Gravity. Oscar winning James Cameron calls it the best space film ever done and the movie ive been hungry to see for an awfully long time. Here is the trailer for gravity. Beautiful, dont you think . What . The sun rise. Terrific. screaming no houston, the listen to my voice you need to focus im spinning i cant breathe what do i do . What do i do . No, no, no anybody, please copy. Rose i am pleased to have the director, Alfonso Cuaron and his son and cowriter jonas cuaron at this table. It looks like an easy movie to make. laughter i thought that. Actually, i finished the screenplay, sent it to chih bow our cinematographer and i said listen to this, its a small piece, two characters, it will be the c. G. But well do it in one year. Rose one year . Yes, it was going to be one of those. Rose and how long did it take . Four and a half. Rose why . Because the technology to do it didnt exist. I didnt know that because we were writing and when youre writing you dont think of those things. And then when we start doing the whole thing it was clear that they wouldnt have gone to work rose what was the hardest part. Gravity. laughter rose you mean absence of zero gravity . The current illusion of zero gravity. Because it was very important. It was a cinematic and emotional point so rose i mean, the idea of zero gravity is that just nothing pulls you down, right . Strictly speaking its called microgravity because theyre close you have no the earth that theres still a certain well, i think actuallys not such a thing as not gravity. Because theres so microgravity pulling and attracting some object and stuff. Rose how was it to have your son work with you . It was great in the sense that when were working together were just two writers working together. Rose just like any other good writer, huh . I he came with the concept of not necessarily the story of the space but the concept of doing a film that it was very visual, very that its so relentless that audiences would surrender themselves into an emotional journey. Rose you were working on a small independent film that fell throw sflu yup. That we wrote together. And the reason we started talking about gravity is because when the project fell through i went to london to figure out what to do with that project. Like rewrite it, make it maybe more accessible for financing and he had read this other script that id written that had like a similar concept to gravity and when he read it we started just talking about that concept and its weird, we never planned to, like, professionally sit down and write gravity, we just started talking about one night about the type of movies we wanted to see and that conversation turned into an all night long conversation about that led to the plot of gravity. Rose so how much money has it made already . I mean, like 600 million or something . I dont know that much but, yeah over 500. Rose had to be surprising. You had no idea. In the whole journey has been very surprising. The film took four and a half years, we finished the film two weeks before the Venice Film Festival where it premiered and we had no idea of what was going to happen and suddenly it started to be a great response from festivals and reviewers and you always have well, maybe its the thing thats going connect with festivals and viewers but then it started connecting with audiences as well. Rose then its a home run. Yeah, its kind of happy surprised. Much better than the alternative. laughter rose indeed it is. Why do you think it is, jonas . My theory of why audiences are connecting so strongly with it is that beyond being a space movie its a movie about a universal theme which is adversity. In life we all go through adversity so when you go as an audience to see the film you get so engaged in the writing and suddenly you start imposing your owned a versetys on to that. And thats, i guess, the reason we wanted to do a narrative in this concept which is so straight. Rose if i might say it in another way, its like your two main characters are in danger and youre wondering whether theyre going to make it. Uhhuh. Rose and this is overlaid by the fact that youre seeing space in a different way. You get some sense of what its like to be up there. Well, yes. Part of the beauty, the attraction for audience is that getting immersed in that experience of space for them is to float in space but that has also a thematic function. When we start writing the screenplay we talk about because we started even before we decided it was going to be space we were just talking about the themes. And thematically its about adversities and the possibility of rebirth and when you go through adversities you lose ground, you know . Its all metaphorically, of course. You lose ground. So here you have a character that is going through adversities, loses ground and then it goes into the void and then getting away from human communication, victim of her own inertia and living in her own bubble. So that and i think that in many ways the audiences when you see the film, yeah, theyre connecting to the journey and the roller coaster ride and into space but theres an emotional immediacy that i think is what has been working with audiences. Rose and whats the relationship between ryan, sandra and mat and george . We always saw both characters for us the journey of ryan is a character that has given up on living intellectually and through this journey hes going to get this new desire to live and in a way george is experienced not only whos going to teach her how to move in this environment but also who in a way is going giver that teach her back the desire to live, to enjoy life. The character of matt, this guy who enjoys every moment of life and is going to enjoy every moment until he runs out of oxygen. Live in the present versus the past or the future. Rose thats a good place to be isnt it . The present . The present. laughter lets take a look. This is when the the explorer which is the spaceship that theyre on, gets hit by debris. Mission abort. Repeat, mission aboard. Explorer confirming visual contact with debris. Debris is from a sat. Repeat requesting transport. We have to go. We have to go, go, go. Meteorological conditions are no go. Houston explorer copy. Transport to bay area. Do you cop sni explorer, permission to retreat, dr. Stone . Houston, this is explorer copy . Weve lost houston. Weve lost houston. We need to get the hell out of here. Dont waste time. Man down man down explorers been hit. screaming dr. Stone, detach that arm. Listen to my voice in 30 seconds i wont be able to grab you. Detach i cant see you anymore. Do it now houston, ive lost visual of dr. Stone. Rose you said that you knew you knew that the main character had to be a woman. How did you know . Well, we wanted to make this story since we started talking about the thematics of the story is a character whos given up on life. Kind of has lost all of that like force of fertility, of like life giving and through the journey that life will get rekindled so we just knew we wanted to have this female presence. This presence of life. Its a movie where the backdrop is earth and we always saw earth through this force of life. And also there was it was very organic. We started writing, we started discussing. The first image was this image of an astronaut actually, that one, spinning into the void. And the moment we started talking about it, we talk about it as a woman. And then we start when we start mapping the whole thing, we used to call her we didnt have a name and it was the woman. And we called her the woman and it was not until we started developing the script that we questioned why it was a woman. It was just an instinct. It had to do with this ideas that we have been talking about ideas of rebirth and fertility and having the background of earth as mother earth. And suddenly everything was infuse bid female elements. Rose you have said that sandras performance you compare to a dance routine. Meaning . The approach she had to take. Because in order to achieve all this choreography because its very complicated choreographys sandra had to go into a whole routine which she had to hit very specific marks. She had to hit very specific timing and on top of that under a very sbru gruesome physical conditions. So its not unlike a dancer who perhaps she prepped for five months to do the whole thing so not only like a dancer that goes through a physical preparation and then a going into memorizing very complicated routines. So in the moment which you roll camera, the moment of the performance for a dancer, it just explodes with expression and emotion. Rose and thats what she was doing. It was brilliant to witness that. Rose did you use lots of things that ron howard didnt use in apollo 13 . Well, we did use something that he used brilliantly. Which was the comet, the parabolic flights. The ones that well, scientists and astronauts used to train that is basically a plane that goes very high up and then just goes into a freefall for 20 seconds and then goes up again and then freefalls and when youre freefalling youre inside the plane so you have the sensation that youre floating and its so much fun. laughter we tried it and it was going to be impossible to do all of this film in the vomit comet. Rose lets take a look at another scene that has some of the same ideas where dr. Ryan stone Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, they get detached while theyre flying through outer space. Brake . We cant, the cans empty. Hit hard. Grab ahold of anything you can. What do i do . Who do i do . Grab ahold rose okay, so take a look at this. I want to show you this image. This is a picture of a light box which was one of the new pieces of thooj you use. Whats the light box . The light box is a 9 x 9 cube in which all the inside walls are l. E. D. Lights. Rose l. E. D. Lights . L. E. D. Lights. So theres i dont know how many million individual lights inside the thing. And then what happens is that you can see that image is inside the International Space station and so if the character is inside the image will convey the point of view of the character. Rose oh, i see. And that image was going to leap the character. You know . It works as the reference, the point of view, and they would have a geographical idea but most important is the interaction of the light. Because that light didnt have to match perfectly well with this c. G. Environment that was going to be used. Rose this had to be in 3d . Well, it didnt have to be in 3d because you could do that in 2d but the screenplay from the original title was gravity a space adventure in 3d because we wanted it to be an experience for the audience, a submerseive experience, almost like an interactive experience because our belief is that way you would connect with the themes on the more emotional level. Like your connection to the story and the narrative and the themes would be more direct. More guttural. Rose i bet youre waiting to direct, arent you . Yeah, well, actually script that i showed him that inspired the concept of gravity i had to put aside to develop gravity over the last five years and now im actually preping that movie right now in the spring. Rose was it always inevitable that you would want to do this because of your father . No, i never really thought i was going to go into film. I wanted to tell stories and i thought i wanted to be a writer but then i started experimenting with this medium and i guess since i was bombarded by him my whole life it came natural. Rose its interesting. 2013 we have a whole series of movies that have been called survival movies. At sea all is lost and captain phillips and then the antebellum American South 12 years a slave. Theres kind of a feeling going around. laughter rose survive. Yes. But the thing is its in the air in the sense of i i guess that one explanation is that people are really worried about the time that were living. Rose exactly. And the possibilities by violence and all of those things and pandemics and the rest. And the whole idea in the context in the fall of that of these of this question about who we are in terms of the self. What is this . I mean, are we just these biological forces or plainly one more species that our survival is just biological as the rest of the planet or theres another idea of self. Rose the there a movie in that idea . laughter the way youre talking about it suggests that its a broader theme to explore. Well, that theme is something we were talking about. It was part of the our idea was the whole thing of adversities and rebirth being meaning a new knowledge of yourself and knowledge of own universe around you. But that is inherent of that, you know . In one hand the interesting thing about survival things is just its not in a unique stuff of humans its like nature is striving to survive. Rose exactly. Exactly. All the time. But we humans, we have a consciousness about that struggle but in a way that gets stripped away while youre in a survival situation because these survival stories are interesting because they yes that will to survive comes from. They bring us down to almost an animalistic level where all our back story becomes secondary to just that instinct to survive. Rose and were living in an age in which adversities have being magnified, you know . And its yeah, magnified because of the way things are right now. And also because the information that we all have slopeen hauer said this thing of adversities we tend to think are exceptions. When reality what is exceptional is the moments between adversities. Rose let me take another look. I want to go back to the light box. This is how this is George Clooney in the light box. laughter rose hes in rig from his waist down. That rig will have certain motion. Then hell be there with this suit with all of those things that look like a martian. Those little antennas. Those are trackers for the visual effects crowd. Because all of that suit is going to be converting to a c. G. Suit. Now all of those roles are conveying this environment so that would be his view if he looks around. So what happens is that that environment is using the light on his face that the sun that is being projected from the right side of the frame of the rose as we look at the frame. Exactly. Picture right. Its through the l. E. D. Lights. And then our view is actually view of the camera that he was mounted in a robot that used to build cars. And it was the camera was mounted. Rose take a look at this. And you see that thing, the rig will just move around helping the motion. Because otherwise it is complimenting the movement of the robot, otherwise the robot will have to move super fast. It was kind of a strange environment to shoot and the testament of the actors that actually it was a whole exercise of abstraction. Rose so it called on them to be better than it night a traditional movie . Well, it was almost like stage play, you know . In which the whole thing was to have a thematic and emotional clarity about each single one of the moments. Otherwise all this technology will be in the foreground while the important thing is the story. Rose now, when youre directing clooney and hes a really good director do you call on that skill that he has as well . Do you have collaboration about how we might best shoot something that hes involved in . No, the thing is rose or he acts when hes acting and directs when hes directing . Hes an amazing not only director, hes an amazing writer. So youre working with a guy whos a fullblown filmmaker. But is he going and relaxed . He theres to help you in your film. So if you know, hes just there doing his job as an actor that he really enjoys but at the same time that he understands exactly what youre doing. So you realize that suddenly hes already helping you as an actor to solve what youre trying to do as a filmmaker. Or if you express out like something youre going through he innately puts on the side of his hat, the directors hat and he has a conversation with you as a filmmaker, but never imposing absolutely anything. Rose not trying to tell you how to make your movie. No, he says look i only work with people that i respect and i want to as filmmakers and i admire. So im putting myself in your hands. Were buddies so we can discuss about this. Rose thats a good actor to have, isnt it . Hes fun. Hes relaxing. Hes like the mission of clooney in life is to make people at ease all the time. And for everyone to have a good time. Rose and Sandra Bullock . Sandra, shes great. Sandra and george were great collaborators in the sense that they really gave me the time of day to really work on like fine tuning those dialogues and their scenes and what really surprised me about sandra is is to have a movie where the whole emotional ride was on one characters shoulders and when i saw movie screened in venice i was really surprised that even though i wrote it and i was jaded by the fact that i knew everything that happen misdemeanor the film i really had a strong emotional connection to her character and i realized that its because she gave such a true Human Performance which is surprising because she was inside of those horrible rigs. So suddenly to have seen her do that and then see her on screen just like floating and being really completely human was very surprising. Shes fearless. And thats the thing. Shes fearless and she told me from the getgo that she wants to step out of her comfort zone. You know . She really wanted to explore and go for it and it was really remarkable and the amount of preparation she did and the discipline and the precision. I never worked with an actor whos as precise a as sandra. Rose when you got ready to prepare for this, did you watch other spay movies like 2001 a space odyssey those kinds of films about space even though they were made a long time ago . Well, a bunch of them, yes, because you want to see how they solved certain technological aspects of film making. The only one i didnt come close was 2001. The only way i can exemplify that is that rose to watch it . It would have been like taking a shower next to a porn star before going out with your girlfriend. laughter rose thats what it would be like . Thats what it would be like. I havent seen it. Right now i have to wait for a couple of years before i can watch i can watch 2001 again. You know, its not only the best space movie ever, its one of the best films ever. And the whole rose and what would it have done to you if you watched it other than your metaphor of the porn queen before the girlfriend its just that its so lucid in terms of the rose that you might be copying it . Not copy, just the feeling that what im doing is stealing. Rose oh, oh, i see, you have no inspiration. I would feel that its just why to do this . And so i saw the film that i love but i dont have in the big like 2001. Rose interesting point. Theres actually a very good one, a fritz lang film of the 20s that is women in the moon that is its a film in 1926, i think and he already predicted the twist off rocket rose twist off and boom. Well, he was german so maybe there was something. Rose started early. Yeah. I want you to set this up. This is dr. Stone trying to make contact with someone while floating alone through space. I mean, give me whats b