Adrien Brody Rewatches King Kong, The Pianist, The Brutalist & More

I'm driving through these narrow alleys,

there are stunt men and extras, and the stunt man fell

in front of me and I averted and a door opened.

I cut right and cut left and shut the door and kept driving

and the entire crew came out and applauded

and it was just this epic moment.

How you doing? I'm Adrien Brody.

We're here with Vanity Fair and we're watching scenes

from films throughout my career.

Let's have some fun.

[upbeat music]

[tape scratches]

That's a terrible thing to say.

Well, I don't mean it to be, I just don't want you

to get the feeling that you're better friends

with him than we are, or something weird like that.

And also, you can't leave your wife

just because she's pregnant.

Jack agrees with that too, right, Jack?

Stop including me.

I was his favorite.

I love the way Wes shot this,

it's is so great. Laying in the street

right before he died.

Oh my God, it's so good. How is that supposed

to make us feel?

I love Wes Anderson.

I love Wes Anderson for not only what he's given us all

in his unique work, but for this, in particular,

life experience and for living in India

for months with these guys

and working on a moving train every day

and for all of that beautiful creativity

and the way he, just looking at this scene,

the way he shot it and how he does these kind

of long, moving masters, but how myself

and Jason Schwartzman enter the mirror reflection.

And so we are seeing all the characters,

one as a shot on one individual,

then you're seeing the reflection through the other,

plus the double image, and then through the doorway,

where the character is entering and coming and going.

It's so beautifully constructed and so cool

and fun and energetic and I just love it.

Francis.

Yeah?

Here's your belt.

[belt jingles]

[spitting]

[both grunting]

Stop!

There's humor and tragedy at the same time,

that's what's really great.

I mean, it's very funny,

but it's got heart to it, which I love.

There is a degree of complete slapstick humor

that it incorporates, but it still has feeling.

And it's a remarkable thing. I love this movie.

And Owen is hilarious, Jason as well, by the way,

but Owen is just, like, a hilarious person

to just hang out with. [laughs]

You don't love me!

Yes, I do.

I love you too, but I'm gonna mace you in the face. Stop!

[canister spritzes]

Stop!

[both yelling]

You know, we shot five hours one direction,

or four and a half hours one direction,

and then the train would come back down the same tracks

and we'd go back to Jodhpur, where we would start

and we'd pack a lunch, we'd work all day.

We'd get up in the morning, five-something in the morning.

We'd have to be at the train station

at, you know, 10 minutes to six

if the train was departing at six.

And if you were late, you missed the set.

So no one was late.

There was no makeup.

It was just, aside from Owen needing his apparatus

for bandages, et cetera, and drank a chai,

had some oatmeal that was very spicy [laughs]

and then went and went to work.

We all lived in a house together and they were really cool.

Like I bought a Royal Enfield, I had a motorcycle,

I bought a motorcycle in India that I was gonna ship home.

And then it turned out that the motorcycle

was not an export model motorcycle,

so I had to sell it in India. [laughs]

And then I had to sell Owen, I had a scooter,

I ended up selling Owen my scooter.

It was hilarious. We were like brothers.

It was a really fun time in my life.

And I'm really grateful to Wes

because this is one of the first overtly comedic roles

that a director had given me and,

at this point in my career, I'd done The Pianist,

I'd done these dramatic works, and I am relatively serious

when I speak of the work

'cause it's meaningful to me,

but I do have a, I think I have a sense.

I crack myself up.

I don't know if anybody else laughs

but I think things are funny all day long, including myself.

[upbeat music]

[tape scratches]

[Kong growling]

[people screaming]

You! [laughs]

You!

Uh-oh, uh-oh.

[Kong growling]

Man, Peter Jackson does that stuff so damn well.

I mean, wow.

The original, the thirties one with Fay Wray

in black and white and stop motion was the movie

that made Peter Jackson wanna become a filmmaker.

And it was such a big deal for me, just remarkable,

like, to be a part of Peter's dream project

after doing Lord of the Rings,

and it just was very, very exciting.

[people screaming]

[Kong growling]

As this scene progresses, it leads

into this whole Times Square scene

where Kong is just wreaking havoc on everything

and Jack knows he needs to pull him away

from this densely populated area.

And he hops in an old thirties taxi cab and a chase ensues.

And that was one of the most fun days I've ever had

on any movie set ever in my life.

I grew up in New York, in Queens,

and drag racing, and street racing, my whole youth

and my teenage years and building muscle cars

and I bragged to Peter about my driving skills.

And I showed up on set and he surprised me

and he said, You're driving today.

And they had a souped up, completely rigged,

like, racing transmission, racing engine

in the body of a thirties taxi

with side-mounted cameras, a rear-mounted camera,

a front-mounted camera

and I did the entire stunt driving sequence

in that movie and in that scene.

And in one moment there was,

I'm driving through these narrow alleys,

there were literally inches on side of either

of the cameras that were side-mounted,

there are stunt men and extras,

and the stunt man fell in front of me

and I averted him and a door opened on the taxi

and I cut right and cut left

and shut the door and kept driving.

And the entire crew came out of the building

they were all hiding behind and applauded.

And it was just this epic moment. It was so fun.

[upbeat music]

[tape scratching]

There are different types of love.

[wind whooshing]

It's actually a pretty upsetting scene

when my character Noah Percy discovers

that Joaquin's character is finding himself

in a relationship with the girl

that my character's been very close with,

who's been caring for him for so long.

I'm often drawn to portraying people who have

to come to terms with some kind of torment

or circumstances that are hard.

I'd like to do that as honestly as I can.

The only pressure I feel is that I can find a way

to hone in on that and tell it with a degree

of honesty and empathy.

[body thuds]

[Joaquin grunts]

Oh, I love Joaquin.

I mean, wonderful thing that M. Night Shyamalan did,

who directed the film, was he created this real sense

of community.

We were playing people who lived in this utopian society.

I lived in a house with William Hurt,

Sigourney Weaver, Bryce Dallas Howard,

and Joaq was in the guest cottage

and then Joaq moved out at some point

and I got the guest cottage, but I was there with my dog

and we all ate together and we did a full-on retreat

in the woods where we lived in a tent and I prepared food.

Very challenging, but meaningful.

[upbeat music]

[tape scratching]

[somber piano music]

This film is incredibly meaningful to me

and was quite an undertaking,

one that I felt immense responsibility.

And in this scene where, at the very end of the film,

Wladyslaw Szpilman, the character that I portray,

is, he's been reduced to, you know, a shell at that point.

We shot in reverse chronology,

so I had to do a crash starvation diet

and then gain the weight back rapidly

so that we can shoot the beginning of the film in spring

and we shot in the wintertime here

and I was 129 pounds in the dead of winter in Poland,

it was incredibly cold.

We shot in former Soviet barracks outside of Berlin.

I just was talking to my mom about this the other day

and the beauty of growing up in New York City

and how my understanding of character

really came from the many years of taking the train

to drama school from Queens.

I remember in my youth witnessing a tremendous amount

of homelessness.

And because the winters are brutal in New York,

I kind of would always notice the hands

of these homeless people that are frost-bitten

and gnarled and their mobility is impaired.

I felt that this composer and eloquent, successful musician,

his manual dexterity is just, you know, like a surgeon's,

to have it lose that, to have that eroded as well

as the physical being, to be reduced,

and to then be faced with having to try

and bring it back alive and remember it.

In the opening of that scene, I, as the character,

contemplate my hands and I remember looking at them

in a way as if they're not going to work

and the memories of what used to be

and it's very tragic.

And then he begins to play, slowly at first,

and then plays the beautiful, I believe,

that's the Ballade and it's just so, it's just wonderful.

It's the power of art triumphing in spite

of all of that darkness.

[upbeat music]

[tape scratches]

When is this gonna end? I'm hearing separate planes.

I gotta say, I don't like betting on blood feuds.

It ends with me in control,

slapped wrists, bit of a pay off, that stuff.

Sea mist, vapor.

I love the show and I love the tremendous work

that everyone involved in the show has done.

The writing is spectacular.

It's just a great show and it's brought a lot

of joy to a lot of people.

I had signed on to do Winning Time.

Adam McKay was also involved with the creation

of Succession and his team and HBO

had mentioned that there was this role

that was right for me.

So I said, Hell yeah, you know, This sounds great,

and then I had wonderful discussions with the writers

and they pretty much wrote, embellished this scene,

for me because I had felt that it needed a bit more bite.

Because these guys are omnipotent

and you really want this guy to come in

and put the pressure on and I wanna do that.

And I thought how exciting it was

to step into that world with these powerful guys

and just swimming in with the sharks

and get in there and show 'em what's up. [laughs]

But I have a gun at your head and I need to know

if this is gonna be a functional situation.

And I'm sure you're gonna say,

Yes, it is gonna be a functional situation,

but I'm gonna need to hear you say

that it's a functional situation.

So can you work together?

Uh-huh. Sure, absolutely.

[laughs] Ah, fuck.

There was a lot of humor in this one from me,

too, because he's the kind of billionaire

that fancies himself a man of the people

and, like, kinda earthy and connected

and he definitely exudes a tremendous amount of power,

so I had a lot of fun playing with the costume

and being prepared and outsmarting them

and being prepared for inclement weather

and taking 'em on this hike that ensues after this meal

and I knew they'd rock up in their loafers

and try to have this business meeting

where they soothe me on my concerns of their power struggle.

And I just put 'em to the test.

[laughs] I have my boots on and my layers

and it's just hilarious and it was so much fun.

[upbeat music]

[tape scratches]

It is my understanding that many

of the sites of my projects have survived.

They remain there, still in the city.

The aspirations of the film really speak

to me on many levels.

One, as an artist, as someone who wants to leave

behind a body of work that is of some significance.

Even distilling work in a film

is similar to an architect directing a building

and creating something.

There's a foundation of work, there is a physical thing

that is left behind and that speaks

to future generations and has an emotional core

that has the potential to inspire conversation.

This was such a beautifully written and complex screenplay.

I expect for them to serve instead

as a political stimulus, sparking the upheavals

that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood.

It speaks also to the immigrant experience,

which people from many different backgrounds can relate to,

especially in our country.

And that's something I understood very well

because I am the son of a Hungarian immigrant.

My mother, she and my grandparents fled Hungary

and fled Budapest in 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution

and lost everything, left everything behind.

And it was particularly hard for my grandfather

as the language barrier was more challenging for him.

My grandmother spoke five or six languages

and was able to find work and it just,

I just remember how much they've sacrificed

and I never took that for granted.

And then to find a role that speaks to that

and what must be overcome to begin again

and to become American, for me to be an American

who grew up in New York and to have had the potential

for the opportunities I have in my life means a lot.

And to speak to that in my work means a lot.

I'm very grateful that this film came my way.

[tape scratches]

[upbeat music]

Thank you again for sitting with me as we went

through some scenes from films throughout my career.