Netflix Commercial Dee Rees Was Inspired By 70s New Hollywood for The Last Thing He Wanted 2025

VIDEO Netflix Dee Rees Was Inspired By 70s New Hollywood for The Last Thing He Wanted TV commercial 2020 • Director Dee Rees shares the cinematic inspirations behind her new film The Last Thing He Wanted, a political thriller and Joan Didion adaptation starring Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, and Willem Dafoe. Netflix is the world's leading streaming entertainment service with over 167 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments. 00:00 We wanted the film to have that kind of '70s sensibility, 00:02 even though it was set in the '80s. 00:03 So it just has this kind of warmth to it, 00:05 it has this kind of grain, 00:06 it has this kind of like, breathing kind of feel. 00:13 The film, in terms of cultural inspiration, 00:15 comes directly from Joan Didion's work. 00:17 I am in love with her fiction. 00:19 I just love, kinda like the machine gun clarity 00:22 of her prose, and so I wanted to kind of 00:24 create a film that moved at 00:26 the momentum of her sentences, 00:27 and that informed the camera language. 00:29 The opening of this film is a couple of continuous shots. 00:32 So you feel like you're in the zeitgeist of Elena McMahon, 00:35 and you're in this kind of pressure cooker world. 00:38 The thing I loved about the book 00:40 was this father-daughter love story at the center of it. 00:42 So it's really about Dick and Elena McMahon, 00:44 and the things we do for our fathers, 00:45 or the things we sometimes do out of guilt. 00:47 And so, in Elena, I saw this woman who's desperately 00:50 trying not to repeat a cycle. 00:52 So with Dick, there's been 00:55 some neglect, some abandonment 00:55 but they're so loving. 00:58 And Elena, in some ways, is maybe repeating that 01:00 with her own daughter, Cat. 01:01 And so, I like this idea of her going back, 01:03 trying to save him, in a way, and she can't. 01:05 She's kinda in over her head. 01:08 For this film, Anne Hathaway, I wanted to transform her. 01:11 And she was completely game. 01:12 Elena needed to be sun-beaten, ya know, 01:14 so I needed to almost invert her, 01:15 to where her skin was darker and her hair was lighter, 01:19 and she was a little bit heavier. 01:20 So she gained weight for me, and did the whole thing. 01:22 And the same thing with Ben. 01:23 I needed a slick diplomat. 01:25 I needed somebody who was coolly attractive. 01:28 And so, he kinda exuded that. 01:30 And Rosie Perez, I needed 01:31 someone who was like nimble and wise, 01:34 and who exuded a kind of bohemian kind of charm. 01:39 Our cinematographer, Bobby Bukowski, and I 01:41 looked at a lotta the old Kodak Kodachrome film, 01:44 that had the kinda like warmed-up greens. 01:47 We just wanted it to have that kinda like analog feel. 01:51 Also, we looked at Salvador, Panic in Needle Park, 01:53 Nashville, Robert Altman's, I love that, 01:56 how there's this kind of cacophony at all times. 01:58 Things that kind of draw your eye, 02:00 draw your attention, that you can't necessarily see, 02:02 that are beyond the frame. 02:03 So it feels like this world is bigger than the frame. 02:07 We found some locations that were extraordinary. 02:09 To me, I'm always informed by the environments, 02:11 and so, Inbal Weinberg who's our production designer, 02:13 and so she actually went out and scouted, 02:16 and found this kinda wild beauty, 02:17 and found locations that looked like 02:19 they walked outta the book. 02:21 I'm trying to make a movie that I, myself wanna see. 02:23 And so, for this, I wanted to do a big action send-up, 02:27 something that my dad would like. 02:29 So it's like that kinda thing. 02:30 But generally, I just like to tell stories 02:31 that I wanna hear. 02:33 For me, it's not about a genre. 02:35 It's just about interesting characters, 02:37 and I'm always slipping in my own kind of like ideas. 02:40 It's just kind of tucked in there. 02:41 So I like just telling stories 02:42 where I can ya know, slip something in, 02:44 and that are exciting for me.- advertisement spot 2020