New/Old Rob interviews

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New 'Cosmopolis' BTS Stills - Bullet Magazine HQ Scan

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Old Rob interview from Cannes with Dagens Nyheter (Sweden)

The vampire star doesn’t hold back when it comes to his image. His latest movie, “Cosmopolis” is set in a limo, where he lives with daily prostate examinations and customer visits.

Robert Pattinson is walking with a cup of coffee in one hand a red lollipop in the other hand at the hotel’s restaurant, at the rooftop in Cannes. He manages to not look like a moviestar which is very clever because everybody follows the moviestars in Cannes, and it’s like you can almost feel the air crackles of static electricity.

But that doesn’t seem to bother this 26-years-old british man. He talks, laughs and is excited and often sounds, frankly, like he was a few years younger and not a young veteran with experience from a dozen feature films.
-It was so weird at the screening yesterday, cause I didn’t even see the movie, I just sat there and listened if someone coughs. I just sat there and thought -”Oh God, please let it go well, oh god please!”

So little, it helps the confidence to have been involved in a “Harry Potter” film, and that after having been a handsome vampire in four Twilight movies, be a superstar and dream guy for 3 billion teenage girls. He had a particular reason to worry. The film “Cosmopolis” is not digestible. It is based on a novel by the esteemed American writer Don DeLillo from 2003. Pattinson plays an immensely rich and bizarre young businessman who travels in a huge limousine through a city – they associates to New York- in the uprising. The car is his office, at various stops employees jumps in to bring him into the world situations and the business. It’s bad made on all fronts, class war rages, his own empire is about to collapse, as well as his marriage. Nothing seems unperturbed Pattinson’s character, which, although it is becoming more violent on the streets are determined to go straight through town to get a haircut.



The Canadian David Cronenberg directs, so viewers get guaranteed no help in understanding this odd vision of the future. The film takes place almost entirely in the limo.
- Well it looks weird, the script, but for me the most difficult part of the job was to determine whether I would take the role or not. I wondered if I could really do this. A week after David asked me, I thought on the one hand that “I know it is a great story and it’s Cronenberg that’s going to direct so it’s really a cool deal.” And on the other hand, “You’re on camera the whole time and if you fuck up, you will fuck up the whole movie.”

Rob pulled himself together when he realized that the only reason to say no would be that he did not dare. He would be forced to admit that to the producer. – “They’ll think I’m a wimp, I can not say it,” I thought.
At a later conversation with David came Rob’s fear: “All actors are always afraid of something,” said the white-haired director. After “Cosmopolis” none can accuse Robert Pattinson of holding back with his image.

To his character’s oddities, is that every day he undergoes a thorough medical examination. It includes that the doctor checks the prostate. That is, the extract, in the limo while Pattinson is having a conversation with his associate Juliette.When Pattinson describes his collaboration with Cronenberg, you get a picture of how the former jumped like a little eager puppy funt feet on the latter, which is more like the one to take each day as it comes.

-I always wanted to talk about the complexity of the script, but he said: “Just wait until we are on the set and the time, when we are in the limo, you will understand how to act.”
If Cronenberg did not manage to find a good way to take the stage that was at today’s recording schedule he simply jumped to another. Pattinson admired his self-confidence, but it was hard: -You had to know the entire script and be prepared to take on any scene anywhere.

Pattinson has a reputation that he read diligently, but DeLilo is a writer that he has discovered only in connection with this job. Lately, he has to his own surprise, “it’s weird” – stuck for poetry. He has fallen for American Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “though I’m not so fond of the beat writers.”
As Cronenberg promised, the limo helped. A real car was used, divided into so that you could take it apart in about twenty parts. During the shots, there was only one remote camera, a sound engineer, stowed so that he did not appear, and so Pattinson and have currently played against.

- You could not see out, the windows were completely black. It was so quiet, as in a recording studio, the air was completely dead. It’s weird. You become aware of the sound of your own voice.
Rob got used to it and surprised to his delight that it gave him the upper hand when he played against the actors, he was a little afraid of, like Binoche, who was now a little shaken up by the strange environment. The luxuriously equipped coffin look-a-like limo helped the creation of the complex billionaire Eric Packer.

- They say you have to share the world with all the other people. He is apparently quite convinced that he can live in his own world, where he forces everyone else to communicate on his terms. Pattinson seems on the other hand not sure about most things. At an early Los Angeles screening of “Cosmopolis” he managed for once to see one of his own movies and really see it because it was such a ‘David’ movie. “Otherwise, Rob usually sit and feels so tormented by the sight of himself – “Oh Jesus, I look like an idiot, what am I doing with my face?”

Sure he doubts himself, he answers when we ask him a question. You have to: – As soon as you start believing that you are good, you become useless. Though it’s a exhausting way to live.

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New Rob and David Cronenberg Interview

As you may have heard — it has been in the news here and there — Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart broke up this summer.<br /><br /> Actually, everyone has seen the stories — including Pattinson. “Yeah, I read it,” the 26-year-old British actor says during an interview at a New York hotel. “It’s my life. You sort of want to read it. You feel like you need to read it. It’s one of those things where you keep picking a scab. You know you shouldn’t be doing it, but it’s a weird kind of addiction. You desperately want to stop.”<br /><br /> About a month ago, a tabloid published photos of Stewart, Pattinson’s live-in girlfriend of four years, in an embrace with her Snow White & the Huntsman director, Rupert Sanders. Since then, the media seem able to talk of little else.<br /><br /> “At times, I find the whole thing pretty funny,” Pattinson admits. “It is pretty funny. My life is kind of ridiculous to me. It’s so absurd at times.” Pattinson would rather talk about his new film, the David Cronenberg drama Cosmopolis. When the noted independent filmmaker, whose credits include A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007), gave Pattinson the script for Cosmopolis — based on the Don DeLillo novel — the actor could see himself as Eric Parker, the 28-year-old billionaire asset manager whose world falls apart around him as he rides in his stretch limo to get a haircut while wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet. But Pattinson had one problem.<br /><br /> “I was honest with David and said that I loved his script, but I didn’t fully understand it,” Pattinson says. “I knew, if I tried to have a BS conversation about it, that David would call me out.”<br /><br /> Cronenberg, too, had some reservations — about Pattinson. “Could this British guy do a New York accent where it’s not agonizing?” the filmmaker recalls wondering. “Could he play that age? Does he have the charisma to hold the audience for the whole movie, because he’s literally in every scene? “I did my homework and watched Little Ashes (2008) and Remember Me (2010),” Cronenberg says. “I even watched interviews that Robert did. I wanted to know what this guy was like when he was just being himself. I wanted to get a feel of what he was like as a person. I wanted to know that he had a sense of humor, and he does.<br /><br /> “I finally said, ‘OK, this is the right guy.’  ”<br /><br /> Most of Pattinson’s films have required him to forgo his natural British accent, so he had no problem finding Eric’s New York speech patterns.<br /><br /> “I don’t even know what accent I was doing half of the time,” he admits. “I always found that the dialect was written in the lines. The voice was also part of the preparation. I wasn’t even trying to get a New York accent.”<br /><br /> His next film is, of course, the series-ending Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2, due in November. Cosmopolis is nothing like that, which is by design. “I try to do something different from vampire Edward Cullen each time I’m not doing a Twilight film,” Pattinson says. “I even try to make him different each time I do Twilight.”<br /><br /> As a child growing up in London, Pattinson had dreams of stardom, but they involved music. That he ended up as an actor still bemuses him. “When I’m asked to write down my occupation, it’s still hard for me to write actor.”<br /><br /> After auditioning for Troy (2004) but not getting the part, Pattinson was cast in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) as the handsome, charming and doomed Cedric Diggory. Three years later, he began his turn as soulful vampire Edward Cullen. For “Twi-hards” dreading the end of the film franchise, Pattinson offers some words of hope. “I’m sure they’ll have a Twilight TV-series spinoff soon,” he says. “They’ll do it again.” That presumably wouldn’t involve Pattinson. There is talk of a film prequel, however. Would he be willing to play Edward again? “Who knows?” says Pattinson, laughing. “The only thing that creates a little bit of a problem is that I’m supposed to be 17 forever.”<br /><br /> source

David Cronenberg talks about Rob and Twilight

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Cronenberg talks about Rob at the Lincoln Center Q&A

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Rob's interview with the Chicago Suntimes

It has been a summer of discontent for Robert Pattinson. Since his longtime girlfriend and “Twilight” co-star Kristen Stewart was photographed in intimate poses with another man a few weeks ago, the heat on his life has been daunting.
How does he deal with it?”
“It drives you nuts,” he says of all the hoopla. “It’s just nuts.
“I don’t know how I cope with it. I really don’t know,” he says in a good-natured voice.
“At times, I find the whole thing pretty funny. It is pretty funny. My life is kind of ridiculous to me. It’s so absurd at time.”
Last week he fended off countless questions about the scandal while making the media rounds to promote “Cosmopolis,” his new film with director David Cronenberg (“A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises”).
Through it all, he felt the love of his fans. The Twi-hards definitely have been Team Robert.
“I don’t credit that to myself,” Pattinson says. “It’s just that there is something elemental about the ‘Twilight’ books and the movies. The core story has connected to people.
“The fan love from that is kind of amazing. I guess it’s so much better than everyone hating you.”

By now he should have developed an attitude — if only he knew how.
“I want to change. I can’t make myself change. I can’t develop an attitude,” Pattinson says with a goofy giggle that is his trademark.
Adds Cronenberg, “I’ve seen him even try to change and it’s pathetic.”
In “Cosmopolis,” based on the novel by Don DeLillo, Pattinson plays a 28-year-old financial whiz kid and billionaire asset manager whose world is exploding. He gets into his stretch limo to get a haircut from his father’s old barber while wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet against the Chinese Yuan. His trip across the city becomes a journey as he runs into city riots, various visitors and intimate encounters.
Filming in a limo for so long wasn’t claustrophobic.
“I actually kind of enjoyed it,” he says. “In the beginning, I wanted to stay in the car for the entire day. But it was so unbearably hot. I couldn’t really do this method.
“The car made me really concentrate.”
The London-born actor does an American accent in the movie. “I don’t even know what accent I was doing half of the time,” he admits. “I always found that the dialect was written in the lines.”
This fall, he plays vampire Edward Cullen in “Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” meant to be the final installment of the “Twilight” franchise.
Fans of the series are about to enter the depression zone, and Pattinson offers some words of hope.
“I’m sure they’ll have a ‘Twilight’ TV series spinoff soon. They’ll do it again,” Pattinson says.
Would he ever play Edward Cullen again?
“Who knows?” he says. “The only thing that creates a little bit of a problem is that I’m supposed to be 17 forever.
“I’m not sure I can be 17 forever,” he says with another giggle.
He is excited to see what the future holds for him in Hollywood and elsewhere.
“Life is all about luck,” he says. “Getting to this point was lucky. I just hope that my luck holds out.”
Ask him what he knows about life at this point that he didn’t know when he was younger, and he giggles again.
“I basically have learned that I know absolutely nothing,” he says. “I thought I knew it all. Again, I knew absolutely nothing.”

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Black&White Pictures of Rob in Cannes Now Bigger

 

Paul Giamatti talks about Rob (Cosmopolis set interview)

Rob's interview with Little White Lies

   Written-off Robert Pattinson as just another fleeting tween sensation? Then listen up. Because Cosmopolis, David Cronenberg's smart adaptation of Don DeLillo's futurist novel, is about to announce the 26-year-old Brit's true arrival. LWLies met up with Pattinson recently to chat about the making of Cosmopolis and why he'll always be up for a challenge.


  LWLies: We were in Cannes when Cosmopolis first screened. How was that whole experience for you?
Pattinson: It was kind of terrifying, but mainly because I've never been to a premiere with potentially a hostile audience. It's a film which could potentially be quite divisive because it's quite wordy and in Cannes there's the added complexity with the language barrier. I remember sitting there and looking around at all these blank faces. No one was laughing. I genuinely thought it was going to get booed. I was so grateful it wasn't savaged.

  The whole Cannes booing thing is kind of a carnival, you can't take it too seriously.
I know, I know. But then David [Cronenberg] was telling me about when Crash screened and people were screaming in the audience. Like, actually going wild during the movie. And I was speaking to Gaspar Noé the other day and he was saying that with Irreversible everyone was yelling 'How would you like it?!' and all this nonsense. He was sitting next to the guy who plays the rapist [Jo Prestia] thinking, 'Fuck, I'm going to get killed after this'.

  Did it put you at ease being in David's company?
Yeah, totally. He was really relaxed. The thing is, normally when you go to a premiere you don't often stay for the whole movie, but in Cannes you sit through it wondering if you're going to get clapped or booed afterwards. It's a pretty terrifying experience and a strange environment to watch a film in. But I'd seen the film before Cannes and I knew I loved it, which is a pretty rare thing for me because I don't normally like the stuff I'm in.

  Was Cosmopolis something you chased or were you approached?
I read the script about a year before we made it. Someone sent it to me on the basis that it was just a really well-written script. I really liked it then but we didn't act on it right away because initially Colin Farrell had been cast, but he dropped out and suddenly I was in a position to go for it.


  What was it like working in an environment where you're in a small closed set, in the back of a limo for most of the film, and you only share a few minutes of screentime with the other actors? 
I worked with everyone for about two or three days, but actually the further we got into the shoot the less time the scenes took. So where the early scene with Jay Baruchel took, like, three or maybe four days, a the others were generally much shorter. After two weeks of shooting a movie you normally just relax into the routine of the work, but with Cosmopolis we had big names coming in every few days shooting their scenes and then going. It really keeps you on your toes and in many ways it's like shooting loads of different, or smaller movies. But you get used to it and actually you get quite comfortable because you're so familiar with the set. 


Was it difficult having David direct you remotely from outside the limo?
It was a little odd a first. But you know I did this Harry Potter movie where we filmed a lot underwater, so I was kind of experienced in not having the director standing next to you. It was similar in some ways to that because you can't see anything apart from what's inside the limo and a camera that's mounted on this remote-controlled crane. David always had the camera positioned incredibly close to your face as well, with a really wide lens on it. So you have a totally different relationship with the camera because normally you're trying to communicate with the guy behind the camera, you ignore the camera. Here you're doing everything for the camera, but it's like no one's watching, like no one's ever going to see it. It's like you're close friends with this little machine.


Do you see this as a significant juncture in your career? 
Not really because the film is so obscure. It's not like everyone's going to get it. But yeah, it's definitely a good step in terms of my career and where I'd like to end up. 


Having done a lot of mainstream films are smaller, more out-there films now more appealing to you? 
Um, I mean... Sometimes. But it's not like I went out looking for the highest risk project. To be honest what attracted me was working with David and the quality of the writing, which was just insane compared to some of the garbage I'd been reading around the time. I'd never read any Don DeLillo before, so it was a bit of an eye-opener. But I'm not looking for obscurities the whole time. The movies I've signed on to do after this aren't quite as odd as this but they're certainly artistically ambitious. 


So few actors ever receive the level of exposure you have right now, do you feel a pressure to try to maintain that by taking on bigger roles?
I don't really know. If I could stay at a level where I was consistently working then I'd be happy. But I can't predict the way the industry is going to go. Things change so quickly, there are so many people who were huge a few years ago and now can't even get a film made. Right now people seem to care about me, but I'm sure that won't last. Frankly I find it all a bit absurd. I'm just trying to do as much interesting stuff as I can for as long as I can. 


What do you love about movies?
I think it's the easiest was to educate people about, like, a million things. I remember watching Godard movies when I was younger and being introduced to Henry Miller and from there discovering Tom Waits and suddenly you've learned so much. Cool movies taught me so much more than books in school ever did. I didn't even realise I was interested in working in movies when I was watching them when I was younger. Now I can't imagine doing anything else.

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Rob & David interview with Screenslam

DAVID CRONENBERG & ROBERT PATTINSON COSMOPOLIS INTERVIEW (Exclusive Video) - Robert Pattinson stars in director David Cronenberg‘s adaptation of the 2003 Don DeLillo novel, Cosmopolis. The story of Eric Packer (Pattinson), a 28 year-old finance golden boy dreaming of living in a civilization ahead of this one. Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, his day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart. Screenslam sat down with the director and star who spoke about the atmosphere on set, Robert as Eric Packer and why Robert took the role.
On the atmosphere on set:

“I’ve never really worked on something where a director has ultimate control, it looked like very little people were questioning decisions, where as my experience on every film set I’ve ever had is just an unending series of everyone questioning the director, everyone questioning everything about everything and with this there was a very confidant atmosphere on set.” - Robert Pattinson

On Robert as Eric Packer:
“I could tell that he (Pattinson) knew it was good and that he wanted to do it, but he was afraid of it afraid of it in the way actors are often afraid really, which is they don’t want to the one to screw it up because of they weren’t good enough or they’ll be on set and they’ll realize that they don’t understand it and cant deliver it the way they want, but in Rob’s case he was the one.” - David Cronenberg

New Cronenberg interview - talks about casting Rob, chemistry and more

As Eric, Pattinson is in every scene of the film, portraying a character unlike any he's tackled before. And in our exclusive interview in support of Cosmopolis' theatrical release by eONE Films, writer/director Cronenberg explained why Pattinson was right for the part of Eric and how he went about tackling the adaptation of DeLillo's novel.

 In casting Robert Pattinson, it's kind of a double-edge sword, isn't it? You have his Twilight fans anxious to support him in whatever he chooses to do and then you have the people who dismiss him because he is 'that guy from Twilight'.

 "Yeah. In a weird way, on the one hand of course I'm completely aware of all of those elements and also of course when you're making a movie that for an independent movie was relatively expensive, you have to have a leading character who is very charismatic and who can carry the weight and has the star quality and so on, because you're going to be looking at him. He's literally in every scene in the movie, and that's pretty unusual. I mean even in Tom Cruise movies, Tom is not in absolutely every scene of the movie - but Rob is. So he has to have that. But at the same time, you want to forget the movies, you know? You want to forget his movies and my movies because we're creating this completely new thing and you don't know what audience you're going to get. You can anticipate it, you can think about it, but really you don't know. So ultimately when you're making the movie you're saying, 'Okay, I'm here with these actors. They're wonderful actors, I cast them because they're terrific and they will bring great stuff to the script,' and then at that point you're just making a movie and you're not thinking about any other movie."
Needing an actor to carry the film by being in every scene, how did you figure out Robert Pattinson was the right guy to play Eric?

[Laughing] "Well, this is the magic of casting! I think as a director, it's part of your job. It's a really important part of your job. I think a lot of people don't even realize that the director's involved in casting. Some people say, 'Did you choose your actors?,' and I say, 'Yes. You're not a director if you don't.'"
"Of course, you're juggling many things, like I say. You're juggling, for example, their passports. This is a Canada / France co-production and we were limited to one American actor. Most people of course don't know that - nor should they. Paul Giamatti is the only American in this movie even though it takes place in New York City. So from that kind of aspect to just finding the right guy...of course he's got to be the right age, there are a lot of things that are just basic. And then after that, though, there are no rules. You as a director just have to intuit that this actor will be able to carry off this role."

"We often talk about chemistry, for example, in movies between actors, let's say. When I was doing A Dangerous Method, Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender - how do I know they have chemistry together because I had never seen them in a movie together? They've never been in one; they've never met each other. I don't see them together until I'm actually directing them, so I have to be this kind of dating master who can anticipate that this couple will be good together. It's a strange kind of thing. So you give yourself credit when it works, and you have to berate yourself when somehow it hasn't worked. That's basically where you're left."

It strikes me with Cosmopolis that the chemistry actually needed to come between you and Robert more so than between Rob and any of his co-stars.

"There's truth in that too. That is the unspoken thing is the chemistry between the director and the actors is the key. And at a certain point I think Rob would...you know, he's a serious actor and he didn't want to be the one who was going to blow this movie. He was kind of thinking, 'Well, I'll be alone in that limo because I won't have one person who is always playing opposite me. It's really a one-man show with a lot of day players coming in.' And I said, 'No, you won't be alone because I'll be there. I'll be with you every moment.' And so that is a real element."

Do you think that you view the character of Eric the same way that author DeLillo did? Or do you think that you two don't necessarily agree on how an audience should look at him?

"I think we actually illuminate things for each other. I've been on the road doing publicity with Don in several countries and I think he was pretty intrigued by seeing what would happen. Because, after all, once you put Rob Pattinson in that role, that's a very specific thing. You've got a particular face and a particular voice and a body, and that's something that the novel can not have. That's one of the things that movies can do that novels can not do, and so it immediately shapes the character in a way that he wasn't shaped in the novel. So, there are differences, I think, but it's not a major split or divergence. It's just really shading and shaping things. It's just really hearing the dialogue spoken, which was something that when I read the novel, I thought, 'Yeah, I really want to hear this spoken by really great actors.' Just doing that immediately changes your reaction to the characters and to the words. So there is a difference, definitely."

Full Interview

Interviews with Examiner.com

Check out what Robert Pattinson (who looked dapper in a Gucci suit), his co-stars Sarah Gadon and Emily Hampshire and director David Cronenberg had to say about working onCosmopolis at the New York premiere:

Q: The film is set in New York.
Robert Pattinson: New York seems very very foreign to me, like more foreign than almost anywhere in America, and almost anywhere in the world, I find it like one of the most overwhelming places, but am I more nervous here? I don't know, generally doing stories about New York, I think New York is kind of important, even though it was shot in Toronto.

Q: David Cronenberg said that you were reluctant to take the role at first.
Robert Pattinson: What made me decide was just basically like the only thing that was stopping me was being scared and so I was like, well what am I supposed to be scared of? The only thing I could be scared of was being bad, and it's kind of down to me whether I'm bad or now, but I think people who like Twilight and stuff, how this movie is being interpreted so far, people either love it or hate it regardless of where they come from, or who they are, so I think it'll be the same thing, it's definitely different.

Q: What was it like working with Robert Pattinson?
Emily Hampshire: Amazing, surprisingly so in the way that I didn't know (kind of ignorantly so) that he was a real actor and a good one and has the desire to be a really even better one...He really is normal and instantly I felt like we were instant kind of besties in a way and maybe that is his charm, maybe that is his thing, that he makes everyone feel like they are connected to him in some way....It was like we were all in these mini-movies because it was just me and Rob had our scene, I never worked with any of the actors, so you do feel like the star of your own movie with Rob Pattinson, directed by David, in this tiny little space, so it felt very kind of surreal.

Q: How did you feel when you first found out you would be starring in a film with Robert Pattinson?
Sarah Gadon: I was really curious when I signed on to the project and what I thought was so interesting was that he is someone who is entirely egoless as a person, but he's playing this character who has a massive ego, so it was really interesting to watch him kind of flip back and forth between those two people.
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Rob and Cronenberg interview with The Republic

The phone call began with Pattinson and Cronenberg laughing.

Question: Sounds like you two aren't having any trouble having fun.
Pattinson: We rollick and frolic. We have no problem.

Q: And Robert, you haven't been in the news enough lately.
Pattinson: Heh.
Q: Your character is a disconnected guy trying to connect. Or maybe it's the other way around. How do you play that?
Pattinson: I think he's just very, very self-obsessed. It's going deeper and deeper into self-obsession until it kind of implodes. It's also just the words. Everything is done for me. I sort of instinctively felt like I knew what to do from the beginning because the script was so good.

Q: Is it tricky to direct someone having a prostate exam (as Packer does in the film)?
Cronenberg: For me? Oh, no problem.

Q: Robert, I assume you're rich. But Packer is incredibly rich. Is there a freedom to that?
A: I think it's actually quite a difficult way to live. I've met a few people who have fictional money (laughing). If you have any interest in the world, it's very difficult to see. Your eyes are totally different to most people. Money really does change people. You have to make an effort to be normal, I think.

Q: Did you go through that when you became successful?
Pattinson: It's different. Dealing with fame is different. Everyone gets stuff thrown at them in life, and you have to figure out how to deal with it.

Q: There's a ton of publicity surrounding you now, good and bad. Presumably you're in a bubble while shooting the film, so not as many people are keeping up.
Cronenberg: In fact, a lot of the "Twilight" fans were keeping up. They made websites, and they had spy-cams. But all of that was really quite sweet. It was quite gentle and quite affectionate, and you had these young girls who had never read anything but "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" before (but) were reading "Cosmopolis," they were reading Don DeLillo and writing about it on their blogs.

Q: Robert, "Twilight" is winding down. What has that been like?
Pattinson: Pretty crazy (laughing). No one ever believes me, but no one involved with the first movie had any idea that it was going to turn out to be what it was going to be. We didn't even know if we were going to make the sequels. You go on this runaway train that I was entirely unprepared for. And at the same time, I was kind of figuring out whether I wanted to be an actor or not, which is kind of interesting. You're in your 20s, you're trying to figure out what you want to do with your life.

Q: What about the fame aspect of it? Isn't that kind of a weird way of life? You can't even walk across the street without someone taking a picture.
Pattinson: Yeah. It's just how you deal with it. Everyone has to figure out how they want to live. It's a challenge.

Cronenberg: I can say that Rob was definitely able to walk across the street in Toronto (where "Cosmopolis" was shot) and no one noticed. And he could go to a bar and he could go to a restaurant. Really, part of it has to do with where you are and how much you're publicizing yourself. If you're Lindsay Lohan and you're making sure that everybody knows where you are at all times, then you know what the consequences will be. But if somebody doesn't want that, there are ways you can do that.

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David Cronenberg talks about Rob and Cosmopolis at The Museum of the Moving Art

Fan Pictures from the Cosmopolis Premiere and Times Q&A

  

Rob and Cronenberg discuss Cosmopolis, fans, fame and more with The Boston Globe

Q. You both have said that you filmed this movie in chronological order, and I know that with many movies, the last scenes are shot first. Was that a luxury — to film from start to finish?
Cronenberg: One of the trickiest things that I had to learn as a director was exactly that. I mean, suddenly you’re forced to shoot the last scene of the movie first. And it’s hard for the actors because they don’t know who they are yet and they’re doing their death scene. As an actor myself, I was in Clive Barker’s movie “Nightbreed,” and the first thing we shoot was my character getting killed. And I said a typical actor thing. I said, “How can I know how to die when I haven’t lived yet?” So it is kind of a luxury. I think Rob can talk about that.

Pattinson: I agree. (Laughs) I don’t think I can add to that.

Q. You have both been very candid in interviews about the fact that you didn’t necessarily know how this novel would translate to film and what it meant to you. Do you have a different interpretation of the text now that you’re finished with the film?Pattinson: Well, I like it. I don’t think that confusion is necessarily a bad thing. We’ve done hundreds of interviews now and I still find myself coming up with new things to say.

Cronenberg: Those statements that we made, which were very candid, can be misinterpreted as meaning we were inept, incompetent. But not at all. You know, I don’t do storyboards, for example. I don’t really know what I’m going to do at every set up and every shot. It’s all very spontaneous and of-the-moment, even what lens to use. That’s what we’re talking about. We don’t have it all mapped out. We’re trusting the script and trusting the dialogue that is all 100 percent Don DeLillo’s and taken from the novel directly. We know that if we respond directly to that . . . the movie will have its coherence.

Q. You just rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. What was that like? And what do you think the people there would think of this movie if they saw it?
Cronenberg: All through the halls of the stock exchange they have these monitors built into the walls, and they were all showing clips of “Cosmopolis.” All of the people there who were marshaling us were incredibly excited about the movie and really wanted to see it. And they were incredibly friendly and sweet, and I was suddenly thinking, “This is the wonderful, friendly face of capitalism. I don’t know why I’ve been fighting it for so long. I think I’m going to buy some stock.” [Pattinson laughs.] And the stock exchange is about marketing. To link the starting of the day with some product that’s being marketed was a no-brainer. And the fact that it might be rather ironic that we were opening the stock exchange; I don’t think it occurred to them.

Q. Mr. Pattinson, what did you think of the visit?
Pattinson: I’m so clueless about anything to do with that world. I was kind of just terrified that I was somehow going to mess it up. And also to see people’s enthusiasm. It’s so alien. Even people’s attitudes there. It seems so alien to me. I mean, I’ve met traders before, but in their own environment — everyone’s extremely happy, which is not what I expected. It doesn’t seem stressful at all. They were all excited about seeing who was going to ring the bell this morning. They had the American gymnastics team closing it that day. It looks like a really fun place to work.

Q. You guys seem like you like each other a lot. You seem so close during this publicity tour. I was thinking, when I looked at pictures from the stock exchange visit, that you actually look like relatives.

[Cronenberg and Pattinson laugh.]

Cronenberg: We get along pretty well and we were kind of wearing the same suit. They were Gucci suits that were connected with the movie — the character wears them — and so, we were Tweedledum and Tweedledee at that point.

Q. Mr. Cronenberg, where do you most enjoy promoting your films? You don’t have to say America.
Cronenberg: I have a huge enthusiastic fan base in France. My first films were horror films and genre films, and in France they never had any prejudice against them, whereas in North America, in the old days when I started especially, there was prejudice against them. They weren’t taken seriously as good cinema. So I suppose I feel more comfortable, weirdly enough, in France releasing a film. The level of discourse there is very intelligent, very intellectual, sometimes humorously so, but I like playing that game there.

Q. Mr. Pattinson, how have you taken to the Cronenberg fan base? I imagine that it’s strange to see “Twilight” fans with people who love David Cronenberg movies.
Pattinson: Absolutely. We were in London and we did a Q&A and it was two very diverse groups of people who suddenly came into contact with each other for I think probably the first time. And, I don’t know . . . David’s horror film fans . . . and general “Twilight” female fans . . . are actually quite a good pairing. I think both of them didn’t see anything in each other first of all, but they’re quite a good, odd couple. When you see a bearded guy with long hair, who absolutely will weep [for Cronenberg] . . . and then a “Twilight” fan who will weep at that, they actually look like a couple.

Q. Mr. Pattinson, I have to ask, in reference to all of the talk show hosts who are asking you personal questions right now: I’m always fascinated by the ability of celebrities to just disappear during a controversy. How do you do that? Is there a tunneling system? Where do you go to hide when you’re so watched?
Pattinson: There is a netherworld where celebrities go. They’re the only ones that have access to it. A mysterious little network of boroughs. (Giggles.)

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Cronenberg talks about casting Rob and discusses his career

Of course everybody wants to ask you about your star, who unfortunately has decided not to join us today. I guess he has his reasons. How and why did you wind up casting Robert Pattinson?

Well, it begins in a very pragmatic way. You get a list of 10 people from various producers and agents, and you start with the basics. How old is this character, and how old is the actor? This character is young, his age is given as 28. So that’s where you start. Does he feel like the right guy? Eric talks about working out a lot and is very physical, so you’re not going to cast someone who’s overweight. It’s simple stuff like that to begin with. And then you get to the pragmatics: How big is your budget and what kind of star power do you need to get the movie financed?

And here’s something people don’t think about, which is the passport of the actor. This is a Canada-France co-production, so you’re really restricted in the number of Americans you can use. There’s only one American in this movie, even though it’s set in New York, and that’s Paul. So the fact that Rob is British helps, because he can fit into the co-production thing. So that’s the long way round, and ultimately you get to: Does the guy have the chops and charisma to hold the movie together? Because this character is in every scene of the movie, without exception, and that’s very unusual, even for a star.

So I looked at everything I could find that Rob had done, including “Little Ashes,” where he plays the young Salvador Dali, and I thought, yeah, he could really do this. And I think he’s actually extraordinary. It’s ultimately intuition on my part, and casting is a huge part of directing that’s very invisible. Making-of documentaries don’t usually cover the casting process, but for a director it’s a hugely important part of your art. Juggling all those other balls that I was just talking about, and still coming up with the right guy.

I realize I’d be better off asking him that question, but do you think Rob is eager to change his image after “Twilight,” and push into doing different kinds of characters? After this role, and playing a sadistic sociopath in “Bel Ami,” it certainly looks that way.

Well, I know from doing interviews with him in Europe that he’s not really thinking in terms of his career. He gets offered a lot of stuff, and it’s usually very conventional, boring stuff. He’s always been interested in doing unusual stuff. He’ll tell you that when they started with “Twilight,” he thought it was kind of an indie film. Which it sort of was, you know! It had Catherine Hardwicke as the original director, and it was an unusual, off-kilter vampire story. Nobody knew that it would be the kind of mainstream success that it became.

In a way, “Cosmopolis” is a lot closer to his heart than “Twilight,” you know. When he read it, he told me that he was also struck by the dialogue. He thought it was incredibly fresh and new and surprising and engaging, and he immediately wanted to do it. He was afraid, because I think he still hasn’t come to terms with the fact that he’s actually an actor! He didn’t grow up thinking he wanted to be an actor. As with many actors, and not just young, inexperienced ones, he wasn’t sure he was good enough! He wasn’t sure he was the right guy, and he didn’t want to be the guy who would bring down this terrific project. So my job, at that point, was to convince him that he was indeed the right guy. That took me about 10 days, I suppose.

Are you telling me that you have actually watched the “Twilight” movies? That’s a bit hard to imagine.

Yeah — or no, I watched about one and a half of them. I’m interested in everything, frankly. I’m not a snob, you know. I really am curious about everything. If something’s hugely popular, it doesn’t automatically mean I’m going to look at it, but sometimes I’m curious as to why something is really popular, let’s say. In the case of “Twilight,” I was watching it for Rob, that was the thing. It’s not like – I mean, I hadn’t seen them before that. source

Rob and Cronenberg talk about Cosmopolis with The Miami Herald

David Cronenberg remembers the time Oliver Stone asked him, “David, does it bother you to be such a marginal filmmaker?”

To which Cronenberg, one of Canada’s most admired and famous directors, replied, “Well, Oliver, it depends. How big of an audience do you need?”

Therein lies the secret to Cronenberg’s success. Cosmopolis, his new movie opening Friday, is an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel about a young billionaire named Eric Packer who spends a day in his limo riding around New York City in search of a haircut.

There is practically no traditional plot in Cosmopolis. More than half the movie takes place inside the limo, where Eric has meetings with his staff, gets a checkup from his doctor (“Your prostate is asymmetrical”) and even has sex. Although Eric is played by Robert Pattinson, the hugely popular star of the Twilight series, Cosmopolis is a tough sell for the multiplex crowd — a rigorous, challenging and oddly hypnotic movie filled with dense, jargon-heavy dialogue.

At 69, Cronenberg continues to make his heady movies the hard way.

“When you’re a filmmaker, you spend a year and a half of your life — maybe more — putting these things together: You have to get your financing in place and you go after actors who will reject you,” he says. “It’s a difficult process. So the movie has to really excite and intrigue me and make me feel like I’m going to discover something by making it,” he says.

“Naturally, you have to tailor the budget to suit the subject matter. No one is going to spend $200 million on Cosmopolis. But if you’re realistic about expectations and the size of your audience, and you’re willing to work for not that much money, you can come up with very interesting things.”



Cosmopolis’ $20 million price tag still seems high for such an outside-the-box movie, but Cronenberg offset the risk to financiers by casting Pattinson, who appears in every scene. (Colin Farrell was originally set to play Eric, but had to back out due to scheduling conflicts.)

“I got the script out of the blue and was offered the role, which was a little shocking,” Pattinson says. “Usually, the movies I am offered straight-up are terrible. This script felt so original, it was almost gleaming.

“I knew there was a movie to be made here. I was just worried that I might not be the one to pull it off. I kept thinking ‘There are tons of people better than me for this job!’ It took me a while to make peace with that.”

Cosmopolis offered Pattinson the opportunity to try a kind of minimalist acting he hadn’t done before. Eric Packer is a detached, aloof man who rarely expresses what he’s feeling. On the page, DeLillo makes us privy to his thoughts and interior monologue; on screen, Pattinson uses small gestures, the faintest trace of a smile or a frown and the hardening of a stare to convey his inner state.

“At the start of the movie, I am wearing this dark, blank suit,” he says. “I am wearing completely blacked-out sunglasses and I’m standing still, not moving. Every tool actors use for their performance has been taken away from me,” he says.

“But I felt secure because I knew David was watching me — really watching me — and that gives you confidence. Most of the time on movie sets, I question whether the director is even paying attention to what I’m doing.”

Pattinson’s legion of Twilight fans will be befuddled by this coldly fascinating movie, but Cronenberg has built a sufficient following to ensure an audience for the strange brew.

Not everyone will like it, of course. There isn’t a Cronenberg fan on the planet who could honestly say he loves all of the director’s movies. And that’s a testament to the risks he’s taken from the beginning of his 37-year career.

(...)

For Cronenberg, too, the inspiration to adapt Cosmopolis sprang not from grand themes but subtle detail.

“I was simply taken by the dialogue. It’s a bit like David Mamet or Harold Pinter, because it’s realistic on one level — it sounds like the way people speak — but it’s also very stylized. When I transcribed it into screenplay form, it gave the movie an incredible cohesion and resonance. That’s when I asked myself, ‘Is this a movie?’ And I thought, ‘Yes. It’s a really interesting movie.’ ”

Nearly all of the dialogue is lifted from the book, which meant the actors had to sound natural while saying lines like, “We’re all young and smart and were raised by wolves. But the phenomenon of reputation is a delicate thing. A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.”

For Pattinson, the unusual cadences and word choices felt liberating.

“I felt a physical connection with the writing — I thought it was so good — and I wanted to read it aloud as soon as I got the script, just to see how it sounded. It is so perfectly written. I loved the fact that I didn’t need to put my personal stamp on it as an actor. I just had to perform it in the truest way possible.”

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As ‘Twilight’ fades, Pattinson tests himself (AP & The Washington Times)

NEW YORK - Robert Pattinson was nearing the end of shooting the last “Twilight” film, concluding a chapter of his life that had picked him out of near obscurity and was preparing to spit him out … where exactly? “Twilight” had made him extravagantly famous, but his next steps were entirely uncertain.

“Out of the blue,” he says, came the script for “Cosmopolis” from David Cronenberg, the revered Canadian director of psychological thrillers (“Videodrome,” “Eastern Promises”) that often pursue the spirit through the body. Pattinson, having never met or spoken to Cronenberg, did a little research: He looked him up on Rotten Tomatoes “and it was like 98 percent approval,” he says.

“It was like: OK, that’s my next job,” says Pattinson.

Pattinson now has the unenviable task of releasing his most ambitious movie, his most adult role, into a media storm that instinct would suggest should be run from like a pack of werewolves. Promoting “Cosmopolis” puts Pattinson in front of cameras and microphones for the first time since his “Twilight” co-star and girlfriend Kristen Stewart last month publicly apologized for having a tryst with director Rupert Sanders.

The awkward circumstance, he says, is “dissociated” from the film, and he’s thus far declined to use the attention to make any kind of public response to the scandal. Rather, he’s sought to deflect it to “Cosmopolis,” a film that, in an earlier interview before it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, he said “changed the way I see myself.”

If Pattinson is understandably guarded about his private life, he’s refreshingly openhearted and humble about his anxieties as a young actor. At 26, Pattinson may be one of the most famous faces on the planet, but he’s still getting his bearings as an actor _ a profession, he says, he never pined for, fell into by chance and has always found uncomfortable. His unlikely trajectory began with “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and “Little Ashes,” in which he played Salvador Dali.

“Then I got `Twilight’ and it suddenly became a massively different world to navigate,” Pattinson said in a recent interview in New York. “Most people who get their big hit have figured out what their skills are, and I hadn’t, really.”

“Cosmopolis” is a radically different kind of film that will surely confuse not only the hordes of diehard “Twilight” fans who will line up on Friday to see it, but art house moviegoers, too. Pattinson himself has watched it four times to try to get his head around it.

The first movie adaptation of a Don DeLillo novel, “Cosmopolis” is about a sleek financier, Eric Parker (Pattinson), slowly making his way in the airless sanctuary of his white stretch limo across a traffic-jammed Manhattan with the simple goal of a haircut. But the journey, which includes visits with his new wife (Sarah Gadon), a prostitute (Juliette Binoche) and Occupy-like protesters (Mathieu Amalric), is a kind of willful unraveling for Parker, who dispassionately watches his fortune slide away on a bad bet on the Chinese yuan.

“He’s an egomaniac who wants to see some kind of spirituality in his egomania,” says Pattinson. “It’s kind of like how actors feel about themselves.”

Pattinson is in every scene of the film, which relies on his callow, hyper-literate performance to carry the movie through its limited setting and DeLillo’s heightened dialogue _ much of which Cronenberg transcribed verbatim from the novel. Though some reviews have found the film static and impenetrable (perhaps intended responses), most critics have praised Pattinson’s performance, with many citing it as proof that the heartthrob can indeed act.

The stylized language and atypical nature of the film made it a risky and intimidating choice for Pattinson.

“I couldn’t hear the voice of the character at all. There was nothing,” he says. “It was scary to say yes to something which you didn’t know what it was. I knew it was interesting, I knew there was something special but I had no idea how to do it or what I could add to it. But when you start saying no to Cronenberg because you don’t think it’s good enough, it’s a stupid decision to make.”

It’s clear that his “Twilight”-fueled celebrity weighs heavily on Pattinson, who says he knows people watch his films “through a cultural context.”

“Rob, he’s popular,” says Cronenberg with deadpan understatement.

“I couldn’t have cast Rob without `Twilight’ just as I couldn’t have cast Viggo (Mortensen) without `Lord of the Rings,’” says the director whose previous three films _ “A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises,” “A Dangerous Method” _ starred Mortensen. “The fact that somebody who has clout is willing to do a movie that’s difficult is a gift to a director because you’re not only getting the right guy as an actor, but you’re getting financing interest and you get to make the movie. This is not an easy movie to get made.”

Pattinson seems energized by the freedom of choice in front of him following the final “Twilight” installment, which will be released in November. He’s lined up parts in gritty films far from blockbuster size: “Mission: Black List,” a military thriller, and “The Rover” by Australian director David Michod (“Animal Kingdom”), a role he says he fought for more than any before.

Embarking on “Cosmopolis” appears to have been a process of letting go for Pattinson of self-awareness, of worry, of fear. Asked if he now feels certain he’s an actor, he quickly replies, “No.”

“As soon as you start existing in a certain world, you feel like you have tremendous amount of baggage all the time,” he says. “You get stuck in this rut where you want people to think you’re something else, but you’re too scared to do what that is to actually be the other person.

“Then you get a gift like this movie where it’s way easier than I thought it was,” he says. “You just do it. It doesn’t really matter if you fail.”