Scottish director Jon S. Baird is best known for his BAFTA-winning film Stan & Ollie, which starred John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan, alongside the 2013 adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s Filth featuring James McAvoy, audiences might consider his career an eclectic one.
That trend shows no sign of abating with his latest project Tetris, which launches on Apple TV from Mar. 31, starring Taron Egerton, Toby Jones, and Roger Allam. In a recent chat with We Got This Covered, talked Tetris, and what drew him to the project.
Having worked on such an eclectic mix of titles across film and television, what first attracted you to Tetris?
The first script I got was called Falling Blocks, it wasn’t called Tetris, so I kind of knew it was going to have that sort of Cold War political, geopolitical aspect to it. So being a politics graduate, that sort of drew me in more than the fact that it was a video game, and also because at its heart it’s like a buddy movie, as well as this kind of fast-paced thriller on steroids as it’s been described. So those were the things that really sort of first took me into it, and it just so happens to be about the fight for the rights of this very famous and very much loved video game.
This film feels like it encompasses a number of different genres from comedy farce to espionage thriller; how would you describe it?
Okay here we go, I’m just going to repeat something I heard somebody saying that I thought sort of summed it up really well. It’s a fun fast-paced Cold War thriller on steroids about the world’s most favorite computer game.There you go.
As a director, what were the advantages of having Taron Egerton, Toby Jones and Roger Allam amongst the ensemble?
It makes it way easier, and you know Spielberg, who I am a huge fan of, said if you cast your film right you’re 80 percent there as a director. The last 20 percent you have to work on, but you are 80 percent there. Because if it’s a comedy, if it’s tragedy, if it’s a love story, whatever, you get the right person portraying it in the right way, it makes your job a hell of a lot simpler to do.
I think that’s what I’ve always tried to do, is spend a hell of a lot of time on casting. I think you’ve pointed to three great actors here but the ones that I think really don’t get enough credit in this film are the Russian actors. The five Russian actors who we flew in from great theatre backgrounds are as good as the three you’ve mentioned, and the three you mentioned are right up there as some of the best.
So we spent a heck of a lot of time casting, we found a Russian casting director who got those for us, we found a Japanese casting director who got those for us as well. That would be a bit of advice from me, for young filmmakers, is to spend a lot of time on the casting because it pays dividends in terms of the film.
Why was it important to pay homage to 8-bit gaming through the visuals in this film?
When we were shooting the film I didn’t have it in my mind at all you know because we had the script in front of us. It was hinted at in the script by the chapter breaks, it was like player one, player two, you know level one, game over, all these kinds of different things that Noah [Pink, writer] had written in there. But I hadn’t really thought about it until we were shooting the thing.
We were in Scotland trying to replicate Russia, and it was during the pandemic, and it was freezing, and we were up against it and stuff. So I was just trying to get the pages there, the film there, and once we got into post production, then we thought right, how do we sort of make a nod to the gaming aspect of it, how do we start doing that.
All that stuff was an organic process, it began in post really and just sort of mushroomed in sort of the snowball effect. At one point we had way too much of it in and it felt a bit gimmicky, and then we sort of ripped it back and didn’t have enough in it. It was like, oh no it just looked a bit strange. It was just all trial and error, just getting the right sort of levels of it, but all that stuff came in post production.
A lot of the ideas were coming from Matthew [Vaughn], who was a producer, he was way more involved in post-production than he was during the shoot. So it was very much a team kind of thing, and the visual effects guys obviously, who were putting up these ideas.
Considering the time period, to what extent do you think Tetris could be called political?
I think you can definitely say it is, but it’s not as cut and dried as the West are the good guys and the East are the bad guys. You look at it and you think some of the biggest names in the film that are portrayed are the Maxwells and they are very well to do London gents on the face of it.
So it is definitely a complicated political story, and it’s not so much about capitalism versus communism, it’s more about how communism then disintegrated and turned into this ferocious capitalism for a few very wealthy people, the oligarchs, who benefited greatly from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
There’s definitely a big political similarity in what we’re seeing now in terms of Ukraine and this terrible sort of conflict. I think for the kids who weren’t around in the Cold War, it educates them into how potentially dangerous Henk’s journey was back then because of how strict Western relations were and how they are now.
Having worked across film and television for some time, how have streaming studios changed the process in terms of production?
It hasn’t changed at all for me. When I’m shooting anything, I did a thing for ITV which is a smaller budget thing called Stonehouse. I’m about to do a movie that is not being made by a streamer but it may end up being on a streaming platform. I have obviously done this for Apple. But my philosophy is always the same, it doesn’t matter to me if people are consuming it on a cinema screen or on their phone or on their iPad, or at home on their television. I’m just telling a story you know, so it doesn’t matter.
Where it does change is when you’re promoting a film and when it’s being distributed and how you work alongside the distributor. I have to say I’ve had a really positive experience on this one with the guys at Apple TV. Their focus and dynamic is different from other maybe theatrical ones, but I have really enjoyed it and I have been treated very very well by them so it’s been very positive.
Can you describe for me your perfect Sunday afternoon?
Perfect Sunday afternoon. Roaring fire, bottle of red wine, watching either a rerun of a Sidney Lumet film or a Stanley Kubrick film, with my British bulldog Mary on my lap.
What would be your Lumet movie of choice?
It would be Dog Day Afternoon.
Tetris is now streaming on Apple TV, and you can check out our review of the movie here.