Robert Pattinson stars in director David Cronenberg‘s adaptation of the 2003 Don DeLillonovel, Cosmopolis. The story of Eric Packer (Pattinson), a 28 year-old finance golden boy dreaming of living in a civilization ahead of this one. Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, his day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart. Screenslam sat down with the director and star who spoke about the atmosphere on set, Robert as Eric Packer and why Robert took the role.
On the atmosphere on set:
“I’ve never really worked on something where a director has ultimate control, it looked like very little people were questioning decisions, where as my experience on every film set I’ve ever had is just an unending series of everyone questioning the director, everyone questioning everything about everything and with this there was a very confidant atmosphere on set.” – Robert Pattinson
On Robert as Eric Packer:
“I could tell that he (Pattinson) knew it was good and that he wanted to do it, but he was afraid of it afraid of it in the way actors are often afraid really, which is they don’t want to the one to screw it up because of they weren’t good enough or they’ll be on set and they’ll realize that they don’t understand it and cant deliver it the way they want, but in Rob’s case he was the one.” – David Cronenberg
“Cosmopolis” seems to be a perfect fit for Cronenberg, and my experience with the film was complicated a bit by the screening room where I saw it. There was no air conditioning, and it was mid-afternoon during the recent crazy heat here in LA. The screening room was completely full, every seat taken, and by the middle of the film, I was so hot I felt like I was slow-motion-fainting. Awful. And with a film that’s designed to make you uncomfortable anyway, my first reaction was to recoil.
I walked away blaming the movie, but thinking it over for the last week or so, I can’t get it out of my head. It’s exquisitely made, carefully controlled, a simmering look into the dead empty eyes of Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) as Rome burns around him. Based on a novel by Don DeLillo, it’s all character, all mood, a slow surreal ride through Manhattan during a meltdown that seems to have been caused, in part, by his own hubris, and Pattinson is fascinating in the role. He seems to constantly be shifting through a complicated but subterranean inner implosion, pieces of himself shutting down at random, little by little. His stated goal for the day is simple enough. He wants a haircut. Never mind that the entire city seems to be on high alert thanks to the visit of a President and construction and protests and traffic and madmen and giant rats and angry wives and dirty lovers, all complications thrown in the path of Packer as he attempts to make his way across this tiny island, locked inside his sterile bubble.
I do not think I’m out of line when I observe that Robert Pattinson is from outer space. Part of what makes him so compelling in the film is that whatever weirdness Cronenberg throws at him, he rolls with it, staring out of that blank passive face with furious eyes. People race in and out of his personal orbit. He gets a physical from a doctor inside the cab at one point, carrying on a conversation while this guy’s got half his arm inside him, and the way Pattinson plays that scene is impressive. On the whole, Pattinson delivers in this difficult role, and I can’t picture anyone else tuning in more completely to what Cronenberg has done here.
It helps that Pattinson interacts with truly great performances from the supporting cast. Juliette Binocheshows up to have some sex, drink some booze, and lay some ugly truth on Pattinson’s character. Sarah Gadon is Packer’s wife, newly married and already looking for a way out, away from this shark-eyed and alien “other” who she has barely gotten to know as a husband. Jay Baruchel and Kevin Durand both do sharp and specific work in small roles here, and there’s a wonderful but oh-so-short appearance by Samantha Morton as well. Paul Giamatti almost steals the film in the last ten minutes, and it’s a testament to how good Pattinson is in the film that he stands there and refuses to let Giamatti run away with it. He gives as good as he gets. Giamatti is great, giving voice to all the frustration and powerlessness of everyone caught up in these forces at work in the modern world, these soft little boys dressed up in expensive suits, untouchable in their coffins on wheels. Giamatti is determined to break through the expressionless exterior of Packer to find the soft and vulnerable heart, and once he does, he plans to rip it out.
As Eric, Pattinson is in every scene of the film, portraying a character unlike any he’s tackled before. And in our exclusive interview in support of Cosmopolis’ theatrical release by eONE Films, writer/director Cronenberg explained why Pattinson was right for the part of Eric and how he went about tackling the adaptation of DeLillo’s novel.
In casting Robert Pattinson, it’s kind of a double-edge sword, isn’t it? You have hisTwilight fans anxious to support him in whatever he chooses to do and then you have the people who dismiss him because he is ‘that guy from Twilight‘.
“Yeah. In a weird way, on the one hand of course I’m completely aware of all of those elements and also of course when you’re making a movie that for an independent movie was relatively expensive, you have to have a leading character who is very charismatic and who can carry the weight and has the star quality and so on, because you’re going to be looking at him. He’s literally in every scene in the movie, and that’s pretty unusual. I mean even in Tom Cruise movies, Tom is not in absolutely every scene of the movie – but Rob is. So he has to have that. But at the same time, you want to forget the movies, you know? You want to forget his movies and my movies because we’re creating this completely new thing and you don’t know what audience you’re going to get. You can anticipate it, you can think about it, but really you don’t know. So ultimately when you’re making the movie you’re saying, ‘Okay, I’m here with these actors. They’re wonderful actors, I cast them because they’re terrific and they will bring great stuff to the script,’ and then at that point you’re just making a movie and you’re not thinking about any other movie.”
Needing an actor to carry the film by being in every scene, how did you figure out Robert Pattinson was the right guy to play Eric?
[Laughing] “Well, this is the magic of casting! I think as a director, it’s part of your job. It’s a really important part of your job. I think a lot of people don’t even realize that the director’s involved in casting. Some people say, ‘Did you choose your actors?,’ and I say, ‘Yes. You’re not a director if you don’t.'”
“Of course, you’re juggling many things, like I say. You’re juggling, for example, their passports. This is a Canada / France co-production and we were limited to one American actor. Most people of course don’t know that – nor should they. Paul Giamatti is the only American in this movie even though it takes place in New York City. So from that kind of aspect to just finding the right guy…of course he’s got to be the right age, there are a lot of things that are just basic. And then after that, though, there are no rules. You as a director just have to intuit that this actor will be able to carry off this role.”
“We often talk about chemistry, for example, in movies between actors, let’s say. When I was doing A Dangerous Method, Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender – how do I know they have chemistry together because I had never seen them in a movie together? They’ve never been in one; they’ve never met each other. I don’t see them together until I’m actually directing them, so I have to be this kind of dating master who can anticipate that this couple will be good together. It’s a strange kind of thing. So you give yourself credit when it works, and you have to berate yourself when somehow it hasn’t worked. That’s basically where you’re left.”
It strikes me with Cosmopolis that the chemistry actually needed to come between you and Robert more so than between Rob and any of his co-stars.
“There’s truth in that too. That is the unspoken thing is the chemistry between the director and the actors is the key. And at a certain point I think Rob would…you know, he’s a serious actor and he didn’t want to be the one who was going to blow this movie. He was kind of thinking, ‘Well, I’ll be alone in that limo because I won’t have one person who is always playing opposite me. It’s really a one-man show with a lot of day players coming in.’ And I said, ‘No, you won’t be alone because I’ll be there. I’ll be with you every moment.’ And so that is a real element.”
Do you think that you view the character of Eric the same way that author DeLillo did? Or do you think that you two don’t necessarily agree on how an audience should look at him?
“I think we actually illuminate things for each other. I’ve been on the road doing publicity with Don in several countries and I think he was pretty intrigued by seeing what would happen. Because, after all, once you put Rob Pattinson in that role, that’s a very specific thing. You’ve got a particular face and a particular voice and a body, and that’s something that the novel can not have. That’s one of the things that movies can do that novels can not do, and so it immediately shapes the character in a way that he wasn’t shaped in the novel. So, there are differences, I think, but it’s not a major split or divergence. It’s just really shading and shaping things. It’s just really hearing the dialogue spoken, which was something that when I read the novel, I thought, ‘Yeah, I really want to hear this spoken by really great actors.’ Just doing that immediately changes your reaction to the characters and to the words. So there is a difference, definitely.”
The phone call began with Pattinson and Cronenberg laughing.
Question: Sounds like you two aren’t having any trouble having fun.
Pattinson: We rollick and frolic. We have no problem.
Q: And Robert, you haven’t been in the news enough lately.
Pattinson: Heh.
Q: Your character is a disconnected guy trying to connect. Or maybe it’s the other way around. How do you play that?
Pattinson: I think he’s just very, very self-obsessed. It’s going deeper and deeper into self-obsession until it kind of implodes. It’s also just the words. Everything is done for me. I sort of instinctively felt like I knew what to do from the beginning because the script was so good.
Q: Is it tricky to direct someone having a prostate exam (as Packer does in the film)?
Cronenberg: For me? Oh, no problem.
Q: Robert, I assume you’re rich. But Packer is incredibly rich. Is there a freedom to that?
A: I think it’s actually quite a difficult way to live. I’ve met a few people who have fictional money (laughing). If you have any interest in the world, it’s very difficult to see. Your eyes are totally different to most people. Money really does change people. You have to make an effort to be normal, I think.
Q: Did you go through that when you became successful?
Pattinson: It’s different. Dealing with fame is different. Everyone gets stuff thrown at them in life, and you have to figure out how to deal with it.
Q: There’s a ton of publicity surrounding you now, good and bad. Presumably you’re in a bubble while shooting the film, so not as many people are keeping up.
Cronenberg: In fact, a lot of the “Twilight” fans were keeping up. They made websites, and they had spy-cams. But all of that was really quite sweet. It was quite gentle and quite affectionate, and you had these young girls who had never read anything but “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” before (but) were reading “Cosmopolis,” they were reading Don DeLillo and writing about it on their blogs.
Q: Robert, “Twilight” is winding down. What has that been like?
Pattinson: Pretty crazy (laughing). No one ever believes me, but no one involved with the first movie had any idea that it was going to turn out to be what it was going to be. We didn’t even know if we were going to make the sequels. You go on this runaway train that I was entirely unprepared for. And at the same time, I was kind of figuring out whether I wanted to be an actor or not, which is kind of interesting. You’re in your 20s, you’re trying to figure out what you want to do with your life.
Q: What about the fame aspect of it? Isn’t that kind of a weird way of life? You can’t even walk across the street without someone taking a picture.
Pattinson: Yeah. It’s just how you deal with it. Everyone has to figure out how they want to live. It’s a challenge.
Cronenberg: I can say that Rob was definitely able to walk across the street in Toronto (where “Cosmopolis” was shot) and no one noticed. And he could go to a bar and he could go to a restaurant. Really, part of it has to do with where you are and how much you’re publicizing yourself. If you’re Lindsay Lohan and you’re making sure that everybody knows where you are at all times, then you know what the consequences will be. But if somebody doesn’t want that, there are ways you can do that.
Here are some black & white pics of Robert Pattinson I made for you guys from NY Times Talk, Good Morning America, MTV First, the New York Stock Exchange and the Cosmopolis premiere in NYC. Enjoy!
Robert Pattinson
c/o Curtis Brown Group Ltd.
Haymarket House
5th Floor, 28-29
Haymarket
London, SW1Y 4SP
England
or
Robert Pattinson
c/o Endeavor Agency
Stephanie Ritz
9601 Wilshire Blvd. Floor 3
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
USA
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