00:00 - John, you're winning the prize for best background so far.
00:02 I'm loving your office.
00:05 - Fantastic.
00:06 There are a lot of movies of yours behind me.
00:08 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:09 You say that to everyone.
00:10 (laughing)
00:11 (dramatic music)
00:13 ♪ The whole world is watching ♪
00:16 - Martin's dead.
00:16 ♪ The whole world is watching ♪
00:20 - Bobby's dead.
00:20 ♪ The whole world is watching ♪
00:24 - Jesus is dead.
00:24 ♪ The whole world is watching ♪
00:27 - I was shocked to find out how funny this movie was.
00:29 I think I went into it expecting it to be really serious,
00:32 really dramatic.
00:33 And there were a lot of moments of just subtle levity.
00:37 And I wanna know what type of conversations
00:38 you guys had on set with Mr. Sorkin,
00:40 where he said, like, let the humor be accessible
00:43 to get people into the trial,
00:44 'cause it could have played very angry and very futile.
00:47 - It was on the page, honestly.
00:49 He, Aaron is the master of that.
00:51 He takes on such sort of rigorous subject matter.
00:56 And yet, and he invests in his audience's speed of thought,
01:01 but he also laces it with humor in a way that's wonderful.
01:05 In fact, we talked about it in relation to Tom, even,
01:09 because Tom, in Aaron's take on the trial,
01:12 was very much the policy, within the system man.
01:17 But I was said to Aaron,
01:20 in order for an audience to stay with him,
01:21 he's got to have charisma,
01:24 which Tom did, by the way, in real life.
01:26 He was swimming in charisma,
01:29 but he's got to have some of that himself.
01:32 So actually, Aaron went in and laced a bit of humor
01:35 into Tom's earlier work.
01:37 You're not quite Abby, as far as,
01:39 and certainly I'm not Sasha,
01:40 but it was important.
01:44 What I'm saying is it was very important
01:45 that the humor is a way into these characters in some ways.
01:49 - Get him on the street!
01:50 Get him on the street!
01:52 - These are very, very, very witty and smart,
01:57 very, very intelligent characters,
01:59 and characters who come from various backgrounds.
02:04 And so when you have ego and experience
02:07 and a certain degrees of trauma and intelligence,
02:11 then that's also, that's right for drama,
02:15 but it's also right for a lot of comedy
02:18 and for great quips and comebacks and challenges
02:22 and things like that as well.
02:23 So Aaron definitely took advantage of the personalities
02:26 that he was given with this cast.
02:28 - Yeah, not a spoiler at all,
02:30 but when it's pointed out that the members
02:32 were not present at a certain location,
02:35 and then you say, "I wasn't there either."
02:38 I love that so hard.
02:40 - Yeah, for informational purposes, right?
02:43 Just in case we wonder, "I wasn't there either."
02:47 - You all right?
02:49 - I was until I saw that.
02:50 - These rebels without a job.
02:53 - They're a threat to national security.
02:56 - This revolution,
02:57 we may have to hurt somebody's feelings.
02:59 - I consider Mr. Sorkin literally
03:01 our greatest screenwriter working today.
03:04 You've been lucky enough to read a number of scripts
03:06 over the course of your career.
03:07 I'm curious, what's different about his?
03:09 - Yeah, I opened up this script in my email
03:13 and I scrolled all the way through the bottom.
03:17 I said, "There's gotta be a mistake.
03:18 "There's 140 pages."
03:21 It's definitely 130.
03:22 There could have even been 150 pages.
03:24 How do you do a movie in 150 pages?
03:26 Then I started to read, and before you know it,
03:29 I'm on page 40.
03:30 I've only been reading for what feels like 10 minutes.
03:33 So the script sings.
03:35 The script is musical.
03:37 The dialogue compliments one another.
03:40 There's not a lot that is gratuitous.
03:42 There's not anything gratuitous about the script,
03:44 and yet it still finds the place to go fast
03:49 and to rest and to allow for jokes
03:54 and the things that you would see
03:56 when a script has the time to really take its breath,
03:59 although it's packed full of words and dialogue.
04:02 So he works with a very, very smart hand
04:05 over his language.
04:07 - I would love to get your insight
04:09 about the production pause
04:10 that we're currently going through in the industry,
04:12 because you happen to be part of a massive franchise
04:14 in "Fantastic Beasts." - Yes.
04:15 - And a lot of times, these movies are racing
04:17 to hit pre-announced release dates,
04:19 and I'm just curious if there's been an added bonus
04:21 to a sequel to press pause and take a breath
04:24 and solve some issues
04:25 and maybe make the strongest movie possible.
04:27 - I mean, I hope so.
04:29 I did definitely.
04:30 So we were meant to start,
04:31 we'd done a pre-shoot day
04:34 just before we went into lockdown here.
04:37 So we'd shot on a Friday,
04:39 and then on the Sunday night,
04:40 we were meant to start shooting proper on the Monday,
04:42 and we got a call on a Sunday night saying,
04:44 "We're not doing it."
04:45 And then we had this six-month period,
04:48 and absolutely, the creatives,
04:51 or certainly David Yates and I were talking about
04:54 using that time,
04:56 and whether it was in the visual effects
04:58 or working on things as far as,
05:00 I think it's really important.
05:01 You're always trying to make the best work possible,
05:04 and so I feel like it has been
05:08 helpful in some ways.
05:12 But it's interesting 'cause we've started shooting now.
05:14 We're two weeks in,
05:15 and it's, again, whole new processes,
05:19 whole new normal testing frequently, masks.
05:24 And I wondered actually whether the masks
05:25 would affect creativity in some ways.
05:27 Maybe it was a bit ignorant,
05:29 but I just thought, do people,
05:31 as humans, do we need interaction to spark from each other?
05:34 And what was really reassuring is it has,
05:38 it is a different process,
05:40 but it still feels like it's fizzing
05:42 and that everyone is working at the top of their game.
05:47 - So I think I've been fortunate enough with "The Matrix"
05:49 that we haven't had,
05:53 that the pause that we experienced was not as large as,
05:56 or was not as long a pause as a lot of the other productions.
05:59 So I find myself being fortunate enough
06:01 to stay in the creative spirit
06:05 and to continually be processing and making work.
06:09 But I think that this is an industry that will,
06:11 that does survive by finding the silver lining.
06:14 So I think that it will be the case
06:15 that this is a time for artists, for creatives
06:18 to rejuvenate, to go back, to look at footage,
06:22 to look at what they've already have in the can
06:23 and then say, okay, well,
06:24 this is what we're gonna do better when we get back,
06:26 and this is how we're gonna streamline
06:27 and become more efficient.
06:29 And so I think that that was,
06:31 hopefully that the response will be a lot of quality work
06:35 coming out in the next year.
06:38 - Are you hoping to draw the police into a confrontation?
06:42 - The whole world is watching!
06:43 (crowd shouting)
06:46 - I'm concerned you have to think about it.
06:49 - Give me a moment, would you, friend?
06:51 I've never been on trial for my thoughts before.
06:54 - The whole world is watching!
06:57 (thumping)
06:59 (upbeat music)
07:05 (upbeat music)
07:07 (upbeat music)
07:10 (upbeat music)
07:13 (upbeat music)
07:16 (upbeat music)
07:18 (gentle music)
