June created this atmosphere on set where it completely felt like a family, and we felt so free to do whatever we wanted to do without judgment. She trusted us. I felt completely free to explore. But the thing about her too is her performances don’t seem theatrical. Looking through the viewfinder at her face, and oftentimes I’m this close to her face on a wide lens and the nuances of her performance, it was like I would get shivers.
The tone was hard to get right. It’s really easy to tip into broad comedy or sometimes you would do something that would almost sound like you’re making fun of her versus being, I think the important thing was just being with her. Everything needs to be from her perspective, especially with the action and just riding that line basically of never being too big with it, but also feeling tense.
There’s only so much that you can do with the weight of, for instance, Orlok’s cloak, which was all fur-lined and it’s massive. It’s a massive costume piece. We devised a harness that went next to Bill’s body, came out through his inner clothing, and clipped onto the cloak, and it meant that we could do a quick release, and get it off him because his prosthetic makeup was very hot for him. Then you add all the costuming onto it and the hat and everything else and the poor guy was just boiling.
I think there’s a little bit of Jean Arthur in Annette, she’s a good friend… I know that she loves The More The Merrier. I saw her and Warren (Beatty) last time I was in Los Angeles about four weeks ago and she told me that they had screened it recently and she said, “It’s sexy.”
When we first started prep in Atlanta, Dan Aykroyd was there with Jason and they were doing a pickup shot on the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. So I’m in my office and all of a sudden Jason comes in with Dan in front of this big model. We asked him questions about how accurate was this set we built. Jason posted it on his Instagram. It was wild to get that sort of validation in a way. It was really fun getting his feedback.
It always existed as 90 minutes. The challenge was that you were moving at a certain speed with a certain tempo and you also wanted to give each character their moments and to allow the audience to settle into something. The delicate balance of pacing and rhythm and restructuring little moments of the script or what was shot to keep you on this roller coaster.
Jon was improvising a lot of this with his musicians. It’s very inherent as everything was orally passed along where you play and hear things rather than have written down music and it’s all done by mouth and in your ears. It was really interesting to sit through and process. That became what Jason wanted to use and there’s this raw edge to it that makes it super unique.
“I hope that we’re inspiring people. I feel like it’s so needed right now with the state of cinema and all of that, winning Cannes, winning the Palme d’Or, felt like a win for independent cinema. It truly did. I think the fact that we won, the fact that we were able to stand out, just kind of, to me it’s a sign of the times. It’s a sign that indie cinema needs a comeback. This is what people actually want. They want bold, original films, that are risky, that are subversive.”
Godzilla is one of the most iconic monsters in movie history with 33 Japanese films and four American films. Since his debut in 1954, he has been a top box office draw in Japan and worldwide. The King Of The Monsters has endured decades of change in the world, from his serious beginnings in Gojira to the absolutely wacky fun films of the 60s and 70s that represent the Shōwa era (named after the Japanese Emperor). He would not return until 1984 in the aptly titled The Return of Godzilla beginning the Heisei era.
“John Williams is a Hollywood icon, and it seems the word was invented for him and has been overused for other people, but I also knew the importance of it to my relationship with Steven, who I’ve known for 30 years, and he’s given me so many incredible opportunities that, not that I ever going to think that I’m going to screw them up, but I just knew that this was going to be one of those situations where I had to hit it right away.”
