Envelope Director’s Roundtable

A great roundtable with Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”), James Cameron (“Avatar”), Lee Daniels (“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”), Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air”) and Quentin Tarantino (“Inglourious Basterds”). If you are interested in getting to know a little more about how these successful directors think, I would highly recommend reading/watching the 90-minute interview.

One of the most interesting part was about the importance of casting and auditioning. Cameron says that casting is the single most important decision involved in making a movie. Furthermore, even highly accomplished directors like Tarantino and Cameron still audition for their characters:

Don’t Miss the Jump >>

Excerpt:

DANIELS: I … that’s not fair to everybody, no. But for me, Mo’Nique was the first person that I cast. We worked together on a film called “Shadowboxer.” She’s my very good friend, and she doesn’t … and for the most part, nor do any of the other actors, just question me. They don’t question me. If I ask you to throw the baby, she throws the baby, and she says, “Get this [thing] off of me. It makes me itch.” I ask her don’t shave her arms, she doesn’t shave her arms. There are no questions. There are no, like, “What’s my motivation?” And that excites me about working with Mo’Nique. She just gives me her soul, and I tell her “Jump off the roof,” she jumps off the roof. With Gabby [Sidibe], I interviewed 400 girls, over 400 girls.

CAMERON: Call me a control freak.

DANIELS: With Gabby, I interviewed 400 girls and I looked for the truth. I was looking for, you know, girls that were Precious, because certainly Hollywood didn’t offer them, so I was at the 7-Eleven, on the train station stops, inside of the KFC, off the streets, and I narrowed it down to 10 girls, and they were phenomenal. They were … a lot of them … of the 400, eight had HIV. A lot of them couldn’t read. A lot of them were sexually abused, and I learned so much about my … about Precious through those 400 girls.

HORN: So the casting of the film actually influenced the movie?

DANIELS: Without question. Without question, because they’re all invisible. No one wants to look at these girls. Gabby came in at the end, and she was as good as the rest of the girls, but Gabby is not that girl. She talked like this white girl from the Valley. She’s like, “Oh, my gaaaawd, I love ‘Shadowboxer.’” And I said this … she’s trying to get the job. And it was clear to me that she came from a really great background and she had gone to college and she was not this girl, and if I had used those girls, one of those girls that had made it to the final 10, I would’ve been exploiting them because they were the truth.

HORN: So you … I mean, it’s a really interesting answer you’ve offered. So everything about what you’ve said earlier is about discovering the truth, but you felt that that was too close to the truth …?

DANIELS: Too close. It wasn’t …

HORN: … or that Gabby was a different version of the truth?

DANIELS: She gave me exactly what the other girls gave me because she hadn’t acted before, but the difference is that Gabby really was acting. These girls were not acting. They were the real. And with Mariah and with Lenny, these are friends, and with Mariah, it was really about … Helen Mirren was going to play the role, and she backed out at the last minute, and Mariah called to invite me over to her house for Champagne, and I was like hunh. So I called Helen. I said Helen, what do you think of Mariah Carey playing … stepping in for you? She says, if I do it, it’s expected, but if you can pull a performance out of Mariah … and with Mariah, it became … I love her so much, you know?

HORN: Then it becomes almost a totally different movie with that change of actor. I mean, Helen’s going to be much more matriarchal, you’re going to maybe feel her … the judgment of her experience, whereas Mariah as a performer, you think maybe she’s been there, maybe she’s shared part of that life.

BIGELOW: Just a magnificent performance.

REITMAN: Yeah.

DANIELS: Thank you.

REITMAN: I didn’t know. I walked out and my wife said, “What did you think of Mariah Carey?” And I said, “Did she have a song in the movie?”

BIGELOW: Really?

HORN: You’ve worked with actors … familiar actors before. You’ve cast Jason [Bateman] in a lot of your movies.

REITMAN: Right.

HORN: I mean, Quentin, you’ve worked with some of the actors – is that something that you do because you enjoy their work, because you like to have familiar faces around? Even department heads, what is the idea of repetition in terms of who you surround yourself with – cinematographers, editors, actors?

REITMAN: I want a family that I make movies with.

TARANTINO: Yeah.

REITMAN: I want a shorthand. I believe in relationship over résumé. I think, you know, things are going to get tough, and you have to really question who you want to be standing next to when they do. And with actors, and I suppose this is one difference between you and I (looking at DANIELS), I don’t like acting. I like people being as real as humanly possible. And that’s kind of it. And as I cast, I want my … I want to cast people who are as close to the character as possible, that are going through some process of self-examination while they’re playing it, and the reason I enjoy working with people I know is just I know what they do. I know how to get them to do things. The faster I can get there with somebody, the better, and there’s just people I enjoy being in the company of. So J.K. Simmons? Yeah, yeah, I’d love to work with him every movie. Same with Bateman, same with Sam Elliott and, by the way, everyone else I’ve worked with.

HORN: Do you find yourself writing parts for them to play as opposed to writing parts and say maybe …

REITMAN: No, no … I think you’ve got to write the movie and then … but early on, while I’m writing, it just starts kind of clicking as I go that’s who this person is. And then that informs the writing. That … because I understand how they talk, I can understand how the character would talk, and they start to become one in the same. The dangerous part of that, of course, is that if they are unavailable or don’t want to do your movie, now you have a character that was so tailored for this one person … you know, if you write something for George Clooney, and what are the chances that George Clooney is going to say yes? They’re not very good. I wrote this part for Vera Farmiga and then I found out she was about to have a baby. And I just did not know … I really didn’t know what to do, I thought. And I met with her and she was there, she was like seven months pregnant. You know, we were about to shoot. I just didn’t think it was possible. And it was funny because that was actually the moment that I suddenly realized how perfect she was for the role, because there she was seven months pregnant going, “Oh, no, this is not going to be a problem.” She was so Alex, even in terms … and that’s not to say she was not a great mother. She was an incredible mother, but at the same time, it was very like, “Ohhh, shhhh, don’t worry.”

CAMERON: And you bought that?

REITMAN: Yeah, I was so … she was so convincing, I was like, all right, I guess we’re going there. And she was. She showed up and started shooting three weeks after she had a baby. It was just astonishing.

HORN: Quentin, do you find yourself trying to work with the same people? I mean, Kathryn talks about not having actors who bring baggage and yet you cast Brad Pitt in your lead role. Is that a different way of thinking, or is there a different idea about how you put together your cast?

TARANTINO: Well, you know, it’s…I’ve always liked the idea of…nothing…I didn’t really have hardly any carry-over actors on this movie because most of the characters in my movie are German…German or French and I had…you know, it’s a mixed bag. The thing is sometimes…like I can’t imagine “Kill Bill” without Uma Thurman. I wrote it for her. That was the only reason to do it. If she couldn’t…in fact, she got pregnant, all right, just when I thought we were going to get ready to do it, and I waited for her. I mean, if you’re doing “Fistful of Dollars” and you’ve got Eastwood, he gets pregnant, you wait for Eastwood. So…but…and that has been…that was fantastic. And the same thing for some other…you know, when I write for Sam Jackson in “Jackie Brown,” write for Pam Grier in “Jackie Brown,” the wonderful results. However, I’ve got to say there is something very, very special in the writer in me when it came to this movie of writing characters that I didn’t have a clue who I was going to cast and just letting the characters become the characters. And not second-guessing the characters because of the actor who might be playing them. Just to give you an example, in the case of Landa, who I had no idea who was going to play the role, if I was writing for another actor that I thought maybe spoke German pretty well, then maybe he wouldn’t be able to speak all those other different languages because I would know that, oh, it’s going to be hard enough for blah blah blah to learn German. He can’t learn French too at the same time. But by not thinking about stuff like that, I didn’t know when I first… in writing the first thing that Landa spoke all those languages. But in the course of writing the movie, all of a sudden, he did. Like I said, he could’ve spoken Tagalog, if a Filipino walked in the room. And that was something from just finding the character, and so I’m…and you know, it’s not my job to take an actor that I think is sexy and bring them up there and show them off to the world. It’s my job to have my characters come to life. And I really kind of love that thing now, like again, if I do “Kill Bill 3,” I’m going to write it for Uma, naturally, and I can’t even imagine that. But I really do like the idea of just letting the characters now just be who they are and then find the perfect person to make that character come alive.

HORN: Do you think you guys exist … you guys exist in something of a bubble in terms of what you’re able to do …

CAMERON: I have something to say about casting.

HORN: I’m sorry, Jim. Go ahead.

CAMERON: Just simply that I think it’s the most important decision … set of decisions you’re going to make on your movie. And if you botch it, if you botch that combination, then you can work on the film for another, you know, nine months, a year, in my case, four-and-a-half years on “Avatar” and you’re wasting your time. So it’s the most critical set of decisions, and it’s a very alchemical formula for how you wind up with a great cast.

HORN: And when you’re meeting with Sam, what do you need to hear in casting that part?

CAMERON: Sam was an easy choice for me, a hard choice for the studio. But you know, I mean, just in broad strokes, I’ll work with actors again that I know, and I’ll also cherish that idea of creating a character and having no idea who’s going to play that character. The one thing that I have a big dilemma about and people ask me how come you don’t use stars all the time is because I won’t work with anybody who won’t read for me. Period. It is a rule. Unless I’ve worked with that actor specifically before and I believe I know what they can do and what they’re like, because I need to see the character live in front of me, at least in some crude form, some approximation of what it’ll be, and I think that’s being responsible to the movie.

TARANTINO: I do that too.

HORN: But we live in an era in which actors want offers, they don’t want to come in and read.

CAMERON: I won’t do it.

HORN: So how do you deal with that? You say …

DANIELS: I don’t necessarily … I don’t like auditioning. I used to … I don’t like the auditioning process. I can sort of feel just in a conversation whether or not that person is or isn’t the person that I want to work with. I mean I had to audition Precious …

HORN: But you want to meet them. You don’t just want to say …

TARANTINO: No, you’ve got to meet them. You’ve got to meet them.

DANIELS: No, of course, you’ve got to meet. You have to meet, but I don’t…

CAMERON: No, I’ve got to have them read. I’ve got to have them show me that character.

DANIELS: The concept of that … if I know their body of work and I know what’s on the page and I know what’s in my head, I think that marries and warrants … I don’t want to meet them if I don’t want to hire them.

TARANTINO: Now, you know, here’s the thing …

HORN: So did you have Brad read?

TARANTINO: Yeah, no, I did, but …

DANIELS: You had Brad read?

BIGELOW: Yes and no.

TARANTINO: No, I did. Yeah, yeah, I did. No, I did.

DANIELS: Brad Pitt? Brad Pitt read for you? That is genius.

TARANTINO: But not like, OK, come up here and do an audition, all right? And same thing when I cast, you know … and Brad’s a different story. Getting Bruce [Willis] in “Pulp Fiction” and getting him to read before I gave it to him, that was something else. But that wasn’t like … again, it’s as nice and as friendly as possible, all right. I mean in the case of … even with Uma Thurman on “Pulp Fiction,” you know, we might … I just need to hear … I’m about my dialogue. I need to hear their voice say my dialogue. It’s just that simple. So it doesn’t even … they don’t need to show me the character per se. We can just muck around with the script, but I have to hear it. We can just take a bunch of tequila shots and that’s OK, but I need to get them comfortable and take all the onus off of it, so they’re not feeling like they’re auditioning, but I need to hear them say my dialogue.

HORN: If Brad doesn’t sound right to your ears, you’re willing to say …

TARANTINO: Well, I’m not going to do it.

HORN: OK.

TARANTINO: Of course not.

REITMAN: I think that … my way around it, instead of doing an audition, which feels uncomfortable to just put someone in a chair, you put them on a camera, is invite two actors down, do some blocking and actually just work on the scene with them. I agree with …

DANIELS: But that’s auditioning. That’s auditioning, right?

CAMERON: It’s just a different format.

TARANTINO: No, that’s like a quasi-rehearsal.

CAMERON: I’ve never done one shorter than two hours.

DANIELS: I’m sorry. What did you say there James?

CAMERON: I’ve never done an audition shorter than two hours.

REITMAN: Whoa! Really?

CAMERON: No, I’ll read all the scenes. I don’t care. I’ll do … I’ll get up, I’ll act with them, I’ll bring in other actors …

TARANTINO: Oh, if I’m into somebody, they’re not leaving until I’ve crossed every …

CAMERON: That’s an audition for me, is, if you’re not willing to put two hours into this process to decide if you’re going to tank or not tank my couple-hundred-million-dollar project, then that’s a nonstarter conversation.

DANIELS: Excuse me, Mr. Cameron. Of course. Of course.

TARANTINO: That is actually my favorite thing that’s been said right now.

BIGELOW: That’s a two-hour process.

DANIELS: That is a two-hour process.

REITMAN: I know you don’t see …

CAMERON: I go through endless hours of videotape to …

HORN: But you know five minutes in if somebody is in or out, even if you know somebody …

CAMERON: We haven’t gotten out in less than five minutes?

DANIELS: Wait, James, if you see … I mean, with this … Billy Hopkins casts for me, and so when he gives me these things on the computer, I push a button and out comes the audition. To me, that’s the work right there. I don’t need to have them re-audition for me. They’ve done the work. I’ve seen the character.

CAMERON: I use that to narrow it down from 400 or 300 to three or four or five that I’m interested in, and I’ll spend the time with them, because if I’m going to spend years on a movie, why wouldn’t I spend a few hours making the most important decision …

REITMAN: Don’t you want to see how they react to your direction, though? That’s the other thing, because I want to see how they change …

DANIELS: The reaction, no, I want to see how they react to me.

TARANTINO: No, I’ve really got to see how we correspond to each other

DANIELS: It’s not about … yeah, it’s not about direction. It’s about how do you … can you understand me? Can you play with me?

CAMERON: Exactly.

DANIELS: So it’s not about the audition, but it’s about do we connect.

BIGELOW: It’s about the dialogue.

CAMERON: It’s about a creative dialogue.

BIGELOW: It’s about a creative dialogue. Exactly.

HORN: Not the dialogue they’re repeating, but how you are having the conversation with the actor.

BIGELOW: No, just how you communicate with the actor and how he or she communicates with you.

DANIELS: Have you made mistakes ever by casting someone? I’m sorry, I have a question …

HORN: It’s a good question.

DANIELS: I have made a radical mistake, and I won’t say who, but I made a big mistake once.

HORN: By casting the wrong person?

DANIELS: Correct.

HORN: For the wrong reasons?

DANIELS: Just I … my instincts were wrong, and I was wondering whether I was the only one that had that experience here.

CAMERON: I don’t, because I work with them for two hours at a time.

REITMAN: You see?

CAMERON: It makes it hard to defend your method.

DANIELS: Yeah, but I only have the one time.

REITMAN: I’ve cast … I’ve worked with people I don’t jibe with. I feel like at the end of the day, I’m proud of all the performances in my films. I feel like I’ve always had actually the right actor and that their performance I’m very proud of and tonally is consistent with the work I’ve done, but there are people I’ve worked with that I’m not proud of the work experience I had with them, and I would not work with a similar actor just because I think that the process isn’t right, and I get better work when the process is right.

HORN: Quentin?

TARANTINO: I cast a couple actors once in a film and it just made me realize that I needed a … I thought they were interesting enough at the time, and I thought they passed the audition process. I thought they were the best, but then I realized they were just not the level of actor that I need and require. I mean, my feeling is if you show up on my set, there’s none of that BS you learn your lines on the day. You need to know my dialogue as if it’s the sixth week of your Broadway run and you already had a Boston tryout. All right, you need to know it beyond it. And unless you’re prepared to do that, you’re not prepared to be on my movie.

HORN: Kathryn, is this how you’re going to work going forward, or are you already that way?

BIGELOW: I’ve been very lucky, and you know …

CAMERON: It’s not luck. You have an uncanny knack. I mean, I will never forget when we went into Columbia with Keanu Reeves to star in “Point Break,” and the only thing he’d done was Ted in “Bill and Ted’s”…

BIGELOW: “Bill and Ted,” right.

CAMERON: … that anybody knew, and she said no, no, no, I’m going to cut his hair, he’s going to work out, I’m going to dress him, I’m going to teach him how to be an action star. And this was before “Speed.” And my role as the producer was to defend her creative choices. And, you know, before it, I was thinking, based on what?!? Based on Ted? How is this going to work? So we go into the meeting and they say, based on what?!? Based on Ted? I said, no, I think she’s onto something. And meanwhile, I’m thinking, this better work. But full kudos … he’s got a career because of her.

BIGELOW: Thank you.

CAMERON: It’s true!

BIGELOW: But it goes back to instinct, you know, what Jason was saying, and it is … I can kind of just see the person, and we communicate well together, I think they perhaps will trust me, I will trust them implicitly and I know it’s going to be a good situation. So it’s really just an instinctual process.