Behind the Scenes: Carnage (Polanski, 2011) with Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet

Two couples come together to have somewhat of a discussion or a negotiation. Their children, their two boys, have gotten into a fight in the park, and one boy hits the other boy in the mouth with a stick and breaks his teeth. And they're all polite people, they're all well-educated, older parents, and they've And they've all, you know, come from... upper-middle-class families and they live in a very, very polite and urban suburb and you would think that this would all go very well and it all just goes very badly. I hadn't seen the play at all and, in fact, I bought tickets to see the play and I was working and I couldn't go, so I gave them to a friend. It's a little different. Unfortunately. I mean, actually, I think that's kind of a good thing to have never seen the play. Or hopefully you're not terribly intimidated, which I'm intimidated anyway, so. I'm sure I would have been more intimidated had I seen it. I think it's, you know, it's a comedy of people's manners. And how in, you know, how they lose those manners. It really matters. And I will say, I mean, you know, it's, the thing that really makes it work is that each character is so well drawn and they're all very, very different. It does sort of underline the fragility of the relationships and how, you know, how... We are fraught, we all are, with all of the wounds that we drag along with us throughout of our relationships. Our relationships with our children, our relationships with our parents, and those things play out within every piece of dialogue that we have. I mean, it's so beautifully written, this play, and it's dizzying. So it starts out in this kind of polite way, and then very quickly it starts gaining momentum and gaining momentum and gaining momentum until it becomes a real rapid fire. But I think Carnage, shortening it to Carnage, which I think is going to happen on this film, is an interesting idea. Yeah, you know, it... It allows you, A, to discover within the story, you know, what that meant. But I think it also, it gives it this primitive feeling in a much more primitive way. And I think that's really what the movie's about, is about all of these, you know, polite people kind of finding their more primitive side. Well, you know, it's the ideas that are in it that I think are the most interesting. Interesting. And, um... The relationship between the people that are even as satirical as it is, and in some ways as outlandish as they are, have a real grounding in real psychology, family psychology. And it's that tapestry that I love the most, the details of people's lives and how they interact with each other and how they drive each other crazy and all the old wounds, how they stab each other over and over again. Not just in this generation, but in the next generation, the generation of the kids that came before, the kids that are that are having a Fight in the Park, as well as the mother that Michael talks to on the phone. It's two hours into these people's lives, and two hours of them discussing and fighting about issues and things that they care about. Um, it... And maybe that is the great challenge, I think, is to shoot a film in real time. Shooting a film in real time, where there's not even a moment where you pass over the fact that somebody goes and gets a broom out of the closet. I mean, you watch the person get the broom out of the closet, and that means that whatever transitions are being made, they're not being made off camera. They have to be made right then and there. And I think the play is so beautifully drawn that it's kind of been easy to go from one feeling to the next. I don't know if there's any hard and fast moral to the story. I think mostly it really is just about an experience of watching people become their more primitive selves and reveal themselves in a truer way. All these people who are being so phony. Thank you very much, Tony. At the beginning, when we first started the film, we were shooting in chronological order. Thank you. I think Roman's direction to everybody was just more phony, more phony, more phony, more phony. Could you be more fake? Thank I think that, you know, that's really where they start out in the process. They start out saying, I'm so sorry, and, you know, what can we do to help? And, oh, don't worry, it's all fine, you know, this happens. you And little by little, it devolves into the real feelings that are behind it. Our ideas about morality are really constructs, so much. and that, in fact, we're all very primitive, and that, you know, we're all monstrous in some ways, and that if we probably took responsibility for that, we'd probably be better off and happier. This is what couples go through every single day of their lives. I mean, this is the undercurrent of what people go through every single day of their lives. I make movies about families. As a director, I make movies about families and couples all the time, and that really is my fascination, my obsession, how this tapestry comes together and how all of these dynamics come together in a positive and negative way. And that's what intimacy is. If you want to be intimate with somebody, it gets really ugly. Well, it is a French play, and the transposition has been done many times in different languages. The English transposition is very different from the American, because, of course, couples in London, not only do they speak differently, but they have a different set of circumstances than a couple does in Brooklyn. So the transposition from Paris to Brooklyn is a huge one. And I think Roman's handled that beautifully with Yasmina. I mean, he's... I think he's really managed to capture that essence of a Brooklyn couple. They're richer people, and they're people that are exposed to lots of things that other Americans aren't exposed to. And they make a decision to live in Brooklyn, not in New York City, but in Brooklyn. And Brooklyn has become kind of the yuppie place. For people that have been really exposed to Manhattan culture, these are older couples. These are not people that had kids in their 20s. So these are people that made decisions to have kids, you know, in their 40s. And that means you have a very different investment than when you're younger. You know, it's a very different investment. In terms of how they relate, I mean, the French play in some ways. It's very much like Parisians, they relate all through language, and it's very much all about how they all play with language. Well, that's very French. See, we don't do that as much in America. And there were a lot of changes that had to be made so that some of the dialogue really reflected the interior of the character and less their tongues. You know, it was less about the barbs that they sent and more about their interiors. I'd like to say that the play is incredibly universal, that it's universal to people of certain socio-economic backgrounds, you know, these are people who are traveled, they're people who are rich, they're people who, you know, buy clothes at... Designers that are Italian and German and all sorts of other things so So, um... That being said there's a similarity between Paris and London and Rome and and Brooklyn, you know, I mean there's a similarity between Those people that are raising couples yuppies raising couples with a lot of money I think we're starting to feel a little bit claustrophobic on week six. We're ready to get out of the studio. But I've made a lot of movies in one location like this. I don't know, maybe it's helpful. The one thing that's happened when you do a film where there's only four people and all there is is talking is that there's a closeness that develops between the actors that you just can't get any other way. And I don't know if it's because We're all desperate, or because we're all really great people, but I have to say, this has been the most enjoyable camaraderie that I've ever had in a movie. I genuinely love these actors so much, and I'm actually already sad about not seeing them every single day. I mean, we really, really, really love each other, and I think it really shows on screen when we're scratching each other's eyes out. Thank They came to me with a role, so Penelope, who was Veronica in the play, seemed like a very good fit. you You know, she is incredibly serious and takes everything way too seriously and is very politically correct. for And in the beginning, in a way, you can play that normally in a sort of dramatic way, having and then as time goes on, it becomes more and more of a satire of a regular person. I am an uptight woman who works at a bookstore, me. but who's writing a book on suffering and suffering in Africa. And I can't seem to get that out of her mind. And she's sort of like, she's, you know, almost like a human rights court. She wants to do the same thing and is appalled by these two people that have come into her home that she feels over and over again by everything that they say and they demonstrate, just don't seem to care at, you know, the plight of the world and how terrible this circumstance is. John John C. Reilly, who plays Michael, his relationship with me is that he's just a good guy. And he... You know, listens to me, but he just is trying to make peace, and he kind of thinks that my uptightness is just a little too much, and the way he avoids that is by drinking his favorite scotch. Well, Roman has been a filmmaker for a very long time, and he knows everything. You know, he's a master technician, and he's a master filmmaker, and he has a very specific style. And lots of directors have many different styles, and they kind of jump back from one to the other, and they all have a different style for each film. Each film they do and each type of storytelling, but Roman doesn't. He's very consistent about what he wants. And the way he does that is that he makes every single decision himself. So he, you know, very often puts the marks down and he very often, you know, he sets the camera and he's there with his little viewfinder, which I haven't seen anyone use a viewfinder in about 20 years. And his is all scratched just from like knife in the water. Thank you. He, you know, he has an idea of the look that he wants for the movie, but that is also a part of his lexicon too. And, you know, another director could come in and make a totally different film. And we'd make a film that would be completely different, so it's been interesting to see his style really take form on this film. I think it's been interesting for him to work with four actors that have also been around for an incredibly long time and have made a lot of movies. I've directed movies, Christoph's directed a film, John's produced films, and Kate's pretty much done everything on the planet that any human being could possibly do right, you know? uh... and i think it's been fun for him because he realizes it's easier for him uh... that in in some ways most of the direction that he had to do was in rehearsals and there's very little acting direction to be done once the film starts shooting so most of his concerns are really uh... visual concerns about how the camera you know what the camera angles are and how to move things around and then very very subtle tweaks for us but You know, he made his play before the film started and sort of told us the direction that he was looking for. And then he doesn't really have to work too hard with us after that. Well, the situation at the beginning is that Nancy and Alan Cowan have a son, Zachary. And, um... He is 11, and Penelope and Michael Longstreet have a son, Ethan, who is also 11, and the two boys have had a fight in the playground, and my son has hit their son with a stick and knocked him, broke him two of his teeth. So they are coming together. They have been in Nancy and Alan, my character and Christoph's character. We have been invited to the Longstreet's house to just try and talk this through, to try and figure out a way to get the boys to patch this up. I'm And to just resolve it, come to some level of resolve. starting But everyone approaches it with a very different opinion, with a very different attitude, and all hell breaks loose. And before you know it, it becomes nothing to do with the boys and their fight, to but entirely to do with these two different marriages speak and the cracks that lie between them. I saw the Broadway production with James Gandolfini now. and Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harden and Jeff Daniels. So, yes, I was indeed familiar with it. And it was a brilliant production and incredible performances by all of them. Just unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's a window on so many of our worlds. You know, it's about... It's about parenting. It's about the complexities of parenting. It's about differing opinions about how children should be raised. But more importantly, it's about the great, endless, complex dynamic that marriage truly is. And to have turned it into a comedy in the way that Yasmina did is something that is even more... Enriching and colourful and enlightening I think for everybody to be able to laugh at ourselves, to be able to make fun of the human condition in this particular context is the thing that I think no matter what language you speak or which country you're in or what your personal circumstances are, we've all as adults experienced some part of what this play is about. I always love rehearsal, it's always Such a pleasure to be able to have it's such a luxury. Some actors don't like rehearsal very much but I felt very strongly coming into this that oh yeah I'm sure we'll probably rehearse everything but I didn't realize I think none of us could have counted on this thing that Roman did which was to have us all learn the script from start to finish the entire movie script like a play and we staged the whole thing and I was I was personally really thrilled that we did that because it means that when we get onto the set we all know exactly what our physical positions are and not only is that helpful to us in terms of where we're at within the story but it's helpful to Roman because he can structure how he's going to shoot it And, to have had that time together as well that kind of you know it sounds like such a sort of um cliche thing to say but it was a very bonding experience for all of us to be thrown right into the deep end you know shocked into you know action by Roman suddenly saying okay go away this weekend and learn the whole thing you know um but but i i i love um... that i mean it's you know this this job is it's such a gift but when it becomes even more of a challenge than You could ever have anticipated it might be, it's just so fun to have to rise to that challenge, you know, and to be with these actors who, you know, John and Jodie and Christophe, who are so accomplished and so brilliant at what they do, you know, to feel the desire to, you know, to all hold hands and match, that match each other's ability is it's really wonderful and I have to say as well that we've been very fortunate that we all really get along great like we all sort of just love each other so that's been great I mean if if one of us had been in any way you know tricky it would have been another story I think. Yes, it was fun, actually. And I've got to be honest, I was dreading it. I was actually dreading this. It's a monologue that Nancy gives, which is sort of extremely erratic and all over the place. And she's at her most drunk. Thank you very much. And having been also vomiting previously for the majority of the story up until this point. But it was in a way, there was a kind of a, it felt, there was sort of a curse over this speech because it always in rehearsals felt a little bit speechy. And we all of us kept commenting on, oh God, how can we make this feel just as though it comes out of absolutely nowhere? And a lot of kind of solving that was... You know, just really relying on Roman's direction, which is always so unbelievably bang-on right. But also just restaging some things a little bit to how we had done it in rehearsal. I mean, that's the other great thing about having rehearsed it one way, is that you know what works and what doesn't work. And, you know, being able to arrive on the day and say, oh, okay, actually, let's change that now. You have the added luxury of that. But it was a really fun morning. But I'm very happy it's done because it is difficult to do that stuff, you know. There's nothing worse than bad drunk acting. God help us. I hope that's not what I've just been doing all day. I I wasn't... I wasn't remotely surprised. I mean, I think when you, you know, don't when you're told that Roman Polanski is directing the film version of God of Carnage, you really just don't question it because you know that this is a man who is clearly capable of doing that and has very specific reasons why he wants to do that. know. And as an actor, you know, all you can ever do is trust entirely in the director's vision and their choices. And, you know. Being asked to be a part of this extraordinary cast of people, it's just so flattering. It's, you know, it's one of the greatest honours. So, So I, yeah, I mean, doubts just never even came into it. Not at all. Well, I think, you know, it's, I mean, there's no handbook, you know, there's no guidebook to how to act, how to, you know, be funny, sad, you know, so you... You have to rely on the writing, I think, with a piece like this, you know, because the comedy is in the writing, it's in the story, and it's within the... The framework of how the piece is set up and I think acknowledging the fact that it's a satire, yes that's important to do and we've all been able to do that but you know you can't play these moments and try and make them funny. You know you have to sort of play the sincerity of the moment or the lunacy of the moment or just how ridiculous the entire situation is. Sometimes it's funny in in and of itself. So. And it's about knowing when to do something that might actually be amusing on camera or when to just rely on the circumstances to be the thing that is humorous. But I've learned so much about that because I have done some comedy before, but not that much. And you learn these things as you go and kind of hope for the best a little bit and hope that you are doing something that is sincere and funny. You know, throughout this piece we hear all of these characters use really aggressive, robust words as either weapons or ways of explaining their own emotions or their perception of what someone else is thinking. And it, you know, And there are reactions to that. And none of them take responsibility for the words that come out of their mouths at all. And that's one of the reasons why it unravels in the way that it does. No one takes responsibility for anything that they say. And, you know, life can't be like that because then look what happens. I mean, that's why it becomes this thing that it does. And that's all again been brilliantly... Written into the screenplay is this sense of no one taking responsibility, no one atoning for anything, no one apologising. I think the only person who says sorry is Nancy. She says, I'm sorry, Doodle, I'm sorry, Doodle. She says it to Alan when she's just apologising for completely ruining his life because she drowned his telephone in a vase of tulips. My son, in the film, gets into a fight with... Kristoff and Kate's son in the film, and they have an argument in the playground, and their son hits my son in the mouth with a stick and breaks his teeth. And so the parents decide, let's be civilized. Let's get together and discuss what happened. And if it's okay between us, then it will become okay between the children. And also we have this business of explaining to the insurance company how it happened. And then, you know, so... In a very civilized gesture, my wife and I invite this couple to our house to discuss, you know, how we go forward from here, you know, and the first, say, third of the story is very polite and everyone trying to present the best version of themselves or this ideal version of themselves in the way that parents are often competitive in that subtle way with each other, Where they're like, oh yes, well. You know, the way we raise our child is, oh, yes, of course, of course, us also, us also. And there are these undercurrents of status competition underneath it, and there's undercurrents of judgment without seeming to judge, you know. And then, you know, one thing leads to another in the story, and needless to say, the gloves come off. And I think if there is a moral to the story, it's that, you know, that adults, Can be more childish than children. Well, as an actor, it was a very exciting opportunity because it's very rare that you shoot a film consecutively to begin with. And that's a wonderful way to find a story and a character organically on a film. I think I've maybe done it twice out of 50 films that I've done. So whenever you get the chance to do that, it's a great opportunity. Thank you for the opportunity. And... What did I see it as a cinematic? Not exactly because it's in such as one location you know it's it's somewhat rare for a film to be so confined but I knew if anyone could do it Roman Polanski could. It's wonderful in an age when you know catharsis in films usually means a massive explosion or you know some type of monster rising out of the sea or something that uh that the monster is It's the people. in this film and the catharsis that comes is when they finally are honest with each other, you know, it takes almost the entire story for them to be really honest, you know, it takes a couple glasses of scotch too. But I think that's the wonderful thing about it is that no one is really off the hook, you know, if you're really honest with yourself and you watch this film you're like, yeah, I've said that or I felt that, maybe I didn't say it, but I felt that about that other couple's kid. You know, they don't raise him right, you know, if only they treated him, if only they, you know, taught their son the way we teach our son, you know, it's very easy to see the faults in other people. And we definitely have these, you know, these impulses to be selfish or to whatever, to be completely self-centered. However, I personally don't believe that that is the total driving force. I know in my own life that that's not, I don't have only selfish. It means, actually, if you have children, that's what you learn. You learn that, well, it is possible for human beings to do something for someone other than themselves. And children teach you that. I have children myself, and I learn that every day, you know. Yeah, so it definitely gives you a sense of place. The challenge that a film set in one location presents is, you know, these characters in the story are in this place for 90 minutes together, and we've been in this place for six weeks together. So, uh... You know, the challenge is to keep each moment fresh as if it's happening within 90 minutes and not to get bored or too, well, it's easier for me because it's my apartment, you know, so I'm meant to be very comfortable in there, but I think for Christoph and Kate, keeping the sense that this is not exactly familiar territory is a challenge. I noticed when I walked into Dean Tembularis' set was, my god, so much of my work has been done for me. Because usually on films, You know, the camera sees what the audience is meant to see and then you look over here and it's just a soundstage or a flat or when you go to pick up a book, you open the book and there's nothing inside the book or, you know, there's a lot of artifice. But Dean's set is just filled with detail. I mean, I think if you... If you covered the windows and you sent someone in, you blindfolded them and took them to this place, and you let them inside the set, they would think they were in an apartment. It really is down to like strange little knickknacks on the shelves and the whole place. The kitchen is like nearly functional. Unfortunately, the bathroom is not functional. That's true. When you first read it, you think, wow, that's an awfully philosophical thing to say in the midst of a discussion. So the rehearsal allowed me to just, through repetition and through reconsideration each day of how I said something or the way I approached it, it gave me a chance to let these ideas settle inside of myself and find a way. For my character to say these things, you know, because of the four characters, I would say my character is the most down-to-earth, or at least the least intellectual, perhaps. So yeah, the rehearsal process allowed me to find that, and also allowed us, you know, within this confined space, just to find the rhythms and the Just the way we interacted, you know, instead of, I think it would be very difficult, number one, to shoot the film out of order would be almost impossible, I think, because there's so much going on from moment to moment, it'd be hard to go back and then forward. And we were running this whole thing. We would do run-throughs of the entire script, like a play, you know, over and over and over and over. If he had notes in that way, he would give them during rehearsal now and now we're just executing what we have rehearsed. So if we start to, you know, if the energy starts to ebb or something, he'll say, oh, no, no, no. Remember, remember when we were rehearsing how upset you got when you said this and remind you, you know, but for the most part, that rehearsal is really The story tells a lot, says a lot about not only parenting and the way we relate to our children and how we, I think, at times over-supervise our children. It also says things about gender, you know, like, ah, the women, eventually the men kind of square off together, like, ah. She's driving me crazy, yeah, and she's driving me crazy, so maybe you and I can find comfort in a glass of scotch with each other. And the women do the same thing, like, you know, he does that, well, mine does this, you know, which is also a very common thing among couples. I think what's great about the story is that it approaches these intellectual ideas, and the characters are actually discussing. These ideas, but that's not what's going on. It's funny, like oftentimes in life, there's what we're talking about, and then there's the way we're behaving. And there's a story of how we're behaving towards each other underneath the story of what we're actually saying to each other. And this is a classic example of that, I think, the script. We're talking about these high ideas and, you know, aspirations and, you know, our belief systems and our place in the world. And meanwhile we're sort of acting like these children with, you know, the dynamics of our relationship become slowly unveiled. And I think that's the key to the success. Yeah, there's all these sort of little revealing moments about our belief systems that we are quick to judge the other people on, but it's much harder to admit our own frailties. But that's what satire does, you know. It's a perfect setup for comedy, I think, because whenever you put people in a situation that is difficult for them to deal with and make them behave in a way... That keeps things polite, that's an age-old recipe for comedy. So Roman, the way he directs films is very much from his point of view. It's very much about the cinema of it, you know, the framing and the shots. There was a lot of interaction with us about the acting during rehearsal, but during shooting... It's minimal, you know, if there's a problem or if there's something he would like you to change, he'll say something otherwise. Roman has a really good innate sense of what it's like to have to act something, so he was as much interested in the rehearsal process and the organic reality of the reactions and the behavior as we were. I mean, this had to be one of the fastest decisions I've ever made about taking a piece of work. You know, I'm just, you know, there's very few people in the world that are at the level of Roman, and I feel incredibly lucky to be here, yeah. I've seen the original production, which was in Zurich, in German, because Jasmina told me that she had written the play for the director who directed it in Zurich, Jürgen Gosch. And he wanted her to write a play for him to open his season there. So she had written this in four months. Roman and Yasmina wrote a specific version for the movie. It's not, of course it's the play, or it's like the play, but it's not as it is on stage. I like movies that just play in the confined space. Now, I wouldn't say this is Roman's specialty, but I've seen movies of Romans that did play in confined spaces, and they were fabulous. I don't know whether I necessarily thought it was cinematic, but in connection with Roman's name, it certainly was. You know, as a confinement is not necessarily an attraction. But the fact that it was these three, these specific three actors that I was promised to be working with made it interesting because I trusted that they were all, you know, well versed in their craft and civilized, intelligent, well mannered. So the confinement did not become a hindrance or an obstacle. Well, we were trying out various versions, possibilities, options, you know, and then we kind of... sort of narrowed down and we're still rehearsing, you know. In this case, it might have even been indispensable. It's possible. In other cases, it should be at least possible to have an extended period of time to not just get used to one another, but to actually play with the material, because you don't ever really get to try out those sort of extreme things. In a shoot, because, you know, it's going to be in the movie. And if you have an extended period of rehearsal, you can experiment. And you can try stuff that you know you won't do it like that in the end, but either to get it out of your system or to maybe use it as a stepping stone to something else. On a regular shoot, you don't have that time. The other day there was a little discord, you know, and Roman said, look, don't tell me I've been doing this job for 60 years and there's no arguing with it. You know, Roman doesn't make any mistakes. He made his first movie a year before I was born and I'm not exactly 25 anymore, you know. So what am I going to question his choices? You know, this is a guarantee. That it will be the right thing to do. Whatever he says. It would be my loss not to do what he says. 60 years of experience as a filmmaker. And not exactly a filmmaker that failed with his first few movies. He's, you know, he... Roman is one of the very, very few who worked throughout 60 years on the top level. Not in terms of career, but in terms of craft of filmmaking.