Julianne Moore on the Appeal of “Freedomland:” “Well, at the risk of giving a very boring answer the attraction is always the script. It was the script that Scott Rudin sent to me around the same time that he sent me 'The Hours.' So it was a while ago, quite a while ago. It was sort of going to be done in one form or another, and then it was in turnaround and all of this business that kept going on and on.
I got a phone call out of the blue from [director] Joe Roth saying that he was going to do it with me Sam [Jackson], which was ideal because Sam was the one person that I had always wanted to do this with. When I looked at this with my eyes, that's who I saw. I couldn't see anyone else.
In terms of the challenges, you're always trying to approach everything with a certain kind of empathy and compassion for what's going on in the story. These people are in very extreme and incredibly realistic places. I mean, I think that this is stuff that's in the news right now and certainly this year what happened with Hurricane Katrina you see how isolated people are by poverty, and that's one of the themes that I think is at work in this movie.”
Julianne Moore on Starring in Such a Dialogue Driven Film: “It was kind of exciting and scary because generally in film you don't have language like that. As a matter of fact, movies have gotten to be less and less dialogue dependent the further along we go and more visually dependent and it was exciting to have. I mean, it was really scary. For 15 minutes straight, and I mean, even onstage to have a 15 minute monologue is kind of unusual, but it made sense for where it was in the film dramatically. She doesn't really say a whole lot until that kind of moment and she's talking about her story in the sort of beginning. I loved it. Also, Richard Price is very specific in his language. He really characterizes people and the way that they speak and the way that they're people who make sort of slip ups in their language and that's all scripted. The little mistakes that people make when they talk, it's all kind of there which is fun.”
Moore said that she was extremely nervous about working on that particular scene and glad it took was actually filmed all in just one day. “It was one day, and it was one day because of Joe Roth who was so great. I was terrified. I mean, honest to God I was terrified and going, 'When are we going to do that scene? Oh my God.'
I came in that day and I was so nervous and we did one little piece of it and he said, 'Listen, we have a variety of ways to do this. We can kind of spread it out over a few days and kind of go back and forth. We can shoot you a little. We can shoot Sam's side and go back and forth, or we can shoot it all today.' He said, 'What do you want to do?' I said, 'You know, I think that I'd like to shoot it today if I can.' That was great and so he kept everything rolling for as long as possible and kind of let me have the experience of doing it, which is what her experience is. It was incredibly helpful and I was so relieved that it was done.”
Julianne Moore on the Issues Addressed in “Freedomland:” “I think that it's the same way when you watch the news. I think what happened to us with Hurricane Katrina is that we opened up our newspapers in the morning and we turned on the TV and we were like, 'This is not possible. This is ridiculous.' For example, you hear the weather warnings, that the storm is coming and you're like, 'Oh, it's going to be fine. No. Now it's going to hit, but they told everyone and everyone will get out. It's fine. It's fine.' Then you see this thing and the reaction even in the newspapers was that it's not possible that there could be that many people in the Astrodome. It's not possible that there could be that many people there for so long. It's that kind of thing because we are all so buffeted by our comfort. We're lucky people and so maybe you're not aware of what poverty is doing to people.
People are asking how come they didn't get out when they were warned ahead of time. They didn't have vehicles. They didn't have a place to go. They didn't have money. There weren't any rich people in the Astrodome. But as you're sitting there and watching the weather report and the traffic report and the whatever, suddenly this thing happens to you. So I think that in the movie it's the same kind of thing.”
Page 2: Julianne Moore on the Housing Project in "Freedomland" and Using Some of the Real Tenants as Extras
