sleemo:

Chris Terrio’s interview with Birth.Movies.Death magazine about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Photos were sent to me by divermylove on Twitter. I’ve transcribed a portion of it:

Did you have real freedom to experiment?

I wasn’t sure if the whole process would be some exercise in corporate micromanagement, but I think it’s a testament to their faith in JJ that we were given enormous leeway to create our version of the galaxy. There was almost nothing on this film that you could dream of that couldn’t be done. You could have something that sounded like the most outrageous idea, and have one meeting with designers, and they would come back with concept art for it, and then suddenly they were building a set based on some crazy idea that you thought could never actually be realized.

So the only limit is your own imagination and creativity. If you can think it up, they can not only realize it in the costume and art and effects departments, they can realize it in a way that feels utterly real, and utterly STAR WARS-y.

That term, “STAR WARS-y,” is a controversial term, but that’s part of the fun of it. To figure out not only if it’s a good idea, but is it a STAR WARS-y good idea? And that doesn’t mean that it has to be slavishly devoted to the original trilogy. There’s sort of a feeling that you get when you talk about a place or a character or even a story point. It’s a balance between innovation and legacy, that you want to feel as though it’s the galaxy we’ve always known. But you also want to feel as though you’re seeing new parts of it.

Unlike writing for many films, you’re working with a cast that already knows and is very invested in their character. How does that affect the writing process?

We listen, always. People talk about this being the golden age of television, and I think one of the reasons is that the actors know their characters so well. When you’re writing with a specific actor in mind, you can really tailor the part, not only to the character as you have gotten to know them over the course of the series, but you can tailor it to the particular actor.

So, for this movie, we had the gift of knowing what Daisy Ridley’s close-ups feel like, or knowing Oscar Isaac’s sense of irony and John Boyega’s truth detector. John can make any line feel truthful. So we had the luxury of having these characters and the actors who play them to work with. We would constantly rewrite lines and jokes and character moves. Some were based on rehearsal, because we did have the luxury to rehearse a little bit, to read through some stuff in the process. Some was based on feedback from the actors.

One of the other things that the actors want—I think any actor wants—they want to see parts of the character that they don’t know yet. Even while they’re saying, “No, my character wouldn’t do this,” part of the nature of being an actor is wanting to explore new stuff. And so a lot of the time, maybe a scene would be written in a way that the actor wouldn’t think it would go, but they liked that about it. Especially when you have the actors that we do. When you put Adam Driver on set, you want to write a better scene. He’s such a smart actor, and he’s always going to do something that surprises you. He’s always going to do a line reading that you never would have expected. Adam, as far as I’m concerned, is like a mystic. He looks at a line and sees it 17 different ways and then can burrow under it and come back and give it to you like you’ve never heard it before.

Chris Terrio, co-sceneggiatore di L’ascesa di Skywalker:

Una delle altre cose che gli attori vogliono – penso che ogni attore voglia – è vedere parti del personaggio che non conoscono ancora. Anche mentre stanno dicendo: “No, il mio personaggio non lo farebbe”, parte della natura di essere un attore è voler esplorare nuove cose. Tante volte una scena, che sarebbe stata scritta in un modo in cui l’attore non pensava che sarebbe andata, alla fine a loro piaceva. Soprattutto quando hai gli attori che abbiamo noi. Quando metti Adam Driver sul set, tu vuoi scrivere una scena migliore. È un attore così intelligente e fa sempre qualcosa che ti sorprende. Legge una riga in un modo che non ti saresti mai aspettato. Adam, per quanto mi riguarda, è un mistico. Guarda una linea e la vede in 17 modi diversi, va in profondità e poi riemerge dandotela come se non l’avessi mai sentita prima.