You’ve probably been asked this. Did it take convincing for her to take the role?
No. That’s the craziest thing and I know that seems bizarre. We had a lot going on though. She was in the middle of shooting that tiny indie movie ‘Mary Poppins,’ we just had our second daughter, who at the time that I was rewriting the screenplay was probably, two or three months.
It was a lot. I didn’t think it would be the right time to say,” Hey, right after ‘Mary Poppins’ and having a baby, do you want to jump right into this movie with me?” So, I didn’t ask her to be in it and I was afraid that she would say no. That would make awkward dinner conversations. At the same time, I was scared that she’d say yes, because she’s so generous and considers other people first. If she was going to do it, I wanted it to be for the right reasons.
I’ve known her for 10 years. I’d been there for every moment when she decided to [take on a role] and I have seen the spark of excitement. She is the classiest person, who has the best taste of anyone I know and the most dedication of anybody I know once you commit to a project.
So, I didn’t want her first movie and her entire resume [flub] to be like, “Well, I didn’t love it, but I did it for my husband.” Long story short, she reads the script on a plane. She turns gray. She turns to me, she looks sick, I grab a barf bag and she turns to me and says, “you can’t let anyone else do this movie.” And it’s weirdly like a romantic comedy like she’s proposing to me or something [laughs]. I said, what are you saying to me? And she goes, “You have to let me do this role. Can you let me, can I have the role?” And I just screamed, “YES!” on the plane. It was honestly one of the best experiences of my career. It was, it was one of those magic moments that I’ll never forget.
God, must have been such an awful chore to shoot, huh?
[Laughs] It was just so perfect. She’s the best collaborator I have ever worked with. She’s so smart and so as such great ideas. We went through the entire script in advance. I walked her through every single shot in our living room. I was like jumping around the room, going through angles. I knew that it would be difficult and intense and we didn’t have time and we didn’t have money just like any movie. So, I didn’t want her to feel those pressures so we got to the heart of everything long before we ever got on set. It was a wonderful process.
Talk about hitting upon the craft and this kind of taut, classic minimalism.
From the very beginning, I wanted to make it feel like a throwback. I wanted it to feel nostalgic and there’s a confidence to classic filmmaking that I wanted to tap into. I watched every relatable genre movies seemingly ever in preparation for this, but the ones that I kept going back to, we’re “Jaws, “Alien,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and then all the Hitchcock stuff because the simplicity always strengthened [the movie] and I really loved that. I tried to watch some silent movies, but I quickly realized, the form and approach was totally different.
So, I started to really hone in on more modern filmmakers who had to deal with silence or no dialogue. A touchstone for me was Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” with the opening that’s like 14 minutes or whatever it is, without hearing Daniel Day-Lewis talk. That was mesmerizing for me. I couldn’t take my eyes off it and then the Cohen brothers with “No Country For Old Men.” There’s such beautiful use of silence and no dialogue and how much power comes from a character who’s being internal rather than external. Those were the touchstones I went for and those movies all have an epic, but simple, confident scope that I honed in on.
I believe the producers have talked about a flashback in the screenplay that revealed what happened to the United States or Earth, and this would-be alien invasion. Was that shot?
There was no flashback in my version. My first decision of the rewrite was to take out all the flashbacks. Look, we can’t allow the audience to experience anything that the family has not experienced. It connects the audience to the family and to the tension. If you fall in love with this family, hopefully, you’ll lock into the movie more because you’re in the same situation that they are. If you know more than they do, you will disconnect from them and not even consciously or purposefully. So, instead of hearing about all these tragedies on a national scale, I would keep you entrenched with them. Have you witnessed it with them? That was the point of view rule.
The ambiguity of it all is nice, and at the same time, we’re not dummies. You show enough in the workshop to convey the gist of what’s happened: some kind of calamity.
Yeah, you’re only going to know as much as the father does. That’s why the workshop scene was one of my favorite scenes to shoot. Designing that with my production designer Jeffrey Beecroft was one of the most thrilling experiences of the whole film because the entire backstory, as you said, everything that’s happened is on that wall, but you’re only getting bits and pieces.
I remember going with Matt Damon into a marketing meeting at Focus Features when we did “The Promised Land.” I was talking to this amazing marketing guy and I asked him, “What’s the biggest misconception in Hollywood?” And without pausing he said that the audiences are stupid. That’s just so wrong. They’re not stupid. They want to be challenged. They don’t want things sugar-coated. So when you write all these things, you try and challenge and you try and make bold decisions. So when I sat down to my page one of the rewrite, I just had to take it all out. I have the backstory in my head and hopefully, through the glimpse of what we should, that catastrophe is communicated. Your imagination can do the rest.
“A Quiet Place” is available now on Blu-Ray/DVD and all digital retailers.
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