Iñárritu and Cruise discuss making Digger, its monologue shot and its play-within-a-film twist

Centre · 1Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu told Collider's Steve Weintraub that a single take of Tom Cruise's monologue scene in Digger left him "trembling behind the monitor", and that he refused to shoot coverage afterwards. 1 Centre · 1Iñárritu said he had planned one master shot in VistaVision with great depth of field, showing many layers of extras around Cruise in his purple suit, and that the camera move and Cruise's performance were choreographed and rehearsed many times. 1 Centre · 1By his account, it was around the fourth or fifth take that everything worked, with many ballerinas and a crane in play. When Cruise said the team had a lot of coverage to shoot, Iñárritu replied that neither of them would do better, and the scene was finished. 1

Centre · 1Iñárritu also described a long production: nearly six years of visual preparation, a year of rehearsals and almost two years of post-production. He called Cruise's performance "very precise". 1 Centre · 2The film stars Cruise as Digger Rockwell, an eccentric billionaire oil tycoon who tries to convince the world he is its savior while a failed drilling project in Greenland threatens the planet. The cast includes John Goodman, Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, Jesse Plemons and Michael Stuhlbarg, and Screen Rant also lists Emma D'Arcy. 1 2 Centre · 1Screen Rant, citing an interview from an industry screening at the Academy Museum (via Gold Derby), reports that Cruise and Iñárritu explained the film's main twist: the story takes place inside a theater, as a play within the film. 2

Centre · 1Iñárritu said the film had to serve both theater and cinema, since voice projection and physicality differ from close-up film acting. He said the team left "some crumbs" so viewers could work it out, that it is "not a trick", and that the play could not tip into farce. He also said the film has a lot of dialogue because theater is about expressing ideas. 2 Centre · 1Iñárritu said the tone took time to get right. Some footage was too naturalistic and not funny enough until rehearsals and physicality fixed it, and he called the film a satire about serious problems in which "everything is performative". 2 Centre · 1Cruise said he plays three characters, "Digger A, Digger B, and Curtis", and that he had never seen a character like this. He said he read the script aloud to absorb its tone and ideas, and found the accent without a dialogue coach. 2

Centre · 2Screen Rant says the twist is not landing well. It reports the film at 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, called it one of the year's more divisive films, and said a predicted three-day domestic opening of $8 million would be a startlingly low debut for a Cruise film. It says the twist is revealed about half an hour into the 2 hour 9 minute runtime. Collider notes only that the film is playing in theaters and IMAX. 2 1