Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013)

Q: This is a really general question, but you were talking about how when you got the script it some to you. But the movie is so visual and the music is such an important part of it, and its so hard for me to imagine seeing a script and seeing that in there. What was it that you saw?


Rooney: Well, the music was, I couldn’t have imagined the music, but certainly, the look of it. I mean, I knew what David wanted it to look like because he sent such good reference photos. You know, he sent me a picture of a little girl sitting on, you know, the floor, in her house, with like a cat, playing with toys and he was like. “This is what I want Ruth’s house to feel like,” and it’s exactly what the house felt like.




Q: Not looks like, but feels like?


R: Yeah. And he sent tons of photos like that of, you know, of what he wanted the movie to feel like, and so I know what it would look like and feel like.



Q: And you had seen his short?


R: I’d seen his short, yes, but also, you know, the script, it is written in a way that it, you could-- it does have a very special, unique voice to it, and you could kind of tell the look the movie was going to be.



Q: Yeah, the letters are really poetic.


R: And a lot of that was written later. It wasn’t in the first script that I read, but there was enough of that that I knew that it was special.



Q: He says that you were the only person he wanted for this and you’ve said that you don’t know why. I don’t know if now you do know why, if he’s told you…


R: Well, I don’t know why, but then I found out later that he used to be, David used to be goth. So, I feel like he only wanted me because I was Lisbeth and I was like... From his goth days, he was like I need Lisbeth Salander. [Laughs]



Q: That’s funny.


R: I know, right, but no, that’s not why.



Q: In naturalistic parts like this, there’s not a lot of bigness to it, like with Lisbeth Salander, where you’re changing your entire appearance…


R: It’s very quiet.



Q: And you’re not Southern and you’re not from a rural area. Your background isn’t really anything like that. It doesn’t seem like you put a lot of stock in that, but is that something that you have to convince other people to get over or have to talk to yourself about?


R: No, I don’t have to convince other people to get over it. I mean, I would choose to play a part, you know, that has an accent and that’s from a place that I’m not from any day of the week over something that doesn’t.



Q: So, you’d rather do that.


R: Oh my God, yeah. I would rather never do a movie in my own voice, ever, but I mean, I have and I will, but I would much rather do anything in an accent or, you know, someone who is from a place that’s not my own.





Q: You've kind of rejected the idea of comparisons between David Lowery and Terrence Malick in other movies, but do you see the similarities in the way their work turns out and does it make sense to you that they work so different?


R: Maybe in Malick’s earlier work, a little bit. think they’re both very poetic and they’re both romantics and they have a similar aesthetic, but, you know, Malick’s work has changed and evolved so much from his earlier stuff. I don’t think the Malick of today has very many similarities to David’s work.



Q: When you’re working with someone like David Lowery, who’s completely taking influences of Terrence Malick or whatever else, do you see the way he’s filtering those influences, compared to someone like David Fincher who doesn’t seen like he’s been making movies that are inspired by anybody else, necessarily.


R: Oh, yes he is. David is like, he knows everything about every movie and he’s seen everything and he I mean, I don’t think there’s a filmmaker out there that isn’t taking something from someone else.