it! You just stay up all night and keep writing!’ She came in the next morning, and I’d been up all night writing. I said to her: ‘You have to read this! It’s amazing!’” He could tell it was perhaps not, he says, from her facial expressions as she read. “And then she said: ‘It’s not in English … and half the time you haven’t even put the character names in so it’s just a stream of consciousness …’”
But he would like to be in a play, he says. “Something in a really small theatre. I don’t think I could do something on Broadway … But I’d quite like to do something kind of shocking.”
He likes being shocking, he says, and his next role is satisfyingly so. Starring alongside Robert De Niro in Olivier Assayas’s Idol’s Eye, he will play a small-time criminal caught up with the Chicago mafia. “My character is this slightly delusional lost child,” he says. “Everyone always glamorises criminals – it feels inevitable in movies – but in this it’s really not glamorised. It is quite dense. It’s really serious. Very political.”
I think of something he told me earlier, about the ways in which he believes Twilight has influenced his career, and of how he wagers that most cinema audiences have judged him before he has uttered a single line on the screen. I pictured his frustration, the effort of forever trying to shake off that famous role, but on the contrary, he explained, he enjoys the possibilities that tension brings.
“It’s kind of fun,” he said. “Because people have preconceived ideas about you, and sometimes it affords you the opportunity to shock people more.”
jeudi 14 août 2014
*NEW INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson with "London Live"... for "The Rover" London Press Ju
with Guy Pearce...
source: ROBsessed
youtube: London Live
Who they 'bedded', jam donuts and getting the 'gritty' look with endless hangovers. London Live's Simon Thompson chats to the cast of The Rover.
source: ROBsessed
youtube: London Live
*GIFS* of Robert Pattinson with "Yahoo! uk"... for "The Rover" London Press Junk...
...
from Tumblr: yahoocelebrityuk
from Tumblr: yahoomoviesuk
from Tumblr: yahoocelebrityuk
from Tumblr: yahoocelebrityuk
The THREE stages of Robert Pattinson’s Kylie Minogue crush
from Tumblr: yahoomoviesuk
We spoke to Robert Pattinson about distancing himself from Twilight… but we’re not sure he took our questions very seriously!
from Tumblr: yahoocelebrityuk
Said Robert Pattinson about WHICH popstar and her bottom?
*NEW INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson with "BBC 1"... for "The Rover" London Press Junk...
with Guy Pearce...
the talk about the movie starts around the 1:04....
the talk about the movie starts around the 1:04....
mercredi 13 août 2014
*NEW INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson with "Yahoo! uk"... for "The Rover" London Press Junk...
...
from Yahoo! uk
source: RPL
youtube: RItZ Charmed
from Yahoo! uk
As a casual observer, you would be forgiven for thinking that Robert Pattinson has deliberately chosen challenging roles to dissociate himself from his teen-friendly origins.
...
“I genuinely choose [my roles], because that’s the only jobs I get [offered],” explains Pattinson in our interview for his new film ‘The Rover’ above.
source: RPL
youtube: RItZ Charmed
*NEW INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson with "Metro uk"... for "The Rover" London Press Junk...
...
from Metro.co.uk
Film review: The Rover
source: ToR
from Metro.co.uk
Directors fawn over him. Girls scream for him. But Robert Pattinson can do without the A-list treatment – at least judging by the shoot for his new film, The Rover, a post-apocalyptic thriller he is starring in alongside Guy Pearce.
Shot in the Australian desert, there were no 30ft trailers and no five-star catering. ‘I was quite content to live off bread and barbecue sauce for two and a half months,’ he says. No, this wasn’t a new form of wacky diet, Pattinson just didn’t want food poisoning.
‘There were so many flies there… and I just didn’t want to eat fly s***.’
Thankfully, R-Patz has lived to tell the tale. Today we meet in the rather more salubrious surroundings of a posh London hotel. Dressed in denim, with stubble sprouting across his chin, he’s come equipped with sunglasses and a baseball cap, the two essential tools for evading prying eyes.
The previous day he promoted The Rover at London’s BFI Southbank. ‘90 per cent of the people outside were autograph sellers,’ he says. ‘I’m like: “You know these things aren’t worth anything.” I’ve signed so many.’
It’s a typically modest answer from Barnes-born Pattinson, whose career was launched playing Edward Cullen in Twilight but who seems uncomfortable with the fame it brought. The 28-year-old knows how much the vampire saga has overshadowed him.
‘People who’ve only seen Twilight… I don’t know what they think I am,’ he sighs. What he wants is credibility.
‘Rob fights to be seen as an actor rather than a movie star,’ said director Anton Corbijn when he worked with him on forthcoming film Life. ‘He is really trying to prove his worth.’
It’s why Pattinson took on The Rover, in which he plays Rey, a survivor in a world ten years on from a global economic collapse.
‘I’ve never worked so hard for an audition,’ he says of walking into the audition room ‘sort of in character’, even dressed for the part. ‘I was really obsessed with it.’
You can see why: Pattinson revelled in the isolation of shooting in the Outback. Ask him what he did for kicks on a Saturday night and all it took was a coin and a car. ‘You just put your foot down, go up to the next road, toss a coin and make a decision on where to go… I ended up in the middle of nowhere.’
That must be an appealing prospect when you’re used to being pursued by an army of fans and photographers. Pattinson has seemingly emerged unscathed, though, attributing it to having a good set of friends from his youth.
‘When your social life revolves around people you meet after you get famous, it gets a bit weird,’ he says. ‘Also, I’ve managed my life a bit better in the past few years.’
Moving out of the house he shared with Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart helped (they first split in 2012, after she cheated on him with director Rupert Sanders).
‘I had paparazzi outside my house every single day and it would drive me insane. It took me such a long time to realise: “This is driving you crazy, you really need to stop doing this.”’
Filming in exotic locations that take him out of the public eye looks to be part of Pattinson’s plan. He’s just played TE Lawrence – aka Lawrence of Arabia – in Queen Of The Desert with Nicole Kidman, which took him to Morocco.
Next he’s off to Colombia for The Lost City Of Z, starring as the assistant to famed British explorer Percy Fawcett, played by Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch. ‘It’s going to be an impossible shoot,’ he says. Well, it will be if the fans of these two make it out to the jungle.
Film review: The Rover
Robert Pattinson playing a twitchy American simpleton is just one of this film’s many surprises. Director David Michôd’s follow-up to Animal Kingdom is a riveting crime thriller set in a post-apocalyptic Australian outback, where desperation and isolation have driven everyone slightly bonkers.
Our main man is Eric (Guy Pearce), who silently drives up to a ramshackle boozer. His car is stolen from outside. Pursuing the culprits, he will stop at nothing to get his beat-up banger back, including kidnapping their cohort, Rey (Pattinson).
Why so desperate for the car? That’s one of the many questions posed by this mysterious thriller, which offers an intriguing glimpse into a world without rules – or very few that can be enforced in rural Australia, at least. Michôd doesn’t spoon-feed the audience information about his dystopian culture, instead encouraging us to piece it together.
The result is an absorbing film with bags of atmosphere and shock value. We have little idea of what to expect from this world, which resembles our own but has an even darker heart.
Pearce is exceptional as a hardened man who is a mystery all on his own: enigmatic, monosyllabic, quick-witted, dejected… a loner whose few remaining principles are gradually revealed over the course of the film.
While Pearce is the undoubted star of the show, Pattinson more than holds his own as the stammering young man feeling increasingly abandoned by his brother (Scoot McNairy), who turns to the older man in his company. The Stockholm syndrome that sets in turns this into a bitterly one-sided bromance.
Also making a welcome appearance is Animal Kingdom’s Susan Prior as an independent woman who grudgingly takes in strangers in need, showing Rey the only tenderness he may have seen in a while.
It’s a bleak vision of a lawless society: something we’ve seen before, of course, but Michôd gives it a fresh spin with plenty of food for thought about society, humanity and the consequences of desperation.
source: ToR
*GIFS* of Robert Pattinson with "Film4"... for "The Rover" London Press Junket...
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from Tumblr: mfoc
from Tumblr: feistyangel34
from Tumblr: skateranya
from Tumblr: vanelandia
from Tumblr: mfoc
Rob, Guy and David interview with Film4, The Rover UK promo (x)
from Tumblr: feistyangel34
from Tumblr: skateranya
Robert Pattinson interview with Film4 (The Rover) (x)
*NEW INTERVIEW* of Robert Pattinson... from "The Rover" London Press Junket - Roundtable Interview -
with Guy Pearce and David David Michôd....
from The Hollywood News
honestly... I love these 2 transcripts.. you definitively can feel how the roundtable interview was conduct... and I love the interaction between the 3 of them...
Transcripts...
Having trudged down a lengthy, rubble-strewn path in the baking heat to the train station, it’s safe to say I was in the right frame of mind to talk about THE ROVER. Director David Michôd and stars Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson were in attendance at a thankfully opulent and stress-free location for a quick chat with the world’s press. Laid-back, often amusing and crucially surrounded by free water, they gave us an insight into the making of the most intense Australian road movie since MAD MAX.
Guy Pearce: What are you guys doing in here? (Laughter)
Robert Pattinson: (Putting his shades on the table) Can’t wait to get to a level where I can wear sunglasses…
Journalist: During the day?
RP: During press junkets. (Laughter)
David Michôd: If I ever have a film at Cannes again I’m gonna do that, you get the big photocall and they straight away tell you to…
GP: Take your glasses off.
DM: Take your sunglasses off… The flashes are so intense, so next time if I ever have another film playing Cannes I’m going to be that wanker who wears the sunglasses. (Laughter)
David, after ANIMAL KINGDOM and THE ROVER, when are we going to see you do a romcom? You keep going to dark places.
DM: Yeah. I don’t know why. When I go to the movies I like to have powerful experiences, and for some reason that darkness and menace and sadness is, for me, a powerful experience. Those are the moments, as strange as it sounds, where I get most exhilarated when I’m in an edit room…That’s when I feel my spine tingling. Having said that I would love to have the experience of sitting in the audience watching a movie I’d made that was making people laugh hysterically. I don’t know whether I’m capable but I’d love to give it a try. Having said that…people keep thinking I’m being facetious when I say that I think THE ROVER is really funny. Everything that Rob does especially, in the face of Guy’s relentless abuse…
THN: I should say, in the screening I was at, there was one laugh, and it was when the little guy got shot. (Laughter)
Journalist: I thought your song in the car was really funny Rob.
RP: No…
Journalist: How was that?
RP: I thought it was so funny in the script.
DM: Did it feel funny when you were doing it?
RP: No. I mean, actually…I was trying to telegraph the next scene. I thought it was really brave having that in the script. It was actually a different song first of all, it was The Pussycat Dolls first of all.
David, did you pick that (Pretty Girl Rock by Keri Hilson) because it stuck out so much?
DM: I wanted there to be at that moment, in the film, a particularly dark juncture for Rob’s character, for there to be a moment that reminded the audience of the fact that his character was just a kid who in different circumstances would probably just be listening to music and thinking about girls. It felt very important to me that you just have that one moment. I can also feel it in the movie, just a moment of levity, because the movie can be a little bit…(chuckles) relentlessly grim.
Rob, how did you find working in the Aussie wilderness? Bit of a culture shock?
RP: Kind of. There wasn’t really anyone out there…
DM: There’s no culture…
RP: There was a pub. With an English person working in there. It was incredibly peaceful. You realize the value of your anonymity again and how priceless it is. But also an unusual place as well. A mysticism to the area. It’s not like just being out in nothingness, there’s an intensity to it as well.
DM: It’s corny but it feels weirdly, strangely spiritual. Just because you are surrounded by vast nothingness…And it’s fun being out there too. When you’re shooting in the city you leave work, you have to have a shower because you’ve probably got a dinner to go to. Being out there it was fun not caring about how filthy you were…about what clothes you were wearing.
GP: We were all in the same boat.
THN: Guy, on the subject of clothes, the look of your character is very ‘interesting’. There are certain scenes where you look like an exhumed corpse. How did the look of Eric come together and did you have much input into his overall image?
GP: Well, I mean David had pretty clear ideas about what he wanted, but we also then would discuss…I think the description of the clothes was there in the…To a degree wasn’t it…?
DM: Shirts, shorts and sneakers.
GP: I was excited about just getting to wear one costume for the entire shoot. There’s nothing worse than having to do a quick change.
THN: Did they mess you up a bit before you went on camera, or you just basically went…? (Guy indicates he looks like that normally).
GP: There was a lot of discussions about our haircuts and we tried something, and then David would go “Look it’s nearly, but not right”. I’m just trying to remember the process in the studio in Adelaide. At one point David’s saying: “I really want it to look like you found a blunt pair of old scissors and you just cut it yourself”. So I found a pair of old scissors and cut it myself. I think I might have been drunk.
THN: Well it was very effective.
GP: Absolutely. And you’ve got to take that leap sometimes, to really go to where…you sort of have these ideas about what you think it could be, and maybe it’s this and maybe it’s that, and you realize you’re still operating within some sort of conformity. And eventually you have to go “No, fuck it”, and hope people don’t freak out the next day when you go to work. We did laugh wondering whether people would take on our looks.
Was the atmosphere hushed between takes or was there levity?
GP: It depended what we were doing, but we had fun. We had a good laugh together on set pretty much. I mean, if we were doing a heavy, heavy scene it wasn’t really appropriate to ruin the mood. (Rob mimes interrupting Guy in the middle of a scene) “I’m just killing someone, hang on a second…”
There wasn’t a lot of background about your characters. Did you guys sit down and talk about it?
RP: I’ve suddenly remembered…Do you remember that conversation we had where I wanted to have the tops of his ears snipped off? (Laughs) I’d read this thing about thieves out in the Wild West…And I thought that would be such a great little bit.
GP: What, to be more aerodynamic?
RP: No, it was a punishment.
GP: Oh I see.
Robert, was there anything specific you had to do to get into character?
RP: There was one thing…I only found out later, I didn’t really realize I was doing it, but all the guns were controlled by an armourer, who was obviously very serious about guns, and he got so pissed off when I started playing with the guns…and I realized that was kind of what was getting me into character, annoying the armourer (Laughs).
THE ROVER is released in UK cinemas on August 15th.
from Live for Films
Out in the UK on the 15th of August, The Rover stars Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson. Its based on a story by Joel Edgerton, and written and directed by David Michôd (Animal Kingdom). You can read my review of the film here.
It’s an excellent film, and Pearce and Pattinson are perfect. In a post-financial collapse Australia, Pearce’s Eric is just trying to survive. But, when a gang nick his car he gives unrelenting chase, letting nothing and nobody get between him and his ride.
Along the way he teams up with Pattinson’s Rey. Rey is the brother of one of the car thieves and wants to track down his big bro and find out why he left him for dead on their last job. It’s a tough, dusty thriller with a great central duo of performances and masterful writing and direction.
Pearce, Pattinson and Michôd were all in town to promote the release and, because we’re the best film blog in the UK, I got to rep us at the film’s junket in the posh Corinthia Hotel.
A “round table” interview can suck. Basically, you, the talent and some other journos (anywhere from two to ten) sit around a table (see, clever name) and take turns asking questions.
The reason it can sometimes suck is if the other journos are evil. I’ve done a round table with total bastards who will do anything to stop you getting a word in edge ways. Like I said – sucks.
Luckily, I was in a gang that include the lovely Stuart from Screenjabber, and the equally lovely Craig from The Establishing Shot – so no probs there. Also, the talent, Pearce, Pattinson and Michôd, were great fun. So, yeah, it was brilliant.
Michôd is a total dude and I would love to go and get hammered with him. Guy Pearce was the politest, coolest guy/Guy ever – joking about people’s cameras and responding animatedly and excitedly to all our queries. And Pattinson… Fuck. I’ll level with you. I’ve now got a total man crush on Robert Pattinson. He’d start answering a question brightly, before tailing off and disappearing back inside himself. I just wanted to take him home, feed him pizza, hold him close and tell him that everything is going to be OK.
[Pearce, Pattinson and Michôd enter. Everyone says hello and Pearce starts messing around with the cameras on the table in front of him. Michôd starts talking straight away, while Rob tousles his hair and chooses between still and sparkling water.]
David Michôd: I can’t wait to get to a level where I can where sunglasses…
Guy Pearce: During the day?
David Michôd: During the day! If I ever have a film at Cannes again, I’m gonna do it. You get the photo call and they straight away tell you to take your sunglasses off, and then all the photos of me – I’m doing this [exaggerated squinting]. Next time… I’m gonna be that wanker that wears the sunglasses.
After Animal Kingdom and The Rover, when are we going to see you do something light, like a romcom?
David Michôd: Yeah… When I go to the movies I like to have powerful experiences. For some reason, that darkness and menace and sadness is, for me, a powerful experience. When it’s dark and powerful, that’s when I feel my spine tingling. Having said that… I would love to have the experience of sitting in an audience watching a movie I’d made that was making people laugh!
Robert Pattinson: But people kept saying (about The Rover) yesterday: “it’s a comedy!”
David Michôd: I think The Rover is really funny. Everything Rob does, in the face of Guy’s abuse, is funny!
Live for Films: I thought the song you sing along to in the car was a great, funny moment, Rob. How was that for you?
Robert Pattinson: Yeahhh… I thought that was really brave having that in the script. It was actually a different song in the script. It was The Pussycat Dolls first of all! But yeah, when we found the Keri Wilson song it was… I’d actually never heard it before – I thought it was written for the movie!
Live for Films: What made you pick that particular song, David?
David Michôd: I wanted there to be, in that moment in the film, a particularly dark juncture for Rob’s character. For there to be a moment that reminded the audience of the fact that his character was just a kid, who in different circumstances, would just be listening to music and thinking about girls and… It felt very important to me that you have that one moment of that, and also, you can feel it in the movie – just that moment of levity as well. Because the movie can be a little bit… relentlessly… grim, without those moments of levity.
David, can you tell us about your writing process?
David Michôd: Animal Kingdom took a long time to write, but that was because I was teaching myself to write over those ten years. I started writing it straight out of film school. The first draft of it bears absolutely no resemblance to the finished film at all. There isn’t a single scene, or single line of dialogue, that is still in the movie.
Guy Pearce: It’d be interesting to go and make that original script. With all of us playing different roles!
David Michôd: I’m so glad that I wasn’t a film school wunderkind, because then maybe someone would have thrown money at me to go and make that first draft, and it would have been a disaster! I kept restarting and every time I felt like I was a better writer than the guy who had written the previous draft, so there was no point in me polishing the turd – I should just throw it all out and start again. When I’m left to my own devices, writing is slow. But when I collaborate with people, like Joel (Edgerton), I speeds that process up. Problems that might take me three weeks to solve if I’m by myself, take fifteen minutes to sort when I’m with another person. Also, if you’re writing with someone else, there’s another person waiting for you to say something! If you’re own, you’ll write five words and be like “Phew! I need a break!”
Rob, how did you find working in the Aussie wilderness? Was it a bit of a culture shock?
Robert Pattinson: Errrr… Kind of… I mean, there were… there wasn’t really anyone out there. There wasn’t any culture, just one pub, with an English person running it!
Was it nice to get away from all the hysteria and cameras – that side of things?
Robert Pattinson: Err, yeah. Definitely. We just kind of… it was incredibly peaceful. Just sort of… you really realise the value of your anonymity again, and how kind of priceless it is. But, yeah. Also it was kind of an unusual place as well, because there’s a mysticism to the area. It’s not just being out in nothingness – there’s an intensity to it as well. Yeah, it was really fun being out there.
David Michôd: It’s corny, but it feels weirdly spiritual being out there because the vast nothingness is…
Robert Pattinson: Like savage.
David Michôd: When you’re working in the city, you’ll work and go home and have a shower if you’ve got a dinner to go to. Being out there, it was fun not caring about any of that. Not caring about how filthy you are. Not caring about what clothes you were wearing.
Guy Pearce: Yeah. I never get to wear shorts in normal life! [everyone laughs]
Guy, on the subject of your look in the film, how did that come together, and did you have much input into your image?
Guy Pearce: David had pretty clear ideas about what he wanted. I think the description of the clothes was there… in the script… to a degree, wasn’t it?
David Michôd: Well, yeah. Shirt, shorts and sneakers! [everyone laughs]
Guy Pearce: I was excited about getting to wear just one costume the whole time! [everyone laughs]
Was there much prep before you went on camera, did they have to mess you up a bit, or were you just ready to go?
Guy Pearce: You think I just look like that?! [everyone laughs] I remember there being a lot of discussion about our haircuts. At some point, I remember David saying “I just want it to look like you found an old, blunt pair of scissors, and you just cut it yourself!” So I found a pair of old scissors [everyone laughs]. I think I might have been drunk [everyone laughs]. You’ve gotta take that leap sometimes. Sometimes you just have to say “Fuck it. Do it.” And hope people don’t freak out the next day when you go back to work! [everyone laughs]
Was the atmosphere like while you were filming?
Guy Pearce: It depended what you were doing. We had fun, but if we were doing a heavy, heavy scene and it wasn’t appropriate, you couldn’t be like…
Robert Pattinson: Hey, hey, hey, hey! [Rob starts pretending to finger jab Guy's ribs to put him off]
Guy Pearce: Hang on! Let me just shoot these guys!
What about your character’s look, Rob? Tell us about that.
Robert Pattinson: I suddenly remembered, that I’d been calling you (David) up since the audition process, because I wanted my character to have had the tops of his ears cut off. I’d read this thing about thieves – in the wild west – how they’d have the tops of their ears snipped off.
Guy Pearce: For what? To be more aerodynamic? [everyone laughs]
Robert Pattinson: No! As a punishment! If you were a thief. Now, I’m like thank God you (David) didn’t like that, or I’d have had to always wear these prosthetic ears!
Rob, was there anything specific you did to get into character?
Robert Pattinson: Umm… no, yeah. Well, there was this one thing. I only just found out, I didn’t really realise I was doing it, but there was this… All the gun’s were controlled by this armourer – who’s obviously very serious about guns – and he’d get so pissed off because I would always play with the guns! I didn’t realise, but that was me getting into character: annoying the armourer! [everyone laughs]
Guy Pearce: [doing Rob's voice] I’m sorry, I have to do this. I’m an actor.
Robert Pattinson: But that was my character – he’d be constantly being told off. I’d keep clicking the hammer and breaking it, and could see him in the corner getting so angry with me. That was how I got into character – by irritating people!
Guy, how was it for you to work on an Australian film again?
Guy Pearce: Fantastic. Obviously. Because I got to work with David again. Someone said to me “Oh, it must be great working at home again?” and I said “Well, I live in LA, not the south Aussie outback!” [everyone laughs] So it was quite a schlep to get home! There are certain rhythms that I only get into when I’m playing Australian characters. But this is an extreme character, not your average, everyday Aussie!
David Michôd: Like you can wear it a little bit. Like it’s a comfortable jacket or something.
Live for Films: The ending is pretty devastating, Guy. What was you reaction to it when you first read the script?
Guy Pearce: I really struggled, primarily, with who this guy was. So I thought the ending was fantastic, but then I had to go back through the whole thing, looking for who this guy was – that drove everything for me. I thought it was the most beautiful idea that you’re sent on this particular journey for a reason that you don’t get to understand right until the very end. That it’s something so personal, and so representative of various elements of who we are. That that (the thing at the end that I’m not spoiling) was so important to this guy said so much about who this guy was. So I thought it was a genuinely suRobert Pattinsonrising and beautifully sad… I don’t want to call it a “twist”, it’s not a twist, but a piece of the puzzle. So I was really taken with it.
And then our time was up and we were all really sad that our time with those guys was over.
Don’t forget. The Rover. Is excellent. Is out on the 15th.
Huge thanks to Alex from Entertainment One UK for hooking us up, and huger still thanks to Guy, Rob and David for being so cool, charming and accommodating.
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