What does that sense of location do for you as actors?
Leonardo DiCaprio: "You're the one who's done 18,000 movies with him."
Russell Crowe: (Snapping at the microphone, acting like he's upset it's not working) "Man on the mixing board? Have you noticed how boring the press conference has gotten since you started f-cking with my microphone? (Laughing) Just leave it on, okay? Hi. I'm back. Great you could join the show. Well, yes and no. It's wonderful when it's there, but equally you can't rely on it because the next thing you do may have none of that canvas and you may have to run it all in your mind. It's the same thing we talked about before in having a telephone conversation with someone who's not on the other end of the line or doing something in a blue or green screen room where you've got to imagine everything that's around you that everybody else will see. So it's fantastic when you can walk onto a stage of that size, even half of the Coliseum that we built in Malta was better than not having a Coliseum there at all. So it goes both ways. It's fabulous when it works and when you can be in that place and time that the character is supposed to be in. But on the other side of that, being an actor, you can equally shoot Botswana for Texas. The game is a bit more ambiguous."
Leonardo DiCaprio: "Of course it's relevant, and it would be great to have the real locations constantly. We shot Morocco, which doubled for a lot of different places. It's more the attitude of the director that you're working with and the environment that he wants you to be surrounded in. That's what was great about working with Ridley. He's like a human editing bay. He's constantly saying to himself, 'Do I believe this? Do I not believe this? Do I believe the people I've surrounded the main character with? Do I believe what they're saying? Do I believe what I'm seeing through this screen?' He's this filter, this bullsh-t filter and he trusts his own instincts on such a gut level. It's great to work with somebody who will come in and say, 'Okay, this entire scene is wrong. Get rid of three pages of dialogue or let's move this outside. Whatever it is, I'm not believing it…' Or, 'I am believing it. Push it to an even more extreme.'"
"I keep talking about this, but it's amazing to watch him behind the monitor or in the tent with six different monitors and cameras from every different angle and he's just snapping from monitor to monitor, switching and knows exactly…and really efficiently, saying 'This is exactly what I'm going to use in the movie and everything else is a profound waste of time. Let's just not do any of that other crap. This is the moment that I'm going to choose and this is the kind of thing that I want, and let's go work on something that's actually beneficial to the movie.' And that's the attitude that he has. You go in every day and feel like you've done a day's work and everything that you put that effort into will wind up for the most part as a part of the movie. That's the great thing about Ridley. Besides the locations, it's what I just said."
There's a moment in the film when your character tells DiCaprio's character to never have kids. What do you think about parenthood?
Russell Crowe: It's the most fantastic thing I've ever experienced. It continues to get more fun and more complex every day. We did actually debate quite a bit about Ferris' attitude towards children. I think Hoffman's attitude is that he's passing onto a man that he's trying to use in a certain way, so he may be expressing a momentary negative. But what he's really trying to do his suppress his desire by doing anything else but his job. Another sort of moment we had was when Hoffman is on the phone talking and there's this sort of thing where his kid went to go to the bathroom. I think there was just sort of a dismissive aspect in the script and I said to Ridley, 'It's just a function of being a dad that he can still do this thing while he's taking his kids pants down, pointing him in the right direction, make sure he doesn't get it on the floor. Stuff like that.' Then I push him off back to bed while he's destroying something on the other end of the phone. I think that's what Hoffman was getting at a little bit before. I think he used the word insulation. He needed distance between him and the reality of what he's doing so it's easy for him. He's playing a video game where as Ferris is [involved] in real life."
Why do you do your own story boards?
Ridley Scott: "Focus. It's all about focus. If I get lost I just sit there and I will doodle. The doodle will start, because I spent a long time in art school so I can really draw. So I'll doodle and suddenly I'll find the beginning of the movie in one picture. Usually, I start my stuff on the telephone. Right by the telephone I've got a book of doodles. When I'm on the phone, I'll be doing a drawing eventually this big if the phone session's long."
Russell Crowe: "It's not just that he draws. (To the sound guy) "See mate, you did it again. Unless you're going to keep your eyes up and not there… How many knobs you got there, like 10? It can't be that fascinating, brother. He not only draws but he can draw upside down. So he can put a piece of paper in front of you so you're looking at the piece of paper and he can draw the frame for you. It's a very strange talent."
This question is for Russell and Ridley. One of the best pictures you guys did together was A Good Year. Do you have any more movies where a head isn't being decapitated coming out?
Russell Crowe: "Yeah, we're doing another one. Here we go again. Blah, blah, blah (the mic's not working). Blah blah? We’re doing another one. It’s called A Gooder Year."
Leonardo DiCaprio: "A Gooderer Year?"
Russell Crowe: "A Gooder Year."
Page 5: Torture Scenes, Nicole Kidman's Baby, and Robin Hood
