Let Me In – Q&A

On October 1st, Hammer Films released their first film in over 30 years. Along with Overture Films, they bring audiences Let Me In, starring Chloe Moretz (Kick-Ass) and directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield). I was lucky enough to be part of a round-table interview with the star and director. Many topics came up, from the casting of Chloe and the make-up to how important it was for Matt Reeves to make this a great movie, and not just another remake.

Q: Chloe, in making your last two movies, what do you feel they prepare you for? Do they prepare you for action or do they lead you to be more factorial?

Chloe Moretz: Everything really. It’s physical, it’s mental. It definitely helps to stretch my emotional boundaries. I had to show more in my eyes than any other film that I have done. There really isn’t a lot of dialogue between me and Kodi (Smit-McPhee). I was looking at him and had to express the love, but at the same time the sadness with my eyes and to him. And he definitely helped because he gave so much to me that I was able to give back.

Q: Matt, talk a little about directing her to get those moments and making them work.

Matt Reeves: That was the thing that struck me when Chloe first came in. She brings an incredible spirit to the set. It was very serious but then she made everybody laugh. I didn’t want somebody to come in and play a vampire, per-say. A lot of young actresses that were coming in were doing that. Chloe came in and we discussed it. I was intrigued when she first came in and I can just see her thinking. And that’s so much what the role was about. Then I said, “Come in again I want to play some more.” And we looked at these photographs, and Chloe became incredibly internal. I didn’t know she could become very physical. I’d heard about Kick-Ass.

Chloe Moretz: Kick-Ass wasn’t out yet.

Matt Reeves: But I knew from just spending time with her in those auditions that she was incredibly thoughtful, that you can see a lot of what she was feeling coming across when she wasn’t saying anything. The movie is very much in terms of their relationship, the moments between the lines of dialogue, where the most comes through. That was very clear that Chloe was very capable beyond her years or expressing that.

Q: Matt, Can you talk about setting the film where and when you did? Chloe, what was it like working there?

Chloe Moretz: I shot there before and it was really amazing to be back in Albuquerque (New Mexico). It’s such a great town and the people were great there. The crew was phenomenal. It was all around a great setting.

Matt Reeves: Yeah, it was great. Our crew was amazing. I’d say we shot about half of the movie in Albuquerque and then half he movie in Los Alamos, which is where the movie is set. Los Alamos was great because they have done some shooting there, but not a lot. All the locations we shot there, no one has ever shot there. I originally wanted to set the movie Colorado and somebody said, “Listen, the budget is tight, and we have great tax incentives in New Mexico.” I didn’t know a lot about New Mexico. I thought, “Wait a minute, it’s got to snow.”  And they said, “Yeah, it’s desert, but it’s high desert.” And then I realized it was kind of John Ford country. And I thought it was amazing, to sort of have this very, very quintessential American kind of place that the film opens with.

I thought it would be interesting to set in Los Alamos since I was looking for a suburb. In the Swedish novel, Lindqvist talks about how the place where he grew up was this kind of planned community and it has no history, except the recent history. There’s no church and all of the inhabitants are therefore unprepared for the evil that is about to be visited upon them. And I wanted to find an American version of that. An American suburb. I was kind of think about “Spielbergia.” Like those movies that Spielberg made in the 80’s. When Los Alamos came up, I thought, “Well that’s a very unusual suburb that sprouted up all at once.”

Q: And setting it in the 80’s?

Matt Reeves: In the novel Lindqvist set it in the 80’s. I really related to the story of coming of age. And Lindqvist and I are about the same age. In reading the book, I was noticing all the cultural specificity that came form the idea of growing up in the time. And trying to translate that, I wanted to stay faithful to that coming of age story. I wanted to put in a context that I remember from growing up at that time. I thought it would be interesting to set in the Regan era. Here is this boy that is bullied mercilessly and who had very dark thoughts in a world where the people around him were saying what evil was. The evil outside of us. That the Soviets were evil, but the Americans were fundamentally good. He’d be very confused, he’d wonder where he belonged.

Q: What did you think of the 80’s music?

Chloe Moretz: I have four brothers. They’re all older than me, they were born in the early 80’s or the later 80’s. So, I’ve always kind of been associated with the 80’s in some way. Seen pictures or heard music. I thought it was awesome. I’m into any type of music.

Q: In retelling the story for American audiences, was it subconscious to not be as dark as the book or original movie?

Matt Reeves: There wasn’t an attempt to do that. I would say that it had more to do with the tone in Lindqvist’s novel. The Innocents, which was a great movie, those kids were very eerie. The thing about this story was that Lindqvist has found a way to express sort of the pain of growing up through a vampire tale, but you are meant to identify with those characters. In that sense it’s warmer. The darkness is about the juxtaposition of those tones. What really struck me about this tale was the idea that on the one hand there was real darkness but that there was real tenderness, and that’s really unusual. With The Innocents, it’s an eerie, amazing movie. The kids are sort of in a way there is something mysterious about them. Obviously there is something mysterious about Abby. It really is meant primarily for you to identify with them, and connect to their pain through the story. And in that sense I guess it doesn’t distance you from them emotionally, so it doesn’t seem as eerie. But hopefully there is a lot of other eerie stuff that’s playing against it that sort of gives it the horror side.

Q: For Elias’ character, in the original movie and the book, that particular character seemed to be the boyfriend that goes looking for what attacks Virginia.

Matt Reeves: In the book there is a character that is a policeman. And then there is Virginia’s boyfriend. The thing I wanted to do was introduce the policeman character as kind of a fate that was moving closer and closer to the Romeo and Juliet story. And that it was happens in the original film withthe boyfriend. And because I wanted to put the story as much as possible on to the kids point of view, I didn’t want to follow Virgina’s story except to show how she effects the coming of age. You don’t really know her history, but you see Kodi watching her from across the way and he’s getting glimpses into her life and the world of adult. Once that happens it made it imperative to not make it her boyfriend, otherwise you’d have to follow their scenes and understand that whole motivation.

I wasn’t really wanting to tell the story in that way and I liked the idea of introducing the policeman as someone who was initially the moral eyes of the movie. He would look at the face of the events and say, “What could be responsible for this horrendousness, these terrible murders? Who could do that?” Sort of looking the horror right in the eye and not understanding it. Over the course of the movie, you would come to understand the surprising course of this and feel for the characters. It doesn’t change the horror of it, but it makes you feel for the characters. And I felt that if you used him in that way, he could be getting closer and closer to Abby. And you knew that she would be in trouble and it would heighten the Romeo and Juliet side of the story.

Q: How was it to see yourself on the screen?

Chloe Mortez: I’m very proud of the work, and Matt is phenomenal. And if I was a horrible actress, he would still find a way to make me look good.

Matt Reeves: Tell them about what happened at the L.A. premier.

Chloe Mortez: I had not seen the full finished film. So when I saw it the first time I only saw the first part of it. I was thinking that this wasn’t that scary right now. And I’m not really freaked out by myself. And then I saw it in L.A. and I was the only one screaming in the whole place.

Matt Reeves: When Chloe jumped out of the tub, she literally scared herself.

Q: When you saw yourself with the make-up, was that a revelation?

Chloe Moretz: I laughed. I was thinking, “This is going to be great. I’m going to have fangs. This will be so cool, with a white face. It’ll be awesome.” Then I showed up and he was like, “This is what we’re thinking. We’re thinking acne all over your face.” I go, “What? Acne? Why do you want acne all over my face? I’m not going to have fangs? Oh.” It turned out to be something totally different than what I was expecting. That’s why I love Let Me In. It’s different than any other vampire movie out there right now. Matt definitely made that happen. The eyes were crazy. I couldn’t be in them that long.

Matt Reeves: And she had to run with them.

Chloe Mortez: I had to run down the hallways and turn without tripping. The ground had not be swept clean because I was barefoot. It made me completely blind. Matt would be talking to me, and I wouldn’t know where he was coming from. I didn’t run into any walls though.

Q: The lenses are completely opaque?

Chloe Moretz: Yeah.

Matt Reeves: We had one set that she could see a little in.

Chloe Moretz: It was like tunnel vision.

Matt Reeves: For me, I always wanted to do a vampire that was adolescence gone wrong. So she had teeth that weren’t fangs. Your teeth right before you had braces. The idea of that time when your body is totally out of control and there are changes that are happening to you. And she was thrilled to know that was the direction we were going.

Chloe Moretz: He showed me this picture in photoshop, and it really wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought I was going to be like Lestat, but I was more of the Lestat gone wrong.

Q: With the look of the film, how much did you try to distance yourself form the original? How much did you want to stay with it?

Matt Reeves: Well, the way that we tried to stay with the original was the story. There were different aspects of the book that I tried to draw in. And then there was the idea of how we can make it sort of personal. A lot of the scenes that are similar are verbatim out of the book. The scene at the jungle gym, the dialogue is virtually the same. I wanted to be very faithful to the story. Visually there was no attempt to copy that. My director of photography had never seen the original film.

The idea was we would try to make our own version of the story. We would let it grow and become what it was. If we tried to copy anything, I think it would have been very hollow and empty. So, there wasn’t an attempt to copy anything. I wanted to be a bit more point of view, like Rear Window.

Q: Was that so it can play more for American audiences?

Matt Reeves: No, that’s more my style. I’ve very drawn to try to get into the characters emotional state. My desire was to put you in their shoes.

Q: Did you feel some responsibility to see this movie succeed being such a fan of the novel?

Matt Reeves: I felt a real responsibility, especially after I reached out to him (Lindqvist), and I wrote to him. We started an e-mail communication. First of all, he told me he really liked Cloverfield, which was really cool. And he said he was excited about the idea of me doing that, because he thought that it was a fresh spin on an old story, which is what he was trying to do. When he talked about it being his childhood, I really related to it on that level. When I realized how personal it was to him, I felt a tremendous responsibility. And I did feel like this could lead people back to the novel and back to the original film, which I thought was wonderful. And if it was horrendous, it would discourage anyone from ever wanting to check out the book.

Q: If this does well, would you want to do a part 2 for this?

Matt: I heard that Lindqvist might continue the story, and I would want to follow his lead. The material is so beautful, the last thing I want to do is start making up other versions of his story.

Q: Both movies and the book are so emotionall draining for the viewer. Chloe, when preparing for a role like this, is it difficult to get into the role?

Chloe Moretz: My brother is my acting coach, and we tried to figure out the role at the beginning, and then with Matt, we went even more indepth with it. He showed me pictures of this homeless family, this whole family that lived on the go. And he said, “This is kind of how I envision Abby. This old soul in the eyes.” At the same time, she’s a 13 year old girl, but she’s had a rough life. If you were around for so long, would you remember your parents? Would you remember your life? Do you even remember who you were? It was a lot to try to figure out. But every day it was pretty amazing to get into costume and become this character. I was tired at the end of the day, though.

Let Me In is currently in theaters now.