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Submarine

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : A 15-year-old has two objectives: Lose his virginity before his next birthday, and stop his mom from leaving his father for a dance instructor.

Opens today June 3, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 37 min.

Press Conference with Director Richard Ayoade, Producer Ben Stiller, Musician Alex Turner

(Q) : The novel has been compared to "Catcher in the Rye" and "Catcher in the Rye" makes an appearance in the film. I was wondering what each of your relationships to "Catcher in the Rye" was and did each of you have such an awkward time of losing your virginity as Oliver does.
 
(Richard Ayoade) : I like "Catcher in the Rye." I think it stands up. It's pretty well written. Yeah, I stand by it as a book.
 
(Ben Stiller) : Yeah, I like "Catcher in the Rye" too. What was the question?
 
(Q) : Did you have an awkward time losing your virginity?
 
(Ben Stiller) : No, the other question.
 
(Q) : Your photo as a child you sort of look sort of similar.
 
(Ben Stiller): Yeah, I was pretty awkward.
 
(Richard Ayoade) : It feels that this is an appropriate moment to share that kind of information. Certainly in the context of promoting something, I really feel it's a good time to go into that.
 
(Q) : I'm really curious to hear about the process of creating the music for this film. A lot of directors work with their composers in different ways. Some like to show them rough cuts for the music and then others don't like to show their composers the footage until the final cut. I'm wondering how it worked between the two of you in terms of creating the music. And also since you're known as being part of a modern band and this movie has a period feel what directions did you get from anyone, or maybe feedback you got from anyone regarding how to create the music for this movie.
 
(Richard Ayoade) : I made you live without electricity for a while.
 
(Alex Turner) : There were a couple of tunes there that I already had and played them for Richard and they sort of just happened to like fit in some places. And a couple of the other ones I wrote after I had seen some of the rushes and read the book. Originally we were going to do a couple of covers, that was the plan, like some John Cale tunes and a Nico song "I'm Not Saying," a version of that tune "How Deep is the Ocean." And we ended up abandoning the covers idea as I wrote more. But I suppose that helped me feel out what the temperature should be.

(Q): And for the director, you said that maybe there was some temp music in place. How did you end up hiring him in the first place or working with him on the music?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : I just asked if he'd fancy doing it quite in advance, maybe even a year before it was finished. There were just gaps really where we knew there was going to be a whole song. I can't even remember whether there was music in those sections ever. It was just to be determined really. We kind of waited until he had written before we started editing those bits, so we cut them to the music.
 
(Q) : Question for Richard. How did you work with the writer because he also wrote the novel as well, so how did you collaborate working with him?
 
(Richard Ayoade): I wrote the screenplay but I'd give him draft to read. He spent three years writing the novel and was starting to write his next one, so he was done. So it was really having someone there you could ask questions of and just occasionally check to see how furious he was. Yeah, that was really it.
 
(Q) : Which cameras did you guys use to film and what kind of look were you trying to achieve?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : Well it was on 35 mil film largely but there are lots of other types used. There's one camera called an Arriflex 2C, which is an old camera which we used with old lenses. There's a Super 8, Video 8 for TV things. We should have put some of this information on the poster. I suppose it was really to use a lot of natural lights, the DP and I really like natural elements and being able to shoot like that and not have to light and actors hit marks and do it more of a documentary way.
 
(Q) : How did Mr. Stiller get involved with this? When I saw his name up there I said "Oh wow. I'd want to see a film that Ben likes." Did he come in after the film was completed?
 
(Ben Stiller) : It just sort of fell in our laps. We were sent the script. Do you know how we got sent the script? I don't know what happened, but our production company, Red Hour, got sent the script and my producing partner, Stuart Cornfeld read it and called me up and said this is a really good script and they'd asked if we'd like to be executive producers on it and I said "What does that mean?" and he said "I don't know."

And I said "Do we have to do anything?" He said "Probably not. Just be there for them and just support it." So I said "Okay, that sounds good." I read the script; I thought the script was great. It was really simple; it seemed to have a real voice. I hadn't read the book and I saw what Richard had done. I was familiar with "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace" and thought that was funny, and I thought that was different from what he had done or what I'd seen. I think I might have checked out a video or two.

Basically I said "Sure, this seems like a good thing." And we just were there. We got dailies sent to us, we'd talk on the phone maybe. When the dailies started coming in that was when it got really exciting for us because we already were very supportive of it and the script, but then he shot this film test, he had a couple of days of shooting film tests and literally this film test came in and it was like a movie. Is it actually in the movie? It seemed like there were scenes.
 
(Richard Ayoade) : Yeah, there are some scenes that worked. There's one scene under the bridge that we I guess tested out and a couple of scenes that we did for the screen test.
 
(Ben Stiller) : And it was amazing. I was like "This is crazy. This is great." And then the dailies started coming in and we'd get the dailies every day and I started looking forward to seeing the dailies and just thinking this is going to be amazing and I was very happy with they way he put it together.

And I came to England to do my little, little, mini, little piece that I'm in on the tv, and that's when we had a chance to sit down. That was it. We were lucky enough to be sent the script and to be there to support it in any way.
 
(Q) : Richard, while watching the film I was reminded a lot of my favorite directors. It's very much in the way of a French new wave feel. So I just want to ask you what directors influenced you growing up while becoming a director and what influenced the feel of this film?
 
(Richard Ayoade): Well a lot of those French new wave directors, I suppose Louis Malle, "Zazie in the Metro" which we saw at this cinema in England where you're not allowed any carbonated drinks and there was an altercation. I particularly like them and Goddard and Truffaut. But one of the main influences on this was "Taxi Driver" because it's very internal and you have this uninflected voice over over a character who is always seeing the least important things. Just the juxtaposition between voice and over and what's happening I think is done so well in that film, so that was a big thing we had in mind.
 
(Q) : Can you talk about the casting process for this and how important it was to find the right lead?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : Not very important. We really would have taken anyone. It's just laziness. He was the first person we saw and lunch was there sort of cold and yeah, that's how that worked out. I wish there was a better anecdote other than auditions. It's not a great story. Just very lucky to find those two. They just have a kind a charm to them.
 
(Ben Stiller): How many people did you see?
 
(Richard Ayoade): I think a few hundred on tape probably. Quite a few. There were quite a lot of auditions. This was a test one thing at a time really. What was important was that you just have a voice that you can listen to and he has a good sort of detective voice to him.

 (Q) : As a writer, was it somewhat freaky to have a character whose voice you don't know how much you can really believe what he's saying? Did that make it more difficult as a writer or even as a director to get the movie going?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : For me that was what was interesting, that he couldn't particularly be trusted and that you could juxtapose his statement with some form of reality. So that was one of the things I liked best in the novel, that you have an unreliable narrator, somebody who's very linguistically idiosyncratic.
 
(Q) : Can all three of you share your thoughts on Craig Robertson specifically?

(Ben Stiller) : I found him really interesting to watch when I started watching the dailies. He's young but yet he has this sort of older quality. Old not like mature but sort of like he's almost like a young old man, which is great. He has character and he's interesting to watch. I felt when I met everybody that somehow Richard had created this bond with the actors, Yasmin, these young actors besides the other great actors who are in the movie.

But these young actors who are the core of this movie I felt like he created some sort of a connection with them where they all felt very much as responsible as he was for the movie and they were all in it together, and that's a really special thing. I've felt that a couple of times on movies as an actor where you feel that for the director, where you just kind of want to do anything for the movie and for him.

I really think that's just a genuine camaraderie that comes out of wanting to do something good and having respect for what he was doing. They're smart kids and they all seemed to get that and they all seemed to be in it for the same thing. That was a really nice feeling to experience when I came on for the day.
 
(Ben Stiller) : One of the main things I suppose with Craig and with Yasmin was just liking them and that being really important and wanting to work with people who you get on with and who you like. Hopefully that translates. I'm not a terribly social person and so I have to really like people to work with them, and they just were a pleasure and just couldn't have asked for more. They'd be acting since they were seven so had been on more film sets than me and incredibly comfortable. Yeah, they were great.
 
(Alex Turner) : I only met them a couple of times. Craig, I think he's great in the film. He's a funny chap. He sort of came up to me quite confident and says "You do realize we look an awful lot alike?" We do have similar bags under our eyes.
 
(Q) : A lot of coming of age films are written in such a way where the parental figures are sort of on the periphery and you don't really hear too much from them, where as in this movie they're really fleshed out. I have a two part question. The first part is what did you think needed to be maybe adapted or changed from the novel into the screenplay in terms of making those parental figures and the way that they were in the movie. And the second part to my question is for everyone. What were some of your favorite coming of age films?
 
(Richard Ayoade): The novel in a way possibly deals more with the parents than the film, so that's very much – I'm going to use the word explored because there was too long a pause for me to think of a less annoying word –  in the book. Yeah, it was just very important, it informed how he behaved and was very much his parents' child and very affected by that and just felt important. In terms of coming of age films, is "The Graduate" a coming of age film? That's great. "The 400 Blows."

(Q) : Anyone else favorite coming of age films?
 
(Alex Turner): Yeah I suppose like "The Graduate" again, like he said. Certainly in the way we worked with music in the film, Richard really like the idea that it's sort of one voice singing all the songs in the film in a way like in "The Graduate" each song plays out in its entirety usually. And "Harold and Maude" as well.
 
(Richard Ayoade) : "The Last Picture Show" as well.
 
(Ben Stiller): "Towering Inferno."
 
(Q) : You grew up in the John Hughes era; were you a fan of his?
 
(Ben Stiller): I was a little sort of semi-post age wise. Actually, weirdly my favorite John Hughes film is "Planes, Trains & Automobiles." This made me think really more of the Salinger books. Obviously "Cather in the Rye" but also "Franny and Zooey" and just that voice in those "Nine Stories" books that I always find sort of heartbreaking. And that came through in the writing when he was writing the screenplay.

And I do think that the music is a huge part of it too in that sort of Hal Ashby-esque way that you guys were able to collaborate. It's really great in the movie and it gives the movie a voice. I just think the images are so amazing in this movie, and coupled with the music it's just beautiful.
 
(Q) : I was just wondering how "Zoolander 2" was coming along? And Richard, what's next for you?
 
(Ben Stiller): It's kind of coming along. I mean we have a script that we like. We're just sort of waiting for the studio to figure it out but I think we all want to do it. We're rearing to go. Hopefully it will come together.
 
(Richard Ayoade) : Just writing really. Working with a writer called Avi Korine on an adaptation of a novel by Dostoevsky.
 
(Q) : Ben, I was curious that you strictly went onto this as a producer. Is there a difference when you look at a script as a producer as opposed to when you look at a script as a writer yourself and as an actor?
 
(Ben Stiller) : Actually, executive producer, which is one step more removed. Honestly, it's the same thing you look at. As an actor obviously you look at it more in terms of yourself being in it, which is a whole other thing. But just to read a movie and to try to visualize it, I find the director is just a huge element in any movie, and a writer-director it's sort of a tough thing to gauge when someone hasn't directed a movie before.

You just don't know. Sometimes it will be a great script that's written beautifully and then the director who has also written it does not have the facility to translate it. Ultimately you just have to take that chance and I don't know how you do that. It's just looking at something that's a piece of material and go this seems like it has integrity, it's good, it could be funny, it seemed like there's humor in it.

There's humor in Richard's other work and he just seemed like a really thoughtful guy. And honestly after that it's just taking a chance, you just don't know. You just have to go. I've had to go both ways in terms of working with first time directors, and we were very fortunate that you happened to be incredibly talented. Do you like hearing that? Usually it doesn't work out like that honestly. We just lucked out.
 
(Q) : Two questions, first for Mr. Turner. What is it like to write for a character as opposed to how you regularly write songs?
 
(Alex Turner) : I don't know. Half the songs already existed in a way and some were written after I was aware of what the film was. I think it was almost more about not making them about the character too much. I think we wanted to avoid it being a narration. We just wanted it to sit in the background a little bit more and if it can help compliment what's going on without being too direct, I think that was the balance we were trying to strike.

Or certainly like in the lyrics for the tunes that was what I was aiming for. I really enjoyed doing it because it was different to what I do with the group and a lot more stripped back. It was sort of allowed to be like that because we had this film going on in front and all these wonderful images so you thought it could just be an acoustic guitar and melody. That coupled with what's going on on the screen hopefully is a good blend.
 
(Q) : Earlier you said you don't consider yourself to be the most sociable person and your track record tends to involve projects with socially awkward people. Is this a self conscious decision?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : All my decisions are pretty self conscious. But yeah, I don't think I'd be the natural director for the Bon Jovi story. I suppose it's just what you're interested in as well, and I just really like this book. You don't have some idea of trajectory or this is my territory or anything. And they've been quite different in some respects, the things I've done. I have a very limited range that probably comes into what I play; just a lack of ability.
 
(Q) : Can you talk a little bit about the different between directing American television as opposed to directing your first feature film?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : American television's very much created by the writers and just the volume, the writers are so key here. You're really just trying to do something that serves that script, and I mean in general film is its script really. With the episode of "Community" I directed it was quite clear because there was a clear visual way of going with it. It's just the scale of it. There are a lot of writers, high volume, the cast has been in that zone for years and do 22 a year, so you probably can't ruin it. I mean that's what my pitch to them was.
 
(Q) : When all is said and done what were your favorite scenes in the movie to film, and also what were your favorite scenes to watch?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : I can take it or leave it.
 
(Alex Turner) : I like the part where he gets on the bed and he sort of lies on the bed and he's told her to shut her eyes and she says "Oh my god you're a serial killer."
 
(Q) : Just out of curiosity, was that in the book or did you come up with that yourself?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : I don't think that's in the book like that. There's a bit when she does come round but it's based on them reading his diary. I don't really know. The credits; I like that. Those two songs in a row with just blue; I enjoy that section. It normally means that the film's ended by then so I can relax.
 
(Ben Stiller) : There are so many images in the movie that I really love, and there are so many funny scenes too. I mean the sequence where they kiss and the Polaroid camera, when I saw that the first time I was like wow, I've never seen anything like that in a movie. And the subjective nature of the movie where you're seeing so much through his eyes and through his narration, and just the jokes.

There are so many jokes within jokes too in the film about him talking about how he would make a movie but how the movie's actually being made; all that stuff is really fun too. But just on a simple, sort of emotional level I think the ending I love. I love when they go into the water there at the end.

And I remember reading the ending too in the script and thinking how simple it was, and then just seeing the images he ended up with were just so not what you would necessarily see in a movie about romance between two people and how it ended. It allows you to sort of fill in whatever you want to fill in there. I love that.
 
(Q) : In England you're a star, Richard, and people love you.
 
(Richard Ayoade) : Let's back up on both of those.
 
(Q) : People don't just fall down when you walk down the street because of the "IT Crowd"?
 
(Richard Ayoade): They remain erect.
 
(Q) : Well that's similar. In many British interviews you keep putting yourself down, and as a director were you very polite? Were you saying "Would you like to move there? If you want to. I'm not forcing you."
 
(Richard Ayoade) : I'd shove people. Yeah, "Would you like to" doesn't seem to be an incredibly polite thing to say, so yeah I think I could imagine that phrase appearing. I really like Orson Wells' films so it's quite easy to be self deprecating if you've seen other films really. It seems somewhat impolite to go around, and also inaccurate. Why should I be trusted talking about something I've done? It seems ridiculous.
 
(Ben Stiller) : I worked with Wes Anderson once and Wes is a very quiet guy who commands a lot of respect on the set because I think everybody there respects him, and I felt like that just right off the bat. It felt to me like Richard is the kind of guy where he's not going to bully you but he's going to ask you politely and you'll probably do it because you trust that he has an incredible vision and you want to be there. That's the feeling I got that everybody had around him.
 
(Richard Ayoade): And also I feel there's nothing worse than telling actors what to do in front of everyone, because then on the next take everyone's just waiting to see if you do that. It just feels like the worse thing to just go "Could you do that a bit quicker?" and then everyone just watches. It's just the worst thing so I only ever privately tell people stuff and more often ask what they feel is right. Normally by the time you're filming if it doesn't work it's always the script, it's very rarely the actor can't do it. It's because it doesn't work, and generally they end up telling you how it should go.
 
(Q) : Richard, I was wondering about your relationship with Warp I read somewhere that you were doing a video and they gave you the script for "Submarine" to possibly write and direct, which you don't really get that nowadays, like that doesn't really happen. So I was wondering could you speak a little bit about your relationship with them and what they do?
 
(Richard Ayoade) : They're a music company, that's how they started I think and then they went into film. They did "Dead Man's Shoes" with Paddy Considine and Shane Meadows directed. And then Warp did some of your first videos I guess, and so when I I think first met Warp we were just talking about script and things I was writing.

I just mentioned that I really wanted to do music videos and I really liked the Arctic Monkeys, and it just happened that they had a new record coming out and it was really fortuitous really. Yeah, it was kind of great. And they're kind of quite small and cottage industryish. Yeah, I think they're really good and I think they produce good films. Like Paddy's new film's just tremendous and I think all of Shane Meadows' films are really good. Yeah, I just kind of like them.
 
(Q) : Do you think that you will continue to work with them?
 
RA: No.

End.