GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY comes to cinemas on Thursday and despite that is yet to be released, a sequel is already in the works. This may have something to do with the brilliant critic reaction; we at THN have fallen in love with the film over the last few months and weren’t disappointed when we saw the film last week (see our review).
In preparation for the release we were invited to attend the press conference at the rather swish Corinthia Hotel. Having been completely smitten by the film we couldn’t say no, and spent thirty minutes in a room with director James Gunn, Star Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista) , and Nebula (Karen Gillan), as they answered a whole heap of press questions.
Vin Diesel was also scheduled to appear but was an unfortunate no-show, the reason for which was shared by James Gunn before events got underway. The chemistry between the group was evident from the start with them sharing all sorts of personal anecdotes. There was also A LOT of laughing and giggling. They were up for all questions, even the curveball that THN threw them didn’t phase them. Below is the press conference in its entirety, and to quote the poster – ‘You’re Welcome!’
All five sit down at the table and James Gunn takes the opportunity to address Vin Diesel’s absence.
James Gunn: Vin can’t be here just now, hopefully he’ll be here shortly, he had a stilt miss-hap. (Diesel attended the première on bouncy stilts).
How did you all get involved in the project and what appealed to you about the role?
Karen Gillan: Well I just got a call from my agent and they were like, ‘are you willing to shave your head for a Marvel film?’ and I said ‘Absolutely’. Then I just auditioned, I mean this is a boring story. (Laughs) How to make this interesting? Then I met James in the studio, Shepperton, where we shot the film, and it was really exciting and then I screen-tested and got the role as it was really appealing. (Laughs)
JG: Actually it was, and I told her the other day in person, Karen’s audition’s my favourite, her screen test is my favourite, (looks to Chris, Zoe, Bautista) Sorry guys. (All laugh) Her audition was my favourite audition of anybody in the entire process. Her audition was my favourite, it was the coolest.
KG: Thanks man.
Moderator: I gotta ask why?
JG: Because she was just so good. Because she took this character that was a pretty simple character, it was a pretty long sequence and it was just very, it was actually very moving. This character that she created out of this bald cyber-jerk.
KG: (Laughs) Cyber-jerk.
JG: Yeah. I think that her character is almost like the Boba Fett of the movie, and she has some of these just little moments in the movie where you can see that there’s a lot more to this character than just being a villainess.
Mod: Chris, how was your screen test?
Chris Pratt: I figured if could get them to believe in me as the character then it would be mine. I really felt that me and James gelled in a really nice way and seemed to have like, almost immediately felt like, right. My spirit was right for this character and the way I sounded was the way he would sound. I just didn’t look the part. I wasn’t walking round in the right vehicle yet. So I knew if I could convince them to talk a chance on me and give me enough time to create the changes that were required for me to look like the character, then I would have the part. I also had an inside in, because my friend Ben, who was essentially reading the role of Drax for all of the other screen tests, is one of my very best friends.
JG: And he’s also one of my best friends.
CP: And he was like ‘Dude you can’t, Pratt you can’t tell anyone but its totally yours. But no one is meant to know that, but you’re gonna get it.’ I was like, ‘Oh that’s good’.
JG: Well I told Ben. ‘I am just now just trying to check the boxes to get Pratt into the role so that he can be hired by Marvel and they can agree to hire him.’ With Dave it was the same thing I knew. You know the interesting thing about all four of these actors here is I think back along the journey and with each one of them, like the minute we met there was something very like just sincere between each of us. The first time I met Dave in that audition room I just really got Dave. Chris and I had common friends and we met each other. Karen and I were hanging out in my office and just laughing our assess off in that first day we met. Then Zoe on the phone, who was going a thousand miles a minute when I was on the phone with you. We totally just got along really well. It’s one of those cool things where you still love everybody at the end of the project that you liked so much at the beginning. That’s probably the coolest thing about this movie for me.
Mod: Sounds like you had a great wrap party with that chemistry between you guys.
Zoe Saldana: I missed the wrap party. I always miss the wrap party. I always have to leave the day of the wrap party. Then I hear the stories. But its a good thing I don’t go to the wrap party, because I tend to wrap the party.
JG: Dave protected my brother from a guy that was trying to beat him up. (Dave Bautista starts laughing).
ZS: I can’t believe I missed that.
JG: There was a guy (laughs and looks to Bautista) Should I tell this story? There was a guy who was a crew member who was bothering a group of people. He came up to me and was offering me drugs and I don’t even drink and I was like ‘get away from me’. Then he grabbed the person who was the reference for Rocket on set, he grabbed her. Artie. And then there was another girl Abby who was one of the stand-ins and he grabbed her butt. My brother Sean, who plays Kraglin in the movie and was also the on-set Rocket, who is not a big guy you know, got in this guy’s face. He was a big guy and he was like ‘What are doing?’ Somebody ran over to me and said ‘Your brother’s about to get into a fight’ and I walked over to the guy and said ‘you know you gotta get outta here, leave because you grabbed this girl’. Then Artie, the stand-in came and said ‘James, he picked me up by the tits!’ And I said ‘Woah’, Dave was there and Dave said ‘What’s the problem?’ Then this big guy comes marching over to Dave, and he’s about to get in Dave’s face, and Dave has actually superpowers, so Dave just went like this with his hand (Gestures small push, laughs)
ZS: (Lifts Bautista’s shovel-sized hand up) Look at his hands guys.
JG: (Laughs) He tapped the guy like this (gestures tiny push forwards) and the guy flew back like thirty feet. (Laughs) It was awesome, I mean he has actual super-powers. I was pretty excited.
ZS: Good times.
You all play incredible roles, but who do you think stole the show the most?
ZS: For me I would have to say Groot.
KG: Me too. (Dave Bautista grunts in agreement)
ZS: He stole the show when we started working, I just had a soft spot for that big tree. He unconditionally loved us all. Even though I’m mature and I’m pretty sane. (James Gun makes funny noise, Saldana makes a silly noise back to him, James Gunn laughs) You know and you go okay, this is make believe I know, its a fictional character. He moved me in such I way that I was like, I just want to believe that he’s real because what he’s making me feel is very real. It’s Groot.
CP: I think for me when the movie really takes off is when we zoom in on the Xander mall and meet Rocket and Groot together. We see Groot drinking out of the fountain, and we see Rocket looking through his vid-screen for potential bounties. That to me is the moment when this synergy happens, like you take all the parts of Peter Quill, we’ve met Gamora, I don’t think at that point we’ve met Drax yet. But you see like somehow the sum is greater than the whole. It’s when Rocket is talking and he sees a little kid and he’s like ‘who’s this little guy?’ you know, ‘Its not cool to need help’. It becomes really fun, and you see that this journey is going to be really good, so I’d say Rocket. I think that Rocket, in that moment, steals the show for me.
Mod: I suppose James for you its like picking your favourite kid?
JG: Well I have my favourite kid, its Rocket. (They all laugh) For me in some ways Groot, I just go by the tweets I get, and frankly I get more tweets about Groot and Bautista then anybody else. I also like to say its Bautista that steals the show because it embarrasses him. (Dave Bautista chuckles) So he’s the one person I like to compliment as much as possible because he hates it. (Laughs) I think everybody steals it. Chris has obviously emerged as a movie star from this movie which is incredible. Zoe’s kinda the Clint Eastwood and she’s so cool.
ZS: I’m already a movie star (Giggles)
JG: (Laughs) Yeah you’re already a movie star. And Karen is just so visually arresting I think of her as just this, she has this huge beauty and charisma that is so present. Rocket’s maybe the funniest, and Groot is the soul of the movie. Then Bautista comes in and he’s just the most unique character in the whole movie, and he’s so funny and there’s no one else like him. There’s no one else in the world that could play that role. One of the comments that I’ve got the most on Twitter and Facebook from people who have seen the movie, is that everybody kinda steals the movie in turn, and it really is an ensemble piece. I think that’s what makes it so good. It isn’t that one character who everybody says ‘oh its this one guy’ its really the dynamism between the characters together that works more so than any individual character.
Zoe, Kermit the Frog once sang ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green‘, how did you find it?
ZS: Let me tell you something, when you think of things that are sexy they are usually in pink or black or white or red, they’re not green. We don’t even like vegetables, half of us don’t eat vegetables and they’re green. We started out with a really tough, in a really tough position. I have never approached a character on a superficial level in terms of ‘can we make her tits bigger, and make the jeans tighter around the butt’ and this time you should have been in the wardrobe room when I was having a fitting. I was like ‘No Alex, just pad them up more! Just make them like there (gestures to the size of a massively exaggerated bosom), out here. And the ass, get that wedge just perfect.’ I was really concerned because if my character has to bring all the fan boys and be appealing. We like things that are aesthetically pleasing, especially if it comes in the form of a woman and green are martians. Swamp things are green, boogers are green! (James Gunn starts chuckling) And so I was adamant about finding that right shade.
Mod: Dave how was it being grey with the tribal tattoos, how long did that take?
DB: (snorts) I’m sorry, I’m still stuck on boogers are green.
ZS: (Cackles) Sorry. I made long lists.
DB: I was okay. It wasn’t nearly as bad as people think because I became really close to my make-up team. The comparison I like to make is, if you could just imagine yourself hanging out with your friends for four hours and having some good conversation and a lot of laughs and listening to good music, it kinda flies by.
ZS: Yeah that’s true.
DB: It was more the consecutive days than the hours in the chair. When it got to be three, four, five, six days in a row then your skin just got kinda sensitive and raw. You just wanted that day off to feel clean, you know take a shower and stuff. Dig gunk out of your ears and blowing stuff out of your nose.
ZS: (Laughs) Yes.
DB: (To Zoe) Did you blow green out of your nose?
ZS: For like a month after we wrapped.
DB: Mine wasn’t as bad as you would think.
JG: That’s mostly because you have a good attitude.
DG: I’m pretty patient and zen. I kinda just zoned out.
JG: He’d have to have his arms outstretched for long periods of time. To me it would be absolute hell because I have to be moving all the time. I would be very difficult; I think with the green, the interesting thing for me is if I had to go back I would consider even though she’s green in the comic books, changing her colour. It was so hard, it took us so long to find a green that worked. You guys wouldn’t believe. We have other characters who are blue, you know Yondu and Ronan are both blue, and Nebula’s blue. We have other characters who are yellow, we have other characters who are pink, and we found all of those colours were sort of natural to human beings in a strange sort of way. You could find a colour that looked like skin, and green was really hard. It just took a long time. It really was a struggle.
CP: Yeah like I remember being in the make-up room in some of the tests. It was like ‘a lighter shade of green’ and then she’d just look like she was seasick. ‘Okay a darker shade of green’, and it was like ‘that looks like someone got painted green.’
JG: Yeah exactly. It looked painted. Green is not a natural colour that looks good on the skin. It was really hard and its a testament to Zoe’s facial features too that it ends up looking as good as it does.
Mod: I’m guessing Karen you had the longest in the chair.
KG: Did I?
ZS: Yeah.
KG: Five hours?
JG: You and Dave.
KG: Yeah but I didn’t have to stand up with my arms out. I just sat and watched PULP FICTION on repeat. It was really fun.
If the GUARDIANS were to one day meet THE AVENGERS who would you like to work with, or rather collide with?
JG: I would like to see them kill Thor. No this is true Chris and I were driving the other day…
ZS: Thor’s like the only one who came to the premiere.
JG: Yeah Thor was at the premiere.
ZS: Thor is the most supportive Avenger.
JG: Okay I’m kidding about Thor, I don’t really want to kill him. But Chris and I were driving somewhere the other day and we were in the car in one of our ridiculous conversations. We’re talking about all the different things that can happen to the GUARDIANS in this universe as we do endlessly. You think we’re sick of hearing about the GUARDIANS? No we talk about it constantly. (Laughs) And he was saying ‘Dude, seriously I really really think that StarLord should kill IronMan.’ (Everyone laughs) ‘The audience would be, it would be so awesome if he came down and shot Tony Stark in the face.’ (More laughter) ‘People would be so surprised’ (Hysterically laughs)
CP: I think it would be cool.
JG: (Laughs even harder) I know you do.
CP: Or if not me, maybe Rocket. I don’t know. Without giving away, look they’re never going to use my ideas so I should just tell you all of them. In the comics Gamora and Ironman you know they have..
ZS: Noooo!
CP: They hook up. And how does Peter Quill feel about that? Maybe he doesn’t like it, and maybe Rocket hears this, that I don’t like it, and Rocket shoots Tony Stark at the start of the movie. Minute five blows a hole in his face. (everyone laughs) People would be super mad! What? How can you do that?! (mutters) Well because Robert Downey Jr makes 100 million dollars a movie and we can’t afford that.
JG: (Laughs) Yeah Chris Pratt is minimum wage, lets keep him.
CP: Pratt’s cheap. Chris Pratt kills everyone.
What songs do you guys want on ‘Awesome Mix Tape Vol 2’?
JG: Well I haven’t quite figured out mix volume 2 yet. The truth is the songs that were chosen for the movie were chosen to be specific to those scenes. It isn’t so much what songs I like the best, as it is about what songs speak to that scene, and ultimately those songs were written into the script except for one. They were all baked into the story of the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY which is what makes it work so well. For me to think of a song I like a lot and then put it into the movie, it doesn’t really mean it works. I mean one of my favourite scenes in the movie was to ELO’s Living Thing which we cut from the film; that to me, Living Thing, was the main Guardians song because ELO seemed like the Guardians house band almost. There’s another ELO song in there now because it works really well without that scene.
ZS: We need some Abba in it, we need some Hall and Oats and some Air Supply.
JG: I had used Air Supply in SLITHER so I paid my Air Supply debt.
ZS: I saw it and it was fabulous.
CP: I wouldn’t mind seeing Peter Quill try to seduce somebody to Lionel Richie. (Everyone laughs) You know him acting like the mac [daddy]. (sings) Hello, is it me your looking for? (All laugh) Playing it super serious, thats how he’s been getting all these girls. There’s this one girl..
JG: (Still laughing) A purple girl?
CP: Yeah a purple girl and she’s just crying at how beautiful the song is and thinking its for her. (All fall about laughing). Just super easy to hook up with these aliens, all you need is Lionel Richie.
ZS: (To the audience) This is what we do guys.
JG: (Still chuckling) It is a fact that all aliens love Lionel Richie. (Zoe Saldana giggles)
CP: Yeah.
Mod: I guess I should ask what song is playing when you kill Ironman?
CP: (sings) Hello, is it me you’re look- (makes guns noises) Credits roll. ‘What seven minutes into the movie, its over?!’
JG: Then the rest of the movie is like a WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S type thing with Robert Downey Jr’s body to make the most out of his contract.
CP: Being dragged across the dessert with his Ironman thrusters on…
JG: (Struggling to breathe through laughter) With his dead body inside the costume?
ZS: (Trying to get things back on track) Someone ask a question or they’ll just take over and it’ll be this for the rest of it.
DB: This is what is was like on set by the way.
THN raise their hand.
Mod: Maybe a serious question, if that’s possible (Our question isn’t serious but we keep our hand up regardless and get picked).
Firstly thank you for having a raccoon in the film. Because of our research into the raccoon, Oreo is now coming to my wedding (that’s right folks Rocket Raccoon is a guest at my wedding), so thank you.
JG: Oooh great! Oreo Raccoon is the rescue raccoon, he was rescued when he was only, I think, four days old and hand fed. He’s the raccoon who came with me as my date to the premiere last night. He was the reference raccoon for Rocket and he’s a really sweet little guy. After the premiere I went there and he tackled me and ripped my suit a little, BUT that’s alright.
My fiancee will obviously be in a suit, any tips?
JG: Yeah be careful. He’s very nice and he’ll never try to hurt you. But he likes to wrestle.
So my question is for everyone. Chris your character Che in The OC had an otter as a spirit guide. What are each of the Guardian’s spirit guides?
CP: Wow.
ZS: What did she say?
CP: She’s talking about this really profound season of The OC (James Gunn bursts out laughing) where my character Che Winchester has a spirit animal which was an otter. It’s really deep and really kinda subversive, I mean actually if we have forty-five minutes I could walk you through the episode. (Everyone laughs) But that’s a very good question… What’s your characters spirit animal? I don’t know, do you guys have an answer?
Mod: (Looks at THN) I like how I asked for a serious question.
THN shrug their shoulders.
CP: You know I guess for me, Peter Quill’s spirit animal would probably be like a Golden Retriever. (People laugh)
JG: I see that.
CP: He’s like a puppy, he’s still kinda that nine year old boy that got taken away, but he’s like ‘Ah screw it I’m gonna chase my tail and chase frisbees.’ Anyone else?
ZS: I think, usually I always find an animal for all the characters that I play, I just feel like people, we do also have this animal personality and thats a good way of getting to know somebody on a primal level. But this time Gamora wasn’t an animal. You may think she was a reptile but she wasn’t. She was more of a bull-fighter for me. Because obviously a woman cannot out-fight a man with her strength. But she can outwit him. I thought bull-fighters are definitely, they seduce a bull into surrendering into the sword, which is obviously not something that I appreciate deeply, but the psychological journey of that moment is something worth just observing and noticing. I thought that if she is a woman she’s not going to be stronger than all of her opponents, but she’s definitely going to be wittier.
Mod: How about you Dave? What’s your spirit animal?
DB: My spirit animal? For Drax?
ZS: A bull?
DB: No it’d probably be something like a big old dumb dog like a great dane.
Mod: Are you going to go for another dog here Karen?
KG: I mean I don’t know. What animal takes itself too seriously? A Sloth? Those are passive! I don’t know what’s a really serious animal? Like a tiger?
CP: Maybe like a shark?
KG: A shark! That one.
Chris those are some devastatingly cool dance moves you do. Did you choreograph them yourself?
CP: Yes I did. It was kinda a throw back, like everything about Peter Quill it had to be 1988 or earlier. I channeled Michael Jackson, some moves from the Disco era, early hip-hop, stuff like that. I remember around that time in my life me and my brother would have dance-offs in our basement. Those were my moves, (looks to James Gunn) I have not been paid as a choreographer. (people laugh) At least not yet.
They say that movies are made three times; when it’s written, when it’s shot and when it’s edited. With the Guardians not having a lot of notoriety were you able to shape the piece as you wanted?
JG: For me that was the appeal of the project in the first place. To create not just a world, but a world of worlds. I think I would have a very hard time doing a sequel to another Marvel movie, or even setting up another character to be in THE AVENGERS. I felt a lot of freedom in creating this movie. I’m very, very grateful to Marvel because every time I came up with something, some crazy idea, I’m like ‘let’s have a seven page scene where the characters argue about stupid stuff at the beginning of the third act’ and Marvel were like ‘oh that’s great, we love it’. ‘Let’s have all of these bright colours like these fifties and sixties movies’, ‘we love it!’ and I’m like ‘Let’s have Michael Rooker, who’s totally insane and put him in the role of Yondu’ and they’re like ‘we love it!’ For some reason I was allowed to go hog-wild and it’s been an amazing experience. I know for all of us unless they’re being dishonest with me, which I don’t believe they are, this has felt like a special movie to all of us from the beginning. The flavour of it was special and it felt like we were doing something that was both very new and very unique and yet harking back to films that we all loved as a kid. One of my favourite moments was showing Zoe some scenes during the dubbing and she was like jumping around like a little kid. I remember how I felt when I saw RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK when I was a little kid, or EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
ZS: Or SPACEBALLS, (people laugh) there’s nothing wrong with SPACEBALLS.
JG: It was fun to create that sort of thing and to try and create something… So many movies today are so dark and brooding, to be able to create something that’s a little bit more fun but also has the emotional weight and the heart to it.
The marketing for the film seems to be one of Marvels biggest. I noticed in the trailer that there were some bits that weren’t in the final cut. Is there anything you would like to see back in there?
JG: [with regards to the trailer] There’s a few deleted scenes that we have that aren’t in the movie and there are also out-takes; we would goof around a lot on set and sometimes those are used in the trailer. The marketing has been fantastic! The truth is, I’ll be completely honest with you. We went out and we tested some original trailers that we did for the movie, we had like a really mainstream one that made it look all serious and that these guys were Miss Normal-Sci-fi-Movie and then we had the trailer with Hooked on a Feeling. We took them out to malls and showed people, and they were like ‘I don’t like any of these’. So we decided ‘Oh well we might as well go with the one that is most honest and true to the film’ which was the Hooked on a Feeling one. It really gave you a flavour of what the movie was. It just shows you that stuff [test audiences] is all bullshit because people then LOVED the trailer. We beat every other movie in our time slot. We had three times the amount of hits that MAN OF STEEL had on the first day, and no one knows who the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY are. It worked really well and I think that’s just because it was true to the movie. That’s been our philosophy every step of the way. This is really a testament to Disney, the Disney marketing team who decided to have the balls to just kinda sell this movie as what it is, and not try to make it something else thats more palatable to what they think of as Middle America. That has been a pretty cool experience and marketing would have said don’t do that. But we’ll see in a few days if it worked.
ZS: Scenes. There are a couple of scenes that we shot, Gamora and Nebula, where you sort of explain that dysfunctional relationship that Ronan, Gamora and Nebula had by being abducted and forced into a life of crime and violence by Thanos and his group of thugs. I would love to see them on DVD.
JG: Me too. (Zoe giggles)
And with that the time had flown by, Vin Diesel had not managed to attend, but the other guest more than made-up for his absence.
Don’t forget to go watch GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY when it hit’s cinemas Thursday 31st July.
Press Conference images by Kat Smith.
