Team Kristen Site: Come Swim

Showing posts with label Come Swim. Show all posts

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Kristen's jury interview with the Cannes Film Festival

There's something simultaneously light and dark about Kristen Stewart. The elusive actor rose to worldwide fame in the Twilight saga before emerging as a rebellious silver-screen icon with an impressive filmography under her belt. Adored by the public, lauded by the industry, Kristen Stewart made an impact on Cannes in no fewer than three In Competition occasions, first in On the Road by Walter Salles, and then with Olivier Assayas in Sils Maria and Personal Shopper. Last year, the Festival followed the actor's first forays behind the camera with her début short Come Swim, a poignant, heart-wrenching film.

Festival de Cannes, Olivier Assayas, a César, Chanel… are you French at heart?

Almost! I’m getting as close as I can. I’m playing Jean Seberg in Benedict Andrews’ Against All Enemies. A lot of the dialogue is in French, although her accent is terrible. So I have to learn more than I ever have, which will be fun. I’m getting a little closer to being even more French!

Did you go on a French film binge?

Not as much as I should have. I’ve watched a lot of movies but I wouldn’t describe myself as a film buff. My experience has been really incredible because I literally feel like I’m attending film school. Everyone can have an emotional response to a film. It's a universal language. I don’t feel intimidated. French film is home to a really diverse group of people who are all very different, yet all really eloquent and informed. They're kind of like my teachers.

Olivier Assayas says you create a sense of space in the way you act. How do you feel about that?

That space is something he gives me. I made five movies in which I felt the opposite of free. I think an environment that gives you the room to create something unexpected actually takes a huge amount of planning and preparation, and a brilliant mind who knows how to put it all together and make sure everything's working together as it should. Once you have all those ingredients in place, you create space that actually provides you with the room to completely lose control.

I don't try to generate any specific emotion, I never felt like he wanted me to achieve anything in particular. It’s a different way of working and it’s great, although I prefer feeling more directed, having someone waiting with a safety net ready for me to fall into.

In Personal Shopper, you blur gender lines, it’s like you could be either a man or a woman…

That’s perfect because I think that the loss of my character's brother is so central, it’s almost like she wants to be him in order to have him closer to her, in order to not have to miss him and she’s going through this really difficult grieving process. I love that there in an ambiguity in the character, you really never quite know who the fuck she is because she doesn’t know herself.

Could you play a man?

Totally! Gender is a bit of a myth if you ask me. Everyone’s individual relationship with gender is totally theirs to define. But I really think because of the flexibility inherent to gender, there's room for all types of approach.

What's your dream role?

I have a hard time defining what I want to do as an actor. As a filmmaker, as a director, the question is easier. As an actor, I want to never know. I want to be present in something and have it feel so real that I feel like it’s not made up, like I’m honouring a part of the story. It’s always a surprise. As soon as I start having a hand in shaping things...like, I’ll never produce a movie, I promise you. I will never set up a production company. I want to write and direct. And act for people who write and direct.

Your first short film, Come Swim, was revealed here in Cannes. What did it teach you?

Thierry Frémaux has been nice to me. To be honest, it kind of closed a chapter for me. I had this kind of awakening. The thing that I took away from it was that I want to fucking make movies because it feels good, because it really is the best way to capture something, to put your finger on something and to bring a group of people together who feel the same way. Movies can educate, they can bring us together, bridge gaps, make us feel less alone. At the end of that movie I just felt totally fulfilled.

What will your first feature film be about?

I’m adapting a memoir. It’s called The Chronology of Water. Lidia Yuknavitch is from Portland. I love her novels but her memoriees… it’s deeply personal to her. She’s in my blood and I knew that before I met her. As soon as I met her it was like we started this race without any sense of competition. I'm making the movie this summer but other than that, my only goal is just to finish the screenplay and hire a really spectacular actor: I’m going to write the best fucking female role. I’m going to write a role that I want so badly but that I’m not going to play.

Source Cannes Film Festival

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Kristen talks to WWD about directing and her next project

Kristen Stewart recently made her directorial debut with the short “Come Swim,” and is already back at it. The actress — and now, director — noted that she’s working on “adapting something” for her next project. Has directing taught her anything new about acting?

“To be honest not really,” she said while attending The Museum of Modern Art’s Film Benefit honoring Julianne Moore on Monday night. Stewart went on to describe her interest in directing and acting as rooted in the same intention.

“Just from a really young age I’ve always thought — even if it wasn’t a great film, if there’s something to be said by someone and it’s a singular perspective and you have essentially 100 to 200 people supporting that, I always just grew up thinking I wanted that,” she said. “I wanted to hold that responsibility. And I wanted to protect something precious, and give people an opportunity to be seen, and in a really true way. I just love this s–t, I’m just happy to be doing it.”

Source

Friday, November 10, 2017

Kristen talks to NY Times about 'Come Swim' and mentions future career plans

NEW YORK — Kristen Stewart's directing ambitions go all the way back to when she was an 11-year-old performing in the 2002 David Fincher thriller "Panic Room."

"I was working with Jodie Foster and I was like, 'I'm going to direct. I'm going to be the youngest director that exists,'" Stewart recalled in an interview. When she, years later, told Foster she was finally making something, Stewart says, "She was like, 'Dude, the first thing you're going to realize is that you have nothing to learn."

It took longer than Stewart expected, but she has now made a short film titled "Come Swim." Following premieres at the Sundance Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival, "Come Swim" debuted Friday on the women's entertainment and lifestyles website Refinery29.

The film announces Stewart's filmmaking ambitions and opens a new chapter in the fast-moving career of the 27-year-old actress. Stewart is already developing several other projects, including a script she's writing that's an adaptation of a memoir (Stewart declined to say whose). She's taking two months off acting to write it, and she also hopes to turn "Come Swim" into a feature-length film.

"It's my first step into something I've wanted to for a really long time," said Stewart.

Stewart spoke in a pair of interviews — one on a balcony in Cannes in May, the other by phone on Thursday. As to the recent sexual harassment scandals that have swamped Hollywood, Stewart pointed to her speech last month at Elle's Women in Hollywood event, where she spoke about the less-noticed harassment of below-the-line crew members. Stewart declined to add to those comments Thursday but acknowledged the industry's gender imbalances behind the camera have been on her mind.

"I'm so fortunate to be able to have made this movie because it's obviously tougher for women to be heard," said Stewart. "I'm obviously deeply proud of anyone who's able to express themselves freely and it's awesome that we're living in a time where they can."

"Come Swim" isn't your standard actor-made directorial debut. It's an 18-minute metaphorical rendering of a feeling, of the overwhelming oppression of heartbreak and grief. A man is submerged, literally, by water everywhere. Stewart describes the film as about "aggrandized pain" and says its imagery has haunted her for four years.

"You don't realize when you're trudging through that water, you feel so alone," says Stewart. "We've all been there. But when you're in it, you feel like you can't participate in life."

In many ways, "Come Swim" reflects something essential about Stewart: she is hyper alert to her surroundings and her emotions. It's a quality that has probably helped make her, in the eyes of many, a performer of twitchy, alive sensitivity.

"I am so sensitive it drives me crazy," says Stewart. "It's funny (that) the first movie I wanted to make was basically just a movie about somebody who is like, 'You don't get it! It's horrible!'"

Getting behind the camera was also a way for Stewart to be the kind of director she herself appreciates — one who favors discovery over heavily-scripted control.

"The worst is when directing becomes correcting," she says. "It's like: 'Do it all yourself then. Why are you even making movies?' I don't want packaged and delivered ideas."

"Come Swim," abstract and impressionistic, is certainly not that. For an actress who remains a considerable box-office draw, her film is little concerned with matching audience expectations.

Right now, she's trying to carve out more time for directing — a challenge for a performer drawn to jumping from project to project. Making "Come Swim," she says, is the most fun she's had on a set.

"I was making movies before I was watching (a lot) of movies," she says. "So I knew how significant it was to protect something precious really young. I saw people doing it and it seemed like this honor-bound commitment that everyone shared and there was one person spearheading it. When a movie's really good, there's a singular, very particular perspective that everyone is servicing, and I always just wanted to hold that."

Source

Quotes from the 'Come Swim' screening at the LA premiere (WWD)

Kristen Stewart’s short “Come Swim” marks the actress’s directorial debut, turning a vision she had in her head for some time into a film now available for streaming globally.

Stewart was on hand Thursday evening briefly speaking about the film’s creation and the thinking behind it following a private screening at the Westside Pavilion. “Come Swim” tracks a day in the life of a man grappling with a broken heart, delving inside his personal thoughts and emotions that become so crippling before he eventually comes to and realizes he will be fine.

“It was like when you are so in your own head,” Stewart explained to those in attendance at the screening. “You have things, feelings that, in a really cliché way, are feelings you just think nobody could possibly relate to. Yet, they’re the most standard. There’s not, like, a thought or a feeling you’re going to have that nobody’s had before you, but somehow when you’re in that, you’re so alone. I wanted to be able to really step inside someone’s head and externalize that and then be able to take a step back afterwards and be like from the outside we see you so clearly.”

Water plays a symbolic role in the film, the idea of which Stewart said had been stuck in her head for some time.

“It started with just the idea that somebody might be laying in a totally inhospitable place, such as the bottom of the ocean and yet be so happy and so content doing that and wondering why that may be he case,” Stewart said. “We initially immerse [the main character] in the most hydrated environment possible, yet he’s absorbing none of it. [It] was something I couldn’t get out of my head and then I let it expand into [this].

The piece, which was earlier shown at the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival, is part of Refinery 29’s Shatterbox Anthology short film series which looks to specifically highlight work from female filmmakers.

“When we launched Shatterbox Anthology over a year-and-a-half ago we were hoping for a moment like this,” Refinery 29 chief content officer Amy Emmerich said while on stage at the preview with Stewart, “where women absolutely have a seat at the table and voices like this is exactly what you’re hearing: her full creative freedom. Her voice. Her pictures. No notes. This.”

Source

Kristen's interview with Yahoo Entertainment for 'Come Swim'

As a child actress growing up on the sets for films like Panic Room and Catch That Kid, Kristen Stewart learned early on to pay close attention to the director behind the camera. “That’s your boss,” she tells Yahoo Entertainment about her earliest memories of watching filmmakers at work. “You look to that person for everything. When a movie is really good, it takes a lot of people’s efforts. But what starts it is something so singular with a specific perspective. Even when I was really little, I knew that my job was to listen to that [perspective] and hold it like it was precious. And even as a little kid, I was like, ‘F**k, I’d like to hold that myself one day and share it!'”

Flash-forward to the present day, and the now 27-year-old actress is sharing her own directorial debut with the world, the evocative short film Come Swim. After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the 17-minute production is being released today as part of Refinery 29’s Shatterbox Anthology, which provides a platform to emerging female filmmakers. Starring first-time actor Josh Kaye, Come Swim grew out of a recurring image that embedded itself in Stewart’s mind several years ago and became the linchpin for a half-realist, half-impressionist portrait of a man whose mind is plagued by memories of a failed love affair, to the point where he feels like he’s drowning even on dry land. We spoke with Stewart about how she relates to the character we see onscreen and whether she has any desire to direct a Twilight-style blockbuster.

Yahoo Entertainment: You’ve said that the idea for Come Swim originated with the image of a man sleeping at the bottom of the ocean. Where did the vision come from?

Kristen Stewart: Initially, I was just fixated on the idea of a person that’s so over-aware of what’s essential to them — what they’re really in need of — but are unable to absorb it. So even at the bottom of the ocean, the most ultrahydrated place in the world, they’re dry. When you’re in your own head, your pain and struggle seems so dramatic and unrelatable. And yet it’s so universal! There isn’t any feeling that somebody hasn’t had before you. Once you’re in it, it feels all-consuming, but when you step back, you go, “What the f**k have I been doing?”

For me, the film tapped into that feeling of being mentally underwater: There’s so much buzzing around in your head, and you’re just in need of a moment of clarity.

Exactly. He’s punishing himself with memories and can’t really organize them. He can’t put them somewhere easy to process. I wanted to externalize a very internal sound. When he starts out, he feels things are whizzing by him, and he can’t grab them, but they also won’t go away. It’s about waking up in the morning and going, “Wow, I’m allowed to use my mind! It’s not controlling me.” When you’re in that state, easy things seem hard.

Is there something about the modern world that exacerbates that? You place the character in settings like a busy office and the front seat of his car, where there’s a lot of stimuli.

I wanted to put him in places that were normal — stripped-down environments without much detail. We don’t have much time to get to know this guy really well, so what I wanted you to focus on was your own projections of doing mundane things like getting up and going to work. But he is always cubed in: his office cubicle is small, the car is small. It’s only once he gets outside and finds the ocean that he allows himself to breathe. He has regrets about his relationship that have sent him into this existential crisis, and even though he hates swimming and water, he realizes he’s got to let himself float. Water is stronger than us, and if you fight it, you’re just going to f**king tire and drown. But if he lets himself look like a dork and bob around in the water, when he gets out he’ll be cold, but he’ll also realize that he’s not going to have to try and control everything.

The character’s circumstances are intended to be universal, but in working with Josh Kaye did you discover that men and women have different responses to this kind of mental state?

I think there are big differences between him and I, but more on an individual level. It doesn’t really have much to do with gender necessarily. The character in the story isn’t necessarily me, but I wanted to be as close to it as I could. The main difference between us is that I’m a little bit more explosive. There are a few things in the film that I’m so excited I didn’t do myself, because he grins and bears it whereas I think I would be a little more dramatic. He’s never acted in anything before, so he wasn’t trying to prove anything to me. He was just realistically in this environment and allowed whatever memories or ideas to stir him.

You incorporated paintings you made into the film via a process called “neural style transfer” as opposed to traditional CGI. Was that a process you had a hand in developing?

No, I have a friend who works at a VFX house and she was familiar with Bhautik Joshi’s research. I spoke with her about my painting and how I wanted it to feel illustrated in the film; I wanted parts of the movie to feel like a painting. I was talking a lot about grain and how to do that, and she told me about this guy who could take a physical painting and apply that style to a moving picture. So he helped us out, but I think it was something he came up with, and when the movie came out it was a good chance for him to talk about that process. I was lucky to be able to do it and take those two mediums and put them together. [Stewart is listed as a co-author of an academic paper about neural style transfer that’s on file with Cornell University.]

Has working on big-budget movies like Twilight and Snow White and the Huntsman made you leery of incorporating CGI into your own films?

Not at all. Initially, I thought I was going to need a lot of digital work on Come Swim. I had this long list of shots, but after we went out and shot everything I kept crossing them off my list during post-production, going “I don’t need that one, I don’t need that one.” We did minimal digital work, because everything we did physically was so cool. All of the makeup work on Josh was practical and worked. I really like it when you only have to use a small amount [of CGI] to patch things up and refine them. If you can get as much as you can while taking f**king pictures, that’s what looks the most immersive.

Would you ever want to direct a tentpole film yourself or does that not hold any interest for you?

Maybe, because I do like to suspend reality — not in a way that’s fantasy, but to get inside someone’s head and really feel embedded in something internal. Because a lot of times it doesn’t resemble what you’re seeing on the outside. So I think I’ll want to make small movies; I have no interest in making huge movies, although I like working on them as an actor.

One of your earliest movies was Panic Room, directed by David Fincher. Do you recall observing any part of his process on set that you held onto for your own work?

That was the second movie I ever made. I was lucky to have that experience so young because it was so labor-intensive and for all the right reasons. I always want to be in movies where if you have to work tirelessly and endlessly, and if it has to hurt and you have to do it over and over again, you get something that really matters at any cost. That’s what you do — you just do f**king anything to get it. That [feeling] probably started on that movie.

It certainly feels like the fans that have grown up with you through the Twilight films are embracing the work you’re doing now. Are you conscious of how they’re seeing you evolve as an artist, and do you hope they take any lessons from you as the develop their own creative voices?

Yeah, of course. No one is so special as to have any kind of original thought or feeling that nobody’s had before you. But I really do follow my gut as to the things I’m drawn to artistically and hope that there will be someone out there that feels it too. For that, I’m lucky. I don’t think about the greater narrative [of my life] or alter my decisions to say things to people. But I feel that if you’re really honest about something and are exploring something that feels worth it, there will be other people interested in it too.

Source