Director Jaume Collet-Serra on his new film The Commuter.
COLLET-SERRA ON REVIEWS, RUNNING TIMES AND THE COMMUTER
Jaume Collet- Serra knows how to exhaust t he creative possibilities of a space. His exhilarating thrillers station themselves in self-contained locations and make clever use of every nook and cranny: he’s explored transatlantic airplanes ( Non Stop), shark- infested beaches ( The Shallows), deadly museums ( House of Wax) and now, in his new film The Commuter, a metro- north subway train barrelling from Manhattan to the suburbs beyond the city.
Liam Neeson, Collet- Serra’s muse, once again plays a down- on- his- luck middleclass family man thrust into Hitchcockian peril, which naturally obliges him to kick, punch, and shoot his way to triumph. Of course, the focus of the picture remains squarely on the train itself — which the virtuoso director probes and basks in with scrupulous gusto, leaving hardly a square inch of carriage unutilized.
As The Commuter ar- rives in cinemas, we caught up with Collet- Serra to talk about the logistics of locations, the necessity of changing scripts, and why he can’t look back on his earliest movies with much affection. And in a perfect touch given the subject, we spoke just as he was disembarking from a plane. Q So you’ve just landed at the airport. Is it difficult to disassociate flying from Non Stop?
A Non Stop was a bit like therapy for me. I was more afraid to fly before I made the film than now. After all the research I did on Non Stop I feel better. You ask questions like, “how far can the wings of the plane bend?” You talk to the pilot and the heads of security and all of that. So you realize that actually there’s a lot of stress that those planes can take. In Non Stop, the scene in which they’re taking off and Liam Neeson is very nervous and grabbing the arm rest — that used to be me. Q Are there are a lot of personal touches like that in your films? A When you’re a filmmaker and you’re making thriller films, you have to have certain fears and insecurities within yourself, just to understand what the character is going through. In The Shallows, I don’t necessarily have a fear of sharks, because I’d never be near one, but certainly the loneliness and desperation she feels frighten me. Q Are there motifs that you fixate on or return to?
A One of the things I keep going back to, especially with Non Stop and now with The Commuter, is observation. I like films in which the audience observes with the main character, and there are a lot of clues to discern. I feel I’m comfortable in that space, working without dialogue. Maybe other filmmakers are comfortable with talking. I prefer silence. Q How does the train differ from the plane, logistically?
A There are some key differences. For one thing, a plane has divisions: first class, coach. That’s interesting because society already tends to divide people by class. A train is more communal. All the carriages look the same. Q What about in terms of the physical set?
A The biggest challenge was the size. For Non Stop I was able to build a plane from cockpit to tail on a stage. A train is three hundred feet long. There was no way I could ever build that, or attempt to shake or move it if I did. I could only build one carriage and a little extra. So everything in the film is one carriage that is redressed. Q I noticed as the film progresses, the light gets brighter — not unlike Run All Night. Was that intentional?
A Exactly. But understand, when I get these scripts, the script is not like that. Run All Night, even though it’s called Run All Night, the script took place over three days. So you make an effort to narrow it conceptually. You’re going into the dark soul of these characters, and it was obvious to me that their redemption should happen toward the dawn. Q Do you often change your scripts? A Oh yeah. The original scripts for Non Stop and The Commuter called for action all over the world. Cutting to control rooms, cutting to other characters, car chases and whatnot. But I removed all of that to concentrate on a single environment, because it purifies the concept and I think it’s easier to see what the movie is about and understand it. Q But doesn’t that also make it way more difficult for you?
A Ha. Yeah. I know that I’m getting myself into a world of pain by refusing to leave the train and all of that. But at the same time the work is gratifying. It has to be done like that. A movie should start as late as possible and end as soon as possible. There should be an economy. There should be a respect for the audience. The Shallows, you wouldn’t want to cut to people looking for her, because that would defeat the purpose. Same with Non Stop. Why cut to the control room in the airport reacting to the plane’s behaviour when it’s much more interesting not to?
A movie always has problems. You’re always trying to make it better. At the end it’s not finished — it’s just released. You run out of money or time. — Jaume Collet- Serra
Q And how does the studio feel about that? It’s unconventional.
A At the time of Non Stop I had many people, people at the studio more powerful than me, asking for those extra scenes. And then Gravity came out and made a lot of money, and one of the things people said about it was that it was brave not to cut to the Earth. That helped me. They accepted my point. Now, it’s obvious. But you need a film like that, a global hit, to prove it. This is not a new thing. Hitchcock would have done that. Polanski would have done that. Q So you decide you’re going to make a movie on a plane or on a train. Where do you go from there? How do you start mapping it out?
A Oh my god. I just sit down with a piece of paper. I mean, literally. You just come up with complicated ideas. I have a floorplan, and I start going scene by scene and moving the characters around. I plot the movie with the movement of the characters and the movement of the camera and I keep track of where everyone is at all times. In Non Stop that was complicated; in The Commuter that was 10 times more complicated. Q My friends and I just marathoned all of your movies this weekend. A Oh wow. Oh my god. Q Including Goal 2 and House of Wax. A Oh no! Why? Why would you do that? I haven’t seen them in 10 years. Q I haven’t even seen Goal 1. A It’s pretty good. My Goal 2 is not really a very good movie. Q You don’t look back at them with any fondness at all?
A Not really. I mean, you have to realize that for a director, you see the movie only finished at the very end. The experience for making it is very different: it’s your everyday, going to set, your battles. The experience is not the movie. Some movies can turn out very good but the experience was horrible. I remember the horrible experience, but don’t remember whether the movie was wellreceived or not. You know? Q So you’re never completely satisfied?
A A movie always has problems. You’re always trying to make it better. At the end it’s not finished — it’s just released. You run out of money or time. Q It must be easier for you now, though. You have more freedom. A Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The more you do something, the more you work with people, it makes you better. The more movies you make the more comfortable you are with your strengths and your weaknesses. It gets you out of tough situations when there are problems. That’s the key. Nobody ever comes to you with good news, like, “eh, we found another five million dollars,” or “we have an even better location.” Never ever ever. People come to you with questions, and then bad news. When the bad news comes — “there’s a tornado coming,” whatever it is — you have to think fast, and experience is great for that. Q What about reviews? Do you read them?
A No. No, I don’t. I don’t read reviews. I don’t care, good or bad. I will not read it. I’m the only one who knows what I wanted to make so I already know if I succeeded or not. Nobody knows my intention. They can interpret my intention — but some people will say there’s a great moment, and I won’t be happy with it, because it’s not what I wanted. Obviously the movie has to live in a world where it has to be reviewed and it lives or dies at the box office. But there’s nothing to be gained from reading reviews. If I could learn something from it, then maybe, but I feel like for every review that says one thing, there’s another that says the opposite. Q But you do care about the audience.
A The movie is for the audience. If they don’t understand something, or if they think it’s too long, I respect that. I watch my films opening weekend and if I see the audience react, if they are having a good time, that’s what I enjoy. I hate going to see a movie where there is absolutely zero reaction from the audience. When you go to the theatre you want to laugh or clap. Maybe not all the time, but if there’s a twist, you want to hear that gasp. The theatre is a place to have that collective experience and I love that. Q I’ve never seen an audience applaud as loudly as the floating gun in Non Stop.
A Yeah. Or in Orphan, when Vera Farmiga slaps the kid, everyone in the theatre starts clapping. I’ve never seen people clap for someone slapping a kid. I didn’t expect people to actually clap. That means that they really care. Q Something else we noticed in our marathon is that nearly all of your films are exactly two hours long. Is that studio-mandated or is that all you?
A That’s me. In fact, I would keep making them shorter and shorter if I could. Movies should be short. My earlier movies are a bit longer, and they shouldn’t be. House of Wax is two hours long. It shouldn’t be. That movie should be shorter. You have to be aware of the pace. People doing actions, just walking, that’s the fat you have to lose. The audience doesn’t need to see someone opening a door. I love when The Shallows was 89 minutes. That’s what it should be.
I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS WHAT I WANTED TO MAKE.