Brady Corbet Interview

Michael Haneke’s Funny Games is a remake of his 1997 hit transferred to an American setting. A dark and unsettling tale it follows Anna (Naomi Watts) her husband George (Tim Roth) and their son (Devon Gearhart) to their idyllic holiday home in the Hamptons. But once there they meet a pair of charming strangers (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet) who begin to terrorise the family and shatter their notions of security.

How familiar were you with Michael Haneke’s films before he cast you in this remake of Funny Games?
“I was a huge fan of his work. I met Michael when I was 12 or 13 years old at a screening of Code Unknown. There was a Q&A afterwards and I shook his hand. He thought it was funny that such a young kid was there. The first film of his I ever saw was Funny Games on video, and I’ve followed his work ever since. His first three films were really hard to find for a while. I special ordered them from some video store in Los Angeles when I was living there.”

The film toys with the audience and makes them question their complicity in the violent events it depicts, how aware were you of all that while you were making it?
“When you’re in production it’s really not very conceptual, it’s more practical. You have a massive amount of blocking and choreography, it’s all about composition for Michael. And of course performance too but the performance only works for him if the blocking is right, having worked for so many years on the stage.”

How did this role come your way?
“I read for it. They’d been casting for two months and I’d been begging for all that time for them to see me. I was 17 when I met Michael for it, but they didn’t want to see me because I wasn’t fat at the time. I put on weight for the movie, but I was like 5 foot 8 and 125 pounds, pretty skinny. But I asked for them to let me read because I was so passionate about working with him. I remember I said to my manager at some point that this was the first time this guy was making a film in America and it could very well be the last. I said I’d do anything, I didn’t care, I just wanted to be there.  After I read for him it was really straightforward, he offered it to me right off the bat.”

At what point did you tell him you’d met before?
“I told him after he gave me the role.”

Did he remember meeting you?
“I don’t think so. Michael barely remembers the names of actors he’s worked with four or five times. He’s totally hilarious, it’s a miracle he ever remembers my name, much less some kid he met six years ago.”

The violence in Funny Games serves a different purpose to the anodyne thrills of the typical Hollywood suspense movie, doesn’t it?
“The thing is I think there’s this term that people have been using a lot with regard to our film, as anti-torture porn. But I think this whole torture porn thing is a little bit stupid, I think that’s something that one 78 year old critic said to his 78 year old friend and it spread like wildfire. I think it’s too easy to come down on a film like that. I’m not a fan of a lot of those films but I don’t think these films are creating serial killers or anything. That said I think Michael is really critical of those films and he’s made a pretty great argument against them. I think if nothing else it’s just great to have an opposing point of view, something to tackle these ideas, these films and these images.”

Michael’s camera is not voyeuristic in the way some of those films seem to be. But by not showing things he forces the audience to confront their own expectations in scenes of a violent or sexual nature doesn’t he?
“Michael’s not in denial of these instincts, he plays on them and he’s not just slapping his audience on the wrist, he challenges himself just as much. Any great thinker is posing the same questions for himself as he is for his audience I think.”

Does the endless tension you have to convey on screen ever take its toll?
“I like relentless films, films that are all or nothing. I really like my trash pretty trashy and my art pretty arty. The films that win Oscars are basically films that appeal to the masses but with some artistic intentions, and I hate films like that. Who gives a shit?  Real artists are radical, you have to be radical in your ideas though that doesn’t mean you have to combative. You have to have a strong sense of self and identity and what it is that you have to say. You have to at least pretend for a hundred minutes that you are totally committed to these ideas and this is how it is. And then you can make another film in radical opposition to the point that you’ve already made, because you’re allowed to think more than one thing.”

Was that a real home in the Hamptons you shot in?

“We shot exteriors in the Hamptons but the interiors were all on a soundstage in Brooklyn. The dimensions of the house are the same as they were in the original film, exactly the same. Having seen the original it was really a strange experience walking around that set.”

It’s strange too that this all-American couple are played by a couple of non-Americans?
“That is funny, but it is the American way to adopt something as your own. It’s ridiculous but funny. He really wanted big movie stars for the film. We don’t really have many movie stars who are actually American, especially women but the whole county’s a melting pot.”

 Did they keep their accents between takes?
“I don’t really know, I can’t remember. Tim and Naomi are not really method actors. You’d think Tim was, but he’s really practical. Most great actors are because they really understand. Cinema is not really an actor’s medium, it’s a director’s medium, so it’s all in the service of the director’s idea as long as your director’s not an idiot. Tim is great, I think it’s really cool that he took on a character like this, who is incredibly weak.”

You see him as weak?
“I do, I think the character reacts in a way that most intellectual men would behave. Any time I’ve ever been faced – not that I’m an intellectual, just that I was brought up in a certain way by my mother who’s a real thinker, a great woman – whenever I’ve been confronted with a violent situation I’ve never known how to fight.  I only know how to talk my way out of it, and Tim is one of these people. I think that Michael Haneke created a character that he could identify with and Michael, as aggressive a filmmaker as he might be doesn’t have an aggressive bone in his body.”

You and Michael Pitt invest your characters with a close bond, did you and work hard on that?
“We both liked what we were doing, we both liked the film we were doing, and we worked really hard at having a rapport.  But that just came naturally, and working together you kind of develop a bond.  That’s what I’m proudest of in this film, that even though the characters don’t really have a history or a past, they have no motives, I do feel the two of us have a relationship in the movie. I do feel like we work.  It’s a greater experience when you can share the experience with someone. And Michael’s a really great actor.”

The stakes for you, as you’ve stated, are so much higher though being a Michael Haneke fan in a Michael Haneke movie. How did the experience measure up?
“It was incredible, the film changed my life. I was coming off a couple of years feeling pretty down and out. I’d had one really bad experience working on a job that I didn’t want to do to begin with. I really don’t meet on that many jobs any more. It’s such a big deal for something to come across my desk that I like, and then I have to like it and they have to like me, the stars have to align in this whole process.  But working with Haneke was a total dream come true for me, so when it came around, it changed my life in so many ways.”

A Tartan Films and Halcyon Pictures Release www.funnygamesthemovie.co.uk