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TRANSCRIPT
[OPENING TITLE]
JENNIFER LAWRENCE: God, I’m really nerding out on this couch. I feel like I’m gonna cry.
…
LAWRENCE: Hi, I’m Jennifer Lawrence, and I’m going to be playing back some films that are special to me.
The first clip we’re going to see is from Die My Love.
[CLIP STARTS]
[Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) crawl to each other in a field]
JACKSON: Wanna get married?
GRACE: Yeah. Yeah. Fuck, yeah.
[CLIP ENDS]
LAWRENCE: He’s meeting her where she is, and I think she’s kind of, like, pleasantly surprised by this. Obviously, the proposal is really special, but I feel like what happens before is kind of almost more profound to her.
Martin Scorsese called me because he had read this book in his book club. And, so I read it right away.
I was six weeks postpartum with my first son, and I was actually having a lovely postpartum. Because I was having such a nice experience, I was able to kind of go there because I think if you identify too much, you would just want to avoid it and be like, “I don’t want to do that.” So, I think it was a blessing that I was in such a kind of like, floaty headspace.
And then I think A Woman Under the Influence is one of the most influential films to me, and any actor would want that kind of role. So, if this can work, this would be the most phenomenal thing to do.
What struck me at first was this isn’t a normal movie because it’s, you know, it’s all told from the character’s inner world and inner monologue, so, it has to be made in like, a subversive way, and I think the only filmmaker that comes to mind for me when I think who is a poet, is Lynne Ramsay. She’s, she just, she’s a poet. If anybody can create this for cinema, it’s only Lynne Ramsay. And then she said yes.
…
LAWRENCE: This is the best movie I’ve ever seen. This is One Battle After Another.
[CLIP STARTS]
[Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio) stands at a phone box talking to Comrade Josh (Dan Chariton)]
COMRADE JOSH: What time is it?
BOB: You know, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t remember that part, alright?
Let’s just not nitpick over the password stuff. Look, this is Bob Ferguson, alright? You just called my house. Let’s cut the, I need the rendezvous point.
COMRADE JOSH: What time is it?
BOB: Look. Steve Lockjaw just attacked my home.
LAWRENCE: [Interjecting] “Time is an illusion, but it controls us anyway.”
BOB: I don’t remember any more of this. I don’t remember any more of this code speak, alright?
Just get on with, what is the rendezvous point?
[CLIP ENDS]
LAWRENCE: I can’t remember a time where I ever had an experience like that in the cinema, and it was shared. When it was over, everyone applauded. I just kept thanking my husband over and over and over again because he had booked the tickets, like two weeks in advance, and I just couldn’t say anything else other than just like, thank you for that experience.
You have to see it in theatres. I think it’s an impossible pace to uphold. There’s not an extra minute in it, at no point does it drag.
And P T Anderson has so many characters inside of him, and they’re all so visceral, so real that you’re, it’s so alive and you’re in it. Every character, you are, you know them and you see them.
I mean, the performances are unbelievable. Sean Penn, I mean, Leo, obviously, but I mean, my God.
…
LAWRENCE: This was the movie that really put me on the map.
This is Winter’s Bone.
[CLIP STARTS]
REE DOLLY (LAWRENCE): If Dad has done wrong, Dad has paid. And whoever killed him, I don’t need to know all that.
But I can’t forever carry them kids. And my Mum. Not without that house.
[CLIP ENDS]
LAWRENCE: So sad.
I feel like the last time I saw that I was younger. Now I’m like, a Mum, I’m like… I remember it so well, I remember that scene so well and Debra Granik was so. She made it so immersive. It was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t. You know, there were so many people in that movie that weren’t actors and- and the costume designer, I can’t remember her name, but she would buy kind of new Carhartts and new coats and clothes and things like that, and trade them for the locals, like kind of, worn so everything had this really realistic veneer.
I did a movie, The Poker House, when I was 16, and I won something for it, and was just like, I think in my mind I thought like, “Well, that’s because I could do that one character.” And then was really nervous to do a second movie, which was The Burning Plain. And then, this is like, I can’t, [mumbles] I got something, right? An award. And so, I was like, “Well, that was just that one movie.”
And so, by the time I got to Winter’s Bone, I kind of started being like, “I think I can do this.” I feel like I started kind of listening to my instincts kind of more, and kind of having more confidence and like, awareness of what I was doing.
When it came out, I got nominated for an Oscar, and obviously that shifted me from, you know, I was like, an indie kind of unknown person and that obviously put me on a bigger… Then I got Hunger Games, so I guess, yeah, it was entirely different.
…
LAWRENCE: This movie is the most beautiful movie in the world, in my world.
It is In The Mood For Love.
[CLIP STARTS]
[Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) cross paths]
[CLIP ENDS]
LAWRENCE: I mean, I don’t, I’ll, [scoffs] It’s for anybody that loves, like, a period, like, love story. It’s like, similar to Pride and Prejudice and it’s, like, set in this conservative society in this specific time and this reluctant love story where everything is so chaste that like, just passing in the hallway or like, the touch of a hand is so electric and the cinematography and the set design is so beautiful.
There’s pastels and pops of colour. There’s source lighting with shadows. It’s, I mean, if anybody wants to do anything in film, this is a must.
You must see In The Mood For Love.
My husband is more of a cinephile than I am. So, he’s showed me a lot of stuff.
In The Mood For Love, I feel like I watched when I was like, younger, and I was just starting to kind of get into movies, and I loved the love story, but I didn’t understand visually kind of what was happening until I had more experience, because I’m always interested on set. You know, what the camera guys are doing, you know, how the DP– It’s just interesting to me because it’s not my world.
So, with more experience, I started paying attention to cinematography.
And so, my husband and I were trying to find something to watch, and we were both like, “Oh, I could totally rewatch In The Mood For Love.” And I was like, “Yeah, I would love to rewatch In The Mood For Love.”
And then it was like I had never seen it before. And I just, it was just overwhelming, it just makes you cry when you look at when somebody is so talented, when there’s a group–
Because what I love about film is the collaboration, you have somebody who’s been studying styling for years and they do wardrobe, and that combines with somebody who knows how to think of what a person’s apartment would look like and where they live, and production design and the cinematographer and the directing and it all comes together.
Obviously, the actors and the performances, but looking at something so beautiful and seeing people that are so talented, a talent like Wong Kar-wai getting being alive and being able to witness. That’s how I felt when I saw One Battle After Another.
The fact that I am alive and I got to see this in theatres, I feel so grateful. And that’s how I felt when I watched In The Mood For Love. The cinematography made me cry.
…
LAWRENCE: God, I’m really nerding out on this couch. I feel like I’m gonna cry.
PRODUCER: What is the one film or piece of TV you think everyone should watch at least once and why?
LAWRENCE: You’re going to make me choose between In The Mood For Love and One Battle After Another? And Phantom Thread?
Oh, God. In The Mood For Love.
I hate that because you also have to see One Battle After Another. But In The Mood For Love. It’s a cinematography must.
[Camera pans to different memorabilia dotted throughout the room]
LAWRENCE: That’s the house from Die My Love.
Bonsai tree. Passengers?
PRODUCER: Yeah, you know the little tree at the end, we just–
LAWRENCE: –Oh, there’s a tree. Well, you threw me off with bonsai. Not that I would have gotten it anyway. I wouldn’t have.
The urn. Is that Mother?
The telescope? Don’t Look Up. I get it.
And what are the books?
PRODUCER: – Oh, they’re just books.
LAWRENCE: – Oh, they’re just books. Oh.
Oh, okay, I got them all?
PRODUCER: – You got them all, yeah.
LAWRENCE: – Okay.
Thanks for having me.
What a cool premise.
<ENDS>
