Alejandro González Iñárritu on the Difficulty of Directing Non-Actors

Alejandro Inarritu: Directing actors is difficult, right, and actors in a different language is more difficult, but directing non-actors in a language that you don’t understand, that’s the craziest thing that you can possibly think about. And 17 days before start shooting, before Brad and Cate arrived, I didn’t have one single actor. They didn’t know that, but I was very close to canceling the film. And I was just desperate trying to get these people out of the town because mostly all of the actors in the industry in Morocco, in the small industry, they end up in TV soap opera. So they have these bad habits, they didn’t have the right scheme of people from the desert. So I turned two days, to the Mosque, from the, we have speakers, they put it in line, we announced that there was a film, we filmed like one thousand people. We, you know I was seeing, casting them, reading the people I was finding interesting. And for example the guy, Anoir (could not verify this name) who is the guy who helped Richard and Susan, he arrived to the office asking for a computer, he was a computer system guy asking for job. And I saw him and I felt that he was a great face. And the kids in the, the kids, the Moroccan kids, we find them in Tan Nuel which is a little town, they were playing football. And they were very humble. The town that they live in doesn’t have electricity at all, they have never seen a camera, it’s just such a, I did, I said to Booker, the little kid, I said, “Okay I will give you one line, and you will just respond without words, okay? And you’ll be…” so I was saying to him, just going to respond with gestures and your eyes. And I said well, “Moroccan football team has just won the World Cup Soccer,” and he went like “YEAH!” And then I said you know, your mother has just died. And the guy began to-to cry and all the eyes full of tears. And all of us, all the cast in the plaza with people playing football, he was, just moved me and I said, “I want that guy.” So