A welcome annual tradition, the Directors Guild of America gathered their nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film—Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein), Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme), and Chloé Zhao (Hamnet)––for an extensive conversation spanning nearly two-and-a-half hours, longer than the majority of the films being discussed. Moderated by Jeremy Kagan, the conversation took place February 7 at the DGA’s Los Angeles Theater ahead of PTA taking home the top award.
The wide-ranging talk dives deep into the preparation and production of each of the features, including PTA discussing heavily listening to Cowboy Carter on the way to set, how the eyes of actors are the number one metric Guillermo del Toro looks to cast his ensemble, how Josh Safdie approaches filmmaking like a documentary, the methods Chloé Zhao uses to unlock the subconscious connections between her actors, what Ryan Coogler learned from Sean Durkin about filming an actor who is playing twins.
PTA also shared an incredible story about the opening of One Battle After Another, noting, “We had shot the opening sequence once and we didn’t really like the way that it went. We wanted to put it at the border by San Diego, right on the wall. We had done such a good job, the border patrol was so happy with us the first time around, when we went with Teyana [Taylor], they said that we could shoot on the wall and create a temporary internment camp under the freeway. And I said [to my crew], ‘How did you do this?’ And they said, ‘Do not ask. I don’t really know.’ And so we shot that opening sequence in three days just waiting for somebody to say, ‘You need to go away! What are you doing here?'”
He added, “Even to the point where we’re shooting fireworks off into Mexico. While we were shooting, we would watch people [and] I couldn’t tell our background extras from people who were really crossing the border. I’m not kidding. I was shooting a scene in a tiny little trailer and I saw a family walk by behind Teyana and I thought, ‘Well, the ADs let some extras walk through to go to the bathroom or something like that,’ but it was a family that was crossing the border. I don’t know what the hell happened there and I didn’t ask any questions. I still don’t know the answers. It’s still a great mystery to me, but securing that location was hard.”
Watch the full conversation below.
The post Watch a 2.5-Hour Conversation with Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler, Josh Safdie, Guillermo del Toro, and Chloé Zhao first appeared on The Film Stage.
from The Film Stage https://ift.tt/rbP9By5
0 Comments