CHRIS NEUMER: There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there, it’s just exciting and vibrant, and bold, and it seems pretty synonymous with the way you go about things. It’s a different color scheme, and a different style of shooting, and I was like, "Wow." You like to see that, you can get the master shot, something between A and B, but when you get something like this where things are tilted and there are bright colors… I remember early on, it might have been the first or second scene where Rachel and Ralph were talking, and they walk out into the white and the screen fades away, did you just open up the shutters, something like that, and it was like, "Wow!"

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: And I wondered, "Wow, why don’t we see this more often?" So how did you go about preparing for the atmosphere, or thinking about the atmosphere of the film?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: I work really close with César Charlone, we’ve done City of God together, and we’ve done hundreds of other works together. When we were traveling around Africa to find locations, that’s when we started thinking of ideas. But anyway, on the set, our process of shooting on the set, it’s a bit different from the usual process. Usually the director has to set the camera, and then bring the lights, and then they bring the actors and the actors perform for that specific camera position. Then you break the scene, change the camera, do different light, bring the actors back in and do it again, and that’s the way it’s done. And with Charlone, he only changes bulbs; he doesn’t change equipment on the set.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, there was a couple —

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yes, sometimes you have to, but in most parts of the scenes he doesn’t use any equipment. So the set was just like this, and the actors come, and what we do, we ask the actors to do the whole scene, all the way from the top to the end. Just do the scene, forget about the camera. And each time the camera will be in a different position. So it’s very quick, you just walk around and try to capture the feel, like a documentary, you know? So the actors, they’re not performing for a specific camera position, just doing their performance with the cameras there, like in a documentary.

CHRIS NEUMER: Do you find that getting actors into that mindset is hard? Like, for the first couple of days, you know?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: I tell them that we’re going to do different ways, that I wasn’t going to break scenes, and I wasn’t very interested in keeping all the lines from the script. I always ask them to improvise, and instead of saying "Cut!" to a scene, I’ll say "Keep going, keep going!"

CHRIS NEUMER: More freedom.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah. Because when you allow them to bring new lines, there’s an impressionism that you can’t get in writing lines, and a freedom for them. I think they really liked it, especially Rachel. I’ve heard her doing interviews, and she’s always saying she felt very free. You know, actors, they have to pretend that they’re not seeing the crew, and they’re not seeing equipment. It’s hard to stay focused on the line and be your character at the same time.

CHRIS NEUMER: I also know there were times when you shot with a skeleton crew, you and five guys, something like that. And I thought, wow, who knew you could do that.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah, all the scenes in places, like the scene in the market, or the play; you know, with the crowds watching the play?

CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, yeah.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: All these were shot with a very small crew, like five or six people. The thing is that, if you bring a lot of equipment and a lot of crew, whatever is happening won’t happen anymore. Everyone will stop to watch, and you can’t capture the light, because everyone moves. When you do it on the small scale, you can shoot, and with a big crowd around, nobody really knows that a film is being shot.

CHRIS NEUMER: What type of camera were you using for that?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: A very small camera, called A-Minima, from Aaton. You should see this camera, it’s really small.

CHRIS NEUMER: Digital or film?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Film. 16mm.

CHRIS NEUMER: Oh, ok.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: We used some that were 35, and some that were 16. But it’s still good, especially in this type of situation. When you go in with a really small crew, you can get a real set, real people, nobody really knows that you’re shooting a film, so you capture this. I don’t really know why, but when you bring extras and you recreate all this, you don’t the same level of reality.

CHRIS NEUMER: So was the play just going on and you had them shoot it?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: No, we put that play there, we recreated it, and we brought the stage in and the actors. But they performed for the crowd. We just told the crowds, everyone in that slum, that there was a play going on and they could come and they could watch, so a lot of people came. They weren’t extras; we didn’t pay anyone in the audience to watch the play.

CHRIS NEUMER: Well, it seems like that would also speed things up for you.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Much less expensive.

CHRIS NEUMER: If you don’t have to pay the Union guys to move all the lights, that seems a lot better off for you.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah. Not only the crew, but if you put lights, then you have to pay all the audience because everyone would be extras. It’s a totally different approach. So all our big scenes, like in the market, there’s a scene with Ralph and he’s walking through the market asking for Quelco, and it’s a big market.

CHRIS NEUMER: And he ends up being in line.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: And then he’s arrested. Before he gets arrested, that sequence, it was just him and this small crew. So Ralph was really asking and talking to people, and they were answering him, "Quelco, no I really don’t know." They were really answering.

CHRIS NEUMER: But they knew they were being filmed, right?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Some of them would like around, and they would see the camera, so they would stop. Other people really didn’t see the camera. So it was real people answering real questions.

CHRIS NEUMER: Probably not recognizing Ralph.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: No, nobody knew who Ralph was; he was a totally anonymous guy. They don’t watch films there.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah, probably a safe bet right there. You had mentioned how you were talking with your DP about location scouting. And it seems like, I remember a train, train tracks going through the slum. And I was wondering, did they specifically scout out something where they needed to find a train track going through the slum, or was it going the other way?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: The other way. We had gone into the slum, we saw the train, and we thought wow, let’s use it. Oh, it happens all the time. There’s a shot in the film that I really like, it has a lot to do with my feeling of that country. The shot with the two guys in the golf course, and then the camera turns and you’re inside the slum. The camera just moves, and this again, we were walking in front of this railroad track, and there was this wall. Inside this wall was this beautiful golf course, it was like Hyde Park. Beautiful green gardens, very British. And it seemed like you were really in Hyde Park in Britain, and then you turn. That specific point was very intimate, that scene that happens while they’re playing golf. That scene was inside this bar, in this club in Nairobi [In the book]. We had to bring that dialogue to a golf course, just to use that shot, because it was so amazing. So of course, when you go to locations you change scenes so you can use what you have.

CHRIS NEUMER: You know, I was reading some of the interviews you had done, and in one you had mentioned a number of times that you weren’t going to do any American projects or Hollywood projects. I was going to ask you what had changed, and then it dawned on me as I was sitting downstairs that you probably don’t consider this a Hollywood production.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: No, I don’t. But, I mean, what I said I wouldn’t do, just not now, not in the next two or three years, but maybe in the future. But it’s true, when Simon invited me there was no studio attached, it was just a British independent production company, a small British independent company that produces Mike Leigh’s films. Very small, and I think this is his biggest film. So it’s true, but then something changed with British law, and he lost the money he was expected to get.

CHRIS NEUMER: From this film?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah, from this film. He lost like 40 percent of his financing from the film commission, the film council. That’s when he offered the film to Focus, and then Focus came onboard. And to be honest, at that point I was already looking for location, and then when Focus came onboard, I thought, "Well, now the Americans are going to try to tell me what to do." And then the people from Focus went to London and it was the opposite expectation. They were so easy to deal with, so respectful, really interested in the project, and of course they sent notes about the script, notes and cuts. But also with the last remark, "This is your film, and we’re only trying to suggest, we’re only trying to help, but it’s your call." I’ve always heard about how hard studios can be, and I totally understand. When you invest eighty million in a project, you have to guarantee your money is coming back. With Focus, maybe because this was a lower budget, less than five million, or maybe because they’re really nice people. My next project I’m working on, they’ll be the first American distributor that I look for, they were so good to work with.

CHRIS NEUMER: I would assume when you talk about not working for Hollywood, you’re talking about that 80 million dollar film, then? Something like a small-budget?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah, yeah. But you know, at some point I think I will try an 80 million dollar film. I’ve been invited to do a couple of those films, but I’m not prepared. At some point, probably in eight years, I might try, but definitely doing a career in Hollywood, or moving there, is definitely not my [plan].

CHRIS NEUMER: Nobody wants to move to LA.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: I love LA, but —

CHRIS NEUMER: You love to visit LA, right? But I can’t imagine living there.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Really? I like the city very much, pretty relaxed people. But it’s not my culture; I think I have nothing to add to, I mean, a film about American culture.

CHRIS NEUMER: That actually doesn’t stop most people from doing it.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: I think I could do more interesting films, and keep my distant point of view.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yes.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: See stories from Brazil from a different perspective. Seeing things from a different perspective, there are really already so many great directors doing it, that I think I have nothing to add.

CHRIS NEUMER: You say that, but as you were talking I was thinking and trying to figure it out; your style and your sensibility and applying it to Reese Witherspoon’s next romantic comedy. And I thought, "How would this be an interesting film experiment?" You, and your skeleton crew, and the same methodology that you used on City of God and the Constant Gardener, except applying it to a film like Sweet Home Alabama, or something. It’s just the cheesiest, most formulaic romantic comedy, and I was just thinking, "I wonder if he could make it work?"

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah, well, it would be a challenge, but everything I read, of course, I read lots of scripts that I was sent, and I really didn’t know how to make those stories interesting, you know? There was one script that I had, that I thought about and almost did, and then I stepped back. I really liked it, and I thought it was a comedy when I read it. Have you seen, or read After Hours?

CHRIS NEUMER: Yes, a while ago.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: It’s a comedy, a dramatic comedy, and when I read Collateral, that was my reference. Then I went to LA and talked to Dream Works, and I thought, yeah. But then I decided that I wanted to go back to Brazil, for personal reasons, and also because I was working on the same script that I’d been working on. So I decided not to do Collateral. Then I saw the film that was done, and it was such a surprise. He really believed in the story, such an amazing story and Michael Mann did it in a wonderful way, but such a different approach. He really believes that the guy is really bad. When I read it, it was funny.

CHRIS NEUMER: Yeah. He definitely played up the use of the vocations, too. The one I remember in particular is, I think Jaime Foxx is standing above a parking garage, it’s a low angle looking up at the building, and you see one light out up here, at like floor 18, and then you see Tom Cruise’s character look around in a different office, on like floor 16. And it just lined up perfectly. That kind of stuff interests me, and apparently you to a degree.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: Now let me ask you this. I haven’t read the book The Constant Gardener, or, I should say the book that this was based upon, but I found it interesting that this is one of those films where, you know one of the main characters from the first three minutes on is dead, you know that Tessa is dead. Was there any sense that you should tell this story chronologically?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah, our first draft was chronological. And I called Claire Simpson to edit the film, because she’s a writer as well. She had edited films for a long time.

CHRIS NEUMER: What do you look for in an editor when you bring them on? Is there something Claire had that you liked?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Well, I liked some of the films that she’d done, like Platoon, or Oliver Stone’s and Ridley Scott’s [films]. She’d worked with some directors that I liked. Especially because she was a writer, and it never came to a final script during the process, it was very quick. After I’d read the script for the first time - I read it in mid-November - and by the beginning of January, like 48 days later, I was in Africa doing the scout location. So I tried to change the script, and change a lot of things in the script, but I never came to a final version and was like, "Well, this is it." I was always trying to find actors, then starting to shoot, with few changes in the script. So that’s why I called Claire, because in the end I would need someone to change the order of it. So we first edited, and it was very boring, really didn’t work. Then we tried five or six different ways to begin the film, and in the end we were really lost. Then I read the book again, and in the book Tessa dies on the first page. So we tried to open the film with her death and everything came to the right place, it was really amazing. Most of the work was really done in the cutting room. It’s much easier, better, cheaper and reasonable to find the film on paper, of course, but I just didn’t have time.

CHRIS NEUMER: This seems like a close second, though. You didn’t have to go back and do another two weeks of re-shoots, or anything like that.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: No. But I shot the sequence in Manitoba, in Winnipeg, but I cut it in the end, took it out of the film; it’s such a waste of money and time —

CHRIS NEUMER: You actually shot this on three cameras?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah. The sequence we shot in Winnipeg was just at the factory where they were producing the dyproxins, so we talked to the scientists who had invented dyproxins. It was a very thrill-like sequence. They were chased in the snow, shot at, and just barely escaped, and the scientist was killed because she had a confidentiality agreement and she was talking to these guys, very thriller-like.

CHRIS NEUMER: So we’ll see that on the DVD?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah.

CHRIS NEUMER: But there was never a fear? Are you familiar with Carlito’s Way, with Al Pacino? He’s dead at the very opening sequence, and I think Human Stain was another one that had something like this. It seems like it raises the degree of difficulty for a filmmaker, because you know that one of the lead characters is already dead. How do you create warmth, and how do you care about a character whose fate they already know? This was one of the things I particularly enjoyed about the film, I still cared. I thought, wow, how is he doing this? But did you ever worry that the audience would be like, wow, she’s dead?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: This was the challenge, but actually we tried and it worked, and that’s the truth. And I think that it became much more interesting with the linear order, because it was like two films. In the beginning we would start in the lecture hall with Justin meeting Tessa, and go to bed, and 45 minutes later she would die. Then the feeling was that there was second story coming in. Justin starts to try to find out, and that’s why it was so boring, because you invested all of your energy in this person, Tessa, in the first 40 minutes, and then she dies. Then something else will start again for about 50 minutes — two stories. So putting her death in the beginning, it’s all the same story, you know what will change. But the hard thing for me, something I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to do, was keeping the interest in Tessa. Because she’s in just a few scenes in the beginning, but the film’s about her the whole time, even though you don’t see her. Also because I wanted the audience to dislike her in the beginning, I wanted her to be bitchy. She had crossed the line, she wasn’t a hero. I didn’t want the audience to feel love for her immediately, so during Justin’s journey, like Justin, you start to understand her, and at the end you really like her. There’s an arc for this character, because we’ve all seen her, and it was quite difficult to change, to evolve this character on-screen. But this happens.

CHRIS NEUMER: I liked it when she went off on the whole Iraq war thing —

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: You liked her? The whole intellectual thing, you really liked her?

CHRIS NEUMER: She was a little strident, but I was like, ok, I can see that point. If she’d been talking about how much she liked George Bush and what a great President he was, then I would’ve been like, ok, now I hate her, now we have to talk. But no, like you said, you’re right, she’s standoffish, there’s a little bit of distance there. Now, you did shoot a lot of this down in Kenya, were there any lessons that you learned? Things you didn’t expect to come up while shooting there?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: For me it was quite easy because I was just the director. Usually I produce what I do, and it’s much more complicated —

CHRIS NEUMER: And Simon helped out a lot.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah, I found out that it’s very easy to just direct. Your life is much easier. But anyways, when we shot that sequence with the razors, it was supposed to be a Sudanese village, we shot that in North Guyana, actually, a place where there’s no structure at all. So we had to fly all the crew, food, everything to the place, and there were no hotels, no lodge, nothing. So we set camp with 250 tents in the desert. So during the day, everyone tried to avoid standing where the sun was hitting, and during the night the wind was like here in Chicago, very strong wind.

CHRIS NEUMER: How big were the tents, just little tents?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Ten feet, two beds. Two beds and a little shower behind it; not really a shower, you pull a little hose and you get cold water.

CHRIS NEUMER: Wow. So everybody was in these tents? The actors, supporting actors, extras, crew?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: There was a lodge they supplied us, with 12 rooms, and then this camp. So those rooms, the actors stayed in those rooms, and all the rest of the crew stayed in the tents. I was in the tent in another place. Where we shot the last sequence when he dies, it’s a beautiful place where he walks. That place, it wasn’t a tent; it was a much smaller camp, only 45 tents. But the other one was much hotter, because there were 250 tents, almost 500 people, and you had to fly food, paper, and horses.

CHRIS NEUMER: Now, with the extra money you had, 25 million, I know for Jerry Bruckheimer that would be nothing, but for someone who’s not used to dealing with that kind of money, it must’ve been like, wow!

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah, it was like a fortune, and I was always complaining about how they were spending money for nothing.

CHRIS NEUMER: Like for example, on what? Was there any particular thing that you were like, how can you buy this?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: One day when we were planning this sequence with the raiders, we went to this place. The first time, we were driving around and I’d seen a couple of camels, like three or four camels near the area. So when we were planning, I said we should have some camels walking. Then one week later the producer presented me with this guy who had photos of his camels, he had a farm and raised camels in Somalia, and will fly camels from Somalia. I said, hey, what are you doing? She said, you asked for camels, I thought we could bring them from Somalia. What?! It was crazy, and it was very scary to me; whatever you ask for, you have it. You have to be careful what you wish for. That was my feeling anyway. Just mention it, and there it is.

CHRIS NEUMER: Just wait until you do that 80 million dollar movie.

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: I really don’t see that it would be 80 million dollars, because they’d have to pay the actors, half of this goes to paying them. But it’s funny; I thought it was hard to spend 25 million.

CHRIS NEUMER: Working with Simon as your producer, does his knowledge and talent on production on smaller scale projects, did that in any way assist you, outside of just freeing up your time?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: Yeah. He had with him another producer called Tracey Seaward who was really in charge. Simon was dealing with more of the political things.

CHRIS NEUMER: With Kenya or with Focus?

FERNANDO MEIRELLES: With Kenya and with Focus. In Kenya he was dealing with permits for us to fly around, but the everyday work was really crazy. But [Henning] Molfenter really knew how to handle everything that was there, I’ve never seen anything like that in my country, it was really amazing. I’m very used to working with limits, because you don’t have much money, so you have to do thing fast. So you plan your film, and the way you’re going to shoot, and everything is much faster, there’s quite a difference. It was great; it’s really a lovely experience, to be rich. I am actually rich, for the first time.

CHRIS NEUMER: It’s nice when it happens.