In short
The episode is a set of interviews with major filmmakers and actors, focused on (1) James Cameron’s 3D concert film Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft, The Tour, and (2) Guillermo del Toro’s creative origin story, plus (3) Sally Field and Lewis Pullman discussing Netflix’s Remarkably Bright Creatures.
Guest backgrounds
- James Cameron: Director of Titanic, Avatar (all three), Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 1/2, True Lies; also known for developing film tech.
- Guillermo del Toro: Oscar-winning director; BFI Fellow; known for Pan’s Labyrinth, Shape of Water, Frankenstein, etc.
- Sally Field: Two-time Best Actress Oscar winner; Norma Rae, Places in the Heart, Forrest Gump, Mrs Doubtfire, Lincoln.
- Lewis Pullman: Rising actor; Thunderbolts, Salem’s Lot, The Testament of Anne Lee.
Key claims / notable examples
- Cameron says the audience is a “main character” and describes 34-camera 3D capture at Co-op Live, including “Billy Cam,” tiny gimbal cameras, and “hyper-stereo” long-range close-ups (150–200 feet) using AI segmentation to reconstruct backgrounds.
- He credits a young on-stage camera operator (Cole) for many intimate shots, with minimal rehearsal, and says he “snuck away” during post-production to finish mixing.
- Del Toro ties his imagination to haunted British places, bookstores, and lifelong monster collecting; he says he’s always made films from love, not ulterior motives.
- Field/Pullman discuss acting with a super-smart octopus (Marcellus) and improvisation rooted in a detailed story binder; they describe practical sets and feeling Marcellus’ “weight” even when unsure what’s real.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroducing James Cameron
0:45 to 2:03
Overview of James Cameron's career and latest project with Billie Eilish.
“And when he and Eilish came into London last week, we jumped at the chance to talk to them both.”
Diving into the Tech of Filmmaking
2:03 to 2:48
James Cameron discusses the technical aspects of his new concert film.
“Delighted to be joined on the Emperor podcast by the great James Cameron.”
Camera Techniques and Creative Decisions
2:48 to 3:56
Exploration of innovative camera techniques used in filming Billie Eilish's concert.
“But the tech on display in this movie is astonishing.”
Behind-the-Scenes Challenges
3:56 to 7:20
Cameron's insights into the challenges faced during filming and the creative solutions.
“Anybody that, you know, because she moves like a jackrabbit.”
Audience Interaction and Emotional Connection
7:20 to 12:30
The importance of audience engagement in Billie Eilish's performances.
“messing with their show that was so tightly choreographed.”
Innovative Use of AI in Filmmaking
12:30 to 14:02
Cameron discusses the role of AI in enhancing the visual quality of the concert film.
“You see how at risk some of them are, whether it's gender identity, other identity issues, bullying, whatever it is.”
Innovative Filmmaking Techniques
14:02 to 16:34
Explore the groundbreaking filming techniques used for close-ups.
“That's also a breakthrough because typically when you reach out with really long telephoto lenses, it just flattens everything.”
The Creative Process with Performers
16:34 to 18:44
Insight into the collaborative dynamics between directors and performers.
“I always assured her from the beginning that I would never assert my authority.”
Future Applications of Filmmaking Technology
18:44 to 21:21
Discussion on future uses of developed technology in various sports and film.
“You can work at the same rate you did for this.”
James Cameron's Upcoming Projects
21:21 to 22:20
Cameron shares his plans and aspirations for future projects beyond Avatar.
“And so it's going to take us a year or so to figure out how to do that.”
Show all 20 chapters
Guillermo del Toro's Inspiration and Journey
24:19 to 28:00
Del Toro discusses his inspirations and experiences in filmmaking.
“Guillermo del Toro, welcome to the Emperor Podcast.”
The Haunting Beauty of London
28:00 to 29:50
Explore the magical connection to London through its history and bookstores.
“It was a very bored man behind the counter.”
Media Consumption Habits
29:50 to 31:30
Delve into how filmmakers consume media for inspiration and creative processes.
“And it's still one of my biggest treasures.”
The Origin Story of Guillermo del Toro
31:30 to 36:10
Learn about Guillermo del Toro's early influences and aspirations in filmmaking.
“And I do try to watch pieces of at least three movies a day, if I can.”
Understanding Superheroes in Film
36:10 to 39:20
Discuss the challenges of connecting with traditional superhero narratives.
“And is there something that when you were six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old that you wanted to attain that you have attained?”
Reuniting for the Film
41:47 to 42:00
Hear from Sally Field and Lewis Pullman about their experiences and bond on set.
“Sally, Lewis, welcome to the Emperor Podcast.”
Recollecting Stories and Characters
42:00 to 44:25
Exploration of the characters and stories from the film, with personal reflections.
“then you get brought together again for this.”
The Role of Imagination in Acting
44:25 to 47:32
Discussion on the challenges and creativity of acting with non-physical elements.
“And that was, that was my, that ended up being the best compass was like, because there was so much unknown, I don't know anything.”
Improvisation and Collaboration on Set
47:32 to 53:16
The importance of improvisation and collaborative processes in filmmaking.
“which we won't give it away of what happens.”
Meeting for the First Time
53:16 to 55:07
Recollections of first encounters and the impact of theatre performances.
“I've got to let you guys go in a second.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:14Chris Hewitt:Hello Pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to another episode of The Interviews, the spin-off show that chronicles cracking chats with the cream of the cinematic crop. And this week, we're inundated with legends. First up is the most successful director of all time No, not Brian LaFant, the director of Problem Child 2 and Jingle All The Way It's James Cameron, director of all three Avatar movies, of course Plus, Titanic, True Lies, Terminator 1 and 2 Aliens, our current cover movie And The Abyss Not a bad little lot, that He's directed also some documentaries in his time But he's never ventured as far outside his comfort zone as he has with his latest movie, Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft, The Tour, live in 3D, which is a concert movie, and you'll never guess who the subject is.
1:05Chris Hewitt:In fact, Billie Eilish isn't just the subject, but the film's co-director, and it is a mesmerising audiovisual depiction of her gigs at the Co-op Live Arena in Manchester last year, and features Cameron deploying his mastery of 3D to scintillating effect to bring it to life. And when he and Eilish came into London last week, we jumped at the chance to talk to them both. And that conversation with Alex Godfrey can be heard over on the main Empire podcast. But I was also offered the chance to sit down for a one-on-one with Cameron to talk about the tech he had developed and progressed for this movie.
1:43Chris Hewitt:And well, you just don't say no to an offer like that. But as ever, with James Cameron, we found ourselves talking about a lot more besides. So here it is, James Francis Cameron, who prefers to be called Jim, talking to Christopher Thomas Ambrose Hewitt, who prefers to be called Chris. Enjoy. Delighted to be joined on the Emperor podcast by the great James Cameron. How are you, sir? Good, good. Is this thing on? This is on. Although, I can send this to you and you can fix it in post, right? We can fix it in post. We'll just do AI and just fake, you know, just synthesize all my answers. Yeah, absolutely.
2:19Chris Hewitt:Let's do that. Because this is a daunting task for me, Jim, because I'm about to talk tech with you. That's all right. I can handle it. And you are James Cameron. Thank you. And I am a copper play idiot. We'll break it down. We'll break it down and simplify it. No, something tells me you know what you're talking about. A little bit, but to quote Jeremy Irons in Margin Call, speak to me as you would a small child or a golden retriever. But the tech on display in this movie is astonishing. At one point, I was looking for camera people on the stage, and there is one, Cole. There is also the billy cam that Billy picks up at various points.
3:03Most of those are the most subjective moments, I think, of her performance. Obviously, when she's filming herself with the billy cam, you're inches from her face, and she knows how to do that. But I think by the time we shot the Four Nights in Manchester, she'd already done about 70 or 80 shows, so she had that dialed in. I've told her, you know, if the music thing doesn't work out, she can always come work for me as a camera operator. You know, and there's something quite magical about that, the subjectivity of it, you know, and the way she celebrates her band and connects with the audience and everybody through an actual camera that she's operating.
3:45Chris Hewitt:Yeah. And that was all built in. I didn't suggest any of that stuff. I would have loved to have been that brilliant to suggest it, but it was already part of the show and something she had created. the problem for us was that we looked at creating a 3D native stereo alternative for the billy cam at the last second we just said like we don't want to shift the weight and balance or the form factor of that thing by one percent we don't want to compromise her performance of that so we decided to do conversion and we worked we worked with a company that that uses some AI in their process for conversion and they did a great job a company called the outsiders um and i was very happy with the outcome on that because the thing there was just get it just get it the way she does it and then we'll manipulate the image later okay um now on the other hand when we were on stage with her with our gimbal camera yeah which is about 25 of the film so a significant portion that was two little tiny cameras that added up to a space about the size of half a cigarette pack this is true and we're shooting 4k and blowing it up um we did a little bit of uh post work on the on the image using uh ai upscale to sharp to sharpen it and make it crystal clear but we got amazing results from that little camera the thing was billy didn't want anybody on stage with her.
5:14Chris Hewitt:Yes. Anybody that, you know, because she moves like a jackrabbit. Yeah. And she pivots and we knew we weren't going to have time for rehearsal. I finally was able to talk her into letting this young operator Cole, same age as her. You know, I think she was 23 at the time, he was 22, who was already on stage with her on one song. I can't remember which song it was. I think it was Birds of a Feather. Okay. And he was already on stage with her. So they had already been sort of dancing throughout the whole tour to date. But it was only on one song. And there were 28 other songs. I said, all right, can we get Cole on with you in some of the other songs?
5:56And eventually, you know, I just kept unchilling until we finally got Cole on stage with her for every single song. And then the way we did it was it just wasn't every single song every single night. We'd hopscotch around so that he'd do a few songs each night. And the poor guy had no rehearsal. I mean, there was no choreography, no rehearsal whatsoever. He was going entirely on my broad instructions before the show and his instinct. And he did some things instinctively that are genius, absolute genius. I think a lot of the power of the film is because he got right in there with her. You know, even he even sometimes a couple times got within minimum focus and it was okay.
6:41It doesn't matter because you're right there with her when she's doing her thing at the peak of Wildflower, for example. And he's arcing around her and you see 16 ,000 or 20 ,000 people with their phone lights on looking like this incredible, you know, array of candles it almost feels like, right? Because of the warmth of the color. and he's arcing around her and it's just not too fast, not too slow. It's just, I mean, he hit a sweet spot that was kind of amazing. I mean, I'd love to say I'd love to take credit for it, but I wasn't in his ear in real time because I didn't want to be on their channel messing with their show that was so tightly choreographed.
7:26I was going to ask, where were you? Because you were operating cameras. There's a moment towards the end of the film
7:31Chris Hewitt:where we hear you talking to someone in the audience. I operated only in the behind the scenes during the actual show proper. We rehearsed a hell out of everything to the extent that we could during sound check and placed all our cameras. But I was calling it from a monitor station where I had 17 feeds. And I'm looking at the stereo and we were adjusting the stereo and adjusting the framing from there. Are you fission mixing in real time almost? I wasn't doing a line cut, but I was doing a line cut of my head. Okay. So I'm looking at it. Okay, I love that shot. Boom. Where do I have to go next?
8:05Boom. And then if it landed or if they were like moving or something that I knew I didn't have the cut that I wanted, and then we'd work on that the next night. But, you know, we went in with a really strong team. We had 17 cameras. We had cable cam. We moved the cable cam because she's playing it in the round. And so she's playing to all four quadrants. So we moved the cable cam every single day to a new position. So nobody ever got any real rehearsal. You know, the cable cam guys were just, okay, we think this is working. They were a great team as well. They were out of Germany. They were, those guys had incredible instincts.
8:51Chris Hewitt:And this was something that you did. You snuck away from. I snuck away. I literally, I did not ask permission. I did not inform Disney that I was leaving the highest costing film they'd ever made in their lives at the most critical moment of post-production, editing the film and finishing the effects. And I just left. All right, see you guys. Long weekend in Manchester. Took off for whatever it was, 10 days, and made this film. And then took off again a little later in November because we batted cleanup in Phoenix. Yes. And then we literally just freely mixed those shots in the final edit. So you snuck away.
9:33Chris Hewitt:You played Truant. And you had this incredibly infigurating creative process shooting this. Did that inform Fire Nash? Will it inform what you're doing when you came back? No, not at all. Because Fire Nash was shot. It was done. At that point in August, you've got to remember where we are is we're mixing. Yeah. So all of the VFX turnovers have gone in six or eight months earlier. Yeah. So we're finishing – at that point, we still probably had about 1 ,000 shots to finish, which only sounds big until you realize there's 3 ,500 shots in the whole movie. So you're over the crest. Right? So 1 ,000 shots.
10:10It's like, okay, we're right on track here. And we're mixing the film. And since I hadn't mixed the Billy film yet, that mixing process didn't inform what I was doing. I would say it's more the other way around. You know, the Avatar mixes are very complex mixes and the music is a big part of that. And I asked my composer, Simon Franklin, to deliver to me a lot of flexibility in terms of the way he delivers the tracks. So, he'll deliver like, I don't know, a couple hundred tracks for one cue, right? So, we can contour it and shape it to the scene and bob and weave around the sound effects and the sound design.
10:51And so, you know, when I went into the Billy mix, we had her album mixer with us, Aaron. And so, we had a lot of flexibility there. But they had also recorded crowd mics. They call them crowd mics. But they had a lot of audience mics around. And so, we had a lot of flexibility spatially in how we could layer the audience in. Because, you know, I had realized early on that the audience is a main character here. Billy's the main character. The audience is the next most important character. And her interaction, her interplay with them, you know, she does a kind of call response thing. They're also always singing.
11:35She gives them space to enter in on many of the songs. And they know their cues. You know, it's almost a combined performance in many ways.
11:47Chris Hewitt:Yeah, those moments when she's reaching out to the audience and it feels like almost like a beatific moment where she's almost being anointed as a saint or a god by the limit, reaching out en masse. You know, it's very reverential, but you realize that it's coming from a deep emotional and psychological place for them. Yeah. You know, when you really drill down, it's not just a frothy pulp culture phenomenon. She has grown up with them. They've watched her go through the trials and tribulations of her anxious teenage years and emerge this confident, powerful woman. And that means so much to them.
12:28And you see it. When we interviewed them, you see their vulnerability. You see how at risk some of them are, whether it's gender identity, other identity issues, bullying, whatever it is. These kids, she's been a beacon for them. And once you start to realize that, that to me is when the movie becomes more emotional. You see their emotion early on, and I almost would think just coming in not knowing her and her world, I would almost think, okay, this is a little over the top. And then you realize it's not, that it's highly, highly meaningful for them. And it's highly meaningful for her to get that resonance back from them.
13:14And I think, I don't want to speak for Billie, my impression is she's not sort of consciously wanting to be a role model, but she accepts the fact that by burying her soul and her vulnerability, she becomes a kind of a leader, an emotional leader for them, even if she's just willing to go into the fire first.
13:38Chris Hewitt:This tech that you use, because you have got 34 cameras studded around the co-op arena in Manchester, was this technology, the cameras you referred to earlier on, the ones that are as light as a cigarette packet, if not lighter? Yeah, we got the little cameras, and then we've got these monster cameras that we're able to reach out and get good stereo space at her at a range of 150 or 200 feet. Which is astonishing. That's also a breakthrough because typically when you reach out with really long telephoto lenses, it just flattens everything. Everything looks like a cardboard cutout. I said, we're not doing that.
14:12If the only way for us to get these beautiful close-ups is from that far back, we're going to do something we've never done before. And so we push the baseline out between the lenses out to somewhere around anywhere between 16 and 22 inches. And what that does is it creates a nice roundness and a fullness at her, and it completely destroys the background to where it's absolutely unfusable by the human eye. So I said, now we're going to use artificial intelligence, generative AI to segment her out and to slip the background to itself and to make up missing background, and we're going to reconstruct that so that it's fusible to the eye.
14:50We're going to intentionally make terrible stereo to make a beautiful foreground, and then we're going to fix it. And that's what we did. We did a test, and we proved the principle, and then we went out there with these giant guns to make beautiful 3D on her at an impossible range because there was no other way to get those gorgeous close-ups. Wow. So we were using a lot of cutting edge. We had the Ajito cameras, which are unmanned robotic platforms that are running around in the aisle way or all the way around the stage. We had four of those. We had a couple more of them up in the audience that were running back and forth behind the very back row in the bleachers.
15:32So we had six robotic camera positions. We had the tower cams, which are also remotely operated. We had the cable cam. We had the onstage gimbal camera with her, which is what gives you that real sense of being there with her on stage. And then we had these, you know, I call them the big guns, the hyper-stereo cameras. So we were just fielding every new trick we knew to get in there and to create that experience.
16:04Chris Hewitt:And was this stuff that you were developing anyway, or did you work on it even more specifically for this? A little of both. The hyper-stereo system was built entirely for the Billy show because once we got a look at how it was going to work, we knew we were not going to be able to get a camera right there in front of her. And this is months, Jim. You've got months to do this, right? We had less than two months. Jesus. Yeah. So it was full tilt. It was full tilt in our engineering department. It's pretty damn impressive. I'm very pleased with the outcome, technically. The intimacy is incredible.
16:36I love the movie cinematically. I love her. You know, I just love what she does. she's so amazing as a performer you know i i have to say that my respect has built sort of continuously and and linear linearly at an upward sloping curve across this entire project until today now now i get the added benefit of she and i are pals now you know what i mean we went through the fire we went through the fire together i don't want to say we fought like cats and dogs, but we did butt heads, as you'd expect in a creative collaboration between two kind of willful, visionary people. I always assured her from the beginning that I would never assert my authority.
17:24I would only advocate for certain things if we disagreed, and I would give her a chance to – I asked her to give me a chance to hear me out, and if she still believed strongly it had to be that way, then it was going to be that way, her way. Because it had to be. It's her face, it's her music, it's her show. So it wasn't an Avatar film. I told her, you ever want to show up and act in an Avatar movie, it's going to be a whole different deal.
17:55Chris Hewitt:No Billy Cam is in the Avatar world. Billy Cam is pretty great, you've got to admit. And when she does Bad Boy and she's talking to the lands and she's taunting this poor person's girlfriend. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, I'm only good at being bad, you know. I'll go ahead and go, but are you planning to use this technology that you have developed for this in something else going forward? Oh, yeah. We'll apply it broadly. We can now, I feel confident, you know, we can shoot soccer. We can shoot American football. We can shoot basketball. We can shoot the Olympics. We've got all the tools we need now to be close, to be fast, to be mobile, and to be far back, but creating good stereo, we can do it all.
18:42Chris Hewitt:A soccer game would be interesting. Yeah. That'd be very interesting. Hell yeah. World Cup's in just a couple months. You can work at the same rate you did for this. I don't have my team here. Sorry. Well, luckily they're going to be over there, but we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. But you can see what the stereo adds to the experience, right? Everybody always thinks that the spectacle is augmented and that that's where stereo lives and breathes. I think that it's the close, intimate stuff. When you're in the crowd and their heads and their hands are right in front of you and you see her reaching down to you to touch hands, you feel like you're right there.
19:20It's really an enhanced sense of presence. And then I think that in turn enhances your emotional connection.
19:27Chris Hewitt:In terms of the technology moving forward, are you planning to do something with Avatar going forward with this technology that you've developed? Oh, look, I mean, that's a given, right? In my world, we're constantly trying to improve everything in every part of it, whether it's in the animation workflow, in the CG workflow, in the live action, you know, photographic capture. You know, I'm always trying to make it better, trying to make it a better experience for the audience. And in the presentation, right, we need better light levels in the theaters. if you saw it, you know, you saw it here in our kind of laboratory conditions, right?
20:09It won't be that bright in a lot of theaters.
20:11Chris Hewitt:If I'm a pain punter this weekend or next weekend. If you're a pain punter this weekend, you're not going to see it that bright. And you probably won't hear it that loud. I've already asked Billie if she'll appeal to her fans on social to go, every single one of them, all 150 million of them, go to the theater manager and complain and turn that shit up, people. You know. this could be 150 million people go see this thing this could be a contender to your movie that's a good problem to have what is next for you because I know you've mentioned in the past that you might take a break before the next Avatar film you might do something else we've got an American premiere of you know hit me hard and soft in a few days and after that I'm like Roadrunner going off a cliff You know, I'll be doing some writing.
21:04I've got a number of projects that I'm cooking. Yes. You know, and Avatar 4 and 5 are still floating out there. We're going to be looking at some new technologies to try to do them more efficiently. Okay. Because they're hideously expensive and take a long time. I want to do them in half the time for two-thirds of the cost. That's my metric. And so it's going to take us a year or so to figure out how to do that. And in the meantime, I'll be writing and probably doing a couple of other things. Amazing.
21:31Chris Hewitt:So when you say you're unemployed, I mean, I do need someone to help me with the editing of this podcast, Jim. Are you available? What's your day rate? It's really more of kind of a show rate, you know, for the whole thing. You've got to kind of buy the whole thing. You know, I don't do piecework. Okay. I think somehow you would bankrupt the Empire podcast. Not necessarily. No? Robert Rodriguez and I are talking about doing something that's so blindingly fast that, you know, we're just going to do the whole thing in like 17 days. Because I really like the experience on Hit Me Hard and Soft. Yeah, yeah.
22:05I shot a whole movie in six days. I'm like, what the fuck takes four years?
22:13Chris Hewitt:This sounds like a promising future. My people will be in touch with your people. Okay, all right. We'll make something happen. James Cameron, always a pleasure. Thanks so much. Alright, good talking to you. Thanks.
22:50Chris Hewitt:truly visionary director, a man whose films are absolutely reflections of him and his personality and preoccupations in every single detail, from the visuals to the costumes to the themes. He is the director, of course, of the likes of Kronos, Blade II, the two original and best Hellboy movies, Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone, Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak, Nightmare Alley, and last year's Frankenstein, which saw the realisation of a lifelong dream to adapt Mary Shelley's novel. He is also the guy, of course, who made The Shape of Water, a weird fantasy film about a fish man falling in love with a woman.
23:28Chris Hewitt:And against all the odds, turned that into a Best Picture winner. He is, in my humble opinion, a genius and one of the best we've got. And this honour is in recognition of that. I've known Guillermo for over 20 years and I always love chatting to him. but we've never actually done his origin story and a career play by play, which is what I intended to do with this interview when I sat down with him in a London hotel. In the end, we didn't quite go film by film, but what did happen was a fascinating insight into the man and the movie maker. Now, this was a long interview, around 45 minutes or so.
24:03Chris Hewitt:And so this is an excerpt from that, the first 15 minutes, roughly. The rest will be up next week. But right now, I hope you enjoy this because the latest BFI fellow was on crack inform. Enjoy. Guillermo del Toro, welcome to the Emperor Podcast. Who are you? What are you doing in my room? Get out. I printed out my CV, it's laminated. I'm going to give it to you. I'm calling the front desk.
Read the full transcript
24:36Chris Hewitt:Security. You were just a few hours away, sir, from becoming a BFI fellow. Yes. We're here in a lovely hotel room, a library at a hotel room. Are you nervous at this point? Well, you know, I did not know until today that I had to say something. I thought I was going to just be, it was like a roast. Yeah, I'm due on third. I've got some singers. Now that I know that I have to, I'm starting to get a little nervous. Because I'm really, this is something you read about, you know? This is one of those moments where those things that happen to other people are happening to you and it's nice. That's basically going to be my speech.
25:24Which is, when you are a kid, you read about that. You read about, you know, Marcel Carnet and David Gein and, you know. All these John Hurt luminaries that are really guiding stars for you. And attainliness must have felt inconceivable to you when you were a kid growing up. It does. I mean, especially because my relationship to British culture goes all the way to my childhood. In a strange way, I am a child of the haunted Moors, in a way. You know, I belong to Oliver Twist. I belong to M.R. James. I belong to Joseph Schroeder and Le Fanu, and to the strange crossroads of Hammer films and Michael Powell and Press Burger.
26:19And, you know, there's so much of this culture that is exuberant in horror and in fantasy. That's funny. The English culture is all stiff upper lip except the fantastical side or the murder side. The seedy side is very profound. I think that is what makes it fascinating.
26:49Chris Hewitt:When was your first trip to England? Do you remember? In the 80s. Okay. With my mother and my first wife, we came here and we stayed in the Churchill Hotel in London. And I went to the London Hospital trying to get a glimpse of the Elephant Man's skeleton. Really? Yeah. I went to Whitechapel to do the river tour. Yeah. I wanted to visit sort of the great haunted places. And we went to, you know, like I wanted to visit Arthur Conan Doyle's, the Holmes house, you know, the magicians. I wanted to go to them, which was a bit of a disappointment, the Magician's Club store. Really? It was not as good as I thought it would be.
27:58I imagined a Hogwarts-like experience. It was a very bored man behind the counter. Very much over it. Yeah, well, very much over it. Yes, like, oh, another one of these type of guy coming in, yeah.
28:15Chris Hewitt:But even then, did you feel that connection? Did you feel magic in the soil? Oh, no, absolutely. I thought, you know, there's something in the soil. And London is such a crossroads of the pagan and the civilized. You know, the pre-Roman times still vibrate under the soil. You know, the times of gods and goddesses that demanded blood is still here. And it's a very particular city. It is both beautiful and haunting, you know. And I felt it. I felt every single strand, it resonated with me. And the bookstores, obviously. Of course, yeah. You know, you can properly, I mean, I remember in that first trip, the first thing I wanted was a book by Dom Agustin Calmet about vampirism.
29:27Chris Hewitt:Okay. And I found it. I found the book in a little used bookstore. And I had looked for it all my life. And I found it and I bought it. And I couldn't afford it, but I could. I shouldn't have. I had to make great explanations for that. Do you still have that book? I imagine you do. Yeah. I do. And it's still one of my biggest treasures. So even now when you're hitting the city, you hit the bookstores, the used bookstores. Right now, I should exercise more caution. But, you know, there's one of my favorites is Jarndyce, which is across the street from the London Museum. You know, and I try to go there.
30:14They know me well. I try to go there every time.
30:17Chris Hewitt:Do they set things aside for you knowing you might like them? They do. Right now they have a really good selection of books waiting for me, and I'm very afraid. It was a constant. Yeah, because what you end up liking, you know, when I came to London, I went to galleries that had Arthur Rackham's and Edmund Dulles and, you know, really all the great illustrators of the golden age of gift books. And they're not, you know, people that collect this kind of things, they don't let them go cheap. Yeah. So it's a hobby I have indulged in for decades. Do you get an Oscar winner discount now or a BFI fellow discount?
31:05No, I don't think you get it. You can try it. There's no card. But I love it. Oh, my God. I do love it.
31:11Chris Hewitt:Because you have always been a ferocious consumer of all kinds of media. I remember something you told me once about you would travel with a case full of DVDs. I did. And you would dip in and out. I don't know whether you still do that. No, now I, and my computer has over 7 ,000 movies. Wow. Yeah, and I have them up on, I just call them up. And I do try to watch pieces of at least three movies a day, if I can. And a full movie, certainly a day. And what are you looking for? You know, like, I can, for example, I can be lulled into a certain rhythm of dialogue if I'm writing. You know, if you're writing a crisp contemporary thriller, you want to hear the patois of the friends of Eddie Coyle, you know?
32:04But if you want to do, like, for me, the sort of Terence Rattigan rhythms of the Winslow boy, the one with Robert Donat, are really, really soothing into writing something like Frankenstein.
32:24Chris Hewitt:Okay. Because the precision of the language is so beautiful. So you don't, for example, exclude yourself from watching films when you're making another film? No, but I try to make them visually not… Similar? Not similar. There's no overlap. I'll give you an example. When I was doing Pacific Rim, I was watching Hoosiers with Gene Hackman. Okay. Because for me, Pacific Rim was a sports movie. Of course, yeah. It was this old coach coming back to train a ragtag team of basketballers. It was a slap shot. Yes. Much more than anything else. And I'm not going to watch bad labor when I'm doing Pacific Rim.
33:07Or when I'm doing Crimson Peak, I was watching the Deakins adaptations that Lean did. You know, Oliver Twist or Great Expectations. Those were the interesting things for me.
33:19Chris Hewitt:Interesting. So, yeah. Who's yours, though? At no point does Gene Hackman hit someone with a battleship. No. So that doesn't… No, but it was. I actually think there's a line that comes directly from Hoosiers. What were you doing all these years? And he says, and, you know, he has to say he was not coaching anyone. You know, and it's the same with Charlie Hunnam's character. That's amazing. Because on my way over here this morning, Guillermo, I was thinking that you and I have known each other now for over 20 years. Incredible. I know. 60 pounds. How many stones have we met each other? And, you know, whenever we first met, I was a scrappy, promising young journalist.
34:03Chris Hewitt:And you were a filmmaker. It was on First Hellboy. Yeah. And you were a filmmaker very much on the up and up. Now, some 20 years later, I am just a journalist. I'm no longer promising because I'm too jaded and cynical. I jaded, man. You are an Oscar winner, a visionary director, regarded as one of the best in the world, and now a BFI fellow. So I'm asking you, Guillermo, what went wrong for me? Nothing. I think you're still my role model. You're still my role model. You look at me and go, whatever he does, do the opposite. I want to do that. I want to do that. But on the way over, we've talked so often over the years about so many projects you've made, but we've never done the origin story.
34:41Chris Hewitt:No. We've never really sat down and talked about that before. So what is the Guillermo del Toro origin story that started you off in the path? I think I really think I was interested in being who I am since I was in the crib. I mean, my earliest memories are of being... Sort of odd. There was a recording from when I was barely two or three years old. My father recorded me asking for a mandrake root to do a witchcraft ritual. I was really, really, when I was less than six or around six, I wanted to be in a contest on TV. Life and times. It was called the 24 ,000 questions or something, and people came in that were specialized on a theme.
35:35And I said, I want to participate with the Life and Times of Christopher Lee. What the hell? I always was very odd, and I always wanted to have my own sort of monster house.
35:48Chris Hewitt:Yeah. I had a room in my grandma's house that said, do not enter Monster Club. And I was very, very little. And now I have a couple of houses full of my memorabilia. And I go there, and every morning I feel I am that kid. Even back then, you were talking about the book of vampirism that you wanted to buy when you came to London. And is there something that when you were six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old that you wanted to attain that you have attained? Yeah, everything. Everything. I mean, I wanted a room where it rained all day. I made that. I wanted a secret bookshelf, a passage. I built one.
36:30I wanted a house basically with no windows and all bookshelves. I have one. You know, and I really wanted to tell these stories that were at crossroads between fairy tales and horror or bring gothic to sci-fi. And I think that all that has become true. So whatever that spirit was has remained intact because I've never made, to this day, I've never made a movie for any ulterior motives than just I adore it and I love it and I want to do it. The closest I came to that was Blade II. But I went to Wesley and I said, look, I want you to understand I don't understand Blade. Yeah. I'm on the side of the bad guys.
37:27I'm on the side of Nomak.
37:29Chris Hewitt:Yeah. Because it's Frankenstein for me. It's the story of the Frankenstein creature. I said, is it okay if I deal with him? And Wesley is so cool. I said, you deal with Blade. And that's how we did it. Wow. I dealt with the fight scenes. I choreographed that with the best teams I could possibly get together. but what makes Blade tick, I did not understand. Like Wesley always would say, I want him to be one step ahead of everybody. I go, okay, that sounds good. He DJs at night. I am absolutely impaired for rhythms and music. Under a certain light effect, it may look like I'm moving, but I'm mostly immovable.
38:22Chris Hewitt:And have you come close since to understanding Blade's viewpoint? No. No, I don't understand. It's still something you can't quite connect with. It's like there's a reason. I've been offered the biggest superheroes over and over again, and I only understand the weird ones. Yeah. I understand Hellboy. I understand Deadman. Yeah. I understand Jack Kirby's Demon. Yeah. Swamp Thing. Yeah. But I don't understand the big guys. Did you come close to Fantastic Four at any point? No, I came close to other ones that I'm on there. They're NDAs, not to reveal. But I came close to other ones. Fantastic Four is something that I think is the best thing for me is that cover with the mole man and the monster coming out of the pavement.
39:05Chris Hewitt:Yeah. It's all downhill from there. For me, that's the congratulation of what makes that attractive. And, of course, it's the Kennedy era. Yeah. Hopeful America. Yeah. But, no, I was not a Marvel guy. I was more of a DC guy. Okay. Yeah, very much so. That's very much more, DC I think is much more gods and monsters. Yeah, DC is much more into the dark side. Yeah. To me, the best thing for Jack Kirby was when he went into the weird creature, like obviously monsters unleashed and all that, but the demon or Camandy. Yeah. Camandy, I absolutely love it. And Kirby was for me the best when he was doing the outsized, the new gods, the big mythologies.
40:03Chris Hewitt:This is stuff you're growing up reading. Yeah. And I think Kirby is one of the great storytellers of American history. Go get ready to become a BFI fellow. Call me sir. Hail BFI fellow. Well met. Thank you, man. Cheers, man. There you go. that was Guillermo del Toro, the latest BFI Fellow. Congratulations to him on a truly incredible achievement. Okay, shall we have one more legend? Eh, why not? Remarkably Bright Creatures is a new film that hits Netflix May 8th. Directed by Olivia Newman and based on the novel by Shelby Van Pelt, it stars Sally Field as Tova, a cleaning woman who forms two unlikely bonds.
40:42Chris Hewitt:First with a super smart octopus called Marcellus, who lives in the aquarium where she works and who narrates the film with voice provided by alfred molina and then with a stranger in town cameron played by lewis pullman yes that's right folks it's the century and and may together at last oh and also with doc ock in the mix field of course is a legendary two-time best actress oscar winner and the star of countless classic movies from norma ray and Places in the Heart to Absence of Malice, Forrest Gump, Mrs. Doubtfire, Lincoln. Lewis Pullman is a young, very much on the up actor, but you'll know him, of course, not just as Bob in Thunderbolts, but also the likes of Salem's Lot, The Testament of Anne Lee, and more.
41:32Chris Hewitt:I spoke to them last week on Zoom about this really sweet movie about working with invisible octopi, finding common ground as actors and characters and the time that Sally Field worked with Lewis's dad, Bill. Had a blast. Enjoy. Sally, Lewis, welcome to the Emperor Podcast. Thank you. Nice to be here. I believe that you finished shooting this movie about a year ago. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. So junkies like this must be great because you say goodbye to each other a year ago and then you get brought together again for this. Have you been catching up all day long? Is that how it works? we're kind of doing it on the go a little bit well we did come together at another point earlier on to do other press stuff and you know press stuff brings you together which is always good and it's good kind of like means to recollect some of the stories that we're having to draw out of the old Rolodex a year ago but to make sure you're on the same page and you're not just telling wildly different stories was there an octopus wasn't there an octopus I don't know.
42:39Do you see what? How well did you see it? Do you dream about him now? Is he somewhere in your dreams?
42:46Chris Hewitt:Well, do you? Does Marcellus stay with you after you've left the film? A version of him does. We had to talk about him yesterday. And I have to say last night I thought about him a lot. So he was in my, I'm not so sure it was a dream. He was, I don't know if it was, it's that part of dreaming that is, is this awake or is this a dream? But he was there, Marcellus. He, he was, he's been a big part of my life for many years because I read the book in galleys. So early on, I was, I got to be part of the process of, of adapting this lovely book to, to film. So he's been in my life a long time and I, I kind of miss him.
43:37Lewis, what about yourself? Well, I don't know. I was kind of thinking about who Marcellus is for Tova versus who he is for Cameron. Yeah, very different. Very different. And I almost feel like, and this might be very wrong because I'm just kind of arriving here, but I almost feel like Tova is Cameron's Marcellus, like this kind of catalyst. yeah because they're both stuck or they're they're in this kind of liminal they're lost they're lost yes yeah and i don't know how much marcellus helps cameron kind of through tova i would say well he's he helps uh cameron a little bit with his dating problems that's right but
44:19Chris Hewitt:then but then tova comes in and settles it yeah yeah you really it really did let's pull back the curtain a little bit on how you interacted with marcellus what were you interacting with we're now trying to figure out amongst ourselves how much we want to reveal of the magic was he there was there really an octopus how much was there an octopus um or how much was really just our imagination and then the brilliance of our um of our special effects team um so that's kind of the answer interesting i will say kind of thinking about it now there still is a lot of magic for me because on the day i did not understand what was happening you know remember that especially that day where the first day toba comes in and he's out of the out of his tank yeah cameron is freaking out yes and you you as lewis kept saying i don't know what we're looking at i don't know what we're doing.
45:19I don't know. I would say, just follow me. And that was, that was my, that ended up being the best compass was like, because there was so much unknown, I don't know anything. You know, there was, it was an army that, that kind of made this whole thing happen. But in reality, that's exactly what Cameron was doing. There was an octopus out of the tank and he's freaking out going, I don't know how to do this. I don't know what, I don't know what's happening. And it's Tova saying, get the books, get the thing, open them. So that's kind of was our working existence.
45:54Chris Hewitt:Lewis, of course, you've got your MCU experience to bring to bear, I guess, on reacting and acting with things that aren't necessarily there. Although Thunderbolts was a little bit more practical in that sense, I guess, right? Thunderbolts was definitely more practical. Jake Schreier really was intent on that, which was awesome. I feel like every movie I do, there's some kind of stretching and kind of extending yourself to kind of build the world within your mind. This was fun, though, because like that scene in particular where Marcellus is out of the tank, the whole set is practical, even though it was a beautiful like that was the kind of engine room of the aquarium.
46:38And all that was real in there, all the shelves and stuff that was falling. The tank was real. Everything was real. There were dudes hiding in the corners with fish and wire, you know, pulling boxes off the shelf as Marcellus kind of scampered through. So when the world is reacting around it and you're reacting around it, your brain pretty much does the job in filling in the blanks for you. Or should. Or should. Yeah. Should, hopefully.
47:06Chris Hewitt:Yeah. There's a famous story on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. that Bob Hoskins was interacting every single day for months on end with a creature that wasn't there, Roger Rabbit, and he began to eventually hallucinate. He could see Roger in real life. Yeah. Has that happened to you? Is Marcellus in the room? I completely get that, yeah. How much work I did with Marcellus, and especially the end sequence, which we won't give it away of what happens. But, I mean, I could feel him. I could feel the weight of him. the pull of him and absolutely. But you know what? Acting, if you're really doing what you're supposed to do, really is hallucinating, isn't it?
47:53Right, yeah. It is hallucinating. Self-inflicted hallucination. Yeah, it's, you hypnotize yourself, self-hypnosis, and you, you know, you think something is that isn't really happening, but as far as you're concerned, it is happening yeah yeah i'm sure jimmy stewart took harvey around with him everywhere i bet he did
48:18Chris Hewitt:are your approaches to acting simpatico in a way yeah yeah yeah there wasn't any there wasn't there was no uh slip between cup and lip as they say or there was no there was no there was no you know guardrail that needed to come up it just was bam you know yeah um there was a lot of um improvisation which was great great great fun um and it it we just he was cameron we just belonged together you know from the crabbiness of tova yelling at him yeah um till the in you know sometimes when he's furious at her yeah yeah so i'd say it's a good sign when you're like on set and you're like it's not like you want to just do the scene to get it over with you're like you just are in constant anticipation like just i want to do it because that's the playtime and it's like so fun especially the end we really didn't know where we were going you know and it was pouring oh pouring down rain in beautiful magnificent vancouver yeah and really really cold it was about 34 degrees and we were soaking wet you were out there i was soaking wet he was in the heated room waiting to come on how unfair and backwards is that oh sadly that's that's not yeah that's that shouldn't be allowed quite frankly no it shouldn't be yeah tell me about the improvisation as well because there is such a beautiful i guess improvisational quality to this relationship between Cameron and Tova, who are at least two lost souls who are kind of finding each other.
49:57Chris Hewitt:Was that something that Olivia was encouraging from the off, that you would improvise, you would play with scenes? I think she realised there was no, she better just sit down and be quiet. Because there wasn't any, that's what we were doing. You know, sometimes you have to allow, you have to watch to see what actors are doing and give them this space to just sit back and watch what's happening. And since from the first time we met, we started doing that, just playing and answering back and talking and saying things that weren't on the page. To me, that's the fun thing of doing anything creative because it isn't what I think or or Livy thinks, or Lewis thinks, or anybody, any writer, it is together, something happens that could not have been anticipated.
50:57Don't you think? Definitely. And I also think one of the great gifts of adapting a book, obviously, it's really challenging because you're competing with the audience's imaginations and their own personalized worlds that they built. But we had a whole roadmap and sally in particular should have seen this incredible scroll that she would carry around with her a huge binder of and so like point being like yes it was improv but it was all it was all very based in it was rooted in the in the in the story yes that was i had mapped out using the book as a, as the guideline. And many times it, because I was so focused on it in that way, it wasn't, I didn't have to focus on the whole film or what lenses we were using, or I could, I could pinpoint, wait a minute, the, with this happens and that happens, we have, that has to happen there.
51:52And so you needed the, it's kind of a very small, but very complicated story um so i i just probably many times was a pain in everybody's behind because i was like wait wait wait a minute we gotta this has to happen they can't do that so thank god i think there would have been some missing holes in there oh i don't know no oftentimes that when that binder came out there was we were like wait we didn't think about that i'm fascinated by this binder
52:27Chris Hewitt:37 it says it's a beautiful artifact what was it what was the the binder exactly sally was it the the book and then you had no no no i literally had made i had worked on it for so long and was it got to be part of the process of of really adapting it um because i had i was the first person involved in the project that the producers have brought it to me um so uh i i just had you I had written out, I had sort of like an outline of the story, but I'm bringing in pieces of the book to inform this piece and that piece. So we had to play it this way because that piece has to inform this piece. And it was complicated.
53:13Chris Hewitt:I need to see that binder. That binder needs to be published. Really? Absolutely. I've got to let you guys go in a second. But you talked there about how you've interacted and how you've been with each other since you first met. when did you first meet? Because obviously Sally you have worked with Bill Pullman on stage so I don't know Lewis if you went to see that production of All My Sons or if that's where you first met perhaps? I did and I won't be able to live this one down but I didn't go backstage and meet Sally after the fact But there wasn't a backstage really not at the old Vic. We went up to that cafe, everybody went up to that tub up above and up the stairs and towards the back And because I really went there because I being the hermit that I am, I would just go home.
54:01I don't blame you after a play like that. This play was remarkable. It was a true feat. I mean, and also, like I was saying last night, like when you see there's something, you know, obviously a good movie can kind of leave you speechless for a while. But like a play where you are sharing the same oxygen as the actors up there and the illusion is really kind of there's something that kind of reaches your bloodstream on a molecular level like that. I was I was shaken up by that for quite some time. and in some ways that allowed me to be able to have my idea of you as that performance isolated and then when I met you to do the reading in this it was like different it was like not Sally from All My Sons this is Toba yeah which was great it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you both Sally
54:51Chris Hewitt:Lewis thanks for your time thank you thank you okay that was Sally Field and Lewis Pullman and Remarkably Bright Creatures is out from Friday, May 8th on Netflix. And that is it from me right now. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time. Bye-bye.
From the publisher
It's a legend-laden episode of The Interviews this week, folks, as Chris Hewitt sits down in person with James Cameron to talk about his new, unexpected venture as co-director of eye popping 3D concert movie, Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard And Soft — The Tour Live In 3D, and then the great Guillermo del Toro, with the Mexican director coming to town to receive the BFI Fellowship and launch a season of his films at the BFI Southbank. That is an excerpt from a longer del Toro interview which will be up on its own next week, but this should whet your whistle as they talk about del Toro's British cultural connections, his approach to writing, his penchant for collecting, and more. Finally, Sally Field and Lewis Pullman, the stars of new Netflix movie Remarkably Bright Creatures, Zoom in for a spirited chat with Chris. Enjoy!