<\/p>\n
It is often said that film directors are siloed off from one another, that they don\u2019t get to watch how others work. So when you put a group of them together, as with the six participants in The Envelope\u2019s 2025 Oscar Directors Roundtable, they are quick to share all sorts of ideas. Like where they prefer to sit in a movie theater \u2014 centered in a row or on an aisle? How far back is the best for sound, or so the screen runs up to the edges of your peripheral vision? Should you even take the worst seats in the house, since somebody will eventually be asked to pay money to sit there?<\/p>\n
Guillermo del Toro, there with his adaptation of Mary Shelley\u2019s classic novel \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d<\/a> likes the top of the first quarter of the theater. Rian Johnson, who finds new twists for Benoit Blanc in his third \u201cKnives Out\u201d detective story, \u201cWake Up Dead Man,\u201d<\/a> says, \u201cI look for wherever Guillermo\u2019s sitting.\u201d Nia DaCosta, who made the bold, adventurous Ibsen adaptation \u201cHedda,\u201d<\/a> likes the top of the first third. Mona Fastvold, who explores the life of the founder of the religious movement known as the Shakers in \u201cThe Testament of Ann Lee,\u201d<\/a> likes the center a little farther back. Jon M. Chu, who made the second part of a musical adaptation with \u201cWicked: For Good,\u201d<\/a> sits dead center \u2014 and has been known to talk to the theater manager if the sound isn\u2019t loud enough. And Benny Safdie, who explores the rise and fall of mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr in \u201cThe Smashing Machine,\u201d<\/a> tries to find a spot where he can fidget in his seat and not bother anyone.<\/p>\n Read on for more excerpts of their conversation about the art of adaptation, navigating budget constraints at any scale and much more.<\/p>\n Jon, I\u2019ve heard you say that with \u201cWicked: For Good,\u201d you wanted the film to be deeper but not darker. And it doesn\u2019t pull any punches as far as dealing with themes of antiauthoritarianism. What was it like to have those very serious ideas and yet still have this be a buoyant, crowd-pleasing musical?<\/p>\n Chu: The reason we made it was because it had that meat to it, and it was always a two-movie, yearlong experience that set up the fairy tale first. And Movie 2 is kind of where we all are, this moment of this fairy tale shattered in front of us.<\/p>\n I have five children now, so I\u2019m thinking about how to present stories to my kids. Do I still believe in the possibility of dreams and the American Dream? \u201cFor Good\u201d really gets to delve into that stuff. And because it was shorter than the first half, we get more room to do it. We added new songs to explore that idea. So it all felt really fitting. Movie 1 could be an answer. Movie 2 is much more of a challenge: Who are we gonna be now that we know the truth?<\/p>\n All of your films in their own way are speaking to right now. Rian, \u201cWake Up Dead Man\u201d is specifically set in the year 2025 and all the \u201cKnives Out\u201d pictures have been dealing with our contemporary reality. What makes you want to do that?<\/p>\n Johnson: That kind of started for me with the first movie. This is a genre, the murder mystery genre, that I love and that I\u2019m just seeing so much of growing up. But it\u2019s also a genre where most of what I had seen throughout my whole life, murder mysteries are period pieces set usually in a cozy little bubble of a little \u201cQueensfordshire\u201d place in England.<\/p>\n And I guess my realization was, that\u2019s not what Agatha Christie did. She was not writing period pieces. She wasn\u2019t an incredibly political writer, but she was always writing to her time. It\u2019s not trying to do anything radical in terms of making it new or updating it, but let\u2019s set it very much unapologetically in the modern moment. … You have a group of suspects that have a hierarchy of power amongst them and the person at the top they all wanna bump off \u2014 it\u2019s such a potent vehicle for building a little microcosm of society.<\/p>\n Benny, one of my favorite things in \u201cThe Smashing Machine\u201d is that it\u2019s funny to realize setting a story at the turn of millennium is a period piece now. What was it like crafting this very specific, recent time period?<\/p>\n Safdie: It\u2019s a time period that I think everybody thinks is just yesterday. But when you actually get into the nitty-gritty, it\u2019s a long time ago. And things were very different and everybody knows exactly what those things are too. Because it was heavily documented, there was so much footage of it, it\u2019s so top of mind. And I think a large amount of people also want to go back there a little bit, to this time where the internet was just kind of happening. People want to go back to this simpler moment. But trying to re-create what that feels like is what I was really going after \u2014 just thinking about how you would live in that time, and then represent that in the movie. Because I did want it to kind of feel like time travel.<\/p>\n Guillermo, you\u2019ve spoken so much about how \u201cFrankenstein\u201d has been a lifelong dream project for you. Now that it\u2019s done, where does that leave you?<\/p>\n Del Toro: There\u2019s a massive postpartum depression, No. 1, and it\u2019s real. And it affected me more than I thought it would, to be candid. But fortunately, I\u2019ve been very interested in two new themes that are going to be sure to produce blockbusters, which is memory and regret. The dynamic duo of past 60. And I always thought about that in the abstract, but now I try to make the movies not only about the moment I\u2019m in, but about me.<\/p>\n And I\u2019m seriously trying to express what makes me uneasy, what makes me believe in the possibilities of grace even in the most horrible circumstances. And I\u2019m not talking only social, but personal or philosophical. Something happens when the six clicks in on the counter. And all you can do is [ask], \u201cDo I feel I have something to say, genuinely?\u201d And then you go to that. Cronenberg, I had dinner with him when he was turning 74, and he said you have to scare yourself into being young again.<\/p>\n Nia, \u201cHedda\u201d is such a bold adaptation of the play \u201cHedda Gabler.\u201d You switched the gender of one of the main characters. You aren\u2019t afraid to inject issues of race and class and sexual identity into the story. Were you ever concerned that you were asking too much of this classic text?<\/p>\n DaCosta: I wrote it on spec, so I wasn\u2019t thinking about anything besides letting my freak flag fly, basically. I just thought, \u201cThis character makes more sense as a woman.\u201d OK, what does that mean now? How does that affect the rest of the story? And then I just go from there. And then it ended up being really bountiful and generative.<\/p>\n And then when I met Tessa [Thompson] three years later, I thought, \u201cOh, when I write this, eventually Tessa will play Hedda.\u201d So now she\u2019s Black. OK, what does that mean? And Tessa\u2019s also mixed-race. So then you get that element of it as well. And then I chose the 1950s, and then I chose England and the country house. You just treat these things as truths, and the story has to go in a certain direction. So I never worry about those things. Maybe because I\u2019m a Black woman, so my presence or my identity for some people will complicate the story. But for me, it just is life. <\/p>\n Guillermo, in adapting \u201cFrankenstein,\u201d did you feel like you were dealing with the Mary Shelley text and also all the Frankenstein movies that we know? <\/p>\n Del Toro: I put all the cinematic stuff on the side. I didn\u2019t want to make an erudite cinematic movie or a referential movie. I have lived with the three iterations of the text for my entire life. And there\u2019s a lot of the interstitial stuff that I took from her biography, fusing with my biography, because even if you sing a song everybody knows, you\u2019re doing it with your lungs. And your passion and your pain and your throat. … It\u2019s the difference between seeing a living animal and taxidermy. If you just want the text, then buy the text. You cannot be more faithful to that text than reading the text. But if you want to see how we interact and resuscitate something into being emotional again, then that\u2019s what we try to do.<\/p>\n Mona, \u201cThe Testament of Ann Lee\u201d is a story told with music, but is it a musical? Is that a question you asked yourself as you were making it?<\/p>\n Fastvold: I consider it a musical. I do. But it\u2019s just a different kind of musical. No one\u2019s singing dialogue. It\u2019s not magic when they start to sing. I think, as I was writing the script with Brady [Corbet], we realized early on it had to be a musical because the Shakers worship through ecstatic song and dance. They would be moved by the divine spirit and then receive a song or a piece of movement, and then they would start to sing and dance. Their life was a musical, so that\u2019s what it had to be. And that was exciting to me, to create the whole structure of that. <\/p>\n But it couldn\u2019t be, \u201cOK, here\u2019s a story and then here\u2019s an amazing musical number.\u201d It had to come from this place of worship. So all the musical bits and pieces of the film, our moments of feeling moved by the spirit and having this sort of religious experience, it had to be grounded in that and it had to be really organic-sounding and -looking. So we had to ground it in live recordings and create the soundscape and the music in dialogue with my choreographers. Every body slap and stomp is part of the rhythm and the music of it, because it couldn\u2019t just be where diegetic audio fades out and then there\u2019s this great, wonderful piece.<\/p>\n Chu: In a weird way, we all make musicals. All the movies, everybody has a take on how music integrates with it.<\/p>\n Del Toro: I was aiming for opera.<\/p>\n Guillermo, Jon, both of your films have a sense of scale to them. What kind of challenges does that present? Is it wrangling all the extras? Is it having the sets built on time? Jon, just the number of florists credited at the end of \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d is wild.<\/p>\n Chu: It\u2019s like building Disneyland, essentially. We had the warehouses going \u2014 there\u2019s first a recording studio, so we\u2019re recording music while their dance rehearsals are going on. You have hundreds and hundreds of people. Then you go to the costumes department and then you have the hair, just the wigs alone. People are getting there at 2:30 in the morning. And that\u2019s before you even start the day.<\/p>\n We were planning two movies at the same time. So we had 20-something musical numbers rehearsed and worked with our cinematographer and our team to understand everything and build sets around these pieces. And then you get there on the day and how do I say, \u201cHey, all that stuff we did, this is actually happening over here. Let\u2019s move everything over here\u201d? I felt the hardest thing was being OK with wasting money if it was the right thing to do at that moment. I needed to feel free and had everybody aware that if I\u2019m moving all of a sudden, we\u2019ve got to go and we\u2019ve got to figure it out. And I think that\u2019s where the magic is.<\/p>\n Del Toro: To me, it\u2019s three things. The first one is tonal, meaning everything that you do, you\u2019re not doing eye candy, you\u2019re doing eye protein. You\u2019re telling a story. So it\u2019s not about looking good or looking big. It\u2019s about, does the gesture happen at the right moment? Because you can make gestures on the wrong moment of the film, and they don\u2019t have a dramatic impact. I say we designed the movie for the Creature to feel real, of a piece with the world. So that\u2019s the first one. <\/p>\n The second one: Is it expressing something different every time we go to a bigger thing? It\u2019s not about the scale. And the final one to me is, does it feel real in the world? So the way I go at it is, there\u2019s no typeface, no paint, no photograph, nothing, that cannot be investigated and designed to within an inch of its life. Even great movies, I\u2019m very fidgety. I go, \u201cThat\u2019s not a painting from the 1930s. Somebody painted it much later.\u201d Or a typeface or a carnival banner or something like that. So at the end of the day, if you do your job right, you have a world and people just get into it almost like a vibe. Nobody should notice, but if you do it right, they want to experience it over and over again.<\/p>\n Rian, you make a really bold decision in \u201cWake Up Dead Man,\u201d where the signature character of the series, Daniel Craig\u2019s Benoit Blanc, is offscreen for much of the first 45 minutes or so of the movie. Did you have to convince people that\u2019s the way things should go?<\/p>\n Johnson: Not really. For this one, first of all, it is a little closer to actually a traditional detective structure. That\u2019s kind of how most Agatha Christie books work, is you meet the suspects in the first act. You get a very good idea of who\u2019s gonna get bumped off. And then, end of the first act, the murder happens, and then the detective shows up and starts to solve it. So there was a precedent for it. But the real reason I had done backflips in the previous two movies to get around that was so we could get Blanc in there earlier. The reason it made sense for this [is] because Father Jud, who\u2019s played by Josh O\u2019Connor, [is] kind of the protagonist of it because of the themes of religion, and so the whole lay of the land was more complicated and delicate in this one to set up. I felt like the audience would be best served by having that runway and getting the time before this powerhouse that is Daniel playing Benoit Blanc comes in and brings this whole new energy to it.<\/p>\n The other thing that I\u2019ve landed on with them is you have to constantly resist the candy of the mystery. You have to always remind yourself [that] the mystery elements are not a load-bearing wall, that those are never going to keep an audience entertained or engaged. You need to do the same thing you do in any movie where you have an emotional, bold line going that\u2019s thrown at the beginning, that lands at the end. And the mystery then has to support that.<\/p>\n Mona, with \u201cAnn Lee,\u201d but also with \u201cThe Brutalist,\u201d it seems like the movies that you and Brady Corbet are collaborating on together, you\u2019re doing so much with relatively limited resources. What is it that the two of you are doing in these films that you\u2019re able to make them seem so grand?<\/p>\n Fastvold: I mean, there\u2019s no trick. I had to prep for almost a year for this one, because I knew that no one was going to give me a lot of money to make a musical about the founders of the Shakers. It was not gonna be this sexy pitch. It was a hard pitch. So I knew that it was going to be a limited budget. But at the same time, I just desperately wanted \u201cAnn Lee\u201d to have a really grand story. And I wanted there to be a believable, lush world. And I wanted to tell a story about her whole life, not just a day in her life.<\/p>\n So I had to make it work somehow. It was so much about saying, \u201cOK, I\u2019m working with my [director of photography], my production designer, my costume designer every weekend and night for months and months before we started official prep. And same with my choreographer and composer and with all of the cast as well, just rehearsing. Amanda [Seyfried] was rehearsing at night while she was shooting something else. She would go and have dance rehearsals at night, on the weekends, so we could keep on adjusting.<\/p>\n So the only way that I could, to quote David Lynch, get dreamy on set, which was something I really wanted, was by having so much prep time, and then just really knowing what my Plan A and B was, and to sort of experiment in advance more. And because I knew there\u2019s no way that you can try and build a world and then have the same flexibility on this budget, it\u2019s all about knowing every line item in my budget, what everything costs in Hungary, what everything costs in Sweden. \u201cOK, this is how much a cherry picker in Hungary costs, and therefore I\u2019m gonna take out two shots and only build half the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2025 Envelope Directors Roundtable. Top row, left to right: Rian Johnson, Benny Safdie, and Mona Fastvold. Bottom row, left to right: Nia DaCosta, Jon M. Chu and Guillermo del Toro.<\/p>\n Chu: I think that\u2019s one of the biggest lessons I learned being a director. You don\u2019t have a right to make your movie, because it costs so much and you need so much help. You do have to earn the right to make your movie. That is a part of our job.<\/p>\n Nia, you come to \u201cHedda\u201d having just made a Marvel movie. You\u2019ve just also finished a sequel to \u201c28 Years Later.\u201d Is there a secret through line for you that connects all these projects?<\/p>\n DaCosta: Being a nerd, Marvel, horror, comic books, for me, those things that I\u2019ve done that I haven\u2019t written are worlds that I loved as a kid. So \u201cCandyman\u201d was hugely important to me when I was younger. I used to love Marvel comics as a kid. \u201c28 Days Later\u201d is one of my formative films that I watched. And so when the opportunities came up to be a part of those worlds, it was really exciting for me. And then \u201cHedda,\u201d I\u2019m a theater nerd too, so I just really go by my passion, and I\u2019m really compelled by just interesting characters.<\/p>\n \u201cHedda\u201d and \u201c28 Years Later\u201d are very different films, but for me, they were so similar because I learned from my experience jumping into the studio system after making a sub-million-dollar movie [\u201cLittle Woods\u201d] what works for me and what doesn\u2019t work for me. And what works for me is really being given authorship. And so I\u2019m setting the tone early. We\u2019re not here to battle. We\u2019re here to make the vision that I have. And if you\u2019re into it, cool and great, let\u2019s work together. If you\u2019re not into it, then it doesn\u2019t have to exist or I\u2019ll find another way for it to exist.<\/p>\n Del Toro: The ambition should always be beyond the budget. If they give you $130 [million], you want to make a movie that is $260 [million]. But the way to that I found by doing \u201cDevil\u2019s Backbone,\u201d which is $3 million, or \u201cShape of Water,\u201d which is $19.3. \u201cShape of Water\u201d opened with all the different sets in the first 15 minutes. And then it\u2019s two sets. Lab, apartment, lab, apartment, lab, apartment. I always tell the departments, let\u2019s choose meatballs and gravy. Where do we put the real resources? You reach a plateau no matter what the budget. Never spend money on a plateau. It always needs to mean something.<\/p>\n Safdie: You pick and choose the moments when you\u2019re gonna get big. We were doing the hospital scene and then we built the plane in the hallway of the hospital. Because that was the most affordable. But there was a column in the middle of the plane, and I would always joke that we should go through the column. I find those limitations exciting. Because you really have to figure it out.<\/p>\n Rian, \u201cGlass Onion\u201d had a more robust theatrical release than \u201cDead Man\u201d has gotten. Do you feel like as filmmakers that all of you are being put in this position of fighting for the future of theaters and moviegoing?<\/p>\n Johnson: I actually feel incredibly optimistic at this moment about the future of moviemaking. I don\u2019t feel that way because we\u2019re all picking up signs and marching down the street and preaching to people that they need to keep this sacred. I feel optimistic about it because I go to movie theaters and I see them packed with young people who want to go to movie theaters and have that experience.<\/p>\n And I see them coming out for new movies. I see them at revival cinemas. I see theaters at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday showing a Melville film that are just full of young people who are excited. And then you see it with movies that have come out this year. You see it with something like Ryan [Coogler]\u2019s movie, \u201cSinners,\u201d or with so many films that have struck chords with audiences and created cultural events. You can\u2019t wag your finger at people and say, \u201cYou should be going to the theater and having this theatrical experience,\u201d but you feel it rising right now. And so for me, it\u2019s less that I want to advocate for it. It\u2019s more that I want to ride that wave of it coming up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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