00:00We were late to set once. We were in the car going to set and a Céline Dion song in French
00:05started playing on the radio and he wouldn't leave until the song was over and it was like
00:08a four-minute song. It's terrible things to hear as a director, like your cast is just
00:14singing to Céline Dion in the car while you're waiting on set. Like QA? Yeah.
00:23The tragedy of this family really just moved me a lot and there was something about
00:30the way we try to constantly protect, bond with the family members and the idea that
00:40once you've destroyed something in your family, do you have a second chance to rebuild it?
00:46And that is something that I find very interesting and moving and also the idea of
00:53having a project together and in that case it's like going very far away from what you are and
00:59to try to sort of reconnect with something that's been broken is something that really moved me.
01:05Woody, why did you say yes to this movie?
01:07Just everything about Succo Island was amazing to me. The script, usually I'm like,
01:14how many pages are left? Can I stop? But I didn't want to stop reading. It really drew me in. I
01:21thought it was well balanced with the tragedy and the more lighthearted moments. I think it was
01:27just an amazing experience as well.
01:29It's funny, as I was writing the script, I just had this one belief which was like,
01:36the kid in the movie has to go through such hard emotion that I wanted a young actor who had
01:46a high level of experience, which isn't the case of young people so much. And I
01:56accidentally went to the theater to see, well not accidentally, but it was during COVID,
02:00and I went to see a screening in Paris of Come on, Come on by Mike Mills. And I was just blown
02:07away by Woody's performance, to be honest. I just thought he was just so vulnerable and young,
02:12but also just so mature. And I think at the time you were like 12?
02:15Younger. I was nine.
02:16He was nine. And then with Swan, he's also just, it is very hard not to have,
02:23feel empathy for him. There's something where you forgive him almost everything. And so I thought,
02:28because the part is so tough and the father is getting his son through such horrible things,
02:36it'd be interesting to have Swan. Well, I knew his work. In France, he's very famous.
02:41And then it just happened that I saw a screening of Anatomy of the Fall,
02:44but as I was going to ask him to play the part, and then as he said, yes, and then we had to
02:50push the shoot because he needed three months to get ready to prepare, to speak English language
02:58and everything, and to prepare for the part. Suddenly the whole sexy lawyer thing happened,
03:03and it was just really, really funny.
03:05From Come on, Come on, was there anything that was really hard?
03:08I think the hardest thing was working with Joaquin, because I respect him so much. I'm
03:12such a big fan of it. But he made it as easy as he could. And he made it really,
03:18really easy. But just sometimes it would be a bit threatening working with Joaquin Phoenix,
03:21because he's like so amazing at what he does. And I hadn't really worked before. I was like
03:27nine or 10. I've been working for like five years up to that point. I'd never really done
03:32a film that big. So it was just a lot of learning as well.
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