Episode 3 of "The Last of Us", entitled 'Long, Long Time' takes a break from the main narrative to tell the story of two men falling in love and building a life together in isolation. Director Peter Hoar talks about the significance of portraying this story on screen and how Nick Offerman's performance reduced Murray Bartlett to tears. Production Designer John Paino and Prosthetics Designer Barrie Gower reveal how the entire town was created from scratch, and how the passage of time was conveyed through set details and realistic aging makeup.
00:00 A man who knows to pair a rabbit with a Beaujolais.
00:04 I know I don't seem like the type.
00:07 No, you do.
00:09 That scene obviously, it's the same shots, but Bill's closer, everything's changed, the world is different.
00:16 It's day and night as well, but literally the other way around, you know, it's a night scene at the end and it's a day scene at the beginning.
00:21 You might think that it's night and scary and dangerous and then it turns to day when they're all in love.
00:26 But it's not that kind of world and it's not that kind of story.
00:29 The prosthetics department for us, it was great that we would do some really beautiful, subtle character work and aging work with two very well-known actors.
00:38 We'd be very much part of the storytelling, really, so you could actually tell this passage of time.
00:42 I thought of it as beautiful.
00:44 And obviously, as a gay man, I was talking about a story that I understood, not the zombie part of it,
00:50 but the fact that there was a love that could be found at any point in your life.
00:55 I think that was another thing that really affected people.
00:57 Lots of messages from people about the fact that they were two grey-haired middle-aged men, and that was something that people really loved.
01:04 Hello, I'm Peter Hawke. I'm the director of The Last of Us, Episode 3, Long, Long Time.
01:19 My name is John Paineau. I was the production designer on the first season of The Last of Us.
01:25 Hi, my name is Barry Gower, and I'm the prosthetics designer for HBO's The Last of Us, and this is Varieties making a scene.
01:33 I've been staring at this the whole time. Is it antique?
01:36 Murray had been recommended to Craig by HBO because he had just done spectacular work on The White Lotus.
01:43 And then with Nick, I mean, Nick wasn't to be the character, first of all.
01:47 We had another actor, and I think it's all out in the open now.
01:50 It was an actor called Con O'Neill, who's phenomenal.
01:52 He was in Chernobyl with Craig. I since worked with Con, and we've talked about it many times.
01:57 COVID was fully responsible for that not happening.
02:00 But, you know, it seems so moot to talk about that because Nick is phenomenal.
02:04 And as a director, if I look at an actor doing their thing and I think to myself, they own this now.
02:09 I cannot imagine anybody else playing this part. That is the best, the best reaction you can have.
02:15 And I totally got that with Nick.
02:17 Haven't eaten in two days. Doesn't sound very long out loud, does it?
02:22 There's a moment, a very important moment, outside where both men sense something about each other.
02:27 So when they get inside, the minute that food comes out and Frank sees it and Frank sees Bill with it, everything changes.
02:35 It's kind of like the dining room your parents have that you're not allowed to go into and you never eat there.
02:42 He eats in the kitchen and monitors the TVs. So it's very much like that's for the good company.
02:49 But it is very much based on what a real colonial out of slay out would be.
02:53 Frank is going, I think I know a little bit about you that you may not even know about yourself.
02:58 So much is said in that scene, or rather not said and understood between the two men, that it's a really, really powerful moment.
03:05 Oh, my God. It's my favorite.
03:07 The piano scene was shot in a few takes. It wasn't complicated for us. It was for them emotionally.
03:13 We just decided we had to use all three cameras and record it all at once.
03:17 So we just didn't want to be in a situation where the moment was go again in a different position. Go again.
03:23 Here's a third shot. So we set the three cameras up in very simple places.
03:27 And of course, the actual moment of revelation where Frank says, who was the girl that you were singing about?
03:33 And Bill says, there is no girl. And Frank says, I know. And there's not a dry eye in the house.
03:40 One thing we managed to do was get them music lessons and they were both going in different directions.
03:45 So Nick had to learn to be better and Murray had to learn to be worse.
03:49 And you were my purpose. We decided to shoot the final scene in very similar ways.
03:55 So both table scenes had similarities. But at the end, Frank is sat in his usual seat, which is, of course, wonderful,
04:02 because, you know, it was never his usual seat, but it is now.
04:06 And he's looking around in a different way and there's a different sentiment, there's a different feeling of him.
04:11 He's sort of more content. And the house hasn't effectively changed, but it's how he sees it.
04:16 The way he sees the house has changed. Frank has been there.
04:19 He is sartorial and artistic and certainly doesn't want to live in some grandma's house.
04:27 So he has slowly convinced Bill to hang some of his artwork, a lot of flowers and plants.
04:35 And he's making it a home. He's making it a home for a couple.
04:38 He'd learned to adapt into Bill's life just as much as Bill had learned to adapt into Frank's.
04:43 And that's the perfect relationship.
04:49 I remember thinking how beautifully Murray had played his reaction to Nick's or Bill's choice to go with him.
04:59 And but thinking and this is a horrible thing to say now, because it obviously worked so well,
05:04 but thinking that maybe it was too emotional, maybe Frank should be more stoic, maybe, or just maybe just like be on the edge,
05:12 more contained in that emotion. And I went and gave that note and I said, it's not right or wrong,
05:17 but I just said, Murray, maybe there's an option here to do that. And he went, oh, yeah, I understand.
05:21 I see what you mean. Yeah, it's like it's not quite as as an emotional thing as you.
05:25 OK, I get that. Every time they played that scene, Nick was so touching and Murray was so immersed in it that it just happened.
05:35 And I went over to him to say, don't worry. And Murray just went, I can't I can't do it.
05:41 And his tears were falling, flowing.
05:44 We're going to make friends. We don't have friends, Frank.
05:49 For the most part for this episode, we're outside the desiccated world of The Last of Us.
05:56 So we were able to make another microcosm world that is taking place in our story.
06:03 It's hard for Bill to take anyone in. It's not his way. He lives alone.
06:08 It's his mother's house. He's built this fortress and he's safe and he's alive.
06:14 And so he doesn't need anybody else. You know, it told you a lot about him, but it wasn't on the nose.
06:19 It was great to make it feel like a mausoleum almost.
06:23 Yeah, it said a lot about him. It said everything about him.
06:26 This kind of architecture, this kind of place doesn't exist in Calgary.
06:31 So it had to be made from scratch on a TV schedule.
06:36 And it was built from scratch and in the abandoned housing development.
06:40 So we had the roads and the sidewalk and that was it. Everything else was put in.
06:45 You may well have heard this many times before, but episodic TV, even HBO, is relentless.
06:50 It just it has to happen. You know, you've got this many weeks to prep.
06:53 You've got this many weeks to shoot.
06:55 I think we only had about six to eight weeks to put it all together.
07:00 And that includes Bill's house. Actually, parts of the first floor were realized at the location.
07:08 And then, of course, we have all the interiors that were on stage sets.
07:12 And that is just challenging coming on. But we were ready to shoot.
07:16 There certainly was the effects work, but we would dress things up to 10 to 12 feet.
07:22 Part of the roofs on some of the buildings were not built and they were put in with blue screen just to save time and money.
07:28 But then we would go in and add vines. Our greens department would, you know, desiccate everything.
07:35 We put dirt and rubble. We'd spray things down. We'd spray the fences down.
07:39 We'd knock a few rails here and there out. But the majority of the big picture stuff was VFX.
07:46 He's not yours. My mother's. This is you.
07:52 So the use of Linda Ronstadt was always there. It was in the script.
07:55 It was Craig's choice. And I love the fact that whilst Craig is a genius, he still had to go and ask his friend for some advice, his musical genius friend.
08:04 Craig just said, look, here's the story. This is why it matters. This is what I want to find.
08:08 I want to feel I want a piece of music from the past that feels right for Bill, that feels, you know, in that world.
08:15 But yet is very emotive and sort of layered and mysterious and all of that.
08:21 And he did all of that. And then this man goes, oh, yeah, easy. Long, long time. Linda Ronstadt.
08:25 And I think actually it may be wrong, but I think to Craig even it was like, oh, I don't know that one.
08:30 I know Linda Ronstadt, but I don't know that one. And heard it and went spot on. This is perfect.
08:35 Is it antique? 1948. Wow. You know how much these are worth?
08:41 Currently, nothing. In the game, there's an entry screen to the game, which is a blowing open window.
08:47 And it's a very sort of like melancholy, sunny, but scary moment because the whole world is decayed.
08:53 We talked about trying to include that. I mean, Craig was quite keen to have it on every episode, but he didn't know how and where.
09:00 But I knew that there was a way to bring us back full circle at the very end, because the last shot as scripted was Joel and Ellie driving away into the sunset, playing Linda Ronstadt.
09:12 And I just thought, I know how I can deliver on this sort of idea of this blowing window.
09:17 So much of that shot as well was pulled together. We built that window because the window that we did have in the real house or the set didn't face in the right direction.
09:27 To get that angle, we shot, we made a flat.
09:31 We just copied a wall in the interior and put it on scaffolding or lined it up for what Peter and Eben and Craig wanted to show.
09:41 Yeah, cinema trickery.
09:43 So we worked from the view between the other two buildings and said, can you build us a window here?
09:49 And they went, OK. And then we were like, can you actually not build it there? Can you put it a bit higher?
09:53 OK, yeah. Can you paint the inside? Because I want to see the curtain and the wallpaper.
09:58 We wanted a dolly shot, so they had to get the dolly up there as well.
10:02 It's a very good example of how all the departments work together to get something, because the art department built the wall, the grips built the rig and the construction built the rig.
10:13 And then we had to cover it. We had to get all of the lighting, had to work the interior lighting.
10:19 And then the actual view of the truck, Joel and Ellie driving away, is all CG, because we couldn't see enough through it.
10:28 So we drove the actual truck out and it disappeared. So they just said, we can make that better.
10:33 We'll just do it all again. And they made it even more glowing and gorgeous and sunny.
10:38 And so everybody was involved in that shot to make it perfect.
10:44 Just give me one more good day.
10:46 The reaction to the episode was quite simply astounding.
10:50 I get reviews, as you can imagine, there's a review in The Guardian or in The New York Times or whatever.
10:55 I don't know if they're going to say things or not. And you get that, but that's like a professional opinion.
11:00 But what I really loved was that people recorded themselves watching the show for the first time.
11:06 And there were so many that moved me. I mean, they moved me because they were moved and we could see the tears building and getting more and more into it.
11:13 So that was really, really gratifying, actually. And it may well be the only time it ever happens in my career. But I cherish that.
