[NYCC 2014] Interviews with Nicholas Hoult & Jake Paltrow

This past weekend at New York Comic Con, we had the opportunity to catch up with fellow media members, Jake Paltrow and Nicholas Hoult to talk about a new sci-fi/western film that is hitting theatres today called Young Ones in a roundtable discussion. Jake serves as the writer and director to the edgy new film and Nicholas — well, we aren’t going to give away any spoilers, let’s just say that.

Young Ones, lovingly described as a western with an extreme sci-fi flare set in a very plausible future, has gorgeous cinematography set on an arid and uninviting desert-like plains. Told in three chapters all with incredible tones and set amongst the vision of a Greek tragedy, Young Ones shines.

Were you always intending to blend a science-fiction with a western?

Jake: Yeah, I try hard to make something that we haven’t seen it yet and I think about those things all through writing – because I did want to make it like a Western in a classical way. But I wanted to make it feel different in an aesthetic and world sense.

We usually see you [Nicholas Hoult] as the good guy. What was it like to play a darker character?

Nicholas: He’s very manipulative, and I’ve done the manipulative role before but it’s always interesting because there is so much subtext and different motives to what your character is aiming for. I kind of liked the character. Jake had written great dialogue – strange dialogue – the rhythm and patterns were very strange at times in terms of speech. But yes, he does some bad things, but that’s what intrigued me; there were reasons for a lot of the things that he does but there’s still a lot of goodness in him and he tries to do his best based on the circumstances he’s in.

Jake: Nick made the character more complex than he was originally written. Nick’s natural humanity and intelligence brings Flem to life in a different way that creates a grey area that was there onscreen and wasn’t necessarily on the page.

Did you hold onto your American accent between takes or did you have a voice coach that would help?

Nicholas: I did my first American accent when I was 14 and my voice coach that taught me would be on set and point out when I dropped it. This was the first film he wasn’t actually on set with me so I would run the script a couple of times but sometimes there’s a word in the script where no matter what, you still pronounce it really strange. Did I keep the accent up on set, Jake?

Jake: Yeah, I feel like most of the time you did hold onto it and you had this great mantra that you’d say every time you felt like you lost it that would get you back on track – a collection of words.

Hugh Jackman does the same thing I’ve heard.

Nicholas: Myself and Hugh Jackman have the same voice coach and when we were doing X-Men we were both walking around doing this mantra. But now that I’ve done so many American roles, it doesn’t feel right when I have to act in an English accent. I listen to it and it sounds so strange.

Speaking of X-Men, did you film it and Young Ones back to back?

Nicholas: No, I finished Mad Max in between. Originally we were supposed to film in Spain and when Jake told me it was being moved to South Africa I was like “I’ve just been there for seven months, it’s lucky I love you and the film so much!”

What are the difficulties of filming or acting in such an arid environment?

Jake: It was really tough because it’s a very physical movie and the first three days of shooting it was 115 degrees and there’s no shade anywhere aside from one tent. Halfway through the second day I thought, “If it’s going to be like this the entire time I don’t think we are going to be able to finish this film” Just going from point A to point B and getting the shot ready was so difficult for everyone. Everyone was drinking 15 bottles of water a day and when I got home from the second day of shooting I rinsed my face and my eyes started burning; it was like a sheet of salt crystals on my skin and I’ve never experienced that before.

Being so remote brings it’s own challenges, too. Our shooting location was over an hour drive each way and when we got there, there was no cell service or anything else. We would shoot all day, we built sets – it was the first time in my life where if a light blew, we’d go home. There was one night where the generator blew while we were shooting a night scene and we all went home. In LA if something like that happens you just call someone and they come fix it and you keep going.

Do you think that helped with filming working with the theme of the movie?

Jake: I think it definitely brings something to the movie and I think the best thing of all was that there were no hotels, we just lived in big guest houses and we had a cook that we brought from Cape Town and every night we would have a family style dinner. We looked forward to that every night when we got home. Nick and Mike got along so well and I’d always be like “Well don’t get along too well”. [laughs]

Nicholas, there’s a scene near the end of the film where you are calling for help; was the scene as hard as it was to film as it was to watch?

Nicholas: That scene was tough. It was a rough day in general. It has the speech in it which was very hard for me and it feels like it goes on a lot longer on paper than in the film – either way I kept losing my accent and Jake had to keep me on track and tell me I had lost it. There were all the physical aspects too that like the heat that make you really think ‘would I go back and do that again’ when you complete the film even though you loved it.

Jake: It was a learning curve; the design around that sun being behind Kodi for that shot; we picked the whole thing so it would be exactly the halo behind his head and that could only happen on a certain day. If we were going to do this again I would never do it that way. It was… not the best way.

When you were writing, were there any classic Western titles or directors that inspired you?

Jake: Not John Ford – I think of all the ones most not like him. To me it really started with the S.E. Hinton books… I loved them so much as a kid and I read them again as an adult, too. That was a big influence. Rumble Fish and The Outsiders and that sort of thing. I started to think of what a science-fiction idea mixed with her writing might be like – if we were adapting an S.E. Hinton science-fiction movie. That was my approach. The Western portion, I feel closer to a spaghetti western even though we didn’t make it traditionally like that with the sad endings and whatnot. The part of spaghetti Westerns I love is that they deal with a lot of specific political issues of the time but they’re weird. Death Rides a Horse is always one that I liked and someone like Lee Van Cleef being a hero after playing so many villains is in the same way as Michael [Shannon] being this warm heroic, handsome way is like watching Steve McQueen suddenly.

 
Young Ones is in theatres now and you can see the trailer below: