"All of the leads have really different approaches to acting," said Rian Johnson. "And it was, especially for me, it was just my second feature and I know definitely coming into my first one, one of the things that I was really terrified of was working of actors. That was the element of it that I had the least experience with. I was scared that there was this secret language that you had to know. And one of the joys of Brick was kind of that one of my favorite parts of the whole process – it was my favorite part of the whole process – was working with those guys and realizing that you're all on the same page."
"It's gaining each other's trust and then it's playing, telling the story. And then of course all that comfortableness went out the window coming into this because these guys have much more recognizable names – 'Academy Award Winner' – and so I was terrified again. But it's the exact same thing happened. You start working with them and they're so goddamned good at what they do, it ends up making it really, really easy, actually."
"Rachel [Weisz] was the first one we cast, which God bless her because it's the hardest thing in the world getting the first person to jump into the pool, and she really believed in the project from the beginning," said Johnson, explaining how he got this A-list cast to sign on to The Brothers Bloom. "To her credit [she] came on board before anyone else had been cast. Once we had her, our journey became a lot easier. And then after that I cast Mark [Ruffalo] and then Adrien [Brody]. I think Rinko [Kikuchi] was the last person I cast."
"But the casting process, I mean honestly, it's horrible. It's a horrible process, especially when you're making a film independently because we actually financed the film – Summit's doing the distribution of it – but we actually financed the film with his company called Endgame who financed I'm Not There, the Todd Haynes movie, and a couple other indie movies. So when we were working we weren't under a studio or anything, and when you're financing independently it's all about foreign presales. And so it's all about these lists of values that each of these actors have on this horrible, horrible piece of paper, you know? And you have to constantly be kind of balancing against that while trying to get the right person in the role. You're dealing with schedules and everybody in town is going after the same 20 people. You really have to work hard to find the joy in the process, but there is joy there because when you find the right person and you connect and it works out – or when you find someone who you weren't quite thinking of for the part and then something flips around and all of a sudden the part becomes interesting, you know? Like with Mark…exactly with Mark."
"I think when I first sat down with [Mark] it was actually about the part of Bloom. But when I was talking to him and just seeing… And I knew him from his roles where he plays the heavy and he plays somber and he's got that kind of [attitude], which he does so well. But you meet him in real life and he's much more like this. He's a big, open, friendly guy," said Johnson.
Johnson's dialogue has a very specific, playful rhythm to it and his actors stuck to the script for the most part. "When they did [alter a line] it was really a specific thing and they would always come to me and talk about it. But, no, overall there wasn't any [changes]. But at the same time is one of the fun things for me is, especially with Rachel, her style of acting is so free. She likes to come and she likes to experiment and play and find stuff. And it was great for me because I realized part way through the shoot that I'm kind of like Bloom. I like to have my flow chart, you know? And so it's actually a really great thing for me, just in terms of growing, to not only be open to that but to start taking joy in it. To start kind of loosening up my head a little bit about playing on set. Obviously, that can only happen if you have a strong hand on the wheel and know where your ship's going. But in that context, once you both trust that you're both heading in the same direction, we got some pretty nice stuff actually by just kind of playing."
And speaking of playing and letting things take shape, Johnson had actually set out to make an R-rated comedy with The Brothers Bloom but wound up with a PG-13 rated film. "The script was R. I actually did some editing during the course of it to get to a PG-13 because I started showing it," explained Johnson. "The thing that kind of pushed it over the edge for me, I took it down to Orange County actually and showed it to a group of my mom's friends and their kids. It was good for me to see how well younger people [react]. Also, in the test screening that we did that was something that, I think, we did two tests screenings and I think that was something that took everyone a little bit by surprise. I think they expected older audiences to be more into this and the degree to which younger audiences, like teenagers actually, were really into it… And I don't know, just getting out of LA and realizing the extent to which it actually does make a big difference to a lot of people, realizing that I was around 13 when I first saw The Sting and remembering the impact that that had on me. I'm like, 'You know what? It's worth it.' And we didn't have to do anything too painful to it. We just had to maneuver around a couple 'f--ks' here and there. We got it down to two and they gave us a PG-13 with two, which took some working with them."
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The Brothers Bloom will hit theaters on October 24, 2008.
