RT @blackfilm: Here's a pic of @traciethoms from Looper, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt film that opens the Toronto Film Fest tonight - http:/ ...
RT @cameron_tiff: @khadijahxxo @LooperMovie cast will be at both Elgin & RTH. Elgin is all for the fans. #TIFF12
RT @jianghomeshi: "Looper" opens #TIFF12 tonite: director @rcjohnso joins me in Studio #Q this morn + @DivineFits perform/chat & @We ...
RT @NTJohnson: “@firstshowing: When is the Looper soundtrack hitting? On iTunes hopefully? Outstanding as always! Want to listen again.” ...
Day 1 of #TIFF12. My third festival as a Press Conference Moderator. First up at noon: Looper, starring Bruce Willis & Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
About to kick off the very first press conference of the Festival!
The stars have arrived! They're getting bombarded with bulb flashes right now, and then they're going to sit down for a panel discussion
Everyone is sitting down...
Q from Toronto Sun: why is it important for intelligence in action movies?
JGL: "I want people to have fun, but I want them to leave with something to talk about. And Looper offers that"
Bruce: "It's a really great science fiction film, and it doesn't really compare to anything else I've done."
Q from moderator: Which actor did you talk to first?
A from director: "I met Joe years ago and wanted to work together. I wrote the part with him in mind. And then we cast Bruce in it, and I was thrilled he wanted to do it. He's a tremendous actor...and, well, he's Bruce Willis.
Q: The movie is so ambivlient about concept of time travel. Do you think sci-fi time travel movies get bogged down with the details?
Rian: It's easy to get lost in the science. But our model was much more like the first Terminator: time travel sets up the situation, and then the characters take over.
Q: If you could travel to any period in time, when would you go?
JGL: I'd like to see the future. I consider myself an optimist, as dire as things sometime seen, I believe we'll pull out, and I want to see what it looks like.
Q: What do you say about criticism of violence having an affect on kids (i.e. Columbine)
A from Rian: Looper is about violence, and there's a lot of violence in it. But in its bones, it's about the self-perpetuating loop that is created when you say, let's find a person and kill them. FIlms that can actually deal with violence and take a hard look at why violence exists -- it's essential to have movies and stories in our culture that address that. One of the things that film is realy good at is taking some of hte darker stuff we'd prefer not to look at and shining a mirror back on us.
Bruce: I think violence is one of the hard bad things that exist in the world, not just in films ... to pick one thing out and say "it shouldn't have violence in films" would be like taking any other emotion out of it. It's a very emotional film --- we never really said it was a science fiction film and we had to focus on science -- instead it's about focussing on emotion.
Q: what advice would you give your younger self?
Bruce: remind myself every couple minutes not to take myself so seriously. Not to take hardly anything seriously, because it goes so fast... all the things that I worried about, like, an hour ago, are now completely forgotton. You have to remind yourself that.
JGL: I would tell my younger self to relax a little bit.
Q from audience --- what younger self?
JGL: well, me about an hour ago....
Q: Was Joseph a good Bruce Willis?
JGL : I studied his movies, took the audio from some of his movies and listened on my iPod. Bruce also recorded some monologues and sent them to me. But the real learning came from hanging out with Bruce, having dinner, etc.
Bruce: seems impossible to act with someone who is supposed to be the younger you. At some point you have to let go and just believe that your'e in the story, that your'e part of the story. When I saw the film I was surprised that the magic trick we were trying to do works. It's so hard to look at someone else and say, yea, that's the younger me. You just have to believe it.
Q: Why did film move location from Paris to China (question from French press)
A from Rian: it was mostly budget, in the end it made more sense to shoot in Shanghai with a real backdrop vs. Paris with a greenscreen backdrop
Rian: the world of the film is near future, so it's a very grounded future, all the elements try to be very believable. It's also a world where the middle class has kind of gone away. For me that was a real driver of the story --- these characters are doing everything they can to hold on to their little piece of the pie.
Rian: In the second half, Looper takes a turn into Western territory. I always look for inspiration outside of the genre. There are plenty of Western aspects in that film, and the emotions are more in line with Western and horror films.
Q: What kind of efforts were made to appeal to both Western and Asian audiences?
A: I wouldn't say we tried to cater to east or west, but tried to tell a story. I hope Chinese audiences like it the same way American audiences like it
Q: If you could travel back in your own movie history and choose a special moment, what would it be?
Bruce: That's a good question... I don't know what the answer is. I don't know if I would go back in time. I would go back in time and make more mistakes then I've already made. I made a lot of mistakes early in my life, but if I'd made more, I would have gotten to the answer behind those mistakes earlier.
Bruce: I want to get away from the anxiety of making a mistake. There are things i did as a fresh kid when I wasn't paying any attention to whose feelings I hurt... you know what I'm saying. I want to not hurt people anymore.