Empire of Light' Interviews With Olivia Coleman, Colin Firth, Michael Ward

Cinema Blend

“Empire of Light” stars Olivia Coleman, Colin Firth, Michael Ward, Toby Jones, Tanya Moodie and writer/director Sam Mendes discuss the film in this interview with CinemaBlend's Sean O'Connell. They chat about the making of Mendes' semi-autobiographical love letter to cinema and more.

Transcript

00:00 This was so completely built, it had us all fooled.

00:05 (gentle music)

00:07 - Film journalists like myself

00:12 will say really pretentious things like,

00:15 oh, the movie theater is a character in this film,

00:18 but I swear with "Empire of Light," it honestly is true.

00:21 - That's not pretentious, that's quite right.

00:24 - I'm curious if you as an actor,

00:26 if you can treat a location or a set like an individual

00:31 and almost be inspired by them and draw off of them

00:33 the way that you would a human co-star.

00:36 - I think it's invaluable.

00:38 I've done almost no work with a blue screen,

00:41 and I think I would really struggle with doing a good job,

00:44 and I have such admiration for actors who can do that,

00:48 'cause I love walking onto a set, onto Hilary's flat.

00:53 The work that goes on behind the scenes

00:55 with incredible people,

00:57 all of the books that my character had read

00:59 and the things she'd got over the years

01:02 during the breakdown and the food being upside down,

01:06 which is all from your memories as well.

01:09 - But the cinema also speaks about the fact

01:12 that that lobby was basically created.

01:14 The outside of the cinema is real,

01:18 but the inside of the cinema, we needed to be bigger,

01:21 so we created it.

01:23 - Yeah, and so it makes our life so easy.

01:26 The beauty of the hard work that these people have put in,

01:29 and then you walk in and go, "I can feel all of it.

01:31 I can smell it. I can look at it."

01:33 Even though it was only built,

01:34 they probably finished painting that morning.

01:36 There was sort of mold on the ceiling.

01:38 You could see that it was a place that had been loved

01:40 and was not in its prime.

01:43 It is, it's a really necessary part of the whole process.

01:46 - It depends on how a thing's being shot.

01:50 Sometimes the environment is very helpful to you

01:53 because it's entire and you can see it.

01:56 Sometimes you're just staring at lights and half a set.

02:00 This was so completely built.

02:03 It had us all fooled.

02:04 When we walked in there, Sam wanted to do this

02:09 just so we'd all get the buzz,

02:10 the very thing you're talking about.

02:12 And the way it had been designed and lit had us,

02:16 those of us who are old enough to remember

02:19 those kinds of structures and cherish for that part,

02:23 it brought it all back.

02:24 And signs of its deterioration had been added.

02:29 And he thought, "Well, no,

02:31 but this wasn't all art directed, right?"

02:33 Yes, it was from scratch.

02:36 And then the skylight, there was this dome skylight

02:38 that we had to be assured was artificial

02:41 because it kind of just put you there.

02:45 - Yeah.

02:46 - Even the candy, you know, the sweet-

02:48 - Concessions, yeah.

02:49 - The concession stand, just remembering those things.

02:51 And so I think it did an awful lot of the work for us,

02:55 didn't it, really?

02:56 - Yeah.

02:57 - For Stephen, definitely, because he loved film so much

02:59 and he loved being in that environment so much.

03:02 You know, I really felt that.

03:03 So for him, it was a big impact in his life, I think,

03:08 you know, because without that and having someone like,

03:11 you know, meeting someone like Hilary and, you know,

03:14 her kind of galvanizing him to go to university,

03:16 he might not have done that.

03:17 So I feel like, you know, even sometimes

03:19 when I'll just be going past set when I wasn't in,

03:22 you know, sometimes just saying my lines

03:24 while I'm chilling on the beach

03:25 and looking at the cinema and stuff, you know,

03:29 there was a connection that I built up as Stephen

03:33 that whenever I saw that location,

03:34 it, you know, it gave me something to feel

03:37 and kind of play off.

03:38 I compared it when I was reading the script to,

03:41 you know how the cinema plays a big part

03:44 in "Glorious Basterds"?

03:46 - Oh yeah.

03:46 - For example, that's when I read it,

03:48 I felt like, you know, it was definitely,

03:51 it gave me that kind of feeling of like,

03:53 it's its own character.

03:55 Like it doesn't, the film doesn't exist without it.

03:57 - Who was guilty of going into a concession stand

04:00 and nicking a few things?

04:01 - You know what?

04:02 It was really disappointing.

04:03 Those, they all just had,

04:06 they didn't have the real sweets in there,

04:07 the real candy in there.

04:08 It was very disappointing.

04:09 - Like bits of, you know, dried--

04:10 - It would have been me, because I love all that stuff.

04:14 I thought, well, even if the movie goes tits up,

04:17 at least I'll be able to get some free candy,

04:19 but no, you know?

04:20 (laughing)

04:21 ♪ Here it goes now ♪

04:25 - Here's to the future.

04:27 ♪ Walking those old streets ♪

04:29 - Here's to getting back up.

04:31 - Here's to coming home.

04:33 - As film people, we are always asked

04:36 to make recommendations for movies,

04:38 and I personally stress over what movie

04:40 I'm going to recommend.

04:42 So in this magnificent scene of where

04:45 Miss Coleman's character asks,

04:47 basically Toby Jones' character,

04:48 to show her a movie, to immerse her in a story in cinema,

04:52 you chose "Being There," and I want to know why.

04:55 - That's a very good question.

04:56 I chose it, A, because it meant something.

05:00 I had to find a movie that meant something

05:02 to Olivia's character in Hillary in that moment.

05:05 And Hillary struggles with a mental illness

05:07 and a feeling that she is somehow

05:11 not, she's an outcast, and she's not allowed in

05:16 to the world of normal people.

05:18 And for me, "Being There" is a movie

05:20 about how it's possible to be broken

05:22 and yet still somehow survive in the world.

05:25 And it happens to also be one of my favorite films,

05:29 feature, and it happens, obviously,

05:31 crucially, to have been released

05:32 in the year the movie takes place, which is 1981.

05:35 So it ticked all those boxes,

05:38 and I wanted to find a movie that I thought

05:39 would speak to her and move her,

05:42 so that's why I went for it.

05:44 - The timing of the release is kismet, almost.

05:46 It's like it was meant to be at that point.

05:48 - I think "Being There" is a really good choice

05:51 for the title as much as anything,

05:55 because I think there's something that he detects in her.

05:58 It's just fortuitous that he happens to be out that week,

06:00 but I mean, it's a perfect movie,

06:04 a mixture of comedy and very, very sad,

06:09 and also miraculous in a way that cinema

06:13 can be all of those things.

06:14 And for me, I think "Being There" is a pretty good choice.

06:18 I don't, suddenly my mind goes blank

06:21 when I try to think, well, how would I improve on that?

06:24 Because I love that film.

06:27 If you were trying to help,

06:29 there's a therapeutic aspect to cinema anyway,

06:33 that people use films as a kind of therapy.

06:36 They return to a certain kind of film

06:39 just to trot through it,

06:41 and almost, let's go through that story once more.

06:44 I see my kids doing it in particular,

06:45 that they return to these films in a way that I don't.

06:49 I always feel like a huge debt of unseen films

06:52 that prevent me going back and re-watching other films.

06:56 I see the pleasure they get from it,

06:58 and I'm sure that is therapeutic,

07:00 is that once you've been through the initial thing

07:03 of the hit of it,

07:04 the ritual of rewinding, I think, must be therapeutic.

07:09 - It's funny that I would say,

07:09 'cause my partner and I,

07:11 when we were going through our courtship,

07:12 that was an important part of our courtship,

07:13 that we each gave each other a list

07:15 of our top 10, top five films, basically.

07:20 And the one that I gave to him,

07:21 which was the real, the sort of litmus test

07:24 in terms of what is this man's character like,

07:27 was "The Lives of Others,"

07:31 which I just think is a film that,

07:33 I mean, I could watch it again and again

07:35 and get just completely lost in the story

07:39 and the characters and the performances.

07:43 Oh, it's just such a beautiful, beautiful piece of work.

07:46 - Do you remember what his top one was?

07:48 - That's a really, gosh, no,

07:52 I'd have to have a think about that.

07:54 I mean, he's such a mad James Bond fan,

07:58 so it might be one of those.

08:01 Yeah, and also we had a separate list for Studio Ghibli.

08:05 We weren't allowed to have Studio Ghibli films

08:07 in the main list because they would take up

08:09 too much of the space,

08:10 so we had to have a separate Ghibli top five, basically.

08:14 - That's very fair, I can understand that.

08:16 Mr. Firth, next year, remarkably,

08:19 marks 20 years of "Love Actually,"

08:22 which comes up around this time.

08:24 And I'm curious what the film's legacy means to you

08:27 and why you think we return to it every year.

08:30 - There's a bit of a mystery to it, really.

08:31 I mean, it's one of the,

08:33 I don't think anyone knew what to expect when making it,

08:39 because it's a composite of all these different stories.

08:43 My own experience of it was so isolated

08:46 because I was in a little film all to myself in a way,

08:49 and I maybe shot a lot of the others,

08:51 but I was in France with only one other actor,

08:55 and we were the first thing that was shot.

08:58 And so I was done and moved on

09:01 while everyone else got on with the rest of it.

09:03 So I didn't really have much of a full picture of it.

09:05 And then I think it,

09:08 I can't remember how well it did at the box office,

09:10 it was so long ago,

09:11 but I don't know if its initial opening was successful.

09:14 It certainly, reviews-wise, got some stinkers.

09:18 I'm sure it got some great ones as well,

09:20 but I remember the hostile ones.

09:22 And I don't think I would have imagined

09:25 that we'd be talking about it 20 years later.

09:27 - I don't think you can assume that about any film.

09:29 - True.

09:30 - And then for it to become this perennial,

09:32 partly as a Christmas movie,

09:33 and it's very kind of Marmite.

09:35 I mean, some people love it,

09:37 but it's also up for a kind of deconstruction.

09:40 And again, it's targeted for all kinds of criticism,

09:45 but still in the discussion.

09:49 So go figure.

09:50 I mean, it's not, you know,

09:52 I feel very little to do with it,

09:54 but it's a very interesting thing

09:55 to sort of track it through those 20 years.

09:58 (upbeat music)

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