Sarah Wayne Callies got an awful lot of fans Lori in The Walking Dead, adding to those she’d already gained from her time on Prison. However this year rather than the undead or jail conspiracies, she’s been dealing with the forces of nature in Into The Storm.

She stars in the film alongside Richard Armitage, as two of the people dealing with a serious of enormous, powerful and incredibly destructive tornadoes than hit the small town of Silverton. The film is out on DVD & Blu-ray now, so it’s a good chance to catch up with Callies and her thoughts on the film.

What was the draw for you to be a part of Into the Storm?
I thought it’d be fun to do a big, crazy special effects movie. I’ve never done anything like that before. And then I read it and what really held my attention was the fact that it’s this huge spectacle of a movie, but, at the same time, it’s also a story about how people who are strangers can become almost family in the course of a single day when that day threatens all their lives and is chaotic and overwhelming. I just think there’s something really moving about that. It’s the story of strangers who become family in the course of 24 hours.

The catalyst to that, obviously, is a tornado and it’s amazing and cool to see all that thrashing around. But I think from a human perspective, it’s really simple and really moving. It’s interesting. We never know whether we’re heroes or cowards until the sirens go off and the storm is coming. You learn so much about yourself in those moments that you can’t know otherwise. Movies like this are fascinating because inevitably we end up casting ourselves in them and thinking, ‘Well, I hope I would do this and I think I would do that.’

Storytelling is an old thing that humans have done for as long as we’ve been around. We tell each other stories to try and figure out who we are. This is a summer movie but it’s still a movie that tells us something about who we are and who we might be.

You play Allison Stone, who’s a climatologist and meteorologist and has joined the storm-chasing team for the first time. What can you tell us about her?
Allison is somebody who’s studied weather events in depth and with a great deal of passion and who has incredibly strong opinions about the need for certain kinds of climate work, to demonstrate certain things about climate change. In a way, she’s sort of a combination between an academic and ideologue, and all of a sudden these storms leap out of her textbook and into her face.

So, it’s the story of a woman who’s had a lot of ideas and a lot of theories about weather and about the politics of weather who all of a sudden finds herself very much immersed in the practicalities of weather, which are two very different things. She’s getting her hands dirty for the first time and it’s very, very dirty.

I understand you did quite a bit of research for the role?
I did. I mean, I’m the daughter of academics. Research is just part of my de facto approach to things. So I got a meteorology textbook and thought I would just read it and try and make sense of it. But about fifteen pages in, I discovered that I quite simply did not have the physics to wrap my head around what was going on.

So I reached out to a professor of meteorology at the University of Michigan, which is in Ann Arbor, very close to where we shot in Detroit. I just ‘cold called’ him. He was the emeritus professor or chair of the department, and turned out to be a gentleman, I believe, in his 80’s. So, when I called, I sounded like a little like valley girl, ‘Hello, I’m an actor and I have some questions about weather. It’s a new movie.’ And, bless his heart, we actually met for lunch while I was filming and he was so patient, answered all kinds of questions for me and drew me all kinds of pictures that helped break down the science for somebody who has never been particularly strong in that suit. He was a doll.

And then, of course, I would take it to Steve. I’d say, ‘Steve, okay, you know how they say vorticity and none of us knows what that means?’ And we’d draw pictures and get all excited. Steve’s a big geek like I am, and we thought it was super cool to be able to be really specific about what all this stuff means and to be able to throw that language around in a way that Allison could.

Was he a fan of The Walking Dead?
No. I mean, granted, I have met people who are fans of the show in their 80’s but he did tell me that he told his son and his son was excited about it. And he looked me dead in the eye and he said, ‘For the life of me I don’t know why.’ [Laughs] And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s fantastic! I’ve never been to your classes before. You’ve never seen my work. We’re strangers and we’re collaborating for the moment.’

I will say that I think there’s a decent chance he’ll see the movie and as we were shooting it, one of my only goals was to make sure that he wouldn’t see the movie and think, like, ‘I took my time with this woman and she didn’t take it in and was a bad student.’ I didn’t want him to flunk me. [Laughs]

Can you talk about working with Richard Armitage, who plays Gary, the high school vice principal, and the bond that forms between them?
Richard was a doll. ‘Waiting For Richard’ was the title of this movie for a moment because I showed up in Detroit, had dinner with [director] Steve Quale and he said, ‘So, do you have any questions?’ I said, ‘Yeah, who’s playing Gary and who’s playing Pete?’ Because they still hadn’t cast them. And he said, ‘You’re going to be really excited but we’re still pursuing and we don’t want to jinx anything by saying.’

So, when I found it was Richard, I immediately wrote to Andy Lincoln [Callies’ former co-star in The Walking Dead] because my assumption is that all British actors know each other. And so far, I haven’t been wrong. [Laughs] Richard and Andy had done Strike Back together, and Andy was thrilled. I’m on this funny streak. I had, I think, five consecutive English leading men. So, when I called Andy about Richard, he said, ‘Oh, you’re going to love him. He’s a wonderful guy. He’s super smart. He’s really kind and he makes the set a great place to be.’ And then, unbeknownst to me, Richard did the same thing and called him. [Laughs] So, we actually came together having had a good friend vouch for each other, which was helpful.

Then, maybe a week later, Richard and I both were at San Diego Comic-Con. He was there with The Hobbit movie gang and I was with The Walking Dead gang and they were coming in right after us at a press event. But we were going to have to leave before they arrived. So I literally scribbled a note on a piece of paper and just said, ‘I heard from Steve that you’re going to be playing Gary. Can’t wait to meet you.’ And left a little lipstick mark on a piece of paper and handed it to a journalist. I said, ‘Would you please give this to Richard Armitage?’ She’s like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not.’ [Laughs] So, we were passing notes back and forth before we met.

And I really like what he did with Gary. The point of Gary, the point of all of these people, is that they’re not heroes. For all of the amazing, gorgeous films that are coming out right now with superheroes, this is just a movie about two people who are both teachers—I’m a professor and he’s an assistant principal—and we’re both parents and end up in a situation where we’re the ones who’ve got to advocate for and try to save as many students as we can, and also try and find our way back to our own children. And that’s a pretty simple story.

And Richard is so good looking. He’s so strong and he’s got such an incredible presence that it would’ve been easy for him I think to play Gary like a sort of Cary Grant-style hero. That wouldn’t have been the story but it would’ve been easy for him to do and everybody would’ve loved him for it. But he didn’t do that. He just put his ego aside and decided to play him as a regular guy and a man who was broken by the loss of his wife and having a hard time reaching his children. And I really admire what he did with that role because I think he did it beautifully.

Can you also talk about working with Matt Walsh, who plays Pete, the leader of the storm-chasing team?
Yeah, Matty was fantastic. I think we got really lucky with Matt because he doesn’t work from a place of ego. Matt works from a place of wanting to tell the story, and I thought he gave Pete a real beating heart. He was somebody who genuinely believed in a project and had put his whole heart and soul into it, just as Allison had, but we have completely different reasons for what we’re doing.

Pete is somebody who wants to show people something they’ve never seen before, and it’s also the only way he’s going to pay his bills. But he is a true believer and what’s kind of cool is that he and Allison are both passionate and intense and have differences, but they’re the differences that people have who deeply believe in what they’re doing. He’s not a mercenary which I think is pretty cool.

And having Matt Walsh on a set is just a little fun. He’s somebody who can look at you from across the field and make you crack up and you don’t even really know why. Matt just made everybody laugh and he was an absolute doll. We got really lucky; we had a really, really nice cast of people.

What was it like working with director Steven Quale, and how did he communicate his vision to you while bringing out so much naturalism in the characters?
Working with Steve is like entering the laboratory of a mad scientist. I mean, no matter who you are, he’s smarter than you, but he doesn’t make a point of it. [Laughs] It’s a little bit like sitting down and playing chess with Bobby Fischer. You’re hanging out with somebody who sees so many moves ahead of you that the best thing you can do is go along for the ride and do your work.

So, there were times where he was sort of bouncing around from bubbling beaker to bubbling beaker because it’s an incredibly technical movie. And I think Steve did a wonderful job of not making us feel like this is a movie about a tornado and you’re a bunch of meat puppets.

The truth of the matter is that the tornado is the star of the movie, but I think we’re also going to give people something very moving and very human. There are going to be a lot of people who buy the ticket because they want to see a big tornado and they’re going to get their money’s worth. It’s a big tornado, and it’s amazing. But Steve did a great job of not making our work as actors secondary to any of that.

The very first conversation he and I had was about, ‘How do we make this the most grounded human story that we possibly can?’ I found him really collaborative to work with. He’d listen to what you had to say and go, ‘Ok, let’s craft this thing together.’ There would be moments where I’d be worried about how something would work, and he would explain technically how he was going to deal with it. And, I’ll be honest, I never really understood the explanation. But I thought, ‘Well, he’s got an explanation so I’ll just trust him.’ And at the end of the day that trust I think paid off.

What was it like for you to work on such a stunt-heavy film? Did you do those stunts for real?
Oh, yeah. That was a part of the draw of the film for me, because I get to fly around and do wire work and stuff like that. I’d never had much of an experience doing it before on sets. I studied aerial arts for three years when I was in grad school and loved it. And I’ve always wanted to do a job where I could bring some of that work in.

So, we got to that scene outside the bank on the tank and our stunt coordinator, he’s a high flyer. He’s the guy who made his living jumping off of sixty-story buildings without any kind of a harness and sort of aiming for a mattress. He was just incredible. He’s fearless and has a real sense of what’s possible.

So, I showed up on the first day and they harnessed me up onto the wire and an hour later, we were just playing like children. He said, ‘Hey, I’m going to let you do all of this.’ I said, ‘Thank you. I want to do all of this.’ The one thing they wouldn’t let me do is the fall just because insurance companies at a certain point stand up and say, ‘You can’t drop our female lead 20 feet onto concrete. We’re not going let you do it.’ I said, ‘Okay, fine.’

So, I got to do virtually all of it and it was amazing. Part of the thing that’s great about that kind of work is there’s just no acting involved. Somebody puts you on a wire and yanks you backwards, there’s a hundred-mile-an-hour fan and a rain tower in your face, you don’t have to act scared. [Laughs] You’re right there. You’re scared. It’s pure adrenaline. And it was fun. It was really, really fun. The stunt coordinator and I talked about it afterwards. I was like, ‘Dude, let’s do a movie like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where we just fly through the whole thing.’ [Laughs] I absolutely loved it.

How about the special effects? I understand that the rain and the wind machines were there for about half the shoot?
Yeah. I read scripts differently now, which is to say I now look at a script and say, ‘Wait. I’m wet for how long? There’s how much rain in this thing?’ I just read the script and thought it was a great story and it wasn’t until we were actually in prep and I was breaking it down that I thought, ‘Wait a minute. I’m going to be soaked to the skin for 45 days out of this filming.’

What was great, and I know that this was intentional on Steve’s part, was they had as many practical effects as they could. So, we had hundred-mile-an-hour fans, which you can’t really fathom. The first time they turned it on in front of me in a scene it blew me 20 feet off my mark. You could literally lean your full body weight into it and it would hold you up. And then they’d throw dirt and leaves into it so there’d be debris flying around. Then they turned the rain towers on and it certainly wasn’t comfortable, but, again, it saved us the indignity of trying to act like you’re in a tornado. You’re just there.

I think green screen movies can be difficult because if you’ve got seven actors who are all imagining something different, it can start to become a little incoherent. We had a huge number of practical effects, and because Steve does come from such a technical background, he was able to unify our visions whenever we had to do imaginative work. He’d sit us down before we would start filming and show us all the mockups of the effects so that we would know what we’d be seeing.

In this film, cameras are positioned everywhere, and there is a lot of handheld camerawork. What was that like for you as an actor, and did having so many cameras around affect your performance?
In a way, what was great about it was that Richard and I both come from theater. I left this movie and went right into a play and Richard’s doing a play right now. There’s something great about being on stage, which is that it keeps you very honest because whether or not you’re talking, people are looking at you. If you’re not acting all the way down to your feet, people are going to see that your body is lying and they’re not going to buy it.

So, in a way, doing this movie was like doing a play because we had GoPro Cameras and an actor would have a camera over their shoulder and half the time it would be a tactical camera, so you never knew when you were being filmed. I don’t know how our cinematographer lit the film because it’s a virtually impossible task but, thankfully, it’s not a movie in which any of us had to look particularly good. [Laughs] We just had to look like people.

But the effect of having so many cameras around kept you very honest as an actor because you can’t say, ‘Well, I’m going to sit out this take.’ Everybody is on all the time, which I think is a wonderful way to work. And because it’s somewhat of a ‘found footage’ movie, you can’t do a traditional master, tighter close-up kind of shot because those angles might not exist in the ‘real’ world of the storytelling. So, a lot of times a scene will play as a single wide shot where you see five characters.

There’s a scene where we go to get the two kids who’ve been trapped—you’ll have to see the movie to know if we succeed—but you see the reactions of the three of us. And instead of cutting to the kids and cutting to the dad and cutting to the kids and cutting to me, it plays almost the way it would on stage. It’s very real and very raw. And I think the rawness of the way the footage is captured also helps reflect the rawness of the emotions that are involved. It’s not so much ‘shaky cam’ that you need to take a Dramamine before you go into the theater. But the camera itself is a character because the camera’s being held by the characters.

And I’ve got to give a shout-out to the camera team because, God bless them, they were with us in all of the wind, all of the rain, wrapped in plastic, fighting with the Alexa [camera] to make her do their bidding. It was no fun for them and they really did beautiful, beautiful work.

Looking back at the experience, do you have an experience that was particularly memorable for you?
[Laughs] Yeah. It’s not particularly serious but Richard and I were doing a scene in the weather van where I’m driving and we’re looking for his son. And we were both indoors but soaked to the skin. Then I took a deep breath and said, ‘Does it smell like a barn in here?’

He had on a cheap wool suit because his character would wear a cheap wool suit, and he insisted on that to the costume designer, ‘Get me something this character could afford.’ So, he had a cheap, wool suit and when it got wet, he smelled like a wet sheep. And they can hear this conversation over the earphones. And the makeup artist, who’s a marvelous woman who somehow kept makeup on our faces with a hundred-mile-an-hour fan right on us, came in and handed me a tube of Chap Stick that was bacon-flavored and said, ‘Put this on,’ and closed the door.

So, I put on the bacon-flavored Chap Stick. They closed the door and I was sitting there with my pig-smelling lips. Richard was here with his sheep-smelling suit and I turned to him and said, ‘Richard, you have no idea how many women would be thrilled for the opportunity to be locked in a very small space with you. And the only thing I can think is that you smell like a barn.’ We both started laughing. And for the rest of the day, every time they cut, he would just turn to me and go, ‘Baaah!’ It was just a lovely moment of two people surviving being wet and freezing cold.

What do you hope audiences will come away with after having experienced this movie?
I think maybe it’s possible that this is a movie about the fact that a parent’s love for their children is stronger than even the most violent storm imaginable. I think that’s pretty cool. And hopefully people will come out of this movie with a stronger sense of what we’re capable of as regular old people who try and protect each other, which can be pretty amazing.

But, look, if they just want to go see some really cool special effects and ignore those of us with arms and legs running around, that’s okay too. If you just want to sit in the dark for a couple of hours and let us tell you a pretty cool story about a really rough day, I’m okay with that too.

I don’t think it’s for me to tell people what they might get out of it. I just know I saw it and I knew it was coming and I had a really, really, really great time.

INTO THE STORM IS AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD ON 15TH DECEMBER 2014.

 

If you want someone who can be as sympathetic as he is scary, Spanish actor Luis Tosar is a good choice. He’s been excellent in the likes of Cell 211 and Even The Rain, and he returns to UK cinemas this Friday (March 1st) in Sleep Tight – from the director of [REC] – in which he plays a lonely night porter who gets up to come rather creepy activities at night. You can read our review here.

We caught up with Luis a few months ago, to chat about the film.

What attracted you to the film?
I loved the evil side of the character I play and the fact that he did not have any empathy and yet there was a great sense of humour about him. When I met up with the director we immediately clicked and I really felt that we were on the same wavelength for what we wanted the film to be, so I signed up straight away. We both believed that my character was perfect on the script and I didn’t want to change him in any way, I worked on small nuances when it felt right on set but on the whole, the script and the remarkably well-written character was why I signed up for Sleep Tight.

Cesar is a despicable character yet oddly endearing? How did you achieve this? Was this in the script or your doing?
I had no reference for where to start in terms of Cesar, as I’d never experienced anyone like him before. He is such an unusual character because he just doesn’t want anyone to be happy, he feeds off misery and when he encounters someone who is profoundly positive, he goes out of his way to make sure that stops. So instead I pictured myself in that dark mindset, and how I’d feel, act and behave and what I’d do to people who I didn’t understand. There’s a playful side to him, and I was incredibly interested in his sadistic game; I was determined to make the viewer feel like a victim and surprise them when they realise that he was not who they thought he was.

There have been some really great thrillers from the Spanish film industry recently, why do you think this is?
It could be because Filmax is based in Spain, they have their headquarters in Catalonia, and we have fantastic film factories now there as well, which I think together gives us the capabilities now to make internationally appealing films. We also have the Sitges film festival, which is also based in Catalonia, and I believe contributes hugely to creating a dedicated fan base of Spanish horror and fantasy film fans. The reception to Sleep Tight was great there.

Do you think that Sleep Tight will get a Hollywood remake?
Funnily enough, at the same time that they were making this film, they were talks of another film coming out with Hilary Swank that had a similar theme but it turned out they were not the same. But no, I’ve not heard any talk of remakes or an indication that anyone is going to make it.

What’s next for you?
My next film is called Operation E ad it’s a political drama based on the arms conflict in Columbia.

Thank you Luis.

On the 50th anniversary of the release of the first James Bond film (which comes on October 6th), many fans would assume Ian Fleming considered his life and work was a success, but that’s not quite the case, claims his biographer Jon Gilbert. Fleming may have been a good sportsman, a talented naval intelligence officer during the war and an admired writer but he was always in the shadow of his brother Peter, says Gilbert.

“Peter was a great athlete and explorer, and an excellent travel writer” explains Gilbert, “and he wrote books in the 1930s when there weren’t any travel books. So in many ways Ian was always in the shadow of his brother, but you can see the seeds of what made him a writer too – the sense of adventure, the sporting prowess.”

Ian Fleming deserves a biography, especially in this 50th anniversary of his greatest creation, James Bond. Fleming’s life was in many ways more extraordinary than Bond’s – he was educated in Geneva and Austria, he spoke four languages, he loved learning to scuba dive, and he was very well connected to many writers and publishers. His father’s obituary was written by none other than Winston Churchill, and Fleming kept a framed copy wherever he went. He also sat opposite Churchill during the war, and wrote for Reuters. And contrary to popular opinion he wasn’t an Eton-educated snob, he was actually in awe of writers who were held in higher esteem than himself – Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Stephen Spender.

Fleming was under-rated as a writer Gilbert thinks: “When Casino Royale was first published it wasn’t slated but it was considered alongside thriller writers. Somerset Maugham – who wrote the Ashburn series of spy books, which could have inspired James Bond – read it and liked it, but didn’t review it publicly because they were friends.”

Casino Royale wasn’t an instant success either: “It sold ok but it was a slow start. It wasn’t until the book was serialised in the Express, then the biggest paper of the day, that it started to take off and the books started to really sell. Then there was the first film, Dr. No, with Sean Connery that really took off.”

Ah yes, the Connery question. Film history seems to record that Fleming didn’t like Connery as his character but Gilbert reveals: “There is absolutely no evidence of that at all. He kept notebooks, and he visited the set – the beach where Ursula Andress comes out of the water was near his home – and there is nothing to say he disapproved of Connery.”

In the US Fleming had another piece of good fortune – President Kennedy did an interview where he was asked to name his top 10 books – From Russia With Love was number nine. Gilbert says: “Kennedy was seen as very cool, so to have that endorsement was massive.”

Fleming only lived long enough to see two of his Bond books turned into films, but was happy with them says Gilbert: “I think he was very flattered at all the attention, and of course they made him a lot of money. “

Of course it wasn’t just Bond books that were made into films: “He was ill in 1961 with heart trouble, and while he was recovering he wrote down the stories he told his son when he was a boy. They turned into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That was turned into a film with a script by Roald Dahl, who knew Fleming from during the war. Dahl was a natural choice to bring out the darker sides of the story – the child catcher is pure Dahl. But Dahl was a pilot during the war so they had that connection.”

An hour in Gilbert’s company is enough to completely change your view of Fleming – he was not the martini-drinking snob who hated modernism (he admittedly hated a famous house in Hampstead so much he used the architect’s name for his baddie – Goldfinger) but was a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky person who certainly lived life to the full.

Gilbert adds: “He had a travel job for the Sunday Times which he used to put his experiences in his books. For example he asked listeners to tell him where buried treasure was and he went out to scuba dive the places to see if it was true. He never found anything but you can see the use of buried treasure in his books.”

In fact everything in Fleming’s life reappeared as Bond: “The war gave him all the stories he needed, and he had an interest in cars, and adventures. It’s all there.”

Bond had one advantage over Fleming though: “He was immortal”.

Ian Fleming: The Bibliography by Jon Gilbert is released by Queen Ann Press for £250 and £175.

Since starting out as a stand-up comedian while still a teenager, Bobcat Goldthwait has gone on to become a well known comedy actor, probably still best remembered as the squeaky-voiced criminal turned police cadet Zed in the Police Academy series.

He made his directorial debut in 1991with Shakes the Clown (described by the Boston Globe as “The Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies”) in which he also starred. He didn’t direct another feature film until 2006 when, with bestiality comedy Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, he seemed to have found his niche, making clever black comedies with likeable characters that explore the darkest corners of the human psyche. Bobcat followed up Let Sleeping Dogs Lie in 2009 with World’s Greatest Dad ,about a sensitive failed writer, played by Robin Williams, who writes a fake suicide note for his obnoxious son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) after he dies in a humiliating accident.

Now, with God Bless America, Bobcat levels his sights at the nauseatingly shallow world of reality TV and the worthless “celebrities” that it spawns, as well as fear-mongering news organisations and uninformed political movements. Veteran character actor and Mad Men star Joel Murray (last seen on British cinema screens in a small role in The Artist) gets a rare feature film lead role as Frank, a disillusioned, jobless and terminally ill man who, sick of a culture that celebrates “the shallowest, the dumbest, the meanest and the loudest”, takes matters into his own hands and sets off on a killing spree. He encounters Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr) a teenage outcast with similar disillusions about modern culture to Frank and the pair form an unusual bond.

I was able to catch up with Bobcat and Joel during the Edinburgh International Film Festival to discuss their film which is released in cinemas on July 4th and on DVD on July 9th. Oh, and by the way, the interview contains spoilers.

Where did the original idea for God Bless America come from?
Bobcat Goldthwait: A couple of things, one of the big things that kind of influenced it was, I was in London and they were having a My Super Sweet 16 marathon. I was really disappointed that this was what we were projecting to the rest of the world and I thought, “Oh, these children should die!” I think that was part of the germ of the idea.

How did it progress from there?
BG: I wrote the screenplay as a Christmas present for my wife. You know, I think people think I’m a misanthrope but I think she’s more of the misanthrope of the couple.

Joel Murray: You’re the cockeyed optimistic.

BG: Yeah, I’m the plucky one. No, because she actually thinks if you kill certain people the world would be better (laughs). I’m more just kind of only say: “Kill ‘em all.” I’m more like an old Metallica album.

Do you think you’re an angry person?
BG: I don’t think I’m angry at all; you’d have to ask Joel that!

JM: The kids that play on your lawn think you’re angry! I don’t think you’re angry, I think you’ve just got something to say and you say it. And I got hired to say it.

Would either of you say you’re as pessimistic as Frank is in the film?
BG: No, the reason the ending is pessimistic is because I was trying to make a movie that kind of threw it back onto the audience and asked: “Are you part of the problem? Or are you part of the solution?” And if I’d had an ending that was all kind of upbeat I think it would have been kind of a cop-out. It wouldn’t be challenging people; it would just be preaching to the converted and pandering.

JM: Well, there would have been a much better chance of a sequel.

What is essentially the message you’re trying to convey to the audience?
BG: I was trying to ask the audience “Where are we going as people? What it does it say about us that we have such a huge appetite for these kinds of distractions?”

JM: Why can’t we be nice?

BG: And why can’t we be nice at the end of the day? You know, these shows and things don’t really bother me; the list could have been anything. I picked American Idol because it was something that’s universally known. I don’t watch these shows so they don’t bother me.

JM: As an actor they kind of bother me because they take work from other actors. They’re hiring non-actors because they’re cheaper and they’re taking work from writers and producers who aren’t getting regular salaries. I think it’s a complete scam.

BG: With reality shows, beside the writers and actors, it’s all the people behind the scenes…

JM: If I want to work for nothing I’ll work for you!

Was the part written with Joel in mind? Have you know each other a long time?
JM: It was on One Crazy Summer we met, the John Cusack comedy.

BG: It wasn’t a movie it was just one crazy summer! I didn’t write the part with Joel in mind but I had back pain and he was kind enough to give me a box-set of Mad Men when I was high on pain medicine and my wife said “You should use Joel”. I would have said yes even if I wasn’t high! But it was one of the coolest things I’ve had in regards to casting, it just finally made sense. I thought, “If Joel will do this then it will work” and I gave him the script but I forgot to tell him I wanted him to be the lead.

JM: I read the script I was like, “Yeah it’s great, am I the guy in the office or who? Wait, THE GUY?”

(Both laugh)

BG: It’s kind of funny, if you watch the movie, whatever you think of it, it’s clear that Joel is a Bill Macy or a Phillip Seymour Hoffman, you know? I don’t understand why he’s not leading other pictures.

JM: I’m not like those guys. Bill Macy is a much nicer guy (laughs).

The film’s been out a month or so in the states, what has the general reaction been? Have there been any accusations of being irresponsible?
BG: Some of that. You know, being irresponsible came about from the trailer, people were saying that. And I was saying that if you could take healthy normal people and turn them into killers by making a movie then the military would be producing a lot more movies. And in regards to banning it because… You know if we were just killing people that Americans don’t like right now, then no one would have a problem with it (laughs)

Was there much backlash regarding the baby killing fantasy sequence?
JM: Everyone seems to like it!

BG: Everyone knows that baby’s an asshole!

JM: You know that’s kind of Bob’s style in that its, “Let’s see if you’re gonna stay for the whole film!” It’s what, like a minute and forty seconds into the film? Bam! Okay, everyone’s staying!

BG: The only weird thing about that is that there’s something Joel’s character says ” I now know I’m no longer normal” he’s not a healthy guy at this point he already knows that he doesn’t like where he’s going or how he’s thinking.

JM: There’s something about the lullaby music as the baby’s exploding and bloods dripping down my face. There’s something about that lullaby that lets you know we’re not taking it that seriously. Later there’s a montage with an animated car as we go on a killing spree, it’s not for real!

BG: The funny story about the baby is that the baby wouldn’t cry. I’d said I needed an ugly baby; it should look like we’d shaved a pug! And when the baby turned up its parents were like, “So, what are we shooting today?” and the AD goes “Your baby” and they didn’t laugh and we went, “Oh fuck, no one told them!” (laughs). And the baby wouldn’t cry no matter what it just sat there like Hitchcock or something, we would take things from it…

JM: Sent its parents away…

BG: And you know eventually, I’d love to tell you I’m a better man than this, but I got down on my knees and sat an inch away from its face and went [makes terrifying monster noises] until the baby started crying. But as soon as I left her she stopped crying again! So the funny part of that story is nine or ten years from now that kid will be watching a Police Academy and then just start screaming and run out the door! (Laughs)

So the parents were totally unaware of what was going to happen to their baby?
JM: No, they were just so excited to be making money off this kid.

Bobcat, do you think your stand up persona and your role as Zed in the Police Academy series affects your audience for your films as a director?
BG: I think, especially in the states, my name and everything, I come with a lot of baggage. I think some people who might enjoy the movies stay away but they’re so small that they’re really only known through the festival circuit and stuff like that. I intentionally keep my name at the end of the movie, I like it when people stumble upon one of my movies accidentally on cable and they go, “I didn’t know he made that movie.” Ao, you know it doesn’t say “A Bobcat Goldthwait Joint”. So yeah, I think I come with baggage but I don’t think it’s even from Police Academy and things like that, I think it’s the more embarrassing things I did as a guy making a living like being on Hollywood Squares and you know, game shows and crap like that.

Do you have a favourite scene in the film?
BG: I like the scene where they’re playing Russian roulette with the balloon gun. But the thing about that is I didn’t write that. It’s just a scene that Joel and Tara are adlibbing, the sun was going down and Joel pointed out that the lighting was really pretty and my movies are always claustrophobic because they’re so cheap that they’re always just a couple people talking inside. So we ran out and that scene was an adlibbed scene. And the other scene I really like is I really love it when he kills Chloe, you know I just think that’s funny and…

JM: Lighting the cigarette and you’re expecting the car to explode…

BG: Yeah I always liked that scene as well. And you?

JM: I really like the office scene, the guy I was in the scene with was so funny. I mean just to get all that out, it’s just two and a half minutes or something but there’s just so much information that comes out of my mouth and then to go to this other guy who’s just such a perfect dick, you know? Such an LA guy somehow in Syracuse.

BG: He’s really funny, just laughing at the wrong things. Like, he’s trying to make a point about what’s wrong with these TV shows and he’s like, “Shit I missed that, that sounds really good, a woman threw her tampon?” He’s really great.

JM: I liked the driving shots as well; I think the car looks good.

When Kick-Ass came out a couple of years ago there was a lot of controversy over the fact it featured a young girl and a grown man killing people in what was seen as almost a pornographic way. Do you think the relationship between Frank and Roxy will similarly be seen as suspect?
BG: It should be. That’s the idea, that Frank has this idea of how people should live and then by the end he’s thinking about possibly running off and living with this girl in France. So Frank doesn’t even hold up to his own expectations. You know for me, that part of the movie was important because instead it would have just been a vigilante movie for 90 minutes, where I just shoot things that everybody doesn’t like, or the majority of us don’t like, and that didn’t really interest me. I wanted to make it a movie where we question our own behaviour. But Kick-Ass bothered me because, I didn’t mind it and thought it was funny when the kid was killing and stuff, but what really disturbed me was the scene where she shows up in like a sexy school uniform to infiltrate the place and she’s supposed to be 11 maybe? That actually creeped me out, it made it so I couldn’t enjoy the movie after that point, it lost me there.

Was there ever a version of the script where Tara turned out to be a figment of Frank’s imagination? Watching the film that seemed like a possibility.
BG: No, that would have been interesting, I like that idea. Reshoots! I think [If Roxy was imaginary] Frank would have had an adult woman who was smart and I don’t think he would have been fighting with her. That is a good idea, for some reason I just wanted to ride this all the way out. I think for me the only kind of magical realism that shows up in the movie is when she appears at the end but in my head I kind of justify it when her parents say, “We’re going to Disneyland!” so I imagine at the end that’s when she escapes, I could have had her running out of the Magic Kingdom! (Laughs)

Was the Roxy character a part of the film from beginning or was she added to the script later on?
BG: Yeah, the Roxy character came about because I kind of…there’s two scenes where, a theme that I always kind of like exploring is that we are what we hate, so I needed a young girl but I didn’t want her to be a Lolita or a Goth or you know, a clichéd character. I wanted the reason she’s an outcast to be because she’s smart. So I often come up with the end of the movie first but actually the very first scene I ever came up with was this idea of the kid who says, “You killed Chloe? Awesome”. I didn’t even know where they were gonna go when I came with that idea but I liked the idea that there’s this kid who instead of screaming and freaking out, thinks it’s the coolest thing she’s ever seen.

How much rehearsal time did you get to work with Tara Lynne Barr before you started production?
BG: We usually have a table read but we didn’t even get that.

JM: You said I was going to be part of the casting process and you’ll come in and you’ll read with the girls and then he called me and said “Oh yeah, I got the girl.” I was like “Oh, how’d I do?” (Laughs)

BG: Well Tara came in and in my head I was like, “If her and Joel get on this’ll work”. I always panic too once I find the person that they’re not gonna do it, and it doesn’t matter who it is. Once I had the idea of Joel being Frank I was really being coy when I said, “Hey, I got a new script do you want to read it?” because I was afraid he was gonna say, “This is too fucking dark” and then with Tara or when Daryl Sabara came in for World’s Greatest Dad and did a great job, I was afraid that his parents are gonna be jerks – they weren’t, his mom’s really nice – and that someone was gonna tell him not to do it. Because that does happen to me a lot, people tell people not to be in my movies (Laughs).

Your films are all fairly dark, do you have any plans to make anything more light-hearted?
BG: I’ve written other movies that weren’t dark, I guess. But even the movies that people think of in terms of kids movies, you know like Wizard of Oz is really scary, you know like when the monkeys rip them apart and the good Disney animations are really terrifying so… I did write a movie that when my wife finished reading it she looked at me and said, “You wrote a family picture”, I didn’t mean to but I just write these movies really quick and you know even the ones that wouldn’t be rated for adults still have the same themes, you know? And you know, you’re laughing when you’re not supposed to if they work for you and they explore the unpleasant side of people, even the ones that are a little G-rated explore parts of us that we don’t often like to poke around. I met Todd Solondz about a month and a half ago, did I tell you?

JM: No.

BG: Todd Solondz, John Waters and I posed for a photo and it was like the Mount Rushmore of fucked up! (Laughs).

Did you cut anything out of the film that you were sorry to lose, or not sorry to lose?
BG: No, the only bonus footage is, there’s actually more television stuff that Frank watches. One didn’t make it into the movie because it was really funny but it was a different tone, it was almost Christopher Guest, kind of, which are great movies, so if you get the DVD then there’s like another five minutes of Chloe when she does that show, there’s like a five, six minute version of that where they’re all adlibbing. It’s pretty funny. And then there’s a baby fashion show called the Jersey Shorties, that’s in there, you know just more TV.

Obviously the film’s called God Bless America and is about America and American culture, but how aware are you of that reality TV culture being worldwide?
BG: I don’t know because this is the European debut, so I’m interested in that. I have a feeling, yes, in the UK [there is the same kind of culture], but I don’t know what it means in the rest of the world. I don’t know if everybody’s watching the same stuff. This is the first movie I’ve ever had that was bought in Japan, but that could just be because they have guns and Tara has huge anime eyes!

Are you both proud to be American?
JM: I’ve been to a lot of countries, I think it’s still a great place; it’s one of my favourite places to be. Am I proud to be American? Well, I hope we can keep my man in the presidency in the next election, as opposed to going off the Right end! I’m not a wild liberal but I grew up a Democrat. I’m not ashamed of my country in any way but I’m ashamed of the way that Congress is acting now. It’s doing absolutely nothing on purpose, if you behaved that way in any other job you’d be fired! And I hope these people do get fired. But that’s the way it is sometimes and hopefully, come November; we’ll get back on track and do some actual things to make the country better.

BG: Am I proud? Probably not. I mean the problem when you say stuff like that is you start losing your ability to look at your flaws. So, I think it is a great country with a lot of really large flaws. And I am glad that I live in a country where I can point them out and not be jailed. So yeah, there are a lot of great things about it. But often I’m not happy about the foreign policy; also a lot of citizens in the US really have tunnel-vision on how our actions affect the globe. But of course I’m thrilled to be living in a place where I can express myself and find like-minded people.

So how long did it actually take you to write the script for God Bless America?
BG: About a month but it took longer to write this one than usual. And it took me an even longer time to edit it, because the original draft was about 187 pages! A lot more people got killed; there was a lot more weird stuff, like Steven Clark (Aris Alvarado) is on the cross at one point and the Idol judges are the soldiers holding a sponge to his face and Joel and Tara are on the cross next to him and then Joel reaches behind the cross and rips the nail out of his hand and pulls an AK-47 out and starts shooting all the Roman soldiers! But, you know budget, so that hit the floor.

Joel, were you sorry you didn’t get to do that scene?
JM: I didn’t know about it until we started doing these press interviews! (Laughs)

BG: You would have been in a loincloth!

JM: It would have been a chance to get stigmata.

BG: We could have put you in your Hawaiian shirt on the cross! There were fantasy scenes; there were other scenes that became kind of redundant. And then there’s the stuff that’s just budget-wise you know? There was a time when they were up on a rooftop in Manhattan shooting people; there was a lot of stuff hit the floor. I mean they weren’t just shooting random people! There’s a movie called Little Murders where, spoiler alert I’m going to ruin it, it’s about a family who are just like Frank in a weird way they’re just crushed by modern society and they come together as a family unit at the end of the picture by getting up on the roof and starting shooting strangers. It was made in the 70s and I’m sure was an influence [on God Bless America].

Had you seen James Gunn’s Super?
BG: No, but they’re brought up a lot, this movie and Super. You know there were a lot of comments when people saw the trailer, “I liked this movie better when it was called Super.” Really? I liked that joke better when I heard it 9,000 other times! But no, I didn’t see it, I did see Slither, I liked that James Gunn movie. I don’t feel, from what I’m aware of that movie, it doesn’t seem like it explores the same themes. I mean it does have a middle-aged guy and a young girl…

JM: Who’s named Frank.

BG: Yeah, I think if I was gonna rip someone off; I probably would have changed the name! That’s how brilliant I am. I mean I didn’t see it but if I had maybe it would have affected me not writing it, but I think I’d probably written it already by the time that movie came out.

Were there any other influences for God Bless America?
BG: The real influences were like, Gun Crazy, Bonnie & Clyde…I think it’s funny that sometimes people say, “Did you ever see Super?” because no, but I steal plenty of scenes from other movies that aren’t Super! There’s the Taxi Driver scene, the overhead shot [of the car] is from Taxi Driver too. It’s very derivative of Network. You know, I’ll tell you who I’m ripping off; I’m not coy about it! And I would say Little Murders is a big one.

So, do you have plans for your next project?
BG: I don’t know, because I’d written five movies after World’s Greatest Dad but I don’t know what the next ones going to be. I just try to get them financed and I don’t really have, like, an agenda. I just try to get the next one going.

Do you think you two will work together again?
JM: I hope so; it was a lot of fun.

BG: Yeah I’d love to work with him again.

JM: It was a great time. The whole vibe on the shoot was really fun; it was people making film for the sake of the art and you know, older guys teaching younger kids how to do certain things in their section or their craft. And people being promoted to scoring the movie from being a PA, just because they were doodling on a piano at one point!

BG: Yeah, we were cleaning all the blood out from when we killed the parents and the guy who wound up writing the score was just sat there playing on an electric piano that was there and he ended up scoring the movie. So yeah, in the Bob-World universe that kind of thing happens.

JM: Well, I ended up being the star of the movie! You never know what you’re gonna be! (Laughs)

So you enjoyed making a smaller, independent film?
JM: It was fun. I mean I was changing in my van and literally, you know, moving sandbags and stuff like that. I worked like a week after this on a movie that’s just come out with Bruce Willis: Lay The Favourite. And you know, I worked with these guys, they were in the same film as me, but I never saw them. They were in these huge, monolith trailers. But I got to work with Stephen Frears which was cool.

Thank you very much, Joel and Bobcat.

Interviewer: Adam Pidgeon

To most, John Madden will always be the director of such period classics as Mrs. Brown and Shakespeare in Love. Oscar-nominated for Best Director on the latter, he steered the film to a staggering 13 Academy Award nominations and seven wins, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Gwyneth Paltrow and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Dame Judi Dench. Since then, he’s branched out, adapting Louis de Bernières’s best-selling novel Captain Corelli’s Mandoli, David Auburn’s play Proof and Elmore Leonard’s book Killshot for the big screen. Yet, with his latest movie, Madden takes on a different type of source material – that of the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov, directed and co-written by Assaf Bernstein.

Remaking it as The Debt, it tells a complex story about secrets, lies, history and guilt, starting in East Berlin in the 1960s and continuing in Tel Aviv in 2007. Cutting back and forth between the two, the story sees three Mossad agents (Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas) sent to kidnap a Nazi doctor and bring him to trial in Israel. Over forty years later, the former agents (now played by Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds and Tom Wilkinson) must contend with a secret they’ve kept about the operation for all this time. Below, Madden talks about what drew him to the film, why he loves working with Helen Mirren and his next film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Q: The Debt has been a long time coming. Can you explain why?
A: We filmed in January, February and March of 2009. We ended up finishing the film later because I wanted Tom Newman to do the score and I couldn’t get access to him until September of that year. So we finally finished the film at the beginning of 2010.

Q: What appealed to you about The Debt?
A: Well, it’s extraordinarily compelling and challenging material. It’s thematically weighty. It’s an extraordinary opportunity to tell a story that in one sense is a very pure cinematic genre – the genre of the thriller. But also one that allows a very complex emotional and psychological drama to unfold at the same time. Usually those things pull against each other in a project and you have to stop the thriller for a moment in order to fill in the character and catch up on who they really are. And this film is very different in that way. You understand who these people are through the story that’s unfolding. It all pulls against itself in a really interesting way. An amazing challenge in terms of the material, but a great opportunity as well.

Q: How did you come across the Israeli film, Ha-Hov, that The Debt is based on?
A: Well, I can’t take credit for that. What happened was that somebody who was involved in the original Israeli film, as an executive producer, brought it to the attention of somebody at the agency that represents Matthew. And Matthew Vaughn and Kris Thykier had a company and they essentially saw the completed film and thought it deserved a wider platform. The original film was made in Hebrew and it received quite a limited release inside Israel so not many people in Israel saw it, which I didn’t realise until I got there to film. I thought it would be very well known, but it wasn’t. But it’s such a compelling story and so powerful and very challenging to tell that story in the form of a thriller, without selling the material short. It also frankly evoked a movie that I really like, which is the kind of movie that used to be made in the Seventies, where the thrillers were about psychology and behaviour and character was an essential part of what was going on. Those films are still being made but there’s a definite tendency for certain kinds of thrillers to move off into the total immersion zone. And the psychology is very reduced and very simple, if provocative. So the fact it’s a character story and a human drama…

Q: But do you think we’ve gone through the Bourne phase to return to something more realistic?
A: I think so. It’s funny, one imposes those constructions in retrospect, but the impulse is probably the same. Meaning the impulse to get back to something that is a contrasting colour from what we’re used to seeing now.

The Debt Press Conference Highlights

Q: What films were you thinking of that inspired The Debt?
A: The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor. Those sort of movies that had political complexity to them. China Syndrome is a different kind of thriller, but had something to say. So much of modern film has been hijacked by the visceral experience, the fairground ride. The most extreme manifestation is 3D, obviously. It’s about how can you bazooka somebody into a really trippy experience. The satisfactions of a film that works with tension and fear and intrigue and mystery and suspense that is also about character has been forgotten along the way. Then you see something like Tinker, Tailor and you go ‘Wow, that’s a different kind of experience.’.

Q: Did Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman originally intend for The Debt to be a project for Matthew to direct?
A: Yes, in the first instance. Matthew being Matthew, he thought ‘This is a good one for me to direct’, and Jane is his writing partner and does most of the actual writing. The script that I first encountered was very tailored towards being a Matthew Vaughn film. But he understood and acknowledged immediately that a director would have to make the film that he or she saw.

Q: Did you ever have any discussions with Matthew and Jane?
A: Yeah, there were some talks. I talked to Jane at considerable length, but it was fairly obvious that, because they were already engaged on Kick-Ass, which they were about to start shooting and which they’d been writing at the same time, it was not going to work out in terms of the time frame. So Peter Straughan came onto the film and we worked very, very closely on deconstructing and reconstructing.

Q: Given you made this two-and-a-half years ago and you have Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain in the cast, you must be a good talent-spotter…
A: Well, with Jessica, I was very lucky to find her. I absolutely wanted to cast an actress who was little known. I didn’t want ‘How did she turn into Helen Mirren?’ to become the agenda that dominated the film. If it had been another famous actress, that would’ve been the case. But directors are often credited with discovering somebody…

Q: Who else were you considering?
A: It would be invidious to say that! But there were other actresses that I didn’t know, that I was interested in investigating. But to be honest with you, I didn’t get so far with that. Helen was my given. That’s where the casting started. Once I had her committed to the film, the film then became a viable film. That’s the way it works. Obviously there was consideration about finding an actress who had a physical affinity with her. Though I have to say, having worked with Jessica, even if her physical affinity had not been as good as it was, I’m sure I would still have cast her.

Q: And Sam?
A: Sam I knew only from one film. Avatar had been shot but it hadn’t come out. I wasn’t even aware that he’d done these things. Strangely then, as now, people aren’t quite sure who he is. He was in a film called Somersault and I remembered the performance very strongly. It made an impact on me and he just lodged in my mind, as soon as I came across the material. It’s an unusual part. He’s the bespectacled boy in Lord of the Flies; that character – he’s wounded, and damaged, and hidden, but equally he has to have a heroic masculine presence. He just seemed like a very good fit. I went and pitched the film to him in Albuquerque once I had traced where he was (he was there shooting Terminator: Salvation). So I thought, ‘If I think he’s right I’ll pitch it really well and, if I think he’s not right, I won’t pitch it so well!’. So I pitched it as well as I could – he has a very distinctive presence. As it happens, the time-span has probably not hurt us. It’s certainly not hurt us with Jessica. Actually, when it was originally supposed to come out, Sam would’ve been known then. But you know what? People see the movie because of Helen.

Q: Is that down to her success with The Queen?
A: Of course it is, but those of us who live in this country knew her as an iconic figure well before that. That’s unquestionably what has put her in that position internationally though, just as – nothing to do with me – Mrs Brown did for Judi Dench, who did not have a film career of any significance particularly in the industry before that. It’s where they suddenly click with a role – often a royal as it turns out! You could say the same of Colin [Firth], I guess. But Helen is one of those actors, and Judi Dench is another one, that audiences just connect with because of something to do with their being immediately available. An audience finds it very easy to engage.

Q: And you’ve made another movie with Tom Wilkinson and Judi Dench, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. What’s that about?
A: What would I call it? It’s a comedy but it’s a melancholy comedy about a constituency that is ignored in life and in movies frequently – older people, the grey pound. That’s a line in the film! It’s about the grey pound and the grey opportunities, or lack of opportunities. It’s about people who find themselves at some dead end, either through lack of money or bereavement or physical infirmity or a wrong marriage. And none of these people know each other and they get pointed to a website which is advertising a crumbling Indian palace as a hotel where people can go and retire and outsource their retirement. It’s a very funny idea, and a very good idea, that the character in the film has. That character is played by Dev Patel. They arrive and of course the place is not what it purports to be, as nothing in India really is. And it’s about them colliding with India and with one another. It’s a very unusual piece.

Thank you John.

The Debt arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on January 23rd.

It’s rare for an action-thriller to clean up at a major awards ceremony, especially as it’s set in a prison, but Daniel Monzon’s Cell 211 did just that at Spain’s prestigious Goya Awards. It picked up eight gongs, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor.

We caught up with Daniel to find out what he had to say about the movie, which arrives on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on January 9th.

How and when did you come into contact with the novel [Cell 211 is based on a book by Francisco Pérez Gandul]?
One of the Producers gave me the book and I read it in a night. It was a page turner. Initially I was sceptical, but when I closed the book I had already decided that I wanted to do this movie. There were plenty of great ideas, for example the concept of a guard who goes to a jail the day before he starts work and because of an accident finds himself trapped in the middle of a riot and has to pretend he is a criminal in order to hide his true identity.

And there was a flavour of Greek Tragedy. A character that is at a shining moment in his life, when suddenly everything changes, in 30 hours in this case, and a life is ruined by a twist of destiny. This guy has to suffer in these 30 hours the worse things a human could suffer and he is going to change forever. This type of journey is very interesting for an audience to follow.

This was a challenge for me as a director. To put the audience in Juan’s position, to grab them by the neck at the outset and not let them go until the very end. I have seen the movie with a lot of audiences, in different countries and the audiences always react in the same way, they’re shocked at the end, silenced. The challenging thing was to put the audience in the same point of view as Juan and push them to understand him and justify his actions, which is disturbing.

How was adapting the novel for a cinema audience? Was it a great challenge?
We went to real jails to talk to the inmates and guards, to take all this reality and put it into the script and finally the movie. They were really open to our questions because they are starved of this type of conversation or contact, closed off in the cells. When there is someone who is interested in talking to them they are like open books. They really talk a lot and we learnt a lot about jails. The prison system is a kind of kingdom with its own rules, its own hierarchy. Geographically jails are very close to our cities but these jails are far, far away from public knowledge. We wanted to show a little bit of this universe, and take the audience through the locked keyhole straight into the cell. I realised that the story had to be told in a way that the audience felt is real, and this is reflected in the style of the movie. For example we used real inmates as extras in the scenes to give us the authenticity that you cannot get from professional extras or make up. We had to convince the real inmates and the authorities as well for them to be in the movie.

We also shot in a jail to be inspired by the real spaces. It was a great help for all of us; for the team, for the DoP for the professional actors, to be living in the real space, surrounded by the evidence of the people who had lived there, the desperate signs, the scratches and marks on the walls of the punishment cells. You enter the cells and there is a palpable presence. I showed the actors the cells on the first day of filming, and actors are very sensitive to this kind of thing, to the smell and feel of what happened in a space. Somehow it was like a ghost experience, I felt like the jail was whispering in my ear how to frame our scene, how to choreograph the actors. I told my DoP, to forget that we are making a fiction and to think about how we’d shoot it as a documentary. Every day I went on set with an open mind and I tried to each day to make the movie as believable and authentic as possible. I had some shots in my mind but I never used them. I found the reality of the every day situations more interesting.

The Opening of the film is brutally graphic. What challenges did you face to depict the harsh reality of prison life?
Everything comes from reality. The brutal, graphic violence in the movie came from our research. The suicide at the opening of the movie is not in the novel, but when we were talking to real inmates and guards at the jail they told us the story about an inmate who was complaining he had a headache all the time. The doctor diagnosed him through the bars of the cell and told him it was diarrhoea. Finally the guy committed suicide and the results of the autopsy showed that he had a tumour the size of a kiwi fruit. This was reality. When we were writing the script we thought that it was a very hard, direct way to open the movie. This is what the film is, if you can stand it, suffer it, then okay otherwise you still have time to leave. But to my surprise and my happiness the movie affects every type of audience. Even old ladies have come to me and said this is a very beautiful movie, they say it’s violent but it is not gratuitous.

Can you tell us something about the casting?
This is an ensemble movie, so for me it was absolutely important to get the best actor for each character role. It was Kubrick who said that the best a director can do with his actors is to choose them well. It’s so true, I spent eight months auditioning and trying to get to know the actors in preparation for their roles. The most difficult part to cast was Juan. We made hundreds of auditions and I could not find an actor to play Juan because it is a really difficult role. He’s a normal, friendly guy at first who is going to change totally, who transforms into a dark and haunted soul by the end of the film.

I realised in order to find one guy who would be believable with this transformation I needed to cast an unknown actor. But it was very difficult because he had to be able to confront an actor like Luis Tosar who plays Malamadre, and convince him of his disguise. Finally my casting director remembered “that one guy, who won an acting prize in a contest of fighting, take a look”. When I saw Alberto Ammann I felt something about his size, the strength of his look, everything. His image was a really great contrast with Luis. With his clean cut features so pure, so innocent, Alberto made Luis seem even more brutal. So we made an audition between them and it was great, They listened to each other, they looked at each other, they were alive, feeding off each other and I was convinced that this was the correct guy to take on Luis’s Malamadre.

Thank you Daniel.

Cell 211 is released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 9th. If you’d like to try and win a copy in our comp, click here.