A family of four must navigate their lives in silence after mysterious creatures that hunt by sound threaten their survival. If they hear you, they hunt you.
USA TODAY
Emily Blunt has made a lot of movies (she’s been working for 15 years), but “A Quiet Place” is different in an obvious way: Her co-star and director is her husband, John Krasinski.
It’s a horror film in which they play parents in a near-future when terrible creatures have invaded, killing everyone they can find. The only hope — the monsters are blind. So, isolated on a farm near a deserted town, they live in near-total silence.
RELATED: In John Krasinski’s ‘A Quiet Place,’ silence is chilling
And Blunt’s character is pregnant.
There’s a lot more that would spoil too much if revealed. Instead, just read on as Blunt, who laughs a lot, talks about making the film.
Question: I enjoyed the movie, which is nice because now we don’t have to pretend it’s good. That makes it easier.
Answer: And for us, too. I was just saying, you do some of the junkets where you walk in and people are like, “So, interesting movie,” and you’re like, “Oh, God” (laughs). But in this case, it’s been really lovely. People genuinely love the film, so it’s awesome.
Q: That must happen with your friends in the business, too, right?
A: Oh, it’s awful. We were talking to some friends of ours who do a lot of theater, and they were saying the worst thing is when someone walks in after a performance and they go, “You’re in a play! Wow!” (laughs)
Q: It’s hard to talk about the movie without giving too much away.
A: Oh, you can do a spoiler alert.
Q: Maybe. Let’s just say that the last frame of the film, in which you are involved, colors the whole experience. There’s a lot done just with, obviously, facial expressions.
A: Sure, sure. Everyone has sort of been asking if it was challenging to do a film predominantly with zero dialogue and, actually, I think a lot of us found it quite freeing. And certainly for me, the most arresting stuff to watch in cinema is the more unspoken stuff. I’m not more impressed, for example, with scenes that are riddled with dialogue. And this was so rich with stuff to play with — the family that needs to communicate so much and can’t, and has so much that is unresolved and so much to get over and they can’t. And sound is like the enemy. It’s the bad guy; it’s the shark in “Jaws,” as well as the creature. I think that was really fun for us to inject every scene with all of those elements and then not be able to speak. It just allowed for a lot of play facially. We used to laugh and call it face acting, or “facting.”
Q: It’s probably a fun acting exercise.
A: It was fun. I found it really exciting. Sometimes it was really challenging. Obviously the giving-birth scene was pretty challenging to shoot, and that was a scene where it’s, like, impossible not to make sounds, so it’s trying not to make sound convey agony and fear for your life, so that was probably the most demanding sequence in the film.
Q: She does a good job of it.
A: Hey, I know (laughs). Well you have to, right? What would you do in that situation?
Q: How many takes did you do for that? It’s so intense.
A: I would say I probably, depending on where the camera was, did it about four to five times. John’s pretty great at understanding when I’m out of gas (laughs). He was very clear on where the camera was going to be, what he needed for each moment. So the actual scream, I think I only did it twice.
Q: That’s such a bizarre thing to me, doing something several ways and then giving up control of what’s used to someone else. Of course, that’s part of the job.
A: It doesn’t make it easy, though. That’s sometimes hard, and as I’ve been doing this a really long time, there’s been moments when I haven’t trusted giving it over to the director, and that’s a really hard place to be in sometimes.
Q: So what do you do?
A: You have to relinquish it. Ultimately, I hope to be at a place where people will listen to what I say to a certain extent (laughs) and take on board my notes. It makes you really have to be very specific about who you work with, so that you really trust them. That was almost like a luxury in this situation, that I’m married to the director, so we kind of have to engage (laughs). So I saw a couple of early cuts, and he was so collaborative with me. We are creatively very aligned, so he would ask my opinion on things, he’d bring me into the edit to show me a couple of sequences. It was kind of glorious, because I could feel a part of this process that had meant so much to me, because so often your job is done and you’re kind of cut out until the film comes out.
Q: And it’s only then that you find out if they’re good?
A: I think I’ve worked on projects that feel special. So, for example, when we shot “The Devil Wears Prada,” we thought it was really funny. We were having a good time. But I never knew it would have this sort of meteoric moment where people just went nuts for it. That’s the kind of thing you can’t predict, is which films will catch fire and which ones won’t. And I feel any time I’ve strategized and thought, “Oh, this film’s going to do really well,” it doesn’t. It’s always surprising, the ones that catch fire and the ones that don’t.
Q: Was there any extra stress being married to the director? Sometimes you’ll hear couples say they don’t take the work home, sometimes they do.
A: We absolutely did. And listen, if you’re able to disconnect and not talk about it at home, good for you. I just feel like “A Quiet Place” was a family member. Sometimes it was an unwanted one, and sometimes it was a really exciting one. John and I drove to work together, we drove home. Also, I think it’s easier to not talk about it if one person is not involved. But if both are involved, then you’re ultimately going to be discussing it.
We drank so much whiskey during this process, just needing a break from the day. We went through entire vats of whiskey (laughs).
Q: So if you saw something that wasn’t working, you were fine saying so?
A: Oh, definitely. John also knows it’s like a compulsive thing. I’m always going to be honest with him. He’s always going to be honest with me. Usually, to be honest, by the time we arrived on set, we would have ironed out any creases or differences that we might have had about a scene. We both like to work kind of spontaneously, so once a scene was on its feet, we could kind of stretch it around if it wasn’t working, if there was a different idea for the camera. I think John and I work very similarly. We also had the huge advantage of endless time together to figure out how we felt about every scene.
Q: Your husband seems like one of those people everyone likes.
A: Yeah, yeah. Listen, I, of course, think he’s the coolest person. I’m married to him. But other people feel that about him as well. He is somebody who just has that insane likability to him. He is disarmingly funny and really smart and really kind and generous. He lives big. He just lives really big, and he’s such an all-or-nothing guy. That’s why a film probably as ambitious and challenging as this one fit him like a glove, because it required all he had.
Q: Underneath the horror, it’s really a family movie, right?
A: Yeah, it is. I think that’s what was appealing. This is a metaphor for parenthood in many ways. The dread that most parents feel sending their kids out into this incredibly brutal, fragile world that we’re in right now. Obviously “A Quiet Place” is like the magnified version of that. But at the root of it, this is about a family that need to communicate more than most families and they can’t. There’s an agony in that, an agony in living silently, and the dynamics are something that John and I really understood — the need and desire to protect your children is something that we just understood in spades and were obviously very aligned in because we parent the same children. In the same way “Jaws” is not really about the shark, it’s about the men and what they have to overcome, this is sort of his homage to that.
Q: Has being a parent made you play parents differently?
A: Yes, yes. Probably it’s not just a reach right now. I also just feel like, in general, I am cracked open emotionally in a way that I wasn’t before, or not as much so, and I think my empathy for other parents and what they experience is huge now. So my empathy for this mother and what she experienced was gut-wrenching for me. I also feel like the bright line that’s normally there for me between the character and between my own life was a little blurrier on this experience, because it was so personal for me.
Q: What has been your take on the #MeToo movement? Your character is a powerful woman.
A: I think it’s a really exciting time. It’s been a fascinating time, seeing women be given the opportunity to speak honestly about what we’ve all felt for a long time. I think when you’re given the platform to use your voice, women are going to use it. I think change is happening, so it’s very exciting. I do feel this movement was always going to explode at some point, and here we are, and a lot of good’s going to come from it.
Reach Goodykoontz at [email protected]. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.
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