00:00I'm interested in what is the hardest part of being a director?
00:03It's a battle. Nobody is there when you start, nobody is there when you end.
00:07You do it alone. You have to be a tactician, you have to be a poet,
00:11you have to be a boxer, a pusher and a pimp. It's a very complicated profession.
00:23I created death.
00:30Hello, nice to meet you. How are you? Nice to meet you.
00:32I'm very well, thank you. I guess just to start, you know, I know that you've been working on this
00:36movie for a very long time.
00:37Can you talk me through, you know, how many versions and kind of iterations on this script have you made
00:42throughout the years before you kind of got to this point?
00:45Well, you know, I always knew, even when I was very, very young, I knew I wanted to do what
00:51the book does in a different way.
00:52Like it is a he said, she said. It's two versions of the same story told by two sides of
00:57it.
00:58That I loved from the beginning and no other version has tried it.
01:02But the way to solve it is very difficult because what do you do?
01:05Do you do a rush a month and you do repeat the whole scenes from a different point of view?
01:11That can become very tiresome.
01:12When I found that I wanted to tell a story of fathers and sons,
01:16that it was a paternal pain lineage that I wanted to end in forgiveness.
01:20Then it became very clear that the point of inflection was when the father tries to kill the son, you
01:28know,
01:28which is the moment that where the son comes back and says, well, you tried to kill me and this
01:34is my story.
01:35To get to that took many decades.
01:38It sounds very easy, but you know, it's very intuitive.
01:40But to find that solution and get to that solution in a way that is structurally sound took a very
01:46long time.
01:46I did want to ask about that ending because it does feel like it's a much more hopeful ending than
01:51the original.
01:52Yeah.
01:52Can you talk me through the thinking behind that?
01:55You know, the movie has sort of a circular structure.
01:58It starts with the sun rising on the captain and the ship and ends up with the sun rising on
02:04the creature.
02:04And I thought, well, if the idea is that he's going to live forever, can he still welcome the sun?
02:10Can he still welcome being alive?
02:13And we know he cannot die.
02:15So there is a very existentialist piece at the end of the movie, which is where we live, all of
02:21us.
02:21Nobody has an extraordinary life.
02:23We all have ordinary, to some degree, terrible and beautiful lives.
02:28And I think that in a moment in the world where we are very hyperbolic about how everything is marvelous
02:36or somebody is wonderful or somebody should be destroyed and everything is terrible.
02:41You know, I think that it's a good moment to say, look, imperfection is the condition of life.
02:48You will live an imperfect life.
02:50I think the movie makes peace with that and forgiveness and what it is to be human, which is to
02:57be capable of seeing the other.
02:59These are themes that floated the movie towards a different image.
03:02The last image in the book is very, very romantically bleak, basically.
03:06And a beautiful final line when he's bored by the currents away into the mist.
03:13For me, the story is different.
03:16It's probably one of my most hopeful endings in a strange way.
03:28Now, run.
03:29I really feel like having seen the movie, like I can't imagine anyone other than Jacob having played the monster.
03:35I think he does such a great job.
03:37Can you talk me through, you know, what was the audition process like for that role?
03:41And what was it like kind of the first time that you saw him properly in the suit?
03:46Well, what happened is we survived the two of the strikes trying to keep the production afloat.
03:53But once the strikes settled, all the calendars were upside down with the cast.
03:59And Andrew Garfield had to bow out of the production.
04:03And we were nine weeks before starting production.
04:07And we had spent six months sculpting the creature for Andrew.
04:11So everybody was very scared, except me.
04:15I actually said to the makeup guy, look, you and I have been preparing for this movie all our life.
04:20And we're going to do it.
04:21You know, it's what they say about a song.
04:23How long does it take to compose the song?
04:25Ten minutes to come up with it and a lifetime to get to it.
04:28Right?
04:29So I said, we're going to find something even better.
04:31And I started talking to other actors.
04:34And then on the same day, my wife, my daughter and Ted Sarandos from Netflix, all of them said, you
04:41have to see Salburn.
04:43And you have to see Jacob Elordi and you have to see Priscilla.
04:46And I watched them.
04:47I thought, this is really a remarkable actor.
04:50He has a wonderful face and amazing eyes, which are very necessary for the creature, the eyes.
04:56Then I called him.
04:57He was shooting a miniseries.
04:59Unbeknownst to me, when he was shooting Priscilla in Toronto, he had said to the makeup and hair team, which
05:06are my makeup and hair team.
05:08He said, he's shooting Frankenstein.
05:10I should be playing the creature.
05:11Wow.
05:12And they told me that before the phone call.
05:15And I talked to him.
05:16The moment I saw his eyes, I said, this is the guy.
05:19And then I said, your last name is Elordi.
05:23I said, that's a Basque name.
05:25Is your father from the Basque country?
05:28And he said, yes.
05:29And I said, then you understand the tension between fathers and sons.
05:33What manner of creature is that?
05:37What manner of devil made him?
05:42I did.
05:45I did.
05:47Justin, what is the hardest part of being a director?
05:49I think the hardest part of being a director is stamina.
05:53If you think about it, you're the one that opens the bar.
05:56You clean the bar, serve the drinks.
05:58The party happens all night.
06:00Everybody leaves.
06:00And then you clean the vomit, clean the toilets and close the bar.
06:04Nobody is there when you start.
06:05Nobody is there when you end.
06:07You do it alone.
06:08And you're talking about a process that takes anything between two to four years.
06:12It has to be minutely planned.
06:14And then it's a battle.
06:16You have to be a tactician.
06:17You have to be a poet.
06:19You have to be a boxer, a pusher and a pimp.
06:21It's a very complicated profession.
06:23Amazing.
06:24Well, look, thank you so much for your time.
06:26I really appreciate you jumping on the call and chatting with us.
06:28Thank you, my friend.
06:30Have a good one.
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