Kristen Stewart Gets Candid on Making Chronology of Water at Cannes

Kristen Stewart Gets Candid on Making Chronology of Water at Cannes

Congratulations. You’re probably walking on air a little bit. Yeah, I’m like totally running on fumes right now because we I was just sort of telling her a minute ago, but we just ran here like we barely finished. My head is spinning. All of a sudden, I woke up this morning and the movie had already been shown. I was just like, no. I mean, to say that it’s surreal is an understatement for sure. Yeah. And I when you were there last night, you said I think your words were, “Let’s rip off the band-aid.” So, is that because you’ve just been feeling like you’re dying to show it or you’re not sure if you can let it out of your hands yet? Um, which you know, like what’s that what’s that feeling of anticipation or fear? I mean, I was I wasn’t scared to show the movie. I was uh I guess I was just sort of speaking to the fact that really meditates on like what it is to bleed. The second shot of the movie is a really sort of clumpy bloodletting and 50% of the population will be keenly aware that that did not come from a cut or a wound. It is it is it’s coming from the source and uh yeah so I just thought actually quite literally the whole movie is um there’s it’s about reprocessing pain and there’s a a blood and water motif that runs through it that um I mean honestly runs through the surface of image and skin every 5 seconds. I basically I was just like rip off what a what a what a cute thing to say before this movie. I think that’s why I said it. I was just like I wasn’t scared. I was just like, let’s do this. I mean, I’ve been making the movie for eight years and you know, we shot for 30 days in Latvia and it took me nine months to put it together. I just starred in my wife’s movie. So, I had to sort of put it down for a second. It was so painful and then all of a sudden Ken was like approaching and this is the type of environment that um stories about stories about stories like matter where it premieres does matter. It’s not about selling a film. It’s about like the words that are laid out for people because people tend to follow other people naturally. And um yeah, I was just uh so it was it was a bit irresponsible. I submitted a really like roughy cut. It was like 40 minutes longer than it is now. And I was like honestly if I have to then fine. And I was like really sort of petulant about the idea that it was um that the sort of result of the thing before it really had found itself was even being considered. And then all of a sudden it sort of detached from my body and I looked at this thing and it sort of rose to the surface and it had valition and it had a voice and it had a face and I wanted to dress it and brush its hair and send it to school which is where it is now. And um uh yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let’s just back up a little bit uh for I’m sure many people here have not yet seen it. So, I’ll just say um that it’s an incredibly raw personal story based on a book by uh the writer. I’m going to say her last name completely wrong. It’s Lydia is you say it. Uh Lydia Yugnovich. Yukovich. Okay. Yeah. And what was it about the book that led you to be so devoted to this that you spent eight years needing somehow to make the film? Um well, it’s um the the book itself is um like a really rockous invitation to listen to yourself. Um there’s it’s a it’s a it’s a it’s a really like initiating in in no way like provocative but like incredibly sort of necessary outburst and it sort of makes you want to know like I’m like me too like I it just it really and I don’t want to write novels I want to make movies and so when I read this thing that’s how my voice responded to it and um so physical and it It’s it’s like a it’s a it’s a movie about memory and it’s a movie about a woman who endures a lot of pain, violation, thievery, but also sort of takes that and puts it through her body in a way that she she she shoves something out that is so tied to pleasure, joy, and release. It’s just even if you don’t have the specific relationship to like abuse that this woman does, if you have been walking around the earth with a female body for the last, you know, right now, whenever being taken from being told to shut the up, you know, like it’s it’s pervasive. It’s just a fact. It’s not even like this isn’t my opinion. This is every like I think um there are certain p pieces of work that uh allow you to exist, you know, like all of a sudden you go, “Wow, me. that is a mirror and we are so much stronger together and uh most of like a lot of my favorite movies and a lot of my favorite books are about process and um I didn’t want to make a movie about the things that happened to this woman I wanted to make a movie about what we can do to the things that happened to us iterate metamorphosize um you know understand that we are organic material too like the only way to make this film a movie was to sort of be unfaithful to kind of like let the movie live to the extent that it truly alive, ephemeral, out of my control completely. Like the the the shoot was a shipwreck. I mean, we were just like screwed constantly. And I don’t say that to like Great. What do you mean? I mean, it was really hard. And we were sort of cosmically all the time. And I know everyone probably thinks that, but like Burden of Dreams has nothing on our movie. Like I like like um You mean like the light like you needed the golden hour and it didn’t have it that day? Like that kind of thing. You don’t have enough time for me to tell you how this was so impossible. Like from jump like give me like the worst one. The most panicinducing, the most holy what do we do now moment. It’s like too dark. I can’t. It’s too personal. I’m like, “No, I can’t like it’s I mean I’ll tell you something. I think of something. Um Oh, this one this is kind of funny. One day uh Imagining came to set and we had like you know no time, but that’s normal. It’s fine to have no time. um we had just enough time and then all of a sudden we had like two hours sucked out of our schedule because she accidentally put in dilating um eye drops and she couldn’t see. She came to set wearing these like really chic glasses and I was like you look beautiful. What are you doing? And she was like I can’t see anything. I’m blind. And I was like I know. I feel that way too. Come on. Let’s go. And she was like no I mean I can’t see. And um it was just on a day where we had like these church bells ringing and I had Thora for just a minute and um we couldn’t return to location. Uh this is like this is an undramatic story compared to the other things that have happened to the movie. But um save it for your memoir. Okay, I’m never doing that. But okay, um uh Thora, we ended up doing coverage of of a of a there’s a conversation that takes place in the movie that I wasn’t going to cover one side of. was going to be strictly Lydia’s side and we just had extra time with Thora and we shot that side of it and we couldn’t have made we couldn’t have we couldn’t have cut the the scene without it and so every single time we got smacked it left like a little mark that made the movie and I’m sure that you know these are stories that you hear this like it was such a wound and it is such a scar and it is like my favorite version of I yeah the the movie is like uh you know kind kind of limping into can like laughing with its hair on fire. That’s a great description. Um I I don’t know why I thought you were going to be very uh quiet and not want to like talk that much cuz you seem uh weird, shy. No, no, you seem like an person with a lot going on internally and might not want and the movie has so much going on. It’s so much is expressed. It’s such the expression of an artist. So, I think if anyone ever doubted whether you’re an actual artist, they will not doubt it from this moment forward. That’s nice. Thank you for saying that. That’s so funny. Actors are like, “Actor, you’re an artist?” Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no. I know that’s not what you’re saying. Of course. No, no, no. I I hear you and I’m so great. That’s like so nice of you to say like unbelievable compliment and I’m like totally receiving that. But um it’s just so funny like there’s an attentionseeking thing that actors I think get projected onto like there’s like well I mean you know they want people to look at them. It’s like yeah they want to be seen but not like looked at you know what I mean? So it’s like uh and then there’s such like art in that like um I’m like sitting here going you know actors are artists too. No of course. What a silly thing to vouch for here. I know you know that. Yeah, I do. And I talk to actors all the time, so I would not. Okay. No, I was like, who put a nickel in this girl? I’ve been talking all day. It’s like something’s happened. I don’t know. Okay. I have two more important questions. One, how did you find Emojin Poots? Because she’s perfect. Yeah. And the way you shot her, it feels very much like that connection between you and her and her to the character and her to I don’t have no idea the real life writer. I have no idea. like it feels so tight. How did you build that? How did you choose her? What’s that experience like? She like really like blows my mind. Um, so she’s been like the best thing in everything she’s ever been in. And we have like a ton of mutual friends, but we didn’t have any crossover. Like as in we’ve never really met, we’ve never hung out. And I’m such a huge fan. And um I guess it happened pretty like like traditionally in so far as that she auditioned for the part and I received like a tape of her and I was like wait a second this is like my long- lost best friend. And also the movie didn’t exist really. It was just such a sort of like impossible to imagine idea without her. And all of a sudden the movie was just like it became an unstoppable force when she became the film because her body is the film. It is the surface of her skin. It honestly it’s like I’ve been trying to describe what the movie’s about all day and it’s frustrating because when you tell people about like what happened and where it happened and when and why, it really takes away from what the movie is about, which is like when her face gets pink and um she’s like got such an unbelievable capacity and she’s so beautiful and she’s a walking motif and like I mean like just the blood and water situation that’s going on in her and she’s got this like open lush kind of forest animal mammal. I don’t know. Like I see the mother in her. Also, she’s a writer, so she has to play a teacher. And so therefore, like you can’t really hire someone just she needed to not be a dummy, you know? Like she needed to have she needed to seem like uh she wasn’t like she wrote this movie with her entire body. Like she Jim Thora, like Kim, like they added pages to our pages. We we created like 500 movies and we got home and I was like, I think I killed everything. I think everything’s dead. And then I opened up all these stunning, beautiful gifts and I was like, “No, no, no. We just did something different.” And like ingratiating yourself to newness is difficult. It’s like you have to mourn the loss of a thing. I’m sure you’ve heard directors talk about this. I’ve heard it. Something goes away, something you receive something else. And yeah, it was like being able to like find the emotional connectivity between images in the edit. Yeah. And like cuz it was written really really precisely. We just sort of swapped out pictures for other pictures because we made different ones and she discovered new things and the movie has a sense hopefully. I mean like the endeavor was to create a movie that had a body. So it has like a sense memory. It’s like when you you go like that tastes like that. Oh I just remember what it was to be five and when he said that and it’s then it’s and then all of a sudden like halfway through the movie she grows up a little bit and she becomes more articulate and sort of more the movie becomes more composed and also threequarters of the way through you’re just like why the are we still doing this? And it has like the undulation of like a female orgasm. It does not have like a three-act structure that mimics the kind of like normal climax that we’re used to consuming as an audience. I’m used to it. There’s a certain thing that you want to get at a certain point. And she had the bravery to like go and go and go and go and go and go. She’s like Rocky. Like she just you keep she just never stops getting back up. I have not read the book, but I have rarely come across somebody who is so fearless in talking and so comfortable in talking about women’s bodies, the women’s sexual experience, um, and women’s identities, and they’re all tied up. So, I just want to thank you for that cuz your your character says stuff in the movie that like made me I’m way older than you. Made me blush and I was like, I’m so glad she said that. Yeah. Right, dude. It’s like so exciting. I mean like in telling secrets is like the most fun thing is like go outside being like woo like um yeah it’s pretty cool. Last question. Did you ever question whether you could direct because you didn’t go to school to direct? Yeah, sure. I guess like I was always No, I mean I thought I ruined the movie. Yeah. Like um I thought I was like but I also didn’t like blame myself. I was like blaming the universe and like being smited by some sort of like stronger thing like uh but the feeling of like potential that type of loss kind of told me something incredible about my own ego. I was like all right well we’re going to have to go show everyone. I didn’t do it. You know what I mean? And I was like all right fine. You know what I mean? I have to like go show everyone the thing and it’s not what I wanted to say and people are going to think it’s what I wanted to say. It’s like that scene in uh Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when he’s like frustrated that he learned his lines, but then he didn’t seem like he learned them. Um I was just like, well, I did the best that I could. And like uh no, I didn’t question for one second. I like wanted to do this so badly. I like to not question impulse is like I guess it just took me a minute to come to the the point that it was like concise in itself and then it it it decided to be born when it needed to be and I was impatient and I was like a little petulant and like frustrated and throwing public temper tantrums but like it wasn’t ready. Also, I am totally a director because I’m an actor. like I want to I want I’ve I’ve exper I’ve been around it enough to trust process and just sort of want to ask why we do things the way that we do things sometimes because there are standardized approaches that just sort of pump out wrote material and um I just couldn’t wait to like get my fingers in there. So are you you’re going to direct again, aren’t you? Nah, it. No, I’m probably not. I don’t believe you. That’s amazing. Kristen, thank you so much. We’re going to do a little toast uh to our freshly born director and somebody who we’re so glad to have with us. So, we’re going to grab a glass. Everybody grab a glass. There’s glasses going around. Let’s make a toast. Sit on a stage with a glass of champ. That’s it. That’s it. Uh a toast to Kristen Stewart and the chronology of water and your success in Ken. [Applause] [Music] Thanks for hanging out.

In a candid conversation, Kristen Stewart opens up about her 8-year journey to make her directorial debut The Chronology of Water, why she thought she “ruined the movie,” casting Imogen Poots and if she’ll direct again.

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