Quint talks vampires and remakes with LET ME IN's Kodi Smit-McPhee and Matt Reeves!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another in the line of interviews today, this time with young Kodi Smit-McPhee co-star of the Let the Right One In remake, Let Me In. This was supposed to be a two-for-one interview with director Matt Reeves, but they started us early so the first half of the interview is just me and Kodi with Matt coming in a little later. I think this is a fascinating look into Matt Reeves’ mindset and while I have some nitpicks about the movie, the one thing you cannot say about it is that Reeves’ intentions were impure. The dude obviously has a passion for this material and, dare I say, quite a bit of talent behind the camera. I really enjoyed this interview and I think you will, too. Give it a gander!

Quint: Hello.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Hi, it’s nice to meet you. Ain’t It Cool News, I saw you guys at Comic-Con.

Quint: Yeah, I think you talked to Capone. So, how are you enjoying the tour on this one?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Well, this is our second place we are going to. Obviously we went to Toronto first and Comic-Con, that was a while ago now. Well, actually yeah this is our third place, but then after this I don’t know how long, but we will be going to Europe, so that will be the big thing.

Quint: I think the movie will play very well over there. I think it’s…

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Apparently the crowd here is going to go crazy.

Quint: Oh man, the Fantastic Fest crowd? This is like nothing but big genre fans. When LET THE RIGHT ONE IN came out, this is one of the festivals it played first. So, I think people definitely have an affinity for the story. Did you get to see the original?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Yeah, I saw it after I had done this because we didn’t want to copy anything, but yeah I’m really looking forward to tonight because apparently like the whole crowd fits this movie perfectly and they are going to go crazy for it.

Quint: Have you been into the theater yet?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: I have not. Isn’t it like 1,700 seats?

Quint: Yeah, it’s a giant movie palace type screen. It’s got the painted murals on the ceilings and all of that stuff. Let’s talk a little bit about how you approached the role because I think your performance in the movie is very good.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Thank you.

Quint: I thought you were great in THE ROAD as well. Something you seem to have that not a lot of younger actors do is you are able to internalize a lot and I want to know if that’s something that you strive for. Is that something that just comes naturally?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Personally, I like roles that are internal and you know that there’s a lot going on inside of that character, but you only see it come out through the eyes and stuff. I really like that kind of stuff, but I think maybe because I like it I maybe work on that part more than like the normal stuff. But me and my dad work together on every role I have done. I’m not sure why I’ve done a lot of dramatic stuff. I think it’s just because it’s come over and maybe I’m a little better at that than other stuff, but that’s what’s happened and I’m trying to open up doors for other lighter stuff. But yeah, I really like internal characters.

Quint: It’s so rare to have somebody your age that’s able to do what you can do, so I think that’s one of the reasons why you are going to see a lot of people trying to pull you into the more serious stuff.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Yeah, probably like after THE ROAD they were like “Okay, we are doing another dramatic thing, let’s audition him for that.” (Laughs)

Quint: Your relationship in the movie with Chloe’s character is… The movie lives or dies based on whether or not we the audience can buy you two. To me the biggest success of the movie I think is watching you two work together.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Oh cool.

Quint: So can you talk a little bit about working with her and how much interaction you guys had in preparation?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: I remember the first day we met we all read at the table with her mom and obviously with Matt [Reeves] and I was just there by myself. We all met and I think maybe just because we are actors and we know that our characters are going to get closer, we get close as well really quick. That always happens. We usually bond quite fast, but I don’t know, we are really good friends now and we bonded pretty quickly from the first day. I think our character’s relationship has to be very intense, I guess.

Quint: It’s very complicated and it’s very layered. There’s a lot to that relationship. Now, did you know anything about the previous movie or the book before you started? Did you know any of this stuff about how the character of Abby is really a boy and all of that?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Yeah, I didn’t. When I first read the script, I didn’t even know that there was a movie or a book and then I looked it up and I saw that there was a movie and then I saw that there was a book. But I actually didn’t find out there was a book until like halfway through when I saw Chloe was reading it. Usually I would read it, but I didn’t do that for this one, but I still haven’t read it. I saw the movie and I’ve heard that there’s a lot more, like he doesn’t die originally when he falls out the window and he like comes back like as a weird zombie and kills people and then she’s a boy and she got changed at birth, which is kind of freaky because I kissed her.

[Both Laugh]

Kodi Smit-McPhee: I really hope that wasn’t what we said in our movie, but hopefully we did something a little bit different because that would be kind of weird. (laughs)

Quint: It’s such an interesting dynamic, because I get the feeling watching the movie that Abby and Owen really have a real kind of young love together, but at the same time Abby has ulterior motives, because she doesn’t need somebody that she can just relate to emotionally, she needs somebody who will act as her protector.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: I know in those scenes where… well this is before I heard about the boy thing, but those scenes where she’s like “I’m not a girl.” I thought she meant like when she said she’s not anything, she’s not anything because she’s an adult. She’s not anything anymore. She’s not human. She’s not a girl or a boy, she’s nothing. I think that’s what they meant as well, they are kind of hinting to that as well, because in the original we actually see a bit more.

Quint: The castration. I know people who saw the original and still didn’t know what that meant. They didn’t know what the whole point of that was.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: I think we kind of took that out a little bit.

Quint: You did, but you kept it ambiguous where it was there if you wanted it, but you don’t have to.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Yeah, exactly. Like the people that did know about that knew “Okay, I know what he means” and then the people that didn’t know it still made sense, which is good.

Quint: Now another aspect. I wasn’t heavily bullied as a kid, but I certainly wasn’t in any of the good cliques or any of that stuff. I was just kind of on the fringe, but I think anybody who isn’t in the top 5% of the privileged or the beautiful people can relate to the bullying. How did you approach that aspect of it? Was there anything that you drew on personally?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Well it’s kind of weird, because at school everyone knows me as just a normal kid like them and they grew up with me knowing that I’m an actor, so I’m not any better than them. I’m in the… I don’t know, the kind of gothic group you could call it. We aren’t all of that dress in black and stuff, but we listen to different music and we’re like the different group, or the funny one, and then there’s like your really popular group. I was never in that and I was always just me and with my friends and I didn’t really care what group I was in, but I did get bullied a bit but not to the point where it was terrible. It was just the kids that were really annoying me, but I didn’t bring anything personally into this, I kind of had to make it from scratch, but obviously everyone knows what bullying is once in their life and I just brought that into it and made it bigger.

Quint: Owen is just such an interesting character because he’s dealing with so much. Obviously his parents are not there, even to the point where Matt doesn’t even really show us your mother’s face.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: That’s exactly why because he doesn’t have really much contact with them. That’s why it’s so easy when he leaves it.

Quint: I know if I was eight or nine years old and I would watch this movie, which I would because I watched all of the R rated movies when I was a kid, but I could definitely put myself in your shoes and kind of have that even though I had a fine family life. There’s always that kind of wish fulfillment of being able to kind of leave on your own.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Because this is the worst of the worst and then everyone can relate to something in-between there.

Quint: Absolutely. So what was it like working with Matt, because he strikes me as a super likable, super engaging guy, but what was his style? How did he direct you?

Kodi Smit-McPhee: He likes to do this with everyone, he does scenes again and again like a normal director would, but he likes to actually explore and do different things. He’s like “Okay, we got that, so lets try it a bit different this time.” Then he lets us do what we want and what we think should be right, which I think is awesome. With his way I think it’s really good, because he lets everyone have their own kind of taste of what they want and then he gets the pick of what he thought was the best.

Quint: Was there any particular scene that you shot that was difficult that it took you a while to find that meat because when you are exploring like that sometimes you can stumble on it right away and sometimes it will take you some time.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Yeah, there’s always a scene that takes me a while to get to and I understand what I’m trying to do, but I can’t process it or I just can’t do it and I think that would have to be… Maybe the scene where we are in the basement, even though it was just like (snaps fingers) that I didn’t know what a human reaction would be like, like if he saw that. I’d have to be kind of shocked, breaking down, or just complete not believing and I kind of went in not believing it at all, but it took me a few times to get into it, just tired.

Quint: Well it’s an abrupt change, because that scene you are going from being so happy you have somebody you can talk to, because your character doesn’t have any friends. Your character doesn’t have anybody in their family that he can relate to and talk to and you finally find this person and you are so excited about it that it’s an abrupt shift.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: And also the scenes, looking back on where I think I should have done a bit more reaction is where he gets whipped in the face, but when I was doing it I thought… When I see it now, I’m like “Wow, that looks much more painful than I was doing,” but then again this happens to him everyday and if this happened to someone everyday, I think it would end up being painless, because you are just so used to it, but it’s just getting them emotionally.

[Matt Reeves enters.]

Quint: Hello.

Matt Reeves: How are you? How’s it going? Good to see you.

Quint: Good to meet you, sir.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Do you remember Ain’t It Cool News from Comic Con? Matt Reeves: I sure do. Are you kidding? How cool?

Quint: Yeah, Capone has the wandering hands. He’s hard to forget.

Quint: So yeah, we were just talking about the movie, talking about Owen as a character. We were actually talking about your choice not to show the mother or you treat her almost like a PEANUTS character.

Matt Reeves: She’s a little bit like Charlie Brown’s teacher, yeah.

Quint: Yeah, except without the voice.

Matt Reeves: Or like the teacher in ET that Harrison Ford plays when they are dissecting the frogs. Actually truthfully it was inspired to some degree by that, but really where I tried to rip it off from, which is a totally highfalutin idea, but I thought of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE the couple that are the center of the movie, they are both married and you never see their spouses except fleetingly. You see the back of Tony Leung’s head and you see like the leg and the arm and parts of Maggie Cheung’s husband and I just thought there was something about that. I thought, “Wow it’s about how both of these people are married, but by not showing them it really shows their isolation and the kind of pain they are going through, how estranged they feel from their spouses.” And I basically just stole it. Kodi Smit-McPhee: Even V FOR VENDETTA… Matt Reeve: I haven’t seen that. Kodi Smit-McPhee: Like when you never see Hugo (without the) mask. Matt Reeves: Is the mask in the movie that you showed me, is that from V FOR VENDETTA? Kodi Smit-McPhee: Yeah. Matt Reeves: He makes movies and he showed me his movie and first of all I thought it was a haunting mask, but it’s from V FOR VENDETTA, I guess. Kodi Smit-McPhee: You never see his face, but there’s a famous actor under it and the mask never gets taken off.

Quint: And he actually was there for most of the shooting, too, so when he’s talking you can actually hear the muffled voice.

Matt Reeve: That’s like Richard (Jenkins) with the bag other his head. That was him with the bag over his head!

Quint: I believe it. I could tell the eyes, yeah. That was actually one of my favorite little touches that you added, because obviously I’m a huge fan of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN…

Matt Reeves: Me, too.

Quint: …and just that one moment where Owen finds the photo strip where it really just kind of, without saying or focusing on it, it really just immediately cements what Abby does and what she needs.

Matt Reeves: What she’s does or maybe what she doesn’t do or what does happened or however you choose to interpret it.

Quint: It’s complex and that’s what’s really fascinating about this story to me is that you don’t even need to have the “Was she a boy? Was she a girl?” You don’t need to have any of that stuff, but you still have this character who is obviously connecting with Owen on an emotional level. She obviously was connecting with Richard’s character on an emotional level…

Matt Reeves: There are some people who have the most cynical reading and they say, “She’s just manipulating.” I certainly don’t read it that way. I think you can still question the nature of the source of evil without having to say that her motives were all evil, because she has needs that she has, but at the same time that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have this tender feeling for him or that she can control her primal side which she can’t. I think one of the things that I love from the book was this notion which I think really emphasizes that as well which is that she’s not some scheming 250 year old woman inside of a 12 year old’s body. She’s stuck emotionally at being 12 years old and that is awesome. And there’s actually a discussion in the book between Oskar and Eli where she says in this way that Lindqvist describes as being somewhat bewildered “I’m 12, but I’ve been 12 for a really long time.” In essence she doesn’t understand why and he says, “Well maybe it’s because you are 12.” She goes “Are you calling me stupid?” “No, I’m saying you are a kid. We are kids.” The idea being that she has lived through and seen things that for 250 years or whatever it is that no 12 year old ever sees or should see, but she still at the same time is 12.

Quint: And she’s dealing with it and processing everything the way a 12 year old would.

Matt Reeves: Which I think is awesome. I think that’s a really amazing thing.

Quint: That’s what keeps the innocence there. To me it’s beautiful in the original film and in your film the scene where she strips and is in bed. That could easily read as being dirty, but it doesn’t.

Matt Reeves: I agree. That’s so innocent. It’s one of the most innocent scenes in the movie and in the story and in the original film. I agree with you, it’s a very tender moment and it’s cool because there still is that moment of… What I love is that we tried to do the idea of using some of the subplots that have another point of view in the other film and also in the book, but use them to really support what I was interested in focusing mainly on which was the coming of age story and use Virginia’s story really to reflect on how he looks out into the world of adults and sort of discovering sexuality, but what I love about that scene where they are in bed is so on the one hand Owen has had this scene where he has seen this woman in a sexual situation, but then suddenly they are next to each other and what does it mean? They don’t have the knowledge for that and he even says, “Will you be my girlfriend?” Nothing’s going to happen, it’s incredibly tender and it’s because they are in that state of just he really likes her and she really likes him and there’s something incredibly pure and innocent about that.

Quint: And obviously she’s put herself in this vulnerable state so yeah it’s more of an olive branch. It’s almost like if she’s reaching.

Matt Reeves: It totally is and I actually had exchanged some emails about this with Lindqvist, but the idea of that scene where the classic scene where she says “You have to invite me in” and he goes “And what if I don’t?” and she comes in. That’s an olive branch of sorts, too, because he’s now so afraid of her that she basically takes herself and makes herself vulnerable to him and puts herself in his hands.

Quint: She keeps trying, even when they are in the courting scenes, by eating the candy and all of that stuff.

Matt Reeves: Yes, she does keep trying and she’s a heartbreaking character at the same time she’s a vicious killer. Kodi Smit-McPhee: It seems like she has to prove this to him to show him all of these things. Matt Reeves: And these are all risks that on the one hand she shouldn’t be taking because first of all she could turn on him and kill him, but secondly if he finds out what she is it’s like that idea that somebody might find out your true nature and then reject you. The beauty of the story is that he does find out her true nature, but yet he loves her still the same and that’s really powerful, I think. Part of her life of survival is probably being cut off from getting close to anyone and that’s why the idea of the caretaker who is the only connection that she has to the world kind of makes sense. Kodi Smit-McPhee: What I kind of want to know is does she want to live? Does she want to live for that long? Matt Reeves: Oh, I don’t think she wants this burden. It wasn’t her choice. Kodi Smit-McPhee: If she didn’t want to live she could just walk inside without being invited. Matt Reeves: Oh, you mean does she live? Kodi Smit-McPhee: Yeah, survive. Matt Reeves: I don’t think she wants to die. I think she wants to survive, but I don’t think if she had a choice she would want the burden that she lives with. It wasn’t her choice. She was essentially violated.

Quint: What I like about it is when she’s hungry; you hear the stomach sounds that anybody can relate to. Anybody that’s been hungry knows suddenly exactly what she’s feeling just by hearing that sound. It’s a very human moment for her.

Matt Reeves: Yeah, it’s very sad. It’s what I love about his story, which is that he’s got this vampire story which he treats completely realistically and it’s a metaphor for the pain of adolescence, but even the genre aspect of it, he does in this way that has a tremendous reality to it, so it’s kind of a really unusual way to treat that kind of thing and it’s part of what made me fall in love with it as well.

Quint: Something that I absolutely have to bring up is just you deserve some sort of metal of bravery for even attempting to do this, because the fans of…

Matt Reeves: Do you have one for me? (laughs)

Quint: (laughs) You must have known going in at a certain point that there was this fan base and that there was this expectation on any sort of remake, so my question then is what about it made you need to tell this story? What was it that you felt you could bring to this that the original didn’t have?

Matt Reeves: It’s not that I really felt that I would do something that I didn’t feel that the original had. I was brought this project very early on, before the movie ever came out and I had just finished CLOVERFIELD, it was January of 2008 and there was a passion project that I was trying to get made and it’s called THE INVISIBLE WOMAN, a script that I wrote. I was trying to make it before CLOVERFIELD and Naomi Watts was in it, but then we had a scheduling conflict and she fell out, so then I ended up doing CLOVERFIELD and I thought “Well now is the time I can do this, because I’ve just had CLOVERFIELD, a success, and I’ll be able to make this. It’s an independent movie” and it was just the moment that all of the independent film companies started going under and it became incredibly difficult, so I took it to Overture and I said “What about this? I want to make this movie.” They read the script and they said that they thought it was beautifully written, but that it was too dark and too challenging and not a genre film and so they didn’t feel in this environment at that moment that they could make it and so they said “But we love the writing. We love CLOVERFIELD. We want to do something with you. We are pursuing the rights for this Swedish film called LET THE RIGHT ONE IN,” which I had never heard of. “Will you watch it? To be honest with you, my first thought was “Well, I want to make my movie. I don’t want to do a remake.” Then I watched the movie… They said “Just take a look at it, we don’t have the rights yet” and I was blown away. I thought it was incredible and weirdly INVISIBLE WOMAN… it’s genesis was when JJ and I were doing FELICITY we both had to write pilots and he wrote a pilot that became ALIAS and everyone knows what became of that and I wrote a pilot that was a coming of age story all through the point of view of an 11 year old boy. He and his family was going through a tumultuous time. His parents were probably on the verge of a breakup. They move into an apartment complex. It was the late 70’s and they move next door to a single parent family and there’s a little girl and she’s his age and they have these encounters in the courtyard. So the whole thing was a coming of age story. When I tried to turn that into a movie, I realized that I had created… When you come up with a movie, it’s different from coming up with a TV show. A TV show is like “Chapter one of many many chapters,” a huge, huge novel. When you come up with a movie idea, you need to come up with an event that sort of implies all of that; it refers to the past and it implies the future, but it tells you the critical moment of what you need to know, so it was like “Oh, I have to translate this story.” I ended up refocusing it through the eyes of the mother and it became INVISIBLE WOMAN through this event which I won’t get into, because this is already longer than you asked. But in essence I started watching that movie and it gets into those courtyard scenes, I didn’t even know it was a vampire movie yet and I’m like “What the hell? This is so exactly the emotional terrain that I love and that I so wanted to make” and then it becomes a vampire movie and I’m like “This is amazing,” because he’s using a vampire story to smuggle in this story that in another context would be very hard to make and that is incredibly meaningful and beautiful and I was blown away. I loved the film so much that I called them up the next day and I said “I’m really not sure you guys should remake this movie, because it’s awesome.” And they said “Well we are going to pursue the rights, because we think there’s an opportunity here to get it to an English speaking audience who may not be open to Swedish films and you think about it.” Then I read the novel and I loved the novel. I just loved that coming of age story and Lindqvist and I are about the same age and he grew up in Sweden in that time in the 80’s and I grew up in the United States at that time and I just saw the potential of doing something that could be very, very respectful and faithful to Lindqvist’s story. Reading the book I saw how he had adapted his novel to the movie and how faithful it was and that it was really a job of focusing it on the coming of age story and actually one job of editing. So I was like “Well if I could remain faithful to that story and find the ways in which I could put it into the context that I remembered from the 80’s but made into an American context from like the Reagan Era…” and thought about all of that. I thought, “Maybe there’s something here that would not supplant or erase or compete or do anything with the original, but would be another version of this film which would be taking that story and putting it in the American context.” This was, foolish or not, this was my thought. I wrote to Lindqvist, he was very very warm and he said that he actually was excited that I was involved because he liked CLOVERFIRELD and he said that he particularly responded to the fact that I had connected to it on a personal level, because it was the story of his childhood and I said “Okay,” and I felt this kind of responsibility like “All right, this means a lot to him, it’s his childhood. I connect to it, because it reminds me of my childhood. I really want to do this.” So despite maybe better judgment I went forward and did it. The one caveat is all of this was before the Swedish film had even come out. By the time the Swedish film came out, I had a draft of the script, was deeply invested in it and deeply working on it and the movie comes out to, not surprising, universal acclaim and people had the same response to that movie that I had and at this point though I was so committed to what I was doing, I was like… Well, first of all, I thought “Uh oh, big mistake. What have I done? This is ridiculous, because now it’s one thing to remake a movie that already I feel is a beautiful film and then I’m trying to find a way to make my own story of… It’s another thing to now know that that film is incredibly well-known and acclaimed and people are going to be watching us with laser focus to see whether or not we are going to trash their very favorite film.”

Quint: It changes your audience, because now your audience is in a “prove it to me” mode.

Matt Reeves: Yes. Absolutely. I just realized at that point that the best thing that I could do if I was going to do it and I was committed at doing it at that point, was to put my head down and ignore all of that and know that “Yes, there is going to be fan expectation, but I am a fan and I have expectations for what this is going to be and I have to go by that.” The other thing is people are going “Did you feel it was unfair?” I absolutely didn’t, because I said, “If I were in their position, I would feel exactly the same way.” Let’s be honest, most remakes are horrendous and they are usually soulless remakes that don’t have any of the passion of the original or they run roughshod over the intentions of the original. Whatever it is, they don’t have any passion or respect.

Quint: They just want the title.

Matt Reeves: They want the title. Or they want a soulless retread and I thought “I don’t want to do either of those things, but I want to do this in a way that is really a labor of love for me” and that’s what I tried to do. Was that stupid? I don’t know, but it was… The way in which it happened, which is a long convoluted answer, but it’s the honest one and I didn’t do it because I thought “Oh, I can better this or do that. I’ll tell you what was wrong with that crazy Alfredson film.” I love the movie. I think it’s fantastic. I so related to it on a personal level and I so loved the story and I saw and opportunity to work on a film that I cared passionately about and I thought by putting it in a different context that it could be a film that would not mean to replace the original, but would be something that hopefully could stand next to it as another version of that film.” That was the attempt, anyway. That was a six-hour answer! (laughs)

Quint: It’s cool.

[A rep walks in and wraps the interview up.]

Matt Reeves: Oh was that it? I’m sorry. You had more questions probably.

Quint: That’s fine. We covered the important stuff. It was good meeting you, sir.

Kodi Smit-McPhee: Nice to meet you.

Quint: Nice meeting you as well and I’ll tell Capone you said hi. Have a good day.

Hope you guys enjoyed that one! Back with more before I sleep! The neverending interview machine keeps pumping! Next up for Let Me In is the great Michael Giacchino! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com Follow Me On Twitter