Deadline Hollywood - Sponsored Issue - Paramount Pictures - 2017

PROMOTIONAL ISSUE PRESENTED BY

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best director alexander payne

best original screenplay alexander payne & jim taylor

best actor matt damon

best supporting actress hong chau kristen wiig

best original song “a little change in the weather� lyrics by

rolfe kent, edward randell, joanna goldsmith-eteson music by

rolfe kent performed by

the swingles

best sound mixing sound mixer

greg chapman re-recording mixers

patrick cyccone | tony lamberti

best supporting actor christoph waltz

best sound editing supervising sound editor

best cinematography phedon papamichael, asc, gsc

best production design production designer

stefania cella set decorator

patricia larman

best film editing kevin tent, ace

best costume design wendy chuck

best original score rolfe kent

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mark stoeckinger

best makeup and hairstyling makeup department heads

julie hewett | patricia keighran hair department head

cliona furey makeup artist to matt damon

chrissie beveridge hairstylist to matt damon

kay georgiou

best visual effects visual effects supervisors

james e. price lindy de quattro (ilm) ara khanikian (rodeo fx) stephane naze (framestore)

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FIRST TAKE

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T Bone Burnett and Ryan Tedder on creating the title track for An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power.

FEATURES

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DOWNSIZING Alexander Payne and his team craft a little world with big possibilities.

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SUBURBICON Get to know the costume designer and production designer behind George Clooney's '50s satire.

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MOTHER! Darren Aronofsky on the art and amibition of his conversation-starting parable.

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AN INCOVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER Join husband-and-wife filmmaking team Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk on their journey of hope with Al Gore.

FINAL FRAME

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Hong Chau: She's gonna be big!

One of the year's most impressive newcomers talks about her role in Alexander Payne's Downsizing.

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POWER DUET T Bone Burnett and Ryan Tedder found gospel inspiration for An Inconvenient Sequel’s title track “Truth To Power”.

BY ANTONIA BLYTH

WHILE T BONE BURNETT

is a well-known ace music producer for many score-centric films and TV shows—Crazy Heart, Walk the Line, Inside Llewyn Davis and Nashville, to name a few—Ryan Tedder, lead singer of the band One Republic, has been more of a stealth creative force in the industry. In recent years, Tedder has quietly been owning the charts, writing hits for big name artists like Adele, Beyonce, Madonna, U2, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez and Ariana Grande.

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MUSIC MAKERS T Bone Burnett (this image) and Ryan Tedder (opposite).

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So, when looking for the right songwriter to pen and perform the title music for Al Gore’s new Oscar-buzzy doc, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Burnett landed on Tedder as a clear choice, because, he says, “I think we come from a very similar place. I think philosophically we’re close and he’s also a great singer, he’s a great songwriter, and I certainly think the subject matter demands that.”

The Bonni Cohen/Jon Shenkdirected film follows 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth and takes another, updated look at the state of environmental affairs. Part of the reason Tedder was so keen to get on board with the second film was down to how deeply the first affected him. “I felt like it should be shown in schools,” he says.

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Melissa Etheridge’s song “I Need to Wake Up” won her an Oscar for the first film, so was there a feeling of pressure to write and produce an award-winning song? “I would welcome any attention that could be brought to this film and to this subject,” Burnett says, “so if the awards can help focus people around this even for five minutes then I think it’s an important reality.

Other than that, I’m sure the songs will last longer than the awards.”

Tedder, who was nominated for a Golden Globe earlier this year for his song “Faith” on the Sing soundtrack, also says awards don’t really come into the creative songwriting process.

“You don’t start writing music or making movies to win Grammys or Oscars,” he says. “They’re kind of

"THE MUSIC BECOMES THE INNER DIALOGUE. MAYBE IT'S THE INNER DIALOGUE OF AL GORE, BUT MAYBE IT'S THE INNER DIALOGUE OF THE PLANET."

the by-products of some of these things that are out of your control.”

The pair had never actually met before, and it wasn’t until Tedder sat next to the head of film and television for Interscope Records on a plane, and he raised the subject of the film needing a title track, that the collaboration came together.

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GLOBAL IMPACT Al Gore presents his new lecture on climate change.

Right: An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 24.

Tedder and Burnett co-wrote the resulting track “Truth to Power”—a song that tells the tale of betrayal from the viewpoint of the betrayed: our planet. “I believe in God,” Tedder says, “I believe in a higher power, and I believe that God created Earth and in a way, anytime you’re handed off something as beautiful as the planet we live on, we have a responsibility to care for it.”

The sound of “Truth to Power” is evocative of gospel, which speaks to the influence of church music in the lives of both men.

“In any given church you go to, Baptist, non-denominational, Pentecostal,” Tedder says, “you see the musicians quietly creep back up on stage and start playing in very hushed tones, and it builds

and it builds. For me, that what’s this music had to do, it kind of has to usher you in, and crescendo; start off in the valley and end up in the peaks. I was kind of reaching back and trying to pull from chords that felt more ecclesiastical, I guess you could say. And T Bone and I just went back and forth figuring out the exact arrangement of the song.”

The result is a rising and memorable anthem. So what are the magic ingredients for a great title track for a film? “When you’re putting music to image,” Burnett says, “the music becomes maybe the other dialogue of the character, or in this case, the inner dialogue of the film. Maybe it’s the inner dialogue of Al Gore, but maybe it’s the inner dialogue of the planet.

I think that’s the way this song went. But for music to work, it has to be connected to the character or the thing that’s happening. The most successful, in title songs for instance, are songs that grow right out of the story. It doesn’t have to be literally about the story, but it somehow grows out of the emotion, the intelligence of what’s come before it.”

Ultimately, the pair were keen to do justice to a project they really believed in. Tedder compares the tireless work Gore is doing to that of a preacher. “It’s not just about movies, I mean he’s preaching this. He is the master at what he’s doing. I feel that if there’s anything I can do to shed light on this topic I want to do it, because it absolutely affects all of us.” ★ D E A D L I N E .C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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t first glance, Downsizing appears to eschew the real-world topics director Alexander Payne and screenwriter Jim Taylor are best known for, with films like Nebraska, The Descendants and Sideways, telling a heightened tale about a world in which humankind opts to shrink down in order to save the planet. “It’s a different take on the similar themes we've explored before," says Payne.." A shmuck from Omaha who sees that his aspirations are quite different from his reality.”

Still, it’s true that Payne plays way outside his comfort zone with the film, which required that he learn the process of visual effects, and rethink his approach to so many other aspects of the production. “The science fiction premise just seemed really delightful to us,” he says. “As delightful as two guys going wine tasting in Santa Barbara County the week before one of them is to be married.”

Taking an exclusive look behind the scenes, Payne

A BIG COLLAB

Alexander Payne introduces the crew who helped him realize the world he builds in his new film. By Joe Utichi

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LONG TIME COLLABORATORS Director Alexander Payne and his DP Phedon Papamichael on the set of Downsizing.

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introduces us to the key creatives whose work informed Downsizing.

VISUAL EFFECTS “Jim Taylor and I allowed our imaginations to go wherever they would take us when we were writing the script. Then we were lucky enough to find a fellow named James Price to be our visual effects czar.

From the first time we tried to get financing in 2009, until we finally

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got financing in late 2015, he stayed with the project, consulting. The fact it took so long to get financing, he tells me, allowed time for some bits of technology to develop that we may not otherwise have been able to use.

“We don’t use too much forced perspective, because the people and their world were a bit too small to do that. A lot of it was building, as much as we could afford to. You

build what you can, and then do digital set extension.

“James and his visual effects producer Susan MacLeod made it fun and delightful for me.”

CINEMATOGRAPHY “I charged James, and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, with, as much as possible, tricking me into making me think I was making a ‘real’ movie; the same movie

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SCALE MODELS Left: A nurse oversees some newly downsized citizens.

Below: Payne and Damon.

without visual effects. I wanted them to be so real as to be banal.

I wanted the feel of the world we were creating to be very lived-in. I didn’t want the seams to show.”

PRODUCTION DESIGN “Jim and I had envisioned a lot of ‘Leisure Land’, where Matt Damon’s character goes to live, in the screenplay. Stefania Cella, our very talented production designer, is a

multi-purpose production designer.

She’s Italian, and she has some training in, amongst other things, architecture and urban design. I charged her with hiring some urban designers and architects whom she could supervise and said, ‘If Walt Disney were coming to you with an idea for Epcot—the city of the future—what would that be?’

“Jim and I knew we wanted it oval-shaped, and where certain

things would be to tell the story correctly. The Visitors’ Center at the north side, the workers living to the south, both inside the walls of the city and then outside in a kind of bootleg city.

“We built an entire wooden model of the town that is present in the film, but only from a distance.

A lot of time, talent and effort went into creating Leisureland and what they built was extraordinary.

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Above: Leisureland. Right: Udo Kier and Christoph Waltz in a scene from Downsizing.

PROPS

COLOR TIMING

"You can’t talk about production design without mentioning David Gulick, the property master, who created all the objects that actors hold and touch. I was super blessed to work with him.

He came up with the spatulas in the downsizing sequence.

He came up with the giant saltines, and the big rings and the keepsake box. The vision I needed from a property master was immense."

“There’s one other crew member I have to talk about. His name is Skip Kimball, and he’s the colorist at Technicolor. He did Nebraska and he does James Cameron’s movies. He’s very much in demand. He’s essential to finishing the aesthetic that Phedon and I stipulate, and also in making sure the visual effects shots work, because a large part of selling visual effects, I learned, was about getting the color timing correct.”

REAL PEOPLE COSTUME DESIGN “This is my sixth feature with the great Wendy Chuck. We started together on Election. Everyone can notice that, on a doll’s clothing, the fabric falls differently and with less detail than it has at our scale. We wanted to have some sense of that stiffer, almost burlap-like texture to the quality of the textiles.

“We couldn’t go crazy with it, because we had thousands of people to clothe. And that, too, was a new thing for me to deal with: thousands of extras. I wonder, again, whether people will notice the level of detail, but unconsciously I think its presence helps sell the reality of the film.”

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“I’ve always been a stickler for detail on all of my films. I don’t have 555 phone numbers, I have to use real phone numbers. I cast a lot of nonactors because they hold the jobs that are indicated in the screenplay. I like to take a documentary approach to filmmaking, and that extended now not to a world I found, but to one I was telling a team to create.

In the big downsizing sequence, where Matt is shaved and given a colonic, we had male and female nurses doing all of that work. Later, the ladies who are spatula-ing up the downsized bodies are actors, but I had them come in for a few days ahead to train so that their actions were second nature to them by the time we shot. ★

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SUBURBAN ICONS Main image: Julianne Moore plays the dual roles of sisters Rose and Margaret in Suburbicon.

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sed to working with George Clooney in front of the camera, costume designer Jenny Eagan first experienced the Oscar winner as a director on Suburbicon, where the directive was clear: “Anonymity and sameness,” masking the darkness simmering under the surface of a community that is more Fargo than Pleasantville.

What was the directive from George Clooney as to how the film’s costumes would look?

It was very much on the page. He’s very trusting of people in their positions, but it was sort of there, feeling those advertisements from the ’50s. That beautiful, colorful—for lack of a better term, perfect—family lifestyle. It was about the “Happy Family ‘50s,” if you will.

What is your research process when preparing for a period project?

I start with the Internet, but I love reference books. I have special bookstores that I have been to for years that are very helpful in knowing what they have in stock, what’s out of print, and things

E ’50S FAMILY Suburbicon costume designer Jenny Eagan on costuming the quintessential American community. By Matt Grobar D E A D L I N E .C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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they can find for you. It’s a very open dialogue with them about what I’m looking for, and they bring to me an inspiration that maybe you wouldn’t have thought of.

I still really like “old schooling.” I like going through magazine articles or newspaper clippings from years back, because it gives you things that you wouldn’t necessarily find on the internet—little, special things.

Were there particular sources of inspiration when crafting costumes for Suburbicon?

There’s a lot of great things in costume houses that are readily available, mainly for your background. You can find a lot of things that may not be usable because they’re not in such great shape, but they’re inspirational, and you can make them, seeing how the pieces come together.

[Inspiration] comes from collectors, people that I’ve known through the years, and finding those pieces. There were a lot of catalogues that we drew from, because this was more of a suburban atmosphere, rather than a New York City dwelling—more Sears and Roebuck, and Montgomery Ward. JCPenney catalogues were very inspiring for looking for what the people in the suburbs might order. People tend to look very similar when you’re in the same place.

What’s the secret to creating costumes that don’t feel like costumes?

I always come from a very simple, grounded place, and my research always starts from where does this take place, what are the people like there? This one specifically was a little more hyper-real than most things I’ve done in the past.

Also, whether it be a background person or a principal, I look at who they are.

You create their backstory, rather than thinking, Well, this is what’s on the page.

I always like to give somebody true-life stories. These things are always the most important. ★

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CRAFTING

FAMILY VALUES Above: Matt Damon and Noah Jupe.

Right: Jupe and Tony Espinosa.

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n his fifth collaboration with George Clooney, Oscarnominated production designer Jim Bissell pursued a vision of dark ’50s Americana, cobbling together a sense of visual geography out of disparate Southern California locations. Achieving his big break with E.T. 35 years ago, Bissell reflects on commonalities between the two films, and the aspects of his job that haven’t changed.

What personally resonated with you about Suburbicon?

I grew up in a suburban neighborhood in North Carolina. I’m a little bit older than George, so I lived during that era and I shared George’s feeling, which was that in the ’50s and ’60s, there was an awful lot of white privilege and hypocrisy. It was going to be interesting to try to delineate that in a non-romantic, non-stylized way.

Suburbicon production designer Jim Bissell discusses his varying portraits of Americana. By Matt Grobar

FTING AMERICANA

You’ve frequently explored different epochs of Americana in your work. As a designer, are the ’50s comfortably within your wheelhouse?

Having come from a suburban background, I bring certain experiences and insights into it, and it wasn’t lost on me that there was a little bit of an interesting bookend—that my breakthrough film was E.T., and now at 66, I’m doing this show. In some ways, I was trying to bring the same sensibility. These are the kind of things you want to set against a bit of a magical background, as well as a realistic background—and this was the dark underbelly of that.

It was interesting to read that George Clooney is someone who meticulously draws out his shots.

It’s a very iterative process, and a very satisfying one for a designer. Any director that can put a pencil to paper… whether they do it well or not, it doesn’t make too much of a difference. The hardest part is starting that process of taking something out of your head and sticking it onto paper.

So many directors will give you the line, “I don’t quite know what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it.”

That makes it really difficult because the translation of ideas is very complex, and you can wind up dealing with somebody who just wants to wander through a visual supermarket and make choices.

But with someone like George, it’s not inefficient at all. I’ll give him a crude model in 3D and say, “Here’s where the entrance is, this is the kind of visual we would have at the entrance,” and he’ll instantly see it. ★ D E A D L I N E .C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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arren Aronofsky wears the polarizing reaction to his new film, mother!, like a badge of honor. It is, after all, an ambitious journey into themes most mainstream cinema struggles to corral, and the film remains true to Aronofsky’s vision for it. Aronofsky’s film explores both the nightmarish interior of the relationship between Mother (Jennifer Lawrence) and her writer husband (Javier Bardem), and the surreally-sinister cult Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer’s characters bring into Mother’s home. The director describes it as, “a very human story of the horror of divorce when the home is invaded,” and it’s also an allegory of humanity’s impact on the planet, using stories of the Bible as a structural tool.

Darren Aronofsky on the lofty ambition charging his new film. By Joe Utichi

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OH m

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CENTERED Main image: Jennifer Lawrence plasters over the cracks in her home sanctuary. Left: Darren Aronofsky.

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You use some elements of the horror genre–the home invasion and the haunted house. Were you looking to show it through a different kind of lens?

Well I’m very interested in genres, and genre filmmaking. I can’t say that my films ever come out as real genre films, but I love genre elements, because I think that audiences respond well to them. I think upending them and twisting them is how you create something new for people, so they aren’t seeing the same old type of movie.

And that’s always been my interest, trying to do things differently, in a unique way.

Was it a tough sell in a market that’s so traditional?

I think history has shown us that a lot of the most interesting films that end up with a ridiculous amount

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of success, in both the critical realm and in the financial realm, are films that don’t quite fit into exact models. That is where the art in show business sort of shows up sometimes. When I was making Black Swan, the big critique from all the studios was, “Look, ballet fans don’t like horror, and horror fans don’t like ballet.” But I think it was the combination of those two things that put the film over the top.

Were you surprised by the reaction to it, or did you expect that to some degree?

We always knew we were making a film that was very aggressive, that was very much in the audience’s face, that was very unapologetic, and that went to very extreme places. The reason for that, I think, was, as filmmakers, we’re competing now with so many other

screens. Even when people are watching our movies, they’re off and on a cellphone, or iPad, getting other types of information at the same time. So, my strategy has always been to make stuff that is very extreme, very intense, so that audiences are captivated by it. To me, the one thing I know about this movie is no one’s ever bored, and that to me was the success.

I wanted to really fully engage people. But, then again, by doing that, we were doing something very, very different and very weird, and there were a lot of people that just weren’t ready for that. I think when you put such big movie stars into a movie, even though the performances are exceptional, people expect that they’re going to see a certain type of film, and we upend that by really playing with people’s expectations. So we

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HOME UNDER THE HAMMER Lawrence panics as Javier Bardem (top center) indulges his ego and Michelle Pfeiffer & Ed Harris invade (above).

Inset: Aronofsky on set.

knew we would have a tremendous amount of pushback. When you throw punches out at the audience, some people are going to love it, and some people are going to want to punch back.

A lot of people saw you in the Javier Bardem character, but in fact, could all of the characters be aspects of your thinking?

Absolutely. I mean, I’m every character in every one of my movies.

I’m not a ballerina, but I definitely was the ballerina in Black Swan.

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I’m not a wrestler, but I was definitely Mickey Rourke’s character in The Wrestler. I think that what you have to do as a filmmaker is depict yourself in every one of these characters. Especially when you’re the writer, you’re bringing them all to life with emotions that you really feel.

We stay so close to Jennifer Lawrence’s viewpoint; at times, it feels almost voyeuristic.

We wanted to try to make, for the first time in my career, a fully subjective movie, a film that was always, always with Jennifer. Every single moment of the film, the goal was to make the audience connect to whatever emotion she was feeling, so I wasn’t really trying to be voyeuristic, I was just trying to capture the character and who she was. When you see her in a slightly see-through nightgown, the idea is that she was just comfortable at home, and she’s at peace with her world.

How important is it to find actors like Lawrence and Bardem for these roles?

Jennifer was completely game and excited to do that from the beginning. She’s a young actor who’s done some amazing stuff, but by no means has done anything near what she’s going to get done and accomplish in her career, so I think she was game to go all the way. And Javier, I don’t think can help but try to be truthful, and real, and emotional every moment. ★

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OCTAGON Constructing Mother's house twice, on the soundstage (this image) and on location (right).

• Darren Aronofsky wrote the first draft of mother! in five days. “It poured out of me like a fever dream,” he said.

• Production on Paramount’s allegorical nightmare was preceded by a rigorous three-month rehearsal period in a Brooklyn warehouse, an experience that was a first for Aronofsky. There were no walls in the rehearsal space, with chalk and tape outlines on the floor standing in for the space the crew would build.

• Working from a scale blueprint of the film’s house, Aronofsky and DP Matthew Libatique shot a frame-by-frame test version of the film to focus their approach to camera choreography.

• A central character in the film is the house, which was inspired by research into octagonal Victorian homes, and was ultimately built twice in Montreal.

• At one stage, the first floor was built out in a field for daylight scenes. Subsequently, the entire three-story house was built on a soundstage, enabling a visual transition from light to darkness.

• Editor Andy Weisblum faced one of the greatest challenges of his career on the project, unable to employ his usual “bag of tricks,” due to the film’s subjective nature, its tendency to operate in long, complicated takes and a particularly limited range of options in the coverage. All told, 66 minutes of the film’s runtime is made of close-ups on Mother.

• The exclamation mark in the title refers to the final, frenzied 30 minutes of the film.

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Surpising facts from the making of Darren Aronofsky’s home invasion thriller

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mOTHER! OF INVENTION

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ICE CAPPED Main image: Al Gore explores polar erosion.

Right: Shenk and Cohen on location.

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POST-POLITICAL  V 26

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hinking about directing An Inconvenient Sequel—the follow-up to Davis Guggenheim’s Oscar-winning documentary—Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk were initially overwhelmed, not only by the prospect of living up to that film, but by the ever increasing urgency around climate change, and the sense that there is nothing to be done about it.

Meeting with Al Gore in preparation, the pair were swept up in the former Vice President’s action-driven optimism, becoming aware of sweeping advancements in Gore’s “Sustainability Revolution” and recognizing that change is still possible. Though climate change is at our doorstep, so too are the solutions, if only we will step up to employ them.

An Inconvenient Sequel directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk on their journey of hope with Al Gore

By Matt Grobar

L VICE PRESIDENT D E A D L I N E .C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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AROUND THE WORLD Above, from left: Shenk films the ice; Cohen with Gore and Shenk; capturing Gore in the environment.

What was your thought process in figuring out your take on An Inconvenient Sequel?

Jon Shenk: Bonni and I have been making character-driven documentaries for a long time, including a climate change-related film called The Island President, where we followed President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives in his crusade to save his country from sea level rise.

We had this incredible

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experience where we went to Nashville to meet Al before we started the project and received the 10-hour version of his famous slide show. That got us pretty full of despair, but in the later part of the day, Al started educating us about how far we’ve come with the “Sustainability Revolution,” as he calls it. Bonni and I were blown away by how far we’ve come since the original film, with solutions.

That kind of hope/despair tension seemed like a natural kind of drama that didn’t exist 10 years ago.

What was it like working closely with Al Gore, and what is your take on him now, having done so?

Bonni Cohen: When we thought about trying to follow him, we thought, Oh my god, we have

access to the inner workings of somebody who really has the ability to talk across all these disciplines— business, politics, the environment, all of it—and try and affect change.

That was the grist for our mill.

He is relentless in his energy.

We’re much younger than he is, and we could barely keep up with him, honestly. He wants everything to move quickly; he can get very frustrated when it doesn’t. But at the same time, he has enormous optimism, because he knows that the way to affect change—which he’s done over his lifetime— is to chip away day-by-day, moment-by-moment.

In the film, Gore refers to himself as a “recovering politician,” someone who is post-political.

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Does it strike you as interesting that climate change is regarded as a political matter, rather than a universal human issue?

Shenk: Climate science and the way humans impact the earth really should never have been a political issue. It’s one of those things that probably should have been closer to infrastructure that we build for our societies—it’s so basic.

Obviously, when it comes to fossil fuels, it’s more entrenched and more of a difficult problem.

You have the money that came from the fossil fuel companies that really poisoned the debate, and politicized it, as you say. I think that viewers, when they see the film, are really surprised at Al, because he’s a man who is beyond the politics. He truly only cares about moving the

needle on making a healthier planet.

Cohen: Because the solutions are in place, there’s a little bit of, “Let’s get over all of the vernacular and the language that has caused us to become entrenched in our polarizing positions.” When given the opportunity, he’s able to speak to lots of different kinds of constituencies. He understands where we’ve come from, but he gets that the solutions are here, and we just have to act on them quickly.

What do you hope people will take away from this film?

Cohen: We have a scene that didn’t show up in the film that is between Al and Jerry Taylor, who used to run energy for the Cato Institute, which is probably one of the more conservative think tanks

in the country.

The two of them sat down together in Atlanta, and this is a guy who’s now completely onboard— who understands that climate change is man-made and is trying to do something about it.

He said to Al that there are many more Republicans who are on the brink of crossover, and they just have to figure out how to do it. What there is to be optimistic about, we feel, is that people like Al Gore are continuing to activate around parts of the argument that can really make sense across the aisle, which are the economic arguments, primarily. To actually see people turn and change their opinion because of that is enough to give us hope that we can really turn this around. ★ D E A D L I N E .C O M / AWA R D S L I N E

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HONG CHAU How an unknown with just one movie credit to her name became the breakout star of Alexander Payne’s festival hit Downsizing.

BY DAMON WISE

How did you get the part of Ngoc Lan Tran, a one-legged Vietnamese activist?

I did the traditional audition. I went in and I read for the casting director, John Jackson. It was right before Thanksgiving and he told me I probably wouldn’t hear anything for two months, until after the holidays were over, because Alexander was up in Toronto prepping the film. But I heard two days later that Alexander had seen my tape and was flying back to Los Angeles to meet me. We met and had some soup, and it was just … nice. We didn’t really talk about the movie at all, or the character even. I think Alexander just wanted to know who I was. Actually, the funny thing that he said to me was, “I wanted to know whose child this is.” [Laughs] A charming and very Alexander way to say it.

You have a very specific accent in the film. How did you develop it?

It’s a combination of things.

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She is a heightened character, but she also needs to be very grounded and feel authentic. A great source of inspiration came from my family, because they are Vietnamese refugees, and also from my community in New Orleans, where I grew up—it’s predominantly Vietnamese, refugees and immigrants. So I had an ear for the accent, and also Vietnamese is my first language. I was actually born in Thailand and my parents didn’t speak English, so I grew up speaking Vietnamese and learned English later.

Did you improvise or add anything?

Oh no. It’s a little bit of a red flag to me when I hear that there will be improvisation, because it either means that the script is not finished or it means that they don’t have a clear idea of what they want. Look, Alexander and Jim [Taylor] worked on that script for 10 years, so it was all right there on the page. ★

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“ aronofsky is a virtuoso of mood and timing…

he ingeniously braids his movie’s hermeneutic structure into its plot. his gift for escalation may be unmatched in his generation of filmmakers.” a. o. scott, the new york times

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