Crave Online: What do you make of all this hype for your love scene with Javier and Penelope?
Scarlett Johansson: I don't know. I mean, when you're working you're so isolated that I never even opened the newspaper. You're so tired, you come home you're exhausted, I never research what the world thinks about the film but it's funny because, I mean it's Woody. The idea of like Woody Allen's steamiest film is so ridiculous to me. It's not like it's Bertolucci or something. He's so conservative with that kind of thing. It is sweet, and I think he's quite respectful of the relationship. I think there's a lot of chemistry between the characters and all of us as actors and that's where the steaminess comes from, because it's not really explicit. I mean people kissing, nothing is crazy about it, but because there's such a chemistry between the characters and you're really invested in them and it's such a turn it's like whoa, wait a minute. Even my character's kind of surprised by it herself. And also when you're shooting there's like 60 grown men eating salami sandwiches, kind of waiting for when they can get up and watch the game or whatever. You just think, "God, are we rolling?" because there's like trays of food being passed. "Oh we are rolling, okay." Nobody cares when you're doing it, of course. It's like your day at work and this is part of the story and then of course people get wind and they get excited because they associate two women who wear gowns at an award show and gosh, the possibilities…It's ridiculous, of course I go home at the end of the day and I prepare for the next day. It's not like I sat at home...
Scarlett Johansson: I don't know. I mean, when you're working you're so isolated that I never even opened the newspaper. You're so tired, you come home you're exhausted, I never research what the world thinks about the film but it's funny because, I mean it's Woody. The idea of like Woody Allen's steamiest film is so ridiculous to me. It's not like it's Bertolucci or something. He's so conservative with that kind of thing. It is sweet, and I think he's quite respectful of the relationship. I think there's a lot of chemistry between the characters and all of us as actors and that's where the steaminess comes from, because it's not really explicit. I mean people kissing, nothing is crazy about it, but because there's such a chemistry between the characters and you're really invested in them and it's such a turn it's like whoa, wait a minute. Even my character's kind of surprised by it herself. And also when you're shooting there's like 60 grown men eating salami sandwiches, kind of waiting for when they can get up and watch the game or whatever. You just think, "God, are we rolling?" because there's like trays of food being passed. "Oh we are rolling, okay." Nobody cares when you're doing it, of course. It's like your day at work and this is part of the story and then of course people get wind and they get excited because they associate two women who wear gowns at an award show and gosh, the possibilities…It's ridiculous, of course I go home at the end of the day and I prepare for the next day. It's not like I sat at home...
Crave Online: Do you have female friends who you travel with like Vicky and Cristina?
Scarlett Johansson: It's funny because obviously I'm lucky I have a couple of really good very close girlfriends and yeah, our interests are similar obviously which is why we're friends. We have similar things that we appreciate and stuff like that. They're not actors and stuff like that, but we have a certain aesthetic, or things we like to do. But always with when it comes to men, you're going to differ from another woman, right? What she likes and what she's into and how you feel about her boyfriend and how she feels about your boyfriend and all of that stuff. It's great to be able to be close with a girl that you could both talk about these things and get some relief, and another woman's perspective and all of that. But I've never been in such a specific situation where I was on a vacation, and one girl wanted to go guy crazy and I was like left in the hotel. I've never, fortunately, been stuck in that kind of position, because I think with most of my girlfriends, we're pretty solid. We go away together because we want to see each other, but I think in this particular circumstance, in the film, the two characters are in different places in their lives. They're very close friends, but perhaps they realized the summer that they kind of branch out, the one character is engaged to be married and she's kind of taken a more conservative route and maybe she wasn't quite like that in college. My character's still wandering and aimless and is not quite figured out what she wants and friends grow apart and I think that for this summer certainly they do. They're different, and they're probably different when they come home.
Crave Online: You've played a few of Woody's women now. What sets this one apart?
Scarlett Johansson: Well, they're all such different characters, it's a difficult question to answer because everything about her I think, other than her blonde hair, I'd be hard to find some comparison between her and the character I played in Scoop. I mean, it's such a ridiculous character that I played in that film, but I think that the best thing about working with Woody other than just getting to spend every day chatting with him and bothering him and poking him and stuff like that - -
Crave Online: Poking him?
Scarlett Johansson: Sure, why not? Got to make sure he's still like awake. But that he writes such fantastic female roles. Reading the script, the most exciting part about reading the script is getting to see what are we all, meaning Penelope or I or whatever other women are in the part in the film, what are we going to be doing next? He has such an appreciation and understanding for the intricacies of the female mind. I think he would say that we're a superior species or something. He really loves women, the way we think, and it's always some inspired character.
Crave Online: How much improvisation can you do with a Woody Allen script?
Scarlett Johansson: It's hard to remember. I usually stick to the script but I think probably for Chris and Rebecca, it's so unusual to work with a writer-director that isn't completely precious, married to their dialogue. I remember Woody would say, "I don't know, just make it your own" or whatever and I remember Rebecca just being like, "What do you mean, make it our own? Does he mean that?" And every single actor that worked on this, before our first day, came up to me and they said, "How married to the dialogue is he? I mean, is he precious about it?" Especially Penelope and Javier, I think they were a little worried about it, because it's so nuanced and I said, "No, you'll see." I felt like the old shoe. Of course you keep the idea and his writing's so brilliant, there's not much that you want to [change]. You want to keep it.
Crave Online: Have you seen that YouTube clip where they boost the sound at the end of Lost in Translation? Was there even actually a line, and did this guy get close to it?
Scarlett Johansson: I don't know, I didn't even know that, but I'm sure that it's not because we weren't mic'ed. We had a boom operator and I think that when we're intimate, if it's there's no audible [level] and maybe we're like mumbling or something but I don't know how that could be elevated. I don't know what it is, you'd have to tell me what it is.
Crave Online: Something to the extent of "Even though we can't be together right now, know I'll love you forever."
Scarlett Johansson: That's nice. Honestly, nothing was written and we did the scene so many times, I really couldn't tell you what was said. It's unfortunate because people can't appreciate the filmmaker's decision to not have that be audible. They can't appreciate what that means. There's a poetry in that obviously, and people are so, I think obsessed with discovering the secret of everything and uncovering the code and it's sad.
Crave Online: What was it like working on The Spirit?
Scarlett Johansson: I loved working with Frank. He's wonderful, he's such a visionary, and he's just fantastic. He would come on set and almost lead the whole crew into some kind of presentation. He would draw the storyboard and kind of lead us. I mean he sees it, he can see how he wants it to, he's a visionary, he really is, and it was exciting. It's very exciting to do that, because everybody disperses, we all know what we're going to do, and he's so excited about the characters. That's obviously, that's his thing. He creates these fantastic characters and some of them are like so rotten, they're just so rotten. It's like none of us are heroes. They're all kind of gray and I love that.
Crave Online: Are you rotten in it?
Scarlett Johansson: You're just going to have to see. You're just going to have to see, but it was such a wonderful time and actually working with the green screen was really interesting because we're shooting on these huge I don't know what, they must have been like an airplane hangar or something, and converted with all this green screen. Then Sam and I, our sets were really like, we had a lot of props and we had like our whole set right here so it was almost like a theater in a way. The camera would be way back there or like overhead or some crazy angle, and so the performances I think are really theatrical, which is great because obviously the film is a fantasy film. Even when we were doing some of the post production, like sound, when he was doing some of the sound editing, we're so loud, because we're in this huge room. We have to fill this huge room and of course Sam is so loud and the two of us were just so enthusiastic about the whole thing that Frank was like, "I actually had to bring the volume of the performance down a little bit and make it like a little bit more intimate." It was a lot of fun, we had a really good time on it.
