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00:00I am Brady Corbett, the co-writer, producer and director of The Brutalist.
00:14And I'm here today with one of my favorite people in the world, Lowell Crawley.
00:20Lowell and I have made three feature films together over the last decade.
00:27My daughter is ten and a half years old, so he has known her since she was about four
00:34months old, something like that.
00:37And I would just like to kick things off by asking you, Lowell, how you got into the profession.
00:53I know a little bit about it, and it's a story that I actually really like about when a film
01:00was being made near your house in Wales, where you grew up.
01:05So maybe let's start there.
01:08Thanks, Brady.
01:10Very nice to talk to you about it.
01:13Yeah, essentially, I mean, for me, it was an evolution of sort of art at school and
01:20then into photography and then photography into moving image.
01:24So it's a kind of natural evolutionary process in that regard.
01:29The film you refer to was when I was before university, I guess I was about 18.
01:35And there was a film, a Christopher Munger film called The Englishman, who went up a hill and came
01:42down a mountain that was shot about eight miles from where I grew up.
01:47And I managed to get a I managed to get a job as a kind of runner like on the film, essentially.
01:56And yeah, I really I really loved the I really loved the I was sort of gravitated towards the camera
02:03department. I remember at one point they were preparing for a shot and they asked to clear the hillside.
02:11And I sort of saw this movie cam camera on a tripod.
02:15And so I sort of rushed towards it to move it.
02:17And they rather alarm, rather alarmingly, they kind of ran up and stopped me from touching this
02:24thing, you know, telling me that it was worth, you know, kind of a quarter of a million pounds or
02:31something. And so they saw fit for, you know, somebody else to to deal with that.
02:39Now I get to now I get to carry them all the time.
02:45Lucky you, the Welshman that went up a hill and came down a mountain.
02:51Yeah, exactly.
02:53Yeah. So that was yeah, I kind of got the the bug, you know, I just I love the I love the on set
03:00camaraderie. I love the it seemed bonkers.
03:03It seemed really, really absurd way to make a living in many regards.
03:07Well, it's because it is bonkers.
03:10I mean, it's totally you know, like, you know, when you have like friends or family visit the
03:17city that you live in and, you know, for a few days, you view it very much to the prism of like
03:24their experience of that place for the first time.
03:29And you suddenly just realize this.
03:30I mean, especially if you live in a place like London or New York, like this place is
03:36unhinged.
03:39And I think that, you know, for anyone that visits a film set, I mean, you know, when my
03:45when my mother and father in law, for example, visit us, I mean, I I they're they're just
03:51like, you know, I can tell they think we're all completely mad.
03:55I mean, you don't you don't sleep for weeks on end.
03:59It's so unhealthy.
04:01It has to be one of the least healthy professions on the planet.
04:04I also I can't you know, sometimes agents will ask if they come to say I can't think of
04:09anything worse. I mean, if you're at the sharp end of it, then it's you know, the time you
04:14don't have enough time if if you're visiting.
04:19Why? You know, it's just this weird, endless, repetitive process that you're not involved
04:24in. And I can't see why you'd want to spend more than two minutes there.
04:29But, you know, well, no, me, I mean, beyond the mere curiosity, I suppose, you know, of a
04:36couple of hours, because otherwise it's just two hundred and forty strangers that are
04:41really angry all the time.
04:45But OK, so so real.
04:47OK, so you worked on that production and did you meet anyone on that production that
04:53then brought you on to other jobs or did it take a while for you to end up on a set
04:59again? Yeah, no, it took a while after that.
05:02My experience on that film, I went to university.
05:05And for me, the merits of going to university rather than just going straight into the
05:10industry and working my way up in the industry is that I really I met two important
05:17people in my life that Sam Haley and Dwayne Hopkins, who are a writer, director,
05:24sorry, a writer, a producer team.
05:28And and I got to shoot shorts for them at university.
05:31And then the shorts that we made together after university led to my first film, Ballast.
05:37Right. So so it was an introduction to like minded people.
05:41And those those films from Dwayne.
05:44I mean, I was very aware long before you and I met.
05:48I was very aware of Dwayne's work.
05:51Did it premiere in Cannes or?
05:53Yeah, it was.
05:55Well, Love Me or Leave Me Alone was this anamorphic short that was made as part of the
06:00cinema extreme program.
06:04I think it was that OK, going at the time.
06:06Andrea Arnold and Robbie Ryan also made one under that scheme.
06:11And that premiered in Berlin.
06:13And then and then Lance Hammer, who directed Ballast, just completely called me out of
06:19the blue. I kind of thought it was a practical joke, you know, for a guy to call me up
06:24from L.A., you know, and offer me or potentially offer me my first feature film, you
06:30know. So that that was kind of super instrumental.
06:33The other thing was that it was really important to have film theory for me.
06:37You know, like you can go in and be a you know, you can work your way up as a
06:41technician, but to actually be taught film theory, whether it was sort of, you know,
06:47Soviet montage, you know, Eisenstein, feminist film theory, whatever it just like it
06:55made perfect sense to me that in order to be a practitioner in the way that we are
07:02within within the within the industry, you have to kind of have something to say, you
07:07know, and you have to think about it totally like your way.
07:10It's not, you know, Jim Jarmusch said this recent, you know, I read I heard this
07:16recently at Jim Jarmusch had said that about Robbie Mueller, he said, hey, you know,
07:21he he had a different foot.
07:24He had a foot each foot in a different canoe, which I thought was a really interesting
07:29way of saying it. So he's basically saying, like, you know, on the one on the one hand,
07:33you're a technician. The other hand, you are an artist, you know.
07:36And I and I think that, you know, that's a very important distinction to be made that
07:42that, you know, the best cinematographers or the best heads of department within the
07:49industry are both sort of technically accomplished, but also have something to add
07:56to the story, some other way of, you know, some way of seeing the world that they wish
08:02to express.
08:03Yeah, I think that's I think that's really true.
08:06Like I specifically only ever want to work with heads of department that have a really
08:12strong point of view, like I'm not interested ever in, you know, somebody who just
08:20wants to be puppeted.
08:21Like I don't think that I don't think very interesting work comes from from that
08:26usually. I think that like where something really exciting happens is it's sort of
08:32like good improv.
08:34It's like, yes.
08:35And yes.
08:36And yes.
08:37And yes. And yes.
08:38And yes. And then suddenly there are layers of of ideas and an approach, because, you
08:47know, one thing that I always try to explain people, even though, of course, like.
08:52I mean, a word, a word that all of the films we've made together, they've always been
08:58referred to as very ambitious.
09:00They've been referred to that as ambitious, both in in negative and positive
09:05connotations, depending on on whether people liked them or not.
09:10But they frequently call them very ambitious films.
09:13And and yet what's funny is that in my mind's eye, when I'm writing, it's very myopic
09:21and actually the world of the movies is very small, like it's kind of very character
09:27based. And even though I try my very best to make the experience of reading the
09:32screenplays as graphic and cinematic as possible and there are there are descriptions
09:38of landscapes and there are some descriptions of interiors in my mind's eye, the
09:44world of the movie is like this and it's in the pre-production process that it becomes
09:50like that.
09:51And and I've learned, you know, when I made Childhood of a Leader, that was something
09:58that I really learned from the process and learned from working with you and learned
10:05from working with Jean-Vincent Pouzeau, our extraordinary production designer as well,
10:10where, you know, it's like, hey, you know, like like, for example, if there was
10:17something that we were going to ask production for, I'd be like, well, I'm not
10:21entirely sure that we like, you know, like that sounds kind of outside of our our
10:27means, really.
10:29And then, you know, to have, you know, your heads of department saying, hey, it never
10:35hurts to ask.
10:36Let's just ask if we can have one hundred and fifty more people, like let's just ask
10:40and like, you know, obvious.
10:42And then sometimes, you know, you get what you ask for.
10:46Sometimes you get half of what you ask for, but it's usually bigger than what the, you
10:51know, initial sort of inception of the thing was.
10:54And and now that I know that that's how the process really works, you know, I have a lot
11:00more faith in it.
11:01And so I no longer worry or have any anxiety about like, is the film going to feel grand
11:08enough? Because I know it will, because there's too many people there that are focused on
11:14just their little piece of it.
11:16And and the culmination of all those contributions is what makes cinema such a
11:22beautiful medium. Yeah, absolutely.
11:25And I think, you know, obviously, we're thinking and talking about it a lot in terms
11:31of kind of the grandeur of the brutalist.
11:34And I kind of also I I think that there's a language that you that you sort of
11:43gravitate towards that is that is very cinematic.
11:48And I know that's a term that, you know, is overused and nonspecific.
11:52But what I mean by that is that you've always had this idea of kind of like, you know,
11:58let's say ambitious, but ambitious shots or a whole like very, very pivotal scenes
12:06within the movie, whether it's as you bet accusing Van Buren of being a rapist, for
12:12example. But the execution of that is one single shot, you know, and I think I think
12:21the thing that makes that cinematic is that everything that we shoot, I think the
12:27language is about both the space and the performance, you know, and so I think that
12:32means that you're not you're not getting into a lot of this, you know, and I think
12:37that's what certainly I recognize in through the history of cinema, as you know,
12:44like. You know, there's decades of movies that have just been unapologetic about
12:52putting a person small in the frame and and having absolute faith and recognizing
12:59that an audience is not going to suddenly be confused or disconnected or I mean, that
13:06thing that you always get from people that that, you know, it's like executives that
13:11are like, well, it just feels cold.
13:13It feels distant.
13:15And when I'm like, hey, OK, like if I'm watching a Billy Wilder movie, which is
13:20entirely shot in masters and mediums, there's nothing emotionally distancing about it.
13:27You know, I and so I think that I think that people, you know, they jump to that
13:32conclusion too quickly.
13:34Now, I think that, of course, there is a style of cinema that is that came about in the
13:39late 80s and was very prevalent, you know, in the 1990s, there was a certain art house
13:44cinema that was that is very distancing sort of effect.
13:47And sometimes that's the intention of the piece.
13:50But, you know, but but just because you're shooting something in a master medium doesn't
13:55necessarily mean that you're trying to be, you know, emotionally distanced from your
14:01subjects or your characters.
14:03One of the things that I love the most about large format and I've really been I've
14:09been really reflecting on, you know, where I feel like we got the most out of it while
14:15making The Brutalist.
14:16And, you know, a few of the shots that I think we love the most, I think what makes
14:21them like, I think what makes Adrian and Alessandra embracing at the bus, which is
14:28that it's still that's the most widely available from the movie online, so powerful
14:34is the fact that the frame is just it's in perfect balance.
14:41It's 50 percent them and 50 percent their backdrop.
14:46And with large format, it really allows them to share that same sort of plane, if you
14:53will, because of the lack of distortion.
14:57So there's this feeling where it just there's an immediacy to the picture.
15:02And I was just like, I mean, when I saw that image, I was like, I just want to shoot
15:07images like that for the rest of my life, like that is like, you know, and that's that
15:12combination of of of the color of the bus that, you know, that Judy had painted it and
15:19and all of these things sort of in Kate Forbes, beautiful costumes.
15:23But like, I just realized like that frame is such a powerful frame.
15:29And and I think it's because, you know, the I just think that landscape and portrait are
15:37one in the same.
15:38And and and I and that's what I love so much about it.
15:41And and it's a very emotional sequence.
15:44It's it's hardly emotionally distancing.
15:47I mean, it made me cry the first time I saw it, you know, because when those guys were
15:51really going at it.
15:53No, absolutely. I remember.
15:55And it is a bit like it is like an anamorphic lens.
15:58You know, people talk about anamorphic lenses being two lenses in one.
16:01You know, you you you you can have the portrait, but you can have the world as well.
16:07And this division is a version of that.
16:09You can your lens choice.
16:11You're framing them.
16:12But then guess what?
16:13Your field of view means that you as an audience, you feel that you're you're there
16:19connected to the performance and the characters, but also not be able to ride this this
16:24world, you know, which I I think, yeah, you know, helps support this idea of the film
16:32having, you know, if people have said that the film has a grandeur to it.
16:39And echoes of filmmaking, a sort of bygone era in many regards.
16:46I think that's that the choice of the Vista Vision really supported that.
16:51Yeah, no, I agree.
16:53And it's something I'm just, you know, now because there's, of course, anytime you're
16:58working with with a new piece of kit or at least it was new for me, because I know that
17:03you you had worked with the camera a little bit.
17:07Yeah, I'm not.
17:09I mean, again, a technician, not as a as as a cinematographer.
17:13So it was a yeah, it was a new experience for me to really because the first time that
17:18you ever worked with this division was when you were loading on Phantom Menace.
17:22Yeah, yeah, it was.
17:23It was. And interestingly, because, as you know, as you know, but but maybe others
17:29don't, you know, of during the 60s and 70s, I guess it became very much the Vista
17:36Vision format became very much embraced by the VFX industry.
17:40So it could even be that the so this the camera that I loaded on was would belong to
17:47ILM and it was used for VFX work because there was so much of it.
17:51I mean, it was essentially a VFX movie.
17:53It was all blue and green screen for Phantom Menace.
17:56It could be the movie we shot the Brutalist on was that camera.
17:59I mean, there aren't that many of them around.
18:01So that would be. Yeah, I know.
18:03There's only like four or five in service.
18:05And finally, Giovanni Ribisi is one of the people that that that has one that's in the
18:13best shape, I believe, and has actually created a blimp for it.
18:16So it's sync sound.
18:18And yeah, it's it's it's it's interesting.
18:21I mean, you know, even even recently, I mean, I spoke to Robbie Ryan about it and and
18:28they did, I think I think he told me three or four shots that were visual effect shots
18:33for four things on it as well.
18:37You know, I think what was what was unusual about how we were handling this division on
18:43this movie was was that there were just so many narrative sequences shot on it.
18:48You know, I mean, in fact, I think that, you know, we didn't really lean on it for
18:55visual effects at all.
18:57And but but but but it was interesting, too, because obviously the reason that people
19:05generally use this division for visual effects is because of, you know, that tight
19:11grain and that that at high fidelity.
19:15But I know that you were really torturing the negative, so to speak, even when we were
19:21shooting on that camera.
19:22So you were sort of getting this other quality of image out of it.
19:27That's not something that we've seen a whole lot of.
19:31You know, I think that the only films that I've seen that have really played with the
19:37exposure of this division in the same way are mostly Japanese films from the 70s.
19:43So like Vengeance is Mine and In the Realm of the Senses, they both have have
19:49sequences that are really under and sort of like where you it feels very filmic, I
19:57would say. But as you and I quickly realized with this division, one thing was so
20:01interesting is that like if something was flatly lit or there was something that was
20:06not particularly beautiful, it resulted in an image that was so unforgiving because it
20:13was just so clean and crystal clear.
20:18Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because it's like, you know, we've spoken about it
20:21before, but, you know, for me, almost a discovery of this kind of even though I study
20:27photography at a certain level, this discovery, this rediscovery of the sort of
20:32pictorialists and what they were doing in the in the early 20th century, you know, and
20:37you know, so, for example, so example for me would be that, you know, Sally Mann shoots
20:44on wet plate, you know, wet, wet plate photography, you know, large, large formats.
20:50And yet the images themselves have this very sort of impressionistic quality.
20:56So she's not going for the Joel Sternfeld, you know, Stephen Shaw school, which I love.
21:03Sure. Yeah, me too.
21:04But it's a very different thing.
21:06Aesthetic, yeah.
21:07And I just my my sensibility generally and obviously it depends on what I'm shooting,
21:13but I gravitate towards this kind of more impressionistic, almost kind of dreamlike
21:19quality that I think we both sort of enjoyed, not throughout the entire movie, but we've
21:24leant into it at certain points where it's felt like an impression of a moment rather
21:29than a literal kind of, you know, like a literal capturing of the moment, if that makes
21:38sense. Yeah, absolutely.
21:40Absolutely.
21:41Well, you know, somebody was asking me earlier about the work of W.G.
21:48Sebald, who is one of my favorite writers that I talk about quite a quite a bit.
21:53And also because, you know, he wrote a pretty iconic book called The Emigrants, which
22:00was not an inspiration for this narratively, but certainly thematically and tonally
22:07and made made a big impression on me.
22:10And there's this interesting thing that Sebald used to do in all of his novels, which
22:17is that every five to 10 pages, there was a picture, a photograph that sometimes was
22:29quite loosely associated with what he was describing on the page.
22:35Sometimes it was very literal.
22:38But what, you know, what what he did, and this is something I thought was very
22:42interesting, because Sebald, he devoted his career to working on the theme of memory.
22:51And so, you know, for example, he would say, you know, he would have these sort of
22:57sentences that would fold in on themselves where he would say, last night I had a dream
23:02of a memory I once had.
23:04And and so what he would do is he would take these photographs that he would find and
23:12he would photocopy them like hundreds of times until you would just get this
23:18incredibly sort of dreamlike, sort of distorted image from the photocopy machine.
23:26And then they would go and then they'd be and they'd go into the books.
23:29And and, you know, for me, like I was saying to someone, you know, that that for me,
23:36cinema is, you know, a dream of a memory, of a dream, of a memory, of a dream of the
23:46collective consciousness.
23:48And that, you know, for me, there is this feeling that I have when I'm seeing, you
23:56know, you know, because all cinema is historical, you know, like something that
24:01people often say is that, you know, that that everything is political.
24:06And I, you know, I get that.
24:08But I I'm not always 100 percent in line with that.
24:13But all cinema certainly is historical because it is, you know, it's Voyager 2.
24:20We're putting it in the time capsule and we're shooting it off into space.
24:24And we don't know when it's going to be discovered or rediscovered, if it's 100 years
24:29from now or a thousand years from now or 10,000 years from now.
24:33And and, you know, I think that that, you know, what what's interesting is that I'm I
24:41think that 10,000 years from now, it will be easier for the evolution of our of our
24:49beings if we last that long to understand a feeling of the past than to understand a
24:58narrativized, you know, sort of arc of the past.
25:04I think that, you know, it's like what would aliens do with, you know, the vinyl on on
25:11on Voyager 2?
25:12I think they'd never figure out how to play it.
25:14And so and so I think that there is like I I think that there's this interesting thing
25:20where I'm always thinking about how do you make something that outlasts a season, it
25:28outlasts, you know, a decade?
25:31How are you know, can't is it possible to make something that lasts for for much, much
25:36longer than that? And so it there's a poetic logic to the image making and a poetic
25:44logic to the narratives that I think is, you know, is very is very important to me.
25:51And it's it's something that you do that I, you know, in in in your work that I just
25:58admire so much because, you know, there's something just really haunting about so many
26:05of the images that you create.
26:06And I can't even sometimes put my finger on it.
26:08And sometimes you can't even put your finger on it.
26:11It's just this kind of it's something intuitive.
26:14But, you know, you just feel like, oh, it's a dream of a memory of a dream of a memory.
26:19And and I think that that is that's like the greatest feeling in the world as a film
26:24viewer. I mean, that's how I feel when I watch Death in Venice or, you know, any number
26:28of extraordinary films.
26:30So kudos to you.
26:31Well, thank you. I mean, I think I think that we've said it before, but the idea of
26:37shooting on film is really important to that process, I believe, because I think
26:44there's a some of it is letting go.
26:47Like, I've never regarded myself as an impositional cinematographer.
26:51I mean, I remember very early on with with Ballast realizing, oh, sometimes I'm
26:57employed just to leave the fuck alone.
26:59You know, sometimes I'm employed to not open the doors of the lighting truck, you
27:04know, write about recognition that the light is, you know, just let it be and respond and
27:12react to it. You know, and I think it's interesting being Chris Doyle has obviously
27:16spoke about this, the idea of kind of like, you know, here's the world.
27:22How do I frame it?
27:24And in order to think like that, it's a completely different mindset.
27:27And it's it's it's it's really interesting because it's like as much as I admire
27:33filmmakers, you know, you could someone like Hitchcock, who's incredibly like in
27:37control and the process of making the film is put A to B to C to D.
27:41And he publicly that he found it, you know, the the most tedious aspects of making the
27:47film. For me, it's the complete opposite because it's about letting a little of the
27:52accidental in the world in.
27:54And I think that maybe feeds into what you're talking about, this idea of kind of like,
27:58well, the thing that hopefully allows the material to keep resonating through the years
28:04is that it's maybe that that sort of call and response for a human.
28:10I don't know whatever. It's hard to kind of poke.
28:12I don't like to poke at it too much, but whatever that thing might be, I think, you
28:17know, if you know that's maybe what we're talking about.
28:21Well, I would I would ultimately I would ultimately describe it as a sort of
28:27wabi sabi approach to ceramics, for example, like, you know, those imperfections are
28:34what make the object so beautiful, because, you know, obviously you can go and buy a
28:41set of 12 bowls from Crate and Barrel or IKEA and they serve the same function.
28:47But, you know, something which is made by hand and, you know, is perhaps not a perfect
28:55sphere, you know, it's imbued with the spirit of the person or artisan that created it.
29:04And so I just I think that I think that especially in a time where, you know, many
29:14images and many image makers are encouraged to make something which is consistent and
29:22homogenous, that there's a sort of look that the project has and we're feeding
29:27everything through that filter so that it all has that look and that control is, you
29:36know, there's it takes real artistry to maintain that level of control over the course
29:43of a two hour, you know, or three hour runtime, of course.
29:46But I don't respond so well to images like that because they feel suffocated.
29:52They feel they don't feel man made.
29:54And I think that I just yearn for for that texture.
29:59And and so, you know, I'm happy that I found someone that feels the same way to make
30:07images with.
30:08Absolutely. I mean, I agree.
30:10And the the very nature of digital, unfortunately, is that it has a uniformity and a
30:16precision by its very nature.
30:19Pulling through a piece of celluloid with silver halides attached to it that's
30:24vibrating and resonating within the gate as perfect as one can make it.
30:29It just is imbued with a certain life.
30:31It is just moving in a different way.
30:33And, you know, it's not a recreation of pixel after pixel.
30:37It's, you know, within every frame, there's this dancing, you know, and it just it's
30:42dancing, you know, it's, you know, and so unfortunately with digital, you have to I
30:48mean, we abuse the film stocks in order to make them out the images our own.
30:53But with digital, it's yeah.
30:55I mean, people obviously doing with this.
30:57I mean, it's interesting because people are cinematographers and filmmakers are choosing
31:01glass that is that is imperfect, that has these aberrations, that has this life.
31:08In order to try and counter that in some way.
31:11Just to quickly segue into the two clips from the film that we're going to be
31:17discussing, the first of which is the second scene of The Brutalist, which is
31:28essentially Adrian being awoken inside of a space and we're not entirely clear where he
31:42is. It's very dark.
31:45There are hundreds of bodies.
31:48It could be a passenger train, you know, and ultimately we ascend a staircase with him
31:56and and move down a corridor and then, you know, outside to the deck of a ship finally
32:02to discover the Statue of Liberty.
32:07So, Lowell, maybe you can talk a little bit about how we did this, because it was it
32:14was complicated and it was very complicated, of course, for you to operate because you
32:20were the one operating.
32:21I mean, essentially it took place on a on a ship that Judy and Brady had found moored
32:30on the Danube in Budapest and, you know, that it was a space that we didn't we had to be
32:39very careful not to over light it because, you know, there wasn't that Judy and her team
32:44had designed a lot of the specifically the sort of let's say the the passage that the
32:54route that the Adrian that Laszlo took through the ship that was that was designed and there
33:01was choreography with dancers and background actors.
33:04But outside of that, it was really just the kind of the belly of the ship.
33:08And so we had to be very careful not to over light it.
33:11I mean, on the one hand, we wanted it to feel disorientating and confused and mysterious.
33:18And so, you know, so that was that was a challenge.
33:21And then really it was it was it was me following following Adrian with a handheld camera.
33:31And then, as Brady said, it kind of evolved to this kind of ascension, this up to levels
33:40of these staircases and out on the top of the ship.
33:42I mean, the thing that's interesting is how people have sort of interpreted this in a
33:47way that I'm sure, you know, I just didn't necessarily regard it that way when we filmed
33:54it.
33:55So, you know, people have felt that it may be they're on a train.
33:58Maybe it's it's in the camps, in the holding camps or even in Dachau, you know, that that
34:05it's it's that's where Adrian is.
34:07When we were filming it, I just didn't necessarily make those associations, you know.
34:13But it's really interesting how that whole sequence really echoes not not only the his
34:21journey in some ways, Lazo's journeys, but also the the kind of architecture of the institute.
34:26You know, it's like half of it is buried underground and and and is fighting to kind of
34:32find the light.
34:33And then the top half of the institute is very much a celebration of the of bringing
34:38the light in.
34:38You know, I think that's kind of interesting.
34:40Yeah, that's absolutely right.
34:42I mean, I mean, just to to close on that thought, you know, Frank Woodwright famously had these
34:48sort of mud rooms in many of his residences where you would you would enter and as opposed
34:54to entering into a sort of grand foyer or something, there were very low ceilings and
35:02there were no windows.
35:03And it was a place for you to take off your shoes and take off your coat.
35:07And then as you would ascend the stairs, boom, you know, it would crack wide open.
35:13And and, you know, there you were left with this sort of, you know, modernist cathedral.
35:19And and so I think that's exactly right.
35:22I think that, you know, we realized early on in our process that we could not simply
35:29present architecture.
35:30We also had to represent architecture.
35:34And so that was something that was always on their minds.
35:37And it resulted in this this extraordinary sequence shot, very well operated by our pal
35:45Lowell here.
35:46And now quickly to jump into the second sequence we're going to be talking about, which is
35:53shooting in Carrera.
35:56So I'll kick us off here.
35:58So the Carrera sequence was something that for a variety of mostly philosophical reasons,
36:07was something that was very important for me to to try and hold on to.
36:14Because, of course, you know, with our very limited means and a very low budget, it was
36:21complicated to put together an Italian unit to go and and shoot in Carrera.
36:29We ultimately figured out how to do it with a relatively small footprint.
36:33I think we were something like 16 to 18 people that that made the trip.
36:40And and it was done with, you know, available light, which is bouncing all over from, you
36:48know, this this white marble in every direction.
36:51The reason I'll let Lowell speak about it technically in one moment, basically, the
36:58reason for me that it was so important to shoot the sequence there is that, you know,
37:03for me, one of the film's main themes is about, you know, a patron that is not satisfied to
37:10possess an artist's body of work.
37:14He's compelled to possess the artist himself.
37:18And and Carrera marble, for me, represents this material that that, you know, that that,
37:30you know, should probably not be possessed.
37:35And and yet it is and it's predominantly possessed by, you know, by a very, very wealthy,
37:44wealthy folks.
37:46And this material is used to line kitchens and bathrooms.
37:49And yet, you know, the reality is that in 500 years it will not exist anymore.
37:56And so the thing that's so incredible about the marble quarries is that it's incredibly
38:02majestic and it's incredibly beautiful, but it's also a very violent place where there
38:08are constant rock slides and you feel how immense and dangerous the environment is.
38:16It's one of the reasons that not a lot of films have shot there.
38:21But maybe you just want to quickly talk a little bit about how we how we did it.
38:26Well, yeah, I mean, as Brady said, we had a very reduced crew, but we were able to take
38:36the VistaVision camera.
38:38Obviously, it's integral to the entire film.
38:40So, I mean, this was this was probably the one of the most obvious moments where the
38:49VistaVision sort of came into its own.
38:51And, you know, and what it was designed for, you know, these kind of these incredible vistas.
38:57I mean, the the scale of the place is, you know, it's really hard to comprehend, even
39:03with the human eye, you know, that you're I mean, it's almost like I said to Brady,
39:09these kind of like epic biblical John Martin paintings, you know, totally, you know, there's
39:16like, you know, visions of Sodom and Gomorrah where you see them turning into a pillar of
39:21salt in the foreground and then and then, you know, the city burning down below.
39:26I mean, it's the very fact that it's the brutality of mankind upon the landscape.
39:32Oh, it's the environment where the where the, you know, the most brutal act upon Laszlo
39:38happens, you know, is kind of like is is is kind of genius, you know.
39:43And also, I think it also happens at a point in the movie where you'd I think having seen
39:48the movie several times now as an audience member, you sort of you you've come out of
39:55this quite claustrophobic environment in New York and this claustrophobic relationship as
40:03well. Very, very intense relationship between Ezra and and and Laszlo and he and then and
40:10you're sort of it's kind of a breath, you know, when you sort of you suddenly, you know,
40:16are introduced to Carreras feels like very important at that time in the movie.
40:20And then obviously, it's very pivotal moment in the movie in terms of what takes place
40:26accurate. But yeah, coming back to the technical, I mean, it was a combination of handheld.
40:31It was a combination of, you know, we had a day where we went and shot the scenes with
40:38with Adrian and Guy. And then a day, as I recall, that was kind of very much or at least half a day
40:45that was dedicated to what you would regard as B-roll for want of a more poetic term. But,
40:50you know, I would call them almost illustrations where we were going out and sort of
40:55filming these landscapes. And, you know, and it serves in the in the film as a sort of montage
41:03introduction into this space, you know. And again, you know, well, one thing I wanted to say
41:10was just that when we when we did the initial scout and when we first saw this place, obviously,
41:17we were we wanted to embrace the majesty of this vista. When we turned up to shoot it,
41:22it was kind of shrouded in fog. And we were we were sort of alarmed and disappointed, I think,
41:28in many ways. But, you know, the beauty of filmmaking and the beauty of handing this
41:32to an audience is that this could, you know, even as someone who shot the sequence,
41:37I couldn't see this any other way now. I mean, it has this incredible dreamlike moment as they're
41:44choosing the marble and Guy is sort of fetishistically rubbing himself against the
41:49marble. And this this mysterious character is leading them talking about beating the corpse
41:55of Mussolini. Of course, you know, of course, it has to it has to be shrouded in fog.
42:02Yeah, no, I think I think that's exactly right. I mean, filmmaking is a combination of being
42:11very nimble and very precise. And, you know, it's it's a dance. It's been so great to catch up and
42:21talk through all of this. I mean, I know that especially Carrera was one of the most memorable
42:29events of not just my of my filmmaking career, but it's one of the most memorable
42:36moments of my whole life. And I feel so lucky that the extraordinary people of Carrera invited us in
42:45and supported us. So I just want to say that we are very grateful to all of them for making us
42:53pasta every night and taking such good care of us. So. All right. That's all for now.
43:01Thanks, Brady.
43:02Thank you, my friend.