‘Carol’ couldn’t get financing because of lesbian romance

Cate Blanchett came to Toronto for a wide-ranging conversation about creative conflicts on film sets, making big-budget films ‘risky’, and why her six-time Oscar-nominated film ‘Carol’ struggled to find financing.

Blanchett, who is supporting Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple TV+ show “Disclaimer” and Guy Maddin’s film “Rumours” at TIFF, was welcomed to the Royal Alexandra Theater with a standing ovation after fans lined up early to get rush tickets to the event. obtain.

Early in the conversation, Blanchett talked about her love of performing theater in front of a live audience, which led her to address the “streamers out there” who don’t release ratings.

“We want the numbers,” Blanchett said (though she didn’t specifically mention ‘Disclaimer’ maker Apple, which, like most streamers, tends to shield its audience stats). “Not so that we know how much money is being made, but we want to know how much attention has been paid to the things we have earned. That is extremely important.”

Blanchett recalled playing live theater and hearing people leave the room mid-monologue pflump of auditorium seats closing.

“You look at the seats and you say, ‘Okay, that was 70 pflumps.’ The next night there are twenty pflumps. And hopefully on opening night everyone is excited,” Blanchett said, drawing laughter from the audience.

Later in the conversation, Blanchett was asked how she handles creative differences with directors on set. Although she said there was “no conflict” with longtime collaborator Todd Haynes, Blanchett recalled a moment on the set of “Carol” when the director had trouble finding the lighting in a particular scene, so gave the actors gave him space to clear his head while they looked for alternative solutions.

“There’s somehow a misconception that making the movie, if it’s great, is like summer camp, and I’ve been to a few of those, and the movies were fucking terrible,” Blanchett said. “Polite disagreements, respectful disagreements are super important in the creative process.”

In “Carol,” Blanchett plays a middle-aged mother who becomes involved in a romantic affair with a younger woman (Rooney Mara) who works at a department store. Although the film was released less than a decade ago, Blanchett said in 2015 that it took five years (and multiple directors) to make because it was “so hard” to get the project financed.

“At some point another director was going to do it, and he was kind of taken off the project,” Blanchett said. That led her to distance herself as well, until Haynes expressed interest in the project and brought Blanchett back on board. “It was a five-year period because no one wanted to finance it at the time. No one wanted to see…who is going to watch a movie with one woman, let alone two women, falling in love?”

She added: “We’re thinking about how much still needs to change within the industry in terms of equality, inclusion and making films more sustainable. But you know, we’ve made tremendous progress.”

Blanchett noted that the film has been “vibrant” in recent years because “the voices are less homogeneous.”

“It was unfortunately a risky business at the time,” she said of “Carol.”

Speaking of risk, Blanchett spoke about her “eclectic” range of film roles — from indie dramas to billion-dollar franchises — and said her representation at the time was surprised she wanted to take on “Lord of the Rings” and “for three weeks and a playing elf.”

“If there’s a sense of risk in those tentpole movies, and you can sense it when there’s a risk, then they have a chance to be successful,” Blanchett said. “I mean, ‘Barbie’ worked not just because of the parts, but because it was a risk. Someone took a risk with this. That’s why it worked – it was so damn crazy!”

Speaking more broadly about big-budget films, Blanchett said: “I think this is when they become smug and bloated… bloat is the enemy of creativity. You can have too many resources.”

Blanchett, whose credits include “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” “Thor: Ragnarok” and “Borderlands,” added that large-scale popcorn movies “make room for people to remind themselves how great it is to to the cinema.”

During a question and answer portion for the audience, Blanchett answered a question from a child actor who asked for advice on entering the industry.

“I hate giving advice,” Blanchett said before adding: “Go out into nature. … Anything that gives you time to think for a long time and think uncomfortable thoughts, because as an actor it’s often quite uncomfortable. There will be moments when you flow, there will be moments when you take off as a group of people and those are the moments you cling to. But 97% of the time it’s somewhat uncomfortable. And when you’re in the practice room… unless you’re a little bit uncomfortable, you’re not working from the right place.”