- 4 months ago
"It's fundamental to the way I would love to live my life–to look back and not regret things." Paul Mescal takes a walk down memory lane as he rewatches scenes from his classic works including 'Normal People,' 'Aftersun,' 'All of Us Strangers,' 'The History of Sound,' and more.
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Brad Wickham
Editor: Jeremy Ray Smolik
Talent: Paul Mescal
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors
Associate Producer: Lyla Neely
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Associate Production Manager: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Paige Garbarini
Camera Operator: Carlos Araujo
Gaffer: David Djaco
Audio Engineer: Mariya Chulichkova
Production Assistant: Quinton Johnson, Yirssi Bergman
Set Designer: Jeremy Myles
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds; Billy Ward
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Brad Wickham
Editor: Jeremy Ray Smolik
Talent: Paul Mescal
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors
Associate Producer: Lyla Neely
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Associate Production Manager: Elizabeth Hymes
Talent Booker: Paige Garbarini
Camera Operator: Carlos Araujo
Gaffer: David Djaco
Audio Engineer: Mariya Chulichkova
Production Assistant: Quinton Johnson, Yirssi Bergman
Set Designer: Jeremy Myles
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds; Billy Ward
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00This is embarrassing.
00:04That little step ball change is a killer.
00:07Every time I see it, I'm like, what?
00:09Like, well, not that any part of that is remotely, like,
00:12flattering or good dancing, but yeah.
00:15I'm Paul Meskel, and today we are going to be watching some scenes from my career.
00:30I've been thinking about New York.
00:38They offer it.
00:40What about it?
00:42I don't know. I just...
00:46I keep imagining you being there.
00:50Writing.
00:52It's so weird watching this back, actually.
00:54I haven't seen this in a couple of years now.
00:57This was actually a reshoot.
01:00I think it's long enough now that five years have passed.
01:04So yeah, we picked this up about two or three months.
01:07This is like two weeks before COVID actually hit.
01:09I just felt like I wanted to close the show in a different way.
01:13I never saw what the original cut was.
01:16There wasn't big shifts with what existed on the page.
01:20It's probably a slight shift in performance from me and Daisy.
01:22But I can't really remember what we did the first time.
01:24But I love this scene and Daisy's just extraordinary in it.
01:28I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you.
01:31No.
01:33That's true.
01:35I mean, you'd be somewhere else entirely.
01:40You'd be a different person.
01:44And me too.
01:46She's just so extraordinarily present in this scene.
01:52And I just feel like they represent, both of them represent all the young people that I kind of know in kind of certain shades.
02:00I just feel like they are kind of just so brilliantly drawn.
02:04They feel incredibly modern.
02:05It's like you could transpose these characters from Ireland to American to any society where there's young people trying to navigate the world that they're living in now.
02:15And I just feel like that's what the audience has latched onto.
02:20I'll go.
02:21And I'll stay.
02:22And we'll be okay.
02:23I flip flop on this the whole time because selfishly, like the romantic in me is like, would love Marianne to say, yes, she'll come over to New York.
02:35But it's frequently not the way the world works.
02:51It's also incredibly romantic that I feel like that their relationship will stand the test of time, whether romantically or not, that their relationship feels solid enough that they can be in separate places and love each other.
03:04I think it's beautiful.
03:30That little step ball change is a killer.
03:33Every time it's like, well, not that any part of that is remotely flattering or good dancing.
03:40I mean, it's just so well directed.
03:45Charlotte's work there in terms of presenting us with this moment for Sophie that she remembers her father so clearly and then cutting to Sophie as an older woman kind of visiting his kind of inner life is so wonderfully clever with Under Pressure is kind of perfect, I think.
04:05I think.
04:12Rather than showing somebody who's depressed what I wanted to convey was somebody who didn't really know what was happening to them.
04:18Like, I think he has a suspicion or knows that he's depressed but he's refusing to kind of acknowledge that openly.
04:23Or he doesn't, he's not going to do that with his daughter.
04:25I think there's moments in the film like when he spits in the mirror, he's aware that Sophie is describing something about herself that he recognizes and he's maybe feeling a sense of guilt that he's passing that on to her.
04:38But I think it's much more interesting to see somebody fighting against their mental position or something along those lines versus somebody who's, like, succumbing to it.
04:48And you get a couple of moments when he can't bear it but humans are, like, great survivors.
04:53Like, they try and find a way through it as painlessly as possible.
04:59Come on. Come on.
05:01Ready?
05:02Let's dance.
05:03Let's dance.
05:08Look at Frankie, like, her face, like, yeah, perfect face.
05:13I remember seeing Frankie look at me like that and it's just so gorgeous.
05:19She's like a consummate actor.
05:21Like, she's got charisma, like, falling out of her.
05:25I feel very similarly to the actors that I got to work with on Hamlet as well.
05:29It's, like, these children who are extraordinarily talented actors on top of the fact that they have that, like, freedom of being a child and not feeling kind of a pressure to be good or bad or indifferent.
05:43There's just this kind of joy about being on a film set and getting to inhabit a character.
05:47And I think Frankie, to my mind, is given, like, one of the best child performances I've seen for a full stop.
05:54What was so gorgeous about a scene like this and why I think it works is that the feeling that we see with the cutaways to Callum kind of in his more internalized state didn't exist when we were shooting this.
06:14I was constantly trying to hide that from Sophie and Frankie.
06:20So this was just, like, total joy.
06:23And my job was to try and embarrass Frankie with my dad dancing.
06:32I love Callum.
06:33I think it's upsetting to see somebody wrestling with himself like that and trying to connect to his daughter.
06:41It might sound perverse to say that it was actually incredibly cathartic to get to shoot the other side of it, like the kind of strobe lighting section.
06:50I spent so much of that film hiding things from Frankie.
06:55And in that moment, when he's sitting on the bed and these moments, you really get to, not show any, but you get to release something or let the feeling kind of rise to the surface when for, I would say 90% of the film, you're trying to hide it.
07:11What are you doing down here?
07:23I came to find you.
07:29Andrew Scott, hands down, one of the best performances I've seen in recent memory, just putting that out there.
07:38First and foremost, he's just like somebody who is perpetually playful.
07:44And I know that sounds, actors are constantly talking about playing and that it kind of sounds cheesy, like we just go to work and we play.
07:52I don't think that's true the whole time.
07:54But Andrew is somebody who I think has just a wealth of experience and I think a confidence in his artistry and is able to just have a kind of technical proficiency,
08:05but then just gives us the gift of like opening himself up for us to see everything.
08:10And I think, especially in the kind of last half an hour of this film, he just like totally removes layers of skin and just goes here, you know, it's incredible.
08:24It's okay.
08:25It's not okay though, is it?
08:35I was so scared that night, I just needed to not be alone.
08:41This is a tough sequence for Harry.
08:43It's like, I never really get to play people who are like kind of more front footed.
08:47And for a lot of the film, Harry is like a little bit loose, a little bit kind of like sexually forward, kind of man about town.
08:54And then this is probably the only scene where we get to see who he is, what damage his family have done to him.
09:04He's dead.
09:07Spoiler.
09:08Like if you were to describe the scene, it's like a ghost knowing that his dead body is in the other room and the person that he loves is standing in front of him.
09:15It's like a pretty compelling context of your scene, I think.
09:19I'm in there, am I?
09:24Let's just go upstairs.
09:25No, no, no.
09:26I just need you to tell me, okay?
09:31I can smell it.
09:32I can taste it in my throat.
09:35It was towards the end of the shoot, I felt like I knew him but I feel like something semi-consistent in the jobs that I end up doing where I feel like there's a lot of pressure that lie on certain scenes because of that thing that I may be interested in which is kind of hiding certain things as much as possible.
09:53But then oftentimes in, say, in After Sun or All of Us Strangers or History of Sound or Hamlet, there's critical scenes where it's like he's showing how he's feeling now.
10:03And I think that kind of, he's kind of shown his hand that like he can't pretend to Adam that his life is any different.
10:13He's now got to acknowledge the fact that his parents have caused him a huge amount of damage and that he's dead in the next room.
10:20And he's lost and it's, I feel a great deal of sympathy but also like, it's really a scene about like grief and tenderness in like, in conversation.
10:31How come no one found me?
10:39Well it was my mum and my dad.
10:44I found you.
10:45No but I, Adam I don't want you to see me like that in there.
10:48You're not in there, you're not in there.
10:50You're not in there.
10:54You're here.
10:57You're here.
10:58With everyone, it's interesting we just came from Telluride and Andrew was there as well with Blue Moon and lots of people, every demographic of society came up and wanted to talk about this film.
11:12And I don't think it's actually just to do with sexuality.
11:14I think it's, I think it's dealing with two different generations of gay men in the world in this.
11:19But also beyond that it's dealing with somebody who's dealing with grief surrounding their parents.
11:23It's also dealing with somebody who's grieving the fact that their parents never really existed to them in Harry.
11:27Regardless of where you sit in terms of like, what generation of man or person you are.
11:34It seems to have a strong emotional effect.
11:38And it's such a gorgeous feeling to receive that from people when they come up and be like, this had an effect.
11:43Because that's kind of the remit that I feel like I want to like, protect and preserve.
11:50It's like, you're making this for people to hopefully have an emotional response to or like, process things like.
11:56It's that thing Ethan Hawke said about like, misquoting the idea of like, we only look to art in like moments of crisis.
12:02Or like, when a parent dies they'll read a poem and they'll cry.
12:05Or if we can make films and people can have some sort of cathartic understanding alongside that film.
12:11I mean that's, if I can continue doing that I'll be a happy man.
12:14I'll be a happy man.
12:22Lionel Worthing.
12:25What department?
12:27Boys.
12:28Well, Fa La La.
12:30Composition.
12:31I didn't think people around here knew songs like that.
12:33They don't.
12:34It's one of the things I'm proudest of in terms of the finished film.
12:39The endeavour that it took to make something.
12:44I learned so much about the industry within it.
12:47I made like one of my best friends in Josh and Oliver.
12:50I mean like, it's kind of a huge film for me in terms of where it sits with everything else from my life and career.
12:59This is a hobby in the summers.
13:02Collecting tunes, ballads, songs.
13:05It rounds me up home.
13:06What draws Lionel to David is the fact that he's sitting in a bar in Maine and he hears Across the Rocky Mountains.
13:13Like often times in film you see that shot of like, the protagonist looks across a bar and sees the person and falls in love with him.
13:21Whereas this is the opposite.
13:22Lionel is facing the other direction and he hears this song.
13:25So what the film is fundamentally trying to say is that like, he's essentially falling in love with David's like artistic taste.
13:33There's a familiarity in there, like it doesn't feel like love straight away because it's not.
13:37It's a kind of companionship, a shared love for these songs that then flourishes into this romantic story.
13:44But it's not as simple as that.
13:46And that's what I loved so much about this film.
13:49It's like really hard to pin down.
13:51It's not like a traditional romance.
13:54But I, it feels like incredibly romantic in certain sections.
13:58But it's actually about, you know, that feeling like when you're sat in a bar with somebody and you're obsessed with the work that they do.
14:03Like there's nothing more attractive to me than somebody who is like, who takes pride in their work or is speaking passionately about like.
14:10I don't know, if somebody was to speak passionately about that wallpaper, I'd be into it.
14:15And this so, this just so happens that they share a common interest.
14:19And I think Lionel gets such joy out of the fact that he can, he has one up on David here that he knows a song that David doesn't.
14:27Josh is so like chameleonic to me.
14:29He's got this kind of like ease.
14:32And I know like I've watched him for years and years and years now.
14:36This is like one of my favorite performances of his.
14:39I just think he's so magnetic in it.
14:41He's doing the thing that I love in performance where it's like, he's showing us a veneer.
14:48And I'm kind of suspicious that I'm being shown a veneer, but I can't pin it down.
14:51And I know that there's so much pain and hurt going on, not because I know the script, but because he's doing that thing that I just love watching.
14:58Where he's like hide, he's just kind of hiding his performance in little like cracks of his face.
15:04And then like, it's just, it's gorgeous.
15:07Oh, come on, let's hear it.
15:09Oh, no.
15:10Waki.
15:11Come on, Waki.
15:13I don't usually sing like this with...
15:16With what?
15:18With everyone talking.
15:20Oh.
15:21Excuse me.
15:22No.
15:23Quiet, please.
15:24I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.
15:26A lot of the references that we were sent through, we worked with this, not a singing coach, he's an incredible musician called Sam Amadon.
15:33But he sings in this, a similar style to this.
15:36I suppose the accent has to like, if you're playing a character, the accent doesn't stop when you start singing.
15:42In your head at least, it carries through.
15:45But I kind of had been thinking about this song for so long that I would never really sing it in my own accent when I was practicing it.
15:52Don't sing love songs.
15:57You'll wake my mother.
16:01She's sleeping here right by my side.
16:07In her right hand, a silver dagger.
16:12Lionel is going to be always searching for David, but also like there's a truth in what I find is so beautiful about the lines that Chris Cooper, or what Chris Cooper says at the end about like, but we did meet.
16:27Like, I think we can get hung up on this concept of love being permanent and forever and it's just not.
16:35Like some people are so lucky to spend the majority of the life with the person that they love most, but the film is exploring the fact of like, what if your first love is your great love?
16:44Does it reduce it if you only have a love for a year, two years, six months, in this case one summer?
16:52And I just think that is the most beautiful thing that like, we have such a capacity as human beings to like impact each other in like summers, days, weeks, months.
17:03And I think he is always looking for him.
17:05I think he misses him dearly, but he's also incredibly grateful.
17:10I think that's like kind of the way you can think elegantly about these that I don't feel like as a young man that I can do yet.
17:16But like, it's gorgeous to hear what Chris Cooper says, because that's kind of fundamentally the way I would love to live my life is where you can look back and not regret things.
17:25Thank you so much for watching.
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