"That was the moment where all of us were like, I think this is going to work." Scarlett Johansson takes a walk down memory lane as she rewatches scenes from her classic works including 'Ghost World,' 'The Avengers,' 'Lost in Translation,' 'Her,' 'Marriage Story' and more. Scarlett opens up about the "blind faith" her and her 'Avengers' costars had to have in the movie, the extensive recording process for 'Her,' Adam Driver's "no-bullsh–t" style while working on 'Marriage Story' and so much more.
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Jack Belisle
Editor: Cory Stevens
Talent: Scarlett Johansson
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors
Associate Producer: Zayna Allen
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Camera Operator: Carlos Araujo
Gaffer: David djaco
Audio Engineer: Rebecca O'Neill
Production Assistant: Karla Torres, Rafael Vasquez
Set Designer: Jeremy Derbyshire-Myles
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Director: Adam Lance Garcia
Director of Photography: Jack Belisle
Editor: Cory Stevens
Talent: Scarlett Johansson
Producer: Madison Coffey
Line Producer: Natasha Soto-Albors
Associate Producer: Zayna Allen
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Camera Operator: Carlos Araujo
Gaffer: David djaco
Audio Engineer: Rebecca O'Neill
Production Assistant: Karla Torres, Rafael Vasquez
Set Designer: Jeremy Derbyshire-Myles
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Stella Shortino
Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00I can't believe I could know you forever!
00:03You're insane!
00:05It's so brutal.
00:06But it's also, it makes me laugh.
00:08Yeah, I mean, I think even on the, um...
00:10Oh, hold on, I just have to go grab the phone one second.
00:16Hello? I'm sorry?
00:18Are you okay?
00:19Oh, yes, great. Thank you.
00:21Sorry, where were we?
00:22We were talking about how hilarious Marriage Story is.
00:24Hi everyone, I'm Scarlett Johansson,
00:26and today we'll be watching some scenes from throughout my career.
00:30My worst nightmares have begun.
00:32And...
00:47How the hell did we get so far behind him?
00:49I don't know, it's just great.
00:50Jesus!
00:51Oh, yay.
00:53Oh my God!
00:54Look at this!
00:55Wow'sville, authentic 50s diner.
00:59Since when were there mini-malls in the 1950s?
01:02That 15-year-old version of me is the same 15-year-old version of me.
01:07And living inside my 40-year-old body...
01:10I don't think I've seen this film in...
01:13I mean, it's been legit like 20-something years.
01:16I have to say that out of all of the films that I've done, other than probably some of the Marvel films I've done or Avengers, obviously very meaningful to a wide audience of people.
01:30But I have to say, I get Ghostsworld is my favorite movie a lot.
01:34Whenever I hear that, I know that I'm talking to somebody who's like a real cinephile, you know, probably a fan of either Daniel Klaus or Terry Zweigoff or both.
01:43And yeah, it's just, it always makes me happy.
01:46It was such a...
01:47I loved making this movie.
01:48It was...
01:49Yeah, it was 15.
01:50Everything was awesome.
01:51Hey, check out the awesome 50s hairdo on a waiter.
01:58Hi.
01:59My name is Alan.
02:01And I'll be your waiter this afternoon.
02:03Hi, Al.
02:05Can we call you Weird Al?
02:07I'd imagine so.
02:09I think at the time, you know, being a 15-year-old working actor, teenage slasher movies were really popular.
02:17And I was not a fan of teenage slasher movies.
02:20Not that there's anything wrong with this.
02:22It just wasn't my thing.
02:24It was rare to be offered something that was a film that I would go and see.
02:28And so when I read the script for Ghostsworld, it just felt very authentic to, you know, just the dialogue that I was having with my friends.
02:39It felt quirky and interesting and different.
02:43And I loved Crumb, which was a film that Terry Zweigoff had made.
02:49And I was unusual, you know.
02:51It was not what was kind of happening for an actor my age.
02:57We need you to come in.
03:07Are you kidding? I'm working.
03:09This takes precedence.
03:11I'm in the middle of an interrogation.
03:13This moron is giving me everything.
03:15I don't give everything.
03:18I'm trying to remember what the rehearsal process was for this scene.
03:21I mean, a lot of this fight, like, I couldn't perform because I'm tied to a chair.
03:27And it's actually, like, really burdensome.
03:31The incomparable Heidi Moneymaker, who is my stunt double for all of the Avengers films.
03:40And she is an incredible athlete, amazing performer.
03:44She knows me so well.
03:46She knows my capabilities so well because we've worked together since I was, you know, in Iron Man 2.
03:51I was, like, 23 or 24 for a decade of time.
03:55We together created Black Widow and her style and her gait and her, you know, all of the flourishes that come with her fight style and stuff like that.
04:08And so probably a lot of this chair sequence is the stunt team has done this, like, amazing previs.
04:16And then you would work out what pieces that you would be able to be capable of doing and what pieces the stunt performer would be doing.
04:25And, you know, and it kind of becomes like a marriage of those two things.
04:28I do remember how challenging it was to learn the, like, four and a half seconds of Russian.
04:34That, to me, probably was more difficult than the stunt, if that makes any sense.
04:39It was, like, a mental stunt.
04:48Yeah, that part was, I was way more stressed about the Russian than the chair.
04:52When we made the first Avengers, none of us knew what the potential of this, the Avengers particularly, would be.
05:15Like, Iron Man was massively successful.
05:18It was huge.
05:19It built the studio of Marvel.
05:21And then Iron Man 2 was also very successful.
05:24There was Thor, and that character felt like it was from a completely different universe in a way.
05:28I mean, obviously there's a whole MCU, but it was such a different tone of the Iron Man movies.
05:33And then, of course, Captain America had its whole own identity as well.
05:38And then when you added the characters all together, plus Hulk and, you know, Hawkeye and, you know, it just felt like a big mess.
05:48I mean, to be honest.
05:49And it just, even on the set, it felt crazy because we all looked insane.
05:54It was like, what are we doing, you know?
05:56I mean, I don't think anybody really knew if it was going to work or not.
05:59I'm sure Kevin Feige knew it was going to work.
06:01Joss Whedon knew it was going to work, but the cast, it was like a sort of, it was blind faith, basically, that we all had in Joss and in Kevin Feige.
06:12I remember the scene where we all are in that sort of, like right in front of Grand Central.
06:18It was like that big scene that, you know, you see the 360 of all the characters together.
06:21That was the moment where all of us were like, I think this is maybe going to work.
06:27It felt powerful and it's some, we were like, oh, we actually all, like when we watched the playback, it was, it looked really cool.
06:36But so much of it didn't feel very cool when we were shooting it.
06:39We were so young and we were having such a great time and such a great group of actors and we all became such good friends.
06:47I have great memories of shooting it. It was, it was, it was just a blast.
06:51It's like a whole family for us. You know, we've gone through all personally so many changes and ups and downs and in and outs and everything else.
06:59And, you know, we're all kind of like come out the other side, a little bruised and battered, but you know, but together, united.
07:06I think this was maybe the last scene that we shot.
07:35Um, it was certainly a scene that we stole, which I just realized because I saw some of the extras in the background on the right side being like, look what's going on over there.
07:44Um, I guess it was a time where you couldn't like paint those people out.
07:48I've seen a lot of different videos where people are have like heightened volume or I don't know whatever you do to try to fill in the blanks of like missing audio.
07:59I guarantee you whatever was said in reality is probably much less magical than what is in your mind.
08:08And so I'm, I always encourage people to like not dig too deep, um, because I think it's the mystery of, of what is exchanged there.
08:16That is, uh, the magic of the film and what Sophia intended in the film.
08:21Nothing is script, was scripted.
08:23I was so young when I made this movie, I was 17 years old and I was, you know, I was very much having a parallel experience to the character, uh, because I was in Tokyo far away from, you know, anything familiar.
08:38And I was working like night and day and day and night and very disoriented and just felt, I think alone in, in some parts of the experience.
08:46I think in this moment, it's what it looks like to me and what it makes me remember about it, I think is that it was sort of an improvised thing.
08:54And like I'd experienced so much making this film, um, as a young woman, uh, that I probably felt pretty kind of overwhelmed and just sort of like open to whatever this exchange was.
09:07was going to be since nothing was scripted, but I guess that's why it works.
09:26Hi.
09:27Hi.
09:28Hi.
09:29I actually totally forgot that we kissed in this movie, so I was like, oh wow, I forgot that that happened.
09:35I haven't seen this film in so long.
09:37It's rare to like rewatch stuff.
09:38I guess if it was on, I would like probably stop and watch it for a while.
09:42It's so hard for me to have perspective on the work that I've done, uh, because it's such a like specific time and place, uh, captured on film.
09:52I mean, it's one of the great things about the art form is it's this like performances like frozen in time, you know, it's not like theater, which is much more like ephemeral.
10:01You know, it's like, this is kind of the way that Sophia saw it.
10:05And then the performance that she edited was, you know, the one that she like, you know, I think desire or outcome for the character.
10:12And, and so I always look at the movies that I've done in the past and I'm sure I probably would do the same for this film, even though it was a bajillion years ago.
10:22I always am like, oh, I, you know, I, there was like a different take that I preferred or I, I actually will be like, oh, I could have, I, I know what that line means now.
10:32Um, you know, it was like not as meaningful then or something like that.
10:36So it's hard for me to watch things without being, I, I try to just be too critical, especially because, you know, it is what it is.
10:42But it's like, I'll go back in my mind and review my own performance and, um, remember what I thought I was, what was working then.
10:50And then I think what I would do differently if I could do it again.
10:55What's it like to be alive in that room right now?
11:05What do you mean?
11:07What do you, tell me you, tell me everything that's going through your mind. Tell me everything you're thinking.
11:17The recording process was pretty extensive. That's extensive, not expensive.
11:23No, it probably was also expensive, but, um, because we spend so much time in the recording studio.
11:27I recorded some of this with alone. I, I like in a, basically there was kind of a box that was created for the Samantha character that the actor, um, used on set.
11:44And so that box was brought into, uh, the recording studio.
11:50It was kind of like being in a phone booth, I would say inside of, I think it was just also to create the atmosphere of like being in this contained thing.
12:00Because, in fact, you don't really need to be inside a sound booth inside a sound booth, you know what I mean?
12:05It was a, it was like a Spike thing. Um, I don't know, he had some affinity for this little, like, prison box thing.
12:12But it actually did kind of work in an interest. It did create this space that was so contained that it felt like you were like hyper focused on all the nuance of, um, a vocal performance.
12:26And, you know, sometimes Spike would get in there with me, so he would be like in a little ball on the floor and we would read together like that.
12:35And sometimes he would be outside of my, of my box and he would be, you know, in front of me and I would be recording more traditionally like, you know, to the recording of Joaquin's original, uh, dialogue in the film.
12:50And then sometimes Joaquin would come in and we would do scenes together, but we re, we recorded this film in its entirety.
12:57I mean, I, I can't even count how many times we did it. We did it so, so many times over a long stretch.
13:04Like I would do a day, you know, here and there over like the course of a year, we would work all day, you know, work from like a full day.
13:13Um, and so, and, and actually you can, you know, you could complete the, read the entire script in its entirety, like probably quite a few times in one day.
13:22There are a multitude of options on this, uh, for Spike to choose from.
13:27Like he really must have gone in and like, he did like surgery to pick out specific vocal performances that he, that resonated with him.
13:35It was great. I mean, it was, it was very, uh, challenging, I would say.
13:39I mean, I remember when my agent sent me the project, he goes, it's like a few days of work.
13:44Like, it's like a, you know, you're kind of like supporting character.
13:47And then I read the script and I was like, it seems kind of like extensive.
13:51Again, there's that word.
13:52And then I went and met with Spike and I realized I called my agent.
13:56I was like, this is a massive job.
13:58I had no time to do it cause I was doing a play at the time, but it, we did it.
14:03You know, we figured it out over probably like a year.
14:07You've been through a lot lately.
14:10You lost a part of yourself.
14:13I mean, at least your feelings are real.
14:20Like, I don't know.
14:24I don't know.
14:25Never mind.
14:26I think this film presents a version of the not too distant future that, um, where, you know, AI, I think that we're, where we are able to like utilize AI in a positive way, um, you know, to benefit humanity.
14:45It's an optimistic view, um, you know, and, and, and, and Spike Jones who made the film is, isn't very optimistic person.
14:54You know, I think it shows the importance of film and, um, the diversity of, of thought and, uh, you know, the, the way that there's a good way to use it in a, in a not so good way to use it.
15:08I think we have to utilize AI to our, to our advantage, you know, and not let it consume us.
15:15You think you found some better opposite guy than me.
15:25And in a few years you rebel against him because you need to have your voice, but you don't want a voice.
15:31You just want to fucking complain about not having a voice.
15:34I think about being married to you.
15:35And that woman is a stranger to me.
15:37I mean, we had a child's marriage.
15:40You've gone back to your life before you met me.
15:42It's pathetic.
15:43It's so brutal.
15:45It's really brutal.
15:46Even on the day, it's just so cruel that it's, uh, I don't know.
15:52There's like some, some gallows humor in it or something.
15:55Noah had such a specific idea of how he wanted to shoot this.
15:59And then he was, he had it like edited in his mind.
16:03It's interesting even watching it now.
16:05Like I'm paying more attention to like what shots he chose.
16:09It's such an interesting composition, this fight scene.
16:12It's so, um, carefully constructed.
16:16But of course, like Adam and I are not thinking about that.
16:19We're just in the moment of, you know, the truth of what we're doing.
16:24And we shot this over a couple of days, um, because we did it so many times.
16:29We must have had the fight in its entirety, like probably like 40 times, maybe more like 50 times or something.
16:36Yeah, it's got to have been actually more than that now that I think about it.
16:39Because we would do a setup and do like, you know, 15 takes and there's so many setups in it.
16:47So I actually don't even know.
16:48We could have done it like 80 times in its entirety.
16:51F*** it!
16:52There's so much I didn't do!
16:54Oh, thanks for that!
16:56You're welcome!
16:57I can't believe I have to know you forever!
17:00Oh, you're f***ing insane!
17:02And you're f***ing winning!
17:05Are you kidding me?
17:07It was sort of like boxing where you kind of like both go to your corners afterward.
17:11And, you know, at the end of the scene, like the characters hold each other, you know,
17:15and they kind of fall into each other and kind of become this like shape.
17:19There was a resolution at the end of each take.
17:22And then you just like need to kind of, you know, separate for a little bit, just recover.
17:27But Adam has such incredible stamina and he's just so present.
17:34I don't think he knows how to be any other way.
17:38I mean, he's like that even just talking to him.
17:40He's just very, very present.
17:42And there's like no bullshit with him.
17:44He's just like everything just comes out of him, you know.
17:47It's not like measured at all.
17:49And that makes it fun.
17:50Because you don't know what you're gonna...
17:53The scene then becomes really flexible.
17:55And there's a lot of like room to discover new things.
17:59Especially if you're doing a scene 400 times.
18:07All right, everyone.
18:08Thank you so much for watching.
18:11It's my night-night time.