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It was your childhood dream to become an astronaut. Later you studied philosophy. Is Gravity the logical conclusion out of it?
I never thought about it but probably. I mean I wanted to be an astronaut and
then
but it was between
be an Astronaut or a movie director and since I was very young...
a young kid. I said I wanted to be a movie director.
But then my fascination was philosophy, so I guess is that, yeah, I guess idea is that there's..
something about that.
But there's also the influence of Jonás Cuarón my co-writer...
...who came with this idea he told me.
...you know I like your films, they're okay but they're kind of rhetoric.
You know, you can do something that's... with the full excitement you can tell the same.
And we started talking about...
about films and elements and a we didn't talk about one single space film, but
the model for this film was,
...and i'm talking about how diverse the two things are,
were "Duell" by (Steven) Spielberg and
"A Man Escaped" by Robert Bresson,
a French film of the forties (actually it's from 1956)... yeah, the other one is a
very metitavie kind of film.
...but very similar in many ways. So if, okay what happens if
we tried to do something like that, y'know.
In which ways could Gravity getting as close as possible to your childhood dreams?
I i did some stuff...
I went into the so called "vomit comet"
and that was so much fun so I recommend that to
everyone, that was amazing. I did that.
And I had the fortune to be consulted by
very smart people belonging to NASA or to space programs, ...
... astronauts. So that was the closest I ever been too
any space program. But my dream is still not
fulfilled because... but maybe the Swiss government can sponsor me to go to space.
During production, the Space Shuttle program got shut down. How has the movie been influenced by it?
Well, we knew as we were writing the script that the shuttle was going to be
out of circulation. We knew that, but there were still
two missions left. But there was already announced that there was it.
But nevertheless we wanted...
...we didn't want to go to the next generation. You know the next generation
with NASA is the Orion. That is more similar to the Apollo...
...with the capsule. And we didn't wanted to do that because
the consciousness of people about space exploration involves the space shuttle
and we wanted to represent that universe up there
as people
have a perception on in their consciousness.
Everything that you seen the film is real you know
the technology, the space station, the Hubble telescope, these suits,
the jetpacks. Everything exists up there!
The only difference is the chinese station:
We did the sign as it's supposed to be in 2016
...right now there's only a couple of modules, but that was the only
thing that we exaggerated.
Yeah and about NASA I think
I think that right now that space exploration are going to be,
in terms of close orbits,
it's going to be about the private enterprises doing stuff
and NASA probably concentrating in
bigger radius... bigger radius in terms of
its amazing stuff like the Hubble telescope that is
probably one of the most amazing tools
ever built by humanity or
the space probe that now is for the first time
outside of the solar system.
So you know when we talk about space. Space is not
only the orbit around earth, that is just nothing!
This is so close. We're talking about infinite..!
By what criteria have you cast your main characters?
Well we wanted... we knew that we were stripping
the script from narative backstory
and dialogue, and that we were going to have a story of one character floating.
But at the same time we wanted to be a
a big ride for big audiences.
...so, because that's the model that would set up to do, you know.
I enjoyed... I missed.... that emotion that I once had as a kid.
I saw something that surprised me and blew me away,
um, so we knew that we have to give certain
...certain crotches,
certain elements, so people would be more at ease.
And we needed to have two actors that
would offer immediacy... and accessibility.
Immediate accessibility and immediacy. And particular with
Sandra's character to find an actor,
ideally a movie star, who would offer that, but then...
to make her perform against type..
So she would be... you know, it would become, like, this is a strange journey of going to
somebody that is familiar
and accessible but somebody you're caught in
in her emotional journey. So that was the biggest thing with Sandra (Bullock).
With George (Clooney)... we always wanted to work together,
so this was the perfect opportunity. He completely understood the character from
the emotional standpoint
and from the movie archetype standpoint.
You know, of this...
...of this anchor that his character is.
And so...
..when I got the opportunity to work with Sandra and George, it was just like the
perfect occasion!
Your first Hollywood production was "A Little Princess". Would you like to do anything like it again?
The only film that I've done that I like!
You know what... ever since then...
yes, I would love to do another film like that!
My kids ask me as me that question all the time...
and all I can tell you is that "A Little Princess"... I don't see my films ever since
I finished them, not ever...
But so I keep the memory of what it was and I can tell you that,
if I have to rescue one film of all the films I've done, it's "A Little Princess".