The Royal Hotel | Deadline Studio at TIFF - video Dailymotion

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00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - I'm Kitty Green and I directed a movie

00:06 called The Royal Hotel, which is screening at TIFF.

00:08 The Royal Hotel is about two American girls

00:12 who are pretending they're Canadian

00:14 and they're backpacking in Australia.

00:16 They run out of money and they have to take a job

00:17 in an outback mining town in a pub,

00:21 dealing with a lot of the men, unruly men.

00:25 I'm Australian, but I'd never made a movie in Australia.

00:27 So I wanted to.

00:29 My mother was keen that I came back home for a bit.

00:32 So I kind of was looking for something I could do there.

00:35 And I found a documentary that was about

00:37 two Scandinavian women who are working in an outback pub.

00:41 And I thought it was kind of an interesting,

00:42 I hadn't seen that point of view.

00:43 I could see a lot of films in the outback,

00:44 but never through like a female lens.

00:46 So I thought that was an interesting

00:47 kind of jumping off point for a screenplay.

00:49 So I started writing something.

00:51 Well, I was kind of unsure about whether I wanted to do,

00:55 I saw this documentary and I thought I'd want to

00:58 maybe adapt it, but I wasn't a hundred percent on it.

01:00 And I worked with a company called Seesaw

01:03 and they were interested in,

01:05 Ian Canning had seen the assistant and was like,

01:07 do you want to do something in Australia?

01:08 We have an Australian office.

01:09 And so I floated it by some people at Seesaw

01:12 and they seemed to like the idea.

01:13 So I started sort of developing it.

01:14 I brought on a co-writer,

01:16 'cause I needed someone who'd spent a lot of time

01:18 out in regional Australia,

01:19 Oscar Redding, who's brilliant and crazy.

01:23 And the two of us kind of put the script together.

01:25 It was quite quick, really the process.

01:29 Yeah, he was, 'cause he was in Australia

01:31 and I was in New York at the time

01:32 and I would write all day and then send it to him

01:34 and he'd write all my night, which is Australian day.

01:36 And so we'd kind of constantly be kind of fighting

01:38 over this script, but yeah.

01:40 I mean, I guess we took kind of the premise

01:42 and kind of some early story beats

01:44 and then we sort of turned it into our own thing really.

01:46 Yeah.

01:47 Well, I'd worked with Julia Garner before

01:49 and I was looking for an excuse to work with her again.

01:51 So I think this project was also attractive to me

01:53 because she could play the role.

01:56 And then I was looking for a co-lead

01:58 and I needed someone that would fit in with her.

02:00 And I found Jessica Henwick, who's amazing.

02:03 And she just naturally had the right,

02:06 energetically felt like the right fit,

02:07 not only for the role, but just to fit in

02:10 with Julia and I on set and feel like part of a trio.

02:13 And she was fabulous.

02:15 And then I had to cast a bunch of men

02:18 and I found the most beautiful, lovely, kind guys

02:21 in Australia to kind of populate our cast.

02:25 Yeah. So we were really lucked out.

02:26 We shot in Adelaide.

02:29 We built the interiors of the pub in Adelaide

02:31 and we shot most of the exteriors in an outback,

02:34 like an abandoned pub a few hours North of,

02:38 it's not really outback to be honest,

02:39 it's just a few hours North of Adelaide,

02:40 but it was a remote location.

02:42 It's a bit of a cult clash movie.

02:43 It's a bit of a, it's sort of exploring power dynamics

02:46 and yeah, and gender dynamics and what's,

02:51 and yeah, it's doing a lot of things.

02:54 I hate summarising it, sorry.

02:56 But yeah, we're trying to throw a bunch of stuff at you

02:59 and it's a bit of a wild ride.

03:01 I like a little more control than I get in documentary.

03:04 So I think features, fiction is lovely

03:06 'cause I get to kind of fuss over every frame.

03:09 So yeah, I'd like to continue making fiction,

03:11 but I could make docs again.

03:13 I had a good time making documentaries.

03:15 I was sort of unaware of what happened with this.

03:18 Like it was sort of a weird one 'cause it was so,

03:21 it mostly screened in the film industry

03:24 and within, at the Telluride Film Festival,

03:27 which is all film executives,

03:29 most of them had worked at the Weinstein Company

03:31 and all of them were traumatised at the time.

03:33 And so it was really hard to gauge how much people,

03:36 like if, to see if anyone,

03:37 I didn't know if anyone enjoyed,

03:39 you know what I mean?

03:39 It's not really an enjoyable movie.

03:40 So it was hard to tell what reaction it was having.

03:42 It wasn't until, to be honest, it's not until lately.

03:46 Like when "She Said" came out,

03:47 everyone started talking about "The Assistant" again

03:48 and going, oh no, at the time, like,

03:50 but at the time I think there was a lot of trauma

03:52 and it was a hard movie to make

03:54 and so I think it was hard to really see where it sits.

03:57 But it seems to be remembered fondly,

03:59 which is a great, a sign it's still got a life actually,

04:02 which is good.

04:03 I just like, I'm attracted to subjects

04:04 that I find interesting

04:05 and I guess I like a little bit

04:07 to be a little bit provocative.

04:08 I mean, it's a lot of,

04:09 it's, you know, three years of your life to make a movie,

04:11 so it's nice to make a little bit of a bang,

04:14 I don't know, or a little bit of a mess as you do it.

04:18 Yeah, so I don't know, I guess it's just something,

04:20 I don't know, naturally I seem to gravitate

04:22 towards these things that are a little, yeah.

04:25 Well, we have a great relationship.

04:27 We don't need to communicate that much at this point.

04:28 We kind of, you know, I don't know actually,

04:30 to be honest, how much of it's her

04:31 and how much of it's me.

04:32 Like, we're kind of so interlinked at this point.

04:35 But also, I mean, her face is incredible.

04:37 It's like I can kind of,

04:39 my movies hang on her expressions, basically.

04:42 Her watching a room and assessing an environment

04:44 and whether it's threatening or not is,

04:47 that's what I do.

04:48 That's my whole kind of body of work now.

04:51 So yeah, I don't know.

04:53 We'd like to keep doing them.

04:54 Hopefully they'll keep letting us make movies.

04:56 Honestly, I don't get the budgets to have room to play.

05:01 Like, I really have very minimal coverage.

05:03 We shot this one in 25 days.

05:06 We shot the assistant 18 days.

05:07 Like, there's not enough room to try things.

05:10 We just have to be very specific about what we need.

05:12 So I'm very kind of precise, I guess.

05:15 And I'm very, I pre-plan everything

05:16 and then figure out how to execute it on the day.

05:19 And you know, you run out of time.

05:20 You gotta cut shots and you gotta figure out

05:21 then how to cover things.

05:22 It becomes a very technical exercise, I guess.

05:25 I'm hoping as I keep going,

05:27 that I get a little more time to just,

05:29 I'd love to have more surprises and things like that.

05:31 But it's, you just need to touch more money,

05:33 I think, to do that.

05:35 Yeah, I don't know.

05:35 It seems to be going quite well.

05:37 The reviews were great.

05:38 We're feeling good.

05:39 And I like the reactions from people.

05:40 It's a different, from the assistant,

05:42 everyone was afraid to walk up to me or something.

05:44 And this one, everyone's grabbing me

05:46 and saying they enjoyed it, which is great.

05:47 I still, you know, I don't,

05:49 still figuring out why, whether that's like,

05:51 you know, what the reason is there.

05:53 It's tricky 'cause I technically made it

05:55 for an Australian audience.

05:57 So I'm looking forward to getting home to Australia

05:59 to screen it and seeing what it does there.

06:02 And we've tested it.

06:02 We've done test screenings and things in Australia.

06:04 So we kind of know how it plays,

06:05 but we'll see when it's a bigger group, what happens.

06:08 But yeah, I don't know.

06:09 I like, we've had a, I don't know.

06:11 It's a weirdly like, I love it when women love it

06:13 and say, oh, I get it.

06:15 And that's what I went, but I also like,

06:16 it's not that clearly divided along gender lines.

06:19 You know, so who knows?

06:21 I just like it when anyone's sort of can relate to it.

06:23 Look, it's a complicated one,

06:26 but it's a film about, it's a film about a certain,

06:30 it's a film about like a certain aspect of sort of,

06:34 it's about sort of an aggression

06:36 that's associated with drinking culture.

06:37 That's a very, and it's about sort of,

06:40 I guess it sits in this kind of weird space of when you're,

06:43 I'll speak as a woman in the space like that.

06:47 You're never quite sure if it's a joke or a threat

06:49 or what's, where this kind of behaviour is,

06:52 how threatened you should feel

06:53 and when you should speak up for yourself.

06:54 So it's a film about that kind of weird,

06:56 the weird ambiguity of those spaces

06:58 where you feel a little unsure and you're not sure,

07:01 you know, how seriously to take something.

07:04 So it's sort of about,

07:04 the film is about standing up for yourself

07:06 and figuring out how to say no when it's enough.

07:09 And I hope that that's, yeah,

07:11 I hope people are kind of inspired by that

07:13 or, you know, can, yeah, enjoy it, I guess.

07:17 (upbeat music)

07:20 [Music]

The Royal Hotel | Deadline Studio at TIFF

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