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Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Oskar (Thomas Horn), who lost his father (Tom Hanks) in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, is convinced that his dad left a final message for him somewhere in New York City. Upon finding a mysterious key in his father's closet, Oskar sets out in search of the lock that it fits. Feeling disconnected from his grieving mother (Sandra Bullock) and driven by a tirelessly active mind, Oskar's journey takes him beyond his own loss and leads to a greater understanding of his world.

Opens December 25, 2011

 

Press Conference with Actress Sandra Bullock, Actor Thomas Horn, Actor Max von Sydow, Writer Eric Roth, Director Stephen Daldry.

 

(Q) : What was it about Jonathan Safran Foer's book that appealed to you?
 
(Eric Roth): I was before Stephen, not that long before, but Scott Rudin had given me the book and I actually had read it prior to that and I was quite taken with the obviously emotional quality of it. Its dealing with loss, grief, and obviously the 9/11 event told through the eyes of this boy. And then Scott and I talked about it and Scott I think literally the first time we talked about doing it he said "Do you want to write this? I think Stephen Daldry would be great to direct it." And he ended up being right I think.
 
(Stephen Daldry) : You think?
 
(Eric Roth) : I know. I know. I know. I always hesitate about everything.
 
(Stephen Daldry) : Yeah, and then Scott sent me the book and the script at the same and then we started talking.
 
(Eric Roth) : We've been joined at the hip for a few years now.

(Q) : Hello Thomas. You got to work with a really incredible director and an amazing cast, which doesn't happen to a first-time actor very often. What was it that you learned most from them, from the experience of working with those people? And also if you could share an episode of working with Tom Hanks. Is there something you remember most?
 
(Thomas Horn) : Well I definitely learned a lot from working with all those amazing people. And as you said, I'm incredibly lucky because since when does a first-time actor get to work with an amazing director and an amazing cast? That's unheard of. But I learned a lot from them about many things, especially about acting. And one of the big things I learned is that you must stay in the character until you are absolutely sure that you can be off camera, because any take might be selected and you always have to be ready to go for the efficiency of filming so that the director and so the crew don't waste their time. It's very important that you're able to go at any time.

And as for Tom Hanks in particular I had a very wonderful time working with him. He was really great and really fun. Yeah, one episode that I really remember was there's this one scene where we're kind of having a little playful fight over a newspaper clipping on our bed, and that was a lot of fun to film. He's a really good wrestler in a way because I had a very hard time getting that paper out. You can see me in the film; I'm reaching around. But it was great to work with him.
 
(Q) : I have a question for Miss Bullock. I think you are a very strong and supportive mother in this film, and I assume that when you filmed this movie you had already adopted Louis. How does motherhood help you?
 
(Sandra Bullock) : I play mothers often – a lot, actually – and I think the nice thing about this film was that this mother was very complex. She wasn't as nurturing, or seemingly nurturing. She wasn't all the things you would want a mother to be at the moment that the child really needed her to be that, and I think it pays off in the end. You see that she actually was there in her own way. I don't know how my life applies to it, I just know that the character in how it was written was tricky, because you want to be demonstrative, you want to be nurturing, you see Thomas' character struggling and hurting, and you want to be a caring human being; mother, father, friend, fellow actor.

So that was hard but I think that's what I liked so much about it, that it seemed more real her being the way she was as a mother, more so than the way we've seen moms depicted in films. Because usually it's very squeaky and happy and she takes care of everything when in fact life is messy and it's hard. And I think that's what made their relationship so powerful is that it wasn't perfect, it was just human.
 
(Q) : I guess Mr. Daldry and Mr. Roth can answer. There are many things going on in the world today such as terrorism and natural disasters, and the victims of those can relate to the story very strongly. However, what was your implication for people who haven't experienced those kinds of tragedies?
 
(Eric Roth) : I think the movie to me, and we've talked about this before, is about grief, so I think everybody's experienced grief or sense of loss, and it becomes I think more universal. So this is yeah about a specific event, but I think that and we've found with the audiences who have seen the movie have really related to it that way. That in other words everybody brings a personal tragedy or loss of parent or people getting old, whatever it is, and it becomes where people can grieve together I think, and that's how I felt about it, that's how I approached it. The other piece would be the inhumanity of man to man, which is the bigger event about 9/11.
 
(Q) : This question is for Mr. von Sydow. I just wonder if you could talk a little about the challenges of doing a complex character with the purity of silent acting because you don't get to speak. If that was a particular challenge, the fact that he is complex but it's not through dialog it's just through behavior.
 
(Max von Sydow) : The Renter was to me a very challenging character. It is a man who has so much on his shoulders. He has escaped or run away from a wife who apparently expected a child, and he has lived with this all his life. And apparently when he reads and hears about the 9/11 tragedy and sees the name of his son on the list he feels that he has to go back and maybe tries to get in contact with his wife and whatever he can do, I don't know. But at the same time he has also, he has not punished himself, but maybe he has.

What we don't know in the film but in the book we know that he has been through the Dresden tragedy during World War II, which was a catastrophe comparable with I would say Hiroshima in a way, and he decides that I will never say a word in my life. And there he is suddenly and has a chance to talk to his grandson, who doesn't know who he is. To me it's a very moving situation. Very interesting, very complex. I'm very pleased to be a part of this.
 
(Q) : Were the notes you were writing all scripted?
 
(Max von Sydow) : Yes, they were.
 
(Q) : Thomas, would you like to say something about working with Max?
 
(Thomas Horn) : It was a great privilege and a great honor to work with Max because he's a great actor. I didn't really know about his work before, but I watched some of his films and they're amazing. He's an amazing actor and he's also really, really nice and warm and kind to work with, and it was wonderful. Because if you're working with another actor you need them to do their best to give a good performance even when they're off camera so that you can do a good performance no matter what, and he always did that. It was really wonderful.
 
(Max von Sydow) : It was a pleasure.
 
(Q) : Sandra, I believe you had some access to some original messages left on 9/11, messages to loved ones. I wonder how you got access to that and whether you could share some of the things that you heard.
 
(Sandra Bullock) : We all did. Stephen brought in this documentary that was not shown in the US, right? It was voice messages that people left when they weren't able to make contact. I get goose bumps thinking about it now, but the thing that I was so haunted by and I think in a good way, if I can say that, was that so many of them were messages of strength and calm. It's almost as though as it progressed and as they kept calling back, there was the "Don't worry; I'm fine," then the worry realizing they're not fine, and inevitably the last message left was one of resolve almost. They understood where they were going and their gift to the person they were leaving this message to was "I love you," whatever information they wanted them to impart to anyone else, but so many of them had a peace within them.

They wanted the person on the other end of the line when they heard it to have support and peace. It's almost like they're supporting from beyond, and to leave this piece of love behind I thought was so emotional. It's hard to understand because I don't know how many of us have been in the situation where you thought okay, this is it. I've had a couple close ones but not where I said okay, this is really it, I can have all my faculties and give this gift. It was hard, and you heard that reflected in Tom Hanks' voicemails and the way that they were written and the progression of them. You just are in awe of human beings. You're really in awe of human beings, and that's what I think I took away from that.
 
(Q) : Mr. Daldry, can you talk a little bit about making a movie clearly about tragedy and grief. How did you find and when did you find the emotional tone of the movie? Did you decide to emphasize the tragedy aspect of the movie or did you decide to tone it down a little bit? Was there concern in any way?
 
(Stephen Daldry) : No I don't think so. We have always tried to find and mine and explore the catastrophic loss that the child was going through and what the consequences of that would be. I'm just trying to think of a way of answering your question really. I don't know how to answer it. No, we always, didn't we, we knew what we set out to make the story that Jonathan had written and Eric had interpreted and it was going to be a huge emotional rollercoaster.
 
(Eric Roth) : But you said that I think the important thing that we, at least I felt this way and I think you articulated it this way, Stephen, it always was going back to what the boy's point of view is. I don't think it was supposed to be a more universal point of view. So there was this one boy and then the mother and this man, these relationships in regard to this tragedy. But no, it was only thought to do it as tastefully as possible, obviously, and he's as tasteful a man as I've met so that there was never any question about that.
 
(Q) : September 11 is still a very charged issue in the US especially after 10 years, and I wanted to know what kind of discussion went on between you about what to show and what not to show. As Miss Bullock was saying before, some documentaries have not been brought to this country, others have been sensitive to the family, the victims. So what kind of discussions did you have?
 
(Stephen Daldry) : There was obviously a discussion about is it time or is it ready or how do people feel about it, and I think people will have to make their own choice about that. The only thing that we could do is follow our own instincts on it. Obviously we had discussions very early on with different groups, both individuals and family groups, and those discussions went right the way through production and in postproduction to talk about what we were going to show and what we weren't going to show and whether we felt it was appropriate and whether they felt it was appropriate to be frank.

And I think we came to quite later on in the editing of the film we felt we did come to a place where we were showing enough of 9/11 and that there are disturbing images no doubt in the film. But we didn't want to hide away or pull away or avoid or pretend they didn't happen. And they came out of a lot of research. We did a huge amount of research, obviously. It was a very well researched movie in terms of what happened, particularly for the children.
 
(Q) : To Stephen, how much was Jonathan involved? Was he on the set? And does he have a cameo in this movie?
 
(Stephen Daldry) : A cameo? Jonathan does not have a cameo. He did want one; I forgot to give him one. Yeah he was involved. Eric and Jonathan spoke all the way through the process of writing and then the process of filming. He did come on set and then we chatted with him right the way through really.
 
(Eric Roth) : He added things that he improved. Some of the voiceovers he did later on.
 
(Stephen Daldry) : He was a very good partner.
 
(Eric Roth) : Yeah, he's a very good partner. He really was instrumental as he could be, and he suffered his, as a novelist has to do when you give it over to a screenwriter so your ego. He was very generous in giving this book to us and then being a great partner.
 
(Stephen Daldry) : The thing I loved about Jonathan was that we never heard the comment "Well in the book…" "Well in the book…" was never heard, which was great.
 
(Q) : Question for Sandra. We had a recent tragedy we call 3/11(Earthquake in Japan), and you are one of the first people who gave us a donation. We thank you so much for giving us hope to heal. We wonder why you could do that.  You always care about people who get hurt in daily life. Is it in you?
 
(Sandra Bullock) : I do it because I'm fortunate enough where I can. I'm lucky that I get to do what I do for a living, it's been very, very good to me, I'm very smart about being resourceful with my funds, and they sit there until there's a need for them. It makes sense of what I get that I can't always make sense of, and when I'm able to put money where it belongs and where it's really needed it's exciting for me because you see wow, this didn't make sense where it was sitting before, but when you pass it on it takes on a whole new life and it makes me actually like it.

But my brother-in-law's half Japanese, his mother's Japanese, so I mean when that happened I just like, not because it was another part of the world. I mean we're all connected. I don't feel because I'm a United States citizen that I'm in any way not connected to Japan or Russia or Germany. To me I think it's all the same, and I think Japan would do exactly the same for us and I don't doubt that for a second. It's because I can. It brings me a great deal of love.
 
(Q) : This question is for Thomas. Even before your character goes through what he goes through he has a very particular way of experiencing the world. I wonder the key to what you think you have in common with him and the key to what allowed you to play him.

(Thomas Horn) : We're two very different, separate people, me and my character, and in the beginning it definitely was hard to portray someone who had so many little fears and phobias and was so particular about how he viewed the world. He viewed the whole world through his father before his father died, and that's the whole reason why his father's death was even a bigger tragedy than it would have been for someone else, because his father was his whole world. He didn't have any friends at school, he didn't know his mother very well, his father was like 90% of his focus in life.

And that was really hard to play in a way, but my director gave me some insight, and I tried to think about it. What I would do before I did scenes I would go into a quiet room for five, or 10, or 15, or 20, or 25, or maybe even 30 minutes and sit there and think about how the character would react to a scene, how the character would feel. And that took a lot of time and sometimes a lot of effort, but it was worth it, it helped me to prepare for every scene.
 
(Stephen Daldry) : We had a hut, didn't we?
 
(Thomas Horn) : Yes, we had a little hut on set.
 
(Q) : Before we go to the next question I would like to ask Sandra and Max also what was it like to work with this extraordinary young man?
 
(Sandra Bullock): Oh he's impossible. The word diva doesn't even begin to describe him. Beautifully, it was effortless, and when it was frustrating it was frustrating for the both of us because even though this might have been his first go at it his desire to get the best from a scene was exactly like mine was, and I'm sure the same is Max. Just the desire to make sure every stone was unturned. And as you can hear him speak, the learning curve, it was about this big. Within the first couple weeks of shooting I noticed that this person had stepped into the world of acting as though he'd been there for about as long as I had.

He gave me so much, gave me so much, and I'm so grateful that it was him because he gave me performances that I don't know if I would have gotten from someone else. I'm sure they would have been different, but I got so much magic from this dashing young man that I'm grateful that he was opposite me giving me these great moments.
 
(Max von Sydow) : And working with great discipline.
 
(Thomas Horn) : Thank you. I’m not sure if I deserve all that but it's very nice of my fellow actors.
 
(Q) : Sandra, I would like to ask you if you have a magic want to understand the audience, not just that your movies are the top box office, but I don't know if you know that three of the top five rental movies in Netflix are yours.
 
(Sandra Bullock) : I had no idea. Am I naked in any of them? That takes care of that. And I think I was working out a lot during that film. Luck, it's just luck. There is a whole plethora of films that nobody's renting that I've been in as well. It's just a crapshoot. You don't have a magic wand. I think as I've gotten older I say no a lot more. I want to fight for moments in films, I want to stop a scene and say "This isn't working," I want to figure it out. I don't want mediocre to be in there even if it's a fun comedy. I want that moment to be as good as possible. I've just become a better fighter for my work. I didn't have the guts to do that before.
 
(Q) : Do you have a way to choose movies?
 
(Sandra Bullock) : I don't want any more experiences that aren't amazing. I don't care how big the role is, I want to walk away saying "I had this extraordinary experience." I mean look at the cast, the subject matter, each and every morsel of this film, the writing, Eric Roth, you go how often does that happen? So when that comes across your path you fight for moments like that. Even when you don't have any fight you figure it out, but Stephen Daldry was the person that I fancied and I wanted to be with. But it's true. Look at the body of his work; why would you say no?
 
(Q) : Sandra, I was very interested in the way you portrayed grief. It was very realistic, whereas society expects lots of weeping and wailing and tears. I know Stephen directed you to hold it back.
 
(Sandra Bullock) : Oh no he didn't. Oh we're going to have on the DVD version where Stephen picks Sandy up off the floor and makes her do it again. The beauty is that's the way it was written in the book. Not really. Mom was not viewed as very loving and demonstrative and I like that. I like that through his point of view he couldn't see who she really was, and the way that Eric portrayed her I loved it because it was real. We don't grieve beautifully, and I think what's bad about that is that it doesn't allow human beings to properly grieve because we think that it's not proper, it's unattractive, it's we need to pull up our socks. She was very, very human.

Thomas was very, very human, the renter was very, very human, and all their humanity woven together created I think the end result of just harmony and understanding and a healing that I don't think you would have gotten had everyone grieve in a pretty movie way. And Stephen loves to torture his actors but we love to be tortured by Stephen. The scene he might have chosen might have been one where I wasn't sobbing, but there are 20 other takes where that could have been sobbing. But that's what he does. He pulls out everything from his performers and then uses us like tools in his editing process. But his portrayal of the mother, the way it was portrayed in the book and the way that Eric wrote it and the way that Stephen directed it I thought was one of the more realistic ways of grief that I've seen in a very long time.
 
(Q) : Did you visit grief counselors or was it all on the page?
 
(Sandra Bullock) : I've met grief counselors, yeah. Every person grieves differently. Every single person based on their upbringing, just where they're from grieves in a completely different way no matter who you meet. She was designed by the writers and I was able to bring what I could bring. There are stages of grief that I consciously thought about; this would be this stage, this would be this stage. And that's universal for everyone. But when they arise, how they arise is completely different for each person.
 
(Q) : One thing that surprised me about this film is when you lost the spouse, as much as you're coping for your spouse you have to raise your kids at the same time and it's a very difficult process. When you were actually approaching talking to those family members or victims of 9/11 what was the most surprising element during that process of coping with the spouse and the kids trying to grow up as best as possible?

(Stephen Daldry) : It's what Sandy just said. There are no rules to it. In a sense you have your own personal experience, as Eric said, in one way or another one thing we all share is a relationship at some point with loss, with grief. And then in this particular case obviously you're dealing with catastrophic loss, a very catastrophic situation. And inevitably the way that we chose to do that, or I chose to do it was to, as I say, do a lot of research, talk to a lot of people, and I'm very aware that this is a made up story.

3,000 children had parents who died. There are 3,000 kids out there and those 3,000 kids who loss parents in 9/11 all have their own stories and their own ways of heading with it. We had to construct a family and construct as Jonathan had originally done and then Eric and then myself, we constructed a family who were dealing with it in their particular way, and hopefully with as much respect to the actual victims as we could possibly muster and discover.
 
(Q) : You have shown in "Billy Elliot" and "The Reader" that you are incredible at bringing out a foreign trauma in very young people, but this time the theme is very difficult to deal with. In directing Thomas what kind of attitude did you apply?
 
(Stephen Daldry): I find it very much easier directing young people in films if they haven't done anything before because you don't have to unpick bad habits. And then you have to create a methodology, as you do with any adult actor. You need to find the language in which the actor works and then you can work. And the great thing we did with Thomas, we had many months of rehearsal and we went through a process where we discovered a methodology together that we could talk about acting and about the script and about the scenes and then about the emotion and then about the action as we do it.

But it was great. And then Thomas was incredibly prepared and because Thomas was so prepared. And of course Thomas has a determination, a tenacity, and a commitment which is exactly like an adult actor the advantage we had therefore was Thomas, and Thomas brought his own genius to that process as well. We all had a great time, and we were blessed with you Thomas, I can tell you.
 
(Thomas Horn) : I was blessed to work with everyone.
 
(Stephen Daldry) : I think I've told you this, because we were very clear. Scott Rudin, the producer and I were very clear with the studio that if we hadn't found you we wouldn't have done the movie with anyone. We thought we would only do it if we found the right person to do it. I remember we finished those auditions with you and then I went to the studio, I actually went to Warner Brothers and I said "Okay, this is the child. We think we can now go ahead with the movie." And I showed the whole studio the test that we did to say "The whole film will be based on whether you think Thomas will be able to go through this process. We do, but you have to buy into this, studio. We're all doing the bargaining together. The film will succeed or fail based on Thomas."
 
(Sandra Bullock) : No pressure, Thomas.
 
(Stephen Daldry): What was great was the studio went "That's the boy. That is an amazing actor." So we all held hands together and we said "Right, let's go into production. We're of." And we were right. They were right and I was right.
 
(Thomas Horn) : Thank you, I never knew that before.

 

End.