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Premiere Interviews Alfonso Cuaron -
the director of PoA Summary:
TLC has the entire transcript to an interview held with Premiere and Alfonso Cuaron.
Article: Premiere Interviews Alfonso Cuaron
The following interview with Alfonso Cuaron can be found in the June Issue of
Premiere magazine.
Here is the transcript, thanks to
TLC
“Look at me, man,” says Alfonso Cuaron, in between bites of a quick lunch. “I can’t even breathe.” The 42-year-old Mexican director is feeling the burden of postproduction on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third installment of Warner Bros.’ Blockbuster franchise. Around the corner, in London’s Abbey Road Studios (where the Beatles changed music history), John Williams is recording Azkaban’s score, and there is further work to be done, in preparation for the movie’s June 4 release. It’s all a far cry from Cuaron’s last film, the erotically charged art-house hit Y Tu Mama Tambien, and though he has loved working on Azkaban, he wears the exhausted expression of “a meticulous director concerned with each and every frame,” as producer David Heyman puts it.
As he proved in Y Tu Mama and in his 1995 adaptation of the children’s classic A Little Princess (a favorite of Potter author J.K. Rowling), Cuaron can elicit richly nuanced performances from young actors, and he’s considered an inspired choice to succeed Chris Columbus on this series. “Alfonso is very much a child at heart, and has not lost his sense of wonder, enthusiasm, and curiosity,” says Heyman. “The kids love him, you know,” adds Michael Gambon, who takes over the role of Hogwarts’ headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, from the late Richard Harris. “I love him. I feel safe with him.”
Here, Cuaron—the father of a 21-year-old son and a one-and-a-half-year-old daughter—takes a bit of a breather to talk about the fresh perspective he brings to Harry Potter, the challenges his three young starts faced, and what J.K. Rowling vetoed outright.
" Q : Harry's much angrier than we've seen him before. How did you work with Daniel Radcliffe to bring that out?
A: We're talking about themes and subtexts and contexts, but also we're talking about "Harry Potter", you cannot take "Harry Potter" and turn it into "The 400 Blows". Even so, I asked Daniel to watch "The 400 Blows" before we started shooting. There's a certain aspect of the 13 year old kid who's angry and in discomfort. (Initially) Steve and I got carried away with that; then, when we were shooting, I remember calling Steve, saying, 'Maybe we are becoming too somber with this." Dan was so willing to go (there) ---actually he was too willing; sometimes we needed to bring him back a bit and remind him that Harry Potter's also a cool 13 year old kid. The amount of pain that he put into (some) scenes was almost dangerous. He almost fainted (once), and it was like, 'Hey, Dan, let's slow down here a bit.'
He was very concerned early on about one scene in which he had to cry. So we worked very closely on that scene; I started questioning him about things that he had to respond out loud (to), and when he got a moment of intensity, we rolled the camera and the whole emotional thing came immediately. I thought, 'Oh, man, each time we have to have an emotional thing, we have to do all this work.' No - next time I see Dan in his little corner, talking to himself. He learned how to go through his own process. He's a sponge."
Q: What made you want to direct this after Y Tu Mama Tambien?
A: Ever since I did A little Princess, I wanted to do a so-called family film. I knew the Harry Potter films existed, but I was so unfamiliar with the whole thing, because a film like Y Tu Mama Tambien, takes like, a year of your life to push into different territories, [and] that was the year [of] the Harry Potter explosion. I read the script and thought “Man, there’s something really interesting here.” It’s very layered. There are comments about social class, about the pain of growing up, betrayal, friendship, and ultimately spiritual uplifting.
Q: How does the collaboration with Rowling work? Does she have director approval?
A: I assume…I don’t really know if it’s contractual or a courtesy, but I met with her. She was great. She was very keen on following the spirit of the book, in other words trying to do a good adaptation. At the same time [she asked me] not to put elements that would contradict the stuff either in her universe or that was going to happen in books five, six. In one moment I had this graveyard, and she says, “No, that graveyard can’t be there,” and I say, “Why?” “Because the graveyard is in this other place,” and she gives you the whole explanation of why.
Q: Was there anything that you really wanted to put in that she vetoed?
A: Yeah—little people. Just as extras. It was a scene in the Great Hall; I wanted to have an organ played by little people jumping on the keyboard. I [storyboarded it], and she said, “No, those little people, they don’t exist in this universe. So no.” The thing is, she is so eloquent about her universe that you really feel stupid.
To read the rest of the article, go
here. Some content of the interview is PG-13.
Source:
TLC 
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