I'm kind of embarrassed: Robert Pattinson

Was there a time where you were sitting with Alan Coulter and the producer and something clicked for you? Can you talk about why you were attracted to this character, and about taking that step to produce the movie?
Well, the producing thing. (laughs)  I’m kind of embarrassed about the producing thing because I wasn’t really acting like a proper producer. I only really came on after the shoot just to kind of help Alan and Nick make sure that the product was what the product in which we all wanted to make in the end. It was the summer after the first Twilight. I read it then and I met with Alan and Nick. I thought they were really great, and I talked to them for hours about it. I think basically what I commented to them about was, what shocked me was I was reading a ton of scripts and it just didn’t fall into any, the way the dialogue was written and the plot was structured, it didn’t fit into any kind of normal category. It didn’t seem very formulaic.
 
He’s a rebellious character, especially against his father. Were you attracted to that idea?
I mean, I don’t know if it was so much about just the rebellion that interested me. I liked how it seemed like Tyler didn’t really know what he was rebelling against. It seemed like no matter what his father was like, no matter what everyone around him is like, he’d still be rebelling. There was one interesting thing, I liked how he wasn’t fighting against everybody, and he only chose to fight against his father. I think it was a pretty broken family to begin with, and I think he just takes out all of his rage on his father because his father is the only one who can take it. I mean if he tried to attack his mother, she’d probably end up killing herself or something. She’s too wounded to be able to take that. I don’t think it’s particularly typical rebel. It just comes in fits and starts all the time, so I think he’s kind of faking it. I think what he’s really rebelling against is himself.
 
This movie is so steep. The locations are amazing in the film, and it feels so authentically New York. What kind of research you did, or if you knew a lot about New York in 2001. And what it was like to film in the streets of New York?
My sister lived in New York for like 5 years and I used to go visit her all the time. I don’t know. When I read the script there seemed to be a sort of voice that was just there as soon as you read it. I’ve never had a dialect coach or anything. Ironically I’ve only had a dialect coach for this film I’m doing now, which I’m doing now in an English accent. (laughs) I guess I’ve forgotten how to do an English accent.
 
Alan spoke a lot about your focus that you had to maintain while shooting because of the constant paparazzi attention and the screaming fans. What was that like for you to shoot such an emotional movie under the eye of people twittering about it, and people screaming at you?
It’s like the first two weeks were kind of crazy, because I was all around NYU and Washington Square park and there’d be tons of people around anyway. I think it was annoying people as well, that all of these crowds came and disrupted peoples days, so that was really difficult at the beginning. But, I think after that you just get used to it. You just block certain things out. I was trying to figure out a way to use the sort of rage that was built up, but you couldn’t really use it for that character. If the same thing had happened during this movie that I’m doing now, it would have been perfect and I could have gone around hitting paparazzi and stuff and it would have been great because I would have been staying in character. (laughs) But it didn’t really work for Tyler, he’s not that kind of guy.on trying to do it, I don’t think.