Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, 'Mission: Blacklist' Director, Talks About Rob And The Movie

Transcript added - Video starts around 18:36 to 22:28 and then again at 24:00

You worked with Robert Pattinson? How was it to work with the star?
It seems at the same time that Rob Pattinson ... I was interested in Robert because the same, I think he has in real life, he has a great personality and that's why he's so famous today. That's why everybody likes him like this because he's so unique and I'm really interested working with this guy because... and I saw Cosmopolis for example, his last film, and I think he did a great performance, you know, he's amazing in the film, he's totally different as in real life, at the same time you believed his character. I mean he's amazing and the character he has to do in my film, in 'Mission Blacklist', it's a tough character, I mean it's not at all what we can imagine from Rob Pattinson, or what we know about this guy so it's gonna be really interesting I'm sure he's gonna be great because he's really intense and he has this ... I know that he is a great actor inside, I'm really excited in working with him on this film and we're gonna do the same, you know living in Iraq, doing some rehearsals and as it's based on a true story we're gonna work with Eric Maddox, who's the real person on which is based the story so it's gonna be interesting to mix work with as well Iraqi non (or known?) professional actors because the film is in Iraq, it () during the war, I want to, the same, you know, in being between fiction and documentary.

So you go on the lines, on the borderlines? You have no problem to go borderlines? You know to do, to shoot a movie in Iraq?
I think to do a good movie, to do a movie you need to take risks, if you know before anything, if you calculate everything ... we don't know how to do good movies so I think it's important to take risks, and try to find different ways of making films actually, not doing all the same, that's maybe a punk attitude as well but not doing as everybody's doing, same number of days of shooting, same coût?(cost in french), same kind of set, of (???). No, we have to try to change, it can be like doing a film with three people, something with like a 100 people in a coût?, whatever, I mean trying to imagine some different stuff, even different way of walking with the actors and different way of shooting the film, that's what really interest me. That's why I walked so long as an A.D (Assistant Director), as well as trying to (???). That's a French film but we can, it's not the same script so we have to find a way of doing the film differently, as any film, you know. Even on the way you shoot the film so going in Iraq for me it's really important because it's gonna be like so different shooting there as shooting in LA in a studio for example for the actors, I mean being there and understand how it was and meeting the Iraqis who are like unique and intense and great people and understand this culture and everything, I think it's part of the process.

at 23:55
It's alright to know some different worlds and different countries and meeting different people, for example on this film with Pattinson, you know I spent like 5 weeks in Iraq, living in Saddam Hussein palaces and when I was there I say 'wow'. I mean that's why I really love making movies, you know. How could I have been sleeping in Saddam Hussein's palace if I was not director, if I wasn't working on this film. I would have never been maybe to Iraq and it was great to be there and to understand the Iraqis and to meet the Iraqis.

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