1.Kristen and Nicholas Hoult's interviewwith Moviefone for 'Equals'
There's just so much content on televisionthese days. And most actors see that as a very good thing -- but occasionallysome, like Kristen Stewart, offer a dissenting opinion.
Take her new film, "Equals," forexample. Directed by rising auteur Drake Doremus ("Like Crazy") fromhis own original story, it's the kind of measured, insightful, quirky film themajor studios aren't taking many chances on these days: a thought-provokingscience-fiction film that relies on a different style of effects rather thaneye-popping, digitally-created spectacle. Human emotion is the star, asdelivered by Stewart and her co-star Nicholas Hoult, who, coincidentally, bothhave experience with blockbuster fare like the "Twilight" and"X-Men" films.
"Equals" debuts in theaters in limitedrelease on July 15th, but it's been available to view on home screens viaDirecTV Cinema since May 26th. And, as Hoult points out, any chance to tell aslightly different story in a slightly narrowed scale to an audience of anysize, via subscription services or otherwise, is a bonus. "With everyonekind of wanting to get so much content, it's exciting, because there's a lotmore out there, and a lot more opportunities to tell the smaller stories. Butthere's also a flood of stuff."
But Stewart, who says she's still surprised athow rapidly the movie market has and continues to shift, admits that thecontent flood Hoult references concerns her, especially when she's working on afilm with the kind of quality she feels "Equals" -- the story of afuturistic, post-catastrophic society essentially purged of emotion --delivers.
"You get inundated with material -- it'sjust sort of like, over-stimulus doesn't equal valuable material," she says of the significantly deep libraries of content now available atall times. "I'm actuallytorn on that, because I'm very old school, and selfish: ideally this movieshould be seen in a theater. I hate that people have seen this f*cking movie onDirecTV before, do you know what I mean?"
"If you cared enough -- because thereare fanbases for movies, for certain people, for filmmakers, for genres --anyone who is into Drake or Nick or me or this genre probably watched thismovie on DirecTV when it came out," she says. "Butthose people would have gone to buy a ticket in a theater -- f*ck the payback.I'm truly not even talking about that. But just those guys who actually care,they saw it on DirecTV, they probably won't make it to the theater. To me,that's a little sad because the work, the f*cking photography, is so beautiful.It should be looked at! It pisses me off."
And, in fact, along with being a poignant andemotionally moving sci-fi film, with a romantically spun "TwilightZone" kind of feel, "Equals" is a thing of beauty to look at,delivering a convincing and fully realized environment without requiringlegions of digital artists at ILM or Weta. And because they do indeed want thefilm to find an audience, whatever screen it plays on, Stewart and Hoult satdown with Moviefone to reflect on their experience making the movie.
Moviefone: We've got a great science fictionstory, yet the special effects are your emotions. What did it mean to you to beable to tell a story in this kind of context, but not be relying on visualeffects -- just telling it through yourselves?
Kristen Stewart: I think, with any good science fiction movie, all ofthe elements of fantasy function as relevant metaphor. They all are there toservice what it feels like in the center of it. So it never feels like you'redoing something not real, even though it's not the world we're used to. It'sstill a world that's whole enough to get used to. Drake's really good at that.He creates an environment that's so whole.
Movies that allow emotion to highlight CGI, theyjust fall flat and look fake and are blockbusters that don't interest me. Butthe ones that balance that right; I love big, sort of epic, suspended-realitymovies.
Nicholas Hoult: The nice thing about this is everything you were interacting with wasactually there in the room. It's more about the emotion with the people asopposed to a lot of time doing those types of films, when you end up looking attennis balls around the studio and someone on a microphone telling you when tolook and what's happening. Then you have no idea. You have a concept of it, andan imagination running wild with it, but also until you see the film, oh,that's what was going to be there.
That could be, at times, a little bitfrustrating because there's nothing physical there that you can feel. You'renot receiving anything back. A big part of this is not actually about what youwere doing or thinking about what you were acting, it was about observinganother person and picking up on what they were doing and then reading them,which is kind of the most important thing because that's what you're doing whenyou're living.
I was reading about the veryfocused-on-each-other acting exercises that you did to prepare for this, whichwere sort of unconventional but ultimately really effective in connecting thetwo of you. What was that like, to get that sort of emotional honesty with eachother in preparation for playing roles in a world where they essentially areeach other's only connection?
Stewart: If you imagine the time that Nia and Silas spendaround each other without knowing anything about each other, the groundworkbefore they've even asked their first question is a spiritual thing. They havesaid "hello" to each other 365 times, but they haven't delved anydeeper. Yet, there's a commonality. You can see into someone if they let youin, and that doesn't mean that you need to know anything about them.
So, in sitting in front of each other -- andjust for an hour just staring and looking -- and then trying to transmitsomething and trying to receive it, and then projecting and wondering what thislittle flick of an eye meant. By the end of that hour, you kind of know theperson. So he was just trying to emulate what Nia and Silas start out with whenthey actually begin interacting with each other.
Did that make it almost, in a weird way,harder to play those emotionally stunted scenes by being so close? Or did itinform that in a way?
Hoult: We were lucky where we kind of, as much as possible,shot it in sequence. So the first time when you see us in the bathroomuntouched for the first time, that was in order. Up to that point, we hadn'tdone anything previous to that in the story. So those sorts of things, thatreally helped when you're making anything, as much as you can do that, becausethen everything you've done so far informs that.
Stewart: Because you don't have to play any guessing game."That is what it is, I did that, then I did this, then I did this..."You don't have to wonder what it's going to be like in order to play somethingafter it.
Hoult: Yeah, and there's a build to that moment as well. Sothen there's a release and it all kind of feels more natural as opposed totrying to imagine what's happened up until that point, and then pretend whatwould be happening.
There's just so much content on televisionthese days. And most actors see that as a very good thing -- but occasionallysome, like Kristen Stewart, offer a dissenting opinion.
Take her new film, "Equals," forexample. Directed by rising auteur Drake Doremus ("Like Crazy") fromhis own original story, it's the kind of measured, insightful, quirky film themajor studios aren't taking many chances on these days: a thought-provokingscience-fiction film that relies on a different style of effects rather thaneye-popping, digitally-created spectacle. Human emotion is the star, asdelivered by Stewart and her co-star Nicholas Hoult, who, coincidentally, bothhave experience with blockbuster fare like the "Twilight" and"X-Men" films.
"Equals" debuts in theaters in limitedrelease on July 15th, but it's been available to view on home screens viaDirecTV Cinema since May 26th. And, as Hoult points out, any chance to tell aslightly different story in a slightly narrowed scale to an audience of anysize, via subscription services or otherwise, is a bonus. "With everyonekind of wanting to get so much content, it's exciting, because there's a lotmore out there, and a lot more opportunities to tell the smaller stories. Butthere's also a flood of stuff."
But Stewart, who says she's still surprised athow rapidly the movie market has and continues to shift, admits that thecontent flood Hoult references concerns her, especially when she's working on afilm with the kind of quality she feels "Equals" -- the story of afuturistic, post-catastrophic society essentially purged of emotion --delivers.
"You get inundated with material -- it'sjust sort of like, over-stimulus doesn't equal valuable material," she says of the significantly deep libraries of content now available atall times. "I'm actuallytorn on that, because I'm very old school, and selfish: ideally this movieshould be seen in a theater. I hate that people have seen this f*cking movie onDirecTV before, do you know what I mean?"
"If you cared enough -- because thereare fanbases for movies, for certain people, for filmmakers, for genres --anyone who is into Drake or Nick or me or this genre probably watched thismovie on DirecTV when it came out," she says. "Butthose people would have gone to buy a ticket in a theater -- f*ck the payback.I'm truly not even talking about that. But just those guys who actually care,they saw it on DirecTV, they probably won't make it to the theater. To me,that's a little sad because the work, the f*cking photography, is so beautiful.It should be looked at! It pisses me off."
And, in fact, along with being a poignant andemotionally moving sci-fi film, with a romantically spun "TwilightZone" kind of feel, "Equals" is a thing of beauty to look at,delivering a convincing and fully realized environment without requiringlegions of digital artists at ILM or Weta. And because they do indeed want thefilm to find an audience, whatever screen it plays on, Stewart and Hoult satdown with Moviefone to reflect on their experience making the movie.
Moviefone: We've got a great science fictionstory, yet the special effects are your emotions. What did it mean to you to beable to tell a story in this kind of context, but not be relying on visualeffects -- just telling it through yourselves?
Kristen Stewart: I think, with any good science fiction movie, all ofthe elements of fantasy function as relevant metaphor. They all are there toservice what it feels like in the center of it. So it never feels like you'redoing something not real, even though it's not the world we're used to. It'sstill a world that's whole enough to get used to. Drake's really good at that.He creates an environment that's so whole.
Movies that allow emotion to highlight CGI, theyjust fall flat and look fake and are blockbusters that don't interest me. Butthe ones that balance that right; I love big, sort of epic, suspended-realitymovies.
Nicholas Hoult: The nice thing about this is everything you were interacting with wasactually there in the room. It's more about the emotion with the people asopposed to a lot of time doing those types of films, when you end up looking attennis balls around the studio and someone on a microphone telling you when tolook and what's happening. Then you have no idea. You have a concept of it, andan imagination running wild with it, but also until you see the film, oh,that's what was going to be there.
That could be, at times, a little bitfrustrating because there's nothing physical there that you can feel. You'renot receiving anything back. A big part of this is not actually about what youwere doing or thinking about what you were acting, it was about observinganother person and picking up on what they were doing and then reading them,which is kind of the most important thing because that's what you're doing whenyou're living.
I was reading about the veryfocused-on-each-other acting exercises that you did to prepare for this, whichwere sort of unconventional but ultimately really effective in connecting thetwo of you. What was that like, to get that sort of emotional honesty with eachother in preparation for playing roles in a world where they essentially areeach other's only connection?
Stewart: If you imagine the time that Nia and Silas spendaround each other without knowing anything about each other, the groundworkbefore they've even asked their first question is a spiritual thing. They havesaid "hello" to each other 365 times, but they haven't delved anydeeper. Yet, there's a commonality. You can see into someone if they let youin, and that doesn't mean that you need to know anything about them.
So, in sitting in front of each other -- andjust for an hour just staring and looking -- and then trying to transmitsomething and trying to receive it, and then projecting and wondering what thislittle flick of an eye meant. By the end of that hour, you kind of know theperson. So he was just trying to emulate what Nia and Silas start out with whenthey actually begin interacting with each other.
Did that make it almost, in a weird way,harder to play those emotionally stunted scenes by being so close? Or did itinform that in a way?
Hoult: We were lucky where we kind of, as much as possible,shot it in sequence. So the first time when you see us in the bathroomuntouched for the first time, that was in order. Up to that point, we hadn'tdone anything previous to that in the story. So those sorts of things, thatreally helped when you're making anything, as much as you can do that, becausethen everything you've done so far informs that.
Stewart: Because you don't have to play any guessing game."That is what it is, I did that, then I did this, then I did this..."You don't have to wonder what it's going to be like in order to play somethingafter it.
Hoult: Yeah, and there's a build to that moment as well. Sothen there's a release and it all kind of feels more natural as opposed totrying to imagine what's happened up until that point, and then pretend whatwould be happening.
