- All right, welcome to "The Corner Booth".
This is really exciting.
First of all, I loved your movie.
- Thank you.
- That's good to know.
- Fernando Meirelles and Anthony McCarten the screenwriter.
(bright jazz music)
- You think you know better?
- I'm Argentinian.
How does an Argentinian kill himself?
He climbs to the top of his ego and jumps off.
- You met him, briefly?
- No it's just shook hands. - A handshake.
- Did you feel something when you met him?
- Totally, I mean I tried to tell him that I was
making a film on him.
He really couldn't care less (laughs).
Just ignored me.
- Had he seen any of your films?
- It's a film, it's a big film,
it's Anthony Hopkins and he said,
"Oh nice, nice."
Then off he went.
- Speaking English is exhausting.
- So how did this happen?
Make the two popes?
- I had this idea for a story.
It had come to me when I was in Rome.
I was in St. Peter's square and Francis was giving
an opening of mass.
In 2013, Benedict shattered a 700 year old
tradition by resigning.
- I'm going to resign.
- Resign from what?
- Probably the most traditional pope of the modern era.
Why would he do the most untraditional
thing and resign?
- No, it was shocking.
I remember when that happened.
That was a huge moment.
- Popes don't resign. - Ever.
- That's one of the defining aspects of a pope.
They have to die on the job.
- Forgive me, but...
- But?
- Where did you shoot all the stuff in the Vatican?
- So our main set was the Sistine Chapel.
So we built a Sistine Chapel, a replica.
Perfect replica in Cinecitta.
- In Cinecitta?
- Yeah, yeah, it was amazing set.
Really looks like, the textures, everything.
- [Anthony] Five centimeters bigger than the real center.
- Yes, bigger, yes.
The biggest Sistine Chapel in the world (laughs).
- If I was pope, I'd be in here everyday.
- Ah, what else?
- What?
- Going into this,
what was your desire for audiences?
And for you writing this and the story.
Did you want to change minds about something
or did you want to open minds? - No, not really.
- Was there an intention?
- Not really, you really just follow your own
fascinations and curiosity and that's all I've
done in my career is just, I enter projects that I'm
curious to know more about.
What interested me fundamentally about these two men
is that they're very different people.
- So what matters is what you believe,
but not what the Church has taught for hundreds of years.
- No, no, no, no.
- One falls very firmly into a conservative camp
and one is firmly in a progressive camp.
- Where you live is a criticism.
Your shoes are a criticism.
- You don't like my shoes?
- We know from their stated positions that they're
diametrically opposed on almost everything.
To put them into dialogues seemed to be
therefore offer the potential at least to speak
to the conversation that's happening at large
in the world.
Do we want a monolith that we all respect?
Because it doesn't change.
Or, actually, do we need to be dynamic?
Do we need to embrace the idea of change and with
all its inherent dangers?
Because there's so much uncertainty with change.
Dialectic if you like.
Is at the heart of the story.
- You think the Church is failing?
- We are losing people.
- Are those the fault of the Church,
not of Western relatives or more permissiveness,
or what do they say now?
Oh yes, anything goes.
- There is something very interesting because we don't
like to hear people with whom we disagree.
And the film's about trying and learning
how to listen to the other one.
- I don't with any, well most of the things you
say, think, or do, but,
now I can see it.
- I don't agree with you but I could be wrong,
and allowing that you could be wrong is a quality--
- It's brilliant, it should be, yeah.
- Quality we need in leaders that they may possibly
be wrong and be open.
- I love the pizza scene.
- Thank you, Lord, for this food that we enjoy here
in this place outside of time.
- Amen.
- It's good.
- The idea that those two popes are going to just,
and having a Fanta or-- - Popes have to eat too.
- I just love that because you don't think about that.
- Well the Fanta thing is 100% true.
The Fanta detail came from the fact that during
World War II Coca Cola was banned.
Fanta was allowed.
And he loved it as a child.
And still drinks Fanta.
- Do you have a favorite shot in the film?
- No, I like very much the two of them seated against
the walls of the Sistine Chapel.
- My favorite I think is when the young Francis,
he's on his way to propose because he was in love
with a woman at the time.
And then he received a call to be a priest.
And he goes into this big, empty church.
And he saw a priest move in the far, far distance towards
a confessional box.
And he goes in.
And that dying priest that was there that
day was the instrument of the calling of this
young man with flowers in his hand who was about
to get married.
(speaking foreign language)
- So, one last question for both of you.
- Sure.
- For you, how did you know you were gonna be a writer?
- I didn't really, I fell into it.
I just desperately wanted to escape high school.
And there was an announcement in class one day
that anyone interested in a career in journalism
should lineup outside the science lab.
And I became a journalist and started to write and just
fell in love with words.
- And do you have any stories that you go back to
that are unfinished?
- Leadership seems to keep coming up.
And I'm not quite sure why I keep examining leadership.
- Oh, there is the calculation of leadership.
A calculation we must both make.
- Maybe because we're so dependent on good leadership.
And we're so in want of it now.
- And what about you, Fernando, is there something,
was there a moment?
- Well I was trained as an architect.
And then I had to create my thesis,
graduation thesis instead of a project or monography,
I decided to make a video.
So I bought equipment to shoot my video.
I don't know why I decided to do it.
I liked cinema.
So I kept doing a lot of video art and I had a group
of friends that we start working together and this became
a little production company.
Coming out of the school I was,
accidentally I became a filmmaker.
- I love this movie.
And I'm really happy to meet you.
- You too, thank you very much.
- Thank you so much--
- Thank you very much.
- For coming by.
- Thank you.