Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. My guest today
Speaker 1: is director, writer, and cinematographer Carrie Fucanaga. Fukanaga produced and
Speaker 1: directed Season one of HBO's moody, unsettling, and highly successful
Speaker 1: crime drama True Detective, set in and around New Orleans.
Speaker 1: He has three feature films under his belt as well,
Speaker 1: shot in Mexico, England, and Ghana. For Carrie Fucanaga, each
Speaker 1: production is as unique as the shooting location itself. Every
Speaker 1: movie so far has been so different in that sense,
Speaker 1: in the same way like every relationship is different. There
Speaker 1: are general things of the same, you know, film to film.
Speaker 1: But my first movie was such bliss in terms of
Speaker 1: the the general passion of the crew and how much
Speaker 1: everyone sort of filled in the gaps with number first
Speaker 1: number yeah, and then Jane Eyre was like, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like a mercenary army where eleven hours and
Speaker 1: fifty nine minutes people are ready to pull the plug
Speaker 1: and go Home. It took me about half of that
Speaker 1: film to win over the crew, and I think it
Speaker 1: was necessary. I think you need the crew on your side.
Speaker 1: So yes, there's a there's a level of it. But
Speaker 1: that's also why you start surrounding yourselves with the same
Speaker 1: head to department so that you don't have to win
Speaker 1: them over. They get it, and then they're sort of
Speaker 1: loyalty and there's your people. There are your people, and
Speaker 1: they're loyalty and enthusiasm sort of trickles down. The number
Speaker 1: was at a short film that was made into a
Speaker 1: studio film correct or a future film. Yeah. The Shore
Speaker 1: was a slightly different story, but same world. It was
Speaker 1: about a truckload of immigrants that were abandoned in South
Speaker 1: Texas and it was a refrigerated trailer, so a lot
Speaker 1: of them suffocated to death, very similar to what happened
Speaker 1: just last summer in Austria. You went to n y
Speaker 1: U Film School and we went to grad from where
Speaker 1: did you go unto grow when? To Santa Cruz for
Speaker 1: history and uh, a little bit of political science. I
Speaker 1: went for a year to to a political science institute
Speaker 1: in Grenoble. Friends, and you grew up in northern California
Speaker 1: from the East Bay. Um, but I've lived all around
Speaker 1: the Bay area, moved every couple of years, So I
Speaker 1: did a kind of a ring around the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: But then when I go home to God and your
Speaker 1: father or both your parents were born in an internment
Speaker 1: camp or on one of them was my dad was
Speaker 1: he was born in an internament He and my uncles
Speaker 1: are born. He was born in Topas, my uncles were
Speaker 1: born in Tule Lake. Because my family were no knows,
Speaker 1: which means they signed no to uh two questions the
Speaker 1: US government posed all Japanese Americans put in these camps.
Speaker 1: One was do you first swear citizenship or a legiance
Speaker 1: to your birth country or your country of your race,
Speaker 1: which is Japan. And then the second question is where
Speaker 1: you fight in the U. S. Military? And if you
Speaker 1: answer no to both those questions, you were sent to
Speaker 1: this other camp, which was sort of under martial law
Speaker 1: the entire war. That's where your father was. Did as
Speaker 1: you talk much about that or has he? I think
Speaker 1: he was like three when he left. And then the
Speaker 1: Japanese were moved to sort of ghetto if you will,
Speaker 1: in Richmond in the Bay Area, and from there they
Speaker 1: sort of worked and moved out within the next couple
Speaker 1: of years. Your mother Japanese, so she's you know, Middle
Speaker 1: American Swedish heritage. You know you're Japanese and Swedish basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: describe to me when you do a film and you
Speaker 1: come in there, what you feel the job is, what,
Speaker 1: what is the task? I had a conversation with Afonsi
Speaker 1: quar own right before I went into Jane Eyre, and
Speaker 1: it was the first time I would be directing a
Speaker 1: screenplay that I didn't write myself, and he said something
Speaker 1: really simple but very important, which was, Uh, your job
Speaker 1: as a director is not to just illustrate somebody's screenplay.
Speaker 1: Your job is to make it something entirely different. And
Speaker 1: I think it's just really good advice because I think
Speaker 1: many people are very precious about writing. Writing the essential
Speaker 1: especially for dialogue and general story and plot. But the screenplay,
Speaker 1: in terms of cinema and movie making, is really just
Speaker 1: a starting point. It's a it's a floor plan where
Speaker 1: the finishing work is going to come, you know, much later.
Speaker 1: So I look at it as trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what my unified vision is going to be, what the
Speaker 1: overall emotion emotional impact of the story is and what
Speaker 1: state I want the audiences to be in when they're done.
Speaker 1: So when you go from Sinnombre to you're on the
Speaker 1: set directing Judy dench s out of that field, it
Speaker 1: was I was very aware that she had already at
Speaker 1: that point, I had done more movies than I will
Speaker 1: ever do in three of my life. So she kind
Speaker 1: to you, super kind. She has in mind direction, she
Speaker 1: likes direction and wants wants to make the director happy.
Speaker 1: And that made it a lot easier because at first
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what I could say to where prior
Speaker 1: to that had really only been directing, uh, non professional actors.
Speaker 1: You graduated from n y you graduate film school when well,
Speaker 1: technically I haven't graduated yet, but you attended there when
Speaker 1: two thousand two to four or five, And when you
Speaker 1: had left Santa Cruz with your did you get a
Speaker 1: degree in history? Yeah? When you left, I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if you didn't finish the arrival when you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to want to assume anything now, But when
Speaker 1: you left Santa Cruz with a degree in history and
Speaker 1: you went to n y U, how did that happen? Meaning?
Speaker 1: What what what what made you want to go to
Speaker 1: a graduate film program. Well, I think I wanted to
Speaker 1: do movies for a long time. Started writing my first
Speaker 1: shorts when I was like ten, my first you had
Speaker 1: the bug before, I had the bug before, and you know,
Speaker 1: saved up on its fourteen to buy a video camera.
Speaker 1: I would write stories and and then in college I
Speaker 1: think I decided to pursue snowboarding and sports as a
Speaker 1: career and potentially, you know, be a professional snowboarder. And
Speaker 1: by the time I was one, I was starting to
Speaker 1: realize that might be a really impossible dream. At that point,
Speaker 1: usually if you're not like on the A team by
Speaker 1: age seventeen or eighteen, you're never gonna catch up. So
Speaker 1: I started to write stories again. I thought about getting
Speaker 1: at the major at Santa Cruise and Film, and I
Speaker 1: went and talked to the head of department, and he
Speaker 1: made it seem like I had to be there two
Speaker 1: more years to study film, and I wasn't gonna stay
Speaker 1: in Santa Cruise, so I be I Basically I trialed
Speaker 1: for a bit and then I went down to l
Speaker 1: A and started crewing. It was the first movie you
Speaker 1: crewed him, the first big production I did a couple
Speaker 1: of indies around the Bay Area, but the first production
Speaker 1: I showed up on in Los Angeles was a pick
Speaker 1: up shoot for Destiny's Child Survivor a zooma beach. It
Speaker 1: was amazing. I mean, like, first of all, I didn't
Speaker 1: have to pick up a cigarette, butts, I had a
Speaker 1: pretty cool job. I was on the camera truck and
Speaker 1: so I was right up there with a cinematographer and
Speaker 1: watching uh, you know, Beyonce dour thing. It was a video.
Speaker 1: It was a video. I mainly worked on music videos
Speaker 1: and commercials out there, features like some indie features that
Speaker 1: I don't think ever won anywhere y n Y. You,
Speaker 1: I mean as a native of California and even northwere
Speaker 1: which I'm always mystified with natives of Central or Northern
Speaker 1: California league because it's so beautiful there. I mean, l A,
Speaker 1: I can see you wanted to get out of there
Speaker 1: because it's so crowded. But but the y n Y.
Speaker 1: I think, especially if you're from the East Bay like
Speaker 1: Oakland and Berkeley, Brooklyn is very analogous as cities and
Speaker 1: the multi cultural yeah yeah or not or or also
Speaker 1: I mean, you just want to be in a place Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's an urban side to the Bay Area
Speaker 1: that you like, even with San Francisco being a very small,
Speaker 1: big city but still a big city that I grew
Speaker 1: up with that Los Angeles didn't have. And I think
Speaker 1: also when you grew up in Northern California, you grew
Speaker 1: up with a sort of natural antagonism for the Southern
Speaker 1: California that most Southern Californias aren't even aware of. So
Speaker 1: it's like when you're in college for the first time together.
Speaker 1: The Southern California has had no idea that Northern Californias
Speaker 1: didn't like in them. In the Northern California's really we
Speaker 1: have no reason not to like them, except we were
Speaker 1: just raised not like the South for some reason. It's
Speaker 1: like in New York, we have an upstate downstate thing
Speaker 1: here too, So you come here? Did you take to
Speaker 1: New York? To you? Where do you live now? I
Speaker 1: live in the West Village, So you like New York?
Speaker 1: You took to it? I haven't been here almost fifteen years,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I've taken to it. And when you finished
Speaker 1: the n y you graduate program and according to your
Speaker 1: you know, you just press uh, you know, click on
Speaker 1: the Internet, or where you where your career took you. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of time in between Sin Nombre and
Speaker 1: when you left the graduate film program. Correct, it seems
Speaker 1: like but if you think about the Chronologist. So my
Speaker 1: short was that I shot the short at the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand three. Uh. Started, I finished it by
Speaker 1: the summer of two thousand and four. It was at
Speaker 1: Sundance in two thousand five, and then I was at
Speaker 1: the Sundance Writing Lab in two thousand and six, was
Speaker 1: making it in two thousand and seven, two eight, did
Speaker 1: post two nine it came out, So it seems four
Speaker 1: years go by. I squeeze the hell Nombre experience, wrote
Speaker 1: that thing for five years the Cooting Labs. So when
Speaker 1: you're done, done, done with that sin nobody has done
Speaker 1: what year? I finally finished it in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: but it didn't come out until two thousand nine. The
Speaker 1: next thing for he was Jane Are in two thousand eleven. Correct.
Speaker 1: And what do you think it was that they hired
Speaker 1: you for to do that movie? Well, actually it was
Speaker 1: they conveyed that to you. It wasn't really happening, and
Speaker 1: had been sitting on a shelf at the BBC for
Speaker 1: a while and I had a general meeting UM with
Speaker 1: the BBC executive and I just asked what they had
Speaker 1: and U, Jane Eyre was a project I was actually
Speaker 1: thinking about adapting while I was waiting for se Nomber
Speaker 1: to get the green light. So I had the six
Speaker 1: months off, you know, between thinking we're making it and
Speaker 1: having it pushed for like eight months, and I just
Speaker 1: wrote be some no nation at that time period and
Speaker 1: by yourself. Yeah, I adapted the novel at the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand and six, and um, basically I was
Speaker 1: thinking about what else can I write while I'm waiting.
Speaker 1: I just I wanted to stay busy. And Jane Eyre
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite movies when I was a
Speaker 1: kid because my mom like the old black and white classics,
Speaker 1: so uh, Bob Stevens version with Joan Fontaine and Orson
Speaker 1: Welles was like one of my childhood favorites, and I
Speaker 1: thought about adapting it and updating it. I had no
Speaker 1: idea there were so many other adaptations out there. Zero
Speaker 1: when I sought it out at the BBC, I still
Speaker 1: didn't know it wasn't so I had signed there than
Speaker 1: there are Frank and Stein's out there basically, yeah and
Speaker 1: so uh or or Spider Man's or Heman the Hulks
Speaker 1: uh so. Yeah. So I was unaware of them, and
Speaker 1: then when I found out there were so many, I
Speaker 1: just consciously ignored them. But I sort of was the
Speaker 1: one that pulled it off the shelf again and brought
Speaker 1: to focus features. So it wasn't like they solicited in me.
Speaker 1: I actually asked to read it, and then I met
Speaker 1: with al Snow and the producer. She asked what I
Speaker 1: would change on the screen plan, and I told the
Speaker 1: things I wanted to change, but essentially I felt it
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty good. I thought, but why that? Why
Speaker 1: did you want to do that? I wanted to do
Speaker 1: a period piece. I was a history major. I love history.
Speaker 1: One day, I want to do giant epics, you know,
Speaker 1: all the Lawrence of Arabia. So yeah, so that the
Speaker 1: Jane Are for me was a primer. Was a way
Speaker 1: to show that I could do a period film, a
Speaker 1: classic film. Um, I see Norm Bray in many ways
Speaker 1: was still like my short film from college. And I
Speaker 1: believe in sort of studying classics before branching out and experimenting.
Speaker 1: And um, I thought, what did you learn on Jane here.
Speaker 1: What were the learning curfew in the production? I think
Speaker 1: about acting, about cinema, cinematics, anything, all those things, because
Speaker 1: what I learned about was stillness, Like so much of
Speaker 1: contemporary cinema is filled with showmanship and pizzas and using
Speaker 1: visuals to hide for a lack of storytelling, And what
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn about was doing as little as
Speaker 1: possible and try to tell a compelling story in terms
Speaker 1: of the camera, in terms of the camera, in terms
Speaker 1: of even uh, you know, the Bronze Charlet. Bronze in
Speaker 1: particular wrote really extensive dialogue scenes, and as a director,
Speaker 1: in a great dialogue scene, you're just there to observe
Speaker 1: because the actors are the ones doing all the work.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're all the dramatic fireworks coming from them,
Speaker 1: and there's an impulse to try to do something because
Speaker 1: you're not really doing anything. They're not moving the camera.
Speaker 1: You're not really able to to to shape that in
Speaker 1: any other way or manipulate it maybe is a better word.
Speaker 1: And what I learned there, and I talked to Alice
Speaker 1: known about it while we're shooting. I was just like,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I'm doing anything all day and
Speaker 1: and she's like, it's fine, this is this is it's okay.
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that because one of the first
Speaker 1: movies I made was Beetle Choices, and there was a
Speaker 1: woman named Linda Hendrickson who was my customer on the film,
Speaker 1: and they had summoned some of the people in to
Speaker 1: come look at the dailies the first couple of days
Speaker 1: to see how their stuff was looking on film, and
Speaker 1: I said, how did it look? And I wouldn't go
Speaker 1: to the dailies because I found it very unsettling. I said,
Speaker 1: how did Gina look? I said, because when I work
Speaker 1: with Gina, she does almost nothing. It's almost if you
Speaker 1: wonder they say action and you wonder did she even
Speaker 1: hear them say action? And Linda said to me, oh
Speaker 1: my god, he said, she's incredible. Yeah, you know, because
Speaker 1: fort across and twenty ft high, the slightest little thing.
Speaker 1: It was just she said, she's so entertaining and you
Speaker 1: can't take her eyes off. You can't take your eyes
Speaker 1: off her. Yeah, and that's that's uh. I think both
Speaker 1: Fastbender and Mia brought a lot of that, you know, stillness, stillness,
Speaker 1: and you oftentimes can't see it even on the monitors
Speaker 1: when you're watching because of these tiny screens. But as
Speaker 1: since you start projecting that stuff, especially MEA's performance, there's
Speaker 1: just the veins in her neck and little things in
Speaker 1: her adjustments in her face or in her eyes that
Speaker 1: are coming from some central ootional place where so powerful.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't me, that was her, you know. So
Speaker 1: when you come out of that, you do your history
Speaker 1: major from Santa Cruz, and you come out of that
Speaker 1: and you make this film, uh, this spronte novel, and
Speaker 1: what's the next thing for you, true detective? The first
Speaker 1: thing I thought to myself when I saw that, and
Speaker 1: I hadn't met you with because the show for people
Speaker 1: who don't know, when there were very few people who
Speaker 1: don't know the show. It was ten episodes this season,
Speaker 1: the first the first season, and the first season was
Speaker 1: written by Nilto right, so Nick Pisolatto wrote the first
Speaker 1: season and you directed how many of the ten episodes?
Speaker 1: Eight episodes that I had directed all eight? It was
Speaker 1: so so season one was eight episodes and you did
Speaker 1: all eight, And so did you know that going in?
Speaker 1: Did they say to you from the get go, we
Speaker 1: want you to come and do all eight episodes of
Speaker 1: the show, would you do a couple? And they went, Wow,
Speaker 1: we really like him, we want you to stay. The
Speaker 1: idea well, so I was there as part of the pitch,
Speaker 1: and the idea was it was getting like an anthology.
Speaker 1: Every year they'd bring in Were you were there as
Speaker 1: part of the pitch. How we packaged We packaged it
Speaker 1: within anonymous content. Nick's a writer there, I'm a director, right.
Speaker 1: What what made them want the guy from Jane Eyre
Speaker 1: to come to the searing, violent, blood spattered insane. What
Speaker 1: did you think they saw on you? I actually have
Speaker 1: I've never asked that question. I should sit down to
Speaker 1: Steve Golan and ask them. Um never occurred to you,
Speaker 1: never occurred to me. I was just we had conversations
Speaker 1: about at ideas. UM, I need the color of how
Speaker 1: I'd want to treat it. I love the idea of
Speaker 1: of sort of a neo noir um and uh. I
Speaker 1: was more than anything. I was excited about genre shifting
Speaker 1: again and not staying over the show. Was it HBO
Speaker 1: because Hbos were hands on? Yeah, you mean in terms
Speaker 1: of bringing in Matthew and Woody, Right, what happened there
Speaker 1: was you could have your pick up a lot of actors.
Speaker 1: It was, it was. It was actually a really good
Speaker 1: time because that was right after Janey had come out
Speaker 1: and basically in the same thing, the same with Jane Ayre,
Speaker 1: like Fast Spender and Mea were my first choices. So
Speaker 1: I God, I just had conversations with him, you know,
Speaker 1: and then through the conversations they signed on the same
Speaker 1: thing with Dame Judy. Everyone said, you're not You're not
Speaker 1: gonna get Judy to be in this, and I wrote
Speaker 1: her just a little note and and just sort of
Speaker 1: very lucky. I'm very lucky. I'm aware of this. By
Speaker 1: the way. They're good, but you're lucky and good but
Speaker 1: but but so, any time I saw a man with
Speaker 1: a beard who seemed like that kind of crispy biker
Speaker 1: gang crowd that McConaughey goes back to get high and
Speaker 1: reconnect with, improved himself with by getting like Superstone, those
Speaker 1: are some of the best Stone scenes I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life ever. I mean, I was getting a
Speaker 1: contact high just watching it. And then every time I
Speaker 1: saw a guy with a beard, I wanted to run
Speaker 1: up and break a chair over his face, or run
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction crying like you put the fear
Speaker 1: of God in me bye bye, by the madness and
Speaker 1: then the real interiority of those guys. I don't know
Speaker 1: how I didn't do that. I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: I was trying to. I was wondering if you're going
Speaker 1: there and I think about that, you know, if you
Speaker 1: emotionally to well. I try to think about the movies
Speaker 1: we watch, say an action film right where it's filled
Speaker 1: with all these sort of big set pieces. Uh, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know that the body count is extremely high, and
Speaker 1: why is it. We can watch that and laugh and
Speaker 1: you know, popcorn, it doesn't really affect us. But then
Speaker 1: a movie with like where one person is killed can
Speaker 1: just you know, we can't shake the image. I I
Speaker 1: try to think about that in terms of like what
Speaker 1: I'm going for for execution, in terms of the mood
Speaker 1: or tone of a scene, or even the impact of
Speaker 1: something violent in the story. Maybe sometimes just the banality
Speaker 1: of it, you know, through through again the stillness and
Speaker 1: not trying to over sell something. It's the seduction of
Speaker 1: thinking everything is normal when it's it's not. You know
Speaker 1: what I loved about your show for the most part, Uh,
Speaker 1: it was numbingly we all those scenes where McConaughey goes
Speaker 1: back to that group and tries to befriend those guys
Speaker 1: and everything that goes on there, through the shooting and
Speaker 1: the killing and the kind of the Feu salah that
Speaker 1: takes place in then the old Bolt. The only question
Speaker 1: I have so whose idea was it from mcconnie to
Speaker 1: keep cutting open the soda can all the time? That
Speaker 1: was definitely next idea because it was And then I
Speaker 1: want to register that complain because I thought, if he
Speaker 1: cuts one more fucking soda can, I was just talking
Speaker 1: about continuity, man, that was a pain. And the smoking
Speaker 1: and the kind of the characteristican through smoking and cutting
Speaker 1: the soda can. I thought, okay, we've had a bit
Speaker 1: about enough of that right now. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is that I will say that also made it so
Speaker 1: great other than your work, and I really mean that
Speaker 1: you did an amazing job, is how much I worship Wouldy.
Speaker 1: I'm a complete You tell me what he's in the movie,
Speaker 1: I'm there. I worship Woody. He's some people just have
Speaker 1: that magic. There's no one else in the world like
Speaker 1: Woody Harrilson. There is not, And uh, you know that
Speaker 1: that's what he he brought to the scenes to He's like,
Speaker 1: he's got a special energy and he's got everything. It's uh,
Speaker 1: and you never know it's gonna be. It's unforgettable. He masculine,
Speaker 1: he's playful, he's intelligent, he's loopy. Did you enjoy working
Speaker 1: with him? Yeah? No, I mean he was. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: not only what he was doing on screen, but just
Speaker 1: sort of his energy just on setting around. He said,
Speaker 1: how long did it take to shoot the eight episodes? Uh?
Speaker 1: Did they leave you alone and you want a decent
Speaker 1: amount of time? Or was it tight? It was pretty tight.
Speaker 1: It was pretty tight. We were every day. It was
Speaker 1: pretty stressful. Uh. We shot it in a hundred days.
Speaker 1: So what does that work out too, It's a little
Speaker 1: bit more than twelve days in an episode? Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: where did you shoot Louisiana outside of New Orleans? And
Speaker 1: puts a lot about all of it, wrote the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and how much were Woody or McConaughey or your other
Speaker 1: people allowed to do some alterations that do some alternate takes,
Speaker 1: alternate lines. That was definitely in the in the shaping
Speaker 1: of the narrative. Is a lot of collaboration early on
Speaker 1: and then I think Woody and Matthew wood He definitely
Speaker 1: brought humor into it for both characters and made sure
Speaker 1: that the the interplay between the two guys was more
Speaker 1: balanced and fair. Earlier drafts, I think the Cole character,
Speaker 1: Matthew McConaughey's character, uh, was just sort of just spewing
Speaker 1: out stuff and and and his wife was played by
Speaker 1: Michelle Michelle Monahan. I couldn't believe You've got Michelle Monahan
Speaker 1: to do that sex scene with McConaughey. I was stunned. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I thought Michelle Monte had no she would never you here.
Speaker 1: She was having a very you know, like almost hardcore
Speaker 1: sex scene with him. I thought, my god, I think
Speaker 1: we only did one take of that one too. That
Speaker 1: was an intensely hope. So, yeah, that was a really
Speaker 1: intense scene. And I was obviously trying to be sensitive
Speaker 1: to Michelle um and what was her attitude about doing that,
Speaker 1: because it's interesting and this day in time, I find
Speaker 1: that women nowadays it's like it's like, let's not even
Speaker 1: go there, let's not give it. It's it's tough because
Speaker 1: there was three different girls that had to do sex
Speaker 1: scenes in this show. And my first movie. There was
Speaker 1: kind of a sex scene, but I was really uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I couldn't even ask the girl to take her top off.
Speaker 1: You know, I just felt really out of place there
Speaker 1: and it's not fun. It's just a it's a strange
Speaker 1: need to be a guy with them. If you said,
Speaker 1: sit down with her in the makeup, t learned the
Speaker 1: producer and kind of described we're looking for it definitely
Speaker 1: has to be character based, and I think Michelle understood
Speaker 1: both for the wood he's seen when they're as a
Speaker 1: couple married, how they come back together at that point
Speaker 1: in the dramatic arc of their relationship. The sex scene
Speaker 1: was important to show that connection, to show it still exists.
Speaker 1: And then later on the sex scene with Matthew was
Speaker 1: sort of essential for understanding the split between them and
Speaker 1: how she drove it. But she down for that though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well is there some kind of this is part of directing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was so Matthew again, it's very He's very planned
Speaker 1: and he has ideas for things. So you know Matthews like, well,
Speaker 1: first I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna do this.
Speaker 1: He choreographs the whole thing, and you have to Basically
Speaker 1: it's like a partner dance and Michelle and then we
Speaker 1: pull Michelle side, like are uk with all of these things,
Speaker 1: And Michelle always had every every girl had the cut call,
Speaker 1: so they know they're allowed to call cut in situation
Speaker 1: like that. And they had to feel comfortable to be
Speaker 1: able to call cut. That's also a big thing. You
Speaker 1: can say that and then they still feel like, oh there,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be the show. Never call cut?
Speaker 1: Or did she call cut twenty seven times? Well, we
Speaker 1: only did on the Matthew Day. We only did that
Speaker 1: one taken and on What He's I think we did too,
Speaker 1: and she called cut both times. Right, Yeah. Fucanaga created
Speaker 1: an atmosphere on the set of True Detective that allowed
Speaker 1: his actors to give exceptional performances. Both McConaughey and Harrilson
Speaker 1: were nominated for a Golden Globe and a Screen Actor's
Speaker 1: Guild Award. Explore the Here's the Thing Archives where I
Speaker 1: speak to director William Friedkin about his unorthodox casting process
Speaker 1: Roy Scheider When I cast and he said, don't you
Speaker 1: want me to read for this part? I said, there's
Speaker 1: nothing to read. The guy goes, uh, get your hands up.
Speaker 1: Get what what is that? Who wants to listen to that?
Speaker 1: In a in a goddamn conference room? You know, take
Speaker 1: a listen at Here's the Thing dot Org. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. My
Speaker 1: guest today is director, writer, and cinematographer Carrie Fucanaga. His
Speaker 1: latest feature film, Beasts of No Nation, depicts the horrors
Speaker 1: of a civil war in an unnamed West African country.
Speaker 1: Critically acclaimed for its story, direction, and acting, the film, however,
Speaker 1: did not get a single Academy Award nomination. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of things going against us, which was not having
Speaker 1: a major studio with its sort of locked in oscar
Speaker 1: voters who released the film. Netflix released the film having
Speaker 1: Netflix as a perceived online only game players the TV
Speaker 1: show that was a TV movie. I think subject matter
Speaker 1: we knew. I know most people would discover it once
Speaker 1: all the voting was done, and and and still a
Speaker 1: bulk would never see it ever in the future. So
Speaker 1: I think we thought it was a long shot. Netflix
Speaker 1: learned a lot from that experient ands about how they're
Speaker 1: going to do that differently from No One, I hope.
Speaker 1: So you know, we have. We have yet to have
Speaker 1: a real fall up conversation like would you like to Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have ideas, but they also you know, the
Speaker 1: game is changing in terms of how people consume movies.
Speaker 1: The awards aren't going to immediately reflect that. They're still
Speaker 1: gonna be looking over here. You know. It's and and
Speaker 1: I and I say this with all honesty. This is
Speaker 1: not out of like, well, I don't care, it's I
Speaker 1: actually haven't watched the Academy Awards. And over ten years,
Speaker 1: you didn't watch the Academy Awards when I hosted with
Speaker 1: Steve Martin in two thousand and ten. What you meant
Speaker 1: to say was that in two thousand and ten you
Speaker 1: made an exception. Yeah, when you watched the one that
Speaker 1: I hosted. I watched it pirated, you watched it. I
Speaker 1: stopped watching it around film school because we'd have these
Speaker 1: kind of these pools, see who'd win the Oscars, and
Speaker 1: I would always lose the pool. Like I voted were terrible.
Speaker 1: I was terrible. I always voted for the films that
Speaker 1: I thought deserved it. And clearly that's just not a word.
Speaker 1: And that's when I kind of got that sense of it.
Speaker 1: Then and then then over the years, and I saw
Speaker 1: the films that were being nominated, I just had zero interest.
Speaker 1: I really did. And uh, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: when you're not nominated, you're not like, you know, feeling
Speaker 1: the burn, because it's like not being picked for, you know,
Speaker 1: the little league baseball team. And you wonder why people
Speaker 1: who were voting, they have no opportunity, They have no
Speaker 1: hope of seeing everything that's out there, even everything good.
Speaker 1: People are playing telephone. Somebody calls up somebody and says,
Speaker 1: what do you like? And there are people who move
Speaker 1: little bundles of voters in a certain direction, and and
Speaker 1: and those people are old guard Hollywood, their studio Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and they'll be in touch with people who it's like
Speaker 1: it's like it's like a chain. And that person then
Speaker 1: is in touch with people who are costume designers and
Speaker 1: set designers and do different jobs who haven't made a
Speaker 1: movie in twenty five years. And membership in the Academy
Speaker 1: is there one lifeline to the industry still that they
Speaker 1: take very seriously. And that's been a problem for years.
Speaker 1: And your situation is emblematic of the fact that it's
Speaker 1: only getting worse, only getting worse. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean the reforms are trying to talk about, I'm
Speaker 1: not informed enough about how to make it more diverse
Speaker 1: or make it more reflective our society in our world now.
Speaker 1: Because there's also a part of any art and any
Speaker 1: guilt that is about protecting the legacy and protecting you know, uh,
Speaker 1: the rights of former members of their industry. You know
Speaker 1: that you can't just strip away membership. But maybe there's
Speaker 1: a another way to to to weigh it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just because you you you want to believe like
Speaker 1: health insurance, you know, or social security that you know
Speaker 1: you've put a lifetime into this industry, that you know,
Speaker 1: until you die you'll still be respected. There's an annuity
Speaker 1: there for you. Um, you said you wrote the screen pie,
Speaker 1: you adapted the screenplay for Beasts of No Nation Win
Speaker 1: two six, you carried around for a while. It's been around, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's only I didn't rewrite it until about six months
Speaker 1: before he started shooting The True Detective Help You get
Speaker 1: a job? No, I actually had to produces admiring of
Speaker 1: the TV show. I wondered it helped you, and um,
Speaker 1: you know it didn't even help in terms of pre sales.
Speaker 1: I had interests and and the show, and that didn't help.
Speaker 1: What was the budget of you with my masking for
Speaker 1: the film? It was six million in Ghana, West Africa.
Speaker 1: You're not married, not married, you have no kids? No kids,
Speaker 1: so you could to Ghana for? How long you prepped for?
Speaker 1: How long I prepped there? Not long enough. I think
Speaker 1: we had about eight nine weeks of prep. I was
Speaker 1: down for about a week, had malaria. Right before he
Speaker 1: started shooting. I was bedridden. Uh. I was able to
Speaker 1: get some final rewrites done to lock, you know, locked
Speaker 1: the script before I went into production, but I don't
Speaker 1: think I could ever do a project like that again.
Speaker 1: It definitely took a lot out of me. How did
Speaker 1: you find your lead actor? I had a casting director
Speaker 1: I brought out who was Avy Kaufman's son, Harrison Nesbit.
Speaker 1: He's He was twenty three when he came out there,
Speaker 1: pretty much fresh out of undergrad. He had helped out
Speaker 1: on Life of Pie. I knew what I was looking
Speaker 1: for in terms of street casting. This wasn't something where
Speaker 1: we were going to be able to like make TV
Speaker 1: and radio announcements and get thousands of kids show up.
Speaker 1: I mean we were gonna have to go out in
Speaker 1: the neighborhoods and find these kids. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: he did. And he got a small team mc nats
Speaker 1: together and they went every slip boys name again Abrahamatta
Speaker 1: see from. So he's from a neighborhood called Shiman. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a poor neighbor. It's a working neighborhood in
Speaker 1: in Across. And uh had he acted before, He'd never
Speaker 1: really acted before. He did a couple of like you
Speaker 1: know in church, you know, some scenes in church from
Speaker 1: the battle you direct him. We did a kind of
Speaker 1: it was a boot camp, if you will, of acting
Speaker 1: about two weeks before he started shooting, at about thirty
Speaker 1: kids who were sort of finalists for all the rules,
Speaker 1: and we just taught them the basics. You know, this
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna be something where they could just feel it out,
Speaker 1: like they needed some tools. You didn't have time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had to give him the structure, you know, and
Speaker 1: exercises to Like. One of the things we had to
Speaker 1: kind of pull out of their toolbox was the sub
Speaker 1: opera style acting that they're used to a lot of
Speaker 1: them Nollywood films and the Gnaian version of Nollywood films
Speaker 1: are very uh Nigeria stuff, and I mean they're most
Speaker 1: the most prolific film producing country in the world, I think,
Speaker 1: even more than India. Uh. But there's a style of
Speaker 1: acting there that's oftentimes very very big, and this film
Speaker 1: we wanted to pull it back, so a lot of
Speaker 1: it was rather than indicating an emotion, it was just
Speaker 1: trying to access the memory to feel it so much
Speaker 1: more of a Strasbourg thing. And we did two weeks
Speaker 1: of that and and tried to work on a different
Speaker 1: sort of emotional beats he would go through and then
Speaker 1: in the movie and all the kids did because we
Speaker 1: had to see who was the one who was best
Speaker 1: at it, and Abraham just always came at it from
Speaker 1: a much more um, a smaller and much more sort
Speaker 1: of honest perspective. He was from the one from the go.
Speaker 1: It wasn't overacting. If anything, I had to pull it
Speaker 1: more out of him. So it was it safe to
Speaker 1: say that you had a pool of young boys or
Speaker 1: he was twelve, and we shot the pool of kids,
Speaker 1: let's say around that age, and you weren't quite sure
Speaker 1: who would play the one who would play that leader
Speaker 1: would emerge from that pool because he had to because
Speaker 1: at that point, you know, Harrison and Stall over two
Speaker 1: thousand kids, and I had seen tape on a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred, and these were the top thirty. You know,
Speaker 1: we weren't going to find him anywhere. Did the shooting go.
Speaker 1: It was hard because even on the first one was
Speaker 1: hard about everything, whether whether we didn't you don't even
Speaker 1: have radar there, you know, like in Louisiana we get
Speaker 1: rainstorms all the time, but you could look on the
Speaker 1: Doppler and see if it's gone in fifteen minutes or
Speaker 1: four hours. Who was your deep pay make plans? I
Speaker 1: was a DP. So Um, that wasn't the hard part.
Speaker 1: I mean it was physically strenuous. I think the hard
Speaker 1: part was that we just never had the money never
Speaker 1: at the time. Soderberg is a much smarter guy than me,
Speaker 1: so he had that come before him. Um, but he
Speaker 1: shoots and stuff, yeah, I mean like it. He's a machine.
Speaker 1: You know, he can edit when he goes home, like
Speaker 1: I'm a cide work. I'm told from people he's a cidek.
Speaker 1: But but but why do you, uh you prefer it? I
Speaker 1: like shooting you did you do that? In the true
Speaker 1: Detective I've always been really involved in camera. It's just
Speaker 1: one of the things you operate, detective, and I didn't
Speaker 1: like to operate. I don't want to like get involved
Speaker 1: in that level. I'd rather be pay attention to performance
Speaker 1: and not THEO didn't operate and be some onitiation. I
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to operate. But our our steady cam operator
Speaker 1: who has our a cam operator, pulled his hamstring on
Speaker 1: the very first day, the first set up in the
Speaker 1: second take, and after that he couldn't move the camera.
Speaker 1: So I degree came in. It came in handy. They
Speaker 1: we do everything there, you know, boom operating. Sometimes describe
Speaker 1: your lead actor to me, Abraham dress address address is
Speaker 1: actually I shouldn't say that, yeah, address, I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: the leader because because the other boy, the young boy,
Speaker 1: he is Abraham. He is very every mention the lead actors,
Speaker 1: it was a was that what is no such thing
Speaker 1: as a big actor as a small actors? Even Labraham's
Speaker 1: like four ft tall um but addresses, Uh, he's a
Speaker 1: force of nature. Where did you find him? I found
Speaker 1: him through his work. Essentially. I was very aware of
Speaker 1: his work when I was about freedom to cast who
Speaker 1: you wanted to cast. It was you call it. You
Speaker 1: can call it freedom or the limitations of the subject
Speaker 1: he gave you about. We need a name we can
Speaker 1: raise money off of. I mean it just I mean,
Speaker 1: for me, it just is a name. He's a huge
Speaker 1: even we were that aside, no one came to you
Speaker 1: and said, well, here's another list. All right, Oh, Matthew
Speaker 1: McConaughey played this role Robert Daddy Jr. He's already done
Speaker 1: that role. So, um yeah it. Dress was on a
Speaker 1: very very short list of actors, um maybe two and uh.
Speaker 1: And he was my first choice just based on the gravitas,
Speaker 1: the you know, the way you were describing Woody, where
Speaker 1: he's masculine, he's intention and he's sensitive. All those qualities
Speaker 1: he could he really in any in the all living
Speaker 1: at the same time in him. It's not like he's
Speaker 1: like changing colors like a wheel. He's he's they all exist,
Speaker 1: you know, coexist. And I needed someone that could pull
Speaker 1: off that kind of uh. I don't want to call
Speaker 1: it gang leader, but that sort of uh town hall charisma,
Speaker 1: which is different than say, like a Mugabi the book
Speaker 1: he does in the movie how does he Die? He's
Speaker 1: shot by one of the soldiers in the very soon
Speaker 1: in the final encampment when they say goodbye to him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of them shoots him. Does it build to a
Speaker 1: head where he shoots him? Is he is he bullying
Speaker 1: them and he's taking the money on one of them
Speaker 1: shoots him. It's basically similar. There's just run down and
Speaker 1: they have no goal anymore. Everything has sort of been
Speaker 1: a lie. And then one of the soldiers named Rambo
Speaker 1: shoots some kid and they're a teenager. Essentially, why didn't
Speaker 1: you do that in this? My first draft, I had
Speaker 1: Agu do it because I wanted Agu to take control
Speaker 1: of his destiny and make a choice and in some
Speaker 1: way vengeance for everything he's experienced. And then as I
Speaker 1: did my re right, I thought that was too easy.
Speaker 1: It was to button up a neat way out of
Speaker 1: the story and that life, which I think in the
Speaker 1: banal sense we're talking about earlier, the more insiduously evil
Speaker 1: and frightening version is that he still exists out there
Speaker 1: like a shark and murky water. Yeah, in my version,
Speaker 1: he would have like something would have happened. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it would be. I'm not a good riding.
Speaker 1: He would have tripped and phone on some Purmese tiger
Speaker 1: trapper and he obvious the kid to kill him to
Speaker 1: be had a man of his misery because it was
Speaker 1: one of those characters where I mean because that sex
Speaker 1: scene with him and the boy is so subtle and
Speaker 1: so quiet, and and and and he's you know, he's
Speaker 1: obviously he's high, and he's kind of blitz st out
Speaker 1: the character. And when that happens, everyone I was in
Speaker 1: the room where we were like, oh, I hope this
Speaker 1: guy does And the screen and the screenplay there wasn't
Speaker 1: much more. There's a couple more lines in there that
Speaker 1: that kind of make it even more uncomfortable. And uh
Speaker 1: Idris was kind of he was the one in almost
Speaker 1: the we're talking earlier about sex scenes, He's the one like,
Speaker 1: I'm not comfortable going that far. I just can't do that.
Speaker 1: You know, a newborn child, he's got a daughter, young daughter.
Speaker 1: It's like that's just something I'm just I can't do.
Speaker 1: You don't want to go there, you can't go there.
Speaker 1: What are you working on now? I am working on
Speaker 1: a mini series right now. I'm not going to direct
Speaker 1: the whole thing. It's a Caleb Cars the Alienist, just
Speaker 1: starting to do the casting part again. It kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of when we're doing Detective because there's this exciting,
Speaker 1: uh step in that development process as you start figuring
Speaker 1: out who are the people who are going to make
Speaker 1: this come to life? And with each actor it's a
Speaker 1: totally different thing, you know, and when you kind of
Speaker 1: imagine them in these leading roles, it can you go
Speaker 1: in different directions. It changes the way I want to
Speaker 1: write it. When you work with actors, do you feel
Speaker 1: because you seem very um sanguine, but when you go
Speaker 1: on the set now, do you feel intimidated when you
Speaker 1: have to deal with the crew and the actors? Or
Speaker 1: you feel very confident? Though? I think that the first
Speaker 1: week confident enough, confident enough. The first week of shooting
Speaker 1: is always a bit wobbly as you try to figure
Speaker 1: out paced tone, figure out how you know to to
Speaker 1: communicate with people you're not comfortable with yet, and what
Speaker 1: you ultimately want is to get on a good sort
Speaker 1: of direct line, you know, but you never know what
Speaker 1: someone's limit is. You don't know when with an actor
Speaker 1: where they're gonna be irritated that you're just talking too much.
Speaker 1: I thought that you would tell edge of four about
Speaker 1: this a little bit about the amazing actor and about
Speaker 1: self directing and when you start to do more projects
Speaker 1: and not getting especially if you've worked with greats who
Speaker 1: you know when the day is done, you know what
Speaker 1: you've done and and you don't need to go watch
Speaker 1: the dailies, uh, and you know what your character is
Speaker 1: onto next and how to jump in these new scenes.
Speaker 1: And and then you go into something else where you're
Speaker 1: getting nothing. How do you survive those productions? And that's
Speaker 1: when you start this skin gets thicker and you just
Speaker 1: rely on yourself and you get confused. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: the part of the thicker skin comes from learning not
Speaker 1: to make that confusion make you feel insecure and effect
Speaker 1: the performance, especially if you're operating on your own. I
Speaker 1: think for me, my style at least is what I've learned,
Speaker 1: uh is it's usually about the conversations before we start shooting,
Speaker 1: and if we if we're a hundred percent on the
Speaker 1: same page about who that character is, then every idea
Speaker 1: that comes out of the actual shooting is a continuation
Speaker 1: of that conversation. And it's not like you're just making
Speaker 1: up direction just to fill the space with more words.
Speaker 1: You know, between takes because there is that stillness I
Speaker 1: was talking about in Jane Eyre where I learned where
Speaker 1: where I didn't have to say anything because we had
Speaker 1: talked about beforehand was working, so we can just move on.
Speaker 1: I remember when I was going to a friend of
Speaker 1: mine who was a producer, director, and writer, wanted me
Speaker 1: to do a movie which was based on a The
Speaker 1: character was a big ticket NBA basketball coach and he
Speaker 1: was friends with Pat Riley. And this is when Riley
Speaker 1: was coaching the Knicks here in New York. And he
Speaker 1: took me out to facility up in New Pols where
Speaker 1: the team was training then. And then we got in
Speaker 1: the car and we went to Riley's home and had
Speaker 1: lunch with him, and I said to him, what's the job,
Speaker 1: what's the task? And he said, I have people who
Speaker 1: have been dominant in this sport since they were eight
Speaker 1: years old. He said, they were dominant in their peewee leagues,
Speaker 1: they were dominant in high school, college, they get into
Speaker 1: the pros. He said, they've been dominating this game and
Speaker 1: playing thousands of basketball games for nearly two decades. And
Speaker 1: he goes, and my job is to walk into a
Speaker 1: room and make them care one more time? How do
Speaker 1: you make them care enough to go out there? And
Speaker 1: a lot of directors don't feel that they have that
Speaker 1: obligation that you know you're gonna come and you're getting
Speaker 1: paid all this money or whatever the bullshit is that
Speaker 1: you know, you motivate yourself. And I wouldn't mind if
Speaker 1: the director came in every now and then and try
Speaker 1: to enlist me in the cause and say something. The
Speaker 1: last thing I want to say to you is, I
Speaker 1: mean again about a piasts of no Nation is whenever
Speaker 1: people talk to me about movies and they stole some
Speaker 1: movie they've seen, I always smiled and I said, well,
Speaker 1: let's calm down here because big questions. Would you watch
Speaker 1: the movie in you made an amazing movie. Thank you
Speaker 1: made an incredible movie. When that boy goes running into
Speaker 1: that war, I was sobbing. I was sobbing. And I
Speaker 1: hope that, uh, you'll stick with your instincts, because your
Speaker 1: great instincts have gotten you where you are now. I
Speaker 1: did a small part in Warren Batties movie about Howard Used,
Speaker 1: and I said to myself, you know your problem is
Speaker 1: you don't make enough movies. You know he was too slow,
Speaker 1: And I'll say the same thing to you. Don't stop
Speaker 1: making movies, keep making moneys, don't take too much time off,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. You know, I was supposed
Speaker 1: to make a movie last year, and I sort of
Speaker 1: fell apart, That sort of mid range Hollywood forty million
Speaker 1: dollar film fell apart, just because sometimes you're just not
Speaker 1: creatively in sync with the money people. You can watch
Speaker 1: Beasts of No Nation on Netflix.