CANNES — A unique trend at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is the number of well known, Hollywood “industry” actors who are being rewarded after years of taking one challenging indie film movie role after another. In particular, Nicole Kidman (numerous), Colin Farrell (“The Killing of a Sacred Deer”), Kirsten Dunst (“The Beguiled”), Willem Dafoe (“The Florida Project”) and Elisabeth Moss (“The Square”) have delivered impressive performances in films that are resonating with audiences and critics on la Croisette this year. Another name you can add to that mix is Robert Pattinson, the former teen idol (although he’d likely cringe at that description) who is earning raves for his role in the Safdie Brothers‘ new thriller “Good Time.”
During the festival’s official press conference for the A24 release, the 31-year-old actor revealed he’d reached out to the Josh and Ben Safdie, after being intrigued by the trailer and poster for their previous film.
He recalls, “I saw a still from ‘Heaven Knows What’ and I think it was on the poster, the photo of [lead actress] Arielle Holmes and I don’t know what it was about it. I just knew I wanted to work with these guys. I just did a meeting and I saw a trailer of ‘Heaven’ afterwards and I was just like, ‘Yeah.’ It’s so rare that you get those feelings and I just had to chase it down to the end.”
Josh Safdie follows up, “It was that openness that was so amazing to us that he was willing to say, ‘I’ll do whatever you want’ and he meant it. And we took him up on that for sure.”
The picture finds Pattinson playing Connie Nikas, a Queens native whose life is so desperate he’s willing to trick his mentally impaired brother Nick (played by co-director Ben Safdie) into helping him rob a bank. The Safdies are big fans of “street casting” and a number of the key characters in the story are played by first time actors. Surprisingly, that was a big plus for Pattinson.
“A lot of their casting was street casting and I always wanted to look like I was street cast,” Pattinson says as the assembled media laughed. “I think the script went through a lot of incarnations over months and months and months. There definitely was a voice that they were writing in that I really liked immediately. There is something about their writing that is very musical. It just comes out very easily. I think with this what works for me is just time. It’s just spending a long, long time on the script and not trying to force anything. We were talking about this for a year almost before we started shooting anything. Then I went for two months before we started shooting, just living around the corner from Josh in New York.”
The Safdies also utilize a good deal of guerrilla shooting on their films. Those public appearances could end up being mob scenes if any of Pattinson’s loyal fans discovered he was shooting at a particular location.
“I was so nervous about people finding about the shoot and paparazzi being there….it destroys the whole illusion of it,” Pattinson admits. “Kind of what I was doing as a person was feeding into the character. Basically you’re trying to disappear, trying to be a ghost in a crowd. We shot the entire movie on the street in New York and not a single person even took a cell phone picture. It was crazy.”
Like all the actors in the cast, Pattinson was provided a very detailed backstory to explain Connie’s motivations throughout the story. He notes, “I feel like the character is a conduit for a lot of different people’s energies. Pretty much everyone here grew up in New York except me. Even that you can’t fake it. I had to make that part of the character. Basically you have a part of yourself that’s abandoned and then you fill it up with a lot of other people’s energies and then focus and then take in something. I don’t know how much of it is really me other than just being very manic all the time. Nobody ever really sees that.”
Laughing he adds, “That’s a private, out of control thing.”
Even more intriguing than his performance in “Good Time” is what Pattinson has on deck next. Earlier this week it was announced Pattinson will star in Joanna Hogg‘s “The Souvenir” which will be executive produced by Martin Scorsese.
“I basically got the next year planned out,” Pattinson says. “I’m gonna work with Claire Denis after this. I’m just so happy with seeing the people I’m going to work with. It’s crazy. I’m doing a movie with Antonio Campos in the next year, another thing with David Michod.”
And that means that Pattinson will likely be back at Cannes sooner than you think.
“Good Time” opens in limited release on August 11. Check out the rest of our coverage from the 2017 Cannes Film Festival by clicking here.
