Directors Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, writer/director Evan Johnson and actors Cate Blanchett & Roy Dupuis discuss their film 'Rumours' at the Variety Studio at TIFF.
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00:00You can see the coaching of how one has to behave,
00:03the codification of how a world leader behaves in public,
00:07and the triple, double speak that these strategic plans
00:13that come out of the G7 every year, you think,
00:16what does this mean?
00:30Guy, Evan, and Galen, what was the mindset behind satire versus drama
00:38in tackling what would be an otherwise weighty subject?
00:44Wow, I don't know if satire interested us very much, did it?
00:49We made, we've been told we made one, but that was by accident.
00:52I think we thought we were making,
00:53you didn't even know we were making a movie that would be funny,
00:56that anyone would find funny, I don't think.
00:58Yeah, I don't know, it's a matter of just having a story to tell,
01:02and let it, I like the way it, the words lifted off the page,
01:08and stayed airborne, and floated around in a kind of a charming way,
01:12and I just felt that if everybody just delivered their lines
01:17with a straight face, it would be, it would just be whatever it would be.
01:23So satire was never really, we didn't really have a political agenda.
01:27I mean, the subject matter just makes it satire.
01:30Yeah, the G7, so by definition is satire.
01:33But we kind of tried to zig and zag away from satire as much as we could,
01:38because satire didn't really interest us as much
01:41as like soap operas and B-horror movies.
01:45But you got me, okay, I confess, it's a satire.
01:51Canada has produced so many funny people,
01:53how would you describe the Canadian sense of humour?
01:58Dry, I don't know, I'm thinking now of Jim Carrey, and Dan Aykroyd, and you know.
02:07People funnier than us.
02:09I mean, for us, it's just like, there's a lot of self-loathing.
02:11I think like the idea for us of writing a movie,
02:15and making the Canadian Prime Minister into something like an action hero,
02:19something like that, was not done entirely sincerely, I wouldn't say.
02:25Not entirely.
02:26But partially, you know, we're dreamers.
02:28So imagining Canada as some kind of leader of the other nations
02:33was at least entertaining to us.
02:35Yeah, like maybe we're all children of film,
02:39or whatever I think of the world, often through film mythology.
02:43And I just thought it would be fun,
02:46that things are just a little more real when they're committed to film.
02:50And so the idea of presenting our Canadian Prime Minister in this way
02:54just made it a little more real,
02:56even though it exists in a parallel reality with the real reality.
03:01But it's just a way I wanted the country to be perceived.
03:06And in my head, it officially now is perceived that way.
03:11Kate, as the great dramatic actress of your generation,
03:15do you get sent comedic scripts often?
03:21People ask me that question.
03:23Um, yeah, I mean, I think in a strange way, everything is funny.
03:28We are all absurd in some way.
03:31And we all think we're the heroes and the tragedians of, you know, our own stories.
03:39Yeah, sometimes, I mean, you make decisions about what you can be involved in
03:45based on a lot of things that don't have to necessarily do with choice.
03:49Sometimes it's to do with whether it fits in with your kids' holidays.
03:52So there's been some funny things that I haven't been able to do.
03:56But yes, I wanted to be in the forest at night for eight weeks in Budapest.
04:01And my kids were really happy about that.
04:03So I thought, yeah.
04:04No, but I mean, this was a laugh out loud script.
04:07But it was also confounding and bewildering and deeply distressing.
04:12And obviously, I knew the work that these three guys had done together.
04:16And I knew Roy's work.
04:17And the ensemble was so eclectic and weird and wonderful.
04:20It was just an impossible thing to turn down.
04:23So yeah, it's funny and weird.
04:24But all of that stuff, you can read the funniest script in the world.
04:28But then it's who's looking down the lens and who's editing it.
04:32Because a lot of that stuff is in the way it's put together.
04:37And these guys put their films together in such a particular way.
04:40And I think that's why people ask a lot of questions about the tone of Rumours.
04:45Because it sort of is its own tone.
04:48And I think we so easily try and say, that's a comedy.
04:51That's a drama.
04:52That's a satire.
04:53And I feel like this is a mashup of all of these things.
04:59Did you or Roy, in preparation for this film, talk to any G7 leaders, say?
05:07All of them.
05:08All of them.
05:09And in fact, they were on set all the time.
05:11Yeah.
05:12Consultants.
05:14That was a question for me.
05:15Did we talk to them?
05:17If we talked.
05:18To the G7 leaders?
05:19No.
05:20These guys sent us some video of different G7.
05:24I find it was important for the beginning of the movie.
05:27So it looks like really, it's credible.
05:32So that when the movie takes off, then it makes a bigger leap.
05:37But the thing about that footage is it's so incredible.
05:41I mean, the theatre of it.
05:42The bad theatre of these cultural events that they go through.
05:47And the vagina, or whatever it is.
05:52The way that they speak.
05:53You can see the coaching of how one has to behave.
05:56The codification of how a world leader behaves in public.
06:00And the triple, double speak.
06:04These strategic plans that come out of the G7 every year.
06:08You think, what does this mean?
06:11And I think somewhere in the actual tone of the G7
06:14lies the absurd tone of this film.
06:17So all that footage, it was literally like,
06:21can we make something as funny as this?
06:23Yeah, that's what you want.
06:24Yeah, we got hooked on actual G7 footage.
06:26Just the ritualistic choreography of it.
06:29And I don't know, we just were delighted in it.
06:32And I guess it was a matter,
06:33you can almost never hear the dialogue of these things.
06:36Because the camera's so far away.
06:37You're not allowed to.
06:38No, and they may not even have dialogue.
06:41They might just be flapping their gums
06:43without any words really coming out at each other.
06:45But I guess the aim of the film
06:48was probably to capture in dialogue
06:51what these people might actually be saying to each other.
06:55And I think partly what was interesting from the footage
06:57is how monitored they all are.
07:00I mean, we think we're scrutinized by the media.
07:02But they're constantly followed around by cameras.
07:05So they're very aware that their body language
07:08and who they're speaking to is gonna be read
07:11as being something that's gonna be a photograph taken.
07:14They're constantly aware of their external image.
07:17And what happens in this movie
07:19is they become unmoored from that.
07:22And who are they without the observers?
07:25Who are they without mobile phone reception?
07:28Who are they without their aides?
07:31And I think that's really fascinating and ridiculous.
07:35And without their aides or entourages and iPhones,
07:39it becomes this very interesting dynamic.
07:43Do you think that the actual G7 world leaders
07:46would do well with sort of being stripped
07:49of their entourages and iPhones and devices
07:54and get in a room to talk about the fact
07:57that the world's on fire?
07:58Would they benefit by spending time
08:00with masturbatory bog monsters?
08:02Would they?
08:02I think we all would.
08:03Possibly.
08:03I mean, that's a team building exercise
08:05that I'd like to see.
08:07I think they do about the same
08:09as the characters in the movie.
08:11Yeah, I think it's pretty accurate representation
08:13exactly what would happen.
08:15It's a fever dream.
08:16Yes.
08:20What was the wildest scene of all the scenes in the film
08:23for the two of you to film?
08:27Wildest?
08:28Wildest.
08:29Well, my point of view,
08:35for me, it's, I mean,
08:37it was one of the most demanding things
08:39I've done in my career.
08:41I never told these guys
08:42because it was the ending, the monologue,
08:46which we shot, I think, the fourth day of shooting.
08:49Yeah.
08:50And I knew that Kate and Denis and Charles
08:54would all be listening to this monologue.
08:57Judging.
08:59And it was the end of the movie.
09:01And English is not my language.
09:03And it took me a month just to learn it,
09:06to be able to say it rhythmically, interestingly.
09:10Anyway, so it was, for me, it was a big dive.
09:14That's memorable for me, that moment.
09:17You seem so calm and cool and collected.
09:20When I did it?
09:20When you did it.
09:22Yeah, that's called acting.
09:24That's what that was.
09:26I'll have to try it sometime.
09:28I mean, the situation, Al.
09:30But to have, at the middle of the monologue,
09:33come for, how do you say that
09:36when a director gives you a direction?
09:40And the direction was...
09:41No, we don't do that.
09:44No, you don't.
09:45But in the script, they are.
09:47It was, he says it as his life depends on it.
09:51So that's where I had to go.
09:53So yeah, that was memorable for me.
09:55Yeah, I love that.
09:56I love that scene.
09:58Kate?
09:59I think when the brain catches on fire
10:02and when we're all trying to work out
10:04what language, Alicia Vikander's,
10:10what language she's speaking,
10:12it was quite great around the campfire.
10:15But the boiling brain or the kind of
10:19the fluid-leaking bog monster was, you know.
10:23Right.
10:23Yeah.
10:24And also seeing the circle of bog monsters
10:26and thinking that is ancient and sexual,
10:29but, and I could not even find language
10:31to describe what they were doing.
10:33Those extras dressed up as bog monsters,
10:34that was...
10:35Powerful.
10:36That was powerful.
10:37It was quite powerful.
10:37We were all moved and blessed to be there.
10:40I wept.
10:41Yeah.
10:42Yeah.
10:44Well, thank you for coming to the Variety Studio.
10:48Thank you for having us.