As everyone knows, opening this weekend is director Gary Rossâ The Hunger Games. Based on Suzanne Collins novel and produced by Nina Jacobson, the film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Lenny Kravitz, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland, Wes Bentley , Alexander Ludwig, Isabelle Fuhrman and Amandla Stenberg.  For more on the film, hereâs three clips and six minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, as well as all our previous coverage.During the recent Los Angeles press junket, I landed an exclusive interview with director Gary Ross, who did an awesome job on the movie.  Since heâs been doing so much press recently, I tried to ask new questions like whatâs his favorite movie, director and actor, why he chose to shoot the movie with a lot of close-ups, the studio's reaction to that decision, deleted scenes, editing, sequences that were difficult to cut, the sequel Catching Fire, and a lot more. Hit the jump to either read or listen to the interview.As usual, Iâm offering two ways to get the interview: you can either click here for the audio, or the full transcript is below. The Hunger Games opens this weekend and itâs definitely worth your time.Steve: Do you have a favorite movie, actor and director?Gary Ross: God, a favorite? No. I have some favorites. I love Chaplin; I mean I really love Chaplin. I just think thereâs a grace and an elegance thatâs almost never been matched. Obviously I love The Godfather movies, I think theyâre phenomenal.Even the third?Ross: No (laughs). I really donât like the third. I meant the first two. I love A Bicycle Thief. I love almost all of Stanley Kubrick, thereâs almost no Stanley Kubrick I donât love. I love Lolita, I love Dr. Strangelove. I love A Clockwork Orange, obviously. I even like a lot of Barry Lyndon (laughs). And early stuff, like The Killing and Paths of Glory. Heâs on another level.Ross: Itâs ridiculous. Look, he made the best comedy ever, he may have made one of the best science fiction movies ever, he made the best horror movie ever. I couldnât watch the end of The Shining. I went through half The Shining for years before I could finish, because Iâm a writer and as soon as he starts writing âAll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,â I had to turn it off. Itâs almost like Picasso in that he mastered so many different genres.Itâs also because he spent a lot of time in between each project, really fine-tuning each thing.Ross: Yeah exactly, he took his time and patience and he had a crew of like 18 people. They were very handmade movies these were not large behemoths that he did; they were very thoughtful and his editing process was long. Heâs kind of without peer really. If I was gonna settle on a director, probably Kubrick.Whatâs interesting is, you shot this movie with a lot of close-ups. You chose an aesthetic and went with it. What was the motivation for that aesthetic and did you sort of tell the studio, âIâm planning on shooting it this way?â or were they surprised when they saw the dailies?Ross: Well itâs also very handheld. Thereâs also a lot of vérité in it; that was really intentional. Iâm trying to capture what was visceral in the books, which is your first-person present tense narrative, and thatâs gonna require a certain amount of subjectivity. In order to be in Katnissâ point of view and in her shoesâwhat being in a characterâs point of view is, is restricting the information that the audience has to what that character has, and not being writer omniscient. Iâm not cutting from place-to-place, Iâm moving in this serpentine, destabilized path as Katniss wanders through this world. Thatâs not only true in the shooting style, itâs also true in the editing style. My editors are Stephen Mirrione who cut Babel and Biutiful and Juliette Welfling who cut The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and all the Jacques Audiard films, The Beat That My Heart Skipped and A Prophet and stuff like that. This was a very conscious decision to create a very subjective style because the books are so subjective, theyâre first-person and theyâre urgent and you see the world as she sees the world, so that was the reason for it. As far as the studioâs concerned, I made a little short film with some references in the beginning when I got the gig, and I was very clear what I was gonna do. Part of it was to get the job, but the other thing was if I was gonna get the job, I wanted them to know what this movie was going to be. I wasnât going to make a slick, glossy over-produced piece of entertainment because then I would be doing what the Capitol did. Then Iâm actually putting on the Hunger Games and not making a movie of the Hunger Games. Especially with this premise, it had to feel very, very real and it had to feel urgent, so it was a true use of the word vérité, it had to feel true.I would imagine that this is going to be a big hit and fans are gonna really love this thing. Have you signed on officially for the next film?Ross: I am attached to the next film and Iâm intending to do it, I havenât had a chance to think about it yet. So many people ask me adaptation questions or âWhoâs gonna play so-and-so?â I literally finished this movie Tuesday at midnight, I finished color timing, and then I went into the junket a day later, so itâs not like Iâve had a chance to think about Catching Fire but yeah itâs my intention to do the next one. Theyâve asked me to do so.I know youâre not thinking about the next one yet, but do you envision the next one being a similar aesthetic?Ross: I think that there may be some aesthetic departures from what I did here, but I donât wanna talk about them yet not because Iâm being evasive, but just because theyâre so half-baked I wouldnât be doing myself justice in the process if I talked about them prematurely, but I think there may be some differences, yeah.I definitely wanna ask you about deleted scenes, did you lose a lot of stuff?Ross: No, there werenât many scenes that I shot that were cut. There were some things from the book that I wanted to put in that I couldnât, like the Avox subplot, where they came from, things like that. There werenât many scenes [that I cut], there were a few scenes, but I donât kind of believe in the whole âDirectorâs Cutâ thing, because this is the directorâs cut, the thing Iâm doing. There isnât another version of the movie that I wouldâve done, this is my version of the movie that I really intended to do. I think thereâll be a lot of cool supplemental materials on the DVD, but I donât think Iâll be putting in other scenes that got dropped.When you get this gig, and you sign on, a lot of people are like Twilight/The Hunger Games, did you call anyone involve with Twilight and say âWhat am I about to get myself into?âRoss: (laughs) No, no. When I came on, the book had only sold only like a million or two million copies, so it hadnât become the behemoth it is today. I think itâs great that this many people relate to it, I mean I did too. I think weâve done a very original yet faithful adaptation of the book. I donât feel weird about it; I mean I feel glad about it. I made the movie I wanted to make.A lot of directors I speak with talk about one sequence they thought was going to be really hard and then they got it done super quick, and then the sequence they figure is gonna be super easy and they work on it in the editing room for nine months? Did you experience any of that?Ross: Totally. Some things that I thought were going to be really, really difficult I had prepped so much for that they fell in so nicely, like the Tracker Jacker sequence or even The Reaping. Theyâre so unimaginably difficult with the number of axes youâre shooting and what the storytelling is, like The Reaping is eight pages and you need to cover it so specifically. The Tracker Jacker scene is basically vertically configured over 80 feet in a tree and weâre really in the trees and Jenâs really climbing the tree with harnesses on, and the crewâs hanging out of trees and scaffolding and stuff like that, so they were very, very daunting in the run-up to them, in the prep, but they actually fell in very easyâand the fire sequenceââcause we were ready for them. Other stuff, itâs always like a three-page dialogue scene where you just kind of get in there, and I donât remember anything in particular, but none of this was actually that hard. We were so prepped, it wasnât like I ever got in the weeds and felt buried on any particular day. Any director, if you really ask them, will tell you that the toughest thing to do is like a dinner table or a dialogue scene because you need to keep that electricity maintained throughout the course of the film. But to be actually honest with you, this thing was a blast to shoot and it wasnât bad. It was very difficult physically, but I felt pretty clear. I mean I had a great time doing it, I really did. I didnât ever feel in the weeds, and I have felt in the weeds before, and I didnât on this one.For more Hunger Games interviews from the recent Los Angeles press junket:Jennifer Lawrence Talks The Hunger Games, the Mall Tour, Director Gary Ross, and MoreJosh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth Talk The Hunger Games, the Sequels, and MoreProducer Nina Jacobson Talks The Hunger Games, Sequels, the Violence, and MoreElizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz and Wes Bentley Interview The Hunger GamesDonald Sutherland The Hunger Games InterviewAlexander Ludwig, Isabelle Fuhrman and Amandla Stenberg Interview The Hunger Games
Director Gary Ross Talks THE HUNGER GAMES, CATCHING FIRE, Deleted Scenes, and a Lot More
Gary Ross THE HUNGER GAMES Interview. Director Gary Ross talks about filming The Hunger Games and his plans for the sequel Catching Fire.