ROBERT PATTINSON COSMOPOLIS INTERVIEW (Exclusive Video) – Robert Pattinson plays Eric Packer in David Cronenberg‘s adaptation of the 2003 Don DeLillo novel, Cosmopolis. Eric Packer is a 28-year old financial whiz kid and billionaire asset manager the movie follows him as he heads out in his tricked-out stretch limo to get a haircut from his father’s old barber, while remotely wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet against the Chinese Yuan. Screenslam sat down with Pattinson who spoke about reading the script, getting the role shooting in the car and director David Cronenberg.

On David Cronenberg:

“One strange thing about it because your in a car for the majority of the time there’s no camera operator really right there watching you, he’s (David Cronenberg) outside the car and working on a intercom so you cant really be that hands on, but he’s just incredibly sensitive to every little thing your doing, to the point where you sometimes don’t really know what your doing you just kinda had a feeling about it he always seemed to pick up on when thing where really interesting, which is very reassuring and something you want in a director.”

On the script:

“I’d read the script I think a year before and thought it was amazing and I was interested in it but I think that there where other people attached and I also thought I was too young.”

Watch the full interview below:

DAVID CRONENBERG & ROBERT PATTINSON COSMOPOLIS INTERVIEW (Exclusive Video) - Robert Pattinson stars in director David Cronenberg‘s adaptation of the 2003 Don DeLillo novel, Cosmopolis. The story of Eric Packer (Pattinson), a 28 year-old finance golden boy dreaming of living in a civilization ahead of this one. Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, his day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart. Screenslam sat down with the director and star who spoke about the atmosphere on set, Robert as Eric Packer and why Robert took the role.

On the atmosphere on set:

“I’ve never really worked on something where a director has ultimate control, it looked like very little people were questioning decisions, where as my experience on every film set I’ve ever had is just an unending series of everyone questioning the director, everyone questioning everything about everything and with this there was a very confidant atmosphere on set.” - Robert Pattinson

On Robert as Eric Packer:

“I could tell that he (Pattinson) knew it was good and that he wanted to do it, but he was afraid of it afraid of it in the way actors are often afraid really, which is they don’t want to the one to screw it up because of they weren’t good enough or they’ll be on set and they’ll realize that they don’t understand it and  cant deliver it the way they want, but in Rob’s case he was the one.” - David Cronenberg

Watch the fill interview below:

COSMOPOLIS NEW ROBERT PATTINSON STILLS – As we get closer to Cosmopolis starting it’s US release at the Los Angeles Landmark Theater, Indiewire has released three new exclusive pictures of Robert Pattinson from the movie. The first picture features Robert and Paul Giamatti in a situation. To find out what that situation exactly is, you are just going to have to see the movie to find out.

PLOT: Unfolding in a single cataclysmic day, the story follows Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) – a 28-year old financial whiz kid and billionaire asset manager – as he heads out in his tricked-out stretch limo to get a haircut from his father’s old barber, while remotely wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet against the Chinese Yuan. Packer’s luxe trip across the city quickly becomes dizzyingly hellish as he encounters explosive city riots, a parade of provocative visitors, and is thrust into a myriad of intimate encounters. Having started the day with everything, believing he is the future, Packer’s perfectly ordered, doubt-free world is about to implode.

SOURCE: Indiewire

See the pictures below:

COSMOPOLIS OPENING LOS ANGELES – On August 17 David Cronenberg‘s Cosmopolis will open in Los Angeles at The Landmark Theater. The movie stars Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Jay Baruchel, Kevin Durand, K’Naan, Emily Hampshire with Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti. The movie is rated R for some strong sexual content including graphic nudity, violence and language. Based on the novel by Don DeLillo, comes Cosmopolis, a contemporary thriller that turns into a wild, hypnotic odyssey through our new millennium’s obsessions with power, money, control, information, technology, violence, sex, mortality, revolution, destruction and ultimately, redemption.

PLOT: Unfolding in a single cataclysmic day, the story follows Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) – a 28-year old financial whiz kid and billionaire asset manager – as he heads out in his tricked-out stretch limo to get a haircut from his father’s old barber, while remotely wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet against the Chinese Yuan. Packer’s luxe trip across the city quickly becomes dizzyingly hellish as he encounters explosive city riots, a parade of provocative visitors, and is thrust into a myriad of intimate encounters. Having started the day with everything, believing he is the future, Packer’s perfectly ordered, doubt-free world is about to implode.

SOURCE: The Landmark Theater

COSMOPOLIS US. TRAILER (Video) – After premiering at the past Cannes Film Festival, Cosmopolis will finally hit U.S. theaters this summer. Based on the novel of the same name, the movie, which is directed by David Cronenberg, revolves around a young billionaire who rides a limo through the city and witness the crumbling of society. The movie stars Robert Pattinson as the billionaire, Jay Baruchel, Paul Giamatti, Kevin Durand, Juliette Binoche, and Samantha Morton.

PLOT: Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager’s day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart.

COSMOPOLIS INTERVIEWS - Our friends at HeyUGuys recently did an interview with Cosmopolis director David Cronenberg and star Robert Pattinson in London. They spoke about the story, Pattinson’s character and the differences between the book and the movie. Cosmopolis follows Eric Packer (Pattinson) as he crosses Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut. Cosmopolis also stars Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Jay Baruchel, Kevin Durand, K’naan, Emily Hampshire, Samantha Morton and Paul Giamatti.

Source: HeyUGuys

Robert, your character in the film, Eric Packer, is a not a very nice person – he’s a selfish and nihilistic. How do you approach playing a character like that?

Pattinson: I don’t think I approached it as being a nihilist. I think there was an energy there, but I think the energy of being a nihilist is something different. He’s not really throwing things away consciously, he’s just getting more stressed. He thinks he’s getting closer to something, and everything just starts falling away – he’s not consciously destroying it.

How do you think Eric Packer compares to other David Cronenberg characters?

Cronenberg: I don’t really think about my other movies – I said this before. You’re asking me to be an analyst of my own movies, but I won’t, because that’s your job! What I can say is that I don’t think about my other movies when I make a movie The joy for me is middle of the night, on the street, with your actors, nobody else around. You’re not thinking about Twilight, you’re not thinking about Scanners, you’re thinking about Cosmopolis. That’s beautiful and that’s very pure. When I’m putting the movie together I do think about the star value of the actors I get, I have to think about Robert’s passport as it’s a Canada/ France co-production, all of that stuff – but that’s all irrelevant to the actual creative making of the movie. So I try to be pure that way.

Eric Packer’s only real goal in the film is to get a haircut. Why is he looking for something so trivial?

Cronenberg: The trivial thing is not at all trivial. He even sets it up. He says “A haircut is what? It’s calendars on the wall, its a barber’s chair, it’s the neighbourhood”. It’s his past, where he was somehow pure, and somehow innocent. There’s one thing Robert did, and he probably didn’t even know he was doing it, but when he’s sitting in the barber’s chair he becomes a child. And the old barber becomes like his father or grandfather. There’s a great moment where he says “You were four at the time”, and Eric say “Five, I was five,” and it was just gorgeous. I’m getting chills just thinking about it. And this is beautiful stuff that was in every line of his dialogue, there’s a real intuitive understanding of that stuff. So as I say, it’s not trivial, you understand eventually that this movement to his childhood is what the haircut is all about.

People aren’t going to expect to see Robert Pattinson in a film like this – how do you think the Twilight fan’s who just come to see Robert will respond to the film?

Pattinson: I dunno. I mean, I hope people come to see it! (laughs). Get them into the cinema anyway you can! The Twilight fanbase is very much maligned for their tenacity for sitting out in the rain. Like in Germany yesterday, there were all these people sitting on a miserable day in the middle of nowhere, waiting. Everyone’s always screaming and that, but you go down the line, people give you books. Somebody gave me a Lawrence Ferlinghetti book, even. They give you all these different things, and it’s not like they’re giving you teddy bears. People,for some reason, have some kind of… (pauses) I don’t know. Twilight has attracted such a broad spectrum of people, and they have all kind of been lumped together because it’s much easier to get these images of people screaming and stuff. It’s quite a strange spectrum of people. A lot of people who’ve been coming to the premieres in Europe have seen the movie four or five times already, and they all have interesting critiques of it.

Cronenberg: And a lot of those girls in those lines actually had copies of Cosmopolis and they were asking us to sign them. And they’d read them, or truly intend to read it. The websites that were made by girls, young girls, Twilight fans, while we were shooting, they all had read the book – and they were still excited about the project. Some of the websites were gorgeous, really sophisticated and great. Ok, maybe they’ve only read Harry Potter and Twilight – and now they’re reading Don DeLillo! What’s wrong with that?

Read the rest of the interview here (may contain spoilers)

ROBERT PATTINSON CRONENBERG PHOTOSHOOT - Robert Pattinson pays homage to Cosmopolis director David Cronenberg in the Cannes Special Edition of Premiere Magazine. It seems the star is trying to shed his Twilight image. Pattinson pays homage to Cronenberg movies Videodrome, Scanners and Dead Ringers.

Along with the photos, Premiere France wrote a short article for which you can find the translation below.

Source: cosmopolisfilm.com

 Translation: Star of Cosmopolis, the new movie by David Cronenberg, in competition at Cannes, RP was a willing participant to a crazy photoshoot that lasted 13 hours! Find out more in the May issue.

In general, when you organize a photoshoot with an actor, whose movies made more than 2.7 billion of dollars all over the world, you except someone cold and shy, someone with a controlled image and with a safeguard. Everything is timed to the last minute, especially if the actor arrives late, everything has to be started over again. I say ‘in general’ because all of this doesn’t apply to Robert Pattinson!

It’s at the end of our interview that the actor comes up with the idea of a photoshoot dedicated to David Cronenberg’s movies. Like an homage to his respect for the filmmaker, who by casting him in Cosmopolis, offered him not only a passport for after Twilight but also the opportunity to come and celebrate his entry to the adult age, on the steps of Cannes on May 25th.

To say that he got involved in the making of the photoshoot is an euphemism. The first images of Scanners and Videodrome we prepared for him as an inspiration for the future snapshots came back to us with an unexpected commentary: Rob was sorry that they weren’t more daring, wanting to push all the limits with this shoot – the complete opposite of what someone in his position would have asked. Two days later, the photograph Eliot Lee Hazel and his crew – sort of strange for this kind of shoot (a special effect makeup artist, a pregnant lady …) – met in a gloomy hotel in downtown L.A. to give the go-ahead of this shoot that lasted for exactly 13 hours.

After seeing the results of this shoot, we’re ready to bet that you won’t look at Robert Pattinson the same way again. That the last pretense who might still weigh on the actor will fly away as fast as they appeared.

Click photos to enlarge:

Premiere Cover

COSMOPOLIS NEW MOVIE STILLS – As we get closer to the Cosmopolis premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, more stuff from the movie is being released. The latest comes in the form of movie stills of Robert Pattinson and the rest of the cast. The movie is based on the book by Don DeLillo and chronicles a day in the life of billionaire Eric Parker played by Pattinson.

SOURCE: Kinopoisk

Click the pictures to see them full size:

COSMOPOLIS SUPPORTING CAST – As everyone knows by now that Robert Pattinson plays Eric Packer in David Cronenberg‘s Cosmopolis. What they might not know is who is Rob’s supporting cast. From the masterful Paul Giamatti, and the fresh talents of Sarah Gadon and Jay Baruchel to French luminaries Juliette Binoche and Mathieu Amalric, Cronenberg has assembled an impressive cast. Pattinson sums up the ensemble cast: “All the actors come from different backgrounds, have different personalities and have all done completely different kinds of movies. They didn’t know a lot about the film, but everybody wants to work with David and that’s why they’re here.”

Eric Packer is protected by seen and unseen forces. Kevin Durand plays Torval, Eric’s head of security. At 6’6” he is an intimidating presence, and his character is armed and dangerous. Torval is constantly warning Eric away from his journey, especially as he receives information about “credible threats.” But Eric ignores the warnings and subverts his own security.

Durand sees his character “as a frustrated, ex-Military, father-figure to Eric.” He likens Eric to “his teenage son; I can try to guide him in the right direction, but he will ultimately do what he wants.” Torval’s assistants are Kendra (Patricia McKenzie) and Danko (Zeljko Kecojevic), whose intense encounters with Eric function to further reveal his emotional emptiness.

Enroute to his haircut, Eric meets with his business advisors. First to visit the limo is Shiner (Jay Baruchel), Packer’s trading partner and Chief of Technology. Packer depends on his electronic interface with the world and his expectations are high. Shiner is charged with delivering on those expectations, but the character is more casual and less business-like than we might expect. Or would we? Baruchel describes his character as “One of the dot com kids… a slacker who became a millionaire.” He is entrusted with Packer’s technical security, and it has made him rich, but he doubts the meaning of it all.

Vija Kinski (Samantha Morton) is Packer’s Chief of Theory. Specifically, Vija theorizes about the philosophy of finance, one devoid of humanity. Morton embodies a woman so much in her head that she barely notices the riot going on outside the limo as angry protesters spray graffiti and bounce around the limo. Reality and theory are at odds all around her, but she is unwavering.

We meet Packer’s Chief of Finance, Jane Melman (Emily Hampshire), as the single mother diverts her jog—on her one day off—to meet with Eric in the limo about a crisis with the yuan. His disregard for her personal life and preoccupation with his own concerns exasperates Jane, yet there is an odd excitement between them. She talks to him in the limo—and confirms his dangerous financial position—while he has his daily medical tests, even during his prostate exam.

Knowing Eric is a fan of artist Mark Rothko, Didi Fancher (Juliette Binoche) visits Eric in his limousine to tell him that she’s found a painting she thinks he should buy. After they make love, Eric tells her he’s not interested in a single painting; he wants to buy the entire gallery. Binoche notes that “Didi is conflicted because she is obviously attracted to Eric and wants his business, but offended by his vulgar greed.” When asked what Binoche brings to the role, Cronenberg smiles: “She brings her French-ness, talent, humor, sensuality, all the while illuminating a side to our lead character that we may not otherwise see; that he is someone who’d be involved with a mature, strong, opinionated woman.”

Sarah Gadon, the Toronto actress who played Carl Jung’s wife in Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, appears in Cosmopolis as Eric’s new wife Elise. She is a contemporary New Yorker with rich parents and a boarding school drawl, but she isn’t all about money. “Elise has a veneer of an Upper East Side woman and talks a lot about sex, but underneath she’s very much an intellectual and artist,” Sarah observes. “I think Eric and Elise are just young kids trying to be so much more evolved than they actually are; Elise loves Eric, but he’s very much a symbol of wealth while she is more a symbol of art and intellect—or she thinks she is—and the two together create friction which is exciting… but can’t last.” As for resemblance between the character and the actress, Pattinson affectionately notes: “Elise is kind of an ice queen, but Sarah’s really funny and sweet.”

Mathieu Amalric’s anti-capitalist activist Petrescu delivers a pie in the face to notoriously ultra-capitalist Eric, in a rare unprotected moment on the street. This scene was shot just days before an activist and comedian gave Rupert Murdoch a similar treatment in a British parliamentary hearing, an intriguing example of art anticipating life. Amalric acknowledges the humour of his role but also the disturbing element: “It’s a funny but scary moment that only David Cronenberg can master.” Paulo Branco describes this same moment as “terrible but real.”

K’Naan appears on screen in an open-air hearse. He plays the murdered rap star Brutha Fez, a spiritual musician who is treated as a god by the masses. Off-screen the Somali- Canadian collaborated with Howard Shore on the single for which his character Brutha Fezis remembered, entitle Mecca, based on DeLillo’s own lyrics from the novel.

Benno (Paul Giamatti) is a mysterious character ultimately revealed to be a bitter former employee of Packer. He has been quietly stalking Eric with complicated motives and intentions. When they finally meet, Benno provokes a vulnerable side to the billionaire that was barely glimpsed before. Cronenberg describes Benno as “the conscience of Eric Packer. Benno confronts him over his ultimate lack of humanity and remorse and his sole concentration on pursuit of wealth.”

Giamatti has long wanted to work with Cronenberg, and he agrees with the director about his character: “Benno’s a kind of moral compass—even an alter ego—to Eric, who shows more emotion in this scene than any other in the film.”

DAVID CRONENBERG COSMOPOLIS DIRECTING STYLE – There are many ways to direct a film. David Cronenberg’s way does not involve rehearsing, improvising dialogue or using story boards: “I want the actors to have input into how they move around on set; their body language is as important as dialogue.” Only after that time on set alone with the actors do they bring the crew on set and perform the scene like a piece of theatre.

With the episodic nature of Cosmopolis, and no rehearsal, actors would come in for a couple of days not knowing the stylistic tone. Robert Pattinson appreciated Cronenberg’s method: “There was a natural process of getting to know each other which worked brilliantly, especially on this film where there are so many long scenes with so much dialogue, obscure tone and rhythm. Generally, he picked up on it when it felt right for me and he always liked those takes.”

Cronenberg clarifies: “Especially with an experienced actor like Paul Giamatti there are so many layers, so much depth, levels of emotion that he can convey in a line of dialogue – that’s fascinating – and gives me a sense of how to shoot it. Whether it should be a close up or a wider shot, to see a detailed view of body language.”

Paul Giamatti found the experience on Cronenberg’s set “liberating.” He explains: “I’ve never worked with such a confident director who has the courage to take full responsibility for the film, which takes the pressure off as an actor, so you’re free to do whatever you want.”

Pattinson comments on David as an auteur: “It never feels like David’s taking notes from producers to make the movie appeal to a certain quadrant. It’s understandable when it does happen, but it’s really only because of David that a film like this can be made. I really felt like an actor on this film and felt like I was a part of a creation, rather than just a bunch of stuff strung together with music stuck on.”

Click the picture to see it full size:

David Cronenberg on set of COSMOPOLIS

TELEFILM CANADA - David Cronenberg, on the set of COSMOPOLIS