Troy: Yes, and he didn't disappoint, I must tell you. He's an absolutely incredible man to spend five months with.

Q: He's incredible to spend just a few minutes with here today. Can you elaborate a little bit more about how he is from day to day and what his directing style...

Troy: Well first his work ethic is incredible. He doesn't complain, he remains completely positive. He can be in the middle of working on...orchestrating the most complex pain-in-the-ass day and still is able to speak direct and clear with you. Beyond that we worked for over five months and he didn't sit down once.

Q: Was he like really great on the set with you? Very hands on?

Troy: Yeah. You'll be doing your scene and in your peripheral vision you'll see him behind the camera on his monitor going (grunting noises) ...he's in this with you. And that's a really good feeling because that makes you feel protected and safe. Because I know his work and respect him so well you know when he tells you something the ability to have complete confidence in someone is just so rare not only in film but in life and that's a really good feeling.

Q: And what did he tell you about your role?

Troy: Well they told me that I am...we are each given private dossiers about our characters that we are not allowed to share with the lesser cast. Mine was that I'm closetly religious, that I was the non-atheist on the crew and that I was to keep that to myself and that I am completely attached to my family on Earth and while us as a group are supposed to be the most elite military astronaut physicists sent on this, you know insane mission with the likelihood of return being next to zero, I am determined to make it home and ultimately when I realize that I might not I freak out and choose that my life is more important than everybody else's.

Q: Are you Catholic? [the Italian reporter again]

Troy: Me? No, I'm not.

Troy: What's my position on artificial insemination?? [laughter]

Q: unintelligible

Troy: You know I think if the parties are willing and you know if I think somebody is of sound mind and not being coerced into the situation I think people are pretty much free to do what they choose as long as it doesn't cause harm on anyone else. I think also that you know unfortunately there's a rift and an argument and a beef that been placed in between faith-based communities and scientific-based communities that doesn't necessarily have to be there. I think you know both sides of the debate are seeking the same thing and that's truth and that doesn't mean that they have to be at eternal odds with each other. That there's one thing they can both agree upon which is 98% of the universe is completely unknown. As is a creator, as is the origins of people.

Q: Something about living together in a dorm

Troy: It was very...it was a bit claustrophobic. The room was about half the size of this with like sort of prison windows like the slits and they open only so much because students have a tendency to throw themselves outside of windows. But other than sleeping conditions, it was great. It's such a multicultural cast that every night we'd sit around at the dinner table by ourselves and someone would make a meal and we'd share stories about what it's like to work around the world. That's fantastic. You just don't get that. And the other thing is what happened to us in our month of research and those two weeks living together really translated to the screen because we had to remove the pleasantry and the characters in the film...you know when the movie begins we've been together in a spaceship for 16 months and that's really profound because I mean that's people living without privacy. Without privacy you've got to remove vanity. Once vanity is removed people start to relate to each other on a deeper level, on a different level.

Q: What kind of meals did you cook?

Troy: I think I made scrambled eggs [laughing] Nothing extravagant. The best cook by far was Sanada. Hiroyuki Sanada was just...he is I cannot say enough good things about this man. He was, out of all of us, this was our master. He spoke with supreme authority and he even made us these meals that were so delicious and at the end he would take out his guitar and would serenade us and like sing us songs. It was really beautiful.

Q: It was like camp?

Troy: Yeah, it was like space camp for like really strange actors!

Q: Are you a fan of sci-fi?

Troy: As a teenager, yeah I did. There's been a lot of bad science fiction films.

[a little joking and chatter]

Troy: But the great thing that we did during the movie is we watched the science fiction films that sort of basically everyone loves. Our schedule for the first month was at about 8 am we'd begin rehearsing scenes and on the space ship and learning bits about the spaceship. Then we'd break for lunch. Then after a short lunch we'd meet with a physicist or an inventor or Brian Cox and astronauts. Or we'd do flight simulation or zero gravity. Then we'd break for dinner and after dinner we'd go watch a movie in the screening room. We would see Solaris, Alien (which is a genius film), The Right Stuff, IMAX movies about NASA. But also really important films like Wages...oh Das Boot which is you know very important because living in a space station is very much like living in a nuclear submarine. It's the same close quarters. It's not like you see on Star Wars where there's this pleasant big white room. It's very industrial and there's sounds and there's little things they do and submarines that they have to re-enact in space for instance. Look, so you don't go crazy all the air condition things have little streamers attached to them and they blow so you constantly know that there's oxygen. During space studies and submarine studies you realize that people start to have panic attacks because they can't see outside and they forget they start thinking about oxygen and air and they lose their minds. 

Those are the little things we'd learn about. Or we'd watch movies like Wages of Fear which is similar to our movie because in Wages of Fear you have the two men driving the truck full of explosives up this perilous road and how does that stress affect them on their journey. You know at one point how do they survive with that amount of pressure. And our film is eight astronauts strapped to the back of the biggest bomb humanity has ever known and we're going to fly it into the sun so it's that same real fragile existence.

Q: Was this a hard movie to make?

Troy: No, no. It was so much fun. You get to pretend like you're on a spaceship and they don't throw you into an insane asylum...and you're getting paid. So it's a dream experience. The hard parts are when you get a physically demanding moment like you know my death scene they had me strapped into a steel diaper that was on hydraulics and that was you know put onto a 30 ft metal pole on wheels, spin me down the sound stage while these sadists would be hitting the buttons and I'd spin. So that was very difficult and painful on my testicles and you know you do that all day long. Once they strap you in you have to put your clothes on over it and everything so they can't take you out. You have to do like mind games to keep yourself from like freaking out.

Q:What about the zero gravity ...

Troy: Zero gravity is fantastic for about five seconds. After that is becomes a bit...you know it's a bit much. But it's amazing. The scarier part though the plane would go like straight up and then go on its side and then just fall. And that's counter-intuitive...you're not supposed to do that.

Q: Did you throw up?

Troy: No, no. But this wasn't the vomit comet, the big plane. This was a small plane and there's a pilot next to you. You start flying upside down and look at the arc of the Earth and it was great.

Q: What was unexpected about making the film when you read the script and after you were actually making the movie something you didn't take into consideration?

Troy: Well, I didn't know nearly as much about the universe and our relative being...you know us in comparison to everything else. We are so minute in comparison to what is out there. The sheer enormity of the universe is virtually impossible to comprehend. I don't have the stats but they're in your book, I'm sure. When you compare yourself to the size of the sun and then you realize there are a billion other suns in only our visible galaxy and beyond that there's a hundred trillion more suns just like that. How do you conceptionalize? What is that supposed to tell you? It makes you proud but it makes you feel...you question yourself. What are you doing here? Dealing with yourself as stardust. The fact that anyone in this room that's wearing gold you know gold comes from the explosion of the star, that's the only thing that is hot enough to create that metal. At one point in time the sun exploded and cast gold into this planet. That's insane.

Q: What tangible things do you use from your own life, to relate to the character?

Troy: I don't know. The acting is very strange too because most films in dramas you're like "oh when I was 4 my dog got killed and that's why I'm a junkie and I want to express my emotions to you" and in this film you're emotions are only concentrated on your objective which is delivering this payload. So any time you're emotional it has to be in some sort of like mathematical term or how the trajectory is off and if you can through your diagnosis of what's happening to the ship convey how homesick you are. Sort of like Shakespeare.

Q: What's next for you?

Troy: I'm starting a movie in two weeks with Forrest Whittaker that I'm very excited about called Winged Creatures. And I have a movie with Sissy Spacek that I'm very excited about that's supposed to hit the festival this year. It's a drama. I don't know if they're going to go if they're going to go to (unintelligible) or if they're going to wait to do Toronto in September. But it's uh...Mark Johnson produced it, it's me and Sissy Spacek and it's directed by two gentlemen who produced Chronicles of Narnia.

Q: unintelligible

Troy: Yeah I do think some things have changed. When it comes to space and the domination of space we're at a point now where there's not much...we're in a waiting phase so all the nations of the world are working together in order to create this space station and that's a beautiful thing. Those people up there are dealing with things that we...anyone who's been to space is just living on a completely different, they have a completely different experience from any of us. Until the space station is complete and when we start to begin to live on the moon and start doing missions from the moon I think at that point there will be another like you know battle between nations to see who can impregnate the next martian or whatever.

Q: We've been talking a lot about how scientific the film is and how thought-provoking it is but what about the fun aspects of it for fans of science fiction? Can you talk a little bit about some of those?

Troy: Yes, I can. One of the things Danny is doing...well I don't know this is what I project on him is that he, as with 28 Days Later and this, it's two specific genres. There's a zombie genre and now he's doing a science fiction genre. I'm always a fan of directors who'd say "I want to do this genre and be faithful to the rules" . In science fiction there is no love story this is how it has to go down and he is faithful to that. So I think in that alone, science fiction fans will be very, very pleased with this movie. I think he also successfully brings up real philosophical questions that aren't necessarily answered. Although there is enough there to make you really agitated and nervous and frustrated and excited during the movie there is also something there for you to take home with you and to think about and to possibly discuss. If you can leave a movie theater with something to discuss then I think it's worth it's weight.

Q: Pinbacker is an interesting character…

Troy: I love the Pinbacker character. I think he's a very good representation of man. Someone who becomes so close to success and becomes intoxicated by it. Everyone has their own interpretation of Pinbacker. Gets so intoxicated by that and by the power that affords him and you know how dangerous that can be because it separates you from what's right and what's wrong. He also brings up really bizarre questions about who is God. Is the sun God? Is this the origin of life? Was there a life before the sun? To him he finds himself standing in the face of God.

Q: Is he real?

Troy: Who?

Q: Pinbacker.

Troy: Is he real? Well that's up to you. But that's a big question that gets raised and that needs to be answered. If this is this man's God, what is yours? And does it exist?

[end]

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Staci Layne Wilson reporting