Hello and welcome to this celebration of movie excellence in 2024. I'm Alex Zane, and in Countdown to the BAFTAs, we speak to the producers behind those films nominated for best film at the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2024. This time it's Poor Things.
(Poor Things directed by Yorgos Lanthimos)
[START SCENE CLIP]
Bella: May I have a moment of value time dear God?
Baxter: Of course Bella.
Bella: I wanted to tell you big news. Bella is dizzy with excite.
[END SCENE CLIP]
Alex: In this wide ranging interview, we discuss how they got from the creative spark that started it all to the challenges faced in bringing it to the screen.
And a quick warning, we will be talking about the story. This is countdown to the BAFTAs.
Poor Things tells the story of Bella Baxter, played by Emma Stone. A young woman brought back to life with the brain of an infant by the unorthodox, Dr. Godwin Baxter, played by Willem Dafoe. Hungry for the world, Bella embarks on a cross continent adventure with Mark Ruffalo’s debauched lawyer Duncan Wedderburn.
[START SCENE CLIP]
Duncan: You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I will not lie to you, I have been with many.
Bella: Miss Prim said you were wolf with the scent of hundred women on you.
Duncan: She oversells it.
[END SCENE CLIP]
Alex: And over time evolves to become steadfast in her stand for equality and liberation.
Andrew: Hi. I’m Andrew Lowe, producer on Poor Things.
Ed: Hi, my name is Ed Guiney. I'm a producer on Poor Things.
Alex: Ed Andrew, absolutely fantastic to have you here to talk about Poor Things. Let me start by saying congratulations. How does it feel to have been recognized and have poor things recognized by the BAFTA members?
Andrew: Yeah, no, listen, it's, it's, uh, been amazing, Alex. We're so chuffed. And, you know, we're so proud of this film. Uh, we've been very fortunate to work with Yorgos now for a long time. This is the fourth or five films we've done with him. And, over those films, we've sort of pulled together a band of trusted, creatives. All of whose work has, has been recognized, thankfully, by BAFTA and rightly so we feel, because they've just done incredible job. So, yeah, no, we're really thrilled by, by all the nominations.
Alex: And as you just said, you've worked with Director Yorgos Lanthimos since The Lobster, I believe. So tell me, in that relationship over these many years, when were you first introduced to the words Poor Things? What was the circumstance and what was your reaction to this idea at that point?
Ed: I think it was after we had shot The Lobster. 2014, 2015. And he was, he, he was talking about new projects and other things, and he mentioned this book board things and that he'd already been to see Alasdair Gray up in Glasgow.
And, you know, he talked a little bit about it. It sounded incredibly ambitious, but really exciting and unusual and bold and, you know, and we read it and absolutely fell in love with the novel. It's an incredible novel and so full of ideas. You know, as those people who've seen it will know.
It's, it's, it's, it's ambitious. It's quite big and, it's a kind of, it's a kind of very bold idea in a sense, but it's, it's a bit like, you know, Bella Baxter in the movie through a series of baby steps.
We kind of self-actualized and, by making a bunch of movies with, with Yorgos. And then I suppose really the key thing was making The Favourite, which became a kind of a critical hit and awards hit. And, and that gave us, collectively and Yorgos in particular, the right to contemplate making Poor Things.
And, and, and Emma Stone's, uh, involvement in Poor Things is absolutely key to kind of making the argument for it because it, it's a, it's an ambitious film with an ambitious budget. So having her kind of front and centre, both as the star, but also as a producer, that was a key thing.
And, it's been a journey, but a, a really good one and, from something that felt kind of like an incredible thing to try to pull off. It's great that we have been allowed to have a go at it.
Alex: To touch on one of the points you just made, just how important was the success of The Favourite? For example, had The Favourite not been such a successful film in every respect? Would we be here talking about Poor Things, right now or did one very much lead onto the other?
Andrew: I think probably the answer is yes to both. In other words, we, you know, as we always do, we would've figured out a way of getting this film made. I think if we didn't have the success of The Favourite. But it probably wouldn't be the version of Poor Things that we've been able to bring to the world, cause it's, we would, would have more limited resources. One of the things we've been blessed with is a very supportive, collaboration with Film 4 across all of, Yorgos’, English language films, so, they helped us develop poor things in the first instance.
But I guess one of the advantages of The Favourite, was developing a really strong, fruitful relationship with Searchlight. And making films as tough and, and so you know, when you find fellow travellers who are like-minded and, you know, in, in the heat of battle you forge, supportive, relationships.
Then, then that, that really helped. So, so, there was a very easy conversation to be had with Film 4, Searchlight, once we came out the other side of The Favourite and that Poor Things was, the thing you wanted to do next, and it was outside of the typical boundaries of Searchlight and Film 4’s budgets arguably. But, everyone saw the opportunity and they dug deep and we, you know, worked hard trying to figure out how to make it, um, for a price. And, um, so yeah, so I, I, you know, that was the best version of it and we're so blessed that that's what happened. But there, there was another version I'm sure too. We would've figured it out.
Alex: I guess the dream of any producer is to have a star who is invested in the, the project that you are making together. And I hope I'm right in saying this. um, Yorgos didn't even pitch it to Emma shortly after The Favourite. He merely mentioned in passing to Emma Stone, the movie he was making and that little titbit of information. She was, she was hooked, and from the get go, she fell in love with the idea of making this project.
Ed: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think they were just chitchatting really. Um, they'd had a great time working with each other on, on The Favourite.
And she just, yeah, she jumped on it and I think it, I think it was probably a couple years after that before she actually read the script, so I dunno exactly when she read the script, but, but she was super curious and kind of all in from the start.
And that's, listen, it's such a valuable commodity that to have that kind of input, and for us to know that, you know, and Emma wanted to play this part, yeah, she's one of, you know, the great actors in the world. And, and to have that kind of commitment just really powered us on, you know, is incredibly important.
Alex: As pro producers of this movie, we've already touched on, on the sheer scale, uh, of the undertaking that Poor Things was for you, even with having a. Emma on, board, and even with your long relationship with Yorgos, do you have to, at some stage when you're looking at the lay of the land, the amount of time, energy, and money that is gonna be invested in this project, do you have to take a, a step back and in an almost dispassionate way, go look, is is this a go project?
Can we feasibly make this film?
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there was a huge amount of, um, research and prep went into figuring out how to make this film. We were also impacted by the advent of Covid, which was both ironically positive and negative.
So Kasia Malipan, who was our, our co-producer. And, is a line producer we'd worked with in the past. So we brought her on to help us figure out how to physically make the film, and she worked very closely with Paula Heffernan our head of production, and they did a very detailed, rigorous research exercise. You know, one of the, the first things Yorgos had said to us when we first started talking about the film is that he wanted to shoot in the style of a 1940s Hollywood movie. So in other words, everything on sound stages, so that was the rule we set ourselves and we, we then figured out, well, how, how feasible is that realistically?
One challenge was obviously budget. Another challenge was just availability, actually finding sound stages that were available. And then as I said, we, you know, Covid hit, so, so one of the, we sort of digressed a little bit and, and we just, we focused then on. Setting up an art department, which Film 4 very graciously got behind and supported and it's quite an unusual thing to do, but it really, really stood to us and, and we had an art department team working for the guts of two to three months in London.
Just coming up with all the sort of concepts for the film. And it was a combination of Shona Heath and James Price are 2 brilliant production designers and their teams. Just coming up with all these ideas for the animals you see in the film, the worlds that, you know, that everything really.
That just meant by the time, you know, COVID lifted again, Enou-enough to allow us to kind of travel. We were quite clear about what we were looking for and we, and we found in Hungary the kind of perfect combination of stage, space, good crews, particularly around construction, because it was just a massive amount of construction on this film.
Alex: I want to go back to this, uh, this art department that, uh, you were able to set up to, uh, begin the design work on the movie. Um, that must have been a very exciting room to walk into as producers and, and see what was there. , Can I ask, were there any animal combinations that didn't make it into the movie?
Did you see any early drawings of animals? You're like, that's, that's just not gonna happen.
Ed: I actually, to be honest, don't remember. I'm sure there were other iterations of it, Alex. I'm sure there were lots of other stuff. But, but what Andrew's saying is, in a way for all of us working on this film, like how rational are you when you approach something like this?
And the answer is it comes from a place of dreaming and possibility and passion, not rationality. Shona and James kind of together built the world and just, it was sort of hugely ambitious.
The kind of scale of it was kind of mind blowing, but actually it was the thing that work was the thing that kind of gave us wings. It carried us on because it was so exciting and it was such a kind of unique and compelling vision of a world. That it informed so much of what became possible, if you like, because once financiers begin to see that stuff, they're going, wow, that's amazing, and can you really pull it off? Is it feasible?
And then when Holly Waddington, our amazing costume designer, got involved and she saw what James and Shona were doing, that completely inspired her, but also for Jerskin Fendrix, our composer who, wrote all of the music for the film before we shot a frame of the film. Uh, was really inspired by James and Shana's lookbook as he imagined what the sa the score for the film might be, because it was, we hadn't shot anything at that point, , and the cast talk about how useful that stuff was as well.
So it was sort of, there was an awful lot of dreaming and excitement at an early stage, um, which actually weirdly bizarrely, came to fruition, which, uh, yeah, like we were all in some ways terrified because for us at Element, you know, this was the, the biggest film, uh, we've ever been involved in. Maybe the biggest film, I dunno if it is the biggest film, that Film4 had ever been involved in, it's, it's certainly one of the higher budget films that Searchlight have done. But for every single head of department, you know, all of that, that amazing team of people, it was like we were all stretched.
We were all in the unknown. We'd never done it before. There was no one who was like, oh, let me tell you how we do this. We, it's, you know, that everyone was like, holy shit, how do we figure this out?
[Laughs]
Alex: Um, I do want to talk about, actually realizing some of these sets that you've been talking about, on these sound stages. Uh, just before we get there, though, obviously you, you have built this wonderful world that you need to then populate, with actors to take on these roles. From the very get go, Emma was keen on playing Bella and.
Tell me a little bit, uh, about the casting of, uh, Mark Ruffalo in a, a role like no other we've ever really seen him perform on screen and where that thought came from and, and what his reaction was to either having a meeting or reading that script?
Ed: So Dixie Chassay is our brilliant casting director who also cast The Favourite, the cast kind of emerges from I think Yorgos’ curiosity about actors.
I mean, he watches a lot. He sees a lot. He has a list of people that he's interested in and wants to work with. And I think as he approaches, every part, it's kind of digging into the memory banks and, thinking about who might be interesting and unexpected.
What we don't do is the kind of traditional thing of like, list of names and kind of work down through the names. There tends to be one name, and we pursue that name. And if it doesn't work out well, then we think again.
Yorgos is just a massive fan of Mark Ruffalo,
Um, and in some ways, obviously, it's an unusual choice to play that part, but he's an incredible actor, you know, and, and I think he could see, Yorgos could see, what. Sort of was possible for Mark, and I think Mark himself, like, you know, I think he's sort of surprised by himself, by what he's done in the film.
I mean, I, you know, he's very funny, talking about it, but I think playing that part has opened up a whole range of possibilities for him in terms of, you know, what he can think about himself doing as an actor, which is amazing and, you know, really exciting.
And obviously Willem is an icon, incredible, incredible actor. And that was a very easy kind of, conversation and thing to, thing to arrive at.
But then if you think about somebody like Ramy, I mean, Ramy. How do you decide to offer that part to Ramy Youssef, who is, um, Egyptian American stand-up comedian, who makes an incredible show about being a young Muslim man living in America. But to actually, to see the possibility of someone like that playing that part of a young, kind of, sort of naive British doctor, you know, kind of wide-eyed, bushy tail British doctor.
And he's so good Ramy, he's so fantastic in that part. But, so there's a kind of a genius in how Yorgos kind of, curates the different inputs in the film. And again, Jerskin Fendrix, who's our composer is another example of that.
You know, Jerskin, I guess come from kind of outsider music, you know, I dunno how Yorgos actually came across him, but I think just going down a rabbit hole on Spotify, hearing Jerskin’s music and going. I think maybe this guy could compose music. And it's the first time that Yorgos has ever had a composer on a film.
Alex: And I am right thinking Jerskin actually had a small cameo in the movie during that incredible dance sequence in Lisbon. He's playing some crazy fantastical instrument that's Jerskin.
Ed: That doesn't work. It's a complete made up instrument. No, it just looks very impressive, so yeah.
Alex: Pulling back the curtain. Thank you. I enjoy, I enjoy that. So let's talk. Seeing as we're in Lisbon from our last answer, um, at the dance sequence. Let's talk about that Lisbon set because it's. A phenomenal set as a viewer, and by all accounts, a phenomenal set in person. I'm assuming both of you had the chance to walk round it.
Built on, I believe, one of the largest, if not the largest sound stage on mainland Europe. Talk us through that set.
[Background singing from film]
Andrew: It's built in the Korda Studios, which is the largest sound stage in continental Europe. I remember first time stepping on into that studio. I was just blown away by the scale of it. I mean, it's a city block and it's like three story buildings.
Properly built. So when you walk into the hotel and you open the door, there's a room in there and you know, you, the stairs you could go up and down over three, three floors. Yorgos is very keen that we would have a set extensive enough that Bella could get lost in it and wander around and, and that's her journey of discovery.
And actually there's a lot of the set we never saw in the end, but there's lots of little nooks and crannies and alleyways, um, that, that, are all connected. Really an incredible, feat of our production team and the construction team to, to pull that one off.
Alex: It truly is. It is an incredible set and the, the fact that the book is very much set in the real world, in Victorian, Glasgow, I mean here we have something that is much more fantastical. So I imagine watching your production designers almost to, a certain extent, have a blank canvas to just run wild with.
Must have been an exciting journey for you as producers and for them as designers.
Ed: Yeah, no, it was, I mean, Alasdair Gray, you know was an artist as well as a incredible writer. And you know, there were sort of elements of, of his work as an artist that kind of inspired, but then also I think Yorgos was referencing kind of, you know, in the loosest possible way, Fellini movies.
You know, the sort of the mixture of the fantastical, uh, and, and the baroque and the kind of grotesque that, that you, you, you see in some of those kinds of films. And also it's obviously a Lisbon that never existed with sort of strange things flying across roofs and all that kinda stuff.
But it's, it's like, it's, it's also fascinating because if you talk to any of the actors, it's so helpful for them to kind of walk onto a composite set like that. In other words, a set where you can, you know, you can walk into the oyster bar and there is a bar there that serves champagne and it's there and then you can walk into another.
You know, dive bar, you know, you can go down steps and into that dive bar and the hotel and you can go up to the bedroom of the hotel and look out the window. And, so I think there's a whole thing of the kind of make-believe that was super helpful for them.
Alex: And despite this this incredible scale when it came to actually filming scenes, some of which are, are, are quite intimate, quite small moments. Yorgos does keep a very small crew with him, uh, when he's actually shooting. The moments on these vast sound stages.
Is, is that right?
Andrew: Yeah, that's very much I mean you know, Yorgos talks a lot about how he started out filmmaking in Greece, you know, shooting films with a small group of friends.
And just by dent of the lack of resources, there was just a tiny troop, uh, making those films. And that's a kind of a, an ethos in the culture he likes to try and preserve on his sets.
All those sets were pre-lit, for example. So, we could minimize the amount of people that needed to be in the room when, when the camera was turning over. So for a lot of those scenes, it was really just Yorgos the cast and Robbie and sound, that was it, Robbie. The, the, the DOP.
And we, we worked very hard to try and minimize. Interruption and keep everyone else at bay. So it's, it's just kind of, you know, allow them, create that little bubble. There's also, I'd sort of forgotten, you know, we shot this film the height of Covid and, and so everything you see on screen just left and right, there are people stand round the masks so we had to be very careful about that stuff too, you know, because all the cast are obviously, uh, working. Without protection. So there was an awful lot of, you know, very detailed testing and, you know, rigorous, uh, protocols applied.
Alex: You've got this, Um. This script from, uh, Tony McNamara, who you first worked with on, on The Favourites. Just to take you, um, a little further back before Poor Things and, and your discovery of Tony McNamara, that was, that was very much where you were looking. You were actively searching for a writer to work with on The Favourite, and that's how you discovered Tony.
How did you actually discover him? I mean, almost literally.
Ed: It’s a while ago now, but I think it was kind of old school. Yorgos, loved working with Deborah, who, who originated the script wanted to bring someone else in to kind of, I suppose, bring a bit more of, his, uh, sensibility to it. And it was old school in the sense that we just read a load of scripts.
And in fact, the script that we read that, um, kind of really convinced us about the rightness of Tony Mack for this, for The Favourite at least, uh, was, uh, an original, film script he'd written for what? For the, The Great what became the TV series? The Great, but it was a, it was a kind of biopic, a very odd, funny, irreverent, um, biopic of Catherine the Great and, and, so we loved that.
And then asked him to write The Favourite and then, you know, he obviously went on and made a highly successful and super entertaining, TV show based on. The Catherine the Great idea, but, uh, but that, you know, that, was it. And he's a, he's a really warm Aussie, you know, he's he's he's a great kind of, uh, person to have around.
And he's just, he's incredibly funny, incredibly clever, and there's such humanity in his writing. We really want to continue working with with, with Tony as, as does Yorgos, but no, he's, he's fab.
Alex: And the cast, um, every, uh, single one of the casts that I've, watched talk about, uh, this script have nothing but praise for Tony McNamara's words and how much they enjoyed performing them in the film.
For you, having read the script and, then being on set and then seeing Emma. Bring this script to life and inhabit this character of Bella, which, she has called, the favourite character she has ever played by some margin. Tell me what it was, like when you first saw her not knowing exactly what she was going to be doing with this when you first saw her inhabit this role.
Ed: There was a thing that we did where we, we said we were gonna, shoot a kind of a, a test day on all the set, on the set, the, the London set, it was just to literally test it out. And this was after kind of a, there's a period of rehearsal that Yorgos goes through, which I is really.
Helpful, I think to the cast. And it, it's kind of over two, three weeks before, so all the cast assemble before we shoot and they get involved in this rehearsal process. But it's a very unusual rehearsal process. And there's a lot of games, a lot of fun, a lot of rolling around the floor, role playing. Uh, it's not the kind of traditional.
You know, rehearsal period where people read the script to each other and scratch their heads and talk about motivation and all this kind of stuff. It's really about play and disinhibiting and kind of trust and feeling, you know, that you're in this kind of band of players and that, and, and sort of making a fool outta yourself, all of those actors kind of are, you know, highly trained, incredible people.
So there was something kind of very refreshing to them of being in this space where you're just kind of, playing and building this very intimate set of relationships with the rest of the cast.
But still there's kind of trepidation when you move onto the floor and costumes go on and you kind of actually have to execute on that. Because rehearsals don't really deal with the specifics of how you play a scene. It's much more about getting into a head space so that when you're in that headspace, you know what the right impulses are.
You kind of feel them instinctively. It's all at that level. Rather than. You, know, something more technical.
It's completely creative and free in that sense.
But there was, you know, a lot of anxiety from everyone about, like, well, how, what, what happens when we go on the floor and what does it look like? And the costumes are on, everything's on. We're there, we're there.
So we said, well, we'll shoot this kind of full stay. We don't expect anything to come of it.
And that meant I think that, for Emma and, Willem and whoever was around, you know, that early days that actually the stakes were a bit lower.
But of course that meant it was fantastic and fabulous and wonderful because the kind of expectations were more moderated and we used, I, I think pretty much everything we shot that day, but it was a great start into it. But then seeing the kind of physicality that she sort of brought to it, uh, extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary, you know.
And, I think herself in Yorgos had sort of broken down, Bella's evolution into kind of five stages, and so that that meant when you were going from, you know. The very unformed baby brain, Bella, that's one kind of set of physicality and behaviour.
And then obviously the fully self-actualized Dr. Bella at the end. There's a whole other kind of a much more, I suppose,
Much closer to a woman of that age in terms of, you know, physicality and all that
[START SCENE CLIP]
Bella: Go home Duncan. Our time has ended. I look at you and feel nothing but the lingering question of how did I ever want you?
Toinette: Oooo.
[END SCENE CLIP]
Ed: So they had, they had built this structure together, uh, which I think was super helpful to her, but it's just, I don't know.
It's, it's, it's an extraordinary performance. It's incredibly brave.
She takes massive swings, Emma, you know, it's. Uh, you know, it's very hard to kind of understand, uh, how someone like that does that. Um, and all you can do is sort of watch it in awe.
And then when you actually see the coherence of it, when it's all put together, when you see actually how instinctively, satisfying it is and how truthful it feels. You know this, this crazy creation of a character, this crazy kind of weird Frankenstein monster sort of thing.
It's super impressive.
[START SCENE CLIP]
Bella: You really expect me to go upstairs with a man even if I find him distasteful and therefore am sad when I let him furious jump me?
Swiney: That is the way it is my darling.
[END SCENE CLIP]
Alex: I think Emma Stone has spoken about the fact that she loved this character so much. She found it very difficult to, uh, to turn Bella off, to let go.
Andrew: We, we we were at a q and a last night here in, in, uh, West Hollywood, and she was making that exact point that she, very hard to let her go and, and, and, uh, that Bella had, you know, profoundly impacted her, in a positive way.
Alex: The film is, is, is finished and just talk me through, getting the, the, the theatrical cut that, uh, is just about to, uh, be released here in the UK. We hear a lot about, uh, films going through a, a, a test screening, uh, process.
Test audiences scorecard and getting feedback on the film and, and sometimes the film is influenced by those scores and comments, and sometimes it's not.
Was that a process that you used with Poor Things?
Andrew: Um, so yes and no. I mean, Searchlight and Film 4 both, um, hosted sort of friends and family screenings, it's not a formal thing. I mean there, there's some sort of polling, but it's not a, it's not a, you know, blind testing.
You know, with the outside firm. And whilst the feedback is useful, it's, it's just general feedback that's kind of feeds into the conversation that's going on around the cut.
And, I think to be fair to Yorgos, he is collaborative and he's interested in what people have to say, but ultimately. You know, like all great directors, he, decides when he's, you know, when he's happy with what he has.
And one of the great things about working with Searchlight is they understand his process and how he likes to work, and they sort of bend to that so they don't insist on having test screenings, uh, that are going to feed into the code.
I mean, they, they do do test screenings that inform the marketing, um, campaign and what was great about them is they went through the roof. I mean, they were really positive. Um, you know, so they screened in Texas and, uh, you know, so it in places where you wouldn't necessarily expect Yorgos to be a, a big thing.
But, um, but the, the responses were very, very strong and very positive and encouraging. And, and I think that can be helpful just in terms of tweaking the, the approach to marketing and, and, what areas to, to kind of foreground and highlight.
Alex: When you try and sum up at this movie, it's about a woman who dies and then has a, baby's brain put in her head and goes on a, tour of Europe to try and find out what the world is and evolve into a human. It's like Ahuh. And you want us to market that? Okay, we're where, where, where do you begin? So it is with sort of feedback and.
And it must be nice for you as producers to receive that feedback and know that a movie that is, quite out there, is landing with audiences.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, it, it's, it's, you know, it, to be fair to Yorgos, he's a rigorous filmmaker, but he's also very interested in the marketing of his films and has a very big say about them and input into them. So it's not like the marketing campaign is designed on the back of test screenings, but it's, but, but they're literally just there to test what we're, what we already have and, and to tweak if, if necessary.
Uh, the first image of the film is Yorgs’ image. He, he works with, um, a brilliant designer in, in Athens, and they're very old friends and they, um, uh, you know, they, they work together on, on all of Yorgos’ projects.
But then the Searchlight team then kick in and work very closely with them and, come up with the various, uh, iterations of, of the marketing campaign.
Look, it's kind of. You know, it’s always the case that, when you're watching a film 10, 12, 15 times and there's lots of voices in the room, you, you can lose perspective. So it's, really exciting. Slightly terrifying, but just exhilarating ultimately, when you do get that initial feedback. And, and you kind of go, okay, so we're, we're, we're not all drinking the Kool-Aid here.
It actually, you know, it does work, uh, and it does speak to people. So, so yeah, that's, that's, uh, always nice.
Alex: So talk me through the uh. The very first time, you sat in a room with a film that you are passionate about that is finished and you're watching it with an audience, not friends and family, but people generally seeing a movie for the first time. They've got no skin in the game, but obviously you guys do.
What was that experience like? Where, was it? Where did you first watch it with an audience? And where's your head and indeed your heart at in that moment?
Ed: I mean, the first, uh, kind of public screening of the film was at the Venice Film Festival, um, in, uh, early September.
And, the film we had shot it two years before, there's an awful lot of post-production visual effects. It took a long time to finish the film.
And you do kind of lose perspective, but also the film is a big swing. So you don't know how it's gonna land. You honestly don't, you know. And so the first time that an audience sees it is, incredibly nerve wracking.
Um, and we've had experiences where that hasn't, gone down well. And it's sort of devastating. Um, and we've, uh, happily had occasions where it has landed and, and in this case it really did land, with the audience in Venice. And it was a wonderful, wonderful screening. The thing that was also kind of, I suppose that made us maybe a little bit more anxious as well about how it would land was, the fact that we were in the middle of the SAG strikes. And, part of the thing of being in a festival like Venice is that you have the red carpet and you have, you know, our amazing cast and all that kind of stuff. Um, but they were absent.
And particularly Emma, you know, because she's so central to the film, both as a performer, but also as a producer, as part of the team of people who made the film. And not having her there, we felt like was, you know, we were very anxious about her absence in that sense, so that she could speak to the film and talk about it and talk about it from her perspective.
But actually, it really did land very well and it was a, a great opportunity, I think for, you know, all our heads of department. You know, to kind of, to shine actually in the absence of cast, because they were, they were, there and, and there, there was more attention paid to them than often is the case.
You know, a lot of, a lot of, uh, those, those contributions, um, you know, are left behind when there's a glamorous red carpet, if that makes sense.
So, then we went immediately to Telluride. So we went from kind of, you know, Venice and, old Europe if you like, straight into, Colorado, the middle of the Colorado Mountains to Telluride to play for an entirely different audience.
Um, and again, that's something that you go, well, okay, it worked in Venice, but let's see how it works here in, in the middle of America, you know, and it played through the roof there. So I think, you know, coming outta that, you kind of go, okay, and the reviews are very good and. So that sort of makes you think, well, you know, you have a chance.
Like there is something here that people are responding to and people are enjoying, but it's incredibly nerve wracking. Well, certainly for me at least, but I think for everyone it's like incre, incredibly stressful.
Particularly something that, you know, is an expensive film. So many people kind of were kind of stretched in the making of it. It feels like there's a lot at stake, you know, it's not that I feel elated after those sort of things.
It's not like I come out punching the air. I'm just mainly relieved. It's more like, you know, okay, God, thank God we got away with it. It's not like you kind of, you know, you're sort of, but that's me. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm sure other people have much more normal reaction.
Alex: Yeah, I, I imagine some people do punch the air and not just go, we got away with it. That's a really interesting reaction. Just to follow that, uh, that through line of, of thought though, I, it worked in Venice and then it worked in Telluride, and these are, these are film festivals. As we sit here recording the film is imminently about to hit cinemas across the UK.
Does that come with its own set of nerves or, or, or, or at least are we going to get away with it?
Andrew: It does. I mean, you know, there's high expectations for the film in the UK, and Ireland. I mean, um, The Favourite was really successful. In the UK and Ireland, it grows 17 million pounds when it was released. Um, and so that's a very high bar, to, um, you know, to try and aim for. Uh, but you know, Searchlight are doing an amazing job.
We have, um, two, um, arthouse cinemas in Ireland, and I was just talking to the programmer of our, of the Lighthouse cinema in Dublin earlier today, and he was just commenting how. You know, the marketing is all over the city. It's just everywhere you turn. It's on buses, it's, it's everywhere.
There's, um, the cinema itself is plastered in, in Bella Baxter images and the pre-sales are very strong. So, um, and we're, we're also fortunate to have a 35 mil print, um, in our venue. And, you know, that all of those 35 mil screenings are selling out, which is brilliant and it's great. And, you know, we shot the film on film and to be able to, uh, show it on film and, and have audiences respond to that is, is really gratifying.
Ed: You know, it is nerve wracking because, you know, although it's a film directed by a Greek man, and, there are obviously a mixture of nationalities in the cast but effectively it's a film, a film that was built and born out of the UK.
You know, it's a British story. The characters are British. They move from London into the world, you know, so it's really important to us, that the home crowd respond to it, that, kind of, that British audiences sort of feel that it's, it's something that they, they can respond to and embrace please God, it'll be okay. But it's sort of, it's slowly bringing it back home and that's the place where you always wanted to really thrive and succeed. So.
Alex: Uh, we're, uh, nearing the end of our time together, but I do have, uh, a few big quick-fire questions, for you before we, uh, leave each other's company.
Ed: I hate quick-fire questions.
Alex: They don’t have to be too quick-fire.
Ed: Don't say things like, what was the funniest day on set? Don't ask one of those questions.
Alex: Okay. Andrew, what was the funniest day…
Ed: And I'm joking. Ask what you like. Yeah.
Alex: Uh, no, the first question is, and, and you can decide which one of you would like to answer this, but, uh, what was your favourite day, the best day in your memory during either the filming or the editing of this film? Was there one day that particularly stands out as a, as a great day in your memory?
Ed: My best day see on the film was, in Athens in May of. Where are we now? May of 23. I guess it must be when, I saw the first cut of the film in the cutting room. And, it was, just a few of us.
And like we just had no idea what to sort of expect. And, Emma was in town because she and Yorgos had made this film called Bleat a short film that they had done together and they, there was a screening of that. And I've just, I mean, I think I know probably the best experience I've had at a kind of first cut of a film, you know, of anything really.
Just seeing that, in all its glory and being phenomenally excited by it. And also the kind of, you know, also Emma was so excited by it as well, and so there was a real kind of sense of possibility and, you know, that kind of, maybe we'd pull something off so that, that, that, that's my best day.
Alex: Okay,
Andrew: Probably my favourite memory of it was, just at the end of pre-production in, in Budapest. And, and we had a show and tell for Searchlight and, and Film 4 execs that they came to visit. And, uh, James brought us around the London set, which was finished at that stage.
Um, and Holly gave us tour of all the costumes and, you know, examples of of, of, you know, what her team had been working on. And it was a.
It was just such an exciting day because particularly for Searchlight and Film 4 who hadn't seen much, it was like they were just really energized by it and excited by it, and, and you really had a sense of, , this might actually work. You know, it's like, it just looks amazing. And so, yeah. So that was a, that was an exciting day.
Alex: Okay. And, uh, conversely, uh, the flip side of that, was there a particularly tough day on set a day that proved quite challenging as producers from your memory Ed?
Ed: The one I remember was, you know, the reanimation sequence?
Alex: Yes.
Ed: You know when, when she's brought back to life and you know, all the kind of bits and bobs that need to happen there. The total, total car crash, it was a disaster. I mean, we sort of went on to try and to just check that all the little bits of things were working the night before nothing was working.
And we, I think we pushed it already in order to give ourselves more time to be ready for it. And it, it was extraordinarily grim at around eight o'clock the night before we were due to shoot. When none of the reanimation stuff was working and you know, all the, you know, kind of bells and whistles and electricity generator things and all that kind of stuff, it was really grim.
But then we figured it out overnight and it was fine the next day it was grand and which is what always happens, so.
Andrew: I, think one of the challenges, uh, I mentioned earlier, Kasia Malipan was our co-producer and, and who've managed the physical production of the film for us and did an incredible job. But just one of the challenges on the film at the scale is just the amount of people involved and just trying to keep track of where everything is at any point in time.
And, um, it was quite close to the point that we, we really needed to lock our budget, um, which is quite close to shooting the film. And it became apparent the information that was flowing back up to us, that we had a massive problem, uh, in our lighting, uh, department. And, you know, the, the sets are so big, the scale of them are so large.
Um, and as I mentioned earlier, we, there was, they were all pre-lit. So we, we had a lot of lights up on rigging for an extensive period of time. I remember we went to a meeting with our, um, Hungarian co-producers who went to see the lighting company and I was, slightly shocked to discover, we had every light in Hungary and half the lights in Germany up on, on, on our rigging.
And it was just like, okay, fuck. How do we, uh, how do we dial this back a little bit? It was too late, obviously. And so, and it was necessary, but we, we figured out ultimately. But at that particular point in time, it was quite a stressful financial problem. But, uh, yeah, we, we got through that.
Alex: I have that almost cartoon image of when you turn the lights on, every city nearby goes completely dark.
Andrew: Yeah.
Alex: Penultimate question, and this can be specific to this film or perhaps in general, from your experience, between both of you extensive experience of producing films, what would you say the toughest job of a producer is?
Andrew: I think the toughest part is actually having to say no to a director because we've exhausted every other possibility.
I mean, I think we would sort of pride ourselves of that you know, our job is to protect and support and sort of amplify what a director's trying to do and, and so finding ourselves a situation where we actually have to sit down and say, look, I'm really sorry, but we can't do it is, that's really tough. Um, and we've, we, you know, it, it happened to us on, on another Yorgos film, and it was not an easy conversation. Um, but it was, uh, yeah, a unnecessary one, unfortunately.
Alex: So if you do win, it's a possible future. If you do win on the night, who is the one person that you have to thank on that stage, who may or may not have been involved in the films production, but without whom you would not be up there?
Andrew: I, think, does anyone answers all that?
I think we have to thank, uh, our respective wives, Kiva and Nefa, who have, uh, put up with endless holidays being interrupted by drama and late night calls So I think without them, we, we would not be here and we would not be standing on that stage if we're so lucky to be on that stage.
Alex: At fantastic stuff. Um, Ed, Andrew, Thank you so much, uh, for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure going on this journey through Poor Things with you and, and once again, congratulations.
Andrew: Thank you so much Alex.
Ed: Thanks a million. Thank you so much.
Alex: My thanks to Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, and of course to you for listening. Follow the podcast to explore the rest of the nominees and much more in the months to come. Thanks to to the producers of this series, Matt Hill and Ollie Pier at Rethink Audio with Sound design by Peregrine Pez Andrews. I'm Alex Zane.
This was a BAFTA production. I'll see you again as the countdown to the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2024 continues.
