Captain Phillips hits UK cinemas next Friday 18th October and earlier in the year we got to attend a press conference at the Summer of Sony with Director Paul Greengrass and star of the movie, Tom Hanks. If you missed our review of the movie, you can have a read it here. It’s fair to say it’s one of the best films of the year and each of 5 stars we gave it are much deserved.
First up we have the interview with Director Paul Greengrass who fills us in on why he took on this ambitious project, filming at sea and just why Tom Hanks was right for the role as Captain Phillips.
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You seem to have an affinity for movies based on true life events. What about this particular event so interested you?
Paul Greengrass: Well, it was a great human story, I think, mainly, you know. There’s just something kind of absolutely classic about a, you know, a story about a man in peril on the sea. So I liked that. It was a chance to work with Tom Hanks. That was a huge part of it for me. And, I loved the fact that it was a story about, you know, it’s a very contemporary story, you know, the whole issue of piracy on the high seas is very current. And it really goes to kind of the way the world is, the globalized economy, winners and losers, all those sorts of issues. So it was a way of sort of making a contemporary thriller, a very human story. And also on a personal level, my dad was at sea all of his life. So I’d always sort of fancied making a film on the water and sort of exploring that because I remember it from my childhood. So it was a mixture of all those things.
Could talk about casting the Somali characters?
PG: Well it was a very interesting story. You know, when you make any film, you’re really looking for the support of the studio in the creative choices. And one of the things that all of us were very, very lucky, and I’m not just saying this ’cause this is a Sony event, you know. It’s the truth. They were absolutely fantastic at backing this particular vision of this story, you know, and supporting us all the way. And one of the crucial decisions that I wanted to make was to cast real Somalis to play the parts of these four young men who attacked the ship. For a number of reasons, firstly because Somalia as a country has a story, and, it’s a very interesting story and a very conflicted story. And, you’ve only got to spend time with young Somalis and they want to tell that story, you know, and, not soft soap it, they want to tell the truth about what it’s like out there. So it was very important for that reason. And secondly, you know, young Somali men have a particular look, you know, and I wanted it to feel authentic like that. You know, in the end these young men, whatever you think about what they do, you know, they, they, they essentially go out to the middle of the ocean and attack these ships, and it’s a high risk roll of the dice from their point of view. And to try to capture that, you need young men from that culture who understand that. And so, Francine Maisler, the casting director, we decided to go and find Somalis. And there are two very large communities in the US, one in Minneapolis and one in Columbus, Ohio. And obviously there are Somali communities here in the UK. We held open casting sessions I think at the first one, something like nine hundred people turned up. And, we ended up choosing these particular four young men who aren’t professional actors, they’d done a little bit of acting I think in youth clubs. But they just have a quality and a conviction about what they do. And, I’ll never forget the moment they came on set for the first time with Tom Hanks, which was the moment they came through the door to attack the ship, you know, on the bridge. We kept them apart. And, there was a lot of tension on the set, they’d never acted before on any kind of film, and I think Tom was curious as to what was going to happen. And I was certainly intensely nervous. And these young men came barreling through that door, and literally took the scene away with them, you know, and at the end of that first take, I remember the whole crew applauded them because it’s not easy to play the bad guy in the movie. You know, it’s easy to make a bad guy seem like a cartoon figure. It’s much harder to explore the humanity and the forces that lead people to do these things. And that’s, you know, I pay tribute to them. I thought they did remarkably well.
Can you talk about the logististics of filming at sea and the problems that come with that?
PG: Well it was a massive issue. I think filming on the sea is one of those things that can easily get directors and studios into trouble, you know. And one of the things I’m proudest about making this film is that we went out onto the high seas, literally into the oceans, we shot this movie, largely, not absolutely, you know, there were some small pieces on stage. But essentially, it was shot out in the ocean. It wasn’t shot in, you know, small secluded bays. That was another choice that I wanted to make because I think it gives the film a quality and there are difficulties, you know. Some of those scenes when those skiffs are attacking the large container ship, you know, the swell was very high. That’s extremely dangerous water work. You know, you’re bringing small skiffs up close to speeding container ships, there are all sorts of safety issues. And, you know, certainly my heart was in my mouth on more than one occasion. You’re trying to find the place where you can harvest the most dynamic material with safety, and it became a sort of collective endeavor because you do become a crew on the ocean. You really, really do, you know, because you live out in the ocean and you eat out in the ocean and you vomit out on the ocean, and we certainly did plenty of that, and, and you know, you start to understand a little bit of the rhythms of the ocean, you know, the speed with which weather can come up, the variations in the water. And I think it gives this film a real quality. But thankfully, we were able to sort of navigate all those issues and get home safely.
Can you talk about the need to dramatise the movie vs. keeping the real elements intact
PG: Well, I think, well, to answer the question in short, the film is a broad account of exactly what happened. You know, inevitably, you’re compressing an event that occurred I think over four or five days into you know, a little under two hours of movie time, so you’ve got to compress, you know, but I certainly think it’s a very accurate portrayal of the way the story unfolded and in effect, the way the story unfolded in my mind was it’s the story of a very small boat and a huge large boat. And then at a certain point, obviously it becomes the exact reverse. The pirates get Phillips into a small lifeboat and it becomes a chase the other way, with very large you know, US warships chasing a very small boat. So it’s got a sort of beautiful symmetry and also, sort of, inherent in the story is a sort of, a kind of a stand-off in essence, because, you know, you’ve got all this military firepower around this boat, but in the end, you’ve got these kids who are essentially you know, conducting a stick up of a liquor store. It just happens to be a large container ship. And that’s one of the, to me, one of the most interesting things when I was, you know, making the film. It’s a crime story in essence, and that felt very fresh to me. I think we’ve seen a lot of films that are that, and I’ve made, you know, more than a few of them, which I would say are within the sort of landscape of today’s national security concerns, you know. And what was interesting about this is it was an attempt to make a very, you know, dramatic thriller, but set in what I think is the sort of landscape beyond that which is the landscape of the global economy with its winners and losers, which is essentially a landscape of crime, you know. Because obviously, you’ve got this, these countries where the wealth of the world passes by their front door, in effect, you know, these huge container ships that are ceaselessly plying their trade. And you’re bound to get these kinds of events, that’s not to endorse it at all. But it’s a fact of life. If you spend time with any person who’s working in, you know, in merchant marine or anyone involved, you know, whether in the Russian navy or the US navy or the British navy, piracy is a growing and profound issue because it strikes at the smooth running of the global economy. So that kind of freshness made it very exciting to me. So to answer your question, of course I stand by it as a truthful — I hope very real world account — of this stand-off. It’s a story that’s well known, I think in the US, though less well known everywhere else in the world, and you’re trying to get to the heart of what the forces were and what the personalities were and what the key moments in that story are. Do we tell every single jot and comma of a five day event? Well you can’t, you have to select, but I think, I’m actually sure that the selections that we made are profoundly to the truth of that event.
How do you avoid turning Tom’s character into a Jason Bourne like action hero to remain an everyday guy?
PG: Yeah. A good question, actually. I mean, that was at the heart, for me, of what was interesting about the film, to be honest. You know, what you’ve got here is a film that’s got a lot of the elements of an action movie. You know, there’s an intense experience and he goes, you know, in two hours from, you know, from a remote, bucolic community in New Hampshire to this, you know, intense hostage drama out on the high seas. But what’s interesting about the character that Tom plays is he’s everyman. He’s an ordinary person. There’s nothing exceptional about him. He doesn’t have, you know, the action hero skill set. He’s not exemplary in that fashion. He’s just an ordinary man facing extraordinary peril, and how he adapts to that and the insights of wisdom that he gains along the way and the relationships that he makes because at the heart of this film, it’s the story of two captains, one from, you know, from a US merchant marine container ship, and the other, you know, the captain of a small skiff engaged in a criminal enterprise, you know, to rob the liquor store that just happens to be the container ship. And it’s this relationship between these two captains from very different worlds that really is the heart of the film. So, there’s nobody better than Tom to capture that humanity and that ordinariness in extraordinary circumstances. And, you know, speaking personally for me, I absolutely think it’s one of the very special Tom Hanks performances, because he literally is the greatest actor giving you the profound insights of being not special. And that, of course, is why you go to him in the situation, because he’s not balls out, he’s not a big action hero, he just is a human with ordinary compassions, ordinary insights, and ordinary instincts, and, how he navigates the extraordinary peril that he finds himself in is what the film is really about.
You often present paint your bad guys with shades of gray. Are there any actions that can be redeemable from bad guys?
PG: Well that’s a good and deep question. I absolutely think that all sorts of behavior, some of which I’ve depicted on film, is entirely and without reservation to be repudiated and condemned. So that’s the short answer. You know, I personally, in my own life, and also as a filmmaker don’t inhabit a kind of relativist universe. I do think that things are right and wrong, you know. But the point is, you can observe a world where people do bad things and you can depict them with great and unswerving clarity as being bad, but you can observe them with an unswerving realistic eye and that is part of looking at the world and saying, it is as it is. You know, every director’s engagement with the world is different, you know. I just happen to believe that if you try and depict the world with as much reality and dispassion as you possibly can achieve, and incidentally you need actors inhabiting that world to do it for you, it’s their insights that get you there. If you do that, you are very close to the true drama of our world unfolding around us, and you’re also in touch with, I think, if you can capture that, the compassion that you feel for a conflicted world. And if I can end by saying this, you know, obviously you haven’t seen the movie but I hope and I believe that people who see this movie feel a great sense of moral clarity at the end of what is right and what is wrong, but a sense of compassion that the world should be as it is. And that feels to me, like a humane but an unrelativist response to the difficult and also inspiring world that we find ourselves living in.
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Captain Phillips is released October 18th. See all our coverage of the movie here.
