I live a blessed life.
Last night, I went to screening of PHANTOM THREAD at a fancy house/mixing stage (where the film was actually mixed) in the Hollywood Hills, followed by a reception with PTA, Vicky Krieps, Dylan Tichenor (editor), Mark Bridges (costume designer), Daniel Lupi and JoAnne Sellar.
I talked to PTA for 20 minutes. And then I talked to Dylan Tichenor for around 45 mins.
I’ve been to several things with him there, but he was always surrounded by too many fanboys for me to have an actual conversation with him, so I never approached him. But this was the right mix of being a smaller crowd and while many people wanted to talk to him, I was probably the only super nerd there, and I had seen the movie 3 times, so I felt like I had things of substance to say.
He was incredibly nice to me. He was shocked that I had seen the film 3 times already. I thanked him for his films and told him how much they have meant to my development, and talked about XIXAX (which he is aware of) and said that I’ve made so many friends there who all have the common bond of having PTA be the central inspirational artistic figure that got us on this path of loving cinema the way we do. I said I have these friends from all over the world, including a small town in Northern Norway, thanks to his films. He said it warmed his heart to hear that.
We talked about a few things regarding the film. He talked a bit about working without a DP, and I asked him if there was anything he missed about working with Robert Elswit or Mihai Malaimare. He said that Robert was very good at staging things and would give Paul great suggestions to simplify shots. Here, he had his camera guys who he’s close with and they would just talk through that stuff in a similar way.
We talked a little bit about how the film went through 3 coloring processes (digital for the DCP, color timing for the 35mm, a separate round of color timing for the 70mm, which was also done for THE MASTER and INHERENT VICE). I asked him about how he adapts the film to the actual location and to the actors. The London house in the film is so central to the feeling of the film. Apparently it was going to be another house, which fell through at the last minute, but they found this house and it turned out to be better, with the amazing staircase. I don’t think he had to do much adapting with the actors. He obviously wrote it for Daniel Day-Lewis, but Vicky Krieps (who he just found with taped auditions) was not too far away from what he was imagining when writing. He doesn’t really rehearse, he said.
I said my goodbyes and we exchanged thank yous with good eye contact. I felt good about it.
Then I found my way toward Dylan Tichenor. That was a longer conversation about all sorts of things… as far as interesting nuggets about the film, he said that there was a lot that was cut out of it, just various story threads that took away from the main story. I think he said somewhere around 40 scenes were cut out. A very interesting nugget of info that is a spoiler, so I won’t detail it here, but basically a major story element that was invented in editing. Which is a common enough thing, and something that I’ve done myself as an editor. He said that Daniel Day-Lewis was very consistent as an actor, not really changing it up from take to take. Most of the actors were fairly consistent but the others had a little more room to try different things during takes, whereas DDL’s changes were fairly subtle. Then we talked about some general editing and movie stuff. This was not a one-on-one conversation, more a group conversation.
Anyway, um, I can die now I guess.
