Chatting With The Cast of Guardians Of The Galaxy!

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Hey All!

I recently had the fantastic experience of chatting with the Director and Cast of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy! I also have to share I have seen this film and it is AMAZING! Yes it deserves all caps. It has the feeling of those 80’s kids movies like Monster Squad. I’m not going to go on and on about the film just yet. You’ll have to wait for my full review coming on Friday when the film is released.

After being so excited over the amazing job that was done on this film, I was super excited to chat with the cast and Director James Gunn about the film. I was also super excited to chat with Michael Rooker (Yondu in the film and Merle on The Walking Dead). I’m a huge Walking Dead fan!

The press conference began with the moderator asking a question:

Obviously, these are some fairly unknown characters even though they exist in the Marvel comic universe. What attracted you to the project to begin with and was bringing new characters like this a daunting task, or was it liberating? What can you tell us about that?

JAMES GUNN:

It was, frankly, liberating. It was, you know, for me I think I would have had a harder time trying to fit into the regular, you know, Marvel scheme of things and this gave me a chance to take what I loved about Marvel movies and Marvel comics and create a whole new universe which is really, you know, what has been the most exciting thing for, you know, in my entire professional career. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the different planets in the solar system and I — we used to create for every single planet a different alien race with a certain kinda pet and a certain kinda house and a certain kind of, you know, water system and everything. And I would draw these pictures and I had hundreds of these pictures and had them in a box and really to me this was like going back to that childhood box and creating this, you know, fun universe.

The press conference continued with questions for the cast.

Vin, did you ever have to do the acting exercise be a tree where the teacher asks you to play a tree and did that pay off now that you are actually playing a tree? 

VIN DIESEL:

The phobias. The nightmares. When I was a child actor, yes, I had the fear that I was gonna be as the tree. And this was a way to face my fears head on and I’m delighted that I did.

My question for Michael Rooker was of course who’s more of a bad ass, Merle or Yondu?

MICHAEL ROOKER:

That’s a simple question. You get a simple question, you get a simple answer rather. And  you know what? They’re very similar in their nature. They’re true believers in tough love, you know, Merle with his brother and Yondu with his lovely son. Surrogate, okay, surrogate daddy, okay. I’ll put it that way. You missed me, huh, didn’t you?

CHRIS PRATT:

I did miss you. I missed you so much.

MICHAEL ROOKER:

You know what? I will answer your question and I’ll make it real quick. You know what? You saw the movie, right? Did you see the movie?

I of course replied yes and that I loved it!

MICHAEL ROOKER:

Yondu is pretty damn powerful. Merle inside is close inside maybe. You gotta go with Merle, but Yondu I mean I don’t think Yondu would let Merle get close to him.

I giggled like a school girl and thanked him for answering my question.

MICHAEL ROOKER:

You bet.

Chris, you’ve had your fair share of having to gain and lose weight for parts recently. Do you relate to your female colleagues and what they go through with media scrutiny?

CHRIS PRATT:

Oh. Are you saying that I might be responsible for giving men body image issues? Because if that’s what you’re saying, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. No, I’m sure I can’t relate to what females go through in Hollywood, you know. I’m sure I can’t relate. But I do know what it feels like to eat emotionally and  to be sad and make yourself happy with food. And then be almost immediately again sad and now ashamed. And then to try to hide those feelings with more food. I know what that’s like and it’s a vicious cycle and it’s a very real thing and, you know. I know what it’s like to have body image issues. And I also know that if you just work hard and, you know, enlist the help of good coaches and be coachable and be willing to work hard, you can actually change that. And I offer a course it’s like $4500 up front.And anyone’s who has these issues, just get a hold of my people and we’ll set it up and I’ll walk you through it. I don’t really offer a course. I’m kidding.

Zoe the thing that came to my mind is Gamora and Neytiri are both bad asses, but other than that, they’re practically opposites. Can you compare or contrast the two and your approach to them?

ZOE SALDANA:

I feel they’re very different. Neytiri grew up in a household where she was loved and she was held as a child. Gamora was taken sort of like the lost boys of the Sudan. She was taken from her village, from her planet and forced into a life of violence and crime. So there’s this pain that follows her wherever she goes, but there’s this last hope that she has that she can possibly get away. So I did try to find some similarities between them, but I don’t think they would play together in a playground. Gamora’s a hustler. Neytiri doesn’t even know how to lie. And I wanted her fighting technique to be very, very different. Obviously when you show up and you’re sort of like the last person cast and everybody’s just ready to go, the stunt coordinators have already designed the fights and they already have the stunt women working on what you’re going to do and you sort of come in and you just add your last little tweaks. You know, I just didn’t want Gamora to look like any typical action person that’s just like very martial artsy and just does that Underworld jumps and lands and the ground breaks and shit. I wanted her to be a little more graceful and very classy in the way that she fights.

And my husband, one of his colleagues was showing us as I was sort of doing research for Gamora, she was showing us her last collection of work she was going to do that wasn’t yet ready for the public, but she basically recorded this bullfighter from Spain dancing a duel and sort of leading the bull with his sword and his cape. And she shot it at 60, like 60 frames per second so it was very slow and I’ve never seen somebody move so, so smoothly. It was just such a seductive dance and I thought, well that’s Gamora. She’s a woman and she just has to be very seductive in the way that she tricks her enemy into falling into their own death. And I thought well that’ll be interesting, too. I’ve never done that. So when I told that to James, he thought oh yeah, go for it.

It was hard telling the stunt people because they’re so hard and they think that girls are stupid. So when you walk in like into this testosterone driven like rehearsal place and you’re like well she does fencing and she’s a bullfighter, they’re kinda like Que? But then they realize they didn’t really have a choice and they adapted it.

JAMES GUNN:

I remember I got like five messages from you on different platforms when you came up with this bullfighting idea at 3:00 a.m. And it was like on one phone I got a message, and then I got a message from another phone to my other phone, then I got a message of one email and then another email and then DM on Twitter and I’m like…

ZOE SALDANA:

Sending you YouTube videos.

JAMES GUNN:

I get it, she wants to be a bullfighter.

Vin, Dave and Benicio. Vin, you’ve been part of a very successful franchise. Dave, Benicio, you’re coming into a new universe and this is a new universe for you, too, Vin. The Marvel universe. What is the appeal of the Marvel universe and particularly this new offshoot, Guardians of the Galaxy?

DAVE BAUTISTA:

I didn’t look at it so much as, you know, the Marvel thing. I was very familiar with Marvel obviously and I realized they had a winning formula in movies where they’re very well done. But I really looked at it as something new and completely on its own because it was original and fresh and also I looked at it from strictly the standpoint of Drax because once I realized who Drax was and how much of an emotional roller coaster his character would be, I just kinda fell in love with him.

And what about for Benicio?

BENICIO DEL TORO:

You know, I’ve done alotta movies. You really never know. You can do a movie you think is great and then you see and it doesn’t work, and this is something that is the opposite. This is a movie that I did, I loved working with everyone, and then the final product was like a great movie that I really enjoyed, that I saw myself as the character of Chris, even though I’m The Collector.

But I got pulled in, you know and I think the credit is to everyone involved and James ’cause he just really did an emotional thing. You know, I told James, he hit me on every sense. I even felt hungry in the movie even though no one eats. I mean all the senses were tapped and I really enjoyed it. I really, really did. So you never know. You never know. You do movies and I’m very happy to be in a good movie that any actor will say the same thing. You’re really happy to be in a good movie. So that’s my feeling on it.

And Vin?

VIN DIESEL:

Yeah, I’m new to Marvel. I guess this whole thing started for me with a kind of a social media wave that was adamant about me doing something with Marvel. And there wasn’t really a six month window to do a character at Marvel. So when Kevin Feige called me and said that him and James were talking about me playing a role, I had no idea what role it would be and they sent over a book of conceptual art and I went into my living room with my kids and I opened up the book and I asked the kids what character they wanted daddy to play. And they all pointed at the tree.

And I knew that was a good sign. It was for me, it was at a very important time when I did this movie because it was in December and it was the first time I was coming around humans again and the first time I was working again. And there was something very therapeutic about in my personal life — I guess in my professional life, too, dealing with death and then playing a character that celebrates life in the way that Groot celebrates life. I took my kids to a screening to see this movie and they walk around the house reciting Star Lord, Gamora, and all the characters and something very beautiful happened in playing this role. Something that as an actor I never would have imagined. And that is when my kids see trees, they refer to the trees as my brothers and sisters.

They’ll say, “Look daddy, it’s your brothers and sisters.” And the idea to be associated with trees like that is remarkable. It’s so much more gratifying than you would ever imagine. It was — I was really lucky. I was really lucky that that specific role came up. I was really, really, really lucky that when I went to breathe life into the role, I had a director that was willing to indulge in the way that he did. I felt like I was the last person in, so I got to see all of the performances and I was so blown away by the performances. It felt almost too good to be true. And then while I was recording the three words day in and day out — we started one day, it ended up four days — James actually — it’d be wild to actually see my script because I don’t think anyone’s seen my script. It was on the left hand side of the page it said, “I am Groot.” And then on the right hand side of the page it could be a whole paragraph about what “I am Groot” meant.

So when I walked into that situation, I saw somebody that cared so much about every little nuance of that character, it was so refreshing for somebody that didn’t think that being a perfectionist was a bad thing, it was so refreshing. And unfortunately now in Hollywood there are those directors that have some contempt for actors. We’ve all experienced it in one way or another. To have a director that loves his actors is something that you can see the film, the fruits of that labor. You could see that translated in the film. And when you watch this movie, you could see a director who loves his actors and it shines through the movie in my mind and in my eyes. Did I answer that question?

It was so amazingly sweet to see Vin talk about his kids and how much he loved his character. He was like a big teddy bear. It was also great to learn and see how much love and dedication went into making this film the fantastic film it is. It truly translates on the big screen!

If you’re not familiar with Guardians of the Galaxy here is a little about the film:

From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team—the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits—Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand—with the galaxy’s fate in the balance.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY opens in theaters everywhere on August 1st! Run out and see it! You will love it! I kid you not!

For more info visit:

The Website and Mobile site: marvel.com/guardians

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