Meet the RP1 cast, oh, and Spielberg
IT’S OUT TODAY. And we can’t wait. Ready Player One hits cinemas now and we want to hear more from the cast, Tye Sheridan and Lena Waithe and the director, Steven Spielberg himself.
What was it about this story and these characters that made you want to make
Ready Player One your next movie?
Steven Spielberg: I think anybody who read the book and was connected at all with the industry would have loved to make this into a movie. I mean, the book had seven movies in it – maybe 12 [laughs]. It was just a matter of trying to figure out how to tell a story about both of these worlds, and to make it sort of an express train racing toward the third act, and, at the same time, a little bit of a cautionary tale about leaving us the choice: where do we want to exist? Do we want to exist in reality? Or do we want to exist in an escapist universe? Those themes were so profound for me, and are consistent throughout the whole book. But there are so many places we could have taken the story.
Themes of reality versus fantasy run throughout your filmography. Is the process different for you when you’re making an escapist film than it is when you’re exploring historical events or real life issues?
Steven Spielberg: This was my great escape movie. For me, it was a film that fulfilled all of my fantasies of the places I go in my imagination when I get out of town. I got to live this for three years. I got to actually escape into the imagination of Ernest Cline and Zak Penn; it was amazing. But I came back to Earth a couple of times. I made a few films. I made Bridge of Spies and The Post while I was making Ready Player One, so I got that whiplash effect of going from social reality to total escapist entertainment. And I’m feeling it. It’s a great feeling, but it also makes my wife and kids kind of crazy because they don’t know who dad’s going to be when he comes home in the evening, or which dad they’re going to get [laughs].
There is a spectacular mix of music in the film. Are any of the songs on the soundtrack from your own playlist, Mr. Spielberg? Also, did you play music on set to get everyone warmed up?
Steven Spielberg: We did. I played a lot of the Bee Gees on the very first day [laughs]. Tye Sheridan: I want to tell a story about that. I was extremely nervous on the first day. I actually didn’t even know it was going to be our first day. We had two weeks of rehearsals, just kind of feeling out the mo cap volume and getting familiar with some of these environments that we were going to be in in the movie. And Steven shows up on the last day of rehearsal and says, ‘Let’s shoot something.’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh sh**, I hope he doesn’t want to shoot anything with me.’ He’s like ‘Yeah, you can send everyone else home, I just want to use
Tye.’ [Laughs]
So, he brings me over to the side and says, ‘Have you been working on your Parzival walk?’ I said ‘What? What is a Parzival walk? I didn’t know I had to work on a Parzival walk. [Laughs] ‘Yeah, it’s kind of like the John Travolta walk in the beginning of Saturday
Night Fever. You know, he’s got a certain swagger. I just want to capture you walking.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.’ So there I am, standing on one side of the volume and Steven’s on the other side of the volume. And it’s just me and him, no one else is on the floor. And my heart’s racing. I’m just waiting for him to call action. He pulls out his phone and hits the screen, and then he starts playing Staying Alive by the Bee Gees. Then he just starts walking towards me and he’s nodding his head and holding up his phone. And he goes, ‘And action.’ Steven Spielberg: And you can see that walk in Ready
Player One. It’s in the movie. A lot of the songs. But I have to say that most of the came from Zak Penn and Ernie Cline, from their playlist.
Tye, can you talk about your experience with videogames prior to the movie?
Tye Sheridan: Actually, there’s a scene in the movie where I play an Atari game. And, I researched the game and watched videos, and did as much research as I possibly could without actually playing the game. So, when it came time to shoot the scene, I was like, ‘Listen, guys, I’ve actually never played an Atari. So you guys are going to have to teach me how to hold the controller, because I don’t want to look like I’m holding it the wrong way.’ So, I got lessons from Steven and Zak about the Atari controller.
The film got an incredibly enthusiastic reaction when you recently previewed it at the South-by-Southwest Film Festival. What was that like for you?
Steven Spielberg: I was hiding in the back. But I heard a lot of it. I’ve made a lot of movies and I’ve gotten a lot of interesting reactions to my films; I’ve never heard anything like this before. And we were right in the center of the action.
Lena Waithe: I was just happy to be there because I had seen the movie prior and enjoyed it thoroughly sitting there by myself. But it was great being able to experience it with these people, and I spent a lot of time watching the audience, and they were right there, just leaned in and revved up, because I think it brought a real sense of joy. Talk about a time when we want escapism and want to feel good again, and I think Spielberg represents that for a lot of us. He’s been such a huge part of our lives. I remember seeing Jurassic
Park in the movie theater with my family and how I was one person before I walked into the theater and a different person when I walked out. So, to be in this movie and to be around these people who are having that exact same experience, I saw that they were different when they walked out of that theater. They were lighter; they were walking taller and smiling and slapping hands. I’ve never experienced anything like that before and I’ll never experience that again, and it was phenomenal, and I’m glad I got to experience it with all those fans.
Can you talk about your relationship with nostalgia and how that may have changed over the years?
Steven Spielberg: I have the most intimate relationship with nostalgia. It’s based on the fact that from when I was 11 or 12 years-old, I started taking 8mm movies of my family on camping trips when I was a kid growing up in Arizona. When videotape came in, I started taking videotapes. And then I started taking my 8mm sound movie camera when I was hanging around with [Francis Ford] Coppola and [George] Lucas and [Martin] Scorsese and [Brian] De Palma, and that whole group, back in the ‘70s. I’ve got something like 60 hours of footage of all us growing up and making movies together, which someday might make an interesting documentary – if I can get the rights to any of these guys – probably 80% of the footage, they would not want released to the public [laughs]!
Today in my life, I do all the videos of my family growing up. I have a really great editor, Andy, in our office, and he cuts together the whole year in the life of my family – all of my children, my grandchildren – and every year we have little screenings. It’s called the Annual Family Video. So, I basically live in nostalgia, and that might be the main reason I reacted so positively to Ernie’s book and Zak’s script. Because I’m kind of livin’ that way most of my life [laughs].