Robert Pattinson interview at Good Time premiere in Athens, Greece
Nov 22 2017. by Athens International Film Festival Channel
Question: I was wondering if the whole process that led you from Twilight to Good Time was an evolution process for you? For me, it was way before from The Rover, was it a break out from the Twilight “cocoon” if I could call it like that?
Rob: I have never tried to break out from anything. You read tonnes and tonnes of scripts and the ones that are the most appealing are the ones that feel really different. And that’s what you wannna do. And then if they work and they hit then, they feel that they’re different. With every single movie you try and find which has got some kind of interesting writing. And there’s just something about it. And also because I sort of just fell into acting, I don’t really have trust-in-like crutches. So every single time I do a movie I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. And I have to just learn it from the ground up every single time. So for me it’s just an invention not a reinvention,
It’s funny with acting, you can’t force a performance into whatever… You can do it a little bit, you can calibrate something and try to finagle something in, but you get so few opportunities to really, wholly commit to something. and there are a lot of really great opportunities in this (Good Time) where for one thing, the script didn’t exist at the beginning, so I was talking to the writers, to Josh and Ronnie as they were writing it, so I could integrate myself, my own ideas into it quite organically. And then they way they shoot, it’s very much like a 360 process. They light entire rooms, entire set, so you an go around and touch everything, feel everything. There’s a lot of actors who are just first time actors who are just kind of playing versions of themselves and who can easily slip into just improvisation because they are playing themselves. And so it just feel really real. After a week of having that experience, you lose track of reality of how you are performing. It’s all initially from the writing, and the first draft of the script was so exciting so you kind of start getting inspired almost immediately.
Question: Do you think that putting our trust in such risking film-making such as the one we see in Good Time is really important nowadays as we are overwhelmed by this fatigue from franchises, blockbusters, and superhero movies that the American cinema is constantly feeding us?
Rob: I think it’s more risky to not to take risks. I get asked alot about whether this (Good Time) is risky filmmaking. I just don’t think that it is. It was kind of a sure thing with me doing this. I think if you are attempting to do something different, you are always going to win afterwards, even if you fail, you still win cos everyone knows that you tried. Whereas if you’re just trying to be on the bandwagon like everyone else, it’s like “what are you doing? Are you doing this for the money? Are are doing so …?” it’s like its not fun, it’s not interesting, You’re much better off just trying to forge new ground. I think it is safer to do that.
