Yesterday, we gave you a snippet of my extended conversation with filmmaker Václav Marhoul, whose new film The Painted Bird seems poised for serious awards consideration, including a potential Best International Feature Film trophy at the Oscars next year. It’s an incredibly personal film, and you can expect that with a movie like this, Marhoul was adamant about doing things his way.

One way in which he did that was how he went about casting the movie. In our discussions today, he talked about the unconventional way in which he locked down his cast, as well as whether or not any animals were harmed in the making of the picture.

RELATED – The Painted Bird Interview: Director Václav Marhoul On His Cannes Award-Winning Film

LRM Online: So let’s talk about the cast. I mean you had really, I mean yeah, you had the short stories but you had great cast. I mean you got Barry Pepper, you got Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgard, and then and then you had this little boy, Petr Kotlae. How did you know he was perfect? Because I mean that’s a lot. That’s a lot. It’s quite a role for a kid.

Marhoul: Yeah. Good question. Maybe now you will realize that I am really crazy, because I didn’t organize any casting. I didn’t. I’d simply met him on the street. I met him on the street, and I just only felt, it’s him. It’s you. And I decided that he is going to play my character in five minutes, and I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t know that if he can act or not, because obviously no experience before, in front of the camera. Believe me, I was feeling that he is the right person, and I met him by optioning.

LRM Online: Wow! That’s impressive.

Marhoul: Yeah, no casting, no casting. The bigger, the great, or the best casting director is my heart. That’s my heart. This is the best casting director and I felt it by my heart, and I was right. My heart was right.

LRM Online: It’s your intuition. Good intuition.

Marhoul: Intuition or heart.

LRM Online: So how was the filming? So what about what these other actors, how did they get involved?

Marhoul: You know, the task is so, not complicated but it’s an international cast, because it’s about the Ukrainian actresses, Slovacs, Czechs, Russian, German, Stellan Skarsgard is Swedish, Harvey Keitel is American, Barry Pepper is Canadian, Uda Kier is German, the Russian actor, Aleksei Kravchenko. Look, now as a director, I didn’t cast, I didn’t organize any cast, and just only chose them, because I really felt that they are the right person, just excluding one case, it’s a very young blonde girl, Labina. She was only 17 years old and I did cast. I try in Slovakia, to find out, and it was job, very exceptionally, I did organize a casting because I didn’t know how to find her. Means that in Slovakia, you have many school for the actors, and because she was only about 17 years old. So obviously I couldn’t watch her or watch those actresses somewhere on the theater or nor on the movie. All other actors are professionals. I know them, I know their work. I saw them in many movies, and I saw that in the theater.

So it will just only quite simple. Only Labina, I really did the casting. But it’s everything about my intuition still. When I cast, for instance, Stellan Skarsgard, you won’t believe me, it was the first idea. Who could play old German soldier on the rails? And in next second Stellan. It just only did came to me like that. Stellan, must be Stellan, because I will really believe in that he is not going to be Stellan Skarsgard, but he’s going to be an old German soldier, and this is wonderful. I think that all those actors in The Painted Bird, it doesn’t matter from where they are coming, they are on the same level, all those big movie stars, like the Czech actors, they’re definitely on the same level. So nobody is more or less than the other. So everybody is wonderful and perfect, and I’m really so happy that my heart again, or my intuition, what you did say, say the right thing to me. So I… Just like that.

LRM Online: Which one of the chapters of the film would you say you feel like you enjoyed the most?

Marhoul: No, no, no. No, I can’t say it, because each chapter is a piece of the puzzle, and you have a puzzle and if you are missing one piece of the puzzle, so never you can read the puzzle, and never you can watch it. So, I can’t say what chapter is much more important, because it just really grew into step by step. And I can’t say that I am preferring this chapter to another one, because for instance, I can, directing it, say chapter number-five, maybe. But the chapter number-five never will work if you miss one through four. Because it’s like the stairs. If you are going on the stairs, so whenever you can just only your first step, so that you could meet on the fifth or the sixth step. For me, it’s a puzzle. It’s a global piece of nine art, nine pieces together.

LRM Online: There were a lot of scenes, obviously your strong scenes, but you had a lot of animals involved, playing big parts of the film. I got to ask and I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but just for my sake.

Marhoul: Oh, no, that’s fine. It’s good that you are asking. I mean you Americans, United States, you have a very big advantage that you have those association which is watching if any animal been harmed during the shooting, but it doesn’t exist in the Europe Union. The European Union is about 27 countries and it doesn’t, and we do not have federal laws. So each country has its own law, of course, but the European Union doesn’t have any, let’s say, federal association which should confirm that no animal been harmed. So here in Europe, it’s about that each producer must simply put the single card or the credit to the final roll up, that in fact, this is your statement, this is a brilliant producer statement, simply, “No animal being harmed.” But, since beginning, I knew that it’s a very thin ice.

So each shot, for instance, which the ferret, on the beginning of the movie, when the ferret is going to be burned out, or the horse is going to be broke his neck, and then the birds on the sky of course, and then the goat. No animal really being harmed. And I just only met this question so many times, for instance in Chicago, in two international film festival, and it was some guy and he will still pushing, pushed me. I said, “Look, please stop it! If you like, you can go to the curb, you can say what you want, but believe me that always I will win, because every shot with the animals is documented by the video camera and by the pictures and the photo.” Only one animal was really dead, only one. And if you remember, the boy is sitting on the bank of the lake, and he has a fish, and the knife. And this fish was that, and we bought that fish the day before on the market. Okay. So that’s only one.

LRM Online: And it was already dead.

Marhoul: We bought him already dead. So just only him and no other. So, that’s very important. And I am just only repeating. I can confirm, I can provide to anybody how we did it, how we did it. And first off, the scene with the ferret, very complicated, very complicated.

LRM Online: Very strong. That was a strong scene.

Marhoul: Yeah. Because if you aren’t making the VFX, you are shooting, they call it plates, VFX plates. So this shot, it’s about, let’s say, eight shots. The VFX plates together, then finally, it would be to the computer. So for instance, the ferret, the first plate was real animal, the real ferret. They just running just only on the circle, because those animal handlers, they took the rope and at the end of the rope was a ball. And the ferrets tried to catch the ball and they just only make like that and the ferret was running on the circle because she likes it, and she’s just only tried to catch to the ball. So then we sent the real-life ferret away, and we took the model, which was on the same life size, but with the wires. If you have a puppet, there are some they’re the same, and we just only put the petrol on the model and all those guys, I mean the puppets, which are tested with flame.

So with this model, they made the same circles, like the real-life ferret before. So then we made a fire and then we made some other shots, and then we put everything together. So all those people, they do have a model on the ladder, we just only put them away when the computer put all those sorts together. And finally you, as an audience, you see how the ferret, poor ferret is going to be burned out.

LRM Online: Well, that’s great camera work and all the fancy stuff because that made it look so real. I’ve had ferrets when I was little, so that’s why, for me, I was just like, “Oh my gosh.” I mean just your first scene. I was just like, “Oh my God.”

Marhoul: I don’t know if this is the same beginning like in the book, but in the book, so those boys are not going to be burn out ferret but the squirrel. I don’t know how to say in the English language, the squirrel is a very special animal, so that she shouldn’t be in a such a big stress. Such a big stress that the skirt is always dying, always dying. And even I was thinking that bad guy, I mean small Peter, my main character, because the animals handler said, “Look, maybe we can shoot with a squirrel, but it means that small Peter, your main character, must take care of the squirrel from the first day of when the squirrel was born. So must feed her and everything, and then the squirrel should be okay, but believe us, the squirrel will die anyway because even she, or this animal, they’re like the main character, so many people around, the camera, lights, and all those people, the squirrel will be so stressed that she will die anyway.

And I said, “Okay, so what another animal, we can shoot at a scene?” And they said, “Look, the ferret is okay.” The ferret is not going to be stressed. The ferret like people, so she never going to be stressed, but she’s never going to die. It’s like a dog or cat or something like this.

LRM Online: Yeah, it’s domesticated.

Marhoul: That’s how we did it. And for instance, with that horse, it was model in the life size, being produced in Hungary. This is a special company. They just producing models of all those animals. So if you would like to have a dead elephant, believe me, they will do that. They will build it up in Hungary, in Budapest. So you can order what you want. So the horse was a model.

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