Lights, camera, action. The filmmakers, actors, and creative teams behind some of the definitive and most anticipated cinema of the year came together on Nov. 16 to discuss their work at The Lineup: Live at the Egyptian, a one-day showcase of exclusive presentations and conversations about Netflix’s films of the season.
Train Dreams’ William H. Macy, Clint Bentley, and Joel Edgerton
Photograph by Dana Scruggs
Goodbye June’s Kate Winslet
Photograph by Dana Scruggs
Left-Handed Girl’s Nina Ye, Shih-Ching Tsou, and Sean Baker
Photograph by Dana Scruggs
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE’s Tracy Letts
Photograph by Dana Scruggs
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’s Mary Vernieu, Ram Bergman, Mila Kunis, Rian Johnson, Cailee Spaeny, Kerry Washington, and Bret Howe.
Photograph by Dana Scruggs
Nouvelle Vague’s Zoey Deutch and Richard Linklater
Photograph by Dana Scruggs
Among those at the historic Los Angeles theater to delve deeper into their films were:
- A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE’s Kathryn Bigelow, Noah Oppenheim, Tracy Letts, editor Kirk Baxter, production designer Jeremy Hindle, composer Volker Bertelmann, and casting director Susanne Scheel
- Ballad of a Small Player’s Colin Farrell, director Edward Berger, and composer Bertelmann
- Frankenstein’s Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, composer Alexandre Desplat and costume designer Kate Hawley
- Goodbye June’s director and star Kate Winslet
- Noah Baumbach, Adam Sandler, Emily Mortimer, and casting director Nina Gold of Jay Kelly
- Songwriters EJAE and Mark Sonnenblick of KPop Demon Hunters
- The Left-Handed Girl team, Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker, and Nina Ye
- Richard Linklater and Zoey Deutch of Nouvelle Vague
- Clint Bentley, Joel Edgerton, William H. Macy, and Felicity Jones of Train Dreams
- Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’s Rian Johnson, Ram Bergman, Kerry Washington, Mila Kunis, Cailee Spaeny, and casting directors Mary Vernieu and Bret Howe
Read on for more with the stars and filmmakers of a dynamic pack of films, straight from The Lineup: Live at the Egyptian.
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
Anthony Breznican, Kathryn Bigelow, Noah Oppenheim, Tracy Letts, Susanne Scheel, Kirk Baxter, Volker Bertelmann, and Jeremy Hindle
Academy Award–winning filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow turns a lens on urgent subject matter in A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE. “I grew up at a time when we were asked to hide under our desks in the event of a nuclear blast, which of course would do nothing,” she tells Tudum of the inspiration for her latest film. DYNAMITE captures in real time what happens when a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, setting off a race to determine who is responsible and how to respond. “But between then and now, it feels like the nuclear issue has been normalized. It’s gone quiet. And yet we’re still living in a world filled with dynamite.” Bigelow explores the humanity behind the individuals forced to navigate a crisis, alongside a star-studded cast featuring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, and more.
At The Lineup, Bigelow spoke about the moments of humanity in the film. “It was really baked into the script by Noah Oppenheim, who, in my opinion, wrote this meticulous and extremely precise document,” she remarked, “and it had these great moments of humanity because humanity is in fact what’s at stake.”
Oppenheim found that he had the perfect collaborator in Bigelow. “One of the things that make Kathryn such an extraordinary filmmaker is her commitment to authenticity and realism and her choice to focus her incredible talents on real world issues that we’re all confronting,” he said. “So we kind of share this journalistic approach to storytelling.”
Letts, who plays General Anthony Brady, credits the technical advisors, as well as the three- and four-star generals who were on set as key collaborators. “I had them as a constant resource to know, ‘What would I be doing? What kind of leeway do I have here?’ To which they said, ‘You’re the general, you can do whatever you want. You can put as much sugar in your coffee as you want. You can talk about the ball game all you want,’ ” he said.
Learn more about A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
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Cover Story
In Kathryn Bigelow’s film, the actress is a force to be reckoned with.
By Blaine Zuckerman
Oct. 2
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Deep Dive
Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film unravels the threads of a nuclear crisis.
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Explainer
Technical advisor Dan Karbler discusses the facts behind the fiction.
Ballad of a Small Player
Edward Berger and Colin Farrell
Edward Berger follows the story of a washed-up gambling addict looking for a change of luck in the casinos of Macao in his latest film, Ballad of a Small Player. Colin Farrell leads as Lord Doyle in the adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s 2014 novel. After a winning streak of films, Berger found a new canvas in Ballad of a Small Player. “If you compare, All Quiet has a very dark, vast drive, and Conclave has a very rigid world that’s almost like a prison,” the director told Tudum. “Ballad busts open and is full of life and color and energy that comes from Colin’s character’s inner drive to find himself. Kinetic is a very good word to describe the energy of Doyle, as well as the camera, the colors, the light, the costumes, the makeup — everything comes together to serve Colin’s character.”
During their conversation at The Lineup, Berger and Farrell dove into a specific scene in the film where Lord Doyle gorges himself on food in an expansive hotel suite. “On the page, maybe the scene was a half a page long, so it’s not very substantial,” Berger recalled. “Colin made it a centerpiece of the movie, Colin made it an expression of the movie. Colin made his performance, his utter immersion into that state of mind…I sat next to James [Friend], my trusted cameraman… and [the performance] was so physical and so visceral that it really affected us.”
“It was a very explicit articulation of a sense of loss, a sense of emptiness that the character is feeling,” Farrell remarked while thinking back on the filming of that particular scene. “You were pretty kind that day, man,” he said to Berger. “You didn’t do as many takes as I’d gotten used to until that point, you were quite civilized. But I was about 10,000 calories in by lunch!”
Read their full conversation from The Lineup: Live at the Egyptian here.
Learn more about BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER
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Behind the Scenes
Edward Berger, Colin Farrell, and Volker Bertelmann unpack their pop opera.
By Tudum Staff
Yesterday 6:59 pm
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Cover Story
The Irish actor takes on the role of a gambler in Edward Berger’s film.
By Madeleine Saaf-Welsh
Sept. 24
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Behind the Scenes
The Oscar-winning director’s latest film showcases Colin Farrell at his finest.
Frankenstein
Anthony Breznican, Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Alexandre Desplat, and Kate Hawley
With Frankenstein, director and writer Guillermo del Toro makes the film he’s been working toward his entire career. In this adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, the filmmaker renders the collision of tortured scientist Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and his handmade Creature (Jacob Elordi) as a sprawling epic that examines what it truly means to be human. Also starring Mia Goth and Christoph Waltz, Frankenstein is a study of creator versus creation, father versus son, and beauty versus beast. “Mary Shelley’s masterpiece is rife with questions that burn brightly in my soul: existential, tender, savage, doomed questions that only burn in a young mind and only adults and institutions believe they can answer,” del Toro tells Tudum. “For me, only monsters hold the secrets I long for.”
Elordi spoke at The Lineup about the design of del Toro’s latest ‘monster,’ the Creature, saying “I remember Mike Hill, the designer, saying something at one point [that] he’s not meant to be brutally ugly but beautiful and the colors are meant to be beautiful and translucent, almost moving like a butterfly’s wings.”
Co-star Isaac shared fond memories from filming the legendary director. “I remember the very first day of shooting, I was out on a big frozen lake of ice being dragged by the dogs,” he recalled. “He was just screaming ‘grim determination!’ This was the first piece of direction he was giving. It was always like that. He approached every day full of passion and I couldn’t wait to get to set to see what kind of fun we would get into.”
Learn more about FRANKENSTEIN
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Cover Story
“Guillermo said this would be not just a meditation, but a metamorphosis.”
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Deep Dive
How the Creature came together, stitch by stitch.
By Ariana Romero and John DiLillo
Nov. 7
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News
“She’s fluttering and trying to find her place in this world.”
Goodbye June
Oscar-winning actor Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with Goodbye June, a powerful family drama with a formidable cast to match. The film takes place just before Christmas, when an unexpected turn in their mother’s health thrusts four adult siblings and their exasperating father into chaos, navigating messy family dynamics in the face of potential loss. But their quick-witted mother, June, orchestrates her decline on her own terms — with biting humor, blunt honesty, and a lot of love. Winslet co-stars alongside Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, Timothy Spall, and Helen Mirren. “I hope that people will recognize themselves in the characters,” says Winslet. “Some of our most complicated relationships in life are with the people we love the most in the world, the people we are closest to, the people we need the most for support and care.”
When asked at The Lineup how she ended up directing, producing and starring in the film, Winslet, whose son Joe Anders wrote the screenplay, said: “I didn’t actually mean to do all three of those things. I was going to produce it, and I was going to play the role of Julia… I found myself turning to my son when it was ready to be sent out to directors and said, ‘We can’t do it. I’d never forgive myself if we let this story go, and I think I’m ready, and I would like to direct it.’ ”
Winslet assembled other first-time department heads to make the film. “I believe in lifting people up,” she said. “I thought, ‘If my son is a first-time screenwriter and I’m a first-time director, we have to pay that forward.’ ”
Learn more about GOODBYE JUNE
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News
The film arrives in select US and UK theaters Dec. 12 and on Netflix Dec. 24.
By Brookie McIlvaine
Aug. 27
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Trailer
Winslet also co-stars in the drama alongside a star-studded ensemble.
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Trailer
The drama, directed by and starring Kate Winslet, arrives on Netflix on Dec. 24.
Jay Kelly
Tomris Laffly, Noah Baumbach, Adam Sandler, Emily Mortimer, and Nina Gold
In Jay Kelly, director and writer Noah Baumbach tells the story of a movie star (played by George Clooney) at an inflection point, one that leads him on a whirlwind and profound journey of self reflection as he traverses Europe en route to a film festival to accept an award. As much as the film is about its central character, “it’s also about his relationships with people who have devoted a good portion of their adult lives to his success,” says Baumbach. The characters who fill out Jay Kelly’s world, portrayed by Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, and Riley Keough, are “tasked with the simple and complex question of: ‘How do we want to spend our lives?’ ” he says.
At The Lineup, Baumbach explained the layers of journeys happening in the film. “[Jay] goes on a journey from LA into Europe, but he’s also going on a journey into his past. And that was, I think the initial thing that was compelling to me was thinking of an actor who might be having a crisis of sorts and is taking this voyage.”
Sandler, who plays Jay Kelly’s devoted manager Ron, said of his character, “I loved being Ron. I loved having the job as a manager, a man who looks out for his client, all he thinks of is his client. It’s really easy to do with George [Clooney] playing Jay Kelly.”
Learn more about Jay Kelly
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News
The film hits Netflix on Dec. 5. See photos now.
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Trailer
George Clooney and Adam Sandler co-star in Noah Baumbach’s new film.
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Gallery
Noah Baumbach directs the star-studded cast on an emotional whirlwind adventure.
KPop Demon Hunters
EJAE and Mark Sonnenblick
KPop Demon Hunters brings together vibrant animation, a hit soundtrack, and a story steeped in lore as it continues to take the world by storm, shattering music and streaming records while doing it. The film, directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, is an anthem of hope, with K-pop girl group HUNTR/X leading the charge as they slay demons and work to seal off the universe from the supernatural evildoers. “We were very intrigued by the idea of inner demons, because it’s something that I think everybody has. It’s that little voice in your head that is telling you negative things when you don’t really want to hear it,” says co-director Kang. “We wanted to tell people you can make a choice about how you want to live your life — even though there’s this little voice that’s nagging you.”
Songwriters EJAE and Mark Sonnenblick joined The Lineup to discuss the Grammy-nominated music, including the breakout hit “Golden.” “As a Korean-American who is bilingual, I know the nuances of each language and I know that translating English to Korean is super hard,” says EJAE, who incorporated Korean words into the song. “For me, what’s really important to have [in an] ‘earworm’ is rhyming. So having Korean words that rhyme with golden, I needed that ‘earworm’ that also had the same message.”
“It is a song of healing and coming into your own and moving past maybe darker parts of who you’ve been,” says Sonnenblick. “Making something that means so much to you when you’re making it, you just never know if it’s going to break through. I’m grateful to the fans who have responded to everything about this, including ‘Golden.’”
Read their full conversation from The Lineup: Live at the Egyptian here.
Learn more about KPop demon hunters
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Guide
Executive music producer Ian Eisendrath walks us through those catchy tunes.
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News
Here’s everything to know about the animated film and some must-have items.
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Behind the Scenes
At the center of the global phenomenon is a hero defined by her heart and soul.
Left-Handed Girl
Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker, and Nina Ye
Left-Handed Girl, by director, producer, and co-writer Shih-Ching Tsou, is a drama that centers on a single mother and her two daughters after they move from the countryside to Taipei, where generations of family secrets threaten to upend their status quo. The film, Taiwan’s submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 98th Academy Awards, grew out of a memory that has lingered with Tsou since her own childhood in Taiwan. Tsou first began discussing her idea with her producing partner Sean Baker more than two decades ago as a possible feature. After collaborating on Take-Out, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, Left-Handed Girl took off as their next project. Baker, who also edited the film, co-wrote the screenplay with Tsou; it marks her solo feature directorial debut. “I never let go of this story,” says Tsou.
Tsou shared with the audience at The Lineup what the story represents to her. “I wanted to make it a story about women,” she said, “how they survive in a male dominant society, how they help each other, how they fight, how they grow together.”
Baker recalled those decades-old conversations that led to what became Left-Handed Girl. “It was actually the first idea that we talked about in 20001 and I found all of the ideas and stories that Shih-Ching told me about her childhood and growing up in Taipei to be absolutely fascinating,” he said. “We knew there was something very special there and something very personal. Shih-Ching’s love letter to Taiwan. And we never wanted to let it go.”
Learn more about left-handed girl
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Deep Dive
The Cannes Critics’ Week selection is coming to Netflix on Nov. 28.
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Meet the Cast
Shih-Yuan Ma, Nina Ye, and Janel Tsai form a bond in Shih-Ching Tsou’s film.
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Trailer
The family drama from filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou comes to Netflix Nov. 28.
Nouvelle Vague
Richard Linklater and Zoey Deutch
Director Richard Linklater celebrates a titan of cinema — Jean Luc Godard — with his new French-language film Nouvelle Vague. Specifically, Linklater reimagines the making of Godard’s seminal 1960 film Breathless. Guillaume Marbeck leads in the role of the first-time director in the process of crafting his era-defining work; Zoey Deutch and Aubry Dullin play Godard’s muses Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Says Linklater: “This [is a] love letter to those who made you want to make films, who made you believe you could make films, who convinced you that you should make films — and, by the way, what are you waiting for?”
Linklater told the crowd at The Lineup that telling a story about the filmmaking process has long been on his mind. was something that had long been on his mind. “Making a movie about making a movie is a thought every filmmaker naturally has, probably after your first movie, you’re like, ‘What the hell was that?’ There’s drama, there’s humor. It’s kind of a vibrant, crazy thing. So it’s a natural impulse.”
Deutch commented on the similarities between Linklater and Godard. “[They] both began careers with these revolutionary independent films that changed the way people look at independent cinema.”
Learn more about nouvelle vague
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Cover Story
The actress delivers a performance worthy of the legacy.
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Behind the Scenes
Richard Linklater’s team captured the essence of Godard’s Breathless.
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Deep Dive
The film celebrates the youthful expression that drove French New Wave cinema.
By Madeleine Saaf-Welsh
Nov. 14
Train Dreams
Clint Bentley, Joel Edgerton , and William H. Macy
Adapted from Denis Johnson’s beloved novella of the same name, Train Dreams contemplates the astonishing power of one man’s anonymous life.“Robert Grainier doesn’t do anything that really alters the course of history — he doesn’t fight in some great battle or create some invention that changes people’s lives, and yet he lives a very deep and rich life,” says filmmaker Clint Bentley, who co-wrote the film with his Sing Sing collaborator Greg Kwedar. Stepping into the shoes of Grainier, a logger at the turn of the 20th century, is Joel Edgerton, who was also moved by the story’s poetic exploration of everyday existence. “This film, through its examination of an ordinary life, speaks to how insignificant, on the one hand, we all are. And yet how significant a part we play in the world that we live in, in the short space of time that we’re given to be on the planet,” Edgerton says.
Bentley spoke at The Lineup of working with cinematographer Adolpho Veloso to capture small moments that could weave together with the narrative to tell Robert Grainier’s story. “[We] just took this approach of setting up scenes and worlds,” said the director, “and then being able to move within them to be able to get enough material to get into the edit and have the raw material where it can find this rhythm of its own to where it didn’t feel disjointed.”
Edgerton commented on the immersive nature of filming Train Dreams, especially when working with the young actors playing his character’s child. “The idea of getting a child to follow a script is the reason why people say ‘don’t work with children and animals’… they have to run the show. I know as a dad, I don’t run my house, my kids run my house,” he joked. “But with the film, what does the moment require? Let’s follow the child and have the freedom to do that and create an environment where we can live in 360 degrees and allow things to happen.”
Learn more about Train dreams
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Book to Screen
The filmmakers share the process of bringing Denis Johnson’s book to the screen.
By Kristin Iversen
Nov. 14
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News
Joel Edgerton stars in the moving film from director Clint Bentley.
By Kristin Iversen
Sept. 6
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News
“There’s a real potency to the quiet, ordinary life that most of us live.”
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Rian Johnson, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Cailee Spaeny, Mary Vernieu, and Bret Howe
Benoit Blanc returns to the screen in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery in the third installment of Rian Johnson’s whodunit series. In the latest case, detective Blanc (Daniel Craig) heads to a parish in upstate New York to solve a murder that defies logic and challenges everything he believes in. “This film charts [Blanc’s] most personal journey yet,” says Johnson. “He’s forced to engage with the case — and with himself — in a way that’s completely new.”
At The Lineup, Johnson discussed the new tone we find Benoit Blanc inhabiting. “After the big, broad, fun vacation mystery of Glass Onion, Daniel and I talked about how it would be fun to ground the next one,” says the director. “Tonally it goes to a more Edgar Allen Poe or Washington Irving type place, almost like Gothic horror.”
Johnson was joined at The Lineup by three of the ensemble cast of his latest film — Kerry Washington, Mila Kunis, and Cailee Spaeny. On the topic of the crackling chemistry between the characters, Kunis described the atmosphere on set, where instead of heading to individual trailers in-between scenes the cast stuck together as a unit. “We played backgammon together and we wrote wedding speeches together, [people brought] their kids, their dog. It was like the greatest camp you’ve ever been in.”
Washington agreed, “The fun is being in it together and knowing we are only as strong as our weakest link and, luckily, there were none.”
Learn more about wake up dead man: A knives out mystery
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First Look
Rian Johnson’s third mystery comes to theaters Nov. 26 and to Netflix Dec. 12.
By Brookie McIlvaine
Sept. 15
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News
New mystery, new cast, same sleuth — coming to Netflix on Dec.12.
By Brookie McIlvaine
Sept. 15
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Trailer
Benoit Blanc is faced with his most impossible case yet.
By Brookie McIlvaine
Sept. 8
