Alfonso, what was your experience with the NASA astronauts like and how did it inform the way you wrote the script?
Alfonso Cuarón: Well it’s very humbling because you can write a whole fiction and you’re talking with people that have done that thing in real life. Obviously there were certain things that informed the script. In an early draft we had scenes that, after talking with one astronaut, we realized they were absolutely moronic. They were like “that stuff would never happen.” Even though this film is not a documentary, it’s just a fiction, we wanted in the frame of that fiction to make everything as possible and as accurate as we could. Definitely with the physics of space we tried to be super accurate, but there are so many technical aspects and physics that are involved in traveling into space that we had to take some outward leaps in terms of fiction.
The truth of the matter is that when you’re talking with those people, you don’t care about your movie anymore. You just want to hear about what they’ve come to do. You want all the details, and it’s amazing. Another thing that I have to say is that in real life they have hundreds of alternative procedures for each thing that happens in space. In 40 years of space exploration, there have been only a handful of incidents. That’s because these people are so well-trained in what they are supposed to do, and they have to have alternative thinking about many procedures. These people are really remarkable, and the space program is full of people that are so qualified that you just feel so stupid. You feel like a movie director (laughs).
Jonás, what was it like working with your father on this movie?
Jonás Cuarón: Working with him was a great experience because we had this conversation about doing a movie in this style. It is a big challenge to on the one hand have a nonstop action element and be able to juggle themes. I guess the biggest challenge was to engage the audience on an emotional level, and I think that never really came to happen until we started working with George and Sandra. I learned a lot from my dad and also a lot from George and Sandra. I really figured out how a character can come to life. It’s a movie that was a huge gamble, and I’m glad that she (Sandra) didn’t know that it was a big gamble because the whole movie was on this character’s shoulders. She really manages to engage the audience for 90 minutes.
Sandra, you had to go some dark places as a mom for this role. Was that difficult for you to do?
Sandra Bullock: Oh yeah. No one wants to think about that. But if I personally can’t feel it, I can’t do it. I kept having to say at the beginning what would I do, and I realized I would be far worse off than she is. You just have to go there and know at the end of the day that you can unplug and you can go home.
Sandra, this is an unusual role to see you in. What was your reaction when you were offered it?
Sandra Bullock: I was longing to do emotionally and physically what my male counterparts always got to do. I just felt envious every time I saw a movie I was in awe of and it was usually a male lead, and those kinds of roles were not available. They were not being written. So in the last couple of years, whether it was by us searching for something and turning it into a female character or developing it yourself, things have shifted. Alfonso and Jonás wrote this (character) specifically as a woman. It wasn’t an afterthought, it was I think the integral part of the story. It’s revolutionary, and the fact that a studio on blind faith would fund something as unknown as this is revolutionary. So to be able to be the person to do it is beyond humbling, and it made me realize that I had to step up and be the best version of myself so whatever is asked of me I can produce. So yeah, every day I was so grateful.
Alfonso, was it a cautious decision on your part not to show the people on the ground who are just as involved in this situation?
Alfonso Cuarón: Yes. It’s almost an existential experience you get with the characters. You can see this film as just a big metaphor. Forget about space, this is a film about a woman who is drifting into the void. It’s about a woman who is a victim of her own inertia. It’s about a woman who lives in her own bubble and who confronts these adversities that take her farther away from human connection and a sense of life and living. All these other elements are bonuses that are part of her own psyche, and they represent that search of life. Even as she’s despairing, there’s that part where your brain can be telling you that you’re giving up, but there’s something that’s what makes this species keep on going, you know? Life keeps on going. So in many ways you could see this as a metaphor for an internal journey of a woman, but instead of taking this journey to a city or an apartment, it is just in space.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank everyone for their time. Be sure to check out Gravity, in theatres this Friday!