Five Things We Learned From Robert Pattinson’s Talk At The Sydney Film Festival

“Not everything has to mean something,” snaps Robert Pattinson’s character Rey sullenly, after Guy Pearce’s grumpy Eric berates him for telling another long-winded, elliptical story. I don’t know if it’s a dry in-joke from director David Michôd, but it says a lot about The Rover, his anticipated follow-up to 2010’s international hit, Animal Kingdom.

Set in a dystopian near future (“Australia, ten years after the collapse…” says the only explanatory title card), the film’s plot is paper thin: Guy Pearce’s Holden sedan gets stolen, and he spends the rest of the movie shooting people until he gets it back. Despite glimpses of ridiculously black Aussie humour and some shared warm emotion between Pearce and Pattinson, the resulting film is almost suffocatingly bleak — Michôd himself compared it to The Terminator (1984), but there’s also elements of existential Westerns like The Shooting (1966) and Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974) in its nihilistic nothingness, as well as Fallout 3 in its whacko, paranoid inhabitants and blood-splattery wasteland (you’ll even hear a Fallout-referencing Ink Spots tune playing in one of the film’s key scenes).

In recent discussions, Michôd has been ascribing the film some political context. “I feel like a weird roving geopolitical analyst,” he said at the post-screening Q&A at the Sydney Film Festival, describing the script’s anger-exorcising genesis amid the Global Financial Crisis and its rampant bailouts, and Rudd and Abbott’s inaction on climate change. “I felt despair and I channelled all this into the script,” he said — which, well, yeah, I guess the film’s screenwriter/director would say something like that.

Perhaps the more telling quote to come from his recent promo run, though, was this one:  “After Animal Kingdom, I understand ‘second album syndrome’. I figure if I can get this one behind me, the rest of my life will be plain sailing.” As far as a talented director’s second movie goes, let’s all wait for the more ambitious third one.

In more positive news, the wider reviews have been unanimously complimentary to RPattz’s role in the film (“a career-redefining performance by Robert Pattinson that reveals untold depths of sensitivity and feeling in the erstwhile Twilight star,” wrote Variety’s Scott Foundas). Fortunately, we got to listen to him talk all about it at Sunday’s ‘Inside The Rover’ panel discussion in Sydney, which also featured Guy Pearce, director Michôd, and producer Liz Watts.

The whole thing was hosted by Margaret Pomeranz, whose introduction elicited almost as many squeals as Pattinson’s. But despite the distinct lack of Twihards at the event, much of the audience hung off RPattz’s every mumbly word, because, you know, chisel-jawed movie star/holy shit, there’s real-life Edward. In any case, these are the things we learned…

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#1: For A Blockbuster Movie Star, Dude Is A Nervous Wreck

I guess this shouldn’t be surprising given all his previous candid talk about the severe anxiety he suffers from, but geez, Pattinson looked insanely uncomfortable up on stage at the Sydney Town Hall. He spent most of the talk hunched over on the couch like a question mark, mumbling through answers with a hand over his face, and taking nervous sips from a long-empty tea cup. I bet if this guy did one of those high school career aptitude tests, ‘actor’ would be nowhere on the page and the top spot would be ‘hermit’ (well, or ‘writer’). RPattz, what a guy.

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#2: He Joined The Film Because He Considers Michôd’s Blue-Tongue Films Collective To Be His Kindred Spirits

If you’re wondering how a respected but still up-and-coming Aussie director convinced one of the world’s most bankable heartthrobs to don teeth grime and star in his outback indie film, you’re asking the wrong question. RPattz noted that it was he who sought out Michôd. He was attracted to the small collaborative nature of the Blue-Tongue Films group – Michôd’s local collective, which also includes Australian actors/writers/directors Joel and Nash Edgerton, Kieran Darcy-Smith and Mirrah Foulkes, amongst others – and revealed he runs with a similar sort of crew back in London (I have no idea who they are, but I imagine Rupert Grint’s in it?).

“Working on a film can be quite isolating, so I wanted to look for these small collectives,” said Pattinson. He’d discussed collaborative possibilities with Nash Edgerton and other Blue-Tongue affiliates years ago. “I think you were the last one I met,” he told Michôd, to cruel laughter from the crowd.

Michôd, for his part, indicated that he was surprisingly tentative about working with the actor, now that the success of Animal Kingdom had gifted him with a disposal list of A-list stars. “I hadn’t seen the Twilight films, so I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “At our first meeting in LA, I remember he turned up with a Coke, and then had a coffee with about 15 sugars in it… And then I put him through a torturous four-hour audition.”

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#3: His Character In The Film May Or May Not Be Mentally Handicapped

Besides the distinct lack of dialogue, the ridiculous violence and some stellar photography that somehow transforms South Australia’s Flinders Ranges into John Ford’s Monument Valley, The Rover’s most striking element is easily RPattz, whose performance can only be described as tinkering dangerously on the edge of what Tugg Speedman might call “the full retard”. (“That character could’ve easily gone so overboard,” Margaret Pomeranz put it more politely, when discussing it with Rob).

As Rey, an American teenager left for dead in the outback wastelands, Pattinson’s all tics and stutters, sputtering all sorts of nonsense in a barely intelligible Southern drawl (perhaps the only respite being a subdued car sing-along to Keri Hilson’s ‘Pretty Girl Rock’ — yes, they still have R&B radio in the dystopian future). During the post-screening Q&A, he revealed that he’d based his character on video clips of “some guy from Florida” (oh god, not another Riff Raff situation?), but elaborated on that during the Vivid Talk.

“I did the least specific preparation I’ve ever done for a film,” he said. “David told me to watch the documentary Bully, and I got a lot of the physicality from the main guy in that… But from the script, I wasn’t sure if he was meant to be mentally handicapped or not. After the audition, I was thinking, ‘Oh no, have I completely misread this?’”

Whether he misread it or not, Pattinson really goes for it in the film… and I mean he goes for it in a Leo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? kinda way. “A friend of mine watched the movie last night and said, ‘Wow congratulations, this is the first time you’ve ever played yourself,’” he added. Ah, friends.

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#4: He Thinks Australia Is Insane

And well, maybe you would too if you were a dapper foreigner shooting a film in 46-degree heat in a fly-infested desert in the middle of the Flinders Ranges. “How’d you keep these guys under control?” Pomeranz asked the film’s producer Liz Watts, motioning towards Patterson and Pearce. “Vodka?” Watts replied.

Specifically, the shoot took place in the tiny South Australian town of Marree (“a population of approximately 60 persons”, says Wikipedia), about 685 kilometres north of Adelaide. “It’s an extremely specific place,” is how RPattz described it, I guess somewhat kindly.

“It’s outlaw country,” he added. “There are several hundred flies, it’s insanely hot, and everyone looks like they killed someone. A local that David put in the movie was ex-French Foreign Legion and a former member of the Czech military, who claimed to be the person who assassinated JFK. There was an English guy working behind the pub there who said he was a member of Anonymous and was on the run from the MI6.”

“Well, you’ve just blown his cover,” interjected Guy Pearce.

“Shit… I didn’t even think of that,” RPattz, replied sheepishly. “And he confided in me, too.”

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#5: He Apparently Developed A Pretty Close Relationship With Guy Pearce While Making The Film

Oh boy, you’ll wish this one had video. While answering a question about his and Guy’s chemistry on the film, RPattz made some inadvertent wank-job hand signals while describing telegraph poles or picket fences or on-set scaffolding, or something similarly phallic.

Needless to say, the entire crowd – which to this point had been serious, festival-going, intellectual types – blushed and giggled uproariously. “RPATTZ WANK-JOB HANDS”, I furiously scrawled in my notebook, surrounded by love-hearts (jokes, obviously).

“Sorry everyone, that scene was cut,” said producer Liz Watts, tragically.

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The Rover opens in cinemas this Thursday.