Monday, January 16, 2023

I finally finished the fantastic "Andor," so here's all the interviews, clever observations, fan art, and jokes I've been saving










Hollywood Reporter interview of Tony Gilroy:
Aldhani was originally conceived to have six or seven-thousand people in the valley, but with Covid, my God, you can’t put that many extras together. You can’t get them up the hill, you can’t put them in vans, you can’t do any of those things. Beyond an economic hardship, it was just a physically impossible thing to do. So there’s a problem. The whole thing is written one way. It’s a huge deal. So you think, “Oh my God, it’s all ruined. It’s all for shit.” But what comes out of it is something even better because the answer is actually sadder and more important. It’s just the dead-enders. It’s just the end of the line [for the Dhanis]. It’s a culture that’s being wound down, and then that becomes the dominant thing.

And then, oh my God, that monologue at the top comes out of that, and the whole concept of the engineer comes out of that and a whole new approach to the shabbiness and shittiness of it. So all of a sudden, it’s more real, it’s better     




From a remarkably long Collider interview with Gilroy: 
Kino Loy: Attorney at Law. Maybe he'll become a maritime lawyer in the future, or swimming instructor. 
...

I loved the battle scene where Luthen has to fight off the Cantwell-class Arrestor Cruiser. So, how did that come about? 

Here's a scene, and we could do this, and it's expensive, but it's also the kind of thing that's easier to get money for than something else because it has IP in it, and it helps sell the Fondor Haulcraft, and the rest of it. 
 ...

That sequence is just fantastic. 

We also wanted to... Oh I don't know even if I should... It's not me, I'm in the chorus of this, but there is a pride, a community pride – because there's so many people that work on the show, we know how to do this, we should show people that we do know how to do this. So, let's just do one and show everybody, if we could do this all the time if we wanted to, I think there's a lot of people on the show that are like, "Let's show people we know how to do this." So, there's pride in that, I think. 
...

The thing about the design of B2, is that it could have been a million other things. Can you talk about, was the Droid ever almost radically different? How did you figure out the look and feel if you will? 

... I'll tell you a really cool thing about it is that a guy named Dave Chapman is the puppeteer who runs the machine. 
... 
Well, we got deep into the show. We were always going to replace the voice, that was always the plan. But, we got to a certain point, we brought in a bunch of voice actors who auditioned for the part and then Johnny called me up one day and went, "I don't think any of these people are better than what we have." And he goes, "Not only that, but I'm not sure you're aware, but we don't have any ADR for B2, like nothing, Like, a couple off camera lines where we need help, not because we're replacing something that we don't like." So, I called Kathy [Kennedy] and it was approved, and I called Dave Chapman, and he'd been doing this for I think 15, 20 years. He's a puppeteer, and he's done it a million times and been revoiced, and expect to be revoiced. I got to call him up and go, "Dave, we're going to keep your voice." And man, those calls were just so much fun to make, and he was really overwhelmed. So, that's a cool thing about it, I guess.

He's perfect, and I can't imagine what his emotions were getting that phone call. 

Beyond all the immediate stuff, it also means that for the rest of your life you can go to a convention and sign cards if you want to make money. It has all kinds of ramifications, he's B2.





Rolling Stone interview of Gilroy:
The last 15 years, I’ve been reading all non-fiction. There’s an amazing book called Young Stalin [by Simon Sebag Montefiore].

The opening chapter is this incredible [potential] movie sequence where Stalin is part of staging a major bank robbery in a Georgian town in 1907. It involves 15 people and hookers and teamsters and all these things. Stalin was Lenin’s financier. He was a thief. And the reason Lenin loved him so much was he kept bringing the money. They needed money. This shit all costs money. People gotta eat, they gotta get guns. You gotta get stuff.

It’s knowing that and wanting to say something about that. Almost no one ever pays attention to that part of it. It’s an underutilized area of storytelling. I’m always obsessed with what my characters make and where they’re getting their money. 

If you look at a picture of Young Stalin, isn’t he glamorous? He looks like Diego! We’re not doing [the] Stalin show. But, it’s fascinating. All through every revolution, it’s the same thing. It takes coin. Look at Exodus, where they’re trying to get money for Palestine.













Collider interview with Andy Serkis:
But what was it like stepping onset and seeing the sets they had built for the prison cells and for the machine shop?

It was extraordinary and very daunting. Look, we were walking on metal plates for weeks with bare feet, and that sapped your energy. 







Detailed article at Polygon about the creation of the prison:
We actually talked about toilets. We had to ask questions sometimes, like, “Are you allowed to show a toilet in Star Wars?”
...
So the storytelling must bring you into back rooms and the home of Mon Mothma and the toilet of the prison. And it was in a way quite scary! I remember Luke saying, “What’s the Star Wars toilet gonna look like...?”    








Hollywood Reporter interviewed director Toby Haynes:
[Tony Gilroy] was nervous about how much I love Star Wars
...                     
we spent a good month and a bit [filming the Ferrix scenes] after Christmas, and it was the coldest part of the shoot. There was a time when it had snowed, and so there were people using heaters to burn the snow off the ground and keep the continuity. But it was freezing. Maarva’s interior and exterior set were the same set, so it was a fully three-dimensional world. But it was so cold, and that’s why you can see her breath when she talks. You can see that she’s freezing cold and that’s why she’s not putting the heating on. Cassian was worried about her sitting in the cold because she’s going to get sick. So that was a reality
...
We could have heated it to the point that you wouldn’t have seen her breath, but putting an actor in those conditions and being able to see them breathe doesn’t happen very often and it’s worth going after. And it suited her character. So I think they incorporated that into the story, which was a really smart move. 






























































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