- Hey man, it's me Kevin Smith,
we're at the IMDb Studio at Acura Festival Village
and look it's the cast and crew of 'Ironbark'!
Give it up for 'em ladies and gentlemen!
(audience applauds)
Dominic, take us through the picture, man.
What is it, what's going on?
Spy picture, isn't it?
- Well yeah it's a kind of spy drama,
so it's not a conventional thriller.
It's really a story about relationship.
It's a true story about
some people who actually save the world.
- [Kevin] Explain.
- They brought information back from
the Soviet Union that put an end to the
Cuban Missile Crisis.
Very few people know the story.
It was known at the time in the early '60s
but since then they've kind of
faded into history.
So it's an amazing true story.
- Oh my good Lord,
so in a year when James Bond is gonna be coming out,
you're doing the actual real
spy stories. - We're doing the real stuff.
- When you're approaching material like this,
which obviously a true story
and you're dealing with people, some people,
everyone at this point has passed on, right,
the two main characters? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
One of them died in Russian prison
and stuff like that? - That's right.
How do you encapsulate,
it's just a moment in time,
how do you figure out
how to do that in a motion picture?
- I think you gotta get
to the essence of what happened.
You can't tell, in any fictionalized version of real events,
you can't tell
everything that happened
but you kinda try and get to the essence,
and that was there in the script.
I mean, the script
is really good,
and he'd already kinda drilled into it.
And some of it is made up or compressed,
but the essence of the relationship between these two men,
what they did
and the price that they paid is true.
And there was a lot written about it
so we all did our homework
and that helped.
- Now it's an understatement to say,
"Hey, you're a theater guy as well."
- I am a theater guy.
- You do come from the theater world.
What is it like
transitioning between both,
and do you have a preference between the two?
- I love working in both.
I mean, I only started working on screen
about seven or eight years ago.
Actually my dad was in the movies
so it's kind of in my bones a bit.
He was a film editor.
- [Kevin] Get outta here, really?
- Yeah, but I've been in theater for 30 years and
I've loved it.
I absolutely love it.
There are lots of similarities, of course,
you're telling stories through drama,
it's visual medium and so is theater.
But there's a whole lot of extra stuff,
extra help actually
with cameras and editors,
so I've really enjoyed it.
And I don't have a preference.
They're both similar and different,
and I love doing both.
- Rachel, you are now just all about the period piece.
You ever gonna play a modern human being or
are they all just dated and dead in our world?
- Yeah, I mean, I do love a period piece.
I grew up loving fantasy
and I feel like there's a connection there
that in these worlds
that I wasn't a part of,
we get to time travel.
It feels like world-building in a different way.
I love a period piece,
I love a true story.
I wasn't familiar with this story
before we shot this film,
and it's an extraordinary one
that I feel like needs to be told, especially now.
- I'm sorry,
did you say you grew up on fantasy or liking fantasy?
- Yes. - For example?
- I mean, you know, I grew up on "Harry Potter"
and "Lord of the Rings"
and all of Roald Dahl's books
and basically anything I could get my hands on,
I loved all of it.
- How strange, and then, like, in real life,
they're like "Play real people."
- Yeah, it's a little weird,
but like I said, the world-building is the same.
We get to create this entire world
that I have never seen before
and it feels like I'm time traveling.
- This sounds far more serious than your day job.
Was it nice to shift gears and be like,
"I'm gonna drop the accent, I'm gonna be real serious"?
Or did you do an accent in this movie as well?
- Well, I was saying, as the only American
on this set full of Brits
where everybody else had an accent,
it was a bit hard to hold on to my American
so I felt like I was doing
an American accent the whole time.
No, it was nice, it was a really nice change of pace,
even though the projects take place
in a similar period,
the women are very, very different,
although I do love playing women
who are hungry and ambitious,
and Emily Donovan's no different.
She's a young CIA agent
trying to make her mark.
She's a patriot and she's trying to
figure out how she can play her part
to save the world, as it were,
with the help from a lot of other people.
- You seem very serious about your craft.
Perhaps one day you can win an Emmy or Golden Globe
or something like that.
- That would be nice. - Yeah, it'd be cool.
Merab, what is it like playing a real live person?
- It's scary in the beginning,
because
you think that so many people have an opinion
about how this guy was
or what he was about and
they have this clear opinion about him,
and especially in the part of the world
that he comes from.
It's scary because you want to play someone that's neutral,
no one knows that person so it's new to them.
But you play Oleg Penkovsky
so they will know
who it was.
That was scary.
This goes away as soon as you meet with the director
and he just takes all that kind of
away, he says,
"We just play human being,
"never mind how he is called."
But basically in prep period
was just so
so much information going through my head,
and it was just like also
how you prepare yourself to
portray the character like him
was exciting.
I was very nervous,
but all that stuff is good
because in the end, if you're nervous,
you try your best
and if you're relaxed then you don't mind at all.
You might not really perform well.
So I don't know if I really answered your question.
- You absolutely did,
but I'm gonna follow up with another one.
Do you get to talk to anybody?
Did you get to talk to somebody
- Yes we did. at Langley or something
like that?
- Yes you did?
- We are not supposed to tell their names
because they are people who are still working
in very high position on the spying business (laughs)
(audience laughs)
But they were giving an advice or
some details about how
would it really be in real life in '60s
in that part of the world,
in that country with that position
that that guy had.
And some of the really
basically very important things to know about,
because it just changed your physical being also,
knowing what was happening in this guy's,
what kind of obstacles he had
and what he had to go through.
So it was lots of fun,
and it was just great.
- What about you, Rach?
Did you get to meet people from the CIA
or anything like that?
- No,
I would love to.
No,
Emily is one of the only fictional characters
in our story,
but she's a combination
of a lot of different true life figures
who played a role in this story.
But I really went down the Cold War rabbit hole
just to better understand
the stakes and how,
what was happening in the world at large
affected every single person on a daily basis
in a way that I don't know that we still think
about the
war that way.
We have a sort of distant relationship to it.
Yeah, I watched a
24 part documentary on the Cold War,
I really went deep
and did a lot of studying about spies.
There were some amazing, amazing females spies
during the time.
- And it's oddly enough for a movie
that's a period piece,
kind of prescient.
When I looked at the breakdown,
I was like, "Wait, set now or then?"
And I was like, "Oh, it's set then."
Before we let you guys go,
we like to ask some fun questions.
So a speed round, here you go.
Real fast answers, you don't have to think that deep.
Ready?
Cross the boards, number one:
A prop you wish you stole from set.
Go Dominic.
- A Minox camera, a mini camera.
- Me, but I wanted to steal that.
(Rachel laughs)
- Two of them, what about you?
- The 1930's van that I got to drive.
- Very nice, man.
One movie everyone should see.
Go Dominic.
- There's an incredible
film from the '70s, war film called 'Come and See,'
which I strongly recommend everyone sees
'cause it's absolutely amazing.
- 'Come and See,' we were looking for 'Ironbark.'
Next?
- 'Ironbark.'
- Which one? - 'Ironbark.'
- Well done Rae.
Merab?
- It's a difficult question, I don't know.
I don't know what everyone should see,
but
last time I was really impressed in a movie theater
was when I watch 'Apocalypto,'
so maybe
people who didn't see that film should watch that.
- Which one?
- 'Apocalypto' by Mel Gibson.
- 'Apocalypto' by Mel Gibson, going that far back?
You haven't been impressed since 'Apocalypto'?
- It's very hard to impress me,
I tell you.
It's not really easy to impress me,
so you want honest answers, that's it.
- I do, I want the most honest answers.
- [Merab] It's been maybe 15 years ago?
- Right, right, right.
It's been a minute, all right.
Last thing you kids binged.
- What?
- [Kevin] Binged, watched a bunch of series in a row.
- "Succession." "Succession," such a fun show.
- Also "Succession."
I just did it. - Brilliant show.
- "The Americans." - All right, so wait.
You guys make stuff.
When you watch something,
like I make stuff sometimes,
not nearly as good as "Succession."
When I watch "Succession,"
I'm like "Man, I should just quit."
Do you watch it and go, "Man, I gotta up my game"?
- I love watching things
that I really admire,
and they do make you better, I think, right?
You can aspire to do something as good as that,
that's a good goal, I think.
- It's motivating when you feel like
nothing you've ever made
is as good as (laughs)
as some of these things you're seeing on TV.
Yeah, I love watching things
- Beautiful. - That are great.
- When we finished filming 'Ironbark,'
I had couple of weeks free.
It was January,
I watched the show called "The Americans" in one week.
And then I started to re-watch it.
It really impressed me a lot so
that's another one that maybe
everyone should watch. - Since 'Apocalypto,' yes.
Good to know, man, "The Americans" came in there.
Do you think you're gonna go back to "SNL" and host?
You were awesome.
- Thanks.
- With this movie?
Like, "Ladies and gentleman, I'm here to talk 'Ironbark.'"
- "To talk about spies.
"Death.
"Nuclear war."
That's funny.
I had an amazing time and I would love to go back.
I'd love to go back
less
panicked.
I was panicked to the bone,
and I had an amazing, amazing time.
I would love to do it again.
- Beautiful, give it up for the kids from 'Ironbark'
ladies and gentlemen.