The movie of movies at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave,” which was nurtured along the way by Plan B producer Dede Gardner and her partner, Brad Pitt, who co-stars in the film with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Benedict Cumberbatch. I interviewed Gardner for a TIFF Industry Q & A, below.
Anne Thompson: When you showed the film at Telluride were you worried?
Dede Gardner: Yes. I was always worried. I get really anxious because it’s your life, you know. I’ve had movies that I really love, and no one sees them, so you think, “I could be crazy,” and you don’t know. It’s nerve-wracking, sure.
AT: Here you are at TIFF with “12 Years a Slave.” It’s so powerful and immersive and it puts you through the pain. It doesn’t spare you. How did you get involved?
DG: That was a quintessential case of what we do. We saw “Hunger” and I couldn’t breathe. I thought it was one of the most amazing films I’d seen in a long time. We reached out to Steve McQueen and said, “you don’t know us and you’re new to the system but we want to work with you, and to trust us.” You start talking and feeling out one another’s overlap, where your interests are as human beings and artists and as people who love film. He said, “why don’t you think there’s ever been a movie about the institution of slavery per se? There have been movies about singular events but never one that really presents a survey.” We said we didn’t know. I was troubled at the question and said, “why don’t we try?” So that’s the beginning.
Read more. Interesting interview!