It’s a much more difficult discipline because you can’t resort to the tricks of filmmaking in order to get in and out of scenes and have the film flow properly. And that’s a real testament to Robert Schwentke because there’s no script where that architecture is really completely done in the blueprint process. The director is really responsible for that.”
Jodie Foster on Shooting “Flightplan” in Sequence: “We sort of shot out of sequence. We shot basically the airplane, so we would do the top floor and then we shot all that. Then we went to the bottom floor and shot all that. Then we did the different areas of the airplane. But once you shoot the whole top floor, you shot a good deal in sequence. So it kind of worked out pretty well.”
Jodie Foster on Researching Her “Flightplan” Character: Foster plays an engineer in “Flightplan,” but she admits that in real life she can barely add and subtract. “I have like a math phobia so I’m not so good at science. I have to read the baby books about science. Then I have to read them three or four times because I forget what happened in the beginning. So it’s always a big learning curve for me to make movies that have a science aspect to them.”
Jodie Foster on Real Life Airplane Incidents: “On ‘Anna and the King.’ the director and the two producers were flying to Hong Kong with a guy who had a psychotic episode, started beating his wife and trying to beat up the other guys. It was horrible. He got the director or producer around the throat and had to be pried off. They took him away in handcuffs when they got to Hong Kong. But not me.”
Jodie Foster on the Ambiguous Poster for “Flightplan:”
“I’m not the best judge of these things. I really don’t know. I kind of like the poster because I feel like the expression is a ‘deer in the headlights’ expression. You don’t really know what it means. You don’t know whether she’s a victim or whether she’s a hero or whether she’s the bad guy.”
On Working with Peter Sarsgaard: “He’s a great guy. I have to say he and I work very similarly. We’re the ‘no muss’ actors. We like to talk about music and board games before they yell action and we absolutely never talk about our characters or acting or anything like that.
What sort of games did she and Sarsgaard discuss? Foster said, “[Peter’s] a big chess guy. I don't know that much about chess but he is a really big chess guy and he’s a big Scrabble guy. And he takes it very, very seriously. Sometimes it’s hard to get him out of the trailer because he does the online chess and once you leave, that’s it. You can’t go back to the game. So it’s hard for him to leave sometimes. He likes the brainy one-on-one competition thing.”
Jodie Foster’s Games of Choice: “Games I like, well I have kids now. I play all those Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, all that stuff, Monopoly. They also have those computer things, too. I don't know if you guys know anything about the computer games that they have for preschoolers but they’re so much fun. The Harry Potter game I really liked and I really don’t enjoy any video games. But the Harry Potter game was fantastic. You had the little spells and you had to do the wand a certain way in order to get to the next room. You get the jelly beans and it’s good. I like that.”
Jodie Foster on Leaving Her Kids to Work on Films: “It's always very hard for me to have them on the set. I've never been able to do that. I don't know how other people are able to do that. I'm always worried about them eating and are they making noise and if they have enough toys to play with, and I can't really focus on my work. They don't get to come to the set that much. Sometimes I'll let them come for lunch.
The good news is that they go to school six minutes from where we shot the film. I could have a real life with them either before shooting started or at night. Sometimes, I had a half-hour off and I could run to a parent-teacher conference and then come back. I didn't have to lose my life in order to shoot the film.”
Jodie Foster on the Fate of “Flora Plum:” “You know, these movies, these really tough indie movies have a way of finding themselves eventually. I’ve been involved with a lot of movies that got shut down for various reasons. Usually they’re financial. This one wasn’t. It got shut down because an actor got hurt and there was really nothing I could do about it. This film will find its way someday, but it’s going to be the hardest battle I have ever fought.”
