00:00if we scour the backgrounds, if we're going to spot your gravity character,
00:03Kowalski, floating by at all.
00:05The effects guys did this hysterical thing, you'll probably see it at some point,
00:09where they have Ether, our spaceship is floating by,
00:12and then it just goes by me and I'm like, as Matt Kowalski, and I just go,
00:16little help.
00:17You filmed that?
00:18Yeah, we filmed it.
00:20Does anyone copy?
00:24I have to warn them about the conditions on Earth.
00:27Is anyone out there?
00:28It's fantastic.
00:29It actually ends up hitting me, and then I'm like,
00:32woo, hey guys, where have you been, man?
00:34I've been out here.
00:35And then they just eject me out.
00:37Oh my God, I need to see that, please.
00:40Do they have extra scenes for Netflix movies?
00:42They'll put it in, because I just saw it yesterday.
00:44They did it as a, you know, a happy Thanksgiving, and you know,
00:48you know, thanks for working with us, just as a gift to Grant and myself.
00:52But we definitely have to get it on the screen.
00:54I am fascinated with your work as a director.
00:58I love all the stories that you choose to tell from the director's chair,
01:01and we are fast approaching 20 years of Confessions.
01:04I want to know something that you think you are much better at now
01:07than you were when you first tackled Dangerous Minds.
01:11As a director?
01:11As a director.
01:13Well, I think I'm a little more relaxed and open to,
01:18to, you know,
01:21relaxed and open to certain kinds of input.
01:26You know, when you first start,
01:27when I first started with Confessions, I boarded every single shot.
01:30I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what everything was doing.
01:33And I was pretty, pretty locked in on what I wanted it to be.
01:40Good thing, good luck.
01:41We did a lot of, there's a lot more improv and a lot more openness to it.
01:44So as time has gone on, I think I've found, you know,
01:48for instance, I give you a really good example.
01:50When Felicity says she was pregnant in the middle of shooting,
01:54you know, that would have been pretty devastating if it was 18 years ago.
01:59I wouldn't have known what to do.
02:00And this one was one where once we decided that,
02:04you know, that you have to accept it as opposed to try and hide it.
02:08And you can write into it and it actually ends up becoming an act.
02:11Actually, I think it makes the film better.
02:14Miss Jones, I got to start with you
02:15because your character showed me something that I swear
02:17I've never seen on screen before, and that's a pregnant astronaut.
02:21I was so blown away by that as a character.
02:23And then Mr. Clooney told me that that was actually your pregnancy
02:26and that they worked it into the story.
02:27How special is that for you?
02:29Yeah, I think it might be the first depiction of a pregnant astronaut.
02:37So yeah, it was pretty revolutionary.
02:38It was a very organic, instinctive process.
02:43Originally, we were going to CGI the bump,
02:46which is what usually happens in countless films.
02:49It's amazing when you look at the list of actresses
02:51who've been pregnant making iconic pieces of cinema.
02:56And we were sort of going to forge ahead in that way
02:58and let's pretend it's not happening.
02:59And then after about a week of shooting,
03:02George and Grant, his producer, were watching the footage
03:07and they felt actually, you know, this could be far more interesting
03:10if we have Felicity be pregnant in the film.
03:13And we went from there and it just made so much sense with the story.
03:18It really heightened the stakes for us on the ship
03:23and particularly with David and I and our relationship.
03:25And it just felt like a very natural way to navigate the story
03:32and was obviously very nice for me.
03:34And I didn't have to, you know, worry about trying to breathe in.
03:38There is an antenna that's stronger than ours.
03:41We get to that antenna, they'll hear us.
03:44Take a deep breath.
03:47How many lines of dialogue does your young co-star have?
03:50One line.
03:50One line.
03:51Is that the first time in your career you've done this many scenes
03:54opposite someone, a predominantly silent partner?
03:57Yeah.
03:57Well, it was interesting.
03:58There was a lot more lines for me
04:00and I was constantly taking the line and scratching them out
04:03just because you realize that you have to be careful
04:06what lines are important and what lines are just exposed.
04:10Expository and, you know, telling someone something
04:13that either they don't need to know
04:14or we're telling for the audience's sake.
04:16And so, and I decided, I called Alexandra Desplat
04:19and I said, we're going to use score as sort of our narrative
04:23through all of this, which I think will make it more a meditation, you know.
04:27Also, how expressive is her face though?
04:29She says so much without saying anything.
04:30She screwed it up for all the rest of us actors
04:32because also, by the way, almost everything I did with her was one take, right?
04:38And so literally, I've shot all of our stuff.
04:40And then, you know, a couple months later, we started with the other actors
04:43and I would say, Caitlin did this in one take, go.
04:48An astronaut crew has to be able to sell real camaraderie and teamwork.
04:52And there are, the characters in this particular story
04:56have been together for a very long time.
04:57So I'm really curious what you guys did as an ensemble
05:00to get to that comfort level.
05:02What did we do?
05:03I don't, honestly, this is the nicest group of actors.
05:08Like, honestly, they're all so sweet and so nice.
05:12We did do a dinner at George's at the beginning.
05:15Pizza night at George Clooney's house.
05:19I know I sat next to Demian and we got to know each other.
05:23And it's just easy.
05:25We just sit around on set, talk about our lives, talk about our families.
05:28And I think it just came pretty naturally.
05:32I don't know how you guys felt.
05:33No, I agree with you.
05:34It was exactly like that.
05:36And then Kyle and I have met each other before,
05:39briefly during another film, King Kong versus Godzilla.
05:43So we went out for a really nice dinner, a couple of whiskies,
05:47and then we were best friends.
05:49You know, I have to bring up the spacewalk sequence
05:51because it's truly an eye-popping moment.
05:53But knowing that these sequences still come together
05:56through the use of wires and cords and harnesses,
06:00are those days on set that you look forward to,
06:02they're magical when we watch them,
06:04but putting them together, how is it like for you guys as actors?
06:08Yeah, watching them is a lot more fun than shooting them.
06:12I'll tell you that much.
06:14Yeah, it's pretty tough work.
06:16And it is wire work.
06:17And the key is putting maximum effort into making it look effortless.
06:25And that involves a lot of training.
06:27That involves having the kind of control of your core
06:31that is not your everyday.
06:33Myself and Tiffany Boone, who largely were doing the spacewalking,
06:38had two to three months of training.
06:40And thankfully, we had someone like George,
06:43who had played astronauts himself,
06:46iconically so, to guide us in terms of what it should look like.
06:50Little tips like, you know,
06:52your body has to move a lot slower than your mouth and your mind.
06:57You know, those are things that in the red-hot eye of a scene,
07:01you forget and you need constant reminding.
07:04You would think by now,
07:06you would have figured out an easier way to do this.
07:08But no, it's still training for months in advance,
07:12just working on my core.
07:14And then months of training before we shot,
07:18while we were shooting,
07:20on wires, people holding your feet,
07:22people holding your hands.
07:24Yeah, it's a whole thing.
07:27But it looks effortless at the end.
07:28So that's all that matters.
07:29It's worth it.
07:31Going back to re-watch the film a second time through,
07:33I was amazed at how the set seemed really palpable,
07:36that there was a lot of physicality to them
07:38that you could touch and hold on to.
07:40How important was that to you guys,
07:41to have that element of that there?
07:43It was crucial because, you know,
07:45they created such a fantastic scenery,
07:47fantastic space.
07:49The production design is, you know, high class.
07:54And so that made our work very, very easy.
07:57There's some really strong themes of fatherhood,
07:59parenting in the relationships found in here too.
08:02I'm the father of two boys,
08:03and I have some really interesting stories about movies
08:05that have changed completely for me from parenthood.
08:09So I'm just curious if it's changed for you
08:11the types of stories that you want to tell.
08:14I don't know.
08:14I haven't thought about that much yet.
08:16I know that my wife and I went through like my films,
08:20what the kids could watch.
08:22Yeah.
08:22And it was kind of like,
08:23well, they can watch Fantastic Mr. Fox.
08:26And then after that, it's kind of, you know,
08:28they can watch Batman and Robin for a laugh.
08:30But you kind of run out of things
08:33that a three-year-old is going to be allowed to see.
08:35So I probably will have to look at some,
08:37you know, Sesame Street, the movie kind of things.
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