Captain Fantastic: Director Matt Ross Talks Viggo Mortensen and Survival Camp Training

Cannes Film Festival hit, "Captain Fantastic" screened at the KCET Cinema Series in Santa Monica's Aero Theatre on Tuesday, June 21. The flick stars Viggo Mortensen as the father of six who is intent on raising his kids far outside of the mainstream world. After the family suffers a devastating loss, they must leave their compound in a Pacific Northwest forest and head back into civilization. 

Writer/director Matt Ross, who is recognized for his acting roles on shows like "Big Love" and "Silicon Valley," was on hand to chat with KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond. An edited portion of his talk appears below the streamable recorded audio of the evening's Q&A.

The KCET Cinema Series is sponsored by the James and Paula Coburn Foundation and E. Hofert Dailey Trust and offers attendees the chance to see anticipated films prior to their public release. The summer season of the Cinema Series launched on June 7 and will continue through August 2 at the Aero Theatre. 

Matt Ross on transitioning from actor to director 

For me, the question is frequently, what is it like to be an actor turned director? The truth is, there was not a hard transition in the sense that I grew up making short films and acting in theater and I have made films my whole life. As an actor, you obviously have more visibility and people recognize me more for TV shows. It just took me a long time to get here. I made my first short films. I made eight short films, some of them went to Sundance and played all over domestically and internationally. So, the truth is that I do both and it took me a while, I think. I did other things. I got married and had children. 

On Viggo Mortensen's performance 

The truth is, years ago, as an actor, I worked with a director named Mike Newell, who directed "Donnie Brasco." I was talking to him about Al Pacino's performance in that and said I hadn't seen Al Pacino be so vulnerable in so long. He played certain characters that were very boisterous or, he certainly wasn't as accessible emotionally. I said, how did that happen? How did you get the performance? He said something like, 'oh, dear boy, I didn't get anything, he wanted to do that.' The point obviously is that, you don't, it's a collaboration between us. I didn't get Viggo. I didn't manifest that performance. He manifested that performance. You try to create an environment where people are comfortable and feel safe to explore. 

I think we have pre-conceived notions based on other performances we've seen. It's pretty clear from all of his performances that he's a highly intelligent man. People call him a Renaissance man. It's kind of true. He's a poet. He's a painter. He's a photographer. He does all those things. He's a writer. He's also emotionally accessible as a person and has a great sense of humor. Some of those things came out in the part. 

On collaborating with actors

Only so far as I really believe in collaborations, something Chris [Messina] and I did a lot with "28 Hotel Rooms," and also with Marin Ireland, the actress in that movie. It's a collaborative medium. It's very important to me that he's investing his time and his career, in a sense. He's part of the filmmaking team and his voice is a loud one because he's the lead actor and I want it to be a loud one. 

We shot the script I wrote. I would say that there was a long journey before we actually did the movie and he sent me pages and pages and pages through email and most of them were, I would say, more fact-checking and more, is this true? Is this accurate? We wanted to make sure that everything that was portrayed was authentic from the compound that you see in the beginning of the movie and that continues when you hire the production director, Russell Barnes. We talked a great deal about, 'there are certain things that you're going to have to believe that people live this way.' Those things are sanitation. 'What's your water source?' You see their shelter. Also, 'how are they getting their food?' You see canning and jarring. You see smoking fish, eating the deer. 

Viggo also wanted to be part of the conversation. I think there's a natural push and pull of 'you wrote this, it could also be this.' Sometimes, we decided together that maybe it could bend that way. I think it's less about he wanted to change the film, the script that is, and more about wanting to be a part of the conversation and have a dialogue and in some ways asking me to defend my choices, which I think is legitimate. 

On preparing the cast for the wilderness 

We brought everyone out for I think two weeks, maybe a little more, in pre-production and we had a boot camp for the kids. We sent them to a wilderness skills and survival camp where they learned to build a shelter, make a fire and identify edible plants and they spent a night under the stars. Everyone was doing rock climbing everyday at a rock climbing gym because there's that sequence... They're all learning their instruments. Actually, a bunch of the kids actually already have the skills: Nick Hamilton, who plays Rellian, actually plays the drums. Sami Isler, that's her real voice. That's George [MacKay] playing guitar. They all play their own instruments. The only thing that is fake is that Charlie Shotwell is not that good on the harmonica. That's the only part. George was doing yoga. The two teenage girls took a class on butchering sheep, because they dress a deer in the movie. At that time, Viggo was also sleeping in the teepee, which we had erected at that point. It was really so that they could begin to bond and trust each other and look at Viggo as their father. They ended up calling him Summer Dad, which was pretty cool. 

On the cinematography

Stéphane Fontaine. You might know "Rust and Bone," or "A Prophet" or "The Beat That My Heart Skipped." He's made many movies. He's a master. 

I had a list of people that I wanted to work with and I had an idea about how I wanted to shoot it, which was in a sort of vérité way. I wanted to have a combination between a kind of naturalistic vérité or handheld style, but also have beautiful photography. Those two don't always go together. 

I had seen Stéphane's work and had been a long admirer of it. There's something about how he tells a story with his camera and his great sensitivity to performance. I thought there's a seamlessness to his work that's, I just think it's amazing. 

If you watch his work again, it's frequently handheld. I haven't talked to him about specific films, but I saw it on this film. I think it was on the first or second day. I would have said pan down to Viggo's hands, but he did it already. He didn't have to tell me and he would do it continuously. I never had to say, 'hey, you missed something.' After each take, we would talk about certain things: 'You've done that once now, maybe go this way, fish this way for something else.' 

I think, also, the thing about Stéphane that I think is really lovely, that I think is rare in grown-ups in general is that he doesn't pretend to know what he's doing, on some level, which I think is refreshing. We all see people act like they always know what the answer is and that's patently false. I love how Stéphane and I would have a very organic way of working. Or, I should say, the way I liked to work was the same way he liked to work, which is we would observe the actors. We would talk about what the camera should do, what story we wanted to tell, what we didn't want to miss. We would pick a lens and we would try it and sometimes we would look at what we had done and say that's horrible. 'That was absolutely the wrong choice. That's just shockingly bad.' Then we would adjust. It evolves. I love that about him. 

I think that on film sets there's this dynamic that happens where the DP has this power and a lot of that power comes from, there's this illusion that they always know what they're doing and they're the masters of their domain. There's an arrogance to that that Stéphane does not have. He's very self-deprecating. 

On film shoots 

It's going to sound like a lot. Most indie films are filmed in 19 days or 22. I think it was Dustin Hoffman, I think he recently said something like, one of the reasons that the films in the '70s were so great is because they had 45 or 50. Now, how do you make movies in 20 days? It's true. 

Because of child labor laws, the children can only work a certain amount of hours a day, which is a good thing, but it truncates how long you have to shoot. So, we had 39 days, which sounds like a lot, but when you think that it's a road movie, so every day we're in a different location, frequently in the middle of nowhere, so we're getting up at the crack of the crack to drive far out to a location and then you have to hike into the set and we're in two states. It's never enough.

On Frank Langella

When Frank was cast, one of the things that we talked about in the beginning is that he's antagonistic towards Viggo, but he's not the antagonist. It was very important to him, and me as well, that he's not the bad guy, that all of the characters -- this is my intention, I don't know if it came out -- that everyone is flawed. Everyone is complex. As I say, no one wears the black hat and no one wears the white hat. They were both at different times. 

On the comedy in "Captain Fantastic"

I think the comedy, it's a particular tone and it's not played as a comedy or it's not broad in the way some comedies are. The truth is that every comedy has it's own tone and I grew up on certain comedies that are no longer popular. Monty Python, that's not a popular kind of comedy now. We have a certain kind of broad comedy in our studio films, but this is not that. I always said it's the real world and they didn't have to be funny, but hopefully what's funny is the situation or the way that they're viewing the world. 

On the title of the film 

Well, I think the title's been a bit of a journey because I think I underestimated the degree to which we live in a cinematic culture entirely dominated by comic book films and that everyone's association is immediately a superhero. 

I can tell you what I think it means. I prefer to ask what you think it means because I like titles that are memorable, that are meaningful and that are evocative and, for me, that title does all those things. I think it's pretty clear what it means. How it came to me, I actually don't remember the exact way it came to me. I don't remember at all. I just titled it Captain Fantastic and it was my mother who said, you must have titled it because I have an Elton John record called "Captain Fantastic and the Dirt Brown Cowboy." I said, 'What? There's an Elton John record…?' So, I had no idea. It was clearly deep in my subconscious. She played all her '70s music and I heard it. It turns out that album has nothing to do with this movie whatsoever. I thought, I just thought it was a very, it spoke volumes about this character.