Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera & Paul Greengrass On The Lost Bus: An Empire Podcast Interview Special

0:14Hello Pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to another Empire Podcast interview special. Paul Greengrass's The Lost Bus is a true-life tale of the extraordinary challenge facing Kevin McKay, a school bus driver, Mary Ludwig, a teacher, and a group of small children when they found themselves trapped and lost on, yes, a school bus, in the middle of the 2018 Campfire, a deadly North Californian wildfire. The movie, which is one of my favourite of the year, is out now on Apple TV +, so you can watch it from the comfort of your own sofa. But don't be surprised if you find yourself wondering if the temperature in the room hasn't gone up a few degrees while you're watching it.

0:53Because this movie is one of the greatest depictions of fire, flame, heat, and what it must be like to be inside a conflagration of the size that I have ever seen. It's Paul Greengrass firing on all cylinders. It's his best film for me since Captain Phillips. And when I sat down with him on Zoom a couple weeks ago, just before he flew to Toronto to premiere the movie, we talked about how exactly he achieved that effect. We also talked about a whole lot more and we started off with some chat about football because Paul is a big Crystal Palace fan and it is a good time to be a Crystal Palace fan.

1:29Enjoy. We are delighted to be joined on the Emperor podcast by the director of The Lost Bus, Mr. Paul Greengrass. How are you, sir? I'm good, thanks, Chris. Everything good with you? Everything is good for me. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, before we start, before we get into the nitty-gritty of it all, Paul, congratulations on Crystal Palace's unprecedented success over the last few months. Everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. What a day it was. What two fantastic days. Yeah, no, it was amazing. Who'd have thought it? Who would have thought it? But it was good. Great day. I have to ask, did you shed a tear when they won the FA Cup?

2:03I did. Well, I certainly roared. I was there. It was fantastic. What a day. What a day. Brilliant. But Paul, you were about to fly off to Toronto to premiere The Lost Bus. Are you looking forward to that? We were just talking about it off mic. I'm about to shoot a week later too. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. Do you know which way is up at the moment? No, we're going to Germany to shoot with Andrew Garfield. So it's quite a busy time. Let's talk about The Lost Bus. Are you looking forward to going to premiere in front of an audience and getting that? It'll be lovely, yeah. it's i mean we tested it obviously so i've seen it but it's the first time it's sort of all done there's an audience uh so it'll be really interesting to see how it goes you know um you know i'm i mean it's uh i'm i'm uh i'm relaxed you know i it's the film i wanted to make so now it's got to take its own journey you know i like it and you gotta let them grow up and go out in the world and fight their own battles.

3:07The first time I've seen, the first time I saw the movie, because I've seen it a couple of times, it was in a lovely screen room on my own. And I don't often wish for something like the 40X experience, Paul, but I did want them to turn the heat up as the movie went on, because this thing is intense. I can't remember a film that has chronicled what it must be like to be inside a massive colossal wildfire like this yeah well i'm glad you say that as that's really what the intent was i think from all of us you know i mean i think that i think that these huge fires are sort of part of our world now aren't they i mean wherever you look you know, France, Italy, Greece, you know, Canada, North America, South America, Far East.

4:02I mean, it's the world's burning, I guess, you know, so it's part of the, it's part of the terrors of our age, really. And that was kind of why I made it. You know, what I loved about it was that it was a very intimate, small story, you know. but it has you know it connects with this grand overarching

4:31idea of you know our world is burning so it but you never have to say it because it's in the story you know yeah absolutely it's implicit but there's a it's a movie that feels incredibly timely and sadly became even more timely as you were making it yeah We were literally a couple of weeks off finishing the mix when the fires in Los Angeles happened. And it was eerie and disturbing and surreal because, you know, you had all these images up on the stage and there it was playing out in real life, looking very like it. And also affected, you know, Billy Goldenberg, who cut the film, he had to go home because he didn't lose his house, but he very nearly did and his family were there and it was terrifying time for him and a couple of people in the on the film lost their places so it was it was personal you know i know and the movie's produced by jamie lee curtis who um in a way originated the project and she nearly lost her house as well as did jason blumber co-producer he nearly did too it's absolutely astonishing and the footage we've seen over the last few years because the the the california fire the la fire was not the first time this has happened obviously you know the one you've documented here the campfire in this movie did that in a way the fact that these things have been chronicled so much from so many different angles i noticed at the end of the film you you think getty images there's a lot of um like acknowledgement of i guess news agencies that of captured images of wildfires over the years.

6:15Did that help in a way you to communicate that to the audience, what it would be like to be inside this? Because you've never been inside one of these things, Paul. No, no, no. Although I saw one in France at close quarters. Okay. What was that like? I have a place in France, and this was about 10 years ago, down south. and uh i was actually in bed and uh jen and my wife and the kids were downstairs and and i sort of heard a noise like ringing outside down in the valley a bit and then they all came up and said we got to get out we got to get out there's a fire and i went oh come on don't be ridiculous just relax it's just nothing you know and i was a bit grumpy because i had to get up and get in and we drove out and we literally drove you know half a mile down the road turned the corner and then it was like was a huge wildfire that uh missed their house but not by far about half a mile it missed it um and we were out of the house quite a while nobody got killed but it was a big fire so we were close not to see things like the the smoke the way that the smoke changes the air oh yeah yeah you can see it all along the all along the ridgeline it was huge it was absolutely huge i mean not the size of this it didn't move at the scale as in it didn't rip through through uh you know uh wasn't you know one of the things about the campfire was it started as a wildfire and became townfire but um and we weren't in the middle of it we we were evacuated and spent the night actually on the beach um and then got a hotel but you know but it definitely must have lodged with me you know i can imagine so because one of the things that the film really folks is and again i'm guessing is the feeling of what it would be like to be inside a bus surrounded by fire the temperature is slowly creeping up you can't see the sun it's the middle of the afternoon but you can't see the sun late morning in fact yeah absolutely and it's it's just absolutely and say how do you go about doing that when i watched this movie again for the first time i came out and i said to someone i do not understand how that movie didn't cost 300 million dollars because it's the scale of it is incredible well it's interesting it it i actually went down one road attempting to make it in one way and ended up going in a completely different direction.

8:52My initial instinct was because we had a bus full of kids and fire, I thought we'll have to do this in effect virtually or a lot of it, you know? And I went to the sphere, you know, in Las Vegas, the big sphere, the U2, and I saw the U2 show there, which was absolutely incredible because it has this huge wraparound, you know, phenomenal, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars virtual display. So when they're playing and they bring up the Las Vegas desert, you absolutely, it's uncanny. You believe you're there because it wraps around you, you know. And I thought, well, we have to do it the same way.

9:44obviously it's only a bus so it's not the huge sphere space it's could we design and build a display that would wrap around the bus and enable us to shoot it in effect virtually and we did a lot of work and spent some money too trying to create that but in the end I didn't want to do it I decided not to do it I think for a number of reasons first of all I felt in my soul it wasn't really me as a filmmaker you know I felt I wasn't going to be having an experience and putting the actors in a real world experience you know it was going to be essentially a theatrical experience and that troubled me it just didn't feel like it was ultimately me you know and i was solving all sorts of problems that didn't feel like the problems that i like to solve um and then greg goodman who's produced the film with jamie and uh jason found this amazing you know we'd already decided by then we were going to shoot not in california but in new mexico found this recently uh discontinued arts uh university really it was a college facility it was huge it was like four times the size of pinewood and it was entirely deserted and they were happy to rent it to us for an affordable amount of money but it had loads of roads and it took you 20 minutes to drive around it you know lots of different roads different widths of roads roads going past buildings where it's going through scrubland and greg said you got to see this place and i drove around and i thought we need to be there we need to be for real and the advantage of that place was that we could actually lay real fire because the problem you have is yeah center fe if we're in the outskirts of center bay it has the same climate obviously as california and the same fire risks you know where you go there are risks of fire signs and you know no naked flames and so on so forth and of course the thing you can't do is burn anything that creates particles that might fly around you know but we were able to have lay gas burners gas pipes you know gas lines yeah Obviously, a gas flame is very, very specific, doesn't emit any particles.

12:46Yeah. They're very, very instantly controllable up or down. And that unlocked the first piece of the jig. So I thought, okay, well, now I could believe that we could go out and drive and have fire elements for real, which obviously would need to be augmented and so on and so forth. but but you could have a bedrock of reality that was the first thing and you know and then we could have it you know the bus passing through real environments and with real traffic and real vehicles and all the rest of it and then the second piece of the jigsaw really came when when i started rehearsing with matthew and america and the children the children were all cast from schools in santa fe and they were amazed they were an amazingly committed group and their parents were incredibly good and matthew and america who i didn't know obviously but was getting to know because we rehearsed i could just feel how committed they were and giving they were and the thing that struck me it was a challenge i was thinking how are you going to create the light that a forest fire you were saying you know it was the morning time and yet it looked like night but actually when you study footage from inside wildfires it's a weird light it's like a it's like an occluded heavily eclipsed light it's not truly night some of it look it sort of looks like night but it sort of doesn't it's very strange and so you can see but you can't see you know um and you know obviously when i was considering the virtual solution that would have been you know a challenge we could have solved but how were you going to do it and film it in a bus that's moving you know and i had decided that if we were going to move the bus and drive around you know which had tremendous advice i didn't want to do it with a whole lighting rig on the top because that would have made the bus unsafe and it could only move at five miles an hour you know you got all that weight on it so i didn't want to light it so it was a conundrum and in the end the simple truth was this that the closest light that you get in reality to a forest fire light is light at magic hour or what we call magic hour which is really that very very narrow window between dark and light at the very end of a day and depending where you are in the you know in the north or south home hillship that's either shorter or you know more abrupt depending on weather and so forth but you get that same same kind of eclipse light for a very short period of time so that was really when the whole plan took shape i thought okay what we're going to have to do is and i remember sitting and talking to matthew in america saying you know the way we're going to have to do this is to shoot this thing as if it's live so big chunks of pages as if it's live in magic out and we won't be able to shoot other than that So we'll go out at 10, 11 in the morning.

16:18We'll spend all day rehearsing the scenes because, you know, we might do 10, 12, 15 pages.

16:29We'll rehearse all the vehicles because there are a tremendous amount. You know, in that film you can see the fire trucks racing around. You know, there's a lot of intense vehicular activity. Yeah. all of which was you know had huge safety issues smoke that we were laying uh yeah obviously the fire elements you know the gas burn the gas lines and so so we would spend all day basically preparing and then it was a little bit like and sort of it gave it an intensity because you you'd be shooting sort of as the light was dropping knowing that you got at most a couple of goes of it and that was it and it it actually was the key to film because it gave it an intensity to their performance and it was great for the kids of course because when you shoot with young children as they all were you only get them for you know four or five hours a day yeah so you know for you know obviously because they they they're minors but it was great because you could bring them in do their schooling everything could be relaxed you could rehearse them and then they got to do it and go home so you were never under pressure with with children's hours are you as you often are on a film when you're chasing your full sort of 11 hour day that's amazing it gave it for cast and crew alike a kind of you'd set off on the bus to do a leg of the journey and you would know that you had that one or two shots of it and that was it and it just made it thrilling and you know matthew america were amazing i mean they'd stay on that bus for hours on end matthew drove every single yard of that bus literally never moved from the seat yeah he didn't do that neither of them did that i will go back to the trailer tell me when the shots i mean they just sat in that bus all day with those kids on all day you know but rehearsing yeah and i just it was a it was a fantastically intense and and rather wonderful experience that's amazing in a way that's reminiscent of what you did on united 93 so similar i mean different but yeah but like that like captain phillips you know if you're in a real space it gives what you do specificity and you know i think it's great for the actors i mean obviously we we went on stage and picked up bits of close-ups and so forth but but uh but the bedrock at the movie was shot in a bus on the move and that really shows i think there's an amazing scene towards the end where where kevin and mary you slow everything down and they have this exchange they have this heart to heart and kevin kevin breaks down about regrets and about feeling that he's too late in life to you know to bond with his son it's too late to be with his dad was that scene shot on the move so to speak or was that one where you felt you needed to do a soundstage i worked that no no that was shot outside on on the um at the campus wow uh part it was parked the bus um you know with the smoke and the wind and you know one of the things i wanted when brad and i you know we wrote the screenplay i wanted it to be ultimately every character to face the question have we left it too late so kevin does mary does uh you know the firefighter yul vasquez does and so does the dispatcher because that's the question i think that's the big question of what you know for us isn't it have we left it too late but i wanted all these individual destinies to to revolve around that question so you never say it but built into it without it ever being said is that beating heart of the film if i can put it that way and i thought he i mean they both played that scene and so did the kids too they were magnificent yeah and i just believed i was there i believed i was in the warfare and i believed in their dilemma which of course is the dilemma in all wildfires i mean many people in paradise talked about that same dilemma do you run and risk being caught in the fire or do you stay and risk being caught by the fire.

21:09And the truth is, it's luck of the draw. You know, you can't predict where a fire goes. You know, it can take those 20 houses and leave that one alone. Rip this way and then the wind turns it that way. You know, it's like a monster. And I've tried to personify it as such in the film, you know, cinematically. Well, that's another thing I wanted to talk about because I was really struck by, there are numerous shots, there's a motif that recurs throughout the film, almost like a Fars POV in a way. This is prowling, monsterless roaming through the forest, roaming through the town. You have these wonderful little embers as well that are.

21:49What do you think I got that for? Well, I was sitting there, you know, when we were trying to figure out these early big decisions. And I remember coming in one day after a walk and going, I have to, the fire has to be a character. We have to show it. And it, it's exactly the same as what Steven did with Jaws, you know? Yes. The minute he created the sharks POV, it came alive. So there you go. It's good enough for Steven Spielberg. It's good enough for me. That works, but it does give us this real sense, this real presence in the movie. I thought it was absolutely terrific. But it is a vast devouring more, you know.

22:43Yeah. Taking everything its path and moving at the most astonishing speed too. And I thought that really conveyed it, you know, and it was a key, I think, to how we were able to make you feel like you were in the middle of it, you know to give it that immersive quality that i like paul got it to go but uh as you said when you come back from toronto you start filming on another one so yeah so this is the uh this is the rage is it yep this is the peasants revolt of 1381 andrew garfield plays a peasant farmer mixed up in it and uh it's about thousands and thousands of people who think the system's rigged against them decided to march on London and trash the place.

23:34Hmm. Sounds quite... I think we've seen that thing before. So, and three days of mayhem ensues. So that's our story. Of course. Essentially, I'm really looking forward to it. I've never made a film in deep period. I've never worked with Andrew before, so it's going to be got a fantastic cast. Not enough money, obviously, but we'll do it this weekend. And I'll come and see about it when we're done. Absolutely. Well, I cannot wait to see how you're going to immerse this in 1381 as well. Thanks, Paul. Cheers. Okay, that was Paul Greengrass talking about The Lost Bus, and it's incredible hearing how he made this movie.

24:15And I think it was a good thing that he swerved away from filming it on a stage, because that intensity, that visceral approach to doing things is A, very Paul Greengrass, but also B, a huge boost for the actors. As I found out when I sat down with his stars, Matthew McConaughey, who plays Kevin, and America Ferreira, who plays Mary, in a London hotel room just the other day, in fact, to talk about the very hands-on way they made this movie and a whole lot more besides. Do please enjoy. Matthew McConaughey, America Ferreira, welcome to the Empire Podcast. How are you both? I'm good, man. Good, thank you.

24:49Good, good, good. Excellent. We're in a lovely London hotel room. You know it's obviously very very different from the bus That you were on together for Weeks, months I haven't got flame cannons around the place To make you feel at home but do you miss that bus At all? Do you pine for it? I sometimes miss that bus That seat That was my whole stage That's where I was for 95 % Of the film And I got really comfy in it I knew where things were without having to look Left, right and above me I knew it was great. It was my little throne. Yeah. And in real life, behind the wheel is my favorite seat. It's my favorite office.

25:32I pull up. I still do it to this day and always have road trips or driving. I'd rather drive if I have time or I'll pull up to the house at night and I'll sit in my car and finish my work for an hour and a half. Really? Because I don't like passenger seats. I like the wheel. And I've customized consoles where that's my workspace. I love being behind the wheel. Amazing. Well, because you can disconnect because you're focusing on something else. So it allows you to think about other stuff at the back of your brain. Part of it is that. Yeah. You're performing a motor skill. You're staying in the lane, but you haven't thought about it the last time.

26:06You moved the steering wheel and stayed in the lane. You're keeping and maintaining a certain speed, but you're not thinking about. So those simple motor skills do actually release the brain to get creative. And I get wonderful ideas behind the wheel. was it intimidating at all to be like i have to do i have to tell this whole story from this one spot because i felt i felt intimidated by the fact that like i could i could go up the aisle and i could go down the aisle and i could sit in this chair and i remember thinking like how am i gonna how am i gonna give shape to this like how am i not just gonna be like a chicken running with my head got off because it felt like I had less to go to and it took me a while to differentiate the scenes and like settle into the space because I do feel like environment often like yeah leads but what was that like being like I have to sit in this chair see I think I think it's probably easier because you are in the shotgun seat which is a much more difficult seat to like okay so what am I am I am I leaning forward here do I hold this bar am I back with the kids yeah i had i was in mission control you know what i mean i mean then that there's not it's not like it's a spaceship or anything but i mean i don't know maybe it's because i had what was out in front of me to go where am i going and to give variation through you know i was always always asking where remember i was always going where's the fire now where is it at the left window is it to the east where's it so we just have an eye on that you know is it up high what's the height etc etc no I ended up being very comfortable but I know what you mean there was no room you don't there's no room to go stretch it out yeah there's no room to expand really it was very and it got more and more intimate more and more claustrophobic because the show goes on like rude there's really there's literally nowhere else to go yeah once you can't get off the bus that's it America, of course, you actually sat on Matthew's throne for a little bit of the movie.

28:10Was that weird? Was that intimidating for you? Did you see what he saw, his POV, I guess? Yeah, it was. And we shot that pretty early on, too, a version of the scene where you tell me to drive the bus. And, you know, Paul really created the organized chaos and tension. You know, our takes would go on for a long time, like 30, sometimes 40 minutes long of driving sequences, getting through traffic, jumping off the bus, getting back on the bus, moving up and down. And so it felt chaotic. I mean, it was all planned and very well choreographed. But when you're in it, that is what's great is there's so much happening around you that there's nothing to do but kind of react and stay very present.

29:02And I do remember like sitting in that seat and looking out and it's like fire trucks going this way and bulldozers and cars almost running into each other. And then Matthew actually standing in front of the bus. And I'm like, I could hit him. Yeah, like I could actually hit him. So it was cool to get into that POV. and it was quite easy to imagine for Mary how out of her comfort zone she was, particularly with the kids screaming in the back. You had 22 children screaming and an actual live person who you're going towards but don't want to hit. So it was cool to be in the driver's seat for that short amount of time, but I was happy to leave the driving to Matthew.

29:50It's amazing. I love Paul Greengrass as a filmmaker. I love that his quest for the truth, what you said about chaos was really interesting because I think a lot of his movies are about trying to wrestle control from chaos or out of chaos. I was on set of United 93, what, 20 years ago now? And I was fascinated by how he did it. He got those actors onto the plane set and they did it in one take and they simulated taking off and they did the whole thing until, of course, the tragic end. And I did not know until I spoke to him that he did fundamentally the same thing with you guys for this. You were on that bus driving around for real, being assaulted by flames.

30:32Yeah. That must have been extraordinary. Did you know that's what he was going to do when you first spoke to him? No. And I'm not sure he knew early on because there was talks when I was talking about early on that most of that was going to be on a stage with the screens. 360 degrees around us, almost like the sphere in Vegas, and that those were going to be programmed to have an image in the light, and the larger flames would give up more light, and they were going to be programmed. It was just a couple of weeks before we started shooting that. He flipped the script, and he goes, no, it's not going to work that way.

31:10What we're going to do is we're going to set up the live action in this huge lot. We're going to build the roads, and we're going to build the fires, and we're going to build the burning this, And you're going to physically go through it. And then we'll come back to the stage the next morning and shoot the close-ups from that scene we shot last night. When I say last night, that was the day. You get to work at 9. You rehearse those scenes until 5.45. Then you get your hour and 20 minutes of magic hour light. And you get maybe three takes in. That's your day. Yeah. Yeah. And each take would go on for like 25 to 30 minutes.

31:51And you never knew how many cameras there were or where the cameras were. And you were doing a sequence of scenes that took you from a hallway into a classroom, onto the bus, down the street, out of the bus. I mean, I keep saying like, what I discovered is your ego can't hold on that long. Like whatever plan you have, whatever desire you have to like do it good and do it right is just gone by minute eight. and you're just like, I don't know what's happening. And then there is real fire and there's real kids and things happen and - Someone falls. Someone falls. Someone says the wrong, like it was so fun.

32:30It was, I actually had a blast doing it because you want that pressure and you can feel it when you watch it that that's real for us. So yeah, Paul's very much like, you bring up the scene where you at the trailer park where you go looking for water. It's basically like, okay, get off the bus and go look for water. Yeah, yeah. And you, that's, let's shoot that first time when you're showing up and going, I'm here, we need water, where would I go? Check the car, check the door, it's locked, how do I get in? Take something, break a window, all these things, whatever you're doing, looking, didn't find it there, found it here.

33:13Go do what you do. Yeah. Yeah. What would you do? Yeah. And also the evocation of the sense of heat as well. I said to Paul afterwards, I don't know how this thing didn't cost$300 million because I want to see this in 4DX where they can turn up the heat because it would be extraordinary. And you guys are on set when you're outside the bus, when you're inside the bus. How hot was it getting? Obviously, is everything safe? but how claustrophobic, how combustible did you feel in those moments? Claustrophobic for sure. Yeah. I mean, that was also sort of easy to react to, meaning there at the end we were on a little dirt road that, it was a built sort of cavernous canyon.

34:03Yeah. We were just off a lot, but you were consumed. You couldn't go left, couldn't go right. Yeah. We're coming from absolute desolation Armageddon behind us. Yeah. It was almost a sinking feeling. It's like we sunk. Yeah, I was - Anchor was dropped. I was so grateful because there were definitely things for us to react to in the moment. And it didn't take much to see the shell of a structure go up in flames and you're not that far away from it is jarring. It was never on set like what you see on screen. And what I appreciate is before we even began, Paul had, he had storyboarded the whole movie, the entire movie he had storyboarded out.

34:54And he shared some of those pieces with us. And so we had, you know, we had visuals of what he saw in his mind of what it was going to be. And he'd show us, he'd be like, here's a really early version of this drone shot that we did. And here's how big the fire is. And I'm like, whoa. Like, it was crazy on the day, but he would keep reminding us, this is what is surrounding you. This is like, he kept saying like, there's ash everywhere. Like, fire is hot. You're like, oh yeah, oh yeah, fire is hot, you know? So it was like sweaty and hot on the bus. But he really, he had the whole vision. He and his ADs and his producer, the way that they had built this vision and how they figured out how to shoot it the way we did on essentially an abandoned school campus was just genius.

35:51I mean, it was genius because you would never guess. We were a one-stop shop. Our location, besides Riodosa, for the exteriors where the pine trees were much taller, we had one lot, an abandoned school, and they built everything on that lot. We just went round and round. That's amazing. That's amazing. Matthew, has the approach to flame, has your approach to flame, dealing with flame, working with flame, changed since Reign of Fire, for example? Which is probably the last time you were being blasted with flame pads. Yeah, Van Denton, Van Zandt. I still think there should be a sequel. I think when Van Zandt goes down the throat of that dragon with that battle axe, the opening of reign of fire too, should be a dead dragon.

36:30And as you pan by the rib cage, you see this battle axe come from the inside out. Yeah. Yeah. Emerges from there. This was more fire than, than that because most of that fire was added with dragons and special effects. CJ. Yeah. But this was a more fire and closer. than that. So, when Paul says he's flipping the script two weeks before filming begins and you're preparing to shoot on that sort of LCD screen, does part of that give you pause and go, oh, hang on a second, wait a minute? Oh, I was quite excited. Or you just, I'm going to go for this. Because I was concerned with that variation of being, like you were talking about what was I going to do in the past year's season.

37:18I was concerned of two and a half months in a bus on a gimbal. Oh, I'd like – how do we create a new reality every day? Because you can't be at 10. It's not every day is the worst fire. You have to gradiate and go, wait, where are we in the story? What are our options? It's very different when you have five options and maybe you've got to make a choice than it is at the end when we're out of options. or when the fire's, yeah, it's getting bad. Oh, it's bad. Oh, shit, we're going to die. There's different variations. So to be on that set, I was a little like, that's when I was concerned about how am I going to be fresh?

37:59How am I going to have a new dynamic? I had worked on a volume stage before and was so impressed. And it was a car sequence and was insanely impressed with the tricks on the mind of like how it felt like an amazing video game and i was driving and so there was a part of me that was like oh cool like that'll be great and and i was particularly concerned i've never done anything actiony like this yeah and i was concerned about my ability as an actor to perform, to do the action that was, you know, so front and center and to not lose, like, how am I not going to lose? How am I not just going to play panic and running up and down this thing for two hours?

38:49How am I going to make sure that I'm not losing my thread, you know, and I'm not just playing the like, get the thing, grab the thing, do that, you know? Because I'd never done a movie like that. And so when Paul told us we were going to do volume stage, it was like, cool, more control. You know, like, got it. Like, I feel like, okay, then I, then it feels less, you know, but then when he changed his mind and we were out in the real world, it's better in the real world. But then we had it in our bodies so that we could go onto the stage and we had the sense memory of like, I know what I'm reacting to.

39:26I know what that felt like in real life. And so it ended up being this seamless, amazing go-between that also allowed for us what I loved about Paul's process was like, we would shoot one scene three or four times over the course of a month. And like, it was layers of a painting is how he describes it. And it was like, oh yeah, I didn't get this scene the first time we did it, but now it's two weeks later and we're doing it this way and I get it a little more. I know my character a little more. So I actually ended up loving that we had both. Yeah, absolutely. That's very much, again, the Paul Greengrass experience.

40:03Guys, you've got to let it go, but just very, very quickly, it's obviously such a real world resonance to this movie. This was a real life disaster. We've just had the, of course, the terrible wildfires in Los Angeles as well. We're not too far away from Downing Street where we're doing this right now. Are you hopeful that this is a film that might be noticed in the right places by people who can actually potentially wield power to do something about wildfires and whatnot? I mean, I think it's one of the great uses of art and storytelling is to reflect our world to us. And what I think is the superpower of storytelling is to transcend people's thinking minds, rational minds, kind of the ways we get stuck in thinking about something or stuck in how we feel about a certain conversation.

41:02And we get the opportunity to put people back into their most human experience, their feelings. And there's a lot of, oh, shit, and terror and fear. I mean, it is a horror movie. Yeah. And we can't ignore that it's like it's our reality more and more. And, you know, it's one thing to watch in a movie, like an everyday person, you know, step up in a terrible situation. And I think what this movie does is we're telling a story about real people, everyday people, and it grounds it deeply. And like, that could be me. And I think the reality is like more and more every day, that could be me. And so I think for me, my experience and what I've heard from people watching the film is it's inextricable.

41:54The personal narrative and story and why it's so hopeful and why it's so terrifying is inextricable from our reality. And so I think that that's the reason to make art, you know, is to reflect our world and to get us to think and to have more open eyes about the world we're choosing and the world we're creating. So I do hope that it reaches people in a different place than where we're usually getting stuck with conversations about climate change and where our world is going. A good note on which to end America Matthew thanks so much indeed for your time Thank you Very much looking forward to Rain of Fire 2 I love that opening by the way I think it's killer I think it's absolutely killer Not to brag but I also have experience with dragons whatever