Kodi Smit-McPhee and Matt Reeves Let Me In Roundtable Interview
How did you decide what to leave in and what to leave out?Matt Reeves: "You know, what I tried to use as the guiding process was really, because the thing I connected to so deeply in the story had to do with Kodi's character and him growing up and having such a hard time, and how she in a way represents that side of him that he can't express, all of his sort of fantasy that he never acts upon because they're the fantasies that a helpless 12 year old would have... And so that was the guiding principal in terms of what I would keep or not."
"The original film was done in this really sort of beautiful, stately way and everything was sort of a little detached and very Scandinavian and gorgeous. It was very eery and scary how withheld it was. But I wanted to take it and put it even further into his point of view. And so in doing that, it sort of makes certain things shift. I tried to do it as a prism, so there's some things that you might not see as much of or you wouldn't see at all because it wouldn't have to do with his point of view. That was the basic guiding principal of what I tried to do."
Where does this sense of intimacy come from in your work?
Matt Reeves: "Well to me, because the thing that matters to me most in telling any story has to do with the point of view of the characters. And so that intimacy, that's truly what I responded to in the original film. Even though the original film has a kind of distant perspective, in a certain way it is more remote in a really magical, eery way. It makes the movie very ambiguous and cool. That relationship is still very intimate and I wanted to take it even further in my version because that's the kind of thing that I really am drawn to, just to try and get into the characters. "
"I mean it sounds crazy because Cloverfield isn't intimate in that sense, but the one way that I meant it to be intimate is that I wanted you to intimately experience the chaos of that night. I wanted to try as much as possible, through point of view, to put you in the shoes of the characters that are there. And so that does drive the way I try and set up the shots or the way that the DP and I talk about the lighting and all of that kind of stuff - and the way that we work together. It's all about trying to put you into the characters' shoes, because it's what I love in movies, you know?"
Was it harder to conceive the shots when you didn't have the device that Cloverfield had?
Matt Reeves: "No, actually Cloverfield was harder in terms of that kind of thing because I love point of view but Cloverfield is such a radically restricted point of view. It's just the camera, literally. It's not even Hud who's holding the camera, it's the camera itself. There were places where I had to think about, 'Okay, so Hud is so freaked out he wouldn't even be pointing the camera at this point, so what does that mean?' That means the camera's going to drop down, we are going to see his feet here or that kind of stuff. And the idea of the things that you don't see that make it actually scarier than the things you would see. Because the idea of that particular movie is that you are in an event in which you have so little information about and you are at the center of it, and that fact that you have so little information is terrifying because you're just trying to survive."
"In this case it actually, in a certain way, it was quite different because it was more about, 'What would it look like...?' Actually Kodi gave me many ideas for shots. Like we have one scene where essentially Elias Koteas finally tracks down Abby and he starts coming in the apartment, and there's this moment where he's sort of making his way through the apartment. Kodi is there and he's hiding, and there would be things where he'd be saying, 'From right here it looks really, really cool.' And I'd be like, 'Wow, you're right.' And so we'd try and put things in his point of view. There was one moment in particular where he was like, 'God it would be really cool...' - because she has all these toys around - 'it would be really cool if when he's walking, if he kind of stepped on one of these mechanical toys,' because she has all these great old toys that she carries. And I was like, 'Kodi, that's a fantastic idea.' Those were the kind of things that we would do. I tried to plan as much as possible but allow for as much stuff to happen in the moment as possible. That's kind of the way we tried to make it intimate."
How did you find the kids for these roles?
Matt Reeves: "My criteria was to find two kids who I felt could emotionally handle the complexities of the characters and the story, because frankly it's an adult film even though it centers on two kids. And that's a tremendous burden to put on two kids to play it. But when Kodi came in, he was so authentic and that was all the time what I'd ask. I'd ask what would he say here and he'd say, 'Keeping it real, I would do this.' That was really sort of my criteria was to try and find kids who could authentically express themselves, and that's who they were. That was the joy in finding them."
Kodi, can you talk about your character?
Kodi Smit-McPhee: "I see him as living in his own kind of world, coming home to the same thing every day. Pretty much his life is a routine and he's kind of wasting it because all he does is get bullied - not that he can help that. But he gets bullied every day at school, comes home, his mom would be passed out. And then [he would] go out and ruin his dinner eating candy and he'd come back in and lie about it, and does the same thing the next day. And I think that when Abby comes along, it changes his life and that routine. It's unpredictable and he's looking forward to what he's coming home to now, instead of just getting ready to do that routine again."
How does this girl change his life?
Kodi Smit-McPhee: "He thinks that she is the same as him. She just has a dad. He thinks she's just like him and it turns out she's not but she is. I think that whole vampire thing is kind of cloaking that. They are very much like each other. Also, I think Abby's boyfriend/look after her guy is kind of...the film is kind of a cycle. It's showing you what Owen's going to turn into. Not every story has a happy ending and that's probably how he's going to turn out."
How did you and Chloe Moretz work together?
Kodi Smit-McPhee: "We both have the same kind of acting thing. I work with my dad, she works with her brother. I have an acting family. My sister's an actor, my dad's an actor, and he teaches me with everything I do. We just make a whole life for the character. That's the only way to make it real. I remember when I was little my dad always used to say - because it's hard to get into a little kid - he would say, 'Just make it real. It's got to be real.' And now when I'm older I can do a lot more things. I can write about it. I can do a journal. I just kind of make a whole life for the character and then when they say action, I can jump in and then I can jump out."
