Ari Aster presented his A24 film and chatted up his collaboration with the press-shy Oscar winner: “Joaquin is so committed and so engaged that the film kept coming back to life.”
Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix turned up to the DGA Theatre to pose for photos and make a brief appearance on stage with the rest of the cast as Ari Aster introduced the A24 epic, Beau Is Afraid.
“I still can’t quite believe I was given the resources and the freedom to make this in the way that we did,” Aster said on the red carpet, “Credit is very much due to A24 for being stupid enough to give me that.”
“It’s so much pressure,” Aster said. “Things weigh on you, like the money weighs on you, the clock weighs on you because the window of time always closing. It can be very hard to stay in an open place where you don’t stop playing, so it was nice to build a system with Joaquin where we kept coming back to the work. Joaquin is so committed and so engaged that the [film] kept coming back to life, which isn’t to say that it was dead, but it stayed alive in a way that was very, very exciting. It was a challenge in the best way.”
Beau Is Afraid casts Phoenix as Beau Wasserman, a paranoid man who embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother, played by Patti LuPone.
Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Hayley Squires, Denis Ménochet, Kylie Rogers, Armen Nahapetian, Michael Gandolfini, Julia Antonelli, Richard Kind and Zoe Lister-Jones round out the cast.
Posey, Rogers, Nahapetian, Antonelli, Kind and Lister-Jones were present on Monday night and game to talk about their collaboration with Aster on a film that doesn’t easily translate to press-friendly sound bites.
Posey previously teamed with Phoenix on Woody Allen’s Irrational Man. “Elaine has existed for Beau for a very long time and his mother is also a big part of that. His mother owns Elaine as well so Elaine is trapped, too. It’s really layered what’s going on and I don’t know if the people who are writing about that are figuring out the psychology of it because it’s deeper than just wacky. But it is pretty funny.”
Aster’s vet producing partner Lars Knudsen said, “Anything that Ari does sits just next to the impossible. He pushes everyone to the edge of what is doable, and this film was especially hard, but in a very satisfying way.” Why so? “A move like this that has six different worlds that you have to create and you don’t have enough money or enough days to shoot them. Everything becomes sort of life and death in the world of film production because you can’t afford to get delayed or get behind.”
Asked how she would describe the film, Lister-Jones, a filmmaker in her own right who also created the upcoming TV series Slip, borrowed Aster’s description. “It’s a Jewish Lord of the Rings, which sums it up perfectly. It’s an anxiety-induced, trippy, epic nightmare comedy,” said Lister-Jones, who added that she still can’t quite believe she’s part of the cast. “I mean, I died. I’m still dying. I can’t believe that I’m a part of such a magnificent work. It’s like no other film I’ve seen. Ari is just so masterful as a filmmaker and I am so inspired and in awe at what he does.”
She described the filmmaker as “playful amidst a very bleak narrative,” and praised him for creating a set that “allows for so much experimentation in a way that is really freeing as an actor.” Speaking of, “I had to bark like a dog, you know? I’m still barking. It’s just such an amazing gift to work with a director who pushes his actors to just do wild shit.”
Posey said she had to get a life cast mold made of her entire body. “It’s really something to go through. So, even though I had a such a small part, I’m just so happy to connect with a young auteur like Ari who dedicates such a vision to the story they want to tell.”
While Carey, Aster and Posey posed for photos, premiere attendees gathered in the lobby trying to process the three-hour film. Many tweeted that they may need days, weeks or months to wrap their heads around it.
Kind said: “The movie is epic and you may love it and you may hate it. But you’ve never seen anything like it before. If you hate it, you’ll hate it with good reason, and if you love it, you’ll love it with good reason.”
