People have often pondered whether being alone is exclusively linked to being lonely, and whether they feel more connected to other people when they’re using technology, and isolated when they’re speaking to someone who’s actually in the same room as them. That question of how people relate to others in their lives in the ever-increasing connected world, and how they can learn to embrace being alone without getting lonely, is powerfully examined in the new sci-fi fantasy drama, ‘The Zero Theorem.’ Director Terry Gilliam effortlessly explored how people can only truly make sense of who they are when they’re alone through the script from first-time feature film writer, Pat Rushin. The drama’s up-and-coming actor, Lucas Hedges, helped emphasize how the world’s current youth have helped usher in the dwindling sense of privacy through his portrayal of a teen who must find a way to live with a loss of isolationism.

‘The Zero Theorem,’ which is now available on Blu-ray, DVD, VOD and is playing in select theaters, is set in a futuristic London. The drama follows Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz), an eccentric and reclusive computer genius plagued with existential angst. He lives in isolation in a burnt-out chapel, waiting for a phone call that will provide him with the answers he has long sought.

Qohen is working on a mysterious project, which was delegated to him by Management (Matt Damon), and is aimed at discovering the purpose of existence-or lack thereof-once and for all. But his solitary existence is disturbed when he’s visited by the flirtatious Bainsley (Melanie Thierry) and Bob (Hedges), Management’s son. It isn’t until Qohen experiences the power of love that he’s fully able to understand his very reason for being.

Gilliam and Hedges generously took the time recently to talk about filming ‘The Zero Theorem’ during a press conference at New York City’s Tribeca Grand Hotel. Among other things, the director and actor discussed how making the sci-fi fantasy drama independently pushed the cast and crew to closely work together to creatively find solutions to their questions; how Hedges was cast in the role of Bob a week after he sent Gilliam his audition tape, as the director was intrigued by the actor’s interesting approaches; and how the filmmaker feels his movies are meant to view in theaters, but embraces the fact that films, particularly indies, are now primarily only available to most people across the country on Video on Demand.

Question (Q): What was the process of incorporating the effects into the film, without having a big studio budget?

Terry Gilliam (TG): Anything that is cheap, quick, clean and efficient, that’s what we go for. There’s lots of dialogue in the film that we recorded on an iPhone. Modern technology makes the process a lot easier. You go on the web and find things, like the sunset on the beach, and a lot of that was from Shutterstock. We mixed a lot of them together.

I’ve always been intrigued by GoPro, so we stuck [cameras) all over the set. We didn’t know exactly how they were going to be used, but as long as they were doing their surveillance, nobody played to them; in fact, you couldn’t even see them, but they were right there in the scene recording.

Of course, we cheat and lie through the whole thing; that’s the process of making film. All that technology is very useful. It makes everything about filmmaking easier and cheaper, which to me is the key. The cheaper you can make a film, and the more you can say exactly what you want to say, exactly how you want to say it, and not have to listen to a lot of corporate leaders tell you what the public really wants, is key.

I’m constantly lurking around the web. It’s infinite what you can find. You just have to do the work, but it’s all there. The only thing that bothers me is that people don’t use it enough for knowledge. Most of it is used for gossip and “What am I eating?” and “Who am I sitting with?”

Q: What was the working with a smaller budget overall?

TG: You cut through the bureaucracy of complex filmmaking. We have to create a world where everything in there is invented and created in one form or another. On a larger budget film, communications aren’t as direct. Things end up costing more, because people will do three versions of something, just in case the director changes his mind. This there was no time for that, and everything moved fast.

It’s very exciting to work like that, because there’s no time to doublethink. It’s all about, what can we do? How much we got? We can’t do that? Okay, let’s do that instead. It’s a form of guerrilla filmmaking I suppose. It’s wonderful, so I can’t even imagine what it would be like back to have a bigger budget. I’ve forgotten whatever that might have been. I just know what we’ve got. (laughs)

Q: How did you develop the script?

TG: This is very different than other films I’d done because I didn’t write the script. Pat Rushin wrote it, and I liked it. It was full of ideas, and I didn’t do much fiddling with the script. I did more fiddling when we were editing. I start playing around in post [production] and rearranging things. I was cutting scenes in half.

When you’re working with good actors, they’ve got their own ideas. Hopefully we’ve all convinced ourselves that we’re making the same film, only in Bucharest (where it’s cheaper than shooting in) London. Every day we changed things. A script is not a finite thing-it’s the first stage. Then everything is changing and shifting all the time, and that’s the fun of it, because you surround yourself with good, talented people.

Lucas Hedges (LH): Pat and Terry were very diligent about changing words and lines.

Q: Billy Bob Thornton was set to star in the film when you first began developing the script in 2008. How did the conception of the film change when Christoph Waltz stepped in the role?

TG: It wasn’t the difference in the two actors. Each would have done it differently, no question, and they both would have been wonderful. But it didn’t come together then. I went off and made ‘Parnassus,’ and then eventually went back to see if we could make this. When Chrstoph’s name came up, I thought, bingo.

The big difference was the fact that three years earlier we had a budget of $20 million, and then we actually ended up making the film for $8.5 million dollars. So immediately we changed the shooting location from London to Bucharest.

We’re in a very different world relying on actors that I really love working with, some who are friends, and one I’ve worked together with before, to come on and work for scale. The film changed enormously. It was nice being in Bucharest because it’s such an odd, interesting city. That immediately infects what we’re doing.

The lack of money meant that you couldn’t have normal proper costumes, so you had to fake it. (‘The Zero Theorem’s costume designer) Carlo Poggioli had to make things out of plastic table clothes and shower curtains. He found a wonderful Chinese market outside Bucharest, where you bought fabric by weight, not by length.

Q: Lucas, how did you become involved in the film?

LH: I sent in a tape to Terry as an audition, and then a week later I got cast. That was very strange, especially for a role of this proportion-that doesn’t happen. We arranged to talk on the phone and Terry called me. When we spoke, his energy was absolutely incredible-he was insane! He was going on about what was going on in (Bucharest, where the film was filmed), and about Vlad Tempish and Dracula, and it was lovely.

It was clear right off the bat that this is a man who doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. He’s an individual. Hearing him for the first time was something I’ll never forget.

TG: When I saw ‘Moonrise Kingdom,’ there was one guy that popped off the screen for me. It turned out to be this one. I’d never seen him before, and then he sent that tape in. I had only taped one (other) kid in London. This one kid was kind of interesting, and he was the only person I started putting on tape. Then Lucas’s tape came in and I said that’s it! It was simple as that

I didn’t have a single doubt. He just cracked it, and he was the character. Then I called him and tried to frighten him off. and I failed. (laughs) He was really thrown in the deep end with someone like Christoph.

LH: It was a scary transition, going from Brooklyn to Romania, and to working with Christoph., both from a filmmaking standpoint and a social standpoint. But it really became a home and it really worked out.

Q: Terry, some of your previous films, including ‘Brazil’ and ‘12 Monkeys,’ represent dystopias, and some people have suggested that ‘The Zero Theorem’ does, too. Do you agree?

TG: This (film) isn’t a dystopia; it’s a utopia. It’s a wonderful world. Everybody is dressed smart, and they’ve got a lot of color. They’re bouncing around the place, and cars are zipping back and forth. Shopping is 24 hours a day, every day of the week. What more do you want?

Qohen’s workplace, Mancom, is full of rollerblades, scooters and zippy clothes. It’s a fantastic place. There’s only one guy that is the dystopia element, and that’s Qohen, who makes himself miserable. He needs a kick in the ass. (laughs)

If you think the world we’re living in now is a dystopia, maybe you’re right, but we’ve been looking forward to this time for so many years. Now we have all the goodies. I didn’t choose this-this is what the world has become. It seems we’re more infantile. When there’s something interesting, you want it now. People say, “I’m not going to work towards it. I’m not going to wait. I need it now.” That’s infantile, and that’s what we’ve become.

For me, coming to New York is like Qohen going out his front door. In London, we’re overwhelmed by stuff, but it’s provincial, and everything looks small compared to walking into Times Square. Where do we fit into it? Are we just these little dots that connect? Are we just becoming social insects like worker bees? Our job is to keep tweeting and connecting and spreading those pheromones, and they go through the ether across a great distance.

Many people prefer the virtual world to the real world; it’s kind of sad really. Nobody has to have their individual opinion. People are constantly communicating. “Should I say that?” “Have I gone too far?” “Have I offended?” “Am I rude?”

My feeling is that people have to start being individual. I’m obsessed about offending people. You get a discussion going. You might start talking about things rather than ducking and diving. I watched my daughter say, “That was very rude.” It was an idea and a thought.

LH: It’s a matter of what perspective we see it from. We see it from Qohen’s perspective and I guess his perspective is very much nihilistic, dystopic and sad.

TG: That’s really it. He’s the odd man out.

LH: I’m sure there’s a way of looking at the world we’re living in now from a certain perspective that makes our world look dystopic. I mean, maybe it is or maybe it isn’t, but it depends on whose eyes you see it from.

TG: My tendency in films is to see the less good things in society and the world we’re living in. At least those are the things you can criticize and comment on, and it might possibly change something in some small ways. It’s not likely (laughs), but we can pretend we have some potency in our ability to help change the world. (Lucas has) to believe things like this, as he has his whole life ahead of him. But I’m old, and I know the truth! (laughs)

Q: With ‘The Zero Theorem’ being available on Video on Demand, what are your views on that platform, and how it relates to the distribution of your films?

TG: It’s what the world has become. With small distributors, and Amplify (the film’s distributor) being one, they don’t have the kind of money that Hollywood has to get the audience’s attention. So basically we’re relying on people who might like a Gilliam film, or want to see a Christoph Waltz film, take an interest. It’s a way of getting people see the film, and hopefully they’ll get the word goes out, and say, “Oh, it’s a great film.”

I see people on Facebook saying, “Oh yes I saw it on Video on Demand, but I can’t wait to see it on the cinema.” Other people are saying “I’m waiting to see it on cinema, if only there was one within a thousand miles of my house,” and that’s the problem. So maybe Video on Demand is the only way some people are going to see it. The reality is that when I look at my past films, they’re made for a big screen. But I know in reality more people have seen them on DVDs than in the cinema, so it’s just reversed the process a little bit.

Q: Terry, can you offer any updates on the status of ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote?’

TG: After (‘The Imaginarium of Dr.) Parnassus,’ I worked for a year on a half on ‘Quixote,’ but it fell apart. I just wanted to work, so I asked, “What’s out there? Anybody got a job for me? My agent said, “What about ‘Zero Theorem?’” I asked, “You mean they’re still interested? Okay, yes. Let’s go.” But the difference was the budget went down to 8 and half million dollars. (laughs) Actually, it was 7 and a half million dollars, but I got it up to $8.5 million.

Right today I don’t know (the future of ‘Quixote’). I previously knew, but I don’t know anymore. I got an e-mail the other night, so I’m not going to say anything…A man’s got to keep a mind occupied and pretending is the best way to go through life.

LH: Growing up I went to DVD stores with my dad. I don’t feel comfortable watching movies on demand. I’ll get to theater when I get to the theater.

Q: What are your overall feelings about being a filmmaker?

TG: Films are pretty extraordinary, and we’re pretty lucky to be able to make them because they’re so intense when we’re doing it. At periods like this there’s nothing before and nothing after; it’s that moment. You have to be in the moment the full time you’re there. Then it’s over.

Then hopefully, when you look back at your films happily and proudly, and say, “Yeah, we did all right there.” All you need to look back and not feel ashamed or that you were compromised to the point that you didn’t do what you were capable of. I’m very proud of what we pulled off frankly.

Written by: Karen Benardello