"Denis Villeneuve"

26:27I'm really, thank you very much for pointing that. But there are components to building a moment like that that you're just uniquely incredible at in your ability to balance all departments to create that moment. And so for our listeners out there that aren't as familiar with what happens on set and the sequencing of things. Talk a little bit about how you approach a moment like that, where you know that it needs to have the authenticity of sort of the human condition to counterbalance this crazy, odd sort of space world, netherworld that's not really that tangible, but the human emotion is. And so that needs to be real while this other stuff is not that real.

27:15And are you thinking I'm fully reliant on the actor to really ground this with no acting and just being raw? Or do you predetermine a certain visual language, a certain piece of music from Hans, a certain bit of sound design from your mixers? There's so many different elements that you can do to build a moment just perfectly like that. Talk a little bit about that. It's a very good question. Thank you. All shots are different from that specific moment where the Baron is lying on the stairs. It's a character, for those who haven't seen the movie, it's a character that is just about to die and sees suddenly the throne.

27:58The king left the throne and the throne is up the stairs and he's looking at the throne and he's crawling towards it. And with a moment like that, I will say it's a very simple image. So it's about Stellan. I explained to Stellan the idea and Stellan Skarsgård, who plays a baron, will perform and bring that to life. Sometimes I will say that the camera angles and the camera movement can help to enhance or... Elevate. Elevate. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. That's why I'm here. Anyway, to bring force into an idea, the camera is always very powerful, but the birth of the idea is acting, of course.

28:51Yeah, that's cool. But let's say perhaps, especially in this... And to answer about music, it's something for me that it's a power. Music is super powerful, but I try to not think about it as I'm shooting because it needs to be on screen first. It's something that... Well, I had a question about that. Let me just finish just one point though, Sean, sorry. But so while the music can come and does come much later in the process, the assets you may need on the set to create the visual of it, i.e. a technocrane or whatever it is that you want to shoot that scene in a certain way, you need to have a lot of that stuff predetermined so that you've got your crane there that day and your rigors have set up the lighting in such a way, etc.

29:44So how do you manage the balance between having an actor have the freedom that you want to give them but also fit inside sometimes a very technical and pre-thought and heavily prepped visual sequence that you need them to fit inside of. hit this mark, react this way, turn this direction, to fit something that may have other departments all predetermined? It depends. A good example will be the sandworm riding, where Timothée Chalamet playing Paul Atreides will attract a sandworm, and then when the sandworm arrives nearby him, he will jump on the worm and ride the worm. So it's a sequence that is like heavily storyboarded and needs months of prep, and And at this moment, let's say that the choreography that I impose, I'm more of a dictator, I impose a rhythm, a precise choreography that Timothy has to follow.

30:44But inside that choreography, there's tiny moments where Timothy, when I'm in close-up on him, how he can anticipate the arrival of this beast toward him, the way you can act with his eyes. There's tiny things in the micro-precisions of acting that he can bring. I mean, that I'm open to ideas, but in general, sometimes it's more loose. Some sequences, there's more space for the actor, and those are also I love when I have time to give space to the actors to bring some ideas. To bring some ideas. I'm talking about the settings of a scene. It's going to be... It's very inspiring when people bring good ideas.

31:36But complicated sometimes when you have stuff that's predetermined and then you've got an actor that's got different ideas. And it's like, well, no, no, no. This isn't one of those scenes where you can freestyle. You got to see what I'm saying. Exactly. But at the same time, it requires tremendous acting skills to be able to perform and to bring life to like Timothy facing the worm or Amy Adams facing the aliens or to be in relationship with something that doesn't exist. It requires nice imagination and it's not easy for actors to perform in those movies with big toys and all these things. And to answer to your first part of your question about techno cranes or dollies, etc., it's all planned in advance when I built the scene, it's all drawn, prepared, so we know exactly what kind of technology we'll use on the day, of course.

32:30Was there a lot of green screen versus volume stage on Dune 1 and 2? Did you use any of the volume stages? Was it all green? Was there a split half and half? No, we were almost as possible outside in the real environment or with real sets. We built as much as we could. And we were in the real environments, in the desert. And those landscapes are, for the people who have been in the landscape that are bigger than life, that bring humility inside you, that the impact on those landscapes is tremendous, on the actors and myself. Yeah, I watched the whole behind the scenes, all of it, all of the Dune.

33:20I couldn't consume enough of it. I was just blown away with how it's made. And one dumb, dumb question I have is when people are walking in the sand and it's the first footprints in the sand, that's one take. Like, how do you do that? You know what I mean? You're going to love show business. You're going to love show business so much. The right crew. It required a certain amount. We can erase footsteps in the background, things like that with CGI, but you cannot have an actor walking in his own footsteps again because that's a nightmare for VFX. So you have a crew with rakes? So it means that we have to plan to find areas where we will each take, move the camera, put the camera on a dolly and move.

34:12Find another spot. Make sure that we have the perfect place to do five or six or seven or eight takes, that we will also have, the crew will have the discipline not to make any footsteps. It sounds simple, but it's not. It's like when you have a crew of 800 people in the sand to make sure that everybody follows the same path. Amazing. And it gives the opportunity to see crazy things. Like every night when I was going back from the set, at sunset, there were 100 people grooming the sand dunes to remove the footsteps that we had made. So the wind will do its work during the night. And it's very poetic.

34:53That I felt, oh my God, am I a megalomania? Yeah, you're a monster. Because people grooming the desert. Sweeping the sand. Believe me, I've had the same thought I want. Jason made some footsteps in the sand and he yelled at his caddy. He said, you missed a footprint. when he was playing golf. He's a real monster. But, Denis, you know, when I was thinking about, you were talking about the actors and asking them to have imagination and working with them on all these thoughts and this inner life and stuff, and I was thinking about the collaboration that you've had with a bunch of different actors across a bunch of your films.

35:31You've used, and worked, not used, you've worked with lots of people in different roles. I was trying to think who was, well, certainly our friend Josh Brolin, you've worked with a lot. I think starting in Sicario, which I want to get to. Another great one, yeah. Which is an incredible, I urge anybody if you've never seen Sicario to please see that. Oh my goodness, so great. It's so phenomenal. Thanks. Jake Gyllenhaal, you've worked with a couple times, I think, right? With Prisoners. Emily Blunt. And then our good friend Emily. You've had a lot of repeat collaborators. Yeah. Yeah, it's all about the nature of the project and the parts are a bit boring, but I wish I could work with all of them again.

36:22I'll do it.

36:26But it's a thing that honestly I adore working in the United States to have access to all these incredible actors. I mean, it's like, and his casting is very strange. I mean, it's, you bring someone and it's intuitions about the proximity of an actor and a role and you, it's a gamble in some ways. But, yeah. Can I go back? Okay, just one really quick question about the music because I thought that was interesting. you said you were talking to Hans before you started. And do you listen to cues or music before you even start thinking about how you're going to film it to get ideas? Or writing, you mean?

37:16Do you envision stuff from listening to music? Or do you wait to incorporate it later? I'm going to be very honest. Every time I write, I'm direct listening to music. and that's why I say music I'm very sensitive to music I absolutely love music but it has like I remember once one of my first films I was directing a specific scene and as I was alone in my bubble with my headphones listening to this fantastic piece of music and I was saying to myself it's going to be amazing it's going to be something it's the power of music then you look at this scene with all the music like hmm. The same with writing.

38:01Sometimes I write something and I get emotional. I'm like, oh my God, maybe I'm great. And then you read it the next morning. It's like, no, it's the music. It sounds stupid, but it's the truth. I cannot work with music. I work with silence. Then I try to, and silence is my friend. I love, my sets are very boring. I'm not a funny director. I'm someone who loves to be, when I get in the car in the morning, it's total silence. I need silence. I arrive on set, I need silence. And I try to protect that bubble all day long. That's where I can find my way. When there's music, I'm gone. It's too powerful.

38:45And this is why, to answer your question, it's like, if I have music from the past movies right now, I cannot listen to this music. It's too powerful. You introduced me to Max Richter because I never heard of him. And I was like, what is that piece that's so powerful? Staying with music though, where for you does the score and the sound design begins? Talk to us about that process for you and when does it happen? First of all, I try to think about the sound and the structure of the sound design as much as possible in the screenplay. and I know as I'm writing that I will need music there I will create a musical sequence more, it's something that is embedded in the DNA of the screenplay but then when we edit the film there's like I'm working with an editor Joe Walker who is a master that Joe is coming from was studied as a composer he was a composer first then he did sound at the BBC as a sound editor So where I'm going is that sound, what I love, and one of the reasons I started to work with Joey, we made many movies together, is that for him, sound is as important as the image.

40:07And it's something that when I was making indie movies, I felt that the sound was coming at the end of the process and with very little time. And I was always kind of disappointed not having the proper time to make a real embedded sound design. And so now I try to bring the sound as early as possible. So it's like as I'm shooting, we have sound designers that start to create, specifically with sci-fi, to create sounds that will be fed to the editing room very early on. So these sounds, time to live with them and make sure that they will enter the test of time and get used to them and make sure that they are right through time.

40:51It's not just flashes that are last-minute flashes. And it gives, of course, more time to explore, experiment. And so the sound is something that is, again, as important as the image. And with Johan Johansson and Hans Zimmer, both composers, were flirting close to the sound design sometimes, meaning that the music, sometimes there's like a dance that I install between the designers and the composer that they will flirt and cross sometimes the border or one of each other. And for that, it needs communication. But that sound design is embedded prior to you spotting with the composer and figuring out where you're going to put some of the music.

41:39So it's the sound design first then, yeah? Yeah, but I will say that it depends on the sequence. Sometimes I said to the team, here it's Hans. Hans Zimmer is not known to be subtle when he can invade the soundtrack. So there are some moments where we say, okay, that's the area. I said, here it's going to be, we go follow Hans. It's trying to find the right balance between what the scene needs. It's about the needs. It's the movie that guides me. Yeah, yeah. We'll be right back.

42:21And now, back to the show. Can we just touch on Sicario for another moment, if we could, because I'm... Just talk about how that came to be, how that came into you, into your purview, and what sort of led you... I don't know, there's something about that film that I find I just adore. It's so visceral. I've been very interested by the border between the United States and Mexico. I thought it was a very meaningful place in the world about our reality. It was very... I was looking for... I was reading about it. I was looking for a project and that will be for a story, something that will allow me to explore that zone.

43:13And it came into my hands at one point. I read a lot, but one project came called Sicario, written by Taylor Sheridan. Yeah, the great Taylor Sheridan. Taylor is well-known now for all the work he's done, but at that time it was one of his first screenplays. And still today it is by far, by far one of the best screenplays I ever read. Wow. The amount of research that Taylor had done to bring that world to life, the best compliment I have about Sicario is when I meet border officers or policemen, DEA officers, people who work at the border who saw Sicario and said, that's the real deal. And honestly, it is because of the work that Taylor had done.

44:01He had done his homeworks, and when you were reading the screenplay, you knew you were in front of something that felt authentic. Very, very strong screenplay. I remember reading it, and I was like, the screenplay was so intense. I finished the screenplay, I was drained of energy. I was like, oh my God, I love it. I'm so sad that I love this so much. I will have to go in the dark, and I was just out of three very dark movies in a row, and I said to go back there. But it was exactly what I was looking for, and it's by far the movie that was the fastest process. I read the screenplay, met the studio, we got along spontaneously and we did the casting.

44:43It went bang! I was behind the camera with Roger Dickens. It was like one of the fastest projects I ever made and still to this day it's a very nice shoot because there was just a nice balance between the budget and the subject and it went quite, it was a nice shoot. Yeah, I just want to say, JB, I want to get your point, which is I just want to touch on the great Taylor Sheridan. Again, you can tell, I never read the script, but you could tell the material was so strong. It really comes through, you know, not just obviously the visual and the way the film is, is incredible, but also that the material was really strong.

45:21I think it was pretty... I had crazy ideas. I mean, like that border shoot, that slow motion car chase at the border. Great ideas, great. Taylor is amazing to write cinema. Very cinematic ideas. Great dialogues, great characters, but very strong sense of cinema. I'm still grateful that I had a chance to bring that on screen. That shootout you mentioned there at the border is one of the most tense things I've ever seen. still probably ever will see. And, you know, there's, you know, there's, there's obviously great planning that goes into something like that because it's just so intricate. But I guess that's my question.

46:05How much planning did go into something like that? And, and just more generally when you're working and your, your, your visual taste, your aesthetic, your, your sense of composition and whatnot is just unmatched. And you're working with your equals in cinematography with people like Roger Dinkins and Greg Frazier. When you sit down and you start to shot design and shot list and previs and all that stuff in prep and decide how you're going to actually photograph something, what is the relationship with cinematographers like that that are so accomplished and so, in a good way, opinionated, what's the back and forth that goes there?

46:50Do you let them know kind of what you're seeing and look for them to kind of plus that? Or is it the other way around? Do you let them start to design things and then you let them know whether that fits inside your plan? It's a sequence like that battle sequence, for instance, has to be planned months in advance because it's a puzzle. The different parts have been shot in different places. And you have to create a piece of highway. With all these cars, it has to be very, very well planned according to some positions. And so it's storyboarded. And of course, working with someone like Roger Dickens will have a strong input.

47:35That's what I love. It's like a collaboration. I mean, it's like we will find together the right angle. according to the board that I did, but I'm always open if someone has a better idea on set that will make the shot even stronger. The thing I love working with Roger is that we both are, when we are looking for a shot, looking for the angle, not multiple angles, but one, we used to work with one camera and just making sure that that's something, that search for the best angle possible is something that would... You're only working with one camera? It's something I really, really loved. On Sicario, yes.

48:15Only one? Wow. That's crazy. No, no. I will say it's because I'm monomaniac and it's something that Roger has. We try, want to put a second camera on one and it was a disaster. I mean, you feel it. You know it's not right. It's like there's one place to put the camera and the rest is... We are both... On a movie like Doom, sometimes there was additional cameras. It's because of the nature of the piece that didn't have the choice. And Greg Fraser had that flexibility to... But I would say it's... I have four cameras on me right now. And we wish it was zero. Is there a possibility to do zero? No, because I want to make sure we get it.

49:02Denis, I want to say, I was thinking about your films and your filmography, all the things that you've done. And not only have they been epic, as we've discussed before, and had tremendous scope, but also you've tackled a lot of... I don't want to say that they're dark, but there is darkness there. You challenge people in the darker realms. Certainly some of your earlier films and your Canadian films that these guys might not know about. Polytechnique and Cindy's. I'm thinking about Polytechnique, which is about the Montreal Massacre, which was a terrible incident in Montreal in 1989. I was there.

49:42I was in Montreal at that time. You were? Yeah, yeah. And I was living there. And those films were, as I mentioned before, Prisoners and Enemy. And then you get into even Sicario. These are heavier subjects that you're tackling. My question is, when's the rom-com? Yeah. actually my first feature film was some kind of a rom-com was it? not a good one but it was she did lose her life at the end actually he dies wow hopeless but it is one of the reasons when I did Sicario I knew Arrival was coming after and I did Sicario knowing that I would make a movie with more light and because I was like, it's true that I made a series of films that were pretty violet and dark and there's a toll to this.

50:46There's like a weight and I needed to go toward and I think that science fiction also helped me to go toward something like looking in the future or something that's more, there's more light there, I feel right now. So it's a... Please don't stop making the dark stuff too because there is an uplift and an excitement watching a filmmaker do things at your level no matter what the genre, what the mood is. JB, would you agree that if somebody says there's a new Denis Villeneuve film coming out, it doesn't matter what it's about. Where do I line up? Thank you, gentlemen. You're very generous with me.

51:28No, it's true. I'm going to shit talk you when this is over. Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of the earlier stuff. Let's ask Brolin. Let's ask Brolin for the real deal. Are there any films from the beginning of your career that you would enjoy perhaps reshooting nowadays, knowing what you know now and do? Not that you have any regrets, but anything. I should phrase it differently. Which film from your past do you think would be most fun to redo now that you know things now that you didn't know then? Wow, that's a nice question. you know that the past movies are like you say I'm like the father of those movies it's like I see movies sometimes as a selfie of yourself you know when you look at pictures of yourself when you were a teenager the shame it's the hairdo and the clothes and I have that relationship with my past work sometimes I look at it and I'm like that's the truth I would like to go back to my teenage years?

52:32Nope. Hey, how do you, Denis, how do you take care of yourself with these massive months-long shoots? Yeah, health-wise. Honestly, very simply, I need good hours, sleeping hours. And one thing that I did on the past two movies, which was like advice from Ridley Scott, because I said, I asked Ridley, How do you do it? How can you make? Say when I make a movie, Ridley makes three movies. And he has a very high pacing. It's just to make sure that your hours, shooting hours are regular. That there's no... So we do what we call French hours, meaning we shoot 10 hours a day, but without break. No lunch, no breaks.

53:21So it means that the hours are always the same. You always start the day at the same time and end the day, no overtime. So it's like it creates a balance in your schedule. I love that. So you're not all content. You do that on every job? On the past jobs, yes, yes, yes. I didn't do that on Blade Runner and I almost died. Yeah, how are you on night shoots? Night shoots will kill people. I mean, literally, unfortunately. Yeah, it's about to create a balance in the schedule. Trying to find a balance so you will protect the crew from being exhausted. because for the people who don't know about shooting, it's just that the nature of the structure of the schedule because of the turnaround of the actors, sometimes you end up starting your day in the middle of the afternoon and finishing late at night.

54:05So it's like being in constant jet lag. It's not good for creativity. No, it's terrible for creativity. It's terrible. Knocking on an actor's trailer at three in the morning, we're ready for you. Or when they say, they go, hey guys, it's lunch and it's 12 midnight and you're like, what do you mean lunch? This is not lunch, I'm sorry. Or you land on set at 6 p.m. and say, hey, good morning, I said, cut the crap. Yeah, exactly. Danny, aside from the... Are you a Montreal Canadiens fan? Is that what you're going to ask him? Yeah, exactly. Well, it was part of it. It's like, aside from the good sleep, what's the other thing that you do to really sort of decompress and get away from the incredibly, you know, immersive work directing is.

54:52Do you watch something silly on TV? Are you a sports fan? Do you watch hockey? No, but as I'm shooting, honestly, when I shoot, I make a film, it's a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week commitment. There's no way to relax. For me, I'm 100 % present to the project, so there's no... Specifically, a movie of sci-fi movies, every second, not even sci-fi, any movies, the way I will recover from a movie is to go back home in Canada, in the forest, go with my family, spend time with the kids, and that's where I recharge my batteries. But during a shoot, there's no moment where I know that. And because of that dedication, you will now have made it will go down in history Dune as a franchise just like you loved Star Wars as a franchise as a kid you created a franchise that will last forever in the minds of these kids I would say I didn't do it thinking about the word franchise for me it was I was making two movies and it was not there was no because franchise for me it's always like something that is linked with commerce or like there's a plan.

56:14Okay, three great movies. Yeah. Three great movies that are connected. No, but it's not bad. It's just that I was not saying to myself, okay, I'm starting a franchise. It's more about I'm adapting this book in two movies and we'll see what happens after. But for the fans, we're so happy you're making three of them. But Sean, not only that, but also, does it ever occur to you, not unlike you, looking at your father's newspaper and saying, please take me to this movie, is that you're not going to be able to do this? it must be kind of cool knowing that there's somewhere, there's a kid who said to his parents, please take me to Dune, please take me to Dune 2, who 10 years from now says, I want to study film, who makes a film with people they know and makes a big, huge film.

56:57And they do it because they saw Dune when they were 7, 8, 9, 10. To be inspiring in that way, I think it must be very cool. I don't know if it had happened or something, but it would be moving to think that people could be inspired. One thing for sure is that I made those movies. We were talking about darkness and violence earlier. The movies were made for PG-13 instead of rated R. It was the first time after, apart from Arrival, all my other movies are for adults. This one, I insisted, I agreed with the studio also to make it PG-13 because I wanted the movie to be accessible to a younger audience that would have the same age as when I read the book.

57:49So I thought it was inspiring for me. And adults like me who have the brains of a 13-year-old. Yeah, at best. Yeah, but for me, I like the idea that those movies are taking themselves seriously, meaning that they are sci-fi that doesn't apologize to be sci-fi or I love. I remember when I saw The Empire Strikes Back when I was 13 years old, the impact of that movie on me, 12 years old. Oh, gosh. I thought the darkness of it. I felt that someone was talking to me as I was trusting me as a kid. And when Darth Vader said, I am your father, I was like, what would that feel like? Inside joke. Well, Denny, you seem as kind as you are talented.

58:39I can't thank you enough for talking to us three ding-dongs for an hour. It was a pleasure to chat with you this morning. Thank you very much for the invitation and thank you for your generosity as well. That means the world. Thank you, sir. Congratulations on all your great work. Please keep it coming. Take care. See you later. Good luck, Sean. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Well, you got blessed by the great Denis Villeneuve, Sean. I think your prospects look good. He just said, basically, like, hope you live. Yeah. From the great Denis Villeneuve. He's, yeah, I mean. Hey, if you're out there and you're not familiar, and again, I know that we do like, we compliment our guests a lot because we have people on that we like and we respect and we get shit for it sometimes.

59:29You guys just, all you do is compliment. well, we like to compliment people who are really good at what they do. And if you're not familiar who Denis Villeneuve is and you're not familiar with his films for some reason, I really, this is true. I urge you to go and watch some of his films, all of his films, his Canadian films that he made and his current, he's just an incredible, I mean, JB is a director, right? Just stunning, yeah. Like he's not, there aren't many in his league. I think it's probably about, it ain't deeper than 10 and it's probably closer to five. No, and again, he made Brolin look good.

1:00:03You know what I mean? Oh, it's very hard to do. I mean, think about that. It shows what a filmmaker he is. Yeah, I think how many cameras that takes. Just off the, you know? Yeah. But he's really cool. He's... So cool. Yeah, and you can tell he's in charge, which I love. Canadians are cool, right? Yeah, the accent I think he needs to work on a little bit. He's from Des Moines. But I think... No, he's not from Des Moines. No. No, dummy. God. he's uh he's from i think he's from montreal yeah yeah quebec well he's that's in montreal is in quebec but yeah yeah um he's not related to jacques villeneuve or or or uh gil villeneuve sure um but i don't know who those people are those are formula one drivers they were oh excellent wonderful they were um you know you know what here he comes you know good what's up I love that he brought Close Encounters up.

1:00:58Oh, yeah? Why is that? Well, because when I remember that one moment when you all saw the movie, yeah? This is going to be so lazy. Honestly, this is going to be so freaking lazy. When the little kid is standing there waving to the aliens as they're leaving, he actually says out loud. What does he say? Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

1:01:28Nice. On your arm. Nice, buddy. Smart. Nice.

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