Technically, we got four answers from Brady Corbet when we spoke earlier this month. We’re not complaining, though. They were very long answers. The celebrated “The Brutalist” director had a lot to say. A lot of insightful things to say. And frankly, that’s an improvement over some of his peers this awards season.
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Corbet, his co-writer Mona Fastvold, and his producers spent years trying to get “The Brutalist” off the ground. At one point, an entirely different cast was going to star in the picture. Production was intended to begin numerous times but was delayed for a variety of unforeseen reasons. Other filmmakers might have given up. For Corbet, it’s part of the profession. And as he notes with a smile, “I don’t know how to do anything else. I really don’t.”
“I grew up on film sets. I’ve been on film sets since I was seven years old. I’m 36. I’ve been in the movie business for 29 years,” Corbet says. “And so there was never a before. There was only after. And I think that I do it because I have to do it, and I do it because I have to do it to survive.”
Corbet adds, “It is a real job. And I think that it’s a job that I feel privileged to do when I’m doing it.”
In our interview earlier this month, Corbet discusses the long road to getting the movie made (never send your pitch deck out at the beginning of a global pandemic), how he took feedback from friends and family screenings, that complaints about the movie’s length are somewhat unfounded, the scenes he spent a lot of time considering in the editing room, and much more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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I know that you spent at least eight years working on this project. You’ve had so many ups and downs with it. What made you persevere? What made you not just stop and say, “O.K., I’m just going to push it to the side and work on something else“?
I’m very obsessive and extremely stubborn. I think that I always try when conceiving of a project to choose thematic material that I will still be consumed by and compelled by in five to 10 years or however long it might take to bring something to life. I mean, I was very aware that this might be very difficult. In fact, in the beginning of the process, it seemed to be coming together a little bit too easily. We assembled a cast relatively quickly, and everything was going smoothly. And then, we took the project to the marketplace the week that COVID shut down New York City. And the problem with that was that when taking a project to the market, you never want to expose a project and then put the jack back in the box for a variety of reasons. So I remember calling everyone and saying, “Oh my God, did we already send the package out? Has everybody already received the top sheet?” Unfortunately, it was too late, and nobody was making anything at that time, much less a project like this. And the problem when a project kind of sits around for several years is that it kind of loses its luster a little bit, and so much of, for better or for worse, it is a real process of seduction to raise money for these projects. And it’s never been a more difficult time to make a movie release a movie.
And so, of course, I was concerned about a lot of things at that time. I mean, first and foremost, beyond the film industry, my main concern was the lives that were being lost at that time. So I truly don’t mean to speak about them as if it’s at all equivalent, but for a couple of years, I mean, for most people, we were also all losing our ability to work and, therefore, our livelihoods. And it was a very uncertain time. It sort of felt like, as a result of streaming and the way that the business has changed, it was very uncertain about in regards to movie theater closures and all of these things. So that was frightening, anyhow. But then, on top of it, I knew that the next project was a very, very capital “T” theatrical experience. Of course, I had days where it seemed very unlikely that the film would ever get made. And the reality is that I’m so stubborn that I’m not sure that I would’ve made anything else in the meantime. And I can’t really move on from something until I finish the job. And every movie I’ve ever made has fallen apart for one reason or another at least three times. I mean, I’ve gone into pre-production on all of my films multiple times before being shut down. So when I get to the production office, I never assume that things are going to work out because I’ve had the plug pulled on a project seven days before I was meant to begin shooting, and I managed to pull that back together as well on the last movie. But it’s exhausting, and it’s extremely stressful. A hard job.
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It is a hard job. And listen, you shot this movie two years ago. It goes to Venice, you had international distribution, but you didn’t have U.S. distribution. At what point in this process have you been able to just breathe a sigh of relief?
I think that I was able to breathe a sigh of relief as soon as we had a plan for distribution. Because, as you can imagine, I had a lot of folks in the year or two of post-production leading up to it that were like, this film is un-distributable at three hours and 35 minutes. It’s impossible. And I was a bit confused by it. I was like, “A movie came out last year that was three hours long, and it made a billion.” And I was like, “Our metrics are very different because our film is not a hundred-million-dollar movie. It’s a 10 million movie.” So I was like, “It’d be one thing if it was durational cinema,” and there’s a lot of durational cinema that I really love. But for me, this film is not durational cinema. This film is very propulsive, and at least the first half of the film is very, very classical. I just sort of remained very stubborn on the issue and also pretty clear about it. I screened the film for about 150 people throughout the editorial process. And sometimes, for very big rooms, I like to do rough-cut screenings for 40 people. And I don’t want anyone’s notes. I don’t want you to write anything down. I just want to sit in the room with you and watch it. And we can talk about it afterward. But for me, what I really get out of that experience is I can feel when the film is working or when the film is not working. And unless there’s something that’s designed to be something that’s abrasive or designed to alienate a viewer for a reason, then I can feel when people are detaching from the experience. So, I learn a lot from it, just from reading the room.
I kind of knew that the film worked for most audiences, and that sort of gave me the boost that I needed to continue and finish the film absolutely as it was conceived. The other thing is that the screenplay is extremely, extremely precise. If you pull one thread, then a million other things are affected or simply just cease to make sense. And for example, I know the suggestion that Joe Alvin’s character has made a pass at Jfi. I had some early audiences saying, “Well, that doesn’t really pay off.” And I said, “Well, of course, it pays off because at the end of the film, when he responds the way that he responds to this news about his father, of course, there is an assumption that something has to have happened to him as well and that there is this cycle of abuse and generational trauma, which the movie is about.” And so if I were forced to defend every single second of the film, and certainly every scene, that was a pretty easy thing for me to do. And I’m quite accustomed to being obliged to defend projects because the projects are very, very radical. I mean, this film on paper is too long. The last film that I made didn’t have a second act. I mean, a second act was completely omitted quite intentionally. But the number of people that I remember when they read it were like, “I think we’re missing something.”
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You’re screening this film for multiple audiences. Was there one scene in particular that you saw the reaction to that you thought, “Yes, this is what I needed. This is the reassurance”?
I think in that process, you’re mostly really looking for things that are not working. And so it’s something in the flow of the experience. There were certain scenes that I recut over and over and over again. Guy’s monologue at the Christmas party was something that I was really working on for a long time because it was important to me that I had this very hypnotic quality that was sort of a combination of editorial, sound design, and score. And so until I sort of had all those pieces in place, it was very difficult for me because, for example, when you’re dealing with a lot of dialogue, and this film has an extraordinary amount of text, and I mean, it’s very novelistic in that way. What’s difficult about that is that a monologue only works sort of for the first time or the second time that you discover it. And so it’s very difficult for me to gauge in a way after I’ve watched the same monologue a hundred times or 200 times whether or not it’s having the desired effect. Whereas when you have a sequence that’s more visceral like Adrien arriving on the deck to the Statue of Liberty, the visceral stuff, you just [know because it’s a] more musical sort of experience. And so we worked on the sound for that one sequence for literally weeks. And so that was, it’s not, that was easy, but it was very clear to me when it was working. Whereas when you’re working with a lot of text, it can sometimes be a process of trial and error. You’ll do something where you take out a little too much air from the scene, and suddenly, it feels a little bit rushed and a bit difficult actually for viewers to process all the information. So that’s something that I often realize is I’ve gone too far with the economy of trying to really rushing it and that somehow it can be more public-facing to give viewers 20 or 30 seconds of breath to really latch on to what it is that a character is saying.
You committed eight years of your life to making this film. You’ve had films you just talked about that have gone in and out of pre-production. What about being a filmmaker do you love? What is the joy you get from going through all this difficulty?
I don’t know how to do anything else. I really don’t. I grew up on film sets. I’ve been on film sets since I was seven years old. I’m 36. I’ve been in the movie business for 29 years. And so there was never a before. There was only after. And I think that I do it because I have to do it, and I do it because I have to do it to survive. I do it for spiritual reasons. I feel if I haven’t been shooting in a long time, I get quite anxious. And I still try to work on small projects. I really like shooting short-form stuff, and I really like shooting. But I think that it’s normal. It’s so difficult. It is a real job. And I think that it’s a job that I feel privileged to do when I’m doing it. But folks have to remember that you’re only really getting to do your job for 24 to 30 days every five to six years. So, it’s like when you think of it that way, they are only getting to do what you love that infrequently. That’s really tough. And yet, on the flip side of that, of course, I know that there are filmmakers, the Woody Allens, and the filmmakers that turn out a lot of stuff are very prolific. But that’s just not the way that I work. I need time to go back to the well. I need time to reflect on what the next project is really about. I don’t want to just make stuff. I don’t think of the movies as being individual offerings. For me, it’s a body of work. And so it’s a really big canvas, and I’m not done yet, but I really need time to reflect on what I’ll focus on next. I’m a bit slow, I suppose, but I don’t know how to be any other way.
I don’t think you’re slow. I think you’re just passionate about what you’re making but I do hope you get a chance to just take a vacation and chill and have fun.
Yeah, I appreciate it. I think I’ll get to do that in March or April.
“The Brutalist” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles.
