Hot Summer Nights Red Carpet Interviews

Hot Summer Nights is finally being released (albeit limited) on July 27th, 2018. (Those with Directv have had access to the film since June 28th)

The film premiered at the SXSW film festival and conference in March of 2017. My co-reporter and I were accepted to cover the red carpet at the film’s premiere and we were thrilled! I have an affinity for Saoirse Ronan, so I knew that Timothée Chalamet had just finished filming Lady Bird and I was pretty stoked to be able to be in his presence, even though I didn’t know much about him other than that. 

The red carpet was nerve-wracking. It was our first one, but, overall, I think it went pretty well. Every single one of the actors, as well as the director, Elijah Bynum, were incredibly kind and well prepared for all sorts of questions (some of which we took from Twitter fans).

Here’s our red carpet interview with Timothée, Maika Monroe, Alex Roe, Maia Mitchell and director Elijah Bynum:

Here’s some other questions and answers not featured in the video:

LCB: How did you come across this part?

Alex Roe: I was shooting a movie called Rings and I read the script and it was the best script I’d read since I’d been in America — I was so psyched to do a tape for it, so I sent a tape off and the director watched it and I did a grilling on Skype — I kind of knew characters like this back home and it was just learning to translate it to an Americana kind of vibe.

LCB: What was it like shooting like it was 1991?

Alex Roe: That was fun!  It makes you kind of removed from yourself a little bit more because you’re wearing clothes you definitely wouldn’t wear and you’re in settings that feel completely different than your every day settings and you can live and breathe it.

LCB: What was your favorite thing about filming Hot Summer Nights?

Alex Roe: It’s a load of young, talented people like Maika, Maia, Timothée, Emory Cohen - just a lot of young talents all coming together - living together. 

LCB: Did you know any of them prior to this?

Alex Roe: I shot The 5th Wave with Maika so we were great friends anyway, but I made some real friends on this.

LCB: So you think you’ll stay friends after this?

Alex Roe: I know everyone says that, but this is for real.

Timothée:

LCB: Are you enjoying Austin?

Timothée Chalamet: I love Austin! It’s one of my favorite cities.

LCB: So you’ve been here before?

Timothée Chalamet:  Yes, I shot a film here called Men, Women and Children and I’ve been here at the festival before with a film called One and Two  and a film called Miss Stevens.

LCB: Have you worked with any of the actors from this film before?

Timothée Chalamet: … No, I haven’t.

LCB: So do you think you’ll have a lasting friendship with any of them?

Timothée Chalamet: You know… It was great, I was able to get out to Atlanta about four weeks early with Alex Roe who plays Hunter Strawberry — They say experience is the best teacher, you know, to be able spend that time with him and to build that, hopefully, palatable chemistry on screen that’s so crucial between Daniel and Hunter — I think when you create something like that on screen, I think you’re going to have that friendship for a while as well and even to be in Austin a year and a half later, or just promoting the film in general, I think Alex and I have a great relationship.

Maika:

LCB: Do you have a favorite scene from Hot Summer Nights? 

Maika Monroe: So many! There’s a scene with T-Mo (Timothée) and I that we just got to dance around in a parking lot.. they had a little speaker and we just danced around and that was really fun!

LCB: Who in the cast is most like their character?

Maika Monroe: … Probably Alex Roe. Yep!
​

Once the movie started, about ten minutes into it, I knew that Timothée was much more than just an upcoming co-star of Saoirse’s and that he was going to be one of the greatest actors of his generation. (I am also sure he’s going to be bagging some more nominations this year for his new Netflix film, “The King.”) Timothée wasn’t the only shining star in this film, however. Every single actor in this film stepped up to the plate and knocked the ball out of the park. 

I chalk that up to the director — Elijah Bynum. He did a superb job on his directorial debut with Hot Summer Nights; he knows how to balance drama and comedy and pulled perfect performances from all of his actors. The film also has excellent pacing. There were some complaints about the film’s ending (No spoilers) but I don’t think you can deny that this film was well-written, well-directed and supremely acted. An ‘unhappy’ ending doesn’t detract from those truths. I hope you’ll check it out. It deserves to be seen!

You can watch Hot Summer Nights when it hits theaters for its limited release on July 27th, on Directv or you can watch it on Amazon (available on July 24th) by clicking, here.

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