READY PLAYER ONE: What You Need to Know

By Jana On Camera on March 29, 2018 • ( Leave a comment )

(Center L-R) OLIVIA COOKE, director/producer STEVEN SPIELBERG and TYE SHERIDAN on the set of action adventure READY PLAYER ONE. (Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures/ Jaap Buitendijk).

From filmmaker Steven Spielberg comes the science fiction action adventure READY PLAYER ONE, based on Ernest Cline’s bestseller of the same name. The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday, played by Mark Rylance. When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan, decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.

Spielberg directed the film from a screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline. Aside from Rylance and Sheridan, the film stars Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Hannah John-Kamen, and Simon Pegg.

I had the opportunity to attend the Los Angeles press conference who happened weeks ago. READY PLAYER ONE hist theaters on March 29.

What was it about this story and these characters that made you want to make READY PLAYER ONE?

Steven Spielberg – Anybody who read the book that was connected at all with the movie industry would have loved to have made this movie. The book had seven movies in it; maybe 12. It was just a matter of trying to figure out how to tell a story about this competition, both of these worlds and to make it an express train, racing toward the third act, at the same time make it a cautionary tale about leaving us the choice where we want to exist. Do we want to exist in reality or an escapist universe? Those themes were so profound for me when I read the book. That theme is consistent throughout the whole book, but there are so many places we could have taken the book.

The theme of fantasy versus reality is something you are familiar with. Is the process different when you are making something that is escapist or something mirroring something happening that is an historical event?

Spielberg – For me, this film was my great escape movie. It fulfilled all of the fantasy places I go in my imagination when I get out of town. I got to live this for three years. I got to escape into the imagination of Earnest Cline and Zak Penn. It was amazing. I came back to Earth a couple of times – I made Bridge of Spies and The Post while I was making READY PLAYER ONE. I got that whiplash effect of going from social reality to total escapist entertainment. I’m feeling it. It’s a great feeling but it also makes my wife and kids kind of crazy because they don’t know who dad’s going to be when he comes home, or which dad they’re going to get.

OLIVIA COOKE as Samantha Cook and TYE SHERIDAN as Wade Watts in science fiction action adventure READY PLAYER ONE. (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

Why did you have so much passion, joy and imagination for this story?

Spielberg – I had a passionate and amazing cast. They were all younger than me so I kind of fed off that energy. I’d come to work in the morning and Olivia would be, “What do we do now? I can’t wait!’ And Lena would say, ‘Throw anything at me. I’m ready for it.’ Tye. Every cast member, except for Ben Mendelsohn, who was a complete screw up the whole time. A story like this, Ernie gave us a playground to basically become kids again and we did!

We all became kids again. I was working with young actors in their twenties, if that. That’s where the energy came from. We made the movie on an abstract set. The only way the cast had a change to understand where they were; we all had virtual reality goggles. Inside the goggles was a complete build of the set you saw in the movie, but when we took the goggles off, it was a big white space, 4,000-square-foot white, empty space called a “volume.” But when you put the goggles on it was Aech’s basement or workshop, so the actors had a chance to say, “Okay, if I walk over there, there’s the door, there’s the DJ.” It was really an out-of-body experience to make this movie. It’s very hard to express what that was like.

Olivia Cooke – It was wonderful. We just lived in our own imaginations for five months, where we hadn’t had a chance to do that since we were children. To be able to completely rely on our guts and our interaction with Steven and the other cast, made it so special and different to anything any of us had ever done before.

Lena Waithe – When we got to the live action, everybody was like, “Oh, okay I remember how to do this. This is the real world now.” The hardest part is when you are in an empty space and anything is possible.

Art3mis voiced by OLIVIA COOKE and Parzival voiced by TYE SHERIDAN in science fiction action adventure READY PLAYER ONE. (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

The songs you use in the film are great. Did you play music on set to get everybody warmed up?

Spielberg – We did. I played a lot of the Bee Gees on the bridge.

Tye Sheridan – I was extremely nervous on the first day. I actually didn’t know it was going to be our first day. We had two weeks of rehearsal; Steven wasn’t there. All the High Five were just feeling out the mo-cap volume and getting familiar with some of these environments we were going to be in in the movie. Steven shows up on the last day of rehearsal and says, “Let’s shoot something!” I thought, “I hope he doesn’t want to shoot anything with me,” and he’s like, “Just send everybody else home. I just want to use Tye.”

He brings me over to the side and says, “Have you been working on your Parzival walk?” I said, “What is a Parzival walk? I didn’t know I had to work on a Parzival walk.” He says, “It’s kind of like the John Travolta walk at the beginning of ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ He’s got a certain swagger.” I’m like “Okay.” And he says, “I just want to capture you walking.” So, I’m standing on one side of the volume and Steven’s on the other side. No one else is on the floor and I’m just waiting for him to call “Action,” and he pulls out his phone, hits the screen and starts playing “Stayin’ Alive,” by the Bee Gees, and starts walking toward me nodding his head and holding up his phone and goes, “And, action.”

Spielberg – And you can see that walk in READY PLAYER ONE. It’s in the movie. But a lot of the songs (the ideas of) came from Zak Penn and Ernie Cline. I have to say that the songs are from their playlist.

Zak Penn – We would confer on the phone late at night about which songs off to use. The playlist of songs from his book is absurd and I couldn’t even load it on my phone. But we came up with some good options.

Ernest Cline – And Ben Mendelsohn threw in a couple of choices too, but they were more punk, which I respected.

What game or moment in the film really geeked you out with childhood memories?

Waithe – The Chuck doll.

Sheridan – It was the Iron Giant. That was a movie that I played so many time in my childhood. I have a very sentimental connection to that figure. While shooting the movie, we could see our avatars in real time on a 2D screen, and I would look over at my avatar and see Iron Giant’s foot, and I’d think, “That’s Iron Giant’s foot!” That’s so cool.

Spielberg – I saw “The Iron Giant” when it first came out. I’m a big fan of Brad Bird, so (including that character) was to honor Brad Bird and “The Iron Giant.”

Cooke – I really relished getting to learn the “Saturday Night Fever” dance. I used to go disco-dancing when I was a kid in my hometown. So, Tye and I got really close very quickly with these dance lessons. I don’t know how much of it was digitally advanced. That probably helped it quite a lot. That was really fun.

Sheridan – All of my dancing is digital.

Cooke – That was the highlight of the job for me.

Sheridan – We spent three weeks…

Spielberg – on wires.

Sheridan – Yeah, but three weeks just rehearsing after work or in between.

TYE SHERIDAN as Wade in READY PLAYER ONE. (Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures/ Jaap Buttendijk)

The younger cast members weren’t alive in the 1980’s. What do you have to say about that decade?

Waithe – I was born in 1984, so don’t remember a ton about (that era). But because I grew up in the 90s, I remember a lot of that stuff, the music, like Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston and they really began in the ‘80s, and so it was not hard for me to revisit that. Tye and I watch some ‘80s movies together and just to kind of get in the vibe. The interesting thing about that time was everything was so big and loud and and happy and colorful and it was like a prosperous time. That is why I think I was kind of happy that I was born in that decade. That is why it really translates on screen and that there is so much joy, reminding us of a happier time. That is why we are so obsessed with it too.

Sheridan – Because the Oasis stands for the great escape. It’s anything you want it to be. Because the ‘80’s were such a vibrant time full of all this crazy hope. I think it makes total sense that there is all this pop culture and ‘80’s references in the movie.

Spielberg – It’s hard to find a decade when there wasn’t global and domestic turbulence and seismic change like in the ‘60’s with civil rights and the assassination of Jack and Bobby Kennedy.

You are such a perfectionist with special effects, and they have changed so much in the past 30 years. Have you ever considered going back like they did with Star Wars and maybe putting in some shots in E.T.?

Spielberg – I got in trouble for doing that. When E.T. was re-released, I actually digitized five shots, where E.T. went from being a puppet to a digital puppet. I also replaced the guns, when the FBI walks up on the van with walkie-talkies. So, there is a really bad version of E.T., where I took my cue from Star Wars, and all the digital enhancements from A New Hope that George Lucas put in (when the original Star Wars was re-released). I went ahead because the marketing at Universal Studios thought that we needed something to get an audience back to see the movie, so I did a few touch ups in the film. In those days, social media wasn’t as profound as it was today, but was just beginning, and it erupted in a loud, negative voice about, “How could you ruin our favorite childhood film?” I had taken the guns away and had put walkie-talkies in their hand among other things. So, I learned a big lesson and that was the last time I ever decided to mess with the past. What is done is done, and I will never go back with another movie I have done and I have control over, to enhance or change it.

Could you describe your relationship with nostalgia and how that has changed over the years?

Spielberg – I have the most intimate relationship with nostalgia. When I was 11 or 12 years old, I started taking 8mm movies of my family on camping trips in Arizona. When videotape came in, I was using videotape. Then I started taking my 8mm sound movie camera on sets when I was hanging around with (Francis Ford) Coppola, (George) Lucas, (Martin) Scorsese and (Brian) De Palma, and that whole group back in the 70s. I have got something like 60 hours of footage of all of us growing up and making movies together, which someday could be an interesting documentary if I can find the rights to any of these guys. I do all the videos in my life and my family growing up. What we do every single year is, I have a really great editor, Andy, in my office and he cuts together the whole year in the life of my family; all my children and grandchildren; and we have little screenings. It’s called the Annual Family Video. So, I basically live in nostalgia. That might be the main reason why I reacted and responded so positively to Ernie’s book and Zak’s script, because I am kind of living that way most of my life.