00:00Peter Grey from the AU in Australia, hello Drew. Hello. Congratulations on the film first of all,
00:05I walked into this knowing nothing, I hadn't seen the trailer so this was a very big surprise and
00:12I was like I wasn't sure what I could say and couldn't say in this. Great, yeah. I wanted to
00:17know where sort of the, I guess the original idea stemmed from because obviously you have like
00:23the physical manifestation of you know like the lonely heart so to speak, you have AI
00:28like sexbot, hedonism, like I just wanted to know like where did the sort of original companion
00:34idea stem from? Yeah, so I mean every project is totally different like you know like sometimes
00:39like you never know what that seed of the idea will be, sometimes it's like one single image,
00:44sometimes it's a character, sometimes it's a scene. For this one I don't really know but like
00:50the complete fully baked logline just like really just came to me immediately, I just for some
00:56reason it was like oh you know some couples go to a cabin in the middle of the woods and one of
01:01them discovers they're a robot and then you know like things go you know south and
01:07you know you take that horror structure and the character gets picked off every 10 pages but
01:12what I didn't have in that moment was I didn't have Iris being the protagonist, my initial
01:18instinct was to make Iris the antagonist like the AI gone wrong story that we've seen a
01:24thousand times, it's just immediately where my brain was going but it wasn't until I started
01:29writing the movie that you know like writing the script and just fleshing out who she is and I'm
01:34getting to the scene where she's you know she's outside the house and she's worried about
01:39meeting Josh and his friends and suddenly I'm tapping into this really relatable fear
01:45that I had meeting partners, friends and families and how alienating that is and like
01:51immediately I'm like wait a minute I'm like relating to the robot more than I'm relating to
01:55the human characters and so I had to kind of put the whole project on pause and be like
01:59well is this a possibility can I tell the story through the point of view of the robot is that
02:04is that doable to get an audience to relate to the robot and not the humans and
02:11that and as soon as I had that you know I didn't know if I could pull it off but I knew that I had
02:15something kind of original and fresh and I just you know took that idea and just ran with it.
02:21I'm going to say you pulled it off because obviously like the line go to sleep now has a
02:25much different thing but when like so when you realize like oh Iris is going to be who we
02:32follow and who we sort of care for did that make it easier to change Jack Quaid into
02:38not necessarily the nicest guy? No I mean it I mean that's that's always been a tough needle to
02:45thread I mean like I knew after I'd finished the script that that was going to be tough because
02:50it's a tall ask you know he's saying really unlikable things immediately like he's telling
02:54a woman to smile and act happy right out of the gate like there's no version of that where it's a
02:59you know it's coming from a place of good so you know like so so so finding someone that could
03:05say that and it doesn't feel malicious but it comes from a place of of I you know this person
03:11doesn't know any better this person is just maybe a little doofus like a man child and
03:16not that like Jack has Josh within him but the first time I met him I'm like oh my gosh this
03:22guy has the charisma that we need he can make unlikability likable and that that's that's
03:28exactly what we needed with the Josh character. Yeah well I feel like after Scream we should all
03:33sort of be on a bit like eerie with Jack Quaid but he is like the nicest guy so like absolutely
03:38pulled it off like yeah when I was watching it the things he was saying just it never like it
03:43never occurred to me that there was something you know more sinister going on I was under the
03:49impression that the house was going to sort of reveal a lot of secrets and yeah like it was just
03:54so like perfectly executed and I kind of want to say anything but obviously the other reveals later
04:02on were like like thank you that was great one of those things like did did they like without
04:10saying too much did that sort of kind of naturally progress or not yeah yeah yeah I mean like I knew
04:17that you know obviously you know you you you know this movie is going to hinge on a giant twist you
04:22know I knew that like you know there is going to be a moment where she discovers what she is and
04:27that'll also be the moment that the audience discovers what she is but when you're writing it
04:31you're like okay I have a choice to make is this a third act reveal is this a midpoint reveal is
04:35this a first act reveal is this like first five pages so you have to make that decision and then
04:40as soon as I was like well I you know I don't want it to turn into one of those movies that's
04:44marketed as a twist movie where it's like everyone because you watch those differently right you're
04:49watching like you're not like immersing yourself in the story you're like thinking you're trying
04:55to get ahead of the twist and you're like every every decision that every character is making
04:59you're like looking under a microscope going like who is this guy who so you're like not fully
05:04enjoying it so I wanted to kind of have my cake and eat it too so I knew that I would this would
05:08be a first act reveal so we get a little bit of that like what's what's going to happen what's
05:14going to happen and then a beautiful thing happens when you present it as this big twist and it's
05:18revealed and it's revealed earlier than a lot of people think it's going to reveal suddenly they're
05:22they're like oh I don't know what this movie is now like like like this is like this could go
05:28in totally in so many different directions and that's the fun of it it's like so people that
05:32know the twist and people that don't know it the twist like after about you know after the reveal
05:38like suddenly everyone's enjoying it the exact same way everyone's like okay well I don't know
05:43what's going to happen now and that's the I think that's the kind of fun is like the the slight of
05:48hand like kind of my magicians like you know the the robot reveal thing is kind of hiding
05:53all the other little like like twists and turns and swerves yeah no we had our cake and we ate it
05:58it was great so thank you thank you so much thank you
Comments