Press Conference with Catherine Martin and Beverly Dunn, winners of the Production Design category for The Great Gatsby at the EE Britsh Academy Film Awards in 2014.
Q. So Catherine, this is your fourth BAFTA, I believe?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. Where is it going to go? Do you keep the others in a row, dotted around the house?
A. Yes, it is going to go with its friends. We always joke, because there is an Australian film that you are probably familiar with, called The Castle and whenever they get an award, they always say it is going straight to the pool room. So we have a room, which has actually got red wallpaper.
So this is going to go straight to the red room.
Q. I imagine when Baz said to you that he was going to do The Great Gatsby, did your eyes light up with the idea of what you could do?
A. No. I read the book when I was a teenager in Australia and I just didn't connect with the novel and he was talking about it for years and years, and I was just being unbearably recalcitrant about the whole thing. And he finally just was furious and he basically handed me a copy of the book and he just said: you are a really good reader, you read very quickly, just go upstairs and don't come back down until you have read it. And then much to his irritation, I became the biggest advocate for making the -- you know, the book into a film. And it -- you know, it is a completely -- I am a total ratbag, because he absolutely was the one convincing me that we should make the movie, which is ridiculous because what a wonderful opportunity for me. How small minded, and narrower sighted I am.
Q. Does he have any other books that he has been advocating for years and maybe you went: I am not quite sure, and are now you are thinking –
A. Oh, all the time. I remember when he said to me: oh, I think I really -- I think I want to set this story, an Orphean myth in the world of the Moulin Rouge, and I went: can can dresses? That is never going to work. So you can see I am not the one in the family who has any kind of commercial sense whatsoever.
NEW SPEAKER: What is it like working with your husband? Do you fight? Does he come up with suggestions or do you say "no"?
A. We fight all the time, and recently we fought on Australian television while we were accepting an award for The Great Gatsby.
I come from a long line of fighters. We are scrappers in my family. My parents still fight at 78 regularly, and I think it is just part of -- Baz, I think, very poetically says that our work and life relationship is a conversation, and sometimes that conversation has to be had in very loud voices otherwise no-one gets heard.
NEW SPEAKER: Who wins?
A. Who wins? Oh, it is even stevens. Sometimes I win, sometimes he wins.
Q. Well now you have a BAFTA, they are pretty heavy.
A. That's right, but he has one too.
Q. That's right. You have four in total.
NEW SPEAKER: Congratulations on the award.
A. Thank you.
Q. Now that the film is done and dusted, is there anything you have looked back at the film and thought: I wish I could have tweaked that, or I wish I could have done that better?
A. Yes, all the time. I don't think anything is ever perfect. You know, I think things are finished because someone stops you from changing them, you know, or they are wrestled away from you. So, all the time you just look at things and you go: oh, I wish I had done that differently.
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EE British Academy Film Awards in 2014 - Winners Press Conference: Production Design
