The Big Picture - Making Kick-Ass Liam Neeson Movies With Director Jaume Collet-Serra | The Big Picture (Ep. 44)

Episode Date: January 12, 2018

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with director Jaume Collet-Serra to discuss teaming up with movie star Liam Neeson for a fourth time in his new movie, ‘The Commuter’; the difficulties of shooting a movie in a confined space; and why he keeps coming back to genre films. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I have complete control over the casting, the script, what I do, how I edit. They let me do pretty much whatever I want, and I like that. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture. As Hollywood experiences radical shifts and the box office becomes more and more unpredictable, certain kinds of movies have started to disappear. But one type, the high-concept, mid-budget thriller, has a loyal protector, director Jaume Collet-Serra. Collet-Serra has made several films in recent years

that are stylish and smart, but don't skimp on the action. 2011's Unknown, 2014's Nonstop, and 2015's Run All Night have one common denominator other than its director, and that's an ass-kicking Liam Neeson. The director and Neeson have teamed up for a fourth time in The Commuter, a movie that, like Non-Stop, takes place mostly on a moving vehicle, this time a train. Neeson's character must solve a mystery, find a person on that train with precious information, or else. Colet-Sara's movies are inventive and unusually fun, so I was really excited to talk with him about why he continues

to reunite with Neeson, the difficulties of shooting a movie in a confined space, and why he keeps coming back to genre movies. So without further ado, here's Jaume Collet-Serra. Very pleased to be joined by Jaume Collet-Serra. Jaume, thank you for joining me today. Thank you, no problem. So, Jaume, this is your fourth film with Liam Neeson, and it's your second with him that is largely confined to a moving vehicle. After Nonstop, what was appealing to you about The Commuter

and about re-approaching a movie like this? You know, we enjoyed the experience in Non-Stop. We kind of found ourselves with a type of movie that doesn't get made too often anymore. The audience responded well by going to see it. That helps. Yeah. For a while, we were looking to do

a sequel of some sort, but we couldn't quite figure it out. We could figure out some sort of a sequel, but it kind of went into different directions that we felt, you know, that maybe the viewers wouldn't really appreciate. When the script came along, we managed to create a similar claustrophobic feeling

and a mixture of action and mystery that then turns into more of a nugget that could still find someone inside the train. Now, it's not only because I have anything against public transportation or anything, but it just happens to be that the train was also some sort of a good environment. It actually ended up being, for us, much more rewarding than the airplane. Because, you know, the airplane has small windows. Really, the environment doesn't really change that much. And even though you have the pressure of anything going wrong in an airplane,

it's much more dramatic. At the same time, it dehumanized the interaction between everybody because everybody's in such high pressure. When something goes wrong in an airplane, everybody's very alert and it just causes

a very unusual situation. With the train, we were actually able to have scenes and craft them in a way that a lot of the people didn't know that anything was happening or going wrong, and Liam's character could sort of figure out the clues and walk around and come and try to manipulate people or get information as he would as a fellow passenger, not from any position of power.

And that was also very interesting for me because I would see a different side of Liam, so he's not forced to, you know, kind of come to people with a gun and demand information, but use his charm and be able to, you know, take it from them in that way. Yeah, you make him more of an Hercule Poirot in this movie, right? Yeah, I mean, he's not designed, I mean, he's not like, you know, he's an insurance salesman, so yes, he was an ex-cop or whatever, but that's not part of, you know,

let's say he doesn't have a set of skills, you know, in this one. You know, I think he's just playing on his familiarity with the faces from being a commuter for 10 years and, uh, any sort of thing that he figures out is nothing that any other person in the audience can not figure out with him. So, and, and all the information, I like to craft my movie in a way in which I don't, there's no lie, you know, the information is there and, and whatever the main character sees, the audience sees with him. And so they're able to, uh,

to get along with him and nobody feels cheated at the end when we reveal, um, you know, what's, what's going on because they realized that always could have figured it out. Liam has obviously transformed himself in the eyes of the public as this action star over the last decade. What is it about him that appeals specifically to you to make him the centerpiece of so many of your films? I really love these films in which

it is a very strong point of view. And, you know, I follow one actor or one character and I see what he sees and I see how he reacts to what he sees. Obviously, it's an actor, not only that, you know, obviously can be very expressive and all that, but it's instantly likable, you know, and relatable. And I think that Liam has that, and for some reason,

I mean, the audience really connects with him, and he can do anything, the audience really connects with him. And he can do anything, you know, as an actor. I don't think that I could do a thousand movies with him. I would never even get to the bottom, you know, of all of his art and brilliance. I think that he

really loves these type of movies as well. He loves thrillers. He loves figuring it out. And the action part is something that is very natural to him. He's not faking, you know, just because people want him in action roles, he doesn't just put himself there for that. I mean, he loves it. He rehearses.

He helps come up with the choreography. And he does it all himself, you know. All of the fights are all him, even from the inserts. So he works very hard at it, and I think that the audience rewards him in that sense because they can feel that he has passion for it. So for me, it's like a win in all fronts. I mean, an amazing actor that has a similar taste in the movies that I like to make

and that he can do every bit of it, including the action. That's, that's fantastic. I think people tend to forget that he's a wonderful human being. That helps. I think people tend to forget that he's 65 years old too. I mean,

he's still, you know, he's very virile and strong, but he's, he's an older guy. He's an older guy. And, and,

and we have to accept that and play that in the movie. You know, one of the things in this movie is that, you know, you have to give him, you know, an appropriate age, kid, and also a wife and alive and accept, you know, and that's why in this movie, I mean, I wanted him to verbalize, you know, like his age, you know, because in this, you know, sometimes in Hollywood, obviously, you know, there's always an ambiguity. It's like, oh, he's more than 50.

He's more than 45, but less than 70. They never really say a number. The character never says a number. And I think that we wanted to make that part of what this character is facing. I think that one of the scariest parts is that at some point you get to a certain age and depending on your profession, you're going to be told that there's better people, cheaper people or whatever that are behind

that are going to take your place. And that comes to people in the sports industry. It comes very early. Other professions, maybe a bit later, but sooner or later, it happens to all of us. And that's a fear, and I wanted to play with that, you know? You do an extraordinary thing to build that character. The opening credit sequence of the movie

is one of the best I've seen in a long time, and it shows us really who this person is and what the stakes are going to be in his life. How did you decide to cut the opening credits the way that you did to show him and his family? I needed to not only tell the audience something, but I needed them to experience it, you know? So when you have a character who's a commuter

and maybe not a lot of people in the world can relate to that, you know? Like I know people in LA, they use cars. People in other parts of the world, they don't have this type of commute. So, yes, you can understand it logically, but I wanted them to feel like what it's like to spend, you know, years taking the same train at the same time. And eventually that's his superpower.

That's, you know, the fact that he has that routine, which seems very innocent and boring, is the reason why he speaks to be able to figure out who doesn't belong in the train. So I needed to show that. And it's a very unusual montage because normally when you want you show repetition, you show the same scene under different conditions of weather and light and wardrobe.

But this was like not only that, but different moments of different days that cut together, they would almost tell a full story. And, you know, it worked. It was hard to shoot. It was hard to conceptualize. And for a while it was very risky as we didn't know if an audience would follow along or tell us that we're crazy. But at the moment that we kind of got it together, it was clear that we had something that actually was quite powerful. And not only shows that, but it shows the relationship between him and his wife and him and his kid and how his kid has a hard time with the books and how he's helping him breathe.

And then his relationship with the other passengers and all of the, you know, and it's just a bunch of boring, supposedly boring moments that add up to a lot of information. And, you know, and I felt that that was the only way to open the movie. And well, we took a risk and we did it and it's paying off big time. Yeah, I think it was absolutely brilliant. I really appreciated it. Tell me a little bit more about why you like to work in these confined spaces. Is it like a puzzle for you to approach a movie like this? I think mostly restrictions are good for a story. I like very clean, pure concepts and

I think the purity has to be restricted, you know. And this structure, both in the script, when I decide in the script that we're not going to leave the train, and then I design sort of a visual language so people are not bored. In that mixture of restriction plus willingness to entertain, I find the purity of the story, you know? If I had too much freedom to cut to other points of view and things, and, you know, I think that the whole thing would get lost, the story that I'm trying to tell, you know?

And ultimately, every movie is about the character going through some things, but there are more deeper themes, and the deeper theme in this movie is the guy, you know, the everyday hero. He's the guy that leaves the house and goes to work every day for years and years and has to make the right decisions. I mean, sometimes making the right decision is much harder than making the easier decision. And having all of that sort of be compressed and pressurized in one environment and over almost a real time sequence of an hour and a half of a train ride, you can see that more clearly, you know? So that's why I like the one location. It's a harder to figure out, but the reward is much bigger at the end. You pull off some neat tricks.

Was it harder or easier than nonstop or the shallows in any way? What was the approach like for this one? Well, shallows was the hardest just because of the water. I mean, that water is just impossible. But it was, it had, I mean, we learned a lot from nonstop in the sense of how to, you know, nonstop. The plane was six feet up in the air, and it was very hard to get people up on it and off it.

And here we made the train closer to the ground, which was certainly easier technically, but it had the added difficulty that you have big, large windows which show you constantly what you're supposed to be looking at. And obviously we had blue screen all around and a very sophisticated system of lights

would match the environment, you know. And so, but at the same time, in non-stop, I had the whole plane. I had first class, I had coach, I had the cockpit. Here I only first class, I had coach, I had the cockpit. Here, I only had one carriage out of six. Oh, wow. So I had to sort of change the seat configuration

and change all the passengers and shoot completely out of order. So I would shoot the carriage one scene first and the carriage two scenes. And so there was a big planning planning a lot of work in the planning to make sure that because when you play the movie in absolute continuity of real time you know

any continuity error will be very very obvious so so we needed to know exactly where everybody even the last extra was sitting and match you know

and then shoot everything completely out of order for about eight minutes. So it was a big puzzle, you know. Yeah, that sounds complex. You know, you got your start in music videos and you made some horror films at the beginning of your career and you stuck largely with what we call genre movies. What is it that keeps you in that space,

that keeps you working in these kinds of movies? I like it because I have a lot of control, but it's mostly like the same people, like, you know, a lot of the same people that were involved in nonstop are involved on these ones. You know,

I, I'm very loyal to the crews. The crews are loyal to me. I have complete control over the casting, the script, you know, when, what I do,

how I edit, you know, I mean, this is very rare, you know, what I do, how I edit, you know. I mean, this is very rare, you know, for a director to have so much control constantly. They let me do pretty much whatever I want, and I like that. That's interesting. You know, your films have all done good business and are well-liked, and just telling people that I'd be speaking with you, I was kind of rattling off your filmography, and you could see people kind of get more and more excited, the more movie titles that they hear,

but you've been consistent in this kind of mid budget. Do you aspire to making a bigger film or something that is on a bigger playing field? Yeah. I mean, my next film is going to be big, you know, and, uh, and, and different, but I think that, you know, I will always, uh, do more of, of these medium range movies, you know, I mean always do more of these medium-range movies. You know, I mean, that's a lot of fun. Yes, I mean, obviously, if you go to a bigger film, you have a bigger sandbox to play, and you can do things that you can just certainly not do in a smaller budget.

But the smaller the film, the more intimate you can be with everything and everybody. I aspire to do a little bit of everything, and I aspire to do every genre, to be honest. You know, there's no genre that I wouldn't touch. Is there any part of you that worries that you'll become known as a guy who does these kinds of movies and then those are the only kinds of scripts that will come across your desk? No, because as long as I'm a guy that's making movies, I'm happy.

So I don't see a difference between these kinds of movies and other type of movies, you know? It's like, you know, for me, making a movie is very difficult. I respect anybody that makes any movie, from big to small, and that it makes sense, and that

they're able to survive through it. So I'd be lucky to just be making movies for a long time. Is there anything in your life that you're able to survive through it. So I'd be lucky to just be making movies for a long time. Is there anything in your life that you're hoping to reflect on screen at some point that maybe we don't know about? I always do. No, I always do. I always do.

And to be honest, the more you try to reflect things in your personal life, the less it works out. Hey guys, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Sundance Now. Brought to you by AMC Networks. Sundance Now is a premium streaming video service

that gives you access to the best in award-winning films, documentaries, and series. Like Liar, a new psychological thriller from the Golden Globe-nominated creators of The Missing. Starring Downton Abbey's Joanne Froggatt, Thank you. Sundance Now, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial by going to sundancenow.com and using the promo code BIGPICTURE. Okay, and now back to my interview with Jaume Collet-Serra. There's a couple of great fight scenes in the movie, and what makes for a great fight scene for you? It should be earned, you know, in the sense that, you know, it needs to be out of desperation. Fighting is the last thing that should happen in life, like a physical fight and violence. So the character has to really be at that point where he's already so desperate.

He can continue with the fight and not just walk away the moment there's some sort of physical aggression. But one of the things that I learned is that fights should be short and that they should, you know, they should have moments, they should have a little, you know, react structure. But most importantly, it should be as short as possible. Action in general should be short, because in real life it's short. And people kind of, if they feel like they have a sixth sense for it you know even though they can get very exciting or whatnot different people in the audience have

different responses for it it's not fair you know it's not fair for a certain you know a lot of people in the audience might like the fighting a lot but a lot of people in the audience maybe they like more the trauma or they like more the mystery So it's sort of not fair to make something long just for a group of the audience, you know? So you have to be very conscious. But before you start making a film, do you show other films to the cast and crew to kind of indicate like the kind of thing you want

or are you just purely explaining to them what you want? No, I don't. I did that once, you know? It was fun. What was the one time you did it? I did it when I was in, I think I was doing Anton. You know, we were in Germany. So we would screen a film like once a week and, you know, other thrillers or whatever, you know, or even he's made in Berlin, whatever it was, you know, like, and it was fun.

It was like a good way to get the crew together and kind of film. But the thing is that I believe more in, complete answers to concrete questions, you know? Like, you could show this film to 35 different people and they would have a different opinion about what you're trying to show, you know? So it's not, you know, it's a fun experience as a film man, but not necessarily a very efficient tool for a director. I'd rather have a concrete meeting on a concrete scene

and have concrete rules about, like, you know, this is how the camera should move and why. When I have a movie that has a very strong point of view from a character perspective, it's very easy because you know what the character is going through, you know, the anxiety that he's feeling and whatnot. So it's easy to associate that artistic knowledge to give anxiety. You could say,

well, you know, the more that, you know, less, the more, the wider the lens we're going to use, you know,

now we can see more of the world around him. Things like that, you know, or the colors or the type of light. Shama, I end every episode

of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they've seen. So what is the last great thing that you have seen? The Shape of Water. Amazing. What did you like about it?

Like that, that's a director's movie, you know, like that just came out. And as you know, it's obviously very, you know, it's very personal for him.

But you can just see that it, you know, it's just amazing how all of those images just came out of his head and he's able to put this amazing romantic story in this

both you know it's scary but it's tense you know it's just scary, but it's tense. And, you know, it's just fantastic in technically and emotionally and humanly, you know? And, and so I loved it,

you know, I loved it. Uh, for sure. That's what we've been in a long time. Jama, congrats on the commuter. And thank you so much for doing this today.

No problem. Thank you so much. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Sundance Now. Brought to you by AMC Thank you. and Unreal's Yoan Gruffydd, Liar explores the devastating cost of deceit on a couple and their friends and family and asks, are there really two sides to every story? Liar is currently available on Sundance Now. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial by going to sundancenow.com and using the promo code BIGPICTURE.