Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you are here. On today's show we'll speak with Actor Michael Fassbender, who stars as a CIA operative in the new series The Agency. We'll continue our full bio conversation with Peter Ames Carlin, the author of The Name of This band Is R.E.M., a biography, and now onto our week in film. Yesterday we spoke with Lily-Rose Depp, and Robert Eggers about Nosferatu. Tomorrow we'll speak with Peter Sarsgaard about September 5, but today we begin the show with the extraordinary new film, The Brutalist.

[music]

Alison Stewart: All right, this is the only real spoiler I will give you from the acclaimed film The Brutalist, and it's from the opening you see the Statue of Liberty upside down in a frame. Slowly as the camera turns, it turns right side up and you realize this is how our protagonist, László Toth is introduced to our country. You see it from his point of view from the ship that he's been in. He is traveling, escaping, really from Budapest in the 1940s, hoping his wife will join him one day. He lands in Ellis Island with nothing except his cousin's address. László was a well-known architect trained at Bauhaus, but now he just wants a place to lay his head. When a wealthy man finds out László's backstory, he asks him to build a huge community building on a hillside in Pennsylvania. A gift to the community and a monument to himself.

[movie clip playing: The Brutalist]

Harrison Lee Van Buren: It is no coincidence that fate brought us together on the eve of my mother's death. I'm good at reading the signs.

László Tóth: Sir, I do not know what the Commission intends.

Harrison Lee Van Buren: We'll talk about the details at home, but you'll be well-compensated. Also, you'll be given a place here on the property to live and work. I think that residing here will allow you the time and the space to conceive of it properly, and your family, should they arrive, they're welcome here too. What do you say?

László Tóth: I would like to draw something and then present it to you.

Harrison Lee Van Buren: You'd like to win the Commission? [laughs] All right, you can do that. It's cold. Let's return inside. Come on.

Alison Stewart: The arc of The Brutalist follows László as he attempts to find his American dream without giving up important parts of himself. His pride, his family, his sense of self, and a country that tells him that his wife doesn't want him. The three-hour plus film has been earning extraordinary reviews. It won Best Picture and Best Actor at the New York Films Critics Award, and it's nominated for seven Golden Globes. It's set to open on December 20th, but New Yorkers can catch the film in 70mm on Thursday. I'll explain why you might want to do that in just a minute. Joining me now are its co-writer and director and New Yorker, Brady Corbet. Hi, Brady.

Brady Corbet: Hi, how are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing well. Thanks for joining us. In the role of László Toth, Academy Award winner and New Yorker, Adrien Brody. Hi, Adrien.

Adrien Brody: Hey, there. How are you doing?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing well. Brady, you were originally supposed to start shooting around 2020. There was COVID delays in shooting, there were many, many changes. What changed for this film in those two or three years?

Brady Corbet: Well, I think when my wife and I finished the draft, we suspected it might take a while, if I'm being perfectly honest. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Brady Corbet: Of course, no one could have anticipated the shutdowns due to COVID in 2020, but we knew that one way or another, it might take a while. I've always said that making a movie, it's a marriage, it's not a one-night stand. You have to choose material and themes that you're happy to live with for a decade or however long it takes. Look at Francis's film. Megalopolis has been in the works for 30 something years.

Alison Stewart: Adrien, this particular immigrant experience, a talented architect trying first to just survive and then build a life in America. What did the script for The Brutalist say about that experience that you hadn't seen in film before?

Adrien Brody: It's a really telling story, not only of the immigrant experience, but the journey for any artistic person and their pursuits, and the complexities of the American dream. All of this, it just spoke to me. I found this incredibly moving, and personal to me in many ways, obviously, but my mother's journey as a New York photographer and artist began when she and her parents emigrated to New York fleeing Hungary in the '50s during the Hungarian Revolution. All of it speaks to all of these things that I think are very relatable to many people in our country. I felt it was both very intimate and extremely grand. It's a several decades span of this journey of László's life that we experience, and to be transported through this one individual's journey into America is really profound.

Alison Stewart: We'll give Sylvia Plachy a shout out there.

[laughter]

Adrien Brody: Thanks.

Alison Stewart: Brady, after Ellis Island, the early part of the story takes place in Pennsylvania. Why Pennsylvania?

Brady Corbet: Oh, simply because many mid-century designers at the time were stationed all over the northeast, so it was just historically accurate. Guy's character was, at least, partially inspired by Barnes of the Barnes Foundation. That's why.

Alison Stewart: The film travels quite a bit. How many locations did you shoot in?

Brady Corbet: Oh, we shot all over the world, but the film was shot very quickly. It was shot in a total of 33 days, which, actually, normally on an independent film wouldhave been sufficient, but in this case, because the screenplay was about 170 pages long, it was a lot to pack in. We had skeleton crews in a much smaller footprint when we went to shoot in the marble quarries in Carrara, for example. Some of it was shot like a student film, and then there's other days when we had 250 people on set.

Alison Stewart: Adrien, it's a long film. A long film requires a lot of you. You're in nearly every scene and very emotional scenes. Even though it was only 33 days, how did you keep yourself engaged that long?

Adrien Brody: Oh, I have no problem with getting engaged with things that speak to me. I've been really yearning for a collaboration with a filmmaker like Brady for many, many years. Someone who has this tremendous capacity for understanding for so much that is going on in the world and so much history, and such a knowledge of film, and love of film. For me, it was a pleasure. There is just sheer physical exhaustion that we all endured because it was a Sisyphean task for all of us, especially for Brady. Just the enormity of, and complexity of the material to be told in such a finite amount of time with limited resources is really just an accomplishment in and of itself, but we were in the throes of it [laughs] through the whole time. It was quite immersive.

Alison Stewart: Brady there's this intermission and it's a time for us as the viewer to gather your thoughts, gather yourself, think about what you saw, and then you're ready for the next part. When did you realize this was going to be a long movie?

Brady Corbet: Well, the intermission was scripted and we only did two drafts. The first draft was already well over 150 pages, and then with the second draft, it grew a little bit. It was a big story. We always knew that it's been over 30 years in this character's life. I think that time, and the passage of time is a very important ingredient in the recipe because by the time the film comes to its conclusion, you've really lived a life with these characters. Look, I think we all know that we've all seen films that are 80 minutes long that feel like they're three and a half hours long, and so the-

[laughter]

Brady Corbet: -intention was not to make something which was durational. There's actually a lot of durational cinema that I really, really love, but the idea with this film was to make something quite propulsive. It's just a big story. For the intermission, I get so stressed out when I go to see long films and I don't want to step out to use a restroom because I don't want to miss anything, but it kind of makes the experience pretty uncomfortable. We had a solution for this 75 years ago, the intermission. I also think it's great for the communal moviegoing experience and I'd like to see it come back if a movie is over three hours long, especially.

Adrien Brody: You see how considerate he is?

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: We are discussing the film, The Brutalist, about an architect who emigrates to America and struggles to create a life. I'm speaking with Brady Corbet, who co-wrote and directed the film, and Adrien Brody, who plays László Toth. He is our protagonist. Adrien, as you develop the character of László, what does László hope for when he gets to the States?

Adrien Brody: Well, look, he's fleeing such oppression. László survives enduring the concentration camps. He's forcibly separated from his wife. He's an established architect, and really, everything has been stripped from him. It's really about beginning again. The hopes of finding peace and freedom of persecution, and to come to America and assimilate, and begin again and hopefully find opportunities to find creative fulfillment. They're all the yearnings of anyone fleeing hardship abroad. It's very similar to many people's stories if they're lucky enough to escape something as horrific as that time in history.

Alison Stewart: It's really interesting. Early on, he's with his cousin, and he realizes his cousin has changed his name, and he marries a Catholic girl. In that moment, why does László seem either confused or confounded by this?

Adrien Brody: Well, it is quite confounding. I think it's a complex thing to witness, and there's a degree of humor in it, too. I think it's a bit absurd to László. I think [clears throat] my feeling is that he doesn't quite understand or relate to the need or desire to assimilate in that capacity in a land like the United States where these freedoms are, or should be all right. I feel that he's reading, he's learning, he's just got his feet on the ground, and he's seeing what his cousin is doing and willing to do. I think it's a moment of contemplation and revelation, and it speaks to the circumstances for immigrants coming to America.

Alison Stewart: Adrien, your body changes a lot in the film. In the beginning, you're stooped a little bit, and then once he's in charge, once he's running a site, he strides when he walks, László. How did you decide how to carry yourself in the film?

Adrien Brody: Alison, I really appreciate that question. Sometimes there is a very intentional choice made, and sometimes it is invoked through material and connection emotionally to the journey. It's such a harrowing journey to imagine. It's so beautifully shot by Brady and Lol Crawley, our wonderful DP, and the way that the opening, the disorientation of the opening sequence is so visceral and telling of what that experience must be like and to come out of the depths and darkness of this. The hull of the ship and emerge into the light and witnessing the epic beauty of the Statue of Liberty, even if it's askew and all that symbolism, which is just all so beautiful. I feel like all of that leans into a state of being, for me, to exist in. Then as moments of, I guess the foundation is rebuilt, then you somehow can stand taller and more erect, and you will have a renewed sense of pride and strength.

Alison Stewart: Brady, Guy Pearce plays this wealthy man, Harrison Lee Van Buren, who sort of takes a shine to László, but it's more like, "I see, I have this fancy thing. I have this fancy architect in my world." What were your thoughts on creating Van Buren, and what qualities did you want him to have?

Brady Corbet: Well, of course, the entire film is about the dynamic between a patron and an artist and that tug of war between art and commerce, which anyone that's in a creative profession is accustomed to dealing with. We had extraordinary partners on this film that were really, really good to us. Of course, I've worked on projects with financiers that made my wife's life and my life very, very challenging. We wrote this screenplay as a sort of exorcism, a way for us to process a lot of our own trauma and frustrations with experiences that we've had in the past. The thing that's so fantastic about Guy Pearce, and he really understood this from the screenplay is that the character had to have real charisma. The character has real taste. He had to be interested in modernism for him to finance this project, which Adrien's character helms. It was important to us that even though he's very much an antagonist that feels very of the era, he belongs in the mid-century melodrama, that there's nuance and complexity and many, many, many shades of gray with him. Guy just understood that intuitively and really delivered on that.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a clip from The Brutalist. I'm going to describe it a little bit because we're radio. Van Buren has hired him to build this monument to himself. It's a community center as well. He's invited him to dinner, he's brought his wife who's made it over, and he is shocked, shocked to know that she's a woman with a brain. [chuckles] At the end of this clip, we'll hear him flip a coin in László's direction and he expects him to pick it up. This is from The Brutalist.

[movie clip playing: The Brutalist]

Harrison Lee Van Buren: Erzsébet? Pardon me, am I pronouncing that correctly?

Erzsébet Tóth: That's fine. Just fine. Feel free to call me Elizabeth if you prefer it.

Harrison Lee Van Buren: Your English is impressive.

Erzsébet Tóth: Thank you. I attended university in England.

Harrison Lee Van Buren: Oh, where?

Erzsébet Tóth: Oxford, to study English, and I returned home for communications.

Harrison Lee Van Buren: Did you do anything with that?

Erzsébet Tóth: Yes, I wrote for a popular national paper at home. [unintelligible 00:19:10]

Harrison Lee Van Buren: Oh, a journalist? Cultural.

Erzsébet Tóth: Foreign affairs.

Harrison Lee Van Buren: Well, perhaps you can help your husband sound less like he shines shoes for a wage.

Erzsébet Tóth: Haven't you told them anything about me?

Harrison Lee Van Buren: László, how long have you been here now? Four, five years, you have no excuse anymore.

László Tóth: [laughs]

Harrison Lee Van Buren: I'm sorry, I got a little carried away there. Will you please pass that back?

Alison Stewart: Adrien, what does László see as his options in that moment?

Adrien Brody: Well, this is a profound moment and statement, and as Brady alluded to [chuckles] some of the complexities of having a patron or benefactor that it lords over you, and there's a bit of psychological warfare that's at play here. I don't think he has many options, unfortunately, which is, he has to eat it and eat the many comments, and all that is not so subtly inferred in his gesture.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the film The Brutalist, about an architect who emigrates to America and struggles to create a life. I'm speaking with Brady Corbet, who co-wrote and directed the film, and Adrien Brody, who plays László Tóth. He's our protagonist. We've talked about it. I know you've talked about it. VistaVision, you used to shoot this film. All right, here's the definition I found and then I'm going to ask you to go for it. It says, "VistaVision is a high resolution, widescreen process that uses 35 millimeter film. Unlike most other types of filmmaking, the VistaVision camera processes involving turning the film stock on its side so that the perforations are at the top and the bottom of the image instead of on the left and right. This allows for an image space two times the size of traditional 35 millimeter." Did I get it right?

Brady Corbet: That's exactly right.

Alison Stewart: Okay.

[laughter]

Brady Corbet: You nailed it.

Alison Stewart: When did you decide to use VistaVision and where do you think we can see it in the film?

Brady Corbet: The camera was engineered in the 1950s and so it was a natural choice for a film that's predominantly set in the mid-century. I had always wanted to work on a large format, and it hadn't worked out for me until this project. It's such a beautiful format, and essentially what it does, especially for capturing architecture, is that it allows you to be physically close to a building or an object but because of its field of view is so immense, you can see from the ground to the sky even with a six or seven story building without any distortion. You relate to architecture and landscape and the human face differently than you do with a traditional 35 millimeter camera. Any film shot on celluloid, whether it's 8 millimeter, 16 millimeter, 35, 65, is a precious gift these days because there are fewer and fewer films that still shoot on celluloid. For me, it's really the best tool that we have, and it's important for us to protect it because it's very, very precious. I want to make sure that future generations always have that tool in the kit when they reach for it.

Alison Stewart: The movie is titled The Brutalist, a form of architecture, think like Chatham Towers downtown or the Fashion Institute of Technology in Chelsea. Adrien, what kind of research did you do into architects, and did you find a detail that you were able to use?

Adrien Brody: First of all, I have loved Brutalist architecture and some of the structures very much, and I always look out for them when I'm traveling abroad. It really speaks to the era, and of a resilience, and a need to rebuild and looking ahead. I think that it's informed so much great architecture beyond that style of work in particular. Unfortunately, this is an amalgamation of many characters because in Brady and Mona's research, there were no surviving Bauhaus era, Eastern Central European architects after the Nazi occupation. There were none who had endured that and made it to the United States. The ones who have left their mark, like Marcel Breuer, who did formerly the Whitney, but the Matt Breuer, but they left earlier. There were many architects like Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, et cetera, that we were able to incorporate elements of their work and personalities, but this is a fictional character out of necessity.

Alison Stewart: Adrien, if someone follows you on Instagram, you are always so grateful. You post these great videos. I've seen you on your own town doing it. [laughs] What makes you so grateful?

Adrien Brody: Oh, I am grateful. [laughs] Every day, I am kind of in awe of. First of all, the love that I have received from so many people as a result of my work, and this communion that I have with so many people, not just members of my community, and my city where I grew up and my neighborhood, but when I travel throughout the world, I encounter people every day who are somehow moved by something that I've shared. I strive to find meaningful work like this for that very reason so that [clears throat] in things that feel worthy of discussion and circumstances that I am fortunate enough to not have to endure should be recognized because others are enduring that, and should be represented, and we should all be conscious of that, and open to everyone with the same level of respect that we crave ourselves. I'm grateful because I do receive a lot of respect and love, and I have a great capacity to reciprocate.

Alison Stewart: The Brutalist opens nationwide on 12/20. I have been speaking with Adrien Brody and Brady Corbet. It was really nice speaking with both of you.

Adrien Brody: Oh, Alison, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. This was lovely.

Brady Corbet: Yes, thank you so much for doing this. Appreciate it.