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Shes about to step on something sharp.
Play it back, says Krasinski to a nearby sound editor.
Blunt continues softly down the stairs.Thwunk!
A streak of blood.
Thats great, says Krasinski, an admitted horror novice, as the scene ends.
Can we get something wetter?
The sound editor dials up some changes at his computer.
The scene plays again.Shwunk!
says Krasinski, elated.
Lets see that again!
Prior to being hired forA Quiet Place18 months ago, I hadnt even seen a lot of horror movies.
So the theme of the movie was present in my life when I was reading the script.
I thought I could take the material somewhere emotionally exciting and of course make it really scary.
(The budget forA Quiet Placewas $17 million.)
That movie is a strange creature.
Krasinski and Blunt play a couple trying to keep their young children safe.
All of this is done as quietly as possible.
I was anxious about having so little dialogue, says Krasinski, an excitable talker in real life.
You wonder how youre going to keep people interested.
He quickly realized that what I was anxious about became the movies superpower.
Her gestures, he recalls, were so much more cinematic than saying the words wouldve been.
Weve always been quite protective about working together, says Blunt.
We didnt want to do something where the narrative around it would just be about our being married.
Even after Blunt and Krasinski decided they could work together, the challenge of doing it remained.
Hes the impulsive one; shes more measured.
He acknowledges that her approach was an important counterbalance to his own.
Or do you want me tofeelthat its awesome?
Says Blunt, I was quite tough on him sometimes.
I remember being too hard on a scene that hed been struggling with.
But he processed what I was saying and found a solution.
Her husband, she says, is not a put-his-head-in-his-hands kind of guy.
(He also co-created the Paramount NetworksLip Sync Battle.)
The phone wasnt ringing afterThe Officeended, Krasinski says.
People needed to let the character of Jim be or they didnt think I could do anything else.
So it forced me down other paths.
His first job afterThe OfficewasThe Hollars.I had to direct something myself to find work, he says.
Thats how it should go, by the way hes Ryan Gosling!
But I think Im a realist about this business.
IfA Quiet Placeworks, it opens up more opportunities.
Both creatively Living with a character in a long-form-storytelling way is pretty cool, says Krasinski and pragmatically.
Its helpful to have a constant.
Having that allows you to dip into other things in a more daring way.
