Jennifer Lawrence and David O. Russell _ Interview _ TimesTalks

Hi. Am I supposed to talk? I guess I'm supposed to talk first. The first thing I want to do is say I'm really honored that Jennifer's parents are here, Karen and Gary Lawrence of Louisville, Kentucky. How do they know? What did you guys do? I just want to say to you guys, good job. God was happy and a really good day the day he made Jennifer Lawrence. Yes. I have no idea what to do with my face until I say something. I'm really nervous and I'm terrible at this, so I'm actually just going to be reading my questions, which is so embarrassing, but I just wanted to tell you guys that I don't know if I'm the right person to do this interview, because around the time when Joy was inventing her mop, I threw out my ironing board in a fit of misplaced feminism, or maybe I just didn't want to iron anymore. When my mom found out, she started crying and told me it was the only thing we had inherited from her mother, but I would also like to say that it is a truth universally acknowledged that you two are two of the most talented and original people in an industry that does not seem embarrassed about the endless replication of the mediocre. I also want to tell David that the shot of the three Irish sisters on the couch looking fierce and the fighter is pretty much a Dowd family portrait. I am just such a huge fan of both of you. So David, you've always had strong, interesting women characters. Joy is your first major feature centered on a woman. You said, well, great shoes, Jennifer. Thank you. Look at those. Yeah. Wow. Somehow the ironing board came back. You said you were inspired because Joy Mangano had to become a bit of a gangster to succeed, so we're going to look at our first clip and see that. I'm in a meeting with our lawyers. What do you think you're doing? Go home, Joy, and watch the numbers roll in on television. Make 50,000 mops, borrowing and owing every dollar, including your home. It could have been handled better. I'll let Todd have another shot. I don't want Todd or anyone else to try it. It should be me. We don't have regular people. We have celebrities who spokesmodels, do the selling. I told you this. Who showed you the mop? Who sold it to you? Who taught you how to use it? And who convinced you that it was great after you thought it was worthless? Excuse me. Can you give us a second? So Joy was a single mother who invented the self-ringing miracle mop in the 90s and rose David, you said you're interested in daring women who make their way in the world against all odds. You mentioned some of your mom's friends or even your mom. And you mentioned Lillian Vernon, who started the first big catalog for household products. Why was a guy looking at that, or what did you find of interest? Well, I didn't have much choice about my mom. She lived in the same house. And many ventures started at her kitchen table. In the kitchen, she was either trying to get her friend elected mayor of our town, which she did, and she was involved in the League of Women Voters, getting out the vote. And she also tried to make a book for, she tried to do things when she couldn't get back in the workplace. And I watched her struggle with that. And she was very formidable. And Lillian Vernon, I like, is Mount Vernon is next to my hometown, La Marinette. And she was married to a Latino, which gave me the notion of having Jennifer married to Edgar Ramirez, to see this lady speak Spanish to her husband and have the best divorce ever in cinema. Were there any particular products in there that you, did you ever order anything from there or? You know, I can tell you what I love from Joy. You know, back in the day, my mom, Lillian Vernon was like in our house, kind of a cool deal. And Gloria Cooper, Bradley's mother, was our consultant on QVC. She ordered all those things. And last night, wore the Audrey Hepburn brooch to the premiere. Bradley himself had the mop in his house, because he mopped his house, as my job was to clean my floors and vacuum my whole house. We had a sponge mop, and Gloria had the actual other mop, which reaches into corners better. And Bradley took it to Georgetown with him. Miracle mop, yeah. And to me, I use the toiletry kit that Joy has, which she made, which is like this thing that folds up, and you can take out the compartments. You can put your kids' toys in the tour crayons. But the point is this. To me, it was not about a lady who just made a thing. It was about somebody who was hidden from herself, and went from the age of 10 to the age of 45, and what the magic was when she was 10, and what it meant when she got married, and what it meant when she got divorced. What is the meaning of joy and emotion at each of those stations of life, and what's it mean to become a boss, and what is success, really? Because I've watched this one in five years, go from a kid who walked on our set, rather innocently, to have to handle an enormous amount of attention and responsibility, and how to handle it gracefully, with dignity, and how to handle the one she loves. And that's a big deal. Joy has a big heart, and so does she, but it does mean you have to become fierce. I answered nine questions. You need to let Jennifer Lawrence talk. Joy is a fairy tale, complete with fairy godmother, a punishing stepmother type, and horrible half-sister, that makes a point about how the prince is not necessary. David, you said it's half-fiction, because you had to come up with a soulful journey that was worthy of Jennifer. And I think that that's great in your case, because you asked Joy's permission to use her life to create a fable. But I was curious, with the issue in general, how much can a writer change a character's life when you're using the real name? Aaron Sorkin ran into some trouble with that on Steve Jobs, and the writers of Spotlight were very vocal about the importance of sticking to their facts. So, I mean, your situation is a different one, but I wondered if you had any thoughts on that issue. Well, I wanted the license to go into her dreams. I don't know what Joy... We didn't use the last name Mangano, because I don't know what Joy's actual nightmares were. I wanted to create a character who was haunted by the loss of her childhood dreams. That's something a filmmaker has to create. Many of the things in the movie are completely true. The most important things are completely true. The fact that there was a gun range next to the metal garage her father ran. The fact that her mother was obsessed with soap operas. He's made up the psyche of a 10-year-old girl. The fact that she had the business stripped out of her hands numerous times. As it happens, business is gangsterism. People will fight you for it until you learn how to fight back. And she did have to go alone to California and Dallas to have showdowns that I consider worthy of the best westerns or the best gangster films that I've seen, but I hadn't seen it done with a woman. And I hadn't seen it done with a mother, so that's what I loved about it. That's all true, all that stuff. Wow. Jennifer, you're in a movie about cleaning up, but you've talked about being sloppy or unafraid of dirt, as you put it. No? That's her motto. I want to live with dirt. I'm not afraid to, like, get my body dirty. I just wondered if you guys had any... I'm glad we're straightening that up. I wondered if you guys had any odd couple relationship where one was a neat dick and one was not. Well, David and I don't live together, but he always has more stuff than me. He always has his food bag, random vitamins. I'm a bag person. Yeah, he's got a lot of bags. I like a lot of bags. Aw, but every time I get sick, he always sends me an eggplant parmesan sandwich, which I never particularly said, oh, I love eggplant parmesan sandwiches, but every time I'm sick, I always get one. The flour's so sweet. Don't you eat a little bit of it? I do. Yeah. Every time. Jennifer, do you ever shop from the television shopping channels? No. I tried to when I was watching Joy. She was selling some product, and I was like, oh my God, I need that. And then I called and realized that I had recorded all of the episodes and it wasn't live. What was it? Do you remember? It was this thing that I don't need so, so hard. I don't need it at all. It's a tent where you can put your clothes and dry them without a dryer. I'm an owner of a washer and a dryer, but she just is such a good seller that you want it so badly. So I was like, I'll be able to give that to somebody. I know somebody in the dorm. Yeah, I have a red stained glass pheasant lamp that I ordered one night after having a glass of wine, and I can't figure out anyone to give it to. I have her hangers. Your hangers are perfect. I spent most of a segment on Bravo today selling her hangers, the thin velvet ones. I won't say it now because you should just watch the segment on Bravo, and you'll get those hangers. And don't you have her inventing more stuff for you guys now? If you think of things you need, will you have her invent that? We have a lot of ideas. That's by accident. Yeah, yeah. We've got to keep those ideas. An invention that you came up with, you put it in the hands of an inventor for free. No, no. But we did it publicly, so we can get the rights back. So, Jennifer, what kind of mop do you use? I'm going to be honest. I haven't mopped my house since the first Hunger Games came out. I wouldn't either. Jennifer's true answer is that she said her blessing was that she had a nose. I have a mother with OCD, so she would give us all sorts of chores. And you need to do this, and you've got to do that. And you'd listen to it and be like, oh my God. But she couldn't live with it not being done, and nothing ever got done well enough or fast enough. So I knew that if I just kept watching TV for five more minutes, she was going to do it. So I got a lot of orders in the morning, but by the afternoon, you were doing it. You don't think you have OCD. You think everyone else is messy. Mom, if you want to come mop any time, let me know. I think she does want to come mop. Yeah, and David, I don't know if you're really the neat one, because the Hollywood reporter described what was in your canvas tote bag. Yeah, DVDs of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons and Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. A paperback called The Art of Living, the Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness from the writings of Epictetus. A half-finished bottle of raw unpasteurized gluten-free kosher creation juice. Kosher creation juice. And many bags of organic food and vitamins that Jennifer sometimes steals. So Epictetus. So David and I were scrambling backstage to get you guys an Epictetus quote, and here's the one he picked, which is applicable to their work together. No great thing is created suddenly. Difficulties are things that show a person what they are. So Epictetus. I love Epictetus. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. Maybe somebody here can tell us. You guys are a New York Times audience. I'm ashamed of you. It's appendicitis. That's his name. That's right. That's the correct pronunciation. You know, if you take any of the films I've made, it wasn't like I was sitting around saying, gee, I have to make a movie about a boxer. Gee, I have to make a movie about, you know, someone who secretly has a restraining order from his wife and has a strange deal to dance with this girl. I have to make a movie about Abscam. I wanted to make a movie about the people. See, so first of all, we have a cinema that's been based in very specific characters and humans who are very specific, like the ones that inspired me through cinema. And it's been able to reach a wide audience without any, a lot of violence and without a lot of special effects. And that's a very narrow landing strip. And it's due to the heart and soul of the performers and the stories. And I need to find love and inspiration in the stories. But it's found from the fertile soil of the terrible flaws and heartbreaks. And I don't think beauty exists without ugliness. I don't think the sublime exists without the ordinary. And that's at the heart of our story. So for me, there's something very ordinary about this woman. That's what I found extremely beautiful about it. Because if you dig into it and go under the surface, to create a business is a brutal, relentless challenge. And to love your family through thick and thin, those who have helped you get there and those who have betrayed you, is to me worthy of the Godfather. So that's, you know, you have a, they're all very specific characters. And so to me, the epictetist quote you just read is what this picture and actually the last four are really about. Anyway, shut everybody up. No, well, I mean, this is why, this is why you're so rare and valuable. Because most successful male directors in Hollywood would rather do movies about lightsabers and dinosaurs than mobs and those long claws to get down cans of soup from a high shelf. Jennifer said she's my gangster. No, I said I'm your dinosaur. She's my dinosaur. Yeah. So you're drawn to Salt of the Earth stories about how the sublime is achieved from the ugly and you're interested, as New York Magazine put it, in horrible cancerous family units that somehow stay together. That's not how I would ever put it. You said you like to tell the stories of people's souls and how their souls are comprised of all the people we love. That's true. Yeah, I think you are rooted in where you came from and who you love. And that's to me the basis of all the filmmaking is that. That's who you begin with. That's where your groundedness with humanity and life is. And this woman, and I have to relate to it personally, and this woman begins in a home that I can relate to. Her father loves her as best he can. And that's Robert De Niro, the great Robert De Niro, playing a very complicated character who, without him and his girlfriend that he met on a 900-number dating service, which is true, we wouldn't be sitting here today. So he met that girlfriend and she financed the whole thing. She was the banker that lady had to go through if she wanted to quit her job behind the customer service desk at Eastern Airlines. And this all pertains to me to the ordinary in a movie like It's a Wonderful Life, which has a noir movie in the middle of it. People think it's just a candy movie. There's a noir movie in the middle of that movie where Jimmy Stewart loses his ---- in front of his family. And it's all based on the truth of how his own family has let him down and how his own life has conspired against him. That's what everybody goes through. So many people go through that. And I find it inspiring when I find somebody who fights their way out of that and is the only one who would have done it. So I believe her character is made up of that father, her quiet little mother with the soap operas, which allowed us to cast Susan Lucci. She'd be watching General Hospital and say, you must come over and watch this episode of General Hospital. And we cast those two people. And that's part of that little girl's soul. Some people lose the magic and the music of their childhood never to hear it again. They get caught up in adult concerns, work, families, and they never hear that music again. To me, the beauty is when someone can recall it and bring it back. And even if they have to become a grown-up. See, a grown-up demands that you become very fierce. And I feel that Jennifer has always had in her a 10-year-old and a 50-year-old. And that's part of the mystery of her. And that's why I loved, like, in Giant, the George Stevens film, you saw James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rock Hudson, I think, give the performances of their lives. They're all 24 years old. They played from 20 to 60. So I believe Jennifer is made of the same material those guys are made out of. So for us, it was a privilege to do the story. Yeah, you had a great quote where you said, the magic of Jennifer is that her soul merges with the soul of the character and becomes a third thing that creates an effect that is deeply charming and enchanting and alive and unexpected. You don't know what's going to happen when she acts, but it's going to be alive. And when I go to a movie, I want it to enchant me and transport me and make me want to watch it again in any 20-minute segment. That's what I aspire to do. And you can only get that when there's a chemical reaction between the film and the actors. It is unnameable. I love the fact that you use the word enchanting and you talk about the magic of movies because sometimes I think that Hollywood might have lost that forever. Or do you think we're just in a fallow period and they're going to recapture it? I do believe there's always enchantment floating around in many movies out there. I do know there's also a lot of dark movies which have their place as well. I believe enchantment, like in fairy tales like in The Brothers Grimm, comes out of the darkness. In this film, I would never describe her family as cancerous. I would describe them as human and flawed. And I would say without them, she would have never become who she was. It was not like they were unnecessary. Just like, I don't think Jennifer would be sitting here today if her parents hadn't been the people they were. If Robert De Niro's parents had not been artists who broke up and he was raised as an artist, like a little boy in the village who would see his father ride by on a bicycle rarely and say hello to him, he would never grow up to be Raging Bull. To have this unnameable, unattainable quality. And it's the brokenness that makes us the beauty of life. It's a paradox of humanity, I think. So, I think and hope I answered your question. I find snow enchanting. We have snow through the movie because I love snow. And I always want to do a movie in the snow. It's narrated by the great Diane Ladd who has an amazing voice. And this woman also had in her life a great matriarch who was her grandmother. More than her mother, it was her grandmother. That's the truth of joy. And that's who Diane Ladd was to us on the set. And that's who Diane Ladd was to this character. If you have one person who believes in you, even if they're quiet, it can have a great impact. This is the first time Jennifer's done, I think, a performance that is quietly powerful. In our last two pictures, we've done things that were very Baroque and loud and fantastic and spectacular. And I'm sure we'll do those again. This, to me, is spectacular in a different way. She's carrying her power quietly inside. She had to be the one at the center of the film with all the people around her taking pieces out of her and living in their world, in their spaces. She's speaking to the men across their desks. And to me, it's very moving that by the end, they're talking to her across her desk in her space. And the second half of the movie has a completely different energy because of that. It takes on that space. These are all the reasons that I thought the movie was worth making. You said today she's the un-anxious? The un-anxious presence in the room. And that's what Michael Corleone is, too. Yes. When we sat with Joy, I think you should tell the story, please, because I'm talking way too much Thank you. When we first met Joy and we met her family, we were wonderful. And her father, almost as soon as he sat down, said, when I invented the mop, I said, when I started inventing and David and I kind of did this and looked at each other and we both looked over at Joy and she just looked it in and nodded and flattened out and rubbed her hands on her knees and just looked and nodded and it was the most powerful thing I've ever seen because it was so patient, so deeply patient and she just let him talk and didn't argue and we were really affected by that. That really affected a huge part of how we went about Joy was seeing her personality because I've said this character's almost contradictory when he's pitching it to me she's a mother Joy was a mother of three and I play a mother of two works at Eastern Airlines she's given up everything for her family so you think that character would be very meek the person would be very quiet that person could get maybe they could get pushed over easily maybe they aren't and then you see a person who started a multi-million dollar company this matriarch and then you think that's a badass and meeting Joy and seeing her personality and how she carries herself and how she has this quiet power filled in the blanks for me as an actor and that's not even why I met her I wasn't planning on imitating anyone and I don't feel like I did but I just wanted to meet her because obviously when I started hearing their conversations that they would have and reading their transcribed conversations and I had no idea that I would leave going that is exactly how I want to be and carry myself in a movie well I went to see it with my sister who came up from Washington tonight because she too is a huge fan of yours and I leaned over to her at least five times during the movie and I said I would not be speaking to that family if I didn't go through it and take the good out of it I think that's the highest power that you can really have is a forgiving power and that's the true acknowledgement of power because you don't need to fight or argue or even say anything and that was a kind of power we hadn't done in our previous pictures so that was cool to me and that was exciting to me David at lunch today too you said that in addition to strong women characters and more Latinos and Blacks because you have a child of color yes I have to make movies that are going to look like my son my younger son and I found when I had a son who had some mood issues and learning disorders I would go to schools and say well how dare there not be more kids they don't accommodate more kids here with these issues I would never have thought that you feel the same thing how dare they not have more movies where the woman is the gangster and the men are powerful and confident enough to stand behind her without a hitch to their egos but with dignity so that's exciting to me also and I think that's just going to explode in cinema now I think the whole culture is poised for that really? that's what I think because if you look at Enrique you look at so many filmmakers you look at Straight Outta Compton I just think that this country is going to be more and more of color and that's the future and I think that when I went back to my college I was given an honorary degree by my college and when I went back it was so truly more diverse and co-educational the women were truly the equals of the guys there I was blown away by that so I do see this happening but Hollywood always seems so surprised they seem so surprised that Straight Outta Compton won the weekend or whatever why can't they just accept that people have a wider appetite than they give them credit for I think Hollywood would be happy to make money any which way you told them so if you said just do it like this they'll go absolutely I don't think they're fighting it Jennifer you've worked with a lot of amazing actors Phillip Seymour Hawkins sorry I've waited too long she caught up sorry so slowly I'm sorry but he's right what he's saying about studios it doesn't have to do with there's when these movies come out and they start making more money all that happens to the studios is they learn oh we can make money that way so the idea for the longest time and this is the reason why there are so many male heroes in movies is because studios mentality and this is what they would tell new executives coming in is that girls can relate to a male hero in a movie but boys can't relate to a female hero in a movie so there was never a female lead it was always a male lead and that has been up until women started coming out with females and started making money and then they were like oh girls can do this too we get periods once a month but we can still and now more movies are coming sorry sorry I don't want to cut you off you didn't cut me off I thought Emma Frost is that her name she's like a Marvel hero Emma Frost am I right I thought she was really cool she has this academy for girls who become these superheroes I thought it was really cool and I was speaking to Quentin Tarantino last night he told me after he made Grindhouse name dropper he's my friend so we were talking about how when you have a moment of vulnerability which he had after after Grindhouse he was saying to me he was happy for my story that I had lived a journey where I had sort of lost my way which can happen to anybody in any avenue of life and how honest I've been about that you're lucky if you can find your way again it can happen to a columnist you have your beacon and suddenly you've got to find a new beacon and I had a few years where I was like where's my beacon as a filmmaker and I found it in these stories of these people you've also had that Quentin where you've found yourself he said how do you mean I said after Grindhouse right he said what do you mean I said well I saw after Grindhouse which was this weird sort of beautiful art venture owed to those pulp movies I saw you pick up I use the gun as a metaphor and it's a metaphor in our movie it's powerful as a metaphor not actually to shoot people I said I'm going to do the Nazis I'm going to do revenge history porn and I'm going to do it with a movie star named Brad Pitt and I said you weren't ******* around anymore and he said exactly and then I said then you're going to do the slaves and he did that those are films to be reckoned with and there was a point where I was going with all this and now I've lost my way well what was the point before this it was the thing about studios he said to me when he was in his period after Grindhouse they came to him and said now will he come do a franchise and that happens to me if you have a moment now you'll do this so I went into a studio and pitched Emma Frost is that her name I pitched that I keep wanting to say Emma Stone your friend, name drop her you can't drop a name for her Emma Stone you name drop her so the point is I went in and said let's make money with this they talked me out of it this is true 10 years ago they said Holly Berry had made that woman superhero movie which had not done well they said it ain't going to succeed they said you can knock yourself out to make a woman superhero movie it won't succeed but go ahead we'll hire you to do it let me get the story out sorry keep going it's all leading to you I'm side projecting back to the bracelets camp but you can keep going it's side comments they talked me out of it they talked me out of it too they talked me out of it and I went home and said I could do it but it seems like it would be a thankless task so I didn't do it 10 years later 12 years later she becomes a major franchise action star in the Hunger Games so they were wrong it just had to be the right story with the right person at the right time so they were wrong in that way but they do still seem to think it's an aberration but you're right that changed with Frozen and Maleficent and Hunger Games that's when they were able to prove that little boys wanted to go see gorgeous you know heroines why wouldn't they there was a 10 year old the other night who met her and he met her and he didn't quite know who she was and for a moment he was in his basketball clothes and then he goes I said she's the star of Hunger Games and he goes you're Jennifer Lawrence and she goes yeah and the little kid said and he went right it was so awesome this 10 year old boy he just saw him completely melting into some inner volcanic happiness God and it's so weird seeing kids these days they go straight into it and then he was like can I get a picture with you and whips his phone out I was like oh my God I mean fine sure great it's fine it was just weird that age the difference you know what I mean you mean that they want to take a picture right away yeah just like the pictures you should see the light that dies behind people's eyes when I'm like if I'm at the airport and I don't have makeup on I'm not taking a picture with you I don't want a picture of me right now and so I'm like no I'll sign something and then the light just like no I just wanted a picture and I'm like **** you I would have been so like if I met like Britney Spears or something and she was like I'll sign something for you I would have been like you ill like I wouldn't have been like no it doesn't only exist on Instagram like I don't know anyway I'm going off yeah no that's a great insight you've worked with a lot of amazing actors Philip Seymour Hoffman Donald Sutherland and Robert De Niro Bradley Cooper and Andrew Ramirez yeah yeah I was talking to Christian what does it feel like to steal a movie from Robert De Niro is that like a French art heist or something oh that wasn't no that I didn't no I think you said I think you said that at lunch today right I won't be quoted to Mr. De Niro as having said that he said it today on Charlie Rose I said to Robert today I said what are your feelings about Jennifer Barber and he said when she came into the Silver Lions playbook and she came into that scene and she kind of ran that scene he said it was magical and he doesn't give that so I think he understands what we're talking about but Jennifer can you learn anything from them you said acting with De Niro was like driving an Aston Martin or is your acting style so naturalistic that it's more life lessons you could learn you said De Niro urged you not let the producers stick you in the days in stick me in the what in the days in or something yeah I mean I learn I mean I try to learn everything I mean I'm working with a living legend but I also feel like acting specifically is such a unique thing that you can watch somebody do something and that might not be like Daniel Day-Lewis's method and he's an unbelievable actor and that gives performances I couldn't dream of giving but it won't help me to stay in character all day I just wouldn't do anything so I don't know everything's so unique also Bob's so quiet that even if he was doing something we wouldn't know about it he's the softest speaking person I've ever met he makes me look like an old person what but yeah I mean I try to learn as much as I can but it's mostly life stuff because acting is so individual and also he's not pulling me aside going when I'm doing a scene I do this so I don't know what was the question he's extremely Robert is no nonsense and unpretentious and he just will go right to the heart of the matter what the actor's going to have it's meticulous it's all in the details of who the people are and he will ask you specifically if you think his person would do this or this and that's what makes him an artist David I wondered if you could tell the audience when you guys first met you were at you were at an awards luncheon I think and you saw her and you said you didn't I guess you met her but I don't think you could foretell the amazing chemistry that would ensue you were saying something like she had on a white dress and heels and big hair looked like a Malibu mom not mom but like a Malibu not mom I just whispered to you you said Orange County and just say Malibu because Orange County made me sound like a mom and then you said Malibu and then still said mom let me put it to you this way I don't care how you put it anymore and that's how we met so more importantly I want to know what it was like when I met you no I think these stories have been told but she was 20 years old barely and she couldn't really walk in the heels and someone said that's Jennifer Lawrence and I said that's Jennifer Lawrence the girl who ate the squirrel in the woods in Winter's Bone and that's the girl who ate the squirrel in the woods and hunted the squirrel and I was at the 11th hour to audition on Skype and I put on the eye make up in Gary's office in your house in Louisville and found in the middle of the audition there was a giant spider in the bathroom and I watched her go through this whole ordeal of killing the spider in the background and then she came back and did the scene and it made me cry and it was all so impretentious and natural and instinctive that I thought it was special and Harvey said she's too young to play this role and I brought the computer to Harvey's office he said just send it to me I said I want to show it to you in person and I opened it up and within 30 seconds of looking at this audition from Gary's office in Louisville Harvey Weinstein said oh my god I went into your office because I didn't it was like Skyping you were like a boss I didn't feel like I knew you I remember going into your office and I had just gotten off of Hunger Games and X-Men and all these movies where they're like lose weight and I'm like I can't and then you were like these actresses and diets and I was like oh my god he's going to tell me to lose weight and you're like I want you to look real man I want you to eat be a woman and I was like I can do that and then I went through I had seen I Heard Huckabees and it was my favorite movie in the entire world it makes me laugh randomly when I'm thinking about it I just think it's so funny and I went through the entire movie Against Your Will you didn't want to hear about it you didn't want to talk about it and I started at the beginning I remember I did the Naomi Watts come down to Huckabees and the whole thing and then I told you about freezing your jeans to keep them clean and you went that's disgusting what does that mean I don't know I know but I do and every time you wash them they get destroyed so I heard if you put them in the freezer you don't have to wash them I don't think jeans are disgusting I don't think freezing them is disgusting well you said that to me and I said you're eating salt and vinegar chips anyway I read somewhere that you only have like identical 5J crew black suits but here you are in grey and my better half puts me in something different and my first reaction to it is no I can't do that and I wear it on set and somebody like Jennifer says hey that's good and I'm like okay and then it's part of the thing Jennifer I didn't know you sang in another movie before you sang in our movie you didn't speak Spanish in another movie did you no so what did you sing in before our movie Hunger Games and what did you sing in that movie Hunger Games I don't remember I blacked the whole thing out it was like a nursery rhyme thing was it long yeah okay it was a mocking choice okay no I liked it but then what was it like for you to sing with Edgar in our picture you remember what I was like it wasn't good no no here's what happened she didn't want to sing because she didn't like it you started with the snow coming down on the stage because it was a play and then you felt it immediately so you gave yourself away but I didn't have to sing I could lip sync but then you later had to sing I later had to sing that sounds like you I made you pay for that Jennifer you're in the cover of Vogue with an absolutely stunning picture oh thank you the part of the interview that made the biggest news was when you said that you'd been spending a lot of time alone and you broke up with Chris Martin and you said quote dating is tricky at this point no one ever asked me out I am lonely every Saturday night don't say that in the press no well this is a problem with press it's like when you're talking and you're like hanging out with somebody and talking you don't it's very different when it's written I'm not a lonely person I never feel lonely it's okay to be lonely no no no but I'm not I'm not a lonely person I'm like everybody thinks I'm alone every Saturday night you say it like that and then it's on print I'm alone every Saturday I was with you the last Saturday yeah what's your point it's humiliating I praise you for saying it because it's real and it's authentic and you're being true to yourself it is but it's not a sad thing sometimes it is I think what I was trying to get across which didn't come across was I was saying I don't feel a lack of something not being in a relationship I don't feel like there is a hole to be filled an emotional void an emotional space to be filled an emotional space that was also one of the chances we took in this film it was one of the chances that we took in the film was that there is not a romance at the center of it there's a romance that as with many people as you did with your last relationship you enter the romance it's euphoric, it's joyful it has a life of its own and then it ends and it ended and my question is what happens to the joy after that you don't go out on Saturday nights because you're sad and you hate back up from her ex never doing an interview during a breakup ever again and you noted that in life it's often the reverse dynamic where men are focused on how to get the upper hand with women and in Vogue you said sometimes guys are so mean to me I know where it's coming from I know they're trying to establish dominance but it hurts my feelings I'm just a girl who wants you to be nice to me it's like Notting Hill it's like you have all these absolutely stunning it sounds sort of Notting Hill I'm just a girl standing in front of you but I mean I think every guy in the country would love to have a date with you and probably women in Hollywood not now now I sound like a desperate loser to meet some gorgeous Hollywood stars but somehow you can never get together with normal guys I guess there's definitely we talked about it a little bit that the lunch you and I right before we went on stage the polarity switch that happens with men and women there's the global confusion where do women belong what is our place how do we and I was explaining to David I'm 25 I'm successful but I'm a girl so I still want something that impresses me or does something because I'm a girl and it becomes I don't know where I'm going with this it's a contradiction that you yourself are powerful but you want to be with somebody who is also powerful that you can look up to but to find someone who can do that but also respect your power and not be threatened by that takes a very special thing so that is why I am alone I love Maureen in the beginning the picture which is I thought it was powerful to have a little girl her character played by Isabella Cravetti this wonderful little girl actress hold her little paper creation and hold it up in the air and say this is a special power so when you're a child you know if you have a special power because you can make something and that will be a special power when you're grown up if you hold on to it if you remember it I think that's an okay truth to live I think that's a good truth to live Jennifer you said you have signed up to direct a picture which is fantastic because women directors are at 1% of the top 100 grossing films and dropping and it's about what's it called? Project Delirium a true story that was in the New Yorker about a military experimenting on soldiers during the Cold War and you said you've known from a young age I want it to be slightly funny a little bit believe it or not I interviewed Diablo Cody and she said that she directed once and never wanted to do it again because she thinks you need a real alpha personality to do it no problem there I'm not ready I would love to direct I do want to direct one day I'm not ready right now I haven't learned enough I haven't paid enough attention I always say I'm going to go to the editing room and learn I leave after like an hour I don't have the attention span to learn what I need to learn right now I'm not ready but I do want to direct one day because you said she's such a creature and she's in charge of the whole canvas yes it will be yeah it will be I know we're going to get to questions in a minute but I did want to ask you Jennifer because you're kind of the canary in the coal mine on privacy you've been the casualty of two horrible internet incidents and the first your photos were hacked and the second you learned in Sony about your pay inequity in American Hustle and you wrote a really excellent essay in Lenny which is Lena Dunham and Jenny Connors online newsletter about how women sabotage themselves on money issues and you know continue to shape their personalities around the desire to please men while in salary negotiations men get commended for being practical when they negotiate powerful deals and I know there's been a tiny bit of backlash but it just seems ridiculous because it's kind of like everyone's going well actresses make a lot of money so they should just stop talking about this and let the inequity ride which is absurd and you know I just thought your essay made a lot of great points unbelievable and I just wondered the reaction you got and well it's something I'm still working on I wish that it was I wish that I could have written it and then fixed the problem because I was writing about a very real issue that I have which is trying to take personal out of business and I mean it's almost embarrassing to write something like that and still find yourself struggling with it as I know but it's kind of a personal thing with movies especially when you get involved with directors and you get involved with it's an emotional process and then business gets involved and you have to start taking responsibility I struggled with that for a while you know maybe they'll get mad at me maybe they won't like me which seems silly but it's very real but I think that's true of women in all professions I just thought that was the universal universally there's generally a 21% of women she was talking about how women that men ask for raises eight times more than women she advised women to smile when they ask for a raise because maybe that will make the boss like them better but you know it just made me sad that that's not enough for me especially when you're already getting a lot it's a lot but I'm worth more and didn't you say you were infused with the spirit of Katniss no I didn't say that again when you're talking and somebody asks you a question do you think that playing Katniss inspired you to write and then you're just like yeah sure and then all of a sudden everybody's like she wrote the op-ed because she played Katniss and then they're like oh no, the President is affected by their past so how can I say how these characters have affected or not affected my personality as of now I can't so I can't say I wasn't inspired but I don't know alright I am getting to the questions I just quickly want to ask Jennifer unless it was another media screw up but you said that Donald Trump would it be like a Hunger Games kind of America I don't know I just can't believe that's actually happening yeah he went up to 41% I know okay and David has a background in politics and political activism and newspapers and he's been in community organizing so I didn't want to let him go without just asking him what he makes of this crazy 2016 race I'm always looking for some of the heroes that I look up to which to me is there's three Roosevelt's who are my heroes Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor and I just they were fearless I know they were rich people and I want that and that's what I'm looking for so I hope that that shows up on a good day for Americans I'm reminded of the day of the story when George Stevens was the head of the Directors Guild and Cecil B. DeMille had tried to kick out the directors who had foreign names like Billy Wilder and William Wyler and immigrants under the time of the Red Scare and it was when he did not prevail George Stevens and John Huston felt it was such a good day for Americans they were exhilarated because the fear mongers had not won that day and they came very close to winning and it was exhilarating and that's the kind of thing that I get excited about as an American And David also did the brilliant movie about the Persian Gulf War Three Kings and to me that's the original sin that we are now dealing with where any move we make in the Middle East is wrong Do you I mean do you look at that movie now and see what's happening in this race and you know where Ted Cruz wants to bomb so much it'll make the sand glow and you know Trump's ready to send ground forces and you know once you flip the Shia and Sunni without much thought about it Here's what I'll say very quickly I will say that when I made the film Three Kings it was intriguing to me that we'd had a war and no one had really looked at it real close and I will say this I supported the fact that all my Iraqi friends who I met on that war wanted us to do that that created democracy in Iraq so when the second George Bush came and wanted to do that I supported that. Now I then saw that the first George Bush was right. The first George Bush said don't do it it's a quagmire you'll never get out it's never ending it's a thousand year cycle the first George Bush was right however I'd go back even farther and say that I think if the first George had never gone into Saudi Arabia and occupied that country with half a million troops, we might not have incurred the ire of such specific people. And by being so presumptive to take over their territory, I think without that happening, perhaps other things don't happen. So this whole thing has happened as a result of going there to protect Kuwait, which to me just, I don't think, you know, can you ask the Kuwait, was it really worth it? You know, and all these things have unfolded that are so tragic that I just, it all started from that, you know? And I remember when he first did it, I was at Sundance as a ticket taker. And I was very excited to meet my hero, Gus Van Sant. And I said, are they really gonna do it? I hope they don't do it. And I saw the bombs going off in January of 91, and I said, wow, we're really going to war. I don't think it just really ends up working out too good. I just think it just begets more weaponry, more war. And so. I agree. And finally, I know you're a huge fan of old movies, and I wonder, does Jennifer remind you of any old movie star? Carol Lombard. Yes, okay. I was gonna say, because Orson Welles loved Carol Lombard, and he said the reason he loved her was because she could not only be beautiful and glamorous and fun, but she could also talk like a waitress in a hash house if she wanted to, and, you know, Jennifer. I sometimes, I see you on late night. I thought that was gonna be a lot more glamorous. I see you on late night TV, and you can talk about things like phlegm or the flu. And I just laugh. Well, I'm always sick on a press tour. I just laugh, cuz I think if an MGM press person in the 30s saw that, he would, you know, be racing out of his house. Yeah, that's right. I love the partnerships between great directors such as George Cukor and Catherine Hepburn. I love William Wyler and Betty Davis. And it's been my privilege to work with Jennifer Lawrence. Yeah, and Preston Sturgis and Barbara Stanwyck. Yeah, Barbara Stanwyck, the mighty, mighty Barbara Stanwyck. So those are formidable women who were very, very womanly, and could also knock you out in numerous ways. And that's who this person is. Yeah, I agree, I think, Carol Lombard, definitely. So we have