Although I was really interested in physics, I think I wanted to do it because I thought it was really hard. I did theoretical physics.
— Lenny Abrahamson
As a small kid, I had this huge desire to be thought of as really clever.
I was interested in the narrative of how we nurture our elite in this society: all that stuff about believing in yourself and not accepting second best. Our inner world is at odds with that.
Hollywood is probably the most active centre of film-making in the world, but it's also a very difficult place in which to find your voice... It was also a far more civilised industry in Ireland.
On your first film, you think these are going to be your closest friends for the rest of your life. You form a bond, but then you go back to the rest of your life.
I'm not an academic type in term of personality. I had my share of madness as a teenager.
When you're shooting, there's terrible pressure, and you never switch off. Every day is like the day before an exam; it's relentless.
I usually shower the night before, lay out all my clothes on the floor, so then I just fall into them, clean my teeth, stumble out the door, get into my car and go wherever it is that we're shooting. You have breakfast on set.
I can just remember being broke, wondering if I had any talent - really wondering whether this was all a fantasy - but I had to get out there and keep trying.
'Room' was a particularly cohesive group, crew and cast.
I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties - just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.
Having started in sciences, I then turned around and said, 'Oh, I don't want to do sciences. I want to do philosophy.' And to their credit my parents said, 'if that's what you want to do, then go for it'. Then I got the scholarship to Stanford, which was very nice for the parents to talk to their friends about.
I love the cinema, but I'm not a fascist about it. I've had some of my best experiences watching things on TV. But if I were Stalin, I would force everyone to be in the theater.
I did go to cheder and was a bar mitzvah. We were members of an Orthodox synagogue, although we were not religious. My grandfather was Polish. He came to Ireland in the '30s.
I'm a big fan of American vaudeville and Hollywood silent film-era slapstick and the music halls full of ridiculous, eccentric characters.
The style of direction in 'Room,' maybe a little bit like 'Spotlight,' tries to be hidden.
I'm a bit of a pessimist, oh yeah, and I always think the film I'm about to make is going to be a disaster.
I came from a classic, literate, intellectual Jewish family.
I wanted to make films that were culturally relevant in my own country, that challenged people, and that people talked about.
There was a golden era in film-making in Hollywood back in the 1970s, and although there is some great independent film-making in America, it's actually very hard to get independent films made in the United States. It's much more feasible from Europe.
I think that I must be the only person who left California and headed to Dublin in pursuit of a career in film. The arrow is pointing in the other direction in most people's minds.
The thing about America - it's different everywhere, but visually, it's amazing to shoot in the desert in the New Mexico light. It's really hard to shoot in that desert and make anything look not amazing.
I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about.
It's very important to have a good relationship with the crew and cast because you want to get the best out of them. They'll work really hard for you if they like you.
The title, the name Frank, comes from this extraordinary British character Frank Friedbottom. He was very big in Britain in the '80s, but I, as an Irish kid, saw him on 'Top of the Charts.'
I'm fascinated by people who have to reinvent themselves. I did it a few times - I was going to be a physicist before I was passionate about philosophy - and I realized that one more change, and I'm going to start looking like a dilettante.
A big part of filmmaking is gathering a group of people you can work with.
When we say 'cinematic', we tend to think John Ford and vistas and wide-open spaces. Or we think of kinetic camera movement or of a certain number of cinematic styles, like film noir.
It drove me as a kid. I couldn't bear the idea that I wasn't the smartest. Then I got put in a B stream for four years at my school. And that was the making of me in a weird way.
There's a fashion for a macho style of filmmaking. How long can your longest take be? And shooting things in one shot. For me, if you can sort of disappear and make people feel that they are there, that involves massive amounts of work.
I am an unusual Irishman. I'm probably Ireland's third most famous Jewish son.
Trying to make something as tricky as 'Room' really believable is extremely hard, and it largely rests with that relationship between the actors and the director, and the director and the crew.
Good filmmakers make bad films; it happens.
There's so much pressure on kids to perform and to be the best they can be, and particularly with boys: boys who are the gifted ones get loaded with an awful lot of expectation and self-expectation, and that's really hard for an 18 year old.
I can think back to being four or five and not wanting to sit at the kids' table because I thought it was demeaning. I was this ridiculous little kid.
After 'Adam and Paul,' I had offers from American agents, but I think I would have been swallowed up.
If you're in Hollywood, with no track record, it's pretty odds-on that you can get swamped and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it all; particularly with the intense commercial push that you feel there.
Established actors will challenge you if they don't agree with the way you are taking it, and you have to argue it. But with a younger cast, they are more likely to wonder whether what they are doing is okay instead of trying to second guess the director. That helps push you.
I think people like to have their categories clear. They want to know if it's fiction or fact, biopic or not.
I was a bachelor for a long time, and I got into all these really lazy habits work-wise. I'd just work as long as I wanted into the night. There was no structure.
When I'm shooting, it averages out at a 16-hour day. You have two deadlines everyday - lunch and wrap.
'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.
I'm interested in discontinuities and interruptions, people having to rewrite the narrative of their lives because of sudden changes.
I know that it's axiomatic in the film industry that you're not supposed to let the novelist develop their own story. Well, first of all, that's kind of up to the novelist - because they don't have to sell it. But also, I don't believe it. It's about trust.
I started to make some commercials, which was a way for me to finally make a living at last. But it was only really a couple of films in that it looked like a viable career option.
I think digital is getting so much better. It's harder and harder to make the argument now for film. All things being equal, though, I still prefer to capture on film.
For me, I always think of the image of sweeping out my footprints as I walk through a scene.
Most of my work has been independent movies outside the mainstream system.
I think, as directors, they may recognize, more than the rest of the body of filmmakers, exactly what you do as a director, because I think sometimes the conception is if the camera isn't swinging around, and it's not pyrotechnic or worthily melodramatic, then the direction is uninvolved.
Delusion is not good; better to be realistic and then surprise yourself if you're lucky.
