Congratulations on the film. Thanks again.
I wanted to ask you, I've always curious about
when you started, when you made Whiplash, you made the short film
and then you did the film and you put it to Sundance.
And it was quite a quick turnaround of all the stuff that you did
as that experience helped you as a filmmaker, to do something like this
where it's such a big kind of sprawling epic,
if you like, has that experience and the things that you had to do back
then kind of helped you to get to the point
that you're at now and to make something like this?
Yeah.
Ironically, it's like even though this was
like the longest shoot I've done, it was
it felt like the fastest paced shoot that I'd done since Whiplash.
It felt like returning to a whiplash kind of energy.
We all had to sort of put our are like indie film hats on
because the movie needed to look and feel
way, way more expensive than it was
and way bigger than it actually was until you find ways to cheat that.
And those are all the tricks, you know, that you learn in the,
you know, those sort of no budget to low budget indie film days.
So I definitely, you know,
leaned back on those tricks and then, you know, things I've learned from.
Yeah, every movie I've done
and even the scripts I'd written for other folks and stuff kind of.
I think in retrospect, I needed all those experiences and,
you know, a learning curves to, to, to, to make this happen.
Yeah, I always loved when I saw some of the behind the scenes of La la Land.
When you did the first sequence, you shot it on your iPhone,
which you know when you choreographed and everything else.
Then I read that you did something similar for this in some in some shape or form.
I mean, yeah, it was less or less to map out camera moves on this.
It was more just working with Diego Calva, the actor, is sort of,
you know, I wanted to kind of really craft the character of Manny
and his arc with Diego and sort of find it in an organic way. So
yeah, I wound up doing every scene with them.
My my wife, Olivia Hamilton, a producer on the film,
played all the other parts and
the hundred and 30 or so other parts, and Diego did all his scenes.
He filmed it all in the iPhone.
So yeah, there's like a two hour, two and a half hour version
iPhone version of the movie.
That's it's quite good news.
I say
I wouldn't recommend it over the finished
project, but but you know, for an iPhone shot thing
where, you know, gunshots are signified by me yelling bang, bang,
and the entire world is constricted to a backyard
filled with kids toys.
You know, it's yeah, I'm quite proud of it.
It's some of my finest work.
I was talking to Margot Robbie and Diego Calva earlier and mentioned to them
that the scene, the port, the house down in the screen I was in was the scene
where Mother first comes in a soundstage and there's all that stuff going on.
Was that from was that from an experience in your... nightmares
Yeah, I think all of us have
one good thing
about making a movie, about making movies.
We all have our experiences we can lean on
and everyone has had that worst day ever on a set.
I remember one day, you know, where all day
we had to film, you know, many, many shots as about 3 minutes of,
you know, screen time, which is a lot of footage to capture.
And by the end of the day, we hadn't caught a single shot.
We hadn't rolled a single frame of film and,
you know, so you get to the end and you feel very well.
You feel like a failure.
And then, of course, you look back and there's something kind of funny
about it, because as the day goes on, the desperation just kind of rises and rises.
It's like this pressure cooker.
There's this great quote, you know, crews say all the time, every movie.
It's Gone with the Wind in the Morning and Dukes of Hazzard by Sunset.
And that's kind of, you know, that you go in with grand
illusions of what you're going to you know, we're just going to put on
you know, it's going to be a masterpiece of epic filmmaking,
pristine craft that we're going to do here.
And by the end of the day, you're just running and gunning.
You don't care what the hell you're getting.
You just need to get the shot. Go, go, go.
It's it's like trying to paint with a gun to your head.
It's too weird.
Film sets are a weird organism because imagine.
Well, I really enjoyed it. So thank you so much for that. Thank you.
Nice talking to you.