Interview: Making ‘The Master' with Actress Madisen Beaty

Welcome to the fifth installment of "Making The Master," our series of in-depth interviews with some of the minds behind "The Master." We've spoken to many of the production's principal players (including writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, producer JoAnne Sellar, costume designer Mark Bridges and production designers Jack Fisk & David Crank) that helped bring the film to life and today we have an interview with actress Madisen Beaty. At just 16 years old, Madisen joined the cast as Freddie Quell's long lost love Doris Solstad, a spectre of purity who haunts Freddie throughout the film. She spoke to us about what makes the set of a PTA movie special, what it was like going head-to-head with Joaquin and also reveals the original title for the film. Enjoy.

Cigarettes & Red Vines: How did you first come to be aware of the film? Had you seen any of Paul’s previous films at that point?
Madisen Beaty: Yeah, I had actually seen part of “Magnolia” and I had seen “There Will Be Blood” and was a huge fan of it. I got an audition, just like any other audition, but it was actually for Amy Adams’ daughter [Elizabeth]. They gave me my sides and I went over them and went in and auditioned with Cassandra [Kulukundis, casting director], and I was in the middle of doing the scene when she stopped me. She was like, “You’re way too young for this.” There was a scene when she’s supposed to drop her robe and she’s like, “You’re 16. You’re not doing that.” And I was so bummed! But before I could even protest that she said, “There’s another role that I think you’d be perfect for so I’m going to give you the sides and you go over them for a sec and then I want to see you do them.” So she gave me the sides and I read them and did them for her. And then I went home and got a call that they wanted me to come and meet with Paul.

So I went back in and when I got there, they gave me new sides and in these news sides, I’m singing and kissing someone. And they told me that there would be an actor there to read with me. Then they left to go get Paul and Joaquin. So I’m sitting there freaking out, going “Oh my gosh.” I know that’s Joaquin and I’ve seen all his stuff online and I’m supposed to kiss him and I’m singing? What is this! So they came in and Paul introduced himself and then Joaquin introduced himself. And we did these new scenes and I was freaking out. Then I didn’t hear anything for like 2 weeks and then I heard that I got it. I remember later I was talking to Joaquin on set and was like, “Those were the longest two weeks of my life, you don’t understand!” And he goes, “Yeah, I kept asking Paul, ‘Did you tell her that she got the role?’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll get to it.’” [laughs] He’s just very relaxed in his whole process.

So it was just those two auditions that got you the role?
Yeah. Something interesting is [during the second audition] when we got to the scene where I’m supposed to sing “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me)” by The Andrews Sisters. And I didn’t know the song at the time so when I got there, I told them, “I can go learn it and come back or I can sing something else for you. I don’t sing professionally, but I can sing okay.” And Paul was like, “Yeah, we’ll just skip that.” As we were filming I kept asking him, “Do you want to hear me sing?” And he was like, “No, we’ll get to it Madisen. It’s okay.” So fast-forward, it’s the day of filming the scene and I’m not joking, no one had heard me sing.

I’ve been working on it and practicing and even my parents hadn’t heard me. So we started rolling and I started singing and my dad described it, it was just shock on the set because no one knew that I could sing. So we did two or three takes but Paul wasn’t coming up to me. So finally I walked up to him like, “Paul, you gotta tell me. Is it good? I’m just singing! You didn’t give me anything.” And he goes, “Madisen, I figured either Doris would sing and it’d be kind funny and cute because she thinks she can sing but she can’t and she’s just letting Freddie in on her world. Or she’d sing like you did. And you should keep going.” I still can’t believe it to this day.

That must have been incredibly nervewracking.
I was pretty nervous but Paul’s set -- you hear people talk about it -- but it’s really just a different experience.

Did you have any idea that it would make it onto the soundtrack?
No, never in a million years. I was driving to an audition one day and my mom called me and said, “You might want to go online,” so I pulled up my phone and saw that I was on the soundtrack. It was very weird for me.

Did you get the entire script at some point or just the pages of scenes that you were in?
I just had the pages I was going to be in. I was bugging Paul and kept asking him, “Can I read the script? I’ll give it right back.” He said, “I just want you to know what Doris knows and I want to keep it that way.” And I thought that was just a Paul thing where he just lets you see what your part of the script is but now I know that Doris wasn’t even in the first couple drafts.

So did you not know what was going on in the rest of the film until you saw it for the first time?
I had no idea. All I knew was Doris. It’s interesting because she’s haunting Freddie throughout the entire film and the way they set it up to film, we did the screen test -- the screen test was me and Joaquin -- and the first week and a half of filming was me and Joaquin. Then that was a wrap for me so I left but I think Paul set that up so that the whole time, Joaquin could be pulling from that [experience]. Then they called me back about 2 months later and said that they added some scenes and wanted me to come back. This time I filmed in LA instead of San Francisco and when I came back it was so weird because Joaquin was different. The chemistry was a little off and I think it was because he’s such a method actor and he hadn’t seen me during that time.

So what was the scene you came back to film?
It’s hard to tell in the movie, you might get to see some more when the DVD comes out which is supposed to have some deleted scenes. But anything in the movie theatre, I just went and filmed in this gorgeous movie theatre downtown LA. The scene is when we’re sitting on the steps and it’s actually when I’m singing. Paul had me sing again and cut the first time I sing. We kinda redid a little bit of everything and talked about some more things. Then a lot of the scenes that we did in San Fran didn’t make the cut. But Paul’s so gracious that in the trailer [teaser #3], you see some of those deleted scenes.

How did you and Paul develop the character of Doris? In an earlier draft of the script, she’s referred to but has no scenes but clearly he had something else in mind in fleshing out the character.
We stuck to the sides at first and then when we actually got on set it was very free flowing and everything came out organically where we started going off script. I knew enough about Doris and Joaquin knew about Freddie and we would go way, way off script. Paul was so open to that. One morning we were filming a scene where Joaquin had just come back from the war and we’re sitting on the park bench. We were very flirty and we kissed and all that. Then we went to lunch and when we came back -- this was a scene that didn’t make the cut -- but we were fighting because I’m too young for him. Between takes Joaquin was cussing and kicking things and walking around and yelling at me and I was so confused.

While he’s doing that, Paul was like, “This is great! This is so great.” [laughs] And my 16 year old mind is just freaking out, I was so confused until finally I was like, “Paul, I’m so confused. You know I trust you but Joaquin’s over there and you’re over here.” And he goes, “Madisen, that’s Freddie. You’re Doris. You are down here and he’s bringing you down and you need to be bringing him up.” And all of a sudden it clicked where he’s not going to go and tell Joaquin to stop. So I walked back and was like, “Freddie, it’s okay.” And I started talking about how everything was going to be fine and the scene was completely different. Just having that control to be able to make the scene whatever I wanted to make it, I’ve never experienced that before and I don’t think I will for a long, long time. And it’s all Paul.

That kind of freedom must be great for an actor.
Oh, it’s wonderful. When you put him and Joaquin together, they’re both just so focused and there’s no limits for either of them. I think that’s what makes it so brilliant because there are no limits and when you don’t limit yourself, brilliant things come out.

All of your scenes in the film were with Joaquin, did you have any scenes with any of the other actors that didn’t make the cut?
There was definitely more with my mom [Mrs. Solstad played by Lena Endre]. There was a scene where I’m asking her to go out and they taught me how to say something in Norwegian that didn’t make it into the final film. But for the most part everything was focused on Joaquin. Something that never came out in the film, everyone always wonders how Freddie and Doris know each other. My character’s older brother was his friend growing up and they both went to war together. My older brother died in the war so Freddie was coming back to pay respects slash bring out this unspoken love because I’d been writing him these letters.

Were there any other Doris scenes that didn’t make it into the film?
Just the scene where we were fighting because of the age difference and how it wouldn’t work even though I wanted to make it work. When I first saw the cut I was so disappointed that it didn’t make it into the film but now looking back I’m really glad that it didn’t because when you watch it now, it’s like we’re not together because he couldn’t handle Doris’ love. Which I think is a better story than the age difference and it definitely makes it a different story.

You’ve already talked a bit about it but can you just describe what it was like as a young actress working with Joaquin who is just a force of nature in the film?
There’s really no limits for him. He’ll go off script and he’ll do his own thing. If he’s mad, he’s going to be really, really angry like, kicking the park bench. I think he even pulled it out of its root and kicked the park bench off the thing. [laughs] There’s just no limits, he’ll do anything. The scene where he comes and wakes me up when I’m sleeping...

When he tears the window screen out.
Yes. That was one of my favorite days of filming because both him and Paul were playing tricks on me. It’s was like 3am when I got to set and I’m awake as ever. Paul told me, “You are just way too awake,” as we were leaving the hotel. I was like, “Hi Paul! How are you? It’s 3am!” But I’m 16 so I don’t know what you would expect. So he said, “I want you to get to set. Don’t even go to makeup. Get in costume but don’t do anything else and I’ll meet you there.” So I got in costume and went to set and he walked me through the house and took me back to what was Doris’ room. And he said, “I know you don’t believe me but we’re not going to be filming for like an hour and I want you to just lay down and go to sleep. I’ll come wake you up before we film.” I was like, “Are you sure you’re going to wake me up?” He said, “Yeah, just go to sleep.”

My mom told me that as I forced myself to go to sleep, they closed the door and Paul told the crew to be quiet because I was sleeping. I’m just thinking about what the crew must be thinking of me working and I’m sleeping on the job! Then I woke up to this knocking and sat up and thought it was the door. Then I realized that Joaquin was at the window and thought, “Oh, I must’ve not heard them waking me up.” So I just went with it and did the scene. He was just supposed to kiss me but then he pulled off the screen and it became what you see. I’m pretty sure the take that you see is that first take when I had just woken up because of the way that I say the lines. I was so confused because I had just woken up.

So it did work!
[laughs] Yeah. As we went on filming and did a couple other takes, they had to take screens from around the house to keep going because he kept ripping the screens off. But that’s just Joaquin, he doesn’t care. He does what feels right and I followed that and I did what felt right. I think it’s the best way to bring a character to life because there’s no limits. That’s what you do in real life so when you see that onscreen, there’s something that’s so different about it that’s organic. That’s what’s so beautiful about Paul’s films because every single one of his films has that natural energy that is whatever you want it to be.

So what makes the set of a PTA movie different from any other set that you’ve been on?
There are sets that you go on where the crew just doesn’t work together, it’s like a puzzle where the energy is thrown off because these people don’t know each other and they’ve never worked together and different people don’t always mix well. One of the best things about Paul’s set is that he brings together everyone who he’s worked with before. Of course, there are some new people but most of them are people that he’s worked with for years. To see the crew work together and work so effortlessly and so naturally is great.

I remember coming back to the hotel from filming and there was a group of his crew hanging out in the lobby drinking wine together. They were like, “Madisen! Come on over here, bring your mom. Let’s talk!” We sat in the lobby with some of his crew and just shared stories. They’re so wonderful and they don’t get the recognition they deserve. Paul is so direct and he knows what he wants but he says it in a way where you have control. When Joaquin was angry and he pulled me aside, he didn’t go up to Joaquin and give him direction. He let me go up to him and kinda tweak it just a little bit so that the scene was different. Having that control is so empowering and him letting everyone do their own job and bring it together so effortlessly is what makes his sets so amazing.

Can you think of any other moments that stand out as being memorable or any stories you’d want to share?
Aside from filming, the experience I had afterwards [was definitely memorable]. I hoped I would get to go to the premiere but you never know how these things work. I was fortunate enough to be invited to Venice and after that to go to TIFF and after that to the New York premiere. That whole experience was absolutely amazing. Me and my mom and my manager went to Venice. It was a girls weekend and I’d barely been out of the country before! I’d seen the movie in LA with my dad before and I honestly didn’t like it at first. But it’s one of those films where you have to let it sit. Seeing it a second time, I fell in love with it.

I think part of it was sitting there [in Venice] with this audience that was reacting to everything, next to Joaquin and Phil [Seymour Hoffman] and Paul and Harvey [Weinstein] and JoAnne [Sellar] and Megan [Ellison]. Sitting there and watching the film with these people, it was this weird moment where it was like, “I don’t belong here. But I do.” Afterwards there was a standing ovation where me, Phil and Joaquin were standing and the whole theatre is turned to us and clapping. It was this weird moment because this is their film. I am a part of it definitely, but this is their film and they’re the ones who created it. So I kinda stepped to the side and Phil came over to me and grabbed my hand and pulled me back up and said, “You belong with us now, darling.”

That’s great.
That moment for me, was amazing. I might not have created this film but I’m a part of it and that goes back to the family that Paul creates with his crew. The way he makes everyone feel like they belong and it’s just a family that just is in it together. That’s really hard to do. I’ve been on so many sets where it’s not even comparable, none of them are comparable to Paul’s sets.

I know that the film didn’t land on a title until pretty late in the process. Were there any working titles along the way?
It was originally called “The Cause” but we weren’t supposed to say that obviously because it was [supposed to be kept] really quiet. When we were filming in San Francisco, wherever we went they were calling it the “Untitled Western” so no one knew who we were. But to everyone else it was known as “The Cause.” Whoever was aboard at the beginning of filming even got a shirt and a flask in the mail saying “Thank you for joining the production.” The flask said “The Cause” and the shirt had this little logo that said “The Cause.” I thought, “Oh, how cool. I’m going to get to wear this when it comes out.” Then they changed the name! But I like “The Master” better because I feel like it evolved and just from what scenes made it [into the film]. Paul had a story in his head and it definitely evolved as we filmed but I think what came out was better than what we had in the beginning.

Can you talk a little bit more about your first reaction to the movie, since you’d only really known about your piece of it, it must have been pretty crazy to finally see the whole thing.
I had 5 or 6 scenes and we filmed all of them but I didn’t know what would make it or how he would edit it. I originally sang in San Francisco on the front steps of my house but when you see the movie, I’m singing in the movie theatre [in LA]. So for me it was confusing because I wasn’t sure how it was going to translate to the film. My dad was guessing that maybe he’s just haunted and he’s imagining me in the movie theatre there with him. We knew that he got drunk because I had accidentally seen some other sides. [laughs] So when I finally saw it though I was able to follow it, it was still very confusing.

I don’t think it’s a film that you can watch once because there’s so much going on and so many underlying themes. So I wasn’t really sure if I was happy with what had been used, as far as my scenes go but then when I saw it the second time, I was able to watch it as an audience member instead of as an actor. Now I’ve seen it probably 5 or 6 times and still catch these little things. I’m really happy with what came out of my role now and think it’s best for the story. Paul was so nice to include some of the deleted scenes in the trailers he put out and I hear there’s going to be more on the DVD.

Did you have conversations with Paul about what the film was about or would he only really discuss what your piece of it was?
He was very conscious that I would only be focused on Doris and Freddie. Like I said, the first two weeks of filming and the screen test was Freddie and Doris. It was very focused on their relationship and how innocent and beautiful that it was. When I came back to set [2 months later] the energy was completely different. I know they had been doing some harder scenes and accidentally saw some sides of when he’s in the theatre drunk and The Master calls him. In the sides that I saw, The Master said, “Did she get to you Freddie? Did she get to you?” So I thought, “Oh it’s Doris. Maybe my character is haunting him the entire time and maybe that’s one of the themes of the movie.” But I really had no idea.

I kept asking Paul --I was probably the most annoying kid because I just kept asking him, -- “Am I the inciting incident? Am I the lock in?” if we’re talking script terms and he would not tell me. All he said was, “You are what Freddie wants and that’s what you need to remember. You are what’s pure to him and you are what keeps him anchored. You are the only one that has the control to have such a spell on him.” And to see what Joaquin did with that character once I got on set, it’s obviously Joaquin Phoenix but working with him is something completely different. And you have Phil and Amy and in person they’re all so wonderful. For me, as a young actor, it was an incredible experience and I was able to grow so much.

You’ve already worked with another especially notable director, David Fincher on “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button,” so I was just wondering if there were any similarities or differences in their approach with actors?
I love them both and they’re very different! [laughs] David is very focused on the little details -- it’s like the most miniscule things -- and he’s very set on the sides being the way they’re written. As you know he has a reputation for doing things 50 times over but I asked him about it and he said he does that so that we forget what we’re saying and focus more on the emotion. With Paul you start with the emotions and then the lines come instead of forgetting that they’re lines. They’re very different in the way that they work but they’re both so brilliant. A similarity is that you can see when they’re studying the monitor, they both have this love and they’re such perfectionists about it. But they’re so different in the way that they film and the way that their sets are run.

Are there any other directors on your wish list now that you’ve crossed these two off your list?
I remember wrapping ‘Benjamin Button’ and talking to my mom asking, “Well, what do I do now?” After that I went on auditions for smaller projects and for me it was an adjustment because I kinda got a big head working on that film. [laughs] It was like, “I’m gonna have this awesome career,” and then you go and do some other things. I did a Lifetime movie and there was the writers strike and then “The Master” came. And well, we thought we couldn’t do better but look, we’re still going. I don’t want to say too much but I definitely would love to work with obviously, Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson and more recently, David O. Russell. I love the directors that have their own language. With David and Paul, they both have their own language. And “Django [Unchained]” has got to be one of my favorite movies now. To see that, that is why I act: it’s the art of telling stories. When you meet artists who tell the stories in their own language, there’s something so beautiful about that. That’s what I love about it and that’s who I want to work with.

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Watch: New 60 Second Teaser For ‘The Master' Featuring Unseen Footage; New Poster Too

Watch a supercool new 60 second spot for "The Master" featuring Freddie freaking out in a courtroom and sitting in Dodd's office as well as some previously unreleased Jonny Greenwood score. It's not Russian and it is included on the Blu/DVD extras (though the new footage is not included in the "Back Beyond" short). You can watch all the teasers & trailers on our film page.

Below you'll also find a very cool new poster for the film (by designer Andy Berlin) which was produced for Chicago's Music Box Theatre's 70mm Festival which begins this Friday. PTA said that the film would return to that venue and it appears he has made good on his promise. (via @angel_glands)

Interview: Making ‘The Master' with Production Designers Jack Fisk & David Crank

Welcome to the fourth installment of "Making The Master," our series of in-depth interviews with some of the minds behind "The Master." We've spoken to many of the production's principal players (including writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, producer JoAnne Sellar and costume designer Mark Bridges) that helped bring the film to life and today we have an interview with production designers Jack Fisk & David Crank. Responsible for creating the world that the characters inhabit, Jack & David previously worked together on "There Will Be Blood" and have also collaborated on a trio of Terrence Malick films ("The Tree Of Life," "The New World" and "To The Wonder") among other projects. The pair spoke to us about watching the film come to life, the differences in working with David Lynch, Terrence Malick and PTA and also shed some light on an unfilmed sequences set in outer space. Enjoy.

Cigarettes & Red Vines: How did you each first come to work with PTA?
Jack Fisk: I started to work with Paul because I got a phone call from [Producer] Daniel Lupi. I was in England finishing up “The New World” and he said that Paul wanted me to work on this film “There Will Be Blood.” So I got really excited and watched all of Paul’s films. My wife [Sissy Spacek] was doing a film in Romania so I went there for a couple weeks and about a month later I first met Paul. When we went to scout locations for “There Will Be Blood,” we had an instant rapport. I liked him instantly, he’s a funny guy and we had a great time looking for locations. Although we didn’t shoot the film until a year later, the locations we found on that first trip actually were the ones we ended up using, at a ranch in Marfa [Texas].

David Crank: And I met him because Jack met him. [laughs]

JF: David and I were working together on “The New World.”

DC: You went and scouted all that [for “There Will Be Blood”] and then I guess when it went down that first time I went off and did “John Adams” and you went off and did “The Visiting” [later retitled “The Invasion”].

JF: The film with Oliver Hirschbiegel. Daniel Day Lewis wanted to shoot in the summer so his kids could come from Ireland and we couldn’t get ready that quickly so we decided to meet here in a year. Paul did the same thing with “The Master.” We were going to go with “The Master” and then there was some slow down and he says, “Well, we’ll meet in a year.”

David Crank & Jack Fisk

Wow, that is patience!
JF: But well worth the wait.

After you got along really well on “There Will Be Blood,” was there any expectation that you were going to be working together again on the next one? When did Paul first come to you with The Master?
JF: I was counting on it. [laughs]

DC: You’re always counting on it.

JF: Paul called me over at one point and invited me over to read 20 pages of the story in his studio. I read it and I didn’t really understand it. I didn’t even know it was about Scientology when I went there. But then he started sharing all of his research and trying to get me up to speed. David also got involved around the same time. As it turned out, luckily I was committed to doing another film a year later and I thought it was going to go during the middle of Paul’s shoot. So David and I shared responsibilities as a production designer because that way if I had to leave, everything was in good shape for Paul. Working with Crank is so much fun that I wanted to stay there.

DC: Well it was interesting because when you went and looked with him the first time, I was involved with a film but then that went down the same time that "The Master" went down. I can’t remember what we did together then, we did another thing together. It kind of worked out that we were available again the next time.

JF: I think we did “To The Wonder,” the Terrence Malick film.

DC: Ah, that’s right.

Do you remember what was in those first 20 pages you read around the time he showed them to you?
JF: It was a lot of stuff about the life of Dodd, the Master character. I don’t really remember the pages. I have a hard time reading if someone is sitting and watching me. It’s my least favorite way to read a script. But Paul only had pages. He didn’t really have a script yet but Paul gets so excited, he just wants everybody to read it, to come onboard and be involved. I love Paul’s passion and he’s so generous. He shares everything with you, he never holds back.

DC: He’s never closed off, that’s for sure.

JF: You really feel like a part of a close-knit team. He works with the same people a lot.

So cut to a year or so later and now you’re reading the finished script, what are your first impressions of that compared to what you had seen before?
JF: You know it went from those 20 pages and he may have sent a script. Then we met in Baltimore. We looked at locations in Baltimore and Philadelphia because part of the script was written for Philadelphia and we needed a boat. Paul heard about 1896 Navy boat up in the docks in Philadelphia. We looked at that and he fell in love with the interior but then the production shut down for a year. During that year he kept piddling around with Daniel Lupi, trying to figure out where we could shoot with the budget. I know during that time he checked out New York.

Then when he called and said they were ready to go, which was about 6 months later. We decided to go and look at this boat in Philadelphia he’d found by accident. He went to look at a fireman’s boat up there and he found The Potomac, which was FDR’s old ship, docked right next to it. He looked at that and thought that it might work. So David and Paul and I went up and looked at that first thing and I thought it was great. Then that led to us investigating all around San Francisco and what we could shoot there. There were just so many possibilities. We ended up going out to Mare Island which is an old submarine base where they used to work on all the submarines and the ships. We found so many buildings there and other ships that were right for the period and houses. We even found a house that would work for Philadelphia.

DC: You were asking about the initial reaction to reading it -- and I don’t know about you Jack -- but it’s like you read it, and then you jump into it so quickly that there’s almost no time to sit and ruminate. You’re all of a sudden going into specifics but I do remember when I first saw it when it was put together. There were so many parts that were nothing like I thought they were going to be when I read it. There were scenes that just flew by in the movie that felt like 18 pages long when you’re reading it. To me, I remember more of my reaction when I saw the finished product. Not that it was better than the script, but it was just so much more than you could’ve imagined, in a way.

JF: If you could imagine that processing scene on the boat between The Master and Freddie, it was 20 pages long. Just them sitting at the desk. But when they got in there and performed it, it was pretty amazing.

DC: That was the scene that I remember when I read it it was hard to imagine because it’s so repetitive but when you saw it, it went to another level. It was pretty magical.

JF: And Paul is so into character and into the actors that it’s really exciting.

DC: It’s interesting because the script -- mostly when you first read them -- it doesn’t always make a whole lot of sense. You can see Paul thinking constantly while you’re working on it. To me, it’s like you’re all figuring out a big problem and that magic happens somewhere in between there and when it comes out and it’s like, “Oh my God!” [laughs] Jack, you said it earlier that you didn’t really understand it all but it really took on a life.

JF: [The processing scene] was 20 pages of script and we built a room for the scene to play on a stage so they would have no distractions. They shot 20 pages in one day and it came out great. Normally films are shooting 3-4 pages a day, max. But they just got into it and worked nonstop.

I think anybody who saw that scene in particular just knew it was going on an all-time acting reel.
JF: The other scene that was pretty remarkable and it was almost in one take was the cell scene, when Joaquin broke the toilet banging. We just sorta get the set ready and get out of the way.

Nobody expected that to come out, did they?
JF: You don’t know what to expect but I know with Paul we always try to give him as much set as possible. I don’t even think Paul knows sometimes how well it’s going to work or not with the actors. He’s giving them some free reign and he loves it when they get excited and take something to new heights. I think that’s one of the things that makes it fun working with Paul on one of his films. It’s because of his relationship with the actors and how he gives everybody in the crew [that freedom], I feel like we have free reign in a way to contribute, he’s just open to so many ideas. He’s able to keep them contained so that everything works well together. It’s just an ideal working situation.

DC: When he was doing the [window-to-the-wall] processing scene in the house and Joaquin broke that panel, I remember getting the phone call saying “Joaquin’s accidentally broken that piece of paneling.” But then it was followed by, “Can he do it again?” [laughs]

JF: The toilet was actually a museum piece in San Pedro so it wasn’t rigged to break or anything. It was a real toilet, kinda irreplaceable.

David Crank's sketch of the hiring hall in "The Master" (via Flicking Myth).

Can you describe your working relationship with Paul? How you get to work? Do you read the script and come back with some ideas? Do you talk to him for a while and develop a dialogue?
JF: I think we do all of that stuff. We all have ideas and we talk. Paul goes with us a lot looking at locations. He loves that process, I think it helps him thinking about the scenes. Then we design stuff and show it to him. He just sorta trusts that it’s going to be there and be right. That’s the way I feel about him, he’s never really questioned very much.

DC: We don’t have meetings where we sit down and say, “OK, there’s going to be three doors to the left, 1 door to the right and five pieces of furniture. Those kinds of conversations don’t ever happen. You kinda sit and go and talk about a lot of things and somehow this comes out in the end in the wash. Sometimes he’s specific but those kinds of nitpicky things don’t tend to happen so much.

JF: Like the department store, did he come the night before? No I don’t think he did. He was out in the desert and he was going to come but he was so exhausted from shooting the motorcycle scene, he just came the next morning.

DC: He kinda wanders around it and kinda finds it and then shoots it.

JF: I think he had an idea of what it was going to be but he’d never physically been on the set until that morning.

DC: I don’t think there was any shot set before we did it. It was kind of a general idea.

JF: We gave him much more set than he ended up needing.

So did that long take develop on the day? That wasn’t something that had been planned out beforehand?
JF: I think it came in the day. Paul loves long takes so he’s always looking for those. I remember the first time that Freddie goes to the boat, we had about 400 feet of dolly track there. He was walking at night and we must have shot the scene about 25 times. He played the music [“Get Thee Behind Me Satan”] at night and we were out there and he knew exactly what he wanted. And I’m thinking to myself, “This is a very long take, I can’t imagine he’ll leave the whole thing in the film,” but he put the whole thing in! And it was great. Paul does that a lot, he’ll play music during dailies, he’s one of the few directors that still watches dailies on film. He plays music at dailies, he’ll play music in rehearsal, he always has his little iPod full of tunes that he’s gotten either from the composer or things that he’s collected that he likes for the period. He’s always reminding all of us what the sense of the music is going to be.

DC: I remember that morning in the department store, he just kinda wandered around for a long time and found that whole thing. He went through all the different departments so I think he knew where things were going to be but I think he really developed it that morning.

How would you describe Paul’s ethos for production design?
DC: I just remember him telling us at one time, looking at the two of us and saying, “I don’t know what it is but one of you always tells me ‘It’s going to be okay’ and one of you says ‘I’m going to like it.’” [laughs] So we said, “Well it’s true!”

JF: Paul seems so relaxed about it that he trusts us and he also has a picture of it in his mind of what it might be from writing. Because when you write stuff you always visualize it. I think he hopes it’s going to be as good as he imagines it. If it’s different, sometimes it excites new ideas in him. You know? He’s not bored. I worked with Brian DePalma way back in the 70s [on “Phantom Of The Paradise”] and he had every shot planned. He’d show up on set and it would seem oh so boring waiting for everybody to do his shot. Paul’s not like that, he’s much more organic and things are growing by the moment. He’s reacting to what the actors are doing, to the lights, to the environment, to music, everything. It’s like a balancing act where you’re continually readjusting to take advantage of all the elements of the day. It’s an exciting way to work. David and I have done that a lot with Terry Malick and Paul.

DC: Paul wants it to be real. If you had to say, “What does he want?” He wants it to feel like a real thing.

Well it’s interesting because earlier in Paul’s career he made movies more like Brian DePalma did where they were much more structured but I think since “Punch-Drunk Love” he’s allowed himself more room to find the film as he’s making it. It’s been great to see him evolve that way.
JF: A funny thing, when I was in Hawaii getting stuff ready there, David was in LA with Paul and they were shooting that last scene in the film where he meets that girl at the bar. When he first described it to us he just needed a table and a piece of wall? It ended up on the day being a 4 wall set with mirrors reflecting back. He walked in that morning and started thinking about the shot and he wanted more and he wanted more set. So David was taking parts from other sets and building a new set.

DC: We had another shot like that too, that close up of the liquor, he needed an extreme closeup of liquor being poured into a pitcher on the boat. We had the tabletop and all of a sudden I went onto the set and the camera was pulled back and we didn’t have all the other parts!

JF: This was an insert for a shot we had done earlier in the filming.

DC: Somebody said, “Well that ladder’s missing that had writing up the side.” Paul looked at me and I said, “Well I thought it was supposed to be an extreme closeup of the pitcher.” And he said, “Well, it was until I started to improvise.” [laughs] So I said, “Give me 20 minutes and I’ll have the ladder.”

JF: I think Paul really appreciates being able to perform almost like a jazz musician, to be able to change things a little bit. For us if we can do it, we’re going to do it.

DC: I read a thing about an English director and he said when he was young he did Shakespeare at the Royal Shakespeare Company and he said, “I had planned the whole thing the night before. The first scene, I had the blocking, I had a paper for who was where and where they were going, this that and the other. I gave everybody their instructions and the first time I said go I had 30 bodies coming at me that all walked at different speeds and I threw everything out.” Because he said he couldn't do it. You have to pay attention to all that stuff that is in front of you and I think that’s what Paul does now. I think he comes in paying attention to the way people walk and that’s what you have to incorporate.

JF: One of the most difficult scenes to shoot was a short scene in an elevator after they have the conflict in the rich woman's house in New York. They were leaving and Joaquin and the whole family are in the elevator. He wanted somebody to fart and I don’t know if you know Paul but he loves fart jokes. We had to keep shooting it because every time the sound effects would make the fart sound, Paul would start laughing! [laughs] And everybody in the elevator, which was just a 3 walled set, would start laughing. We shot that thing for like an hour and a half and it’s one shot in the film. He’s like a kid sometimes.

In the script during the processing scene he had written that when Lancaster asks Freddie if he’s unpredictable, Freddie is supposed to scream at that point. But it was Joaquin who said that he didn’t feel that was right for the character and asked if he could fart there instead. So it’s funny that this fart wasn’t Paul’s idea in that case but at least one of them made it into the movie.
DC: I’ll bet he loved it. The elevator scene was in there but the fart isn’t.

JF: I’m not sure if they were able to get it without everyone laughing.

Every location in the film is so striking, exteriors like the desert and the ship, interiors like the department store and Mildred Drummond's house. How did you go about creating some of these environments and how much of the movie was shot on sets versus locations that you had to dress?
JF: Most of it was locations.

DC: The hotel suite in New York was a set. But then we built in existing places.

JF: Sometimes we would build sets in existing places. Sometimes we wouldn't get everything shot there so we would recreate it, it wasn’t actually a stage, we had a warehouse where we were building everything back there. We shot for a couple of days, we shot the recording studio [where Freddie tapes his radio commercial], we shot the English girls’ apartment, we shot a little piece of the Philadelphia house, a little bit of the hospital and the pub. The hotel was a big thing, it had 100 foot hallway and the elevator but that only made it to the trailer.

DC: We also did a changing room shooting for Mildred Drummond’s apartment. We shot another whole apartment but it didn’t work so we found another place and dressed it very quickly.

JF: It was funny, David and I had found a location that we liked but Paul just didn’t see it. Then we found another location which he liked so we shot at the location that he preferred. He didn’t like the way the scene turned out so we get a call at night going, “Paul wants to reshoot that scene somewhere else.” So the next morning I go in and say, “Paul, what about that place that David and I liked that you didn’t like?” And he goes, “That’d be great.” [laughs] So we go running back to the location and the woman is in Paris so we say, “We’d love to use your house.” And we shot it 2 days later so we painted it and dressed it, got it ready. So Paul shows up and the woman says to Paul, “I thought you didn’t like my house?” And he points over at me and said, “He didn’t.” [laughs] He was blaming us for not choosing it. But the woman was gracious and loved us being there and the scene turned out well.

I know in “There Will Be Blood” we shot things several times during scenes, it was like we were making a prototype, it’d never been done before. But he keeps on schedule. “There Will Be Blood” he switched actors after 6 weeks and kept on schedule. We had to reshoot everything they’d shot with the first preacher. He works well under pressure.

How long was the shoot for “The Master”?
JF: I think it was about 45 days.

DC: 45 or 52 days, something like that.

Was there additional shooting later on or had everything been shot during that time?
JF: We were going to do additional shooting. He had a scene that took place in outer space and he had a couple dream sequences that the followers of The Master were visualizing. But he ended up realizing he didn’t need them so we never shot them. So we were on the mark ready to go and do some additional photography but after he put the film together he realized he didn’t need it. He pretty much gets anything he needs or wants to do a film. Working with JoAnne and Daniel Lupi, they find a way to give him what he needs if it’s shooting days or locations. When we shot in Marfa, nobody wanted to shoot there because Texas doesn’t give any rebates, and they said “No, let’s shoot in Mexico!” But Paul said, “No, we like Marfa.”

What was the outer space scene about?
JF: That was one of the guys that was going into past lives. He was an astronaut and he got disconnected from his spaceship and flew out into space. We were trying to figure out how to do it because it had to be from a 50s sensibility. It was before we really had people in space so you couldn’t really use that as a reference even if he was making it up in his subconscious, it had to relate to stuff he knew from the period. It was a fun shot to plan but he ultimately didn’t need it.

I read an earlier draft of the screenplay that had a few other dream sequences in it, like Freddie cutting off The Master’s head while he’s giving the speech in Arizona, but I’m not sure if they survived to the final shooting script or not.
JF: Cutting off his head? I never even saw that one.

DC: I don’t remember that scene. There was a scene in Ireland that we didn’t do, another one of the flashback scenes. It was a woman being killed by soldiers in a barn. But that was back in the 1740’s.

JF: It was a barnyard in Ireland.

DC: Those were going to be the two main ones I remember: Ireland and the spaceship.

JF: I think what happened was that the chemistry between Joaquin and Philip Seymour Hoffman was so great that Paul just wanted to stay with them and it minimized the other members of the organization.

He’s said that he realized it was more of a love story after he’d shot it but I was wondering if you could feel that change in direction while it was happening?
JF: I think when you work on a film, everybody goes in knowing what the film is going to be. Then they start seeing dailies and they see a completely different film because it has everyone’s contributions to it. Then when you see an edited version it’s a third film, different from the one you saw in dailies and different from what you were reading. So I think David and myself, we’ve gotten used to this evolution so you don’t really expect the films to look anything like your ideas from reading the script.

DC: What it was actually turning into, unless you’re standing there at the camera, [you don't really know]. The fact that Paul was seeing it as more of a love story, I wouldn’t have seen it.

JF: Joaquin was so unknown to me. I didn’t know what to expect and Paul probably didn’t know exactly either and that was what excited him so much about Joaquin playing Freddie. A lot of times the unknown is more exciting than the known. If you can predict exactly what it’s going to be... [it gets boring]. And Paul’s films are completely unpredictable.

I know “Let There Be Light” and that WWII book about soldiers on leave were big references for Paul. Was there anything else you guys looked at for inspiration in designing the film?
JF: I’d been through a lot of that on “The Thin Red Line” so I was pretty familiar with WWII. “Let There Be Light” was interesting, but boring. [laughs] But I like looking at documentaries. The book was very strange, it was a lot of beautiful sailors and stuff but it’s a very famous book. Paul gave us copies of all that stuff and we were getting stuff on our own too. Everybody is looking at research, Joaquin is looking at research, Paul is looking at research, we’re looking at research and a lot of times it’s the same research. So when stuff comes together it’s not as foreign as you would think. Everybody is pretty familiar with the imagery.

Speaking of working with Terrence Malick, I know you’ve both worked on a few of his films and Jack you’ve worked with David Lynch as well. How is working with Paul different from working with some of these other auteurs? Or what things would people be surprised to find that they have in common?
JF: David’s a completely different animal than either of them because David’s more like a painter. David has the film in his head and he creates his own world. When you work with him you simulate David Lynch, you’re not bringing a lot of your own self to it. You’re trying to help David create the stuff he wants. With Paul, he’s almost like a jazz musician. He’s so musically tuned, he’s so passionate and so unpredictable. Terry is unpredictable in a different way. Terry’s a philosopher and he has something he wants to say. I always think that with Terry it doesn’t even matter which character says it, as long as it gets said.

Terry works with visual poetry and Paul is much stronger with character. With Paul it’s about character and it’s easy to work that way because everybody starts thinking about the character. I don’t know if you’re talking to Mark [Bridges], Paul’s longtime costume designer but it’s amazing how in sync how all our stuff is without conscious dialogue. We spend time together and the stuff really seems to be in sync. I have so much respect for Mark as a costume designer and he has a great relationship with Paul.

From “There Will Be Blood” to “The Master” did the process of working with Paul change at all? Were there different challenges on this one that you hadn’t anticipated?
JF: It seemed like a continuation to me. I think we worked pretty much the same way. We built pretty much everything on “There Will Be Blood” and in this we mostly dressed locations. We built replicas of locations. But the process of working with Paul was the same.

DC: I thought the process of looking for places was very much the same as it was on “There Will Be Blood” even though we only needed one place on that film.

JF: David, remember the Philadelphia house? There were about five houses to choose from and Paul liked one that we didn’t really like and we liked one that he was really unsure of. That’s when David told him, “You’ll love it.”

DC: He wanted one with a lot of red carpet in it and we were like “ehhh.”

JF: Paul grew up in California and we grew up on the east coast so we were more familiar with Philadelphia than he was, so he deferred to us. Plus we outnumbered him. [laughs]

DC: Plus, we’re taller. [laughs]

Did you end up picking up any shots on the east coast or was it all in the Bay Area?
JF: It was all in San Francisco and LA. We shot Massachusetts in Crockett, California, where the C&H Sugar plant is. That’s where Freddie’s girlfriend is when he went back to her house. We found a great little town there.

And London was also California?
DC: Yep, Berkeley.

JF: A great trick that Paul had for that school was that huge window behind The Master was to put a white sheet up there basically so you didn’t see any of Berkeley or California. It was just stylized with light. But I thought it really worked well for the scene so I didn’t really question it when I saw it. I thought if you’d seen that [backdrop] with trees and things it would’ve taken you out of the scene, but it seems sort of surreal just having white out the windows.

It seems almost like stained glass, very church-like.
JF: The scale was so great. We struggled to find a location from that school and we were 2 days away from leaving San Francisco there when we found it. We knew instantly that it would work.

DC: It had to work, we didn’t have any choice! [laughs] So we said, “You’re going to love it, Paul.” [everybody laughs]

JF: And he responded instantly.

“Inherent Vice” seems like it’s gearing up now. Is that something you guys are already starting to think about?
JF: I’m involved with a film that my wife [Sissy Spacek] is directing so I think David is going to take on “Inherent Vice.”

DC: Yes, I’m starting.

It’ll be great to see Paul take on the 60s which is a decade he hasn’t touched yet. Just curious to see if you have anything you’re looking at stylistically for what that might be?
DC: I’d have to kill you if I told you. [laughs] No, I don’t really have any yet.

JF: The year of the story is the year I moved to California so it’s hard for me to think of it as a period film.

Was that 1968?

JF: 69/70. It really takes place in March/April of 1970.

[editors note: Jack followed up with a text the next evening to clarify his thoughts on how to describe the work of 3 very different filmmakers.]

“David is a painter that creates his unique world in films. Terry is a philosopher that visualizes thoughts, and Paul is a jazz musician that plays characters.”

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Speculation: Is ‘Inherent Vice' Looking To Cast Big Names?

Treat this as not quite a rumor but just some speculation on our part. We know that PTA's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" is getting ready for a late April/early May start date, assuming the financing falls into place and/or PTA doesn't decide to postpone. Last month, it was reported that Robert Downey Jr. was still attached to the lead role of Doc Sportello (as had first been reported back in December of 2010) and that Charlize Theron (who PTA had mentioned wanting to work with) was also circling a role. Now it appears that both of those options are off the table with Downey Jr. likely in the middle of his "Iron Man 3" promotional duties in early May when the film opens and Charlize booking a role that shoots in that same window.

Two weeks ago it was reported that Joaquin Phoenix will be taking over the lead role and recent public appearances would suggest this has been in the works for quite some time. The question is: who will join him? Unless he's just doing some artful dodging, Philip Seymour Hoffman says sitting this one out, making this just the second PTA film he doesn't appear in. And while we should be getting some definitive answers on that in the next month or two, we thought we'd use this time to do a little speculating and draw your attention to something that costume designer Mark Bridges said about getting ready for the film.

Interview: Making ‘The Master' with Costume Designer Mark Bridges

Welcome to the third installment of "Making The Master," our series of in-depth interviews with some of the minds behind "The Master." We've spoken to many of the production's principal players (including writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson and producer JoAnne Sellar) that helped bring the film to life and today we have an interview with the PTA's longtime costume designer Mark Bridges. Mark is an Oscar-winning costume designer that has worked on every one of Paul's features going all the way back to "Hard Eight" and including their next collaboration "Inherent Vice." Mark  spoke to us about his 18 year working relationship with PTA, Freddie's incredibly high pants and what film he's looking at for "Inherent Vice" inspiration. Enjoy.

Cigarettes & Red Vines: How did you come to work with PTA?
Mark Bridges: He had started to do “Sydney” and it went down. In the meantime, he lost his costume designer so when it got back together and they were actually going to shoot it, someone recommended me to Paul. And I just pursued it. It was probably December ‘94 and I was really wanting to do my own projects. So I met him. We met for breakfast at Chez Nous on Riverside and we liked each other. I took him a couple days later to see a screening of a small film I’d done and he liked the way I did the clothes in that so he hired me for “Sydney” which turned out to be “Hard Eight.” We went to Reno and here we are, almost 20 years later.

You've been working together for nearly 20 years now. Has your working relationship with him changed much over the years?
I think the basic things that I really enjoy with him are the same, his methods may have changed a little bit. But basically he has an incredible intuition and sense of what is going to work dramatically and he’s really visual. The more I work with him over the years, at least once on each project he surprises me with how much he really knows about what colors say in emotion. But I think when he was 25, he took a lot more advice from his producers and now that he knows the business and he knows what he can do, he’s a little more creative on the spot.

Producers always want you to be very scheduled and complete a day and shoot this many pages in a day and everything. And I think over the years Paul has become a little more organic with shooting. If we’re in a real great groove with Phil and Joaquin, let’s stay on that. Let’s get everything on camera and have that moment on film. And not, “We’ll make it up tomorrow,” or something. I think he’s a little bit more free flowing in his creativity and look at the results we get from that.

I know there was some more on the fly shooting on “The Master.” When there are scenes that come up that may not be on the page, how do you stay nimble and keep up with those kinds of changes?
More and more I just try to be prepared for everything. When I do a fitting with an actor, I try to do his whole arc and sketch in the whole arc during the film. So really, if I need to go from change number 2 to change number 18, I already have a plan. So I just try to be as flexible as he might need me to be. Sometimes its impossible if something is being made or something and it just wasn’t supposed to come up for another 3 weeks. That’s a problem and we’ll go away from that. The same way if a set isn’t built, we’ll go away from that. I just tried to sketch in as much as possible in the couple of fittings I have with actors so we can be flexible. But more and more films in general are being made this way. So I’m getting used to it.

As a director, Paul is really known for his strong visuals and that definitely extends to costuming. There are certain pieces that really stick out in your mind like Barry Egan's blue suit in "Punch-Drunk Love" or The Master's red robe. You mentioned Paul understanding the emotion of what certain clothing choices mean, so I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on that?
I was watching “Boogie Nights” the other night and I remembered that we were shooting the scene with the pool party where Dirk meets all of his friends. And in the finished product, Dirk is wearing a bright orange bathing suit but the day of the shoot I had picked out something much more subtle and brownish something. And Paul asked if we had anything else brighter? And by the grace of the costume Gods, we had a bright orange one, and I probably just took it in a little bit, but it made all the difference in the world. And in “Magnolia” the backdrop of the [“What Do Kids Know?”] game show, the first one that we had was a period gold color of velour. And we walked in that day to start the game show and he said, “You know, this color isn’t going to work. Do we have anything maroon?” And so that whole background changed color and I think for the better.

And in “The Master” we had shot all of them getting off the yacht in New York and Ambyr [Childers] who played LD’s daughter had a fur jacket and a brown dress on. And we went into the interiors a couple of weeks later back in LA and he was like, “Do we have another dress for her? Everything’s so brown in here.” So I said, “Yeah, I have a red dress for her.” [So we reshot it] and it just livened it up. I look at the finished product and think, “It really needed that.” Luckily I had something in every one of these cases, I was ready for him. But he just has a sense so that when I look at the finished product now, it’s always better. I trust his color sense, I trust what he’s seeing through that camera and again and again, he’s proven it right. So I don’t take it lightly when he asks for things because it doesn’t happen that often and when he does, I know it’s important.

You’ve worked with some other strong directors like David O. Russell and Michel Hazanavicius, how is working with Paul different from working with some of these other filmmakers?
I think the familiarity. There’s nothing that can substitute for 18 years of having collaborated on 6 very different films. I truly feel like that whole crew and Paul, everyone who comes back again and again on those projects, we’re all very much a family. At least one time during the holidays we’ll all get together and it’s really great. You understand each other’s ups and downs the way you understand your own families ups and downs. And as long as there’s an open dialogue and respect of other people’s wishes and needs, it stays on a really even keel.

Paul’s very much like the optimal director. He gives you the script and wants to see what you can bring to the table and then we’ll tweak it. There’s a nice latitude and Michel is like that and for the most part David is like that too. So I enjoy working with them all where they’ll allow me to contribute. I think the directors that aren’t as satisfying are the ones that make arbitrary decisions because they can. I think Paul realizes the way he has the big picture of his film, I have a big picture in my mind of throughlines for clothes and the characters. But it’s not to say that there’s any question about who’s running the show. It’s just that there’s a lot of mutual respect, so it’s always a joy.

When did you first hear about “The Master”? How early did you get involved?
It’s really interesting because of the kind of long term relationship that we’ve had. I’m in on it very early, I think we had a table read early on by the time he has a first draft of the script that he feels is tight. He gets to the point where he wants to have a table read, so he gets a half dozen of us together: me, the producers, a couple of the actors and we’ll sit around and I’ll play, you know, Oil Worker number 3 or something and just read the part. Really early on, I’ll know what he’s working on. I probably had about 7 versions of the script for “There Will Be Blood.” 

But very early on, I know what he’s working on so my breezing into or touching on research, I can look at images and think of things for a couple of years before we start to shoot. We had scads and scads of research for “There Will Be Blood” and I just always try to present evocative period images in the rhythm of the story. So I can say, “This is how we’re going to do the yacht, this is the color palette I thought we’d use for New York and Philadelphia, here’s some images of the army hospital,” and whatever else is in that movie...

“Let There Be Light”?
There’s that. There’s also the group meetings, we found a lot of early, early, early pictures of L. Ron Hubbard in Arizona so we were greatly informed of the followers by the faces and clothing of the followers in that. And that’s like 1950 Arizona. So it’s just very different. Paul was always interested in the early days of Scientology when it was all done in people’s living rooms and very much the way it’s portrayed in the film. People had mimeographed letters that they would type at home, newsletters and photographs of people who came to the last meeting. It was a very homegrown, grassroots movement and that was what spurred Paul on to continue with the idea of it. Initially it was very innocent, not at all what it turned into as a global entity. So that was really fun to see that. Who knew?

The Scientology aspect is something that really captured people's attention and the parallels are definitely interesting. Were there any other sources of inspiration either films or just anything else you looked at as far as the costumes go?
The fact that it was 1950 and from a clothing standpoint it was really a transitional time between 40s and 50s, so capturing that was my goal. I’m always trying to be as specific as possible to time, place, weather, economic status, and of course, color palettes and things. So those are the things I lean on to make choices. What will fit? What’s available? What we need to get made for Philip, you know? The first time we see him it’s ever so brief, in longshot but there are more shots indoors on the yacht where he wears this green suit. He wears it later at the dinner scene in Philadelphia too. But questions like: how do you make a person compelling or interesting, capturing someone’s imagination?

Originally, you saw Freddie first seeing The Master from afar when he was a stowaway. So to put LD in a green suit is very right for the period but it also makes him stand away from the crowd makes him sort of interesting. And the red pajamas he wears in the next scene, again, it’s how that man feels about himself as far as being powerful and sexy. But it’s also, ‘How does Freddie see him?’ in these glowing red pajamas, which, by the way, we totally made from scratch. We even dyed that fabric, we made those pajamas, and I love the checkered pattern on there which is kind of like a maze pattern. Which I think says a lot three levels down: the maze of his mind and the way he speaks... And I think that was kind of accidental, I just liked it and a lot of things feel right to me and I can’t put my finger on it at the time. But ultimately it works out.

I know there are a lot of people who are fans of Joaquin's pants in the movie which are just, amazingly high cut on him. [laughs] How did those come about for his character?
It’s something that I love. We copied real pants from the period. It’s what really makes it look period because there’s nothing like that today. And I look at some of these movies that were made in the late 30s and 40s and it is unbelievable how high [these pants are], the space between the armpit and the top of the waist is like 6 inches. [laughs] And I actually think at the time it was for modesty’s sake, because the higher the pants, the more they drape away from your body at the genital area and with pleats and everything it just makes it really full there. So you would never see any outline of anyone’s genitals.

So it’s perfect for a guy like him, the pants being up that high and all those pleats can conceal the erections that he may have during any given time, that little horndog! And Joaquin worked that stuff too, he felt those pants high and that’s where he bent and that’s how he took his stances. The way he worked with jackets and things. With an actor like Joaquin, my goal is to make him be able to live in those clothes. So it’s always very gratifying when those clothes somehow make them somebody else.

And you can see that the way he’s wearing his clothes is informing how he’s carrying himself. It’s amazing that Freddie the character really looks nothing like Joaquin Phoenix, his face and body, it’s really an incredible transformation.
I think so too. I think he did an amazing, amazing job. And he was a pleasure to work with, absolutely.

Were there any unexpected challenges making this film? Anything that you hadn’t anticipated?
Let me go into the dim recesses of my mind, luckily you repress all those and forget about them. [laughs] You know, it was what it was. We shot a lot up at Mare Island up in Vallejo and I think one of the challenges was reality vs. what we’re trying to put on screen. It’s supposed to be a yacht going from San Francisco through the Panama Canal to New York. And so I dress it like we’re in the tropics but the reality is we’re shooting in San Francisco harbor in June, which as Mark Twain famously said, the coldest winter he ever spent was summer in San Francisco. [laughs] So while the clothes were trying to say one thing, the reality is that everybody had long underwear on under their resort clothes. So that’s why you see them in blankets and things during the wedding. So that was the biggest challenge, trying to make it believable that they’re going through the Panama Canal but dealing with the oh-so-breezy San Francisco body of water.

I know that “Inherent Vice” is gearing up now. Is that something you're already starting to think about?
Oh yes. Yes I am starting to think about it. So much of my work is who’s going to play the role, so I would probably prep differently for “There Will Be Blood” if Daniel Plainview was played by somebody other than Daniel Day Lewis, you know? So right now I’m just waiting for casting to be finalized but certainly trying to take in as much as I can of that late 60s Los Angeles.

You guys have already done 3 different period pieces together so I'm really curious how you’re planning to interpret the late 60s...
We really haven’t had any meetings yet, I want to sit down with him. I think it’s an unusual piece. I think it’ll still be Paul Thomas Anderson and probably try to feel very real but I don’t think we’ve really settled on what this movie’s going to be yet. I really don’t. So it could go a couple of different ways at this point. But it’s funny, I’ve been researching and looking at a lot of films at the end of the 60s. There’s a film called “Candy” [a 1968 satire starring Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Walter Matthau, John Huston, James Coburn, Ringo Starr and Charles Aznavour] -- as well as other films that I’ve been looking at -- that are satires but they’re broad and they have very iconic people in them. So I’m playing with that idea in my mind, whether that’s something that Paul’s going to want to latch onto, [I’m not sure].


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Philip Seymour Hoffman Says As Of Now He's Not In ‘Inherent Vice'

If all goes according to plan, "Inherent Vice" will be starting to film within the next 3 months which means that casting announcements should be coming very soon. While it appears that Charlize may no longer be attached to the film (if she ever was) due to 2 other conflicting engagements -- "A Million Ways To Die In The West" and "Dark Places" both of which film in the window where 'Vice' looks to shoot -- Joaquin looks to be a lock. Recent pictures show the actor is in the process of growing out his Doc Sportello hair. Will he be reunited with his "The Master" co-star? It doesn't look like it. Friend of the site Katie Calautti had a chance to sit down with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken for Huffington Post to promote their new film, "A Late Quartet," and naturally the conversation turned to 'Vice.' 

Interview: Making ‘The Master' with Producer JoAnne Sellar

Welcome to the second installment of "Making The Master," our series of in-depth interviews with some of the minds behind "The Master." We've been talking to many of the production's principal players (including writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson) that helped bring the film to life and today we have an interview with the PTA's longtime producer JoAnne Sellar. Even though she's currently pulling double-duty opening "The Master" in countries around the world and gearing up for "Inherent Vice," she was kind enough to carve out some time to for this conversation. JoAnne spoke to us about the origins of "The Master," how the film changed in the editing room and why the collapse of the mini-majors almost sunk the film. Enjoy. 

Cigarettes & Red Vines: So I know you’ve been working with Paul for a really long time. Can you just tell us how you first got started with him?
JoAnne Sellar: I kinda got to know him when he was making “Sydney” or “Hard Eight” because my husband Daniel Lupi was a Line Producer on that. So I got to know Paul through Daniel and he gave me a copy of the “Boogie Nights” [screenplay] which I kinda flipped out about. And at that time they were looking for someone to produce it with John Lyons who produced “Sydney,” so I came on board. So we kinda ended up becoming partners together and I went onto [produce] all his other films.

Producer can mean lots of different things on a film production. So for anyone who hasn’t seen you right by Paul's side in the “Magnolia” doc “That Moment,” can you talk a little bit about what your role is on Paul’s films?
I mainly do just work with Paul. While he’s thinking of the project, formulating his next project, he’ll talk to me about what he’s thinking about doing and we’ll talk it through, [then] we begin researching. He begins writing and he’ll show me scenes or pages as he goes along. We’ll discuss actors and locations and all those kinds of things as we’re getting a project together. And then my job is to find the money to make the film along with his agent. Daniel Lupi, who’s another producer of Paul’s, will prepare a budget and we'll go out to get the financing, [eventually] hire the crew and start preproduction. My job is really to facilitate, putting Paul’s vision onscreen and trying to get him everything he needs in order to do that while also being responsible to whoever’s financing the movie by trying to keep on budget and schedule.

So really everything.
I’ll also see a project through the whole editing stage and then be part of the whole marketing stage until the film gets released in the cinema and beyond, really. Because now, for example, I’m still dealing with “The Master” because its being released all over the world. So for each release, Paul does press or I’ll do a bit of press. Luckily, Paul is in a position where he can oversee all the marketing materials in each of the different countries around the world so if someone wants to do a new poster or something like that, they have to get his approval and input.

And that’s not usual for most directors to have that level of input on the marketing is it?
No, I guess for auteur directors at Paul’s level it is but [they're] few and far between, really.

Of all of Paul’s films, which was the most difficult one to actually get into production?
Both “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master” equally.

What do you think it was about those projects that made them so difficult to get financed? A little bit bigger budget than Paul’s previous films or the period setting or...
No, because the budget for “There Will Be Blood” was pretty slim. I think it was [because it was] an epic kind of production and it’s not an automatic for a studio. It fell between being a small independent and a studio picture, so for a studio it was kind of a risky project because it doesn’t read naturally on the page like it was going to be a big blockbuster. And it was too rich for an independent film.

But then it ended up doing so well so I’m surprised “The Master” had as hard of a time as it did finding financing. "There Will Be Blood" did pretty well at the box office, it was a big Oscar player, it was a cultural touchstone.
Yeah, it made like $40 million and it was so well received critically, it got 8 [Academy Award] nominations which I think is fantastic. Then we set out to make “The Master” and at that time when we were making it, Paul was originally writing the film for Universal on spec. So by the time he’d finished writing it, the industry seemed to have changed a lot during that time. The mini-major [studios] were kind of falling apart like Paramount Vantage and Miramax...

And Warner Independent...
And what was happening was that a lot of these private equity funds, like billionaires, had their own companies that had started up. We were originally going to make the film the first time around a year before we actually made it. And it was gonna be set [and filmed] on the east coast at that time. But we were racing against the clock because we had an end date on Philip Seymour Hoffman. He had to go [by a certain date] because he had a play commitment in Australia that he had to honor. So we did manage to cobble together the financing from five different financing entities. But it was hard because a lot of the places you used to go for that kind of film weren’t available anymore and also the market at that time was really difficult. But basically Paul didn’t feel the script was ready in the time slot that we had, so we decided to postpone [the film]. At that point we went back to the people that were going to be financing and said we were going to postpone and start again next year.

And in the interim time that’s when I met [Annapurna Pictures founder] Megan Ellison, she was a huge Paul fan and she loved the script and just was our guardian angel. She was like, “No, I’ll come in and finance it all,” which was music to our ears! And she was a fantastic partner and we went ahead and made it with her. It was a great experience, she’s very filmmaker friendly and just super supportive and great.

I’m a huge fan of Annapurna and pretty much every film they’re producing right now. It seems like Megan went to all of my favorite filmmakers and said, “What's your dream project? Alright, let’s do this.”
Yeah she’s gotten great praise because she’s such a champion of these directors. And you have these projects that aren’t mini-budgets but they’re not studio pictures, so they fall in between because there’s no one really out there financing these [types of films] except for Megan and Indian Paintbrush and a few others.

So when did Paul first come to you with The Master and what was your initial reaction to it?
He doesn’t really come to me with anything [fully formed]. While we were working on “There Will Be Blood,” he started to talk to me about how he always wanted to do something based on the Freddie character and he wanted to do something set post-WWII. Separately to that, he was very interested in the start up of Dianetics and kinda fascinated with the very early days of persons like L. Ron Hubbard, but obviously not wanting to make a whole statement on Scientology, that wasn’t the purpose at all. And he kinda melded the two together. He had read somewhere that the perfect time for these philosophical groups to start up is that time [just] after the war when you have all these lost souls looking for something to cling onto. And during that time, these groups start to [spring up]. So he used those two things and formed it into what became “The Master.” But it was a long process of talking it through and getting to that point.

And the whole thing where it was labeled a Scientology Movie happened because the script had gotten leaked on the internet and basically became known as the “Paul Thomas Anderson Scientology Movie” which was really frustrating because it clearly isn’t that. And Paul just said, "We’ll let it speak for itself when it gets released." And it did. As soon as it came out, all that kind of talk stopped. It was just a little bit infuriating beforehand [because the Scientology talk] wasn’t founded, really. To me, that’s really the subtext of the text. The same way the pornography is the background to “Boogie Nights” but it’s not about pornography.

How much of all that hoopla affected production? Did you have to shield Paul from any of that stuff?
No, not really. Some reporters tried to talk to me about it but I didn’t really entertain it, I was just trying to get the film made. And it didn’t affect the shooting in any way, it wasn’t like we were being hounded by the Church Of Scientology or something like that. [laughs] Those were all just rumors.

It was nice when the film came out and the conversation immediately changed.
Yeah, it was a relief to move on from that and talk about what the film is actually about.

As Paul’s process has gotten more a little more instinctual over the years, how has that changed your role on the film? It seems like he doesn’t stick quite as rigidly to his script, how does allowing him the space to find the film affect the production?
He kind of changed [his process] around the time of “Punch-Drunk Love.” When I [first worked with Paul on] “Boogie Nights,” it was his second film and he’d had the film in his head for years. He had made the short [“The Dirk Diggler Story”] and [during filming] he was super, super precise to the script. He had everything completely mapped out in pre-production, even down to a shot list of what he was going to be doing every day, which is I would say, over prepared in some ways. [laughs] But it’s great for a producer because you know exactly what to expect. And he was pretty much the same on “Magnolia.” But on ‘Punch-Drunk’ he approached it in a more free form manner where he had the script but there was quite a lot of improvisation.

It was the year of the [proposed] actors strike and we knew we had to let Adam [Sandler] go and then we were going to come back and shoot some more footage with him because he had to finish up something on another film. That’s how we had planned it but the actor’s strike didn’t happen so we were able to actually shoot more. So it gave Paul this wonderful position where he had shot most of the film and he was able to go away and edit it. Then he was able to go back and shoot more stuff that he felt he needed. But it would be very hard to repeat that situation because it would be very costly to shoot like that to have to [break and then] bring the whole crew back.

But we hadn’t planned it like that, [it was all] because of the actor’s strike, so it was kind of a fluke. [By this point in his career] he’d become more confident as a director as well and I think he liked this more organic approach to shooting, [he was being] less rigid on himself. But for me and Daniel [Lupi] it’s, in a way, harder because you have to allow that that’s going to happen but you don’t quite know what’s going to happen. So you have to prepare that he may want to reshoot stuff as he goes along, which he does, and he may need this or that. So it’s much more freefall but not crazily so. We still have a structure and a schedule [that we stick to] but because we know him so well, we just allow for that when we budget it.

And it still seems like it’s done responsibly so that it’s all accounted for beforehand and just allowing that little bit of room to play around.
Yes, totally. And he also takes a long time in post-production but he really finds the film in post.

The way Paul works is very counter to how most movies are made as far as publicity goes. Not a single picture of anyone in the cast came out until that first teaser was released nearly a year after shooting. What was it like working on a production that was so secretive?
Well, most of his films have been that way. He’s always liked a very closed set. We haven’t had press on set, we don’t do EPK’s, so I’m just so used to working in that way. And Paul very much likes to control how the film is presented to the world in terms of when the first stuff goes out and how it’s going to be marketed. He did all those early teasers himself and they were the first things that went out there about the film. Then he started doing those 70mm screenings and stuff. It’s all very planned. It’s just something that we deal with when we’re in post rather than in production.

The teasers were a huge deal when they came out and received a lot of attention. They’re so different from most of the standard movie marketing you see out there.
Yeah and I think the fact that you hadn’t been saturated with stuff along the way made it even more special.

From the teasers to the secret screenings to the festival appearances were all very planned. What was it like working with the Weinstein Co. on actually getting the film out there?
It was a positive experience. They knew how Paul worked and we were all obviously very up front. We had a lot of meetings with them in post-production about what Paul wanted to do and they were supportive of that so we worked together. Paul did the teasers on his own and he cut a trailer and then they had their input and it went backwards and forwards with Paul finishing it up. With the poster, Paul always works with [designer] Dustin Stanton and Dustin came up with some stuff. He did the teaser poster and [Weinstein Co.] came up with some ideas for the main poster and Paul liked that idea. So it was actually a pretty collaborative process.

I imagine you saw many cuts all through post-production but do you remember when you saw the finished film for the first time? What was your reaction to it?
Hard to say because I was literally seeing cuts every week. To me there wasn’t really a final cut, I was in so deep at that point. I’d seen so much as we went along and I’d seen it grow into what it became. There was a point where we’d taken some earlier stuff out, we’d shortened the beginning and taken some stuff out of Freddie’s back story. The film wasn’t working, it was off balance but because we were all in deep at that point, we couldn’t exactly work out what it was. It was clear you needed to have as much back story as we did [so we reinstated some of that stuff]. Times like that [are exciting], where you go, “Oh that works now!” But there wasn’t one ‘Aha!’ moment because I was seeing so much stuff as it went along.

The script on the FYC site is pretty substantially different from the finished film. There are entire sequences in the script that aren’t in the film and vice versa, the stuff where he goes off to see cousin Bob, etc. Was any of that in the final shooting script when production started?
No! Cousin Bob wasn’t in the shooting script. I don’t know what they put up on their website.

Must’ve been an older version.
No, cousin Bob was a while back from there. [laughs] It did change quite a lot from the shooting script to what we shot but not to the degree you’re talking about. There were flashbacks, stuff you see in the teasers like Freddie jumping off the ship and that type of thing, scenes that were part of Freddie’s story while he was at war. But when Paul put the cut the film together, he realized he didn’t need all that and it wasn’t important to telling the story, which was really hard because we had such fantastic footage. But I thought it was pretty interesting how he used it because it’s quite unusual to use shots that you don’t use in the final cut in the teasers and trailers.

One of the most interesting things about watching the film for the first time is seeing that some of the most iconic moments from those trailers -- like the “Tell me something that’s true!” from the jail sequence -- are not in the film! But you kinda feel like they're still there.
You’re like, “Well, was that in the trailer or was that in the movie?” I thought that was very clever of him, yeah.

Did he know when he was cutting those teasers if any of that footage was still possibly going to be in the movie? Or did he know it was all cut stuff?
I think at that point it was already cut stuff.

It seems like “Inherent Vice” is getting started up sooner than later. I’m super excited that we won’t have to wait another 5 years for his next movie.
I know! So am I.

Can you talk about where you guys are at now with that project?
We're just putting the financing together and the plan is to start shooting in late April. That’s the plan.

Fantastic. So casting probably very soon?
Yes. Everything should be very soon in order to start shooting then: late April/early May kinda thing. I’m sure you’ll be hearing some stuff very soon.

Feel free to drop us a line anytime with that kind of stuff. We will always be receptive to that kind of thing.
[laughs]

Last question: what’s the biggest difference in working with 26 year old Paul vs 42 year old Paul?
He’s definitely more mellow. It might be the fact of aging but he’s also got 3 kids now. I also think that as he’s become more confident as a director, he’s a bit more relaxed about the process... although he’s still as much a control freak about everything as much as when he was 26. [laughs] So that didn’t change, which I’m sure is the thing that makes his movies so great because he’s so precise and knows exactly what he wants and fights tooth and nail to get it. He doesn’t have to fight so much anymore because he’s proven himself.

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PTA Salutes Amy Adams

“If you ever want a handjob delivered with magnificent efficiency... there’s no expiration date on ole’ Amy Adams.” - Paul Thomas Anderson at the Santa Barbara Film Festival's Salute to Amy Adams (via Hollywood Elsewhere)

Stay tuned. On Monday, we're launching the 2nd installment in our "Making The Master" interview series with PTA's longtime producer JoAnne Sellar.

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Pre-order "The Master" on Blu-ray or DVD now!