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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
I understand the three of you wrote much of the script via e-mail?
The bulk of it was written via e-mail and faxes. We got together in a room for about three days and really pounded out the core of the movie, the outline. We'd been talking about it for years. So when we really sat down to do it, we had a very specific outline, with a beginning, a middle, an end. We knew what every scene was about. We had the emotional trajectory of each moment or scene -- what the characters are revealing, what they're saying, what they're not saying. All the way to the end -- the fadeout. That was in the outline. We knew the note we were going for at the very end, so it was all there.
And then we went our separate ways. We spent the next year working on other things. And that's when we started, really. We had it so well planned out, in an architectural way. Julie or Ethan could be working on this scene, I could be working on that scene -- just whoever had ideas or felt compelled to take a crack at something. And then we were always rewriting, and sending stuff around. A lot of it was just editing down.
When we had a script that was kind of getting there, we'd get in a room and work together again. It was fun -- it was pretty loose, and then it got really tight. But we all just -- we all had ideas I think we wanted to bring to the movie and to the characters specifically. But if an idea didn't fly with the other two, it didn't find its way in. So what's left is a distillation of thoughts, ideas, these bits that we thought fit into this world, this moment.
There was a lot of stuff I would have loved to have in this movie, but it never got traction with [Julie and Ethan]. I learned this a long time ago, if the actors don't get it, why do it? They can't fake it. Not in this movie. A lot of the time an actor's job is to take this kind of ridiculous-sounding stuff that almost doesn't make sense and make it human. That wouldn't work. If we did that for one second, the whole thing would have collapsed. So we just had to be very honest with one another about what we felt.
You've called "Before Sunrise" a "romance for realists." But I think "Before Sunset" is perhaps even more romantic. For one thing, the characters are more confident in some ways, and in other ways more vulnerable. Maybe that's true of the actors as well.
That's the fascinating thing we all had to confirm, nine years later. From your early 20s to your early 30s, you're still in the state of becoming the adult; you still haven't totally reached your limitations. You still sense an open-endedness and a future ahead of you. The great thing about getting a little older is you're a little more accepting of whatever paths you've taken. You're more likely to be settling into that. I think you're more comfortable in your own skin, maybe.
But below the surface of all that, if you're brave enough to admit the vulnerability underneath, and the disappointment and sadness and pain, as well as the joy and the beauty -- just kind of accepting life in all its honesty -- all that's there if you want to explore that.
It was important to depict two people who were aging but who were still the same people. It seems like we've seen this a million times: First, youthful romanticism and ideas, and then adult disappointments. But what about adult growth and adult passion? You take passionate, intelligent people, and you add age -- that's a nice formula. I wanted to show that Celine and Jesse are engaged in the world. They're intelligent. You sense Jesse is a good dad. They've taken on the adult world in their own, responsible way. I don't think they miss their youth; it's just that confronting each other, they're suddenly connected with what they felt then, and how that is or isn't possible now.
You go through life, but you get these constant reminders, something that takes you back. You have to think about what you wanted in life at a certain age and what you got.
