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Willem Dafoe is sitting in a nicely air-conditioned Beverly Hills hotel suite ready to talk about his award-worthy performance in Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project,” but just two days previous he was finishing up five months of production on James Wan’s “Aquaman.”

“James Wan’s great. He’s great,” Dafoe says. “I mean, because of the underwater [aspect of the movie] it’s very complicated technically. But you see it in his films, he’s very detail-oriented. He figures the cut. He’s very precise. He’s a real gifted filmmaker.”

Dafoe plays Nudis Vulko, who is described as Atlantis’ “chief scientific advisor,” but has an often complicated relationship with the underwater city’s king, Aquaman (Jason Momoa), in the comic book. The two-time Oscar nominee says he had a lot of fun shooting the “Justice League” spin-off.

“I love doing physical things and I was on a wire a lot of the time or on different devices because we’re floating and I love doing that stuff,” Dafoe says. “I was swimming through the air. This kind of stuff is great fun for me.”

What Dafoe is really on hand to discuss, however, is “The Florida Project.” Baker’s riveting and emotional powerhouse of a movie debuted at Cannes this past May and popped back up with just as glowing reviews at TIFF (currently a 92 on Metacritic, 97% on Rotten Tomatoes). The film centers on a young girl Moonee (Brooklyn Prince, phenomenal) and her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite, strong) as they try to survive and enjoy life while living close to homeless in extended-stay motels on the outskirts of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fl. As Bobby, Dafoe portrays the motel’s manager who has the difficult task of balancing his concern for the young kids who know the “temporary” lodgings as home with a job that often finds him kicking families who can’t pay out on the street. It’s a brilliant, subtle performance that deserves serious Oscar attention (as does the film itself).

The rest of our conversation, presented in a Q&A format, centered on the A24’s little drama that can, and touches on some minor spoilers from the film, is below.

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Gregory Ellwood: How you doing man?

Willem Dafoe: Good.

Congratulations on the movie. What about the project appealed to you when it first came your way?

Sean. Good script. The fact that we were going to be shooting in this place so rooted in reality. It appealed to me and I didn’t know about this world, even though I had family in Orlando believe it or not. I didn’t know that area. But I wasn’t aware of this culture of semi-transient people without homes that are long-time temporary residents.

The film is mostly through the eyes of these kids, it’s either between their eyes and sometimes your own character’s eyes. Could you tell on the paper that this could work? Did Sean have to convince you, “Listen, I’m going to get these kids and I’m going to make it work?”

He didn’t have to convince me of anything.

Really?

Now, I liked the proposal, the proposal of what he was setting up to do. And I didn’t know all of his movies. I only knew “Tangerine” actually. But I liked how he talked about the project and how he found the project. It had his whole story too. Chris Bergoch brought him these articles. He grew up down there. It came from some place. It had roots and then the fact that we were gonna shoot in the real place. We were gonna shoot with a combination of street casting, not professionals. This all appealed to me.

Sean told me you arrived a week before filming started and that you went around and talked to managers at similar motels like the one in the movie.

Yeah.

Do you remember the one thing that stuck with you that they would talk about?

I do. The main thing was the pride in their job, which some of these motels are pretty funky. So, the idea that they had pride, that they made it a better place was really kind of touching. These were really working class guys, not exceptional particularly as far as talent. And they were about a paycheck away from being Monee and Haley. So, this was their community and they were very, like, “This place ain’t great but we made it better and we’ve done improvements here.” And there was a pride and that was kind of touching and I think there’s no way for me to enact that, but I was struck by that. Now, when I look at the movie, I think one of the touching things about Bobby is he’s not an extraordinary person, there are no big dramatic scenes or big transformation really. But there is this sense of a regular guy trying to make things better.

And he’s trying to protect the kids, really.

And protect the kids. I mean, he’s a caring guy, you know?

I just saw it again last week after not seeing it for a couple months, and one of the scenes that stuck with me is when the things are going on towards the end with the people from the State’s Department of Human Services and he’s just talking and smoking while it’s going on. And you can tell he’s torn but he wants to do. In the script did it say like, “We cut to …”

No. Those are the connecting things you feel when you’re shooting it. You know because this stuff is happening and you say, “Well, where’s Bobby?” Well Bobby can’t really intervene. But we gotta see what’s going on with him because he’s connected to these kids. So just because he’s not involved in taking the kid away, you gotta spend some time with Bobby, you know? And what’s his reaction? His reaction is, “I’m gonna fix that dryer. Tomorrow’s another day. I do the best I can.” Which is all of our story, you know, in a funny way. And those things are invented on the dime.

So, one of the things I did not have the chance to ask Sean about but you can probably speak to is, the helicopter that’s always going by the motel?

Oh fuck! No one’s mentioned that! That was such a big deal for us.

It’s a real part of the location.



It’s real. You know what? I forgot all about it. The two things, you know when you go on a talk show, they always try to pump you for something. Well this thing, I don’t know how to tell this story, it was weird because these are helicopter rides and it was right there. And you know, when you shoot a film, you don’t want to be anywhere near aircraft because sound is terrible.

Sound, yeah.

These things go up every five minutes. So it became a thing. And like there’s one scene where they’re having picnic lunch and the helicopter and they’re like, flip it the bird. That’s the characters but it’s also the actors saying, “Fuck you!” And we tried to pay them off but it’s …

It’s too expensive.

It was too expensive. It was impossible.

It’s a tourist thing, right?

t’s a tourist thing. They do a quick little loop over Disney World. On the call sheet there was always a notice about the alligators, ’cause there were alligators too.

But I remember there is one scene where you come out of a room and you acknowledge the helicopter sometimes, like this thing’s going on. And then other times you don’t. Would you guys end every take, like, “Am I supposed to pretend this is not happening?”

No, no. We accepted it. And if I had had my way it would have affected even more. But as you said, you didn’t know whether it was a thing we created, or whether it was a given. It was a given. So you don’t want to feature it too much because it doesn’t say anything, but it was such a condition for us it seemed dishonest to erase it. It does enter in.

That was my other question, there are some scenes with you in other scenes where it’s naturally raining and pouring.

Most of the time.

Would Chris and the producers be like, “Hey let’s just shoot this now.” Like “Let’s just go shoot something now.”

A little bit. You roll with all that and you’re working with a small crew, a lot of local people. And yeah, you’re taking it all on. You’ve got a good script but there’s also some air in it, so you can invent stuff. And of course, with the kids, you have to invent stuff because Brooklyn came out of the womb performing. She’s one of those kids you know? And she’s smart. The other kids were good but they didn’t have the same kind of facility so sometimes you’d have to kind of just let them play and catch the stuff.