Michael Pitt in Funny Games Courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures

Did you guys turn to any screen villains for inspiration?
Corbet: [laughs] I think it's impossible to make these kinds of conscious decisions.

Pitt: Some people do it

What preparation did you actually do? If you didn't have a past and there wasn't a projection of your future, how did you feel your role? How did you become —
Corbet: We just played the moments. And those moments are well written moments.

You could identify with it as a natural process, to become a killer like that?
Corbet: All the killing is off-screen so we weren't killing anybody, really! It was just a show. And then [Haneke] would come in later with sound effects and editing and finish the job for us.

How much rehearsal process was there?
Pitt: I rehearsed all the time, every second. I had a friend of mine, an actor friend who was running lines, we would run lines. But Haneke doesn't rehearse.

The outfits had a very distinctive look — all the white, the gloves, especially the gloves. How did that help you get into character?
Corbet: A lot!

Pitt: The gloves did help.

Corbet: Yeah, they really did.

Pitt: There was a time when putting on the gloves meant...

Corbet: Back to work! [laughs]

These guys appear to be very educated, college educated, even Ivy League. What was your take on that? What was the background on these characters? Were they very high-class, upper class people, or just two guys off the street?
Corbet: Well, as I said earlier, I don't think there is much of a background. But wherever they come from I do think they're smart. I think it's obvious that they're intelligent because they're incredibly and successfully manipulative. And anytime we went into too much backstory it was confusing because they don't have backstory. But I definitely thought that he was well educated.

This Halloween I bet we're going to see some Anton Chigurh [Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men] costumes out there. How would you feel if you saw your characters joining that long line of iconic psychopaths at Halloween?
Corbet: [laughs] That would be cute.