- Can you talk a bit about the actors who are playing the Somali pirates and how did you find them? In addition, what were the biggest challenges for both of you while making this film?
Paul Greengrass: It was very important that we cast Somali actors to play these parts: that was a fundamental part of authenticity for me. There is no Somali acting community in Los Angeles or New York, so we went to Minneapolis: that is the largest Somali community in the U.S. We also cast many of the smaller Somali parts - those on the other skiff and on the mother ship from the UK. The four main parts were cast in the U.S.
We held large open castings. This is a fantastically creative community that is filled with musicians, actors, and filmmakers, that just hasn’t had a chance in the mainstream. Therefore, what I thought would be a difficult process actually turned out to be an abundance of rich talent. Those four men did a wonderful job.
Tom Hanks: One of the main challenges was establishing the procedure of these two very specific worlds that we are in: before the pirate’s arrival and after the pirate’s arrival. There are things that happened that were documented in Richard’s book and in reports and news events, but there is an internal procedure that had to be arrived at.
We were lucky that we were filming on the sister ship to the Maersk Alabama called the Maersk Alexander - the crew on the ship was a great source of ’how do you do this?’ You can write in the screenplay, which Billy Ray did to expert degree, but when you are in the real space and trying to operate in some kind of real time, you have to know what the procedure is.
To find that, put it in to practice and to fold it into the filmmaking process was true legwork and homework we had to do: it did eat up time but it provided us with a fabulous background in DNA to each of the scenes.
- Tom, can you talk about the impression that you got of the real Captain Phillips? Did he impress you? Did he surprise you?
It is not the most realistic of moments when you walk into someone’s house and say ‘Hi. I will now be playing you in a film, whether you like it or not.’ It is an interesting dilemma that you have. Rich had been through quite the celebrity exposure mob and did many interviews after the event, so he understood the oddity of it all.
When he is not at sea, he is a very happy guy. He is very well adjusted and he is funny: when I first met him, he was only wearing socks whilst watching a basketball game in lounge chair. We sat and watched the game for a while before we started talking about how he became a captain of a ship such as the Alabama. He got it, completely, what we were going to set out to do.
The questions that I had for him were not a checklist of what he felt or what he saw, but I was just trying to understand how complicated a thing it is to be a captain in the first place. Phillips has one algorithm, one set of rules and one set of tasks that he, as captain, has to perform.
As soon as he saw the skiffs on the horizon with armed men in them, he had to wipe that board clean and come up with a completely different mental and physical formula to in order to see it to its end. I wouldn’t necessarily have gotten that unless I had talked to him.
His wife Andrea said ‘Rich, at home, is one of the greatest and easy going guys in the world. But at work he is one of the most unpleasant human beings you will ever come across.’ He is a stickler, a taskmaster; no fun whatsoever because he cannot allow himself to let his guard down and that is without hijackers on the horizon. Finding him and being his public face, that is a burden he will have to face more than I will.
- Following on from that question. Can you tell us about the discussions that you had with him about his time in the lifeboat? Was it difficult for him to recollect certain periods of being hijacked?
Tom Hanks: I think it was a pretty tactile memory for him: a lot of it is in his book. The more human details that came along with it were incredibly valuable. In the five days that he was in the lifeboat, there were moments of great hilarity: they all laughed at some point. They started joking with each other and ribbing each other about the country’s individual navy, the Somali Navy vs. the U.S. Navy. They made Phillips keep tying knots to demonstrate his knot tying expertise.
At the same time, there was the steady erosion of the physical ability to keep going. He was continually worried about one thing, and that was one big guy was a loose canon and could shoot him in the head at any moment for any reason. He was also very much aware of the withdrawals that the hijackers were going through as they ran out of Khat, which is the leaf that they chew which is a stimulant. Without that, he was worried that there was going to be some kind of breakdown, which wouldn’t have been healthy for him.
I spend about five or six hours with him, on two different occasions, and each time some other tiny little detail would emerge; such as how hot it was inside the lifeboat. It is an equatorial part of the world and during the day, it would get up to 117 degrees inside. A constant stream of the tiniest details was what I was going for, and what I was able to get from Rich.
- You mentioned filming at sea, so can you talk about how difficult a process that was?
Paul Greengrass: Well, it was pretty difficult. The worst bit was shooting in the lifeboat - we did shoot some on a stage in the gimble - but we started out on the ocean. That was a truly horrendous experience. It is very small, you are low down and you are crammed in there.
The first day that we started shooting we had Tom in there with the four guys playing the pirates, along with Barry Ackroyd the DOP, the focus puller and assistant director Chris Carreras: I was in a camera boat next door with a walkie-talkie.
We started the scene and it was going ok, I was anxious to drive on. I spoke to Chris and he said ’the focus puller doesn’t look so good’ and I was like ’I don’t care, just shoot’. He said ’focus puller has just thrown up all over Tom’ and I replied ’I don’t care just shoot on’. Then he said ’Barry has thrown up too’. That gives you a little insight.
Tom Hanks: In Malta before we started shooting I asked if I could go out in the lifeboat to see what it is like. It is a very slow vessel and it took about forty minutes to get beyond the breakwater and onto the open ocean.
I needed just three minutes out on the ocean and I was like ’yeah, I got it. You can turn this around now.’ The gimble does rock, roll, and pitch, but it doesn’t drop like the sea does: that is the bane of all focus pullers and DP’s.
- You announced on David Letterman that you suffer from Type 2 Diabetes and have for twenty years. In that time, you have had roles where you have put on weight and lost weight. So did you know the risk? Is this a warning to the actors such as Russell Crowe who do the same thing? Thirdly on the aging process?
Tom Hanks: I didn’t blaze any territory by saying something is going to kill me - I think that we can all safely assume that at some point. I don’t think it is going to be Type 2 diabetes, I think it will be something else. The gaining and losing of weight may have had something to do with it because you east so much bad food and you don’t get any exercise when you are heavy.
I think I was genetically inclined to get it and I think it goes back to a lifestyle that I have been leading ever since I was seven years old. Everybody is going to have some health problems. I am pretty good on cholesterol and other things that go on: it just so happens that my body type and my lifestyle gives me a preclusion for high blood sugars.
I know what I have to do, I have access to good doctors, I can eat good food and it is down to the individual. I refuse to tell any of those other celebrities what to do, even though you want me to do that.
I have talked to a number of actors who have gained weight for roles and have suffered with problems with knees and shoulders. No one wants to do it again. I think that is a young man’s game.
I am fifty-seven and I don’t think I am going to take on any job - or go on vacation again and see that I put on thirty pounds. It is not Type 1 diabetes where you have to take insulin it is not that. It is about eating the right things and getting enough exercise. I feel just fine.
Captain Phillips received its European premiere at the BFI London Film Festival and will be released 18th October.
Tagged in Tom Hanks Paul Greengrass BFI