Oh that’s awesome. Because you can’t tell that it is a lower budget movie, honestly. Like I wouldn’t even know what the budget is from looking at it.
Olsen: That’s a huge compliment to a bunch of people right there.
I’m not sure if it’s intentional or not, but it seems you know that George and Gloria are a sort of future version of what Mickey and Jules could be if they took a wrong turn somewhere.
Berk: Yeah I think that’s the idea. That was how we wanted to design it. It’s hard to say exactly what came first but in the revisionist history memory of the development process, we kind of knew that Mickey and Jules were characters that we really liked. We liked the set-up of two kind of amateur criminals breaking into a house and finding something that was not what they expected, and yeah maybe this was the wrong house to break into. But then we were like, okay, well what are we pitting them up against? Who do you get when the homeowners get home? Who are these people going to be? We cycled through a whole bunch of stuff and we eventually landed on the exact idea that wouldn’t it be cool if it were a sort of future foil of themselves, but if they fell on the wrong side of the tightrope of what we think both couples share, which is a deep love for one another. Like we think that Mickey and Jules have this empowering and freeing and really healthy love for another. We feel on the other end of the spectrum is George and Gloria who have this toxic, codependent love for each other that has been warped over many years. That’s part of why we feel that George and Gloria have resentment for Mickey and Jules because they’re still at the beginning of their journey, and perhaps their journey will end in a better place than George and Gloria’s. So that’s a very astute observation and exactly what we wanted.
“…even in a shitty situation she can still see the light…”
Oh awesome, Maika, I wanted to ask you what, because to my knowledge you’re not a criminal—
Olsen: She did a lot of research!
Haha, but what similarities would you say that you have with Jules?
Monroe: Oh man! What do we share? Jules has a very positive outlook on life and even in a shitty situation she can still see the light and I like to think of myself in the same way. I feel like I can have fun pretty much anywhere and I can entertain myself and I think Jules would be the same way.
Berk: Jules is the emotional core of this movie in a lot of ways and more on that moral relativism sort of scale, we feel like Jules comes out of that situation with the least mud on her, and that’s why we wanted her to survive and for a million other reasons, but that was one of them. In the moral universe of the film, she’s the truest and has the most virtuous heart. But I think what they share is that they’re both just really good. That’s one of the big reasons we really loved Maika for this role too is because that’s the quality we thought she gave off the most. You just kind of instantly like this person and there’s something so effortless and natural about the way she performs. We knew this was going to take place in a kind of heightened sense of reality. So we needed an actor in that role that could ground it a little bit, that despite all the wackiness going around there, just still had something so real about them and that’s how we knew she was perfect the first day.
Yes, I think you all did such a great job and this has been one of my favorite films of the year so far so I wish you all great success with it!
