Page 2
Rendition Press Conference
Reese, what was the most challenging of the scenes for you to do?
Reese Witherspoon: “Certainly, I think the challenge of doing an ensemble piece is that your storyline is so short that every scene you are doing is sort of a pivotal moment in that character’s journey, so everything was sort of heightened and very dramatic. The challenge…I definitely was nervous the day I had to work with Meryl [Streep]. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do it. Definitely that ride to work that day was nerve wracking. But, she was wonderful. She’s completely intimidating, completely professional, had a thousand ideas. Don’t you think she had a lot of great ideas?”
Gavin Hood: “She contributed enormously to that scene. In terms of some of the dialogue we used, yeah.”
Reese Witherspoon: “Yeah, definitely. She had a lot of interesting ideas and immediately helped the scene – elevated itself. And really, she’s definitely worth every minute of screen time. She definitely makes the film…I don’t know, what am I trying to say, Peter?”
Peter Sarsgaard: “She makes the film better (laughing).”
Reese, your character had to deal with the relationship between an American and a foreigner, and how their relationship is viewed by others. Did you talk to anyone about this?
Reese Witherspoon: “I think that is what really drew me to the part. I was excited about sort of imagining a life that is very much like my own. She’s a mother with two children. She’s fallen in love with a Muslim man and married him, and as someone who has lived a life without having religious intolerance or racial profiling ever touch her world, suddenly experiencing an extreme of one of those circumstances. I guess all you can do as an actor is imagine it. But I think that was one of the more interesting parts of the character that drew me to the script.”
Jake, in dealing with your character being a conflicted CIA man, did you get to meet anyone who has done this in the past? How did you go about researching the role?
Jake Gyllenhaal: “Not in person, no, over the phone. I never talked to anybody who I don’t think would admit or say they were involved in any sort of extraordinary rendition situation. But, I only talked to CIA officers for fact checking. I think I found that when you talk to someone who has a job like that, it’s very technical and the questions you want as an actor are a little bit more emotional. But I think that’s a real key into a character anyway. And so, a lot of it was actually watching movies of people who played CIA agents and officers. And then a couple of movies of a couple of people who have played alcoholics.”
What movies?
Jake Gyllenhaal: “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which is a merging of the alcoholic and the spy, literally, in the movie. And then also The Good Shepherd, actually. Which I think, just a little shout out to Matt Damon, that’s a pretty incredible performance. More about the less he does, then the more he does and that’s the kind of performance that I look up to. So, I just tried to copy it (laughing).”
Why call it North Africa versus Egypt or whatever country it’s supposed to be?
Gavin Hood: “I’m happy to talk about the country question. Kelly’s script originally did set the film in Egypt. We were going to shoot in Egypt and then we were not able to go there, because we simply could not get the cast insured to go there. And so we had to look for somewhere else. But, we found that there was a tremendous amount of fury on the Internet about Egypt and about how dare we make Egypt look bad. Then we went to Morocco. Now, let’s clear this up once and for all, we know that rendition and renditions have happened to Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Guantanamo Bay and…”
Germany.
Gavin Hood: “Germany, but these others… So there are black sites in a number of countries. Well, we very quickly realized that our crew and cast, many of our cast and many of our crew come from countries which do not enjoy the kind of liberties and civil liberties that Americans enjoy. And that any country we named would potentially cause some backlash to our cast and crew.
So, the use of the word ‘North Africa,’ country again to a smart aleck journalist -- and you’ll forgive me for being frustrated on that particular point -- you say, ‘They can’t even define the country.’ Do me a favor, I come from Africa, it’s not a country as the President thinks. It’s a continent, and there are many countries in Africa. I’m very aware of that and one of them is not ‘North Africa’. But in the interests of the safety of our cast and crew, and, by the way, in keeping with the notion that nobody knows where anybody is when they are rendered, we chose to just say ‘North Africa’. Because Reese has no idea where her husband has gone. He has no idea where he is, which you find from many of the people who have been rendered. ‘I think I might have been at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan. I was then flown somewhere else with a butt up my butt and a nappy on…’”
Jake Gyllenhaal: “What?”
Gavin Hood: “Yes, they put a butt plug up these guys.”
Jake Gyllenhaal: “Wait, are you talking about yourself? I was just confused, I think…”
Gavin Hood: “The point is, just once and for all, is that people are flown to destinations and they are not sure where they are, and the fact that you don’t know where they are is okay by me. And thank you for asking that question. It’s important that we know we are talking about things that happen to real people and there are greater risks for some of our cast and crew, in terms of the realities of the possibilities of detention and torture.”
Page 3: Getting Into Character and the Torture Scenes
