Jessica Lucas, Michael Stahl-David and T.J. Miller are on the run in "Cloverfield."
The J.J. Abrams-produced hit
Cloverfield, currently Fandango’s top-selling movie, tells the tale of a group of trendy, partying twenty-somethings whose lives are disrupted by a behemoth crashing into Manhattan. From there, our unlikely hero (Michael Stahl-David ) seeks to save his girlfriend (Odette Yustman), aided by his colleagues (Jessica Lucas, Lizzy Caplan) and best friend (T.J. Miller), who documents the story with his hand-held camera. Fandango had the chance to sit down at the New York press conference with the film’s young cast and the film’s director Matt Reeves.
Fandango: If a giant monster really attacked New York, what would you do?
T.J. Miller: Buy tickets on Fandango!
Odette Yustman: Run! Just run.
T.J: A lot of people ask me, “Wouldn’t you put the camera down? Would you still be taping?” But I think I would [keep rolling]. In that situation, it’s a comfort for my character to be able to separate himself from the events happening through his viewfinder. In this current socioeconomic and political state, it’s people’s instinct to document [what happens].
Fandango: How did you guys prepare for fighting and fleeing from invisible monsters?
Jessica Lucas: With this style of filming, you can’t really prepare much. The more spontaneous it is, the better it turns out.
Lizzy Caplan: There was a lot of green screen. You have to draw upon experiences when you were a kid [imagining] being chased by monsters.
Fandango: Did you know beforehand what the monster would look like?
T.J.: They showed us some animation and gave us an idea of what it would look like. But when all of us saw the finished product, it was pretty surprising.
Fandango: Did you have to do a lot of takes for each scene?
Jessica Lucas: For the very first scene, we did 50 or 60 takes, and I thought, “Is this what it’s going to be like for the whole movie?”
Odette: I thought it was me! I absolutely thought I just sucked and that it was my fault and I was going to get fired. Then I talked to the other actors, and they said, “No, [we experienced] the same thing! That’s what’s going on.” You have to get it all in one take, so a lot of times we had to go back and get certain [things].
Michael Stahl-David: Usually, [an actor] has the luxury of being able to hold back, when you know you can save the emotion for your close-up. With this [style], however, you just had to go for it every time.
Fandango: T.J., since you’re not on screen for most of the movie, how did you approach your role?
T.J.: When I saw that in the script and I realized that I wasn’t going to be on camera, I first thought, “How am I going to make any impact? I’m a forgettable character in this film!” But I don’t think that happened. He’s just as much a part of the story as anyone else, even though you don’t see him.
I actually tried to get myself in front of the camera a few times, so that I could get the audience to relate to me. J.J. and Matt saw those additional scenes and felt it was jarring. The audience fuses with [my character]. Each time you see him, you go, “Oh, we forgot that somebody else is shooting this, not us.”
So I liked that that they kept [my close-ups] to a minimum so that people could mesh with my character - and so I don’t become famous at all and never get another job. [laughs]
Lizzy [teasing]: Also, every time we see [your] character, you’re just a little bit more banged up. We rarely see your face, and when we do, you become more hideous to look at.
T.J. [sarcastically]: Thank you very much!
Fandango: Lizzy, when you are saving T.J. from one of the parasites, what were you actually doing?
Lizzy: I was hitting T.J. with a pipe with foam on it, but I kept breaking the pipe! [They said] “For the next take, please don’t actually hit him.”
T.J.: Yet she hit me multiple times!
Fandango: Was it fun?
T.J.: I’ll [always] let Lizzy Caplan hit me. Ha-cha-cha-cha!
Fandango: Was it easier to act with T.J. when he was shooting the footage himself?
Jessica: For a lot of the scenes, we were actually playing our scenes to a professional cameraman – with T.J. standing behind him. But when T.J. actually got to hold the camera himself, it was way easier and much more intimate.
Michael Stahl-David: Especially with the party scenes. I really did believe that [his character] was filming it with a handheld camera.
T.J.: It was me! I shot nearly a third of the film. For me it was challenging and hard - and unpaid! But I preferred to hold the camera. It’s hard [to get into it] when there’s a camera operator between you and someone you’re acting with.
Fandango: Are you in the union yet? Did you get your camera operator’s card?
T.J.: No, I did not, and we’re not allowed to talk about that because that is illegal. [laughter]
Fandango: How do you maintain a veil of secrecy on a production like this in an era of YouTube, MySpace, and Internet leaks?
Director Matt Reeves: It’s funny, because in the beginning there was not much need for us to keep quiet. Nobody knew what we were doing anyway, and nobody would’ve cared. Nobody knew our cast at that point.
Only the actors had scripts, and they had their names on it. So if the script ended up on the Internet, we would know who it got down to! We wanted to preserve the surprise that you get when you go to see a movie. This was a throwback to a time when you would see trailers and go, “What’s that? I wanna see that!”
Fandango: The phrase “post-9/11” has saturated the media, and it has been ascribed to this movie. How do you feel about that?
Reeves: There’s no question that we were aware of that when we were making the film because the movie is meant to be in the tradition of Godzilla, which is very much a metaphor for the anxiety of that time and about Japan’s national reaction to Hiroshima and that terror. This is meant to be an American monster that speaks to the anxieties that we all fear. What people take from that, we’ll have to see.
Fandango: Are you a big monster movie fan?
Reeves: Yeah, I love monster movies. One of my favorites is Alien, in which the monster is astonishing. I think it’s one of the most suspenseful films ever made. I love Jaws. I’m a huge fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, a very underrated movie.
Fandango: Why did you decide to work with a cast of relative unknowns?
Reeves: I love working with young actors - there’s something very fresh about it. They all just jumped in and didn’t know what they were getting into. They didn’t even know they were auditioning for a monster movie, to tell you the truth. I loved working with them all. It was a ball.
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