Timothée Chalamet & Taylor Russell Break Down a Scene from 'Bones and All' with Luca Guadagnino

Hi, it's Luca Guadagnino.

Hi, I'm Timothée Chalamet.

I'm Taylor Russell.

And this is Notes on a Scene.

[music playing over speakers] [crowd chattering]

[cash register beeping]

We are going to see the moment in which Maren,

played by you,

meets for the first time Lee, played by you.

Maren has left home in search of her mother

and she needs stuff that she can't buy.

So she's getting into this, into this store to shoplift.

I remember when we shot this sequence, we...

to cover an empty warehouse that had these great windows

that could see the America outside.

And then Elliott Hostetter,

our wonderful production designer,

and Merissa Lombardo, the amazing set decorator,

and Matt Marks and Mike Drury, the props masters,

they basically created this thing.

It's all original pieces from the eighties,

merchandise that doesn't exist anymore,

that gave all the real beautiful texture.

But I also think that we should talk about

the way Maren and Lee look in this.

[music playing over speakers] [crowd chattering]

Maren is shoplifting.

[Taylor] The jacket I'm wearing there,

it's kind of this protective layer.

It's her dad's jacket.

If I may. [laughs]

Be my guest. [chuckles] All right.

[Thimothée] But I love Taylor's expression here,

because, as audience members will find out

when they see the movie,

there's a sort of smell that eaters can have for each other

but equal to the sort of instinctual attraction

they have for each other,

I feel like it's simply Taylor's expression here.

There's the curiosity and openness to

finding self in the other that is so true of young love.

And in this scene, I think I was shoplifting tampons.

Yeah.

[chuckles] You know, you see the big backpack,

the fringe that Luca had so vividly in his mind

when we started.

The fringe that Maren wears...

Yeah.

Comes directly from Jonathan Demme, Silence of the Lambs.

And it's come from a small character in the movie

which is the best friend of Frederica Bimmel

that Clarice Starling, played by Jodi Foster,

interviews in order to find clues

about the cave she's going after.

And this was this beautiful high fringe

and Massimo and Fernanda,

the makeup artist and hair designer of the movie, and I,

we had this image in our mind since then.

So we said that this is a time to play.

Chop. Yes.

And you made that, chopped this,

and what about your look?

We liked this idea with Lee that he sort of had

forged his clothing and his look from people

that he had met along his travels.

Whether it was people that were his prey,

for lack of a better expression,

or people that simply had forged around in their homes.

So his wardrobe is sort of genderless

and is a little bit all over the place.

And what he's wearing today could be gone tomorrow.

And this hair color here, Luca and I struggled with

for quite a bit because we were going in a sort

of a lighter direction for a while

and a sort of a more expressionistic thing.

And then when we doing research

with the hair designer Massimo

we realized that in the late 1980s

a lot of hair colors weren't available.

So we actually found a hair product

from the late eighties that was still usable.

We sculpted it with the cut.

Yeah, sure, we did a camera test

in upstate New York about a month before the movie started.

I like this idea very much that on the outskirts of society,

you could think a young person, a young cannibal

would be outside any sort of social system

and not be looking in the mirror per se, to the opposite.

I think Luca and I both thought that Lee,

because he starved of social contact,

would actually be

desperate for identity

and expressing himself and trying to find himself

in the gaze of another person.

What is the beautiful about this, in this sequence,

is how, by simple juxtaposition of you and,

and you,

looking at each other across the camera,

it is the most powerful moment

and it's the most beautiful effect.

We don't need much,

we need just two great actors doing that.

It's beautiful.

[music playing over speakers] [cash register beeping]

[crowd chattering] [objects clinking]

[Woman] Excuse me.

[Barry] Oh, you're trying to run me down?

[Luca] In your expression here,

you can see how you are very absolutely...

understanding that this guy is trouble

and that this guy, in a way, represents anything

that your character is running away from.

[Taylor] There's a lot of older men in this movie

that I feel that Maren's always, kind of,

I don't know, assessing or reflecting her journey off of,

this is another example of that

and also of Lee in this. [laughs]

[Luca] Yeah, there is a line,

[Taylor] I mean it's between... - [Taylor] Yeah

[Luca] the two of you two against him,

which this is the movie.

The movie is about these two young

beautiful lovers who, no matter what their real problem,

they have within their own nature,

they're still having to fight a lot of challenges

and win over in order to achieve the impossible.

[Barry] Here it is, you dumb ho!

Hey, don't talk to her like that.

Hey, you're in control, buddy.

[Taylor] This is the first example you see

and that she's seen of somebody in her life

who has stuck up for her,

who have been on her side.

So it's indicative of the relationship

in the rest of the movie.

[Barry] Dumb ho!

Hey, don't talk to her like that.

Hey, you're in control, buddy.

Are you with the store or something?

No, I'm not the store, but I'm gonna escort you out of it.

I love this moment.

She is really feisty and she's very courageous.

Maren is going after a big man

and really she's saying what she feels she has to say

in order to put him on his place

and Lee suddenly steps in to his voice.

So to the two, one becomes two and two becomes one

together against that moment, that person.

But what I love about it, on top of it, is how

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' score

suddenly enters the scene

and create a connection between the two of you guys

with this beautiful romantic moment of guitar

that immediately underlined that finally

one and one has become one unit,

the two of you guys.

[romantic guitar music]

You with the store or something?

No, I'm not the store, but I'm gonna escort you out of it.

[Barry] [chuckles] Fucking see what happens!

[Lee] See what happens? Yeah.

[Lee] What's gonna happen? Something bad's gonna happen?

Yeah.

[beer cans clinking] [gentle pensive music]

Oh-ho-ho! Outside. We're going outside.

[Lee] You enjoy hassling people, man?

Is that you do on Saturdays?

[Man] You've done it yourself!

As she's the first one to step to him

and then Lee quickly picks up on the moment to, you know,

make a brave stand in front of her.

But true to the nature of the character,

if people see the movie,

Lee's sort of amorphous, I would say,

trying to figure out his moral compass and who he is,

sort of day to day, and moment to moment,

without a clear path.

And I think Maren's a very inspiring figure to him

because she's much more steely in her resolve,

her moral compass is more set,

it's not as janky.

You can't see because the lady's hiding,

but Lee has just stolen the hat from Barry,

I think is the name of the character,

and this hat that he's gonna wear another moment

of him appropriating himself with a piece of his victims

and putting it on top of himself.

I love the corn here very much. It's very American to me.

I dunno, maybe I'm stupid but corn and America is very...

It's a big thing, yeah. It's great.

Yeah? Yes.

[announcement playing over speakers]

[crowd chattering] [footsteps plodding]

[car engine purring]

That's another moment that I love is

Maren becoming the American landscape.

And in shooting this movie, I'm Italian

and I mean, I know America quite well.

I've been there for many, many times.

But this is my first American movie

and of course, I love Hollywood cinema and American cinema

and so, I've been seeing so many movies about America,

from America, that when I came there to do it,

I was kind of humbled by the idea

of approaching the landscape

and in general the Americana.

And what we tried to do was to be

at the height of the characters,

to see the place from their perspective.

[door creaking] [cash register beeping]

[footsteps plodding] [door thuds]

She might feel guilty here, right?

Yeah.

That she stole.

Well, you see the little... There's always a moral...

You have always a moral, like, compass.

She stole a lollipop too. Mh.

I don't know. I mean she's,

I think that's the thing with Maren,

through the whole movie is that you, she does these things.

This purely is for survival too.

She's never stolen before, this is the first time

and having first at that age, she's 18.

You know, it's... it's terrifying.

Yeah. And I like the way, the direction of your gaze

toward what you're leaving behind

because both Maren and Lee,

they particularly fight their identity

and they're trying to find a place in the world

that could contain them despite who they are

and what they have to do by the sheer power of their nature.

Our wonderful Arseni Khachaturan,

who is the director of photography of this movie,

he was 27 when we shot this film

which is shot in 35 millimeters.

In this movie, he was so wonderful in understanding

the light of the time

even though he wasn't even born in that time

in the eighties.

And so, like you can see how powerful he was

in portraying the light of America.

[birds chirping] [insects chirping]

[soft breathing]

She still is

like thinking of what she has done

and what she has left behind,

when suddenly, something in front of her,

it's having a very strong pull toward her, right?

And this place,

with another 27 year old collaborator of ours,

Marco Costa, the editor, where you can see how he made,

he made us feel how Maren is unavoidably attracted

to what is in front of her.

These three cuts are telling us each way

that there is something there that she's attracted by.

[gentle brooding music]

[breathing deeply]

You managed to get us this very abstracting concept

that they can smell each other.

I just remember you saying smell more on the day.

[Luca] What? Did that thing there?

Yeah [chuckles]

It was hard for me to gauge what would read [chuckles]

or not, or if it would be,

I don't know if I would work, doing that.

[deep breathing] [gentle brooding music]

[bag thuds]

[gentle brooding music]

And he is smelling something very strong,

because he turns to look at her

and she's quite far because he feels her presence, right?

Mh, I like this moment very much too.

I like how Taylor just put it as well because if,

for her, this was the first day where she had to play,

sort of the smelling attributes of the eater.

This was the first day that I had to viscerally play

this eater post-eating, I guess would be the expression.

And that was fascinating for me,

because here we were, in the countryside of Ohio.

This building had a couple notices.

It was in disrepair,

and it was on this day, I really realized

how different this experience was with Luca

compared to the beautiful Italian countryside

that I spent a summer in when I was 20.

And all of a sudden I was, you know,

had a bunch of SFX blood going down my chest.

[Luca chuckles]

As Luca said, I like this hat figure right here

because this hat was worn by Barry in the prior scene.

I like this, this is very telling

about what I like about cinema is that,

that I, in other movies I do like,

upon a first watch of a movie where a costume feature

or a character feature becomes very synonymous

with what you're watching.

And then upon a second watch you realize oh wait,

that's something that was new to that character

at the beginning of the movie.

[gentle brooding music]

[water splashing]

[ominous music]

[car engine purring]

What Timothée does so well

from the prior scene to this scene is that

his body language is so creature-like

and you really, it's so vivid seeing how,

how changed he is from, you know, kind of being,

you know, this, I don't know, he has this swag

in the scene before

and he is so embodied too,

I think you see how high he is, almost,

after... his meal. [chuckles]

There is something animalistic in your body language.

It's something that Taylor and Luca and I

talked about a lot, which was

what is the experience for what is the out of body,

what is the conscious experience

when these eaters go through this?

And without appropriating

or being disingenuous towards actual chemical experiences

people have when they're addicted.

It was something in that world

that we tried to figure out something

that would be out of body where the decisions you're making,

the high you're feeling,

the sequence of events that's happening,

you're not really present to

and you're just putting one foot in front of the next.

[Luca] I love the way you show curiosity.

There is here, Maren is intensely curious

and amazed by what she's seeing

and maybe she thinks

that finally, she's meeting someone who can help her out.

Yeah.

What I love about this movie is

that we are going something very dark,

but eventually very romantic,

but we're basically playing with what cinema gives us

the pleasure of playing with, which is heightened emotions

and acting and playing with your...

And what I like about too,

about the magnetizing between Lee and Maren here

is if you think about a sort of mating dance

or mating ritual, you know, Taylor just pointed out

the body language. This is about the least,

this is the least sexy stuff

you could be doing in the world.

But because they're bonded by it,

they're irresistibly pulled to each other,

it's not something you'd wanna see on a first date.

Well I think it's super iconic. Love it.

[Taylor and Timothée chuckling]

It's beautiful.

Thank you.

[Taylor and Timothée laughing]

[Producer] Thank you so much. Okay.

[Taylor and Timothée laughing]

[all talking]

[kissing]