In Quentin Dupieux’s Full Phil, Kristen Stewart had to a eat a lot on screen — without a spit bucket.
In an interview for Deadline’s Cannes studio, Stewart said, “I only puked once. It was when they had filled this cauliflower mash with butter and they were like, ‘There’s no butter. It’s all vegetal oil.’ And I was like, ‘Vegetal oil?’ Woody’s vegan and I was like, ‘You can smell the butter.’”
“I’d have had a spit bucket,” co-star Woody Harrelson said. “I wouldn’t care.”
In Full Phil, Harrelson and Stewart are a father and daughter who’ve taken a trip to Paris in an attempt to reconnect. As his daughter consumes more and more delectable food from room service and a dinner at a restaurant, Phil finds himself in a symbiotic nightmare, feeling the effects of everything she eats and drinks.
“They had a very talented and willful French man making the food,” Stewart explained. “Our process means that I have to eat all day long. They wanted it to taste really good and reflect the French cuisine. And I was like, ‘I’m going to die. I’m not supposed to actually perish.’”
Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart in ‘Full Phil’
Chi Fou Mi
However, she embraced the challenge in terms of how it informed her process. “The eating’s cool because it’s nice to have obstacles,” she said, “like kind of hurdles that you don’t think about when you’re running lines… It’s a metaphor. It’s very symbolic. She’s a voracious bottomless pit, eating her feelings.”
Dupieux said he was inspired by the fact he himself has an 11 year-old daughter. “She’s quite someone, ” he said. “But it’s nothing like the movie. It’s not like that. But I guess it’s almost like a nightmare version of what I’m living with my daughter. I’m living a dream with my family and my daughter… It seems obvious that I may be talking about me and my daughter, plus I’m getting fat.”
I don’t think since I saw Ruben Östlund for the first time — I hadn’t really seen anyone with whom I thought, ‘Whoa, this guy is his own master.’
Woody Harrelson on Quentin Dupieux
Harrelson said of Dupieux, “I think he’s got an extraordinary sense of humor, but he also just has a way of shooting things that just heightens or magnifies the experience for you. I don’t think since I saw Ruben Östlund for the first time — I hadn’t really seen anyone with whom I thought, ‘Whoa, this guy is his own master.’ And ‘Whoa, OK!’ He is a true maestro and I think his vision is extraordinary. And if you don’t like the film, there’s only one guy to blame. He’s the writer, the director, the cinematographer and the editor, but he’s great.”
Dupieux explained the philosophy behind the film thus: “I was just making fun of Americans visiting Paris, my version of it, because what you see in Emily in Paris, for example, is not real. I don’t want to say too much, but no, there’s no message. It’s just like I’m making fun of humanity.”
Harrelson said he’d met Stewart some years back when they were considering working together on another project that ultimately didn’t pan out. “I met her when she was about 17. She had just worked with Sean Penn and he was raving about her. And then I saw the movie and she was great in that. And then we hung out.”
“It was love at first sight,” Stewart said of first seeing Harrelson in White men Can’t Jump. “I was just a little guy going, ‘God, he’s f–king cool.’ He took me to a vegan spot in the valley and we totally bro-ed down and then never got to make the movie. And so when this popped up, I was like, ‘I’ve wanted to work with this guy forever.’”
With regard to what she’s doing next, Stewart said, “I’m writing two movies right now and I’m going to go shoot this Amazon show called The Challenger. I have some balls and they’re all in the air and I think I can hold them all. I want to make two movies basically by the end of May next year, I want to be figuring out what festivals they’re going to. And they’re really different. They’re really cool. I want to make an exploitation film and I want to make it for nothing and I want to distribute it myself. I want to make something teeny-tiny and let it trickle and just not be a part of a system that doesn’t behoove me.”
Harrelson said, that in addition to upcoming Apple TV series Brothers with Matthew McConaughey, he has Jason Bateman’s Netflix film Cackling of the Dodos.
To see the full conversation, click on the video above.
The Deadline Studio at Cannes is sponsored by SCAD.