For him, it was a 13-year process. It was him, and I always feel this way. When I find a director who’s really passionate about the work that they’re doing, I get excited, and I want to work with them. Anybody can pretend that they’re doing the next big movie because they’re passionate about that genre of film. Really, there are millions of reasons why they decided to do it, probably, that is not just the passion. Daniel, he spent years of his life doing this, he didn’t make any money on it. He had to work other jobs to get it made. I just thought this is the kind of guy that you want to be working with on this type of film because it’s the only way that this is going to get made, and it’s the only way that it’s going to get made well. Yeah, he pulled it off, and it was unbelievable that he did. It was quite a feat, because he didn’t have a lot of money to make it, and we didn’t have much time. It’s an international production and a lot of moving parts and all that stuff.
“I remember being that age, and not feeling comfortable, necessarily, being at the center of these things.”
I don’t know if I could do the same thing. The scenes that you have with Antoine Olivier Pilon are great. I’d never seen him in anything before, and he’s amazing. I just wanted to know what he was like to work with.
He’s a good actor. He’s really young, and he is just starting to get a sense of himself as an actor. I know that he was pretty famous in Quebec already because he’d done a movie called Mommy, that had won, I think, the Cannes Jury Prize or something and was very famous in Quebec. He had been working steadily and all that. Daniel did a very long search for that character, and we had another actor initially who, when we lost our funding, the last time Daniel decided to recast. Then, he found Antoine, and it was immediate. He just sparked. He was just right for it: right age, right vulnerability. Just seemed like he was perfect for it. My view of him, from an old hack’s point of view, I’m like, “Oh, he’s just so excited about everything. He’s so ready to go.” He was fantastic. It’s a lot to put on his shoulders. That whole storyline, he had to be the center of it.
I remember being that age, and not feeling comfortable, necessarily, being at the center of these things. He took to it like a duck to water, so I think we’ll be seeing him a lot. This is his first English language film too, so he’s also dealing with translating from French. Yeah. I think you will see a lot of him in the future.
Thanks for taking the time to talk about this movie. I’m really looking forward to everybody seeing it.
Of course. No, thank you for talking to me!
