Archive for 8/1/14 - 9/1/14

Directors fawn over him. Girls scream for him. But Robert Pattinson can do without the A-list treatment – at least judging by the shoot for his new film, The Rover, a post-apocalyptic thriller he is starring in alongside Guy Pearce.

Shot in the Australian desert, there were no 30ft trailers and no five-star catering. ‘I was quite content to live off bread and barbecue sauce for two and a half months,’ he says. No, this wasn’t a new form of wacky diet, Pattinson just didn’t want food poisoning.

‘There were so many flies there… and I just didn’t want to eat fly s***.’

Thankfully, R-Patz has lived to tell the tale. Today we meet in the rather more salubrious surroundings of a posh London hotel. Dressed in denim, with stubble sprouting across his chin, he’s come equipped with sunglasses and a baseball cap, the two essential tools for evading prying eyes.

'Clouds of Sils Maria' will have its North American premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival! :)

The festival runs from 4 to 14 September (the screening schedule is not yet available).

The 'Clouds of Sils Maria' page on TIFF.net

Having trudged down a lengthy, rubble-strewn path in the baking heat to the train station, it’s safe to say I was in the right frame of mind to talk about THE ROVER. Director David Michôd and stars Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson were in attendance at a thankfully opulent and stress-free location for a quick chat with the world’s press. Laid-back, often amusing and crucially surrounded by free water, they gave us an insight into the making of the most intense Australian road movie since MAD MAX.

(Our questions/interjections are marked ‘THN’)

Guy Pearce: What are you guys doing in here? (Laughter)

Robert Pattinson: (Putting his shades on the table) Can’t wait to get to a level where I can wear sunglasses…

Journalist: During the day?

RP: During press junkets. (Laughter)

David Michôd: If I ever have a film at Cannes again I’m gonna do that, you get the big photocall and they straight away tell you to…

GP: Take your glasses off.

The best thing about Robert Pattinson is how weird he is. If he weren’t acting, he’d be the one in the office grinning with half a mouth and going out of his way to avoid the water cooler. He’s friendly, but weird — with a laugh like Butt-head if he’d gone to a nice independent school in Barnes. We met in May at the Cannes film festival, once he’d finished his cigarette under a sky barely holding its rain. To call his clothes “grunge” would be a disservice to the thought that goes into grunge. It’s just messy: lumberjack shirt, T-shirt, trainers, white jeans. “I’m so hung-over,” he moans, as I turn the tape on. “I feel absolutely disgusting.”

It becomes clear after only a few minutes being in a room with them that the trio of Robert Pattinson, Guy Pearce, and David Michôd have formed an easy camaraderie with one another. Their film, The Rover, had its premiere months ago at Cannes, and they’ve been on a busy press circuit promoting the movie through various festivals and release dates worldwide. They recently stopped in London for the UK premiere of the film and Filmoria was lucky enough to have a seat at the table to discuss this newest project.

The Rover, is set in the near future following a severe economic collapse of the western world. Law and order are pretty well in disarray and in the middle of the Australian Outback is Eric (Guy Pearce) who just wants to get his car back, stolen by a band of thieves. While tracking the criminals, he runs into Rey (Robert Pattinson), the younger brother of one of the men who stole his car, and the only person who knows where they may have gone. They strike up an unlikely partnership in order to get Eric’s most prized possession back.

The chiselled Brit teen idol tells LWLies about his work on The Rover and his swift transformation into an actor who's always up for a challenge.

Robert Pattinson’s star power still burns across the globe but all he wants to do with it is make interesting art house movies. David Michôd’s The Rover fits that bill. Pattinson stars opposite Guy Pearce as a splash of humanity in a violent vision of post-apocalyptic Australia. We spoke to him at the Cannes Film Festival, where he also had David Cronenberg's Maps To the Stars on the docket.

LWLies: David Michôd has said that there’s a very angry man – aka him – at the heart of The Rover. What emotions did you draw from for it and what emotions do you think it conjures?
Pattinson: It definitely conjures a lot of dread and anxiety but it was the character I was reading from. Also the first thing I connected to was purely a stylistic thing. Clean writing and also having it so stark. It was so original, even the way it looked on the page.