Asa Butterfield & Sacha Baron Cohen Interview For Martin Scorsese’s ‘Hugo’

Directed by Academy Award-winner Martin Scorsese, written by John Logan, and based on Brian Selznick’s novel “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” ‘Hugo’ stars Asa Butterfield as a young boy secretly living in a train station in 1931 Paris. With the help of an eccentric girl, he searches for the answer to a mystery linking the father he recently lost, the ill-tempered toy shop owner living below him and a heart shaped lock, seemingly without a key. ‘Hugo’ stars Asa Butterfield, Chloe Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Helen McCrory, Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Emily Mortimer and Michael Stuhlbarg. This film is out now in the US, and is set for release December 2nd in the UK.

Could you describe your character and what you felt was the biggest challenge making this movie?

Asa Butterfield: Hugo, he’s an orphan, and because he’s had to grow up far faster than anyone else his age should have. I found it quite hard to relate to him because of all the hardships he’s gone through in his life. So I had to come up with a false past for him that was similar to mine and relate to him in that way. And of course, the book that Brian wrote helped me a lot when relating to him. The biggest challenge filming it, probably was dealing with the crying scenes. They were probably the hardest bits, draining mentally and physically. Hugo was very different to other roles I’ve played, because in ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,’ my character is quite innocent and very naïve. Hugo is innocent, but he’s had to grow up far faster than anyone else his age should have. So he’s very mature, it was a great role.

There’s so much film history in ‘Hugo.’ Did Martin Scorsese curate things he wanted you to watch to prepare for this film?

Sacha Baron Cohen: Well, he always does that with his cast, you know, when it’s set in a specific period, and I had a whole box set of Georges Méliès’ films to watch. Hours of it, really, which was hugely useful for me not only to understand his language of cinema, but also how he multi-tasked to an extraordinary degree. When you’re watching the films, you see a great performer, but then of course, when reading the footnotes, you realize that he wrote, choreographed, directed, edited, designed, starred in with his wife co-starring. I think he must have got about four hours sleep a night because he then having worked in his glass studio, he then went to the musical in Paris to saw people in half, and do all fun kinds of things like that (laughs). So yeah, Martin really saturated us with wonderful material to watch.

Did you think more in detail about the back story and also even the future story for your character?

Sacha Baron Cohen: I mean, yes. Certainly when I approached the character of the Station inspector, I wanted to know why was he so obsessed with chasing children and was he actually a classic villain or was there reason for his malice? I sat down with John Logan (screenwriter) and Marty, and we started talking about perhaps he was World War I veteran, and maybe he was injured. So we came up with the idea of the leg brace. Originally it was a false leg, which the audience wouldn’t have realized until it was going to be the first chase, then I was going to turn a corner and then my leg was going to fly off and go into camera in 3D and that was going to be the first big 3D moment (laughs). Unfortunately, practically I was made aware that I would have had to kind of strap up my leg for four months in order to do that, so we kind of abandoned that and I started wearing a leg brace instead. But yes, we were trying to examine the roots of evil. This station inspector who is doing incredibly unpleasant things – why was he doing that? We kind of realized that maybe he himself was an orphan and was put away in a workhouse and that’s the only structure he knew and that’s what he’s trying to impose on these young children.

How was it working with Martin Scorsese?

Asa Butterfield: Working with Marty was a completely new experience for me. Not only was it an amazing experience, it was an amazing education as well because he gave me lots of homework, as he called it, and old films both by Georges and other old filmmakers, and things that inspired him to become a director. So it was amazing working in that way. And the things Marty does on set are just so different from other directors. For example, rather than saying, “Do this, do that,” he lets the actors come up with their own ideas to bring to the thing. And because me and Chloe are kids and we could come up with like a truthful representation of how a child would react in certain situations rather than say an adult’s thinking of how a child would act, so it was really helpful working with him. I learned loads. Working with him was a massive education for me.

Sacha Baron Cohen: I think that’s the key about Martin Scorsese, that he’s totally collaborative, which I was surprised about because I expected him to be some incredible auteur, which he is an auteur, but part of his power and part of the reason why his films are that successful and that enduring is the fact that he’s ready to collaborate fully with all his actors. Any idea that I came up with, he was ready to listen to, and surprisingly – because I came up with some really absurd ideas (laughs) – he was ready to try them out. One day, Asa hurt his hand, it got stepped on and he had take the day off. We had nothing to do the next day and I said, “Well, listen,” I was looking at some old Charlie Chaplin that Scorsese had given me, some unseen Chaplin, and I thought maybe there’s a scene, something to do with the train. Maybe his leg gets caught in the train. I don’t know if it’s in the final cut or not. He said, “All right, let’s try it.” I go, “You sure? It’s gonna involve hundreds of extras and a moving train.” He goes, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So he was just totally ready at each point to try out any idea however ludicrous the suggestion was, which was worrying for the producer and the financiers of the movie, but for me, it was great. It was basically like doing improvisation or sketch comedy except you have five hundred extras around and award winning designers and producers and actors, so it was a lot of fun for me.

How many of these sets were actually built to scale?

Asa Butterfield: A lot of the clocks were actually in the train station, so they sort of took them down and you had to go inside them. And some of them they just sort of blew up the insides so you could walk around. The hanging clock tower, which me and Chloe Mortez spent quite a lot of scenes in, there was this big spinning thing which a lot of the time I would stand up and it would smack me on the side of the head (laughs). The working clocks were incredible because they were real. You could actually wind them and they had weights on. It was just incredible. It was a gift to the actors to work that way.