TIME:
Eric Packer, the icily charismatic asset manager played by Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis, does a great many interesting things in a single, fateful day. In his white stretch limousine, he attempts to traverse Manhattan in gridlock traffic amid violent Occupy-like protests, and all in search of a haircut. He forfeits hundreds of millions of dollars in a suicidal currency-speculation bid. He enjoys afternoon sex with a comely security specialist wearing a body-armor vest with a stun gun on hand. He also has sex with Juliette Binoche. He also endures a weirdly erotic prostate exam while staring into the eyes of a sweaty associate. He gets a pie in the face from a “pastry assassin” who travels with a crew of paparazzi. He is stalked by an actual would-be assassin as well.
So much to talk about! But overshadowing Pattinson’s press tour for Cosmopolis—directed by the great David Cronenberg and adapted from Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel—is the recent tabloid frenzy surrounding his breakup with Twilight costar Kristen Stewart. (The final film in the Twilight franchise is out in November.) TIME sat down with Cronenberg and Pattinson—fresh-faced, sweet, totally affable, smoking an electronic cigarette— in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood the day after the New York City premiere of Cosmopolis. We mostly stayed on topic, if occasionally tiptoeing awkwardly around the heartbroken vampire-elephant in the room.
TIME: Cosmopolis was published in the first year of the war in Iraq, and in a wave of novels that were all described as being “post–Sept. 11” in one way or other, but now the story maps on remarkably well to Occupy Wall Street and other protest movements around the world in 2011. David, at what point did you encounter the book, and when did you know it was a movie?David Cronenberg: It was about three years ago, and the attraction wasn’t that the novel was prescient or because of its historical place. It was the characters, the dialogue, the intensity, the humor—it’s constantly funny. I wasn’t looking to make any kind of statement. Inevitably, though, if you’re making something with integrity, it will say something about the time it’s being made in. When the novel came out, people were saying, “All this demonstrating-on-Wall-Street stuff isn’t very convincing.” Now it’s obvious.
Robert, DeLillo’s dialogue is hyper-stylized, very formal, and often steeped in theory. How did you approach it?Robert Pattinson: The first thing I connected to was the humor. Everything else seemed kind of arbitrary. I liked that it was absurd and unrelatable in a lot of ways. I thought that Eric doesn’t understand himself, so that was my angle—play the part as if you don’t understand the part. [Cronenberg laughs merrily] Try to remain lost. I noticed that every single time I came into a scene with an idea or an angle about how to do it, it would feel wrong, and David would know it was wrong. When I was kind of somewhere else, not thinking at all—that was when it felt right.
What’s relatable about Eric might be that his world is so mediated by technology—he experiences the world at a remove, through screens, and so he’s struggling to feel something, whether it’s through sex or shooting a gun or gambling away his fortune. Do you think people can relate to that kind of alienation and wanting something real?DC: One of the investors in the movie is a genuine French billionaire named Edouard Carmignac. He’s known as the French Warren Buffett. He wanted to be involved with this movie because he said it was absolutely accurate. He knows many people who are like this character, who have created this strange bubble that they live in. Within that bubble, they’re very alive and in control, and yet they’re completely disconnected from normal humanity, normal relationships. So Eric Packer says things to his wife like, “This is how people talk, right?” He’s trying it out, because he really doesn’t know. He’s dealing with billions of dollars, but he’s never actually touching real money and he doesn’t know how to actually pay for things. Of course, Carmignac doesn’t think of himself as that person, but he recognizes it completely. So I take him at his word that it’s not such a stretch. People create a limo for themselves, a little spaceship, a little bell jar in which they insulate themselves from things that hurt.
RP: I think Eric is confused between genuine power and ego. He’s mixing the two up. I think a lot of people in that job find that empathy is a weakness, so he realizes that it’s a strength. I’ve read things that describe Eric as a monster, but I always thought the story was a hopeful progression. His biggest problem is that he’s totally self-obsessed. But he’s taking baby steps toward coming to terms with it. He’s had an extended adolescence in a lot of ways, and he’s really smart—he’s a savant. Some people are so entrenched in what they think they are, and he realizes that the only shock that can snap him out of himself is that someone is going to kill him.
Do you also see Cosmopolis as a story about fame? Eric is in a bubble, people he doesn’t know know him, they spin narratives in their head about him, and—DC: No, I don’t think so. It’s like the London whale—nobody knows what that guy looks like, nobody knows where he lives. That’s his strength as a trader: nobody can predict him, nobody understands him. I think Eric is like that. On the outside, his limo looks like everyone else’s. He just got this one guy who wants to “pie” him, who’s got the paparazzi with him. But Eric can have dinner and no one’s around, he can go to the diner with his wife and nobody bothers him. He’s got the one security guy but that’s it. He doesn’t have fans.
RP: The world would be a much better place, I think, if all these bankers and billionaires were followed by paparazzi and studied as carefully. As soon as people look at something very closely, the whole thing just crumbles.
I might be thinking about Cosmopolis as a parable of fame in part because Robert is cast in the role, and Robert has a very intense and specific kind of global celebrity.DC: The element of that that’s important is: you want to finance the movie. To attract investors, you can’t do that without an actor who is known. Beyond that, we want to disconnect. When we are making the movie, we are in our limo, our little bubble. There’s nobody else around. It’s just us. At that point, Rob’s other movies are nonexistent and my movies are nonexistent. I’m not thinking about the connections between them.
Speaking of your other movies—Cosmopolis has some affinities with David’s film Crash, in that it takes place inside a car, and the car is a very eroticized space. There’s an amazing sex scene with Eric and the security specialist, Kendra. Is a scene like that highly choreographed down to every movement, or is there room for improvisation?RP: That was probably one of the most difficult scenes in the movie. It wasn’t a sex scene in the script. In the script, we’d finished having sex, and we were getting dressed. [To Cronenberg] I think you only told me like the day before or something. [laughter]
DC: Well, I don’t think it pays to panic my actors. There’s nothing you can do to prepare anyway. It’s not like if I’d told you the week before—
RP: I’d have done some sit-ups.
DC: Yeah, well, that wouldn’t have helped. I said that the scene becomes more interesting and trickier and better if you’re actually having sex. When Kendra says that it’s erotic to be so close to a man somebody wants to kill, it’s obviously better than if they’re on opposite sides of a room getting dressed.
RP: I like the moment of climax—it seems so obvious to have the peak and then his line is, “Do you find this interesting?” I kept laughing.
Tell me about the limo. It’s amazing—like J.G. Ballard designed the Death Star. Robert, was it claustrophobic to spend so much time acting in that space?RP: The seat was kind of tilted back, so you could never look entirely comfortable and powerful, so from any angle, you were kind of like [he slumps and leans back slightly, looking befuddled]. I was constantly trying to present power, but I was always sort of halfway in between positions. I liked that after awhile, but I remember the first time I sat down, I thought, [whispering] “Shit, I can’t sit in this, it’s like a throne, it doesn’t work.”
DC: It was designed like a throne. I wanted there to be a visual equivalent to his sense of power and the idea that he’s created a bubble in which he is the absolute master and he forces people to come into that space for sex, for conversation, for business. The car was a set, and it all came apart into about 25 pieces, so you could get angles and lights in there and take it apart. I was shooting with very wide-angle lenses.
RP: Most of the time the camera is on a crane, so it’s remote-controlled. Normally, if there’s a camera there, you’re trying to connect with the eye looking through the lens. But to have that removed, it becomes a strange thing where you have a relationship with a machine, and there’s a dehumanizing—even the sound inside the limbo was so dead, it was like being in a recording studio. Everything was like, “I’m numb.” The sound guy was always crawling on the floor and squished into a corner, and that was the only person who was there most of the time. I’m just looking at this little French guy squirming away from me, and that’s my only other major relationship on the set.
DC: I was helping him with the disconnect thing. I like to help my actors.
How did you help Robert with the prostate-exam scene? There doesn’t seem to be as much choreography involved with that one.DC: There was! It was kind of complex. Finding the right angle wasn’t easy.
Robert, do you have any tips for actors who have to play a prostate-exam scene?RP: I was about three inches from Emily [Hampshire]’s face, which made it easier because if there was any distance she could have judged what I was doing, but the fact that it was so close meant that I had the upper hand—
DC: As it were!
RP: —In a very humiliating situation. That was probably the most powerful I felt during the making of the whole movie. I only found out later that a prostate exam only takes, like, a few seconds.
DC: They literally take twelve seconds. If it goes on longer, then your doctor is trying to seduce you.
What are the next movies you have going into production?DC: I’d love to work with Rob again, and particularly I think Rob and Viggo Mortensen [star of Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method] would be fantastic together. But I’d have to sit down and write my Rob and Viggo movie. I don’t have my next movie. At one point Eastern Promises 2 was possible but that’s fallen apart for various reasons. Bruce Wagner wrote a script called Maps to the Stars; there’s a role for Rob in it, and Viggo, too. We’ll see if we can get it financed. It makes Cosmopolis look easy to finance, and it wasn’t.
RP: I’m going to make this movie [Mission: Blacklist] about Eric Maddox, an Army interrogator who was one of the major people responsible for finding Saddam Hussein. He was working with JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command], which isn’t supposed to exist, and they found Saddam Hussein by themselves but they couldn’t say it was them. The story is crazy, absolutely bizarre. It’s a really cool director called Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. We’re going to shoot in Iraq next summer. In January I’m doing this other movie [The Rover] with David Micôd, who did the Australian movie Animal Kingdom—a futuristic western with Guy Pearce.
Before we wrap up—forgive me for this, Robert, but I have to ask: What is it like to have millions of people worrying about you and hoping you’re OK?RP: I guess if people think they’re worried about you, it’s sweet. It’s kind of odd.
DC: They’re reacting to what they think they know, but they don’t know. And they have a huge investment in so many lives that they aren’t connected with at all. Talk about a disconnect.
RP: But at the same time, the world is a pretty cruel place, so whatever inspires people to suddenly feel this kindness, hopefully they’ll look at themselves and they’ll look at their own lives and realize, [awestruck, Eureka-moment voice] “I have the ability to—to empathize with people!”
“My ability to empathize with a total stranger has helped me empathize with people I actually know!”RP: “Hey, I’ve learned something!”
moviefone:
Most movie junket interviews do not have hordes of paparazzi and two burly security guards standing outside them. Then again, most junket interviews do not feature a subject who is currently in the midst of a tabloid scandal. Unfortunately, this is where Robert Pattinson finds himself right now, as he attempts to promote his new movie, "Cosmopolis."
Thankfully, if anyone can handle the pressure, Pattinson can. Case in point: when I sat down with him and "Cosmopolis" director David Cronenberg, the 26-year-old "Twilight" star was relaxed, as he discussed his new film and its decidedly more adult tone. The movie, based on the Don DeLillo book of the same name, follows Eric (Pattinson), a billionaire asset manager who takes a ride across town in a limousine to get a haircut. Along the way, he deals with financial loss, random sexual encounters and an angry anti-capitalist, Occupy-esque crowd.
Here, Pattinson and Cronenberg talk about the fandom surrounding "Cosmopolis," the movie's stance against one-percenters and what it's like filming an extended prostate exam in front of the camera.
Considering the anti-capitalist bent in this film, I thought it was ironic that you two were ringing the bell of the NYSE this morning.David Cronenberg: It was a much more surreal experience than I thought it was going to be. I thought, Yeah, we’re visiting the scene of the crime now, and it’s going to be kind of cathartic to ring the alarm bell.
Robert Pattinson: I am curious to know if anyone had actually seen the movie or had any idea what it was about.
DC: Yeah! And [people there] seemed so excited about the movie and so excited about us and were very sweet and friendly. Yet it’s such a completely different world. It’s so familiar to them. I think they think everybody knows all about what they do. And I think the infamy and fame of stock traders and fraud only enhances the idea for them, that everybody knows what’s going on. But once you’re there you realize “Oh my god. I don’t understand anything at all.” But it was a very interesting, and I would say ironic [opportunity]. To use that moment, ringing the bell to open the Stock Exchange, for “Cosmopolis,” it was very strange. Were we selling out? I don’t know [laughs]. They gave us little medals!
Rob, you mentioned on "The Daily Show" about how “Cosmopolis” is almost physically impossible to explain to people. So how do you explain it to yourself? Can you even explain it?RP: The last interview [I did], I just started projecting things. I literally just used that as therapy sessions [laughs]. I didn’t really know what I was talking about.
DC: I was in shock! I never heard him say those things.
RP: [Laughs] I just [realized] that the movie was about things that I’ve said it’s not about. So I have no idea what I am talking about. It’s funny, my initial thought about [the film] was that the script was funny. It’s kind of a sad comedy. The first time I watched the movie, I was shocked by how sad it was. And then you start promoting [the film], and everyone else is saying it’s about capitalism [and] has all these deeper meanings, so then you start following that road. Then I [say to myself] “Interesting, that’s interesting. I should talk about it in an interesting way.” I mean, I always knew it was interesting but you kind of...It’s like looking at a rock. It can be anything.
It is a bit of a sad comedy. There’s a lot of a dark humor in this. For instance, let’s talk about that prostate scene. Obviously you didn’t actually get one, but...RP: [They used] Three fingers!
DC: [laughs]
[Laughs] I respect your method acting approach.RP: See, for this film I didn’t learn anything about [stock] traders. I didn’t have a single thought about it the entire time. I didn’t even really know anything about Occupy Wall St. When we were doing the riot scene [where protesters crowd the car and start shaking it] I wasn’t thinking it had anything to do with capitalism.
DC: Well really, in a way, Rob is approaching the character the way the character thinks of himself. The character thinks, rather than the actors think. That is, he’s just living his life, doing the thing that he does. It’s like the way most people live their live: they don’t think of themselves as a character who has meaning in a plot.
Yeah, so Eric would be completely oblivious of the Occupy movement going on outside.DC: Yes, he is. As he says, “Two hours ago, an international movement. Now, what? Forgotten.”
RP: That was one of the scariest things as well, when we were shooting that scene. It was kind of frightening on the first take. There were like two hundred actors really pushing the car around. But [inside the car] you realize how easy it is for Eric to ignore it. We were literally playing a scene inside [the car during a riot]. If you’re in an armoured car, you could just totally ignore the madness and mayhem outside. It doesn’t make any difference to you. It was kind of frightening to think about afterwards … how [the protesters] think they’re doing something impactful and significant, but they’re really not.
DC: Well, you know, you go to the New York Stock Exchange, and there are checkpoints. You can’t just drive your car there anymore. They said before 9/11, there were tours. Anybody could go into the Stock Exchange and see every part of it, but not anymore. But there they are, trading away, happy and smiling nonetheless. It’s very similar to Eric and his limo.
Other than the anti-capitalist bent, one of the other things I took away from this film is Paul Giamatti is still unbelievably talented.RP: I was kind of terrified about every single [scene], because I would shoot with everyone for about three days, and me and Paul’s stuff was the last bit. But having these independent chunks, you kind of stay in a state of perpetual nervousness right up until the end, when I had this huge scene with [him]. Paul was luckily just as terrified as I was. Basically, I had no idea what was going to happen. But it’s really funny, that scene, we were playing it for laughs. It’s weird. The bit, where [Paul] is doing the thing about the women’s shoes and stuff, I’ve never really been in a scene where I literally started watching it, like I was watching a movie. It was so great. I didn’t even see the camera. I was literally just watching him, completely out of the scene. I kept forgetting to say my line. I mean, I think it’s one of the best things he’s ever done. I couldn’t even talk to him about it when we were doing it, because I knew if I started kissing his ass about doing it, I wouldn’t be able to come to work the next day. I thought he was amazing.
Let’s talk about that scene where you’re getting your hair cut and you leave halfway through. For the rest of the film, you have sort of a sawed-off look on your head. How long did you have that for outside the movie?RP: I had it for ages! I liked it. The scary thing was, to get it shown on film, you needed to show scalp, and so [the actor] was cutting so close.
DC: And he is an actor, not a barber. And he was cutting the hair.
Rob, now that you have been in a David Cronenberg movie, do you have a better understanding of his films? Like, could you now fully explain to me what “Videodrome” is about?RP: It’s funny that you say “Videodrome.” Because I’ve read a lot of ["Cosmopolis"] reviews, and they’re like “It’s a return to form, [like] “eXistenZ.” And I am like, “No, it isn’t.” Obviously it’s much closer to “Videodrome.” This is going to sound ridiculous now, but I found “Videodrome” to be more a sort of mystical understanding. “eXistenZ” had a much more basis in reality, and “Videodrome” is kind of like Describe a dream,. Most people don’t find other people’s dreams interesting. But sometimes, if you know the person, it’s kind of interesting. I find listening to people’s [dreams] interesting, even if I don’t know them. I also like reading their diaries [laughs].
But yeah, in terms of understanding it, I don’t know. I mean, I get weird things. I am an expert at reading things wrong. I will take the opposite interpretation, even when something is blatantly obvious, especially with scripts. The amount of times I’ve gone into an audition for something, I will be like, “The guy’s the bad guy, right?” And they’re like, no, it’s “The Notebook” [laughs].
Was Rob wrong about “Videodrome” or did he get it right?DC: I have no idea what he was saying [laughs].
RP: [Laughs]
DC: So I guess that’s pretty accurate.
I can sort of see the comparison between those movies, although “Cosmopolis” doesn’t necessarily have that TV-is-taking-over-real-life feel.DC: Well there are screens in the limo -- more sophisticated screens. But also, in the limo, the City becomes a screen. Through the windows of the limo, the city is a virtual city. It might as well be a CG -- in fact, as it turns out, it was -- generated city. And for Eric, he creates that, and “Videodrome” is touching on that stuff.
Is it a bit odd having all the fanfare surrounding this movie? Have you ever had that with past films?DC: Well, I have had it [in the past]. I had Jude Law, and he was pretty hot at the time; he was up and coming. He hadn’t had sort of a “Twilight”-type success, but he had a lot of fans. So I’ve worked with some pretty high profiles. Viggo after “Lord of the Rings,” he had a pretty big fanbase. All it has to do with is getting your movie financed, so it’s very pragmatic to me. You need an actor who has enough star power to get your movie financed. And the more expensive the movie, the more the star power is required. But after that, it’s irrelevant. Do I know if Aragorn fans will want to see “A History of Violence”? Aragorn is not in it. Viggo’s in it, and if you’re a Viggo fan, you will want to see it. It’s the same with this. It’s not Edward Cullen, so if that’s who you are a fan of, then this is not your movie. But if you’re interested in Rob, then this is a must-see. And to me, that’s all it is. Because once we’re on a set making a movie, we’re in our own bubble, we’re in our own limo, and we love it. Nobody us around, just the crew, the actors. We’re making a movie, and it’s a wonderful moment.
In casting Robert Pattinson, you have an interesting tension between a big percentage of his fanbase — teenage girls, many of them — and a film they might find inscrutable. Is that conflict appealing to you?David Cronenberg: It was not really an issue at all, in terms of casting. On the other hand, what was interesting was while we were shooting the movie, all these "Cosmopolis" websites popped up that were created by "Twilight" fans and Rob fans, and they were reading the book and exchanging notes about the book and how it might work in the movie. Really, I wasn't thinking that this was necessarily going to be an audience for this movie, but then I started to think, "Well, some of them, it definitely is going to be." And that was exciting 'cause these are young girls who maybe had read "Twilight" and "Harry Potter," and suddenly they're reading Don DeLillo. That's pretty good.
I don't really have an audience in mind when I'm making a movie ... I'm making it for me and all of us who are excited about the script. I'm making it for an audience, but that's kind of an unknown and amorphous audience, so anybody who's part of that audience is okay with us, let's put it that way.
Robert, knowing that younger fans will cross genres for you, do you worry that you need to choose parts carefully? Is that on your radar?Robert Pattinson: It's like I feel a responsibility to myself. If you're doing stuff just purely for money, you're probably disrespecting your audience as well. It's not good for anyone. It's not even really good for you. The only thing I really know is what I think I would find interesting to watch and if I try and make that, I feel like I learn a lot out of doing it and watching it. And so , I don't know, I think I fulfilled my responsibility.
I think you do [have a responsibility] in a lot of ways. Not a massive one. But you know, I think your responsibility can also include failures as well. I mean, you can learn something from doing a sh**ty movie, too.
Before making "Cosmopolis," did you consider the effect your involvement might have on skewing its audience?RP: No, I basically was consumed with terror about me being bad in it. I mean, that's what I was thinking right up until Cannes. The night before the premiere at Cannes, David was like, "Oh, yeah. I'm fully expecting walk-outs."
I knew I already liked the movie a lot, but I was still terrified then, mainly because I'm, like, going to have to have a fight with 3,000 people, if they started booing or something [laughs].
You were expecting people to get up and leave? Because your character is so unsettling? He is arguably a sociopath.RP: I think the walk-out thing actually is just the culture of filmmaking, I mean, it's become a consumer thing. People think they're being insulted when there's a challenging movie. It's so weird. People sit in a movie which they know is s**t and know they're gonna talk to all their friends and say it's s**t, but to sit there and watch a piece of s**t [laughs]. They'll watch one which they know is kind of good and don't really get it and have to walk out and be so offended. I don't think I've ever walked out of a movie in my life. And people will be so offended by it, they can't take it anymore.
DC: I think the walk-outs, I only know about from some of the Twi-Hard websites, because the girls are saying, "I was so shocked these people walked out of the movie." They walk out because it's too much talk. They can't absorb it, and [don't] let it wash over them and just not worry about that, which is really the way you handle that. Everything that's said in the movie actually makes sense and is pretty intelligent, of course, from DeLillo, but there's no way you can absorb it all. It comes at you so fast and so articulate, you know.
RP: People are panicking.
DC: Yeah, you should just let it wash over you, and naturally it'll soak in or it won't. It's not gonna hurt you, but they can't take it. I don't think it has anything to do with the character that Rob plays, because, I mean, Hannibal Lecter's pretty chilling and nobody walked out of that. Though [Rob's character] Eric is ... cuter.
David, you've done drama and horror. Some fairly formidable directors have branched out into superhero movies pretty beautifully —is that something you would consider doing?DC: I don't think they are making them an elevated art form. I think it's still Batman running around in a stupid cape. I just don't think it's elevated. Christopher Nolan's best movie is "Memento," and that is an interesting movie. I don't think his Batman movies are half as interesting though they're 20 million times the expense. What he is doing is some very interesting technical stuff, which, you know, he's shooting IMAX and in 3-D. That's really tricky and difficult to do. I read about it in "American Cinematography Magazine," and technically, that's all very interesting. The movie, to me, they're mostly boring.
Do you think the subject matter prohibits the elevated art form?DC: Absolutely. Anybody who works in the studio system has got 20 studio people sitting on his head at every moment, and they have no respect, and there's no…it doesn't matter how successful you've been. And obviously Nolan has been very successful. He's got a lot of power, relatively speaking. But he doesn't really have power.
So that's a no.DC: I would say that's a no, you know. And the problem is you gotta… as I say, you can do some interesting, maybe unexpected things. And certainly, I've made the horror films and people say, "Can you make a horror film also an art film?" And I would say, "Yeah, I think you can."
But a superhero movie, by definition, you know, it's comic book. It's for kids. It's adolescent in its core. That has always been its appeal, and I think people who are saying, you know, "Dark Knight Rises" is, you know, supreme cinema art," I don't think they know what the f**k they're talking about.
Having determined that they're utterly pedestrian, is that something you would ever do, Robert?
DC: As an actor, I would play Batman.
RP: Actors always think they can elevate anything. The worse the script is, the more an actor is like… I mean, it's funny, you read the worst script ever, and you'll talk to everyone, and go… I always talk to my agents and I got sent this thing the other day, and they're like, "Oh my God, this is the worst thing ever." But really, like, it was basically only one character, you're like, "I don't know. I think I could do something with this."
I'd never get offered [a superhero role]. I'm not buff enough [laughs].
DC: Rob, it's okay. They put you in a funny suit. You don't have to be buff.
The phone call began with Pattinson and Cronenberg laughing.
Question: Sounds like you two aren't having any trouble having fun.Pattinson: We rollick and frolic. We have no problem.
Q: And Robert, you haven't been in the news enough lately.Pattinson: Heh.
Q: Your character is a disconnected guy trying to connect. Or maybe it's the other way around. How do you play that?Pattinson: I think he's just very, very self-obsessed. It's going deeper and deeper into self-obsession until it kind of implodes. It's also just the words. Everything is done for me. I sort of instinctively felt like I knew what to do from the beginning because the script was so good.
Q: Is it tricky to direct someone having a prostate exam (as Packer does in the film)?Cronenberg: For me? Oh, no problem.
Q: Robert, I assume you're rich. But Packer is incredibly rich. Is there a freedom to that?A: I think it's actually quite a difficult way to live. I've met a few people who have fictional money (laughing). If you have any interest in the world, it's very difficult to see. Your eyes are totally different to most people. Money really does change people. You have to make an effort to be normal, I think.
Q: Did you go through that when you became successful?Pattinson: It's different. Dealing with fame is different. Everyone gets stuff thrown at them in life, and you have to figure out how to deal with it.
Q: There's a ton of publicity surrounding you now, good and bad. Presumably you're in a bubble while shooting the film, so not as many people are keeping up.Cronenberg: In fact, a lot of the "Twilight" fans were keeping up. They made websites, and they had spy-cams. But all of that was really quite sweet. It was quite gentle and quite affectionate, and you had these young girls who had never read anything but "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" before (but) were reading "Cosmopolis," they were reading Don DeLillo and writing about it on their blogs.
Q: Robert, "Twilight" is winding down. What has that been like?Pattinson: Pretty crazy (laughing). No one ever believes me, but no one involved with the first movie had any idea that it was going to turn out to be what it was going to be. We didn't even know if we were going to make the sequels. You go on this runaway train that I was entirely unprepared for. And at the same time, I was kind of figuring out whether I wanted to be an actor or not, which is kind of interesting. You're in your 20s, you're trying to figure out what you want to do with your life.
Q: What about the fame aspect of it? Isn't that kind of a weird way of life? You can't even walk across the street without someone taking a picture.Pattinson: Yeah. It's just how you deal with it. Everyone has to figure out how they want to live. It's a challenge.
Cronenberg: I can say that Rob was definitely able to walk across the street in Toronto (where "Cosmopolis" was shot) and no one noticed. And he could go to a bar and he could go to a restaurant. Really, part of it has to do with where you are and how much you're publicizing yourself. If you're Lindsay Lohan and you're making sure that everybody knows where you are at all times, then you know what the consequences will be. But if somebody doesn't want that, there are ways you can do that.
Of course everybody wants to ask you about your star, who unfortunately has decided not to join us today. I guess he has his reasons. How and why did you wind up casting Robert Pattinson?Well, it begins in a very pragmatic way. You get a list of 10 people from various producers and agents, and you start with the basics. How old is this character, and how old is the actor? This character is young, his age is given as 28. So that’s where you start. Does he feel like the right guy? Eric talks about working out a lot and is very physical, so you’re not going to cast someone who’s overweight. It’s simple stuff like that to begin with. And then you get to the pragmatics: How big is your budget and what kind of star power do you need to get the movie financed?
And here’s something people don’t think about, which is the passport of the actor. This is a Canada-France co-production, so you’re really restricted in the number of Americans you can use. There’s only one American in this movie, even though it’s set in New York, and that’s Paul. So the fact that Rob is British helps, because he can fit into the co-production thing. So that’s the long way round, and ultimately you get to: Does the guy have the chops and charisma to hold the movie together? Because this character is in every scene of the movie, without exception, and that’s very unusual, even for a star.
So I looked at everything I could find that Rob had done, including “Little Ashes,” where he plays the young Salvador Dali, and I thought, yeah, he could really do this. And I think he’s actually extraordinary. It’s ultimately intuition on my part, and casting is a huge part of directing that’s very invisible. Making-of documentaries don’t usually cover the casting process, but for a director it’s a hugely important part of your art. Juggling all those other balls that I was just talking about, and still coming up with the right guy.
I realize I’d be better off asking him that question, but do you think Rob is eager to change his image after “Twilight,” and push into doing different kinds of characters? After this role, and playing a sadistic sociopath in “Bel Ami,” it certainly looks that way.Well, I know from doing interviews with him in Europe that he’s not really thinking in terms of his career. He gets offered a lot of stuff, and it’s usually very conventional, boring stuff. He’s always been interested in doing unusual stuff. He’ll tell you that when they started with “Twilight,” he thought it was kind of an indie film. Which it sort of was, you know! It had Catherine Hardwicke as the original director, and it was an unusual, off-kilter vampire story. Nobody knew that it would be the kind of mainstream success that it became.
In a way, “Cosmopolis” is a lot closer to his heart than “Twilight,” you know. When he read it, he told me that he was also struck by the dialogue. He thought it was incredibly fresh and new and surprising and engaging, and he immediately wanted to do it. He was afraid, because I think he still hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he’s actually an actor! He didn’t grow up thinking he wanted to be an actor. As with many actors, and not just young, inexperienced ones, he wasn’t sure he was good enough! He wasn’t sure he was the right guy, and he didn’t want to be the guy who would bring down this terrific project. So my job, at that point, was to convince him that he was indeed the right guy. That took me about 10 days, I suppose.
Are you telling me that you have actually watched the “Twilight” movies? That’s a bit hard to imagine.Yeah — or no, I watched about one and a half of them. I’m interested in everything, frankly. I’m not a snob, you know. I really am curious about everything. If something’s hugely popular, it doesn’t automatically mean I’m going to look at it, but sometimes I’m curious as to why something is really popular, let’s say. In the case of “Twilight,” I was watching it for Rob, that was the thing. It’s not like – I mean, I hadn’t seen them before that.
Q. You both have said that you filmed this movie in chronological order, and I know that with many movies, the last scenes are shot first. Was that a luxury — to film from start to finish?Cronenberg: One of the trickiest things that I had to learn as a director was exactly that. I mean, suddenly you’re forced to shoot the last scene of the movie first. And it’s hard for the actors because they don’t know who they are yet and they’re doing their death scene. As an actor myself, I was in Clive Barker’s movie “Nightbreed,” and the first thing we shoot was my character getting killed. And I said a typical actor thing. I said, “How can I know how to die when I haven’t lived yet?” So it is kind of a luxury. I think Rob can talk about that.
Pattinson: I agree. (Laughs) I don’t think I can add to that.
Q. You have both been very candid in interviews about the fact that you didn’t necessarily know how this novel would translate to film and what it meant to you. Do you have a different interpretation of the text now that you’re finished with the film?Pattinson: Well, I like it. I don’t think that confusion is necessarily a bad thing. We’ve done hundreds of interviews now and I still find myself coming up with new things to say.
Cronenberg: Those statements that we made, which were very candid, can be misinterpreted as meaning we were inept, incompetent. But not at all. You know, I don’t do storyboards, for example. I don’t really know what I’m going to do at every set up and every shot. It’s all very spontaneous and of-the-moment, even what lens to use. That’s what we’re talking about. We don’t have it all mapped out. We’re trusting the script and trusting the dialogue that is all 100 percent Don DeLillo’s and taken from the novel directly. We know that if we respond directly to that . . . the movie will have its coherence.
Q. You just rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. What was that like? And what do you think the people there would think of this movie if they saw it?Cronenberg: All through the halls of the stock exchange they have these monitors built into the walls, and they were all showing clips of “Cosmopolis.” All of the people there who were marshaling us were incredibly excited about the movie and really wanted to see it. And they were incredibly friendly and sweet, and I was suddenly thinking, “This is the wonderful, friendly face of capitalism. I don’t know why I’ve been fighting it for so long. I think I’m going to buy some stock.” [Pattinson laughs.] And the stock exchange is about marketing. To link the starting of the day with some product that’s being marketed was a no-brainer. And the fact that it might be rather ironic that we were opening the stock exchange; I don’t think it occurred to them.
Q. Mr. Pattinson, what did you think of the visit?Pattinson: I’m so clueless about anything to do with that world. I was kind of just terrified that I was somehow going to mess it up. And also to see people’s enthusiasm. It’s so alien. Even people’s attitudes there. It seems so alien to me. I mean, I’ve met traders before, but in their own environment — everyone’s extremely happy, which is not what I expected. It doesn’t seem stressful at all. They were all excited about seeing who was going to ring the bell this morning. They had the American gymnastics team closing it that day. It looks like a really fun place to work.
Q. You guys seem like you like each other a lot. You seem so close during this publicity tour. I was thinking, when I looked at pictures from the stock exchange visit, that you actually look like relatives.
[Cronenberg and Pattinson laugh.]
Cronenberg: We get along pretty well and we were kind of wearing the same suit. They were Gucci suits that were connected with the movie — the character wears them — and so, we were Tweedledum and Tweedledee at that point.
Q. Mr. Cronenberg, where do you most enjoy promoting your films? You don’t have to say America.Cronenberg: I have a huge enthusiastic fan base in France. My first films were horror films and genre films, and in France they never had any prejudice against them, whereas in North America, in the old days when I started especially, there was prejudice against them. They weren’t taken seriously as good cinema. So I suppose I feel more comfortable, weirdly enough, in France releasing a film. The level of discourse there is very intelligent, very intellectual, sometimes humorously so, but I like playing that game there.
Q. Mr. Pattinson, how have you taken to the Cronenberg fan base? I imagine that it’s strange to see “Twilight” fans with people who love David Cronenberg movies.Pattinson: Absolutely. We were in London and we did a Q&A and it was two very diverse groups of people who suddenly came into contact with each other for I think probably the first time. And, I don’t know . . . David’s horror film fans . . . and general “Twilight” female fans . . . are actually quite a good pairing. I think both of them didn’t see anything in each other first of all, but they’re quite a good, odd couple. When you see a bearded guy with long hair, who absolutely will weep [for Cronenberg] . . . and then a “Twilight” fan who will weep at that, they actually look like a couple.
Q. Mr. Pattinson, I have to ask, in reference to all of the talk show hosts who are asking you personal questions right now: I’m always fascinated by the ability of celebrities to just disappear during a controversy. How do you do that? Is there a tunneling system? Where do you go to hide when you’re so watched?Pattinson: There is a netherworld where celebrities go. They’re the only ones that have access to it. A mysterious little network of boroughs. (Giggles.)
David Cronenberg remembers the time Oliver Stone asked him, “David, does it bother you to be such a marginal filmmaker?”
To which Cronenberg, one of Canada’s most admired and famous directors, replied, “Well, Oliver, it depends. How big of an audience do you need?”
Therein lies the secret to Cronenberg’s success. Cosmopolis, his new movie opening Friday, is an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel about a young billionaire named Eric Packer who spends a day in his limo riding around New York City in search of a haircut.
There is practically no traditional plot in Cosmopolis. More than half the movie takes place inside the limo, where Eric has meetings with his staff, gets a checkup from his doctor (“Your prostate is asymmetrical”) and even has sex. Although Eric is played by Robert Pattinson, the hugely popular star of the Twilight series, Cosmopolis is a tough sell for the multiplex crowd — a rigorous, challenging and oddly hypnotic movie filled with dense, jargon-heavy dialogue.
At 69, Cronenberg continues to make his heady movies the hard way.
“When you’re a filmmaker, you spend a year and a half of your life — maybe more — putting these things together: You have to get your financing in place and you go after actors who will reject you,” he says. “It’s a difficult process. So the movie has to really excite and intrigue me and make me feel like I’m going to discover something by making it,” he says.
“Naturally, you have to tailor the budget to suit the subject matter. No one is going to spend $200 million on Cosmopolis. But if you’re realistic about expectations and the size of your audience, and you’re willing to work for not that much money, you can come up with very interesting things.”
Cosmopolis’ $20 million price tag still seems high for such an outside-the-box movie, but Cronenberg offset the risk to financiers by casting Pattinson, who appears in every scene. (Colin Farrell was originally set to play Eric, but had to back out due to scheduling conflicts.)
“I got the script out of the blue and was offered the role, which was a little shocking,” Pattinson says.“Usually, the movies I am offered straight-up are terrible. This script felt so original, it was almost gleaming.
“I knew there was a movie to be made here. I was just worried that I might not be the one to pull it off. I kept thinking ‘There are tons of people better than me for this job!’ It took me a while to make peace with that.”
Cosmopolis offered Pattinson the opportunity to try a kind of minimalist acting he hadn’t done before. Eric Packer is a detached, aloof man who rarely expresses what he’s feeling. On the page, DeLillo makes us privy to his thoughts and interior monologue; on screen, Pattinson uses small gestures, the faintest trace of a smile or a frown and the hardening of a stare to convey his inner state.
“At the start of the movie, I am wearing this dark, blank suit,” he says. “I am wearing completely blacked-out sunglasses and I’m standing still, not moving. Every tool actors use for their performance has been taken away from me,” he says.
“But I felt secure because I knew David was watching me — really watching me — and that gives you confidence. Most of the time on movie sets, I question whether the director is even paying attention to what I’m doing.”
Pattinson’s legion of Twilight fans will be befuddled by this coldly fascinating movie, but Cronenberg has built a sufficient following to ensure an audience for the strange brew.
Not everyone will like it, of course. There isn’t a Cronenberg fan on the planet who could honestly say he loves all of the director’s movies. And that’s a testament to the risks he’s taken from the beginning of his 37-year career.
(...)
For Cronenberg, too, the inspiration to adapt Cosmopolis sprang not from grand themes but subtle detail.
“I was simply taken by the dialogue. It’s a bit like David Mamet or Harold Pinter, because it’s realistic on one level — it sounds like the way people speak — but it’s also very stylized. When I transcribed it into screenplay form, it gave the movie an incredible cohesion and resonance. That’s when I asked myself, ‘Is this a movie?’ And I thought, ‘Yes. It’s a really interesting movie.’ ”
Nearly all of the dialogue is lifted from the book, which meant the actors had to sound natural while saying lines like, “We’re all young and smart and were raised by wolves. But the phenomenon of reputation is a delicate thing. A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.”
For Pattinson, the unusual cadences and word choices felt liberating.
“I felt a physical connection with the writing — I thought it was so good — and I wanted to read it aloud as soon as I got the script, just to see how it sounded. It is so perfectly written. I loved the fact that I didn’t need to put my personal stamp on it as an actor. I just had to perform it in the truest way possible.”
Anne Thompson: Why did you cast "Twilight" star Robert Pattinson as your ice-cold 28-year-old Master of the Universe?David Cronenberg: Of course you begin with the basics. Is he the right age for the character? Does he feel convincing as a screen presence? Obviously you need someone with charisma to hold the audience for the entire movie. He's in every scene without exception, that's unusual. You want someone proven, who people want to watch, who will never be boring. I knew I would be crawling all over his face for the entire movie, so I wanted someone whose face is constantly changing, through all the angles. And he had to have chops for tricky dialogue. The art of casting is to intuit, to see from what he's done before that he could do this.
Was there a particular performance that gave you confidence?I saw him in "Little Ashes" as the young Salvador Dali. He does a Spanish accent, he was not afraid to play a character of ambiguous sexuality and eccentricity. That probably of all the things I saw made me think he was the right guy.
Did you cast Pattinson with a certain likeability factor in mind, so that audiences would like him in spite of the character he is playing? Feel some vulnerablity?I really don't care. I want the lead character in a movie to be interesting, fascinating and complex, but to be likeable to me is way down the list. It's not on the list, because it is a simplistic thing for the lead character to must be likable. He has to be watchable, that's the key, and fascinating, and likeable if it works for the project, fine, let him be likeable. If not I don't worry about it.
There are actors who do not want to play unlikeable characters, afraid it will damage their credibility as stars or effect them personally. Actors who are more interested in being actors than stars, like Viggo Mortensen, don't worry about being likeable or not on screen.
How did Pattinson surprise you? He literally surprised me every day, as he read dialogue and interacted with the other actors. We were throwing different factors at him almost very day because of the stucture of the screenplay. He really has extended scenes. With one actor at the end, Paul Giamatti, he really let it fly, in that he didn't cling to a preconceived idea of what he should be doing. He reacted spontaneously to other actors as they surprised him and he surprised them. He was terrific and not predictable and dead-on accurate.
How many takes do you do?One or two. The whole last shot was a long take with Giamatti, three minutes in that last 22-minute scene.
Robert Pattinson. There were plenty of people who were a little surprised when you picked him for the role, but I have to say he gives a really sublime performance. You knew what you were doing, clearly -- so what was it that drew you to Robert?Cronenberg: Well, casting always starts in a very pragmatic way. It's, "Is this guy the right age for the character?" "Does he have the right sort of physique, the right screen presence?" "Is he available, and if so, can you afford him? Does he want to do it?" You know, all of those things. But then you do your homework as a director, more specifically, and you watch stuff. I watched Little Ashes, in which Rob plays a young Salvador Dali; I watched Remember Me; I watched the first Twilight movie. And I watched -- interestingly enough, I suppose, because people wouldn't expect it -- but you watch interviews with the guy on YouTube, you know. I want to get an idea of his sense of humor, his sense of himself, the way he handles himself, his intelligence -- all of those things you can't really tell from watching an actor play a role in a movie. I suppose in the old days you meet the guy and hang out, and go to a bar or whatever -- [laughs] -- but these days nobody has time for that, or the money, and so you do it some other way. And once I'd done all that stuff, I thought, This is the guy I want. I thought, He'd be terrific and I actually think he's a very underrated actor -- and it would be my pleasure to prove that by casting him.
I think a lot of people will share that opinion after seeing the film. Was he difficult to get? I mean, he's clearly up for it, based on his performance, but how do you go about getting Robert Pattinson?Cronenberg: Basically, I wrote the script before I went into production on A Dangerous Method, so Rob got the script about a year before we were really shooting. He's a very down to earth guy, and he was surprised that anybody would want him. [Laughs] It sounds odd, I know. Of course, he knows that his name adds value because of his star power, but he knew my movies, and he knew I was a serious director, and I think he was nervous, you know -- I think he was afraid, because he knew it was good. He immediately loved the script, especially because he thought it was very funny -- and the movie is funny; a lot of people maybe don't see that the first time around -- and the script was funny as well. But also he had seen enough of the now conventional stuff that he gets offered to see how different this was, and how it stood out -- and the quality of Don's writing, because the dialogue is really 100 per cent from the novel.
So I really had to convince him that I knew he was the right guy and that he could do it. And you'd be very surprised that a lot of actors, and very experienced ones, too -- not just young ones -- they worry that they don't want to wreck your movie. They don't want to be the bad thing in your movie that brings it down. They need to be convinced that they're good enough, especially if they know it's good. He said -- and I know this 'cause of interviews that we've done together, and I hear him saying these things -- that usually the dialogue is so bad that you, the actor, figure that you are responsible for trying to make it interesting, just by the way you spin it. But in this case the dialogue was great, and it's a completely reversed worry: "Am I good enough to get the best out of this?" So it took me about 10 days, and Rob said he was afraid to call me back because he's used to bullshitting directors, like all actors do -- but because I'd written the script he couldn't do that with me. [Laughs] You know, actors can really tie themselves in knots, when really he just should've said, "Yes, I'll do it."
Was there a point during shooting where he realized, "Hey, I am good enough for this," or did you have to encourage him constantly?Cronenberg: No, it's not like he's so insecure or anything like that. I never saw any of that on the set. I know he was constantly checking himself out and wondering if it was good, but I didn't feel that he needed an inordinate amount of that kind of encouragement, really. We just did it. He could tell. The best way for an actor to tell, ultimately, is that it wasn't long before we were just doing one or two takes of everything -- and that means the actor knows it's working.
Well it appears that you've started something of a trend now David, because Werner Herzog has just cast him in his next film.Cronenberg: Well that pleases me no end, and I think that obviously this is what Rob needs. They just need to see that he's really, really good and really, really subtle; and that he can do a lot of different stuff. Once you break through that barrier then I think there'll be no turning back.
(...)
He only seems to connect with people on a very primal, and often violent, level -- be it sex, murder... or getting a haircut. That seems to be the only way in which he can cut through all the other stuff. Is that him devolving, his desire for self-destruction?Cronenberg: Yeah, well I think that during the course of this day... and he does say, at the end, to the Paul Giamatti character [Benno Levin], "I think my life has changed during the course of this day" -- and it really has. He's going to get a haircut, but he's really also going to get a haircut from the barber who first cut his hair when he was a little kid, and used to cut his father's hair, and I think the suggestion is that he is trying to deconstruct his present life so that he can go back to his origins and perhaps reassemble it in a different way. But that doesn't quite work. It doesn't quite gel. I think when he's sitting in the barber's chair, certainly at the beginning, he is like a child. That's the lovely thing about Rob's performance, you really see the vulnerability; underneath it all there's this kind of childlike sweetness there for a moment or two. It's a very beautifully layered performance. But that's not working -- and the current Eric Packer takes over. He has to do extreme things to be able to feel anything and to be able to feel excitement and to feel alive. So that's what leads him to the end scene with Paul Giamatti.
There's a really magic shot in the film -- perhaps my favorite moment in his performance, also -- when he's stumbling down the alley with the gun, and he's looking for Paul Giamatti, and there's this particular look that comes over his face in that one moment and you can see his derangement. It was really wonderfully played.Cronenberg: Yeah, it was beautiful. It was the only take that Rob did exactly that on, and I thought, Well that's the take. It was unexpected. I mean, Rob was constantly surprising me, I have to tell you, with things like that. Lovely, lovely things that were spontaneous but dead-on.
NEW YORK - Robert Pattinson was nearing the end of shooting the last “Twilight” film, concluding a chapter of his life that had picked him out of near obscurity and was preparing to spit him out … where exactly? “Twilight” had made him extravagantly famous, but his next steps were entirely uncertain.
“Out of the blue,” he says, came the script for “Cosmopolis” from David Cronenberg, the revered Canadian director of psychological thrillers (“Videodrome,” “Eastern Promises”) that often pursue the spirit through the body. Pattinson, having never met or spoken to Cronenberg, did a little research: He looked him up on Rotten Tomatoes “and it was like 98 percent approval,” he says.
“It was like: OK, that’s my next job,” says Pattinson.
Pattinson now has the unenviable task of releasing his most ambitious movie, his most adult role, into a media storm that instinct would suggest should be run from like a pack of werewolves. Promoting “Cosmopolis” puts Pattinson in front of cameras and microphones for the first time since his “Twilight” co-star and girlfriend Kristen Stewart last month publicly apologized for having a tryst with director Rupert Sanders.
The awkward circumstance, he says, is “dissociated” from the film, and he’s thus far declined to use the attention to make any kind of public response to the scandal. Rather, he’s sought to deflect it to “Cosmopolis,” a film that, in an earlier interview before it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, he said “changed the way I see myself.”
If Pattinson is understandably guarded about his private life, he’s refreshingly openhearted and humble about his anxieties as a young actor. At 26, Pattinson may be one of the most famous faces on the planet, but he’s still getting his bearings as an actor _ a profession, he says, he never pined for, fell into by chance and has always found uncomfortable. His unlikely trajectory began with “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and “Little Ashes,” in which he played Salvador Dali.
“Then I got `Twilight’ and it suddenly became a massively different world to navigate,” Pattinson said in a recent interview in New York. “Most people who get their big hit have figured out what their skills are, and I hadn’t, really.”
“Cosmopolis” is a radically different kind of film that will surely confuse not only the hordes of diehard “Twilight” fans who will line up on Friday to see it, but art house moviegoers, too. Pattinson himself has watched it four times to try to get his head around it.
The first movie adaptation of a Don DeLillo novel, “Cosmopolis” is about a sleek financier, Eric Parker (Pattinson), slowly making his way in the airless sanctuary of his white stretch limo across a traffic-jammed Manhattan with the simple goal of a haircut. But the journey, which includes visits with his new wife (Sarah Gadon), a prostitute (Juliette Binoche) and Occupy-like protesters (Mathieu Amalric), is a kind of willful unraveling for Parker, who dispassionately watches his fortune slide away on a bad bet on the Chinese yuan.
“He’s an egomaniac who wants to see some kind of spirituality in his egomania,” says Pattinson. “It’s kind of like how actors feel about themselves.”
Pattinson is in every scene of the film, which relies on his callow, hyper-literate performance to carry the movie through its limited setting and DeLillo’s heightened dialogue _ much of which Cronenberg transcribed verbatim from the novel. Though some reviews have found the film static and impenetrable (perhaps intended responses), most critics have praised Pattinson’s performance, with many citing it as proof that the heartthrob can indeed act.
T
he stylized language and atypical nature of the film made it a risky and intimidating choice for Pattinson.
“I couldn’t hear the voice of the character at all. There was nothing,” he says. “It was scary to say yes to something which you didn’t know what it was. I knew it was interesting, I knew there was something special but I had no idea how to do it or what I could add to it. But when you start saying no to Cronenberg because you don’t think it’s good enough, it’s a stupid decision to make.”
It’s clear that his “Twilight”-fueled celebrity weighs heavily on Pattinson, who says he knows people watch his films“through a cultural context.”
“Rob, he’s popular,” says Cronenberg with deadpan understatement.
“I couldn’t have cast Rob without `Twilight’ just as I couldn’t have cast Viggo (Mortensen) without `Lord of the Rings,’” says the director whose previous three films _ “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises,” “A Dangerous Method” _ starred Mortensen. “The fact that somebody who has clout is willing to do a movie that’s difficult is a gift to a director because you’re not only getting the right guy as an actor, but you’re getting financing interest and you get to make the movie. This is not an easy movie to get made.”
Pattinson seems energized by the freedom of choice in front of him following the final “Twilight” installment, which will be released in November. He’s lined up parts in gritty films far from blockbuster size: “Mission: Black List,” a military thriller, and “The Rover” by Australian director David Michod (“Animal Kingdom”), a role he says he fought for more than any before.
Embarking on “Cosmopolis” appears to have been a process of letting go for Pattinson _ of self-awareness, of worry, of fear. Asked if he now feels certain he’s an actor, he quickly replies, “No.”
“As soon as you start existing in a certain world, you feel like you have tremendous amount of baggage all the time,” he says. “You get stuck in this rut where you want people to think you’re something else, but you’re too scared to do what that is to actually be the other person.
“Then you get a gift like this movie where it’s way easier than I thought it was,” he says. “You just do it. It doesn’t really matter if you fail.”
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