Robert Pattinson talks #TheLighthouse during promo

Promo for The Lighthouse release in the US is well and truly underway. Here’s some extracts from recent interviews – click on the link to red them all. I love #promoRob

Thrillist “Robert Pattinson & Willem Dafoe on ‘The Lighthouse’: It’s ’50 Shades of Grey’ with Rotting Fish”

“There’s something about those vowels and the accent and the way it’s written that you really have to contort yourself to say it,” Pattinson says. “It makes you contort your body, and your face is contorted, and then you realize, oh shit, the reason why that is — that’s his psychological state.” But Pattinson says he couldn’t understand his drunken slurring some of the time when watching the final cut. “There are some scenes where I know what the lines are I literally cannot understand what I’m saying at all,” he adds. “I really loved that Robert allowed me to do that. I loved watching it at Cannes subtitled.”

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“It’s like a kind of extreme 9 1/2 Weeks,” Pattinson argues, citing Adrian Lyne’s 1986 erotic drama starring Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke. “There’s very much a kind of sub-dom thing happening. It’s not that far from the surface. We were really trying to push it as well. The bit when we fight each other — there’s definitely a take where we were literally trying to pull each other’s pants down. It literally almost looked like foreplay.” I note that I’ve spoken to some people who have seen the movie who were rooting for a kiss between Ephraim and Thomas. Pattinson laughs: “It’s like 50 Shades of Grey, but you’re shoving bits of rotten fish in your face.” 

GQ “Robert Pattinson Is the Perfect Modern Movie Star“

It’s all a bit cliche to observe, but rather than appealing to the masses, what Pattinson seems to be genuinely concerned with is finding material that will surprise him, make him laugh, material that, according to him, is “pleasurable to read, pleasurable to think about.” But there’s more to it than that. “Whenever I’m doing a bigger part, I always seem to like the same stuff—things that seem quite audacious… A lot of the movies I like have a kind of glee to them… And a little bit of a kind of a punk thing as well. A bit of sticking a middle finger up to everybody.”

Yahoo! “‘The Batman’ star Robert Pattinson on his ‘cool’ Batsuit, not facing Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and the horror of ‘Lighthouse’ flatulence”

I’m a sucker for a good fart joke going back to Blazing Saddles, and excessive flatulence is a big part of Dafoe’s character. Was he farting on set or were those added in post?
We did a Q&A recently and somebody asked him that. He said, “Half and half.” I never heard him, so if he was doing them on set, they were definitely silent. [Laughs]

You’ve worked with director like Eggers and David Cronenberg who have made legitimately terrifying movies, but the films you’ve been in aren’t traditional horror stories. Is that something you’re curious to do: make a full-on horror movie?
I think so. The thing is, I get really frightened at horror movies. I’m incredibly squeamish, so maybe I’ve been avoiding it because of that. I like using certain elements of horror. Especially now, it seems like horror seems to be the only genre where you can be pretty experimental and they’ll get into theaters. In that way, it’s really the most innovative genre at the moment. And there’s something subversive about the genre itself: you’re making entertainment out of killing people, so you can stretch that premise into a lot of different areas. I’m sure at some point I’ll want to do one. I’ve always loved The Cell. I’d absolutely love to play a part like that.

Are there other horror films that have really scared you?
The Exorcist is probably my favorite movie. I’m not particularly interested in doing a horror movie that knows its a horror movie, and I feel like The Exorcist is the reason for that. I find it so scary because it invests so much time trying to make you believe it’s real at the beginning, and that always stuck with me. All the stuff in Iraq was so brilliant, and it’s stayed with me forever. I’ve always thought The Strangers was very scary as well for a similar reason. It starts out as a well-acted relationship drama, and stayed in the world for a really long time before becoming a horror movie. I love a genre switch, and I always think that’s a great niche.

Photo credit: Ryan Pfluger for NYTimes