You all shot for a few nights on the actual BART platform where this tragedy took place. Can you talk about that experience?
Diaz: It was one of the most intense things. You can still feel the ghosts there, the presence of the pain and violence and fear and everything that went down that night. That day was special. We started off with a prayer. It was powerful.
The author of the book had a great line about your films: “Laughs are never free. There are always strings attached.” Can you speak about the humor in this film and its fine calibration, especially in its opening sequences?
Taika Waititi: I always thought that humor and comedy are very powerful tools and effective weapons against bullies and bigotry.
How did you find this story?
David Lowery: It was a true story about this guy whose life was too good to be true in terms of a narrative.
What were your first thoughts, after reading the script?
Simon Rex: I was just like… whoa. Whoa. WHOA!
Can you discuss your inspiration for writing this story?
Robert Machoian: It was really motivated, to some degree, my own life in the sense that I’ve been married for quite a while, and I have children, and coming to this period in life where many friends of ours were starting to separate.
We spent three years filming, and we went to twenty five countries with Quincy.
Did you find it helpful to engage with the previous iterations of the story when you were preparing for this film?
Nicholas Britell: Well, what was interesting, actually, was that when Benjamin first told me that he had this inspiration to to do Carmen, my first instinct was that I actually didn’t want to adapt or rearrange Bizet at all.
There was such incredible chemistry amongst the cast. How did you build that? What was the rehearsal process?
Viggo Mortensen: Early on, which was great and doesn’t always happen, Matt brought me into read with the last couple of kids we were casting.
What attracted you to this project?
Kate Winslet: When I first read the script, I was really taken by the physical demands.
How did you get on this project? How did it come to you?
John Krasinski: So I was about to start pre-production on Jack Ryan, and some of the producers on Jack Ryan were Platinum Dunes, and they said, “Would you ever act in a genre movie?” And I said, “Oh no, I can’t do that, I don’t do horror movies.”
Can you talk about adapting your own book for the screen?
They initially approached Dan Fogelman, who’s a very established screenwriter. And he actually flipped it back to me and said he thought I should do it. At that point I just assumed I was talking to someone who was insane, and that this would be a terrible mistake.
How did you go about conceiving two characters who would ultimately converge?
Jason Reitman: I always thought of the movie as being like those lenticular posters, where if you look at the poster and you kind of move your head two inches, the image changes.
How did you decide that co-directing this film was the best approach?
James Lebrecht: I’ve had the good fortune to have worked with Nicole on three of her films in the past, and we became friends over the years. I just loved her work!
What are the origins of the script?
Gus Van Sant: I live in Portland, Oregon. I had moved there, I think, in 1982. I had made a couple of films, and John Callahan was a visible, local character.
This is not a typical biopic in that you mainly focus on the darkest period of his life. Why did you choose that window?
Don Cheadle: He just shut down his music for five years. I thought, what’s happening there?