INTERVIEW: Francis Lawrence talks about his approach to 'Mockingjay', working with Jennifer & more

Francis Lawrence shared how it was like to work with Jennifer Lawrence and his approach to the adaptation of Mockingjay in an interview with The Huffington Post.

How many days into shooting did the Jennifer Lawrence/Francis Lawrence name joke stop?
Oh, they still haven’t.

Oh, really?
No, no. They still haven’t. I mean, occasionally, Jennifer will just turn to me and say, “You know what? We don’t talk enough about our last name.” She’ll say that. I mean, we constantly joke, because in every single article, it says, “Francis Lawrence, no relation” — of course, because it never says, “Jennifer Lawrence, no relation.” And we say that when we do press conferences, the card in front of my seat should just say “No relation.”

Or you should adopt the nickname F-Law.
[Laughs] Yes, exactly. Yeah.  Somebody did, on my trailer on the first movie, put a nickname where I was “Flawrence and the Machine.”

That’s a good one.
Yes. Yeah, F-Law. Yeah, but the jokes have not stopped. 

The third book, “Mockingjay,” is being divided into two movies that you are directing. How do you approach that story? Because I know quite a few people who don’t like that story as much as they like the story in the first two books.
Well, I think it’s all approach. I think, quite honestly, for me, the third book is the book that gives the stories their meaning — and that’s what I’m most excited about. To be able to take these stories to its finish, but also to be able to tell the story that sort of gives them all their kind of greater meaning, is really important to me. But, we all hear that kind of stuff, so I’m very mindful of it. And what I can try to do that we did with “Catching Fire” is make it as rich and emotional an experience as possible. So, if we can continue to keep the story in sort of Katniss’s point of view and keep you emotionally engaged with her and make the story as compelling as possible and give each of the characters that we present as emotional a story as possible, I think that we’ll really keep people engaged in the world of “The Hunger Games.”

He also talked to Fast Company about how he got into film-making and filming Catching Fire in IMAX.


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