Tom Hiddleston, Karen Gillan, Mike Flanagan "The Life of Chick" TIFF 2024

and it's happening right now if there's one thing that the great Stephen King's Nella taught me it's about how to hold on to those moments and how to meet them when they come um it is also my great honor it was a little more than a decade ago that for all intents and purposes my career took a major uh step forward here at tiff with oculus which played a good night d woo Karen Gillan and anelise basso were in that film as well and they're in the audience today along with my producer of that film Trevor Macy who's here and has in addition to producing this movie produced [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right um jel Ed please come on in [Applause] all right Taylor Gordon Matthew [Applause] lard Matthew I want to bring out our producer Trevor Macy who I see back here here and ladies and gentlemen Mr Tom all right wow what a cast uh thank asking um Tom about actual an extension of what you just spoke about what was their musical inspiration that you listened to to help find the character of chck you know I I I went back to the the great um in the way that I think that's Chuck went and you know you look at some of the old Fred and Ginger Rogers routines um Jean Kelly one of the greatest that ever do it um uh there just there was so many AV verions of those um songs um when we were practicing and rehearsing we play loads of different types of of music and and actually in the end my biggest inspiration was was Taylor who who was sitting conducting me by behind her drun kid and and we and I was dancing with her as much as I was dancing with Al we were all dancing together and it is extraordinary and braa what Taylor does in this and if you know your she switching between rhythms and styles it really truly does go from Jazz to swing to salsa to boson overa to PA in that one SE and you never missed a beat and it really was just about I just played that track over and over and over again I can't isolate any other pieces of music really that I can think of um um apart from some of that yeah some of the friend Jing just St um swing Time paret Queen we listen to that song Prim and especially at the end of the second act uh with you know and thinks uh that is why God made the world just that um at that moment I I felt like uh I felt like this story and I understood each other um I think and I hope you guys felt the same that uh this story that that Steve created um is without an ounce of cynicism and full of joy and hope while acknowledging all of the The Melancholy truth about our mortality it's all kind of there um so it was a story that I thought was was vital and true and and Incredibly moving and I felt very lucky to be a part of it um so Karen Mark and Analisa I believe you've all worked with I know you have all worked with Mike before can you tell them a little bit about what are some of his attributes as a director that make you and want to keep working with him and to be a part of everything he Visions the ability to see the light in the darkness and everyone who's here has seen his work he's able to respect and embrace darkness and also Embrace everything light and good and joy and joyful and this definitely has that part so that's why we work with him because he is that he's capable of great Darkness went through the stories that he tells but also great great kindness and [Music] [Applause] joy for me I mean I just love working with Mike so much he creates one of the most lovely welcoming safe atmosphere is ons set I think I've ever experienced and it sort ofes you you know because you're quite in a vulnerable position as an actor when you're trying things and failing and you know everyone's watching and but he he makes you feel so safe and that you can make mistakes you can try things and some things work some things don't um and I just really really appreciate that and yeah I hope I get to work with you more because I he was a director keep the energy going over those four days how do you plan out and do that sequence uh I can take no credit for keeping any energy going over those four days that came entirely from Taylor and Tom and Analise and from the crew I I think what we got excited about was we got to go through a a full history of dance in movies and we started very early in the 20s and 30s and began to go through dance sequences and see how they've been filmed over the years because we wanted to evolve and change our Styles as Taylor changed her Styles and as the dance evolved um and you know you have this amazing Revelation that for so long the camera plants itself kind of like an audience looking up at the dancers on the stage it just pans and then the whole new AIS is introduced as it starts to come in and out as it starts to track and then Bob FY shows up and all bets are off and the film making and the editing becomes a dancer and so we were tracking all of that and and got to go through this incredible education and got to fall in love with dance on screen again and and at the end of those 4 days I remember watching the very last take which I know we're running out of time of it's very fast I promise um it's like it's a very long scene and the actors had to do it from start to finish every time because if something silly went wrong or the a cloud covered the sun which meant we couldn't use it for continuity we couldn't stop because it would be just brutal to say okay stop wait a second and continue you know it wouldn't work that way so they would go from top to tail knowing sometimes that it wasn't going to work or missing a step or or just succumbing to the exhaustion of it and then something happened on day four which is after Tom had burned holes in the bottom of his shoes and anise had lost Aon uh two in there and we didn't know that she knew we'd stop so she was holding that secret and we ran one take from start to finish we had four shots left on our exhaustive shots to finish the scene we ran a tap that was perfect um from start to finish and the amazing thing was that they could feel it um you could see it in the performance that the the actress could feel it Taylor could feel it the background who had been watching this for 4 days and who looked genuinely delighted 4 days through cuz they were um everybody could feel it and I remember when we cut the take and I came out from where the video Village was and I remember Tom running uh up toward me say oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God did you see did you see and I like yes that that was perfect and I looked at the joy pouring out of him and out of Analise and out of Taylor and out of the faces of everyone surrounding us uh and I knew that we were done and that whatever other shots we hadn't quite picked up didn't matter um and that it was never going to be better than it was in that moment so we called a rap on scene I remember the crew in the background and everybody came together and hit like a 150 person group hug um and that take is a low angle that tracks uh with them kind of pointing at the drums uh you see it from the very beginning when Tom first backs up and we revisit that shot throughout the sequence it's the one shot we use more than any other um because it was a perfect take um and the question was about how I kept up the energy I had nothing to do with it I held on and I watched the monitor every day smiling and laughing and I went home every night with my face sore from smiling from watching them and then I saw something perfect and I knew it was time to quit and that's all I did [Music]