CHALLENGERS (Pt 1) LUCA GUADAGNINO, JOSH O'CONNOR, AMY PASCAL, JUSTIN KURITZKES #DEADLINECONTENDERS

In that and, you know, everything with everything going on, it is just brilliant. Thank you, thank you to Justin, Josh, Z, and Mike, and Amy, and everybody, and your film editors, everything in putting a scene together, and Ross the score, that pulsating score throughout. It is innovative in and of itself for this. That was a kind of sound you wanted throughout this.

Yeah, I thought the movie was, uh, while we were doing it, I felt that it was unapologetic in its entertainment in the way in which Justin conceived it. And I think that, being European, I have no sense of inferiority toward the concept of entertainment. I actually think it's the best thing you can do to create some sort of emotions through your work, right? And so when we were doing it, I felt the movie had this energy, this kinetic energy that was driven by these characters and their messed up existences and their need to be together and their need to be mean to one another and then to make love to one another, which happens to be something that you do in life. And I was more and more convinced that this was like a bombastic energy movie, so I called Trent and Atticus and I said, 'Hey guys, I think for this one we should go house music, like if we are in a rave party.' And I went, 'Okay.' And then two months later, Amy and I we were at their fantastic studio here in Hollywood and they say play and we were like, 'What the f***, John dropping?' But it was all Luca's idea. They're like, 'Really, what great music in this movie?' And he's like, 'Yeah.' And then they were so, it was like he does with everyone, he pushes everyone to do things that they can't possibly think they can do. And then yeah.

Amy, talk about how this came about. You got a hold of the script or how did this start?

Justin, how did this idea come upon you? Do you play tennis? Are you part of that world?

Uh, no, not really. I played as a kid and I was not very good. Nobody played tennis who made this movie with you. Not a single person. I didn't know anything about it and I know nothing about it now. I'll tell you the moment I knew that Luca was the perfect director for this is we had just read the script and we were talking on the phone and Luca said, 'I know next to nothing about tennis but I know a great deal about desire.' And that was flaw for desire. And that was very much true of me as well until one day I was watching the US Open and I just happened to turn it on because it was happening and there was this match between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka in the final. And there was this very controversial call where Serena Williams was accused of receiving coaching from the sidelines. And not being a massive tennis fan, I had never heard this rule, but immediately it struck me as this intensely cinematic situation that you're all alone on the court and there's this one other person in this massive stadium who cares as much about what happens to you as you do, but that's the person you can't talk to. And so I started to think, well, what if you really needed to talk about something and what if it was something beyond tennis? What if it was about the two of you and what if it somehow included the person on the other side of the net? How could you have that conversation and how could you communicate the tension of that using the tools of film? And that was really the spark.

Wow. Well, it certainly works. Maybe it pays not to know the world you're writing in and find something much deeper, you know, that people don't realize. Now Josh, since we've established nobody on this panel except me plays tennis, I have to really congratulate you. How did you train for this? How did you do it? Because you are uber convincing in this role.

Well, I have Lea to thank for all of that. And, uh, and so I'm doing a cinematographer, but no, I think we worked really hard is the truth. You know, we had a sort of boot camp of playing tennis with Brad Gilbert, our coach, who's a brilliant coach. And every day we'd go to this center and we'd work out and we'd play tennis. To be fair, we should say that Mike Faist is a great... oh, that's true, he can play, he really can play. But you, they all... Lea plays for Mike is 95% on screen what does with tennis, you're like 75%, which is good. That's good, yeah. Thanks, it's creeping up. But no, 0 now Z was me and Z on the first day of coming to this coaching center, I caught Zendaya's eyes looking at the racket like that, and she looked up and caught my eyes, and I was figuring out if I was left or right-handed and trying to like, that feels good. And then Brad being, you know, saying that's not how you do it. But it really was, it was so I think so much of the work in the boot camp was yes, trying to understand playing tennis to the best of your ability, but truthfully it was more, I've never worked out to that extent in my life. And all of the confidence that brought and being working to that level so much, you know, that was all about, or for me it felt like Luca leading me to this place of Patrick being full of confidence and you know, forthright and things that I kind of didn't necessarily pick up on early on. So they were the more important aspects of it.

Amazing. Luca, you know, in terms of...