Ari Aster Breaks Down Scenes from 'Hereditary,' 'Midsommar' and 'Eddington'

[dramatic music]

[person screaming]

I remember at one point he was saying

he didn't want the padded desk,

he just wanted a regular desk.

I did not want that.

In the end, the foam was attached to an actual desk.

It landed somewhere between what he wanted

and what we thought we were providing,

which was, you know, total protection.

I'm Ari Aster and I am apparently

going to be breaking down some scenes from my movies.

No, they're your streets sheriff.

They're your streets to keep safe.

And where is your mask?

[people cheering]

[person gasping]

This is a scene from my first feature Hereditary.

[tense music]

So you got some fly VFX here.

I wanted to just have hundreds

of real flies accumulating in the attic.

My first plan was to lock off the set

and just leave some, you know, rotting stuff

in the room for like days.

Just let the room become, you know, permeated.

I was disabused of the notion

that that would be possible pretty quickly.

Something to do with, I think PETA was involved.

Fly wranglers are hard to come by, but we actually did,

I did hire somebody to catch flies

and so we did let some flies into the room,

but they didn't get very, it didn't do much.

It just made the room unpleasant to be in.

[tense music]

There was a real corpse.

We cut off its head, it's not true.

Sorry.

[person coughing]

[tense music]

[Speaker] So really, Nester is driven by revenge.

I will say I was kind of surprised

by the time the film came out

and people were telling me

that the clucking was effective.

'Cause while we were shooting this,

I just kept thinking like, this is not gonna fucking work.

This is so silly.

[person clucking]

Alex basically went method for this film

and he really got into

a pretty intense psychological space.

He was definitely in a zone for this scene

and I think he's amazing in this scene in particular,

especially in what is about to happen.

[tense music]

For that, I think we, at first the idea

'cause I wanted it to feel unnatural

is we tied rope to his hand and tugged it up.

But we found

that it was even more effective when he just did it himself.

Peter, what's wrong?

[tense music]

Peter, are you all right?

That pushing ended up working, I wasn't sure if it would,

where we cant it off axis as we push in,

there's a bit being done here with makeup, with his lip

and his eye, which we kind of artificially

opened beyond what would seem natural.

The rest of what we're seeing here is Alex

just acting very well.

Him going almost purple is not makeup, that's him.

Peter, what are you doing man?

[head banging]

[person screaming]

In order to get that effect, we did that backwards.

So had him press his face into the desk

and then pull it back quickly.

[tense music]

This, he actually did go into the table.

I think his nose would be right around there.

This is a padded table,

so we put foam on the top to protect him.

But I hadn't thought of the fact

that, you know, beneath the foam is still a table.

So it's still solid beneath the foam.

I think he did unfortunately hurt his nose,

which was obviously not intentional.

I don't think any per permanent damage was done.

I remember at one point he was saying

he didn't want the padded desk,

he just wanted a regular desk.

I did not want that.

In the end, because the foam

was attached to an actual desk,

it landed somewhere between what he wanted

and what, you know, we thought we were providing,

which was, you know, total protection.

[person shouting]

Yeah.

So, you know, everybody reacting there

didn't have to act much

because Alex was actually doing that,

or rather the reaction didn't take much acting.

Yeah, Alex is great in this scene.

[person shouting]

He really gave it.

I did write backstories for all of these characters

more than I ever have done since.

I went a little crazy with the backstories,

wrote like these 20 page biographies for each character.

But with Alex it was mostly us just talking about life

and family and our own histories

and just closer to therapy.

Do we wanna let him finish screaming?

[tense music]

Yeah, there it is.

What's that?

That's not for us.

This is a scene from Midsommar,

which was my second film.

I think you should not.

[people shouting]

So they want her to go to Sib's house,

but she's hearing noises in the temple

and she has a bad feeling about what's in there

and feels compelled to investigate

and is about to discover

that her boyfriend is in some sex ritual

and it'll be disturbing to her.

[tense music]

[people shouting]

So this is a steady cam shot.

[people shouting]

Nice to have the light from the keyhole

illuminating her eyes.

[person crying]

I offered to provide something

on the other side of that, but she didn't need it.

Some people would request something there

so that they're not just, you know, acting,

but she did not need it.

[person groaning]

So here again we have a steady cam shot.

They have sort of an empathy based language.

They are all kind of like a hive mind.

And so the idea was to have them

kind of move in all together at once to support her

and kind of whisk her away.

Here we drift in, nice to have the door framing this,

here we move into handheld,

which is the only time we do this in the film.

I try to only kick into handheld

when the scene itself is kind of off balance.

[person groaning]

All of these actresses, well most of them

we flew in from Sweden

and they are all accomplished theater,

television, film actors.

We were very lucky to have them.

[person shouting]

There is a lot of talk about this

before we started shooting.

Florence is not like a big crier

and she was very nervous about even taking on the part

because she was just worried

that she wouldn't be able to do these scenes.

And by the time they came around,

I don't know what she had done to prepare,

but she was very ready.

She was able to launch into this stuff.

Whatever she was worried would be inaccessible

to her was not.

[person shouting]

What the scene required

was kind of laid out pretty clearly in the script.

I remember there was an energy that morning

among all of these women,

you know, they were nervous but very excited

and you know, I think I maybe talked them

through the cycle here

and like, you know, she's gonna crawl off the bed,

try to crawl towards the exit.

You're gonna crowd her

and kind of make her look into your eyes.

You look into hers and just, you know, follow her breathing

and kind of train her to calm down by your breathing.

[person breathing]

And then the way that they launch into the crying

is really strong and really moving to me

and scary and strange.

And I'm very proud of this scene

and I'm really proud of this cast.

I think they are amazing.

[people breathing]

[people shouting]

This is a heavily choreographed film.

There's a lot of dance from actual dance sequences.

When they're all competing to become the May queen,

movements they do.

And gestures to you know, a sort of sign language

that we've incorporated into the affect language.

and the choreographer, Anna Vnuk,

a really brilliant Swedish choreographer

who was hugely helpful in this film,

lent a lot of herself to this.

Couldn't have done it without her.

[people shouting]

So I think altogether we probably did, it wasn't many.

It was maybe three or four takes altogether

because at a certain point, they're just sapped.

We set it up so that the first couple takes

could be the prime ones.

[people shouting]

Pretty sure I was in the operator's ear there

to move closer and then to move out,

which is how we have that pullback.

Their screaming there is meant to synchronize

with the moaning screaming that's happening

in the sex ritual in the next scene.

So we keep that tempo going over the cut.

[people shouting]

I really love this scene

and I really love these actresses.

And then just the spill,

two, 300 construction jobs ongoing.

This is from my new film, Eddington.

This scene is one of the first scenes in the film

and it's the first time we will meet the mayor

of Eddington played by Pedro Pascal.

We've just been introduced

to Joaquin Phoenix's character Joe Cross,

who's the sheriff of Sevier County.

He's about to walk into frame.

You just let these guys build this whatever it is,

data complex and then they up and close it down

for whatever reason, we just gotta eat that.

No, there's on everything.

They're talking about a hyperscale data complex

that's tied to AI

and how they can get that through and make it happen.

Gross receipt taxes, payback property.

There's no wishing tech away.

Whether we jump on the boat now

or get bulldozed these guys,

they're bringing an actual infrastructure

for a real future, a real future.

Like what this neon sign does for the scene.

It casts both of them in red light.

This was an empty building

that was not safe to even really stand in.

And so we had to fortify the building itself

and build the whole thing from scratch.

One thing about this set

that unfortunately is not clear in the film

is we had a mural painted all across the bar

that depicted the history of Eddington

and Ted Garcia's family,

the Garcia family has deep roots in Eddington.

I just didn't anticipate how dark all the scenes would be

and the fact that that mural is like completely invisible.

So anyway, that's some work

that, you know, just kind of went out the window.

Can we count on your yay tomorrow?

What is the problem?

He's outside.

I had to lock the door to keep him outside.

It's been a whole hour like this.

I can't understand you.

Yes you can.

He's disturbing the peace, again,

he's blocking the entrance.

I was pleasantly surprised

how much chemistry Joaquin and Pedro had.

They really liked each other

and they just had this like instant rapport,

made each other laugh a lot.

And this scene was actually difficult to get through

because for whatever reason, they were very giggly.

They were making each other laugh all night

and it was a tight night.

So that was fun for a little bit.

What are you even doing in there?

It's take away drinks all week.

Those are town council members.

That's essential business.

[Speaker 2] Well, you can't just call essential business

whatever you want.

I like glass because it catches reflections

and that just makes any frame more interesting.

What is that Borges quote?

Mirrors are abominable

because they multiply the number of men.

So I like reflections, not for that reason,

but I always think about that.

The city council meeting,

wherever city council people congregate.

It's the mayor's office if I'm inside.

Okay, then you are open and you have a paying customer

who's trying to.

He's aggressive, he's dangerous.

He needs to be locked up.

Where would you have me send him?

These are your streets?

No, they're your streets sheriff.

They're your streets to keep safe, and where is your mask?

[object banging]

Where's your, he doesn't have a mask on.

You can sort of see the mural back here

and it continues here and goes over here.

Anyway, that's what I'm talking about.

Lodge, the homeless man, is played by Clifton Collins Jr

who's a great actor and was great in this.

And yeah, he is kind of deliberately

kind of sidelined all the way through the film.

There's nobody who cares about him.

He's not tied to anybody else.

I don't want to give anything away,

but he becomes important

and at the same time remains expendable.

I maybe that's saying too much.

[Speaker 3] He's coughing.

Okay.

No mask either with this guy.

What I will say we shot Beau Is Afraid

with all those COVID protocols, it made the process

of making that film so difficult.

Even certain things like actors

could not be within three feet of each other

for longer than 15 minutes cumulatively over the day.

And you'd have somebody with a stopwatch, you know,

so every take that, you know, it goes four minutes

and actors are, you know, within that bubble.

Like that's okay, you've got 11 minutes now

over the whole day and then it's over.

This would've been a perfect movie to make

in 2021 when we made Beau

'cause everybody was masked up, anyway.

He's also got a Young Guns Two poster.

And I think that says a lot about Ted.

Up here you've got winners of the Miss Fiesta competition.

It's a beauty competition.

I'll tell you what, this is the kind of thing

that I would do myself,

that me and the art team would do.

But the Truth or Consequences Museum,

and we shot this film in Truth or Consequences,

New Mexico, had an exhibit for the past winners.

Those were just priceless.

So we actually borrowed those from the museum.

Well, yeah, the scene continues,

but you're gonna have to buy a ticket and go watch it.