tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14110936354992542272024-02-06T19:54:34.303-08:00filmfanwriterfilmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.comBlogger140125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-81284045372171596622012-02-17T11:48:00.000-08:002012-02-18T03:32:45.347-08:00In Making Undefeated, Directors Defy Odds, Like The Film's Subjects, And Get An Oscar Nom<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDsvjhXKzcrlhYA8hG9MDQ9p6hbj5xAIZLb2QFbRopguCWdQDhwt2zxkK-BEU8ztb7SliYBnfw4CoVjv_TT13yCLdDXfcfJ_0HnN77qZaoHcGcikqsYEIFOjvTtWcnc3eDBmo_JbgT84OZ/s1600/undefeated-directors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDsvjhXKzcrlhYA8hG9MDQ9p6hbj5xAIZLb2QFbRopguCWdQDhwt2zxkK-BEU8ztb7SliYBnfw4CoVjv_TT13yCLdDXfcfJ_0HnN77qZaoHcGcikqsYEIFOjvTtWcnc3eDBmo_JbgT84OZ/s400/undefeated-directors.jpg" /></a></div>I was glad to have interviewed doc directors Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin -- whose film <em>Undefeated</em> cleared nearly all the award hurdles and got into that rarefied place of being a Best Documentary Feature nominee -- before viewing this year's Superbowl. Talking with them made me appreciate the New York Giants' win even more than expected because I had a fresh understanding of all the barriers to success a player overcomes to get to such big leagues.<br /><br />This film documents one almost-champion season of a really bottom-the-barrel high school football team from wrong-sde-of-the-tracks, inner-city West Memphis Tennessee.<br /><br />The severely underfunded, underprivileged Manassas Tigers -- they had been hired out as a practice team for more successful, affluent schools -- reverse their fortunes thanks to a relatively new coach, Bill Courtney, who, in 2004, came on board and applied what he learned as a former player and salesman to transform wild kids into a team.<br /><br />The team, and three spotlighted members, go through such trials and tribulations as they break their 110 year losing streak and head to the playoffs.<br /><br /><em>Undefeated</em> tells of young men who dare to dream dreams that might surprisingly come true. Just like these two relative newcomers who in getting this Oscar nom, also have real insight into what it takes to achieve the unexpected.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It took Steve James in his classic sports doc <em>Hoop Dreams</em> years to those dramatic moments; who had the crystal ball that led you to capture these intense moments even though you had no idea they were going to happen?</strong><br /><br />DL: Seth [Gordon], our producer. I’m kidding. I don’t think we ever could have imagined, we just captured lightning in a bottle. That’s all any great documentary is. There has to be an element of luck and have things work out in a certain way. I don’t think we could have predicted how it turned out.<br /><br />We always wanted to make a coming-of-age film, but we also wanted to make a sports film. Plus we wanted to address the education system and how it’s failing these young students. But we were able to speak a lot about these social issues by making this a stronger, intimate character piece that hopefully inspires conversation about class, education and race.<br /><br />We definitely went over a worn path with a story about high school football. Even if they had lost all their games, we would have filmed it anyway. It would just be a different film.<br /><br />T.J.: In <em>Hoop Dreams</em>, it was about catching up with the guys and spending huge moments of time with them. We embedded ourselves with them and spent every day of nine months with them. Not the same thing, but there’s an intensity in different ways. We got really lucky. But from the beginning, the approach never changed.<br /><br />DL: One thing we did knew from the beginning was that we didn’t want to span the course of years. We wanted to capture a special moment in time in adolescence where there are so many possibilities. And we can either see those possibilities begin to take shape, or the realities of those possibilities set in.<br /><br />We wanted to film this intimate coming of age story in a way that we would be able to get these personal moments. Because of the way technology has progressed, we can do that. We could shoot for hours and hours. But we used that to our advantage in getting the players so used to us being there that we were just the flies on the wall.<br /><br />They were able to go on with their lives as they normally would and we were able to capture these really intimate moments.<br /><br />TM: We expected little emotional swells here and there, but I don’t think we expected it to be this big.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you two work together? </strong><br /><br />TM: We shot and edited everything.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Together?</strong><br /><br />TM: Together. Sometimes we would go off and follow other characters, but we edit in the same room right next to each other. I’m sure the people that shared the space next to us thought we were fighting.<br /><br />DL: We had really heated conversations.<br /><br />TM: Other people don’t realize that’s how we work through points some times. But for us, we’re not upset with each other, we just get very heated and passionate.<br /><br />I remember one time we were so frustrated and we just couldn’t get the first act together and we had a bit of a dust-up. And I walk out and I came back in and I’m like, "Man, I’m so sorry. I just wanted to make the best movie ever."<br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you narrow it down to the players you covered?</strong><br /><br />DL: Money [Montrail Brown] and OC [Brown] were the first characters we found.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Would you have focused more on OC?</strong><br /><br />TM: The initial interest was doing a movie about OC until Rich Middlemas, our producer, found this article about the Tigers. We still wanted to make a coming-of-age film about OC. Then we met Bill, and then Money, and it kind of mushroomed from there.<br /><br />DL: The first thing we ever shot with Money -- and this was before we moved there, we were just looking around -- we went over to his house, put a mic on him, and said "Show me around your house." So he shows me this corner and says "These are my pet turtles." <br /> <br />I said, "Why turtles?" And what came out of his mouth is in the movie. I was in Memphis, and sent the footage back to TJ, because he was cutting presentation reels and trying to raise money. I said, "Watch this, it’s amazing."<br /><br />Our friends were like, "You told him to say that." And I said, "No, I swear!"<br /><br />So even from the first few moments, there was something special here. Then Chavis [Daniels] became a character because of the way he was affecting the team. There were one or two other guys we followed a bit at first, and one that was actually in the first, six-hour cut of the film. But it felt like it deviated too much to the side.<br /><br />TM: He was probably the hardest to let go, though.<br /><br />DL: His name is Joaquin Kahns, and he had lived in 16 or 17 foster homes in four years. He turned 18 at the beginning of the season and the foster system kicked him out, so he was homeless. I hate to think of it so clinically, because it breaks your heart. [However,] his story slowed down the film because he was not as much a part of the team as the other guys. <br /><br />We spent a huge amount of time with the rest of the team, even when we knew they weren’t necessarily [going to] be in the rest of the film. It was important for us for our process and to get to know them. For guys that are 16 or 17 years old that want attention, we didn’t want our presence to have a negative effect on the team.<br /><br />If they saw us focusing on OC, Chavis, and Money, that might build resentment. So we did interviews with every other player, even though we knew it wouldn’t wind up in the film, but it was about giving them all their chance to get followed around and get mic’ed.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Would you say the toughest parts were what to do with the girlfriends and with the parents?</strong><br /><br />TM: Girlfriends, especially. This is a time in their lives where there’s no reason to exploit… if somebody was following the drama of my high school relationship, ultimately it’s kind of provocative for provocative’s sake.<br /><br />DL: Ultimately if they weren’t affecting the story, I’d see no reason for it. But with the parents, it’s an issue of sensibilities and it’s hard to get ahold of them.<br /><br />TM: Money’s grandma refused to be on. And it wasn’t because she didn’t like us.<br /><br />DL: Some of the parents were maybe a little more cognizant of what was happening. And the approach we had is that we wanted to tell the kid’s story and have it be from their perspective. There were times when we would interview the parents, and we had some footage, but it doesn’t lend itself to the greater narrative. And that was the big thing with this film. From day one, we wanted it to feel like a scripted film. We wanted you to get swept away on this journey.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It is surprising how many of the player’s parents were criminals or had been in jail.</strong><br /><br />TM: North Memphis was once voted -- by Forbes Magazine, I believe -- the most violent neighborhood in America. <br /><br />DL: Most violent crimes per capita.<br /><br />TM: I don’t know if that’s particularly unique to African-American males in this country. I don’t think it’s unique to North Memphis but that’s a huge political discussion to get into.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Is that why you put in the local journalist, to add a narrative voice?</strong><br /><br />TM: We needed someone to set the stage. We wanted to capture a moment in time, so we only wanted to give you the elements you needed to make sense of what you were about to watch, because it was just about that season. <br /><br />Jason ended up being very beneficial in that he gave the viewer context for what they were viewing. The funny thing about him is that he did an interview after the nomination came out on the local Memphis news.<br /><br />His dad is in <em>Paradise Lost</em> as one of the newscasters in Memphis, so they had them both on TV talking about their experiences. He thought we were some college kids doing a project and didn’t think anything would come from this with our little cameras.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What about racial tension say between the white coachs and the kids or the community?</strong><br /><br />DL: That’s something we were very conscious of.<br /><br />TM: We didn’t want to make this a white knight story. That’s another thing that I think is a misconception, too: people would assume a white coach "saves" black kids. There’s a reason we don’t discuss race. At first, that was a really interesting dynamic to us. But once we got there, we realized it was a non-issue and that there was no reason to discuss it. But at the same time, it’s not like we were [ignoring it].<br /><br />The same goes for class issues. We set the stage and hope that it elicits a greater discussion, but our job is to show a human interest story, a character study of sorts. We were very conscious of the prevalence of white knight stories in Hollywood, and that’s something that turns us off. <br /><br />But once we saw Bill and his genuineness, we realized that that’s not what this was. We just presented the story, and it just happens that he’s white and that this is an all African-American school. <br /> <br />I do think there's valid criticism on why these films are made. I’m sure there is a volunteer coach that is African-American and at an African-American school doing similar things to Bill. We just came upon the story because of OC.<br /><br /><strong>Q: More interesting than the race angle is that we have a fatherless coach becoming a father figure to fatherless players.</strong><br /><br />DL: That was one of the early things Bill said when we were filming. Bill was microphoned -- and I don’t even know if he knew he was -- and he was talking to some people at the school. He said, "Well, my own father left me when I was four years old."<br /><br />Later, TJ and I were talking and we realized [by then] Bill’s a real person, he’s not just a rah-rah football coach, he has a past that means something. Suddenly, this is a bigger story than we thought. There are moments with Bill that aren’t in the film, where he’s talking to a player, and it’s like he’s special; he’s unlike any coach I have ever seen before.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-39203987253167645992012-01-24T06:07:00.000-08:002012-02-10T04:44:17.696-08:00Actor Michelle Williams' Uncanny Marilyn Wins Award Noms<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigs_qu1fIEu5NClml89ePlCs91irV0_2BH3qSBu7IpiJUv1Rn1UYNOWZriCVdT4N7CSXmNaGRlla4-Ay9hnVzoxTIBQm88TqfS8INEDeT5he24NdvPbdC0fWEIdvm1lYjUkru7XuQQVzw0/s1600/michelle-tight-head-shot.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 299px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigs_qu1fIEu5NClml89ePlCs91irV0_2BH3qSBu7IpiJUv1Rn1UYNOWZriCVdT4N7CSXmNaGRlla4-Ay9hnVzoxTIBQm88TqfS8INEDeT5he24NdvPbdC0fWEIdvm1lYjUkru7XuQQVzw0/s400/michelle-tight-head-shot.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703192175177084594" /></a>Who knew that when actress Michelle Williams first appeared as the bad girl in <em>Dawson’s Creek</em>, she would have the uncanny good sense to take on roles which offered her real challenges? From a supporting part in <em>Brokeback Mountain</em> to the lead in <em>Wendy and Lucy</em>, she rose to the occasion. <br /><br />So now, another year, another Williams’ award nomination. Last year, her star turn in <em>Blue Valentine</em> garnered this former small town Montana native various noms; now she’s up for the Best Actor Oscar for playing Marilyn Monroe in <em>My Week With Marilyn</em>.<br /><br />Without making her Marilyn simply an "incredible simulation," Williams rendered as authentic a performance as an actor can give of such an iconic chameleon. But given Williams' ever-arching resume, she has developed the chops to validate such an achievement.<br /><br />Born in 1980, Williams’ strong characterizationas <em>Dawson's</em> Jen led to film appearances in the comedic <em>Dick</em> and depressive <em>Prozac Nation</em> before the series even ended.<br /><br />Since then she was in such quality indie films as <em>The Station Agent</em>, <em>Imaginary Heroes</em>, and <em>The Baxter</em>. But real success happened in 2005 when she starred in Ang Lee's<em> Brokeback Mountain</em> as a woman who realizes her husband is in love with a man.<br /><br />That role landed her an Oscar nom for Best Supporting Actress as well as an intro to Heath Ledger who fathered daughter Matilda Rose. They split and when Heath died, she withdrew only to come roaring back, including this many-nominated role.<br /><br />The following Q&A was drawn from a press conference before the the film's 2011 New York Film Festival premiere, red carpet comments and a session before its New York opening.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What was the most difficult part about channeling Marilyn Monroe?</strong><br /><br />MW: Maybe letting myself just believing that I could. Previous representations of her were more [like impersonations so] I felt maybe there was room. That was the first thing that made me think, "Okay, I can explore this."<br /><br />It was a decision made in the safety of my own home, and I didn't really consider the larger implications of it. It was a very, very slow process.<br /><br />It started at home with watching movies, listening to interviews, poring over books. [I would] try and mimic a walk, or figure out how exactly it was that she was holding her mouth.<br /><br />The first big discovery that I stumbled on was that "Marilyn Monroe" was a character that she played, and that [despite] the image that you're most familiar with, there was a person underneath it. That [persona] was carefully honed, but it was artifice -- and it was honed to where you couldn't tell that it was artifice. It felt so real.<br /><br />It was something that she'd studied, perfected and crafted. So once I discovered that that was a layer, and then finding out what that layer was and then getting underneath it -- it was a long and ungainly process.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It seems almost like this is a multiple role -- you're playing someone who's playing a role who's playing a role. Did you think of it in those terms?</strong><br /><br />MW: In some way it's not, when you think of them separately. You want to think of them together because they need to adhere. But I don't know how much it helps me to think of them as three separate people because they are, of course, connected.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It's a hard thing to do singing, and then to do it in someone else's voice.</strong><br /><br />MW: Well, like I said, Marilyn Monroe was a creation, and that creation took a lot of personal work. She also had teachers. Trainers were more common then, professionals who would help make these stars and help develop these talents. So I was -- as she was -- very lucky on this movie to be surrounded and supported by great people.<br /><br />A wonderful man, David Crane, worked with me every day for a couple of weeks and he taught me. I have not sung since I was [about] 10 years old. So he taught me about breathing, how to deliver emotion on lines instead of just [sound].<br /><br />And then in my ears, I listened to her. It comes up on my iPod all the time, all the Marilyn Monroe. And she was very influenced by Ella Fitzgerald, so I listened to a lot of her music.<br /><br /><strong>Q:how difficult was it to learn the choreography and then to perform the opening musical number as Marilyn -- which you did so well?</strong><br /><br />MW: I'm not a singer or a dancer. So, like everything else in this movie for me, they took a tremendous amount of preparation and willingness to start at the very beginning. [I had to be willing] to not know what to do, to make mistakes along the way and to not be hard on myself and to realize that they're a part of the process.<br /><br />In some ways because of that, when I was able to put the nerves aside, I really felt a tremendous outpouring of joy. I felt like a little girl whose dreams came true for the first time. I was able to tap into what I imagine made Marilyn Monroe so luminous in those singing and dancing numbers.<br /><br />What I experienced is that when you're in that state, your critical mind has to turn off. There's no room for it because you're remembering steps and lyrics. It's like learning to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time. Maybe that's what makes those performances of hers so magical -- that she's not thinking.<br /><br /><strong>Q: A lot was made about Method Acting in this movie. What are your thoughts on Method?</strong><br /><br />MW: I suppose, yeah, whatever works. I'd never done anything that had ever required so much technical know-how. This was the first attempt that I had made, really the first time, that I had actually, admittedly, started from the outside in because I knew that I was going to have a very, very long way to go.<br /><br />Where I, Michelle, have wound up after 31 years physically is very different from Marilyn. So for the first time, I started externally, which was a switch to me.<br /><br />Similar to Marilyn, I suppose, I'm not trained. I sort of popped into classes now and then. I read books. I read a lot of books.<br /><br />I have made some kind of amalgamation, some sort of hodgepodge of my own personal experience, what I know works for me in the moment, what I've learned from other actors.<br />I certainly don't know what I'd call it, but at the time the people who were driving the Method were actually live in the room, [I think] how exciting would that have been to be directed in class by [Elia] Kazan, to have [Lee] Strasberg by your side.<br /><br />Now we get secondhand information. It's like the soup of the soup. It's been sort of passed on.<br />I'm not beyond doing rain dances or throwing the [cards] or whatever. And I'm still experimenting. I'm still finding out what works for me.<br /><br />That's the reason that it keeps me acting, and keeps me excited. I'm still learning, and those answers change and new information comes in all the time that transforms my idea of how I'm going to do what I'm going to do.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Has Marilyn Monroe influenced you as an actress as well?</strong><br /><br />MW: She hasn't, to be honest. I had a picture of her in my bedroom when I was growing up, and so I've always had some sort of response to her, but only because of her image. I wasn't aware of her movies.<br /><br />When I had that picture in my bedroom, I hadn't really seen any work that she had done -- although at that time, I was very interested in the Method. God knows why, but at 12 that's what I was reading about.<br /><br />I was reading about James Dean and Montgomery Clift, [Marlon] Brando and thus Marilyn, but I didn't know her body of work. Really, I only came to it as a result of taking on this film.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Of her films, which one was your favorite and why?</strong><br /><br />MW: I wish I could say Prince and the Showgirl. Some Like It Hot -- how can you not? And I also am pretty fond of The Misfits. It was still a shot at a serious part.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you and Kenneth Branagh develop the relationship of Monroe and Olivier -- you had to establish that distance between you?</strong><br /><br />MW: The only distance that we might have kept was because we were both so absorbed in our process. We sat next to each other in the hair and makeup chair and it was like Command Central Number 1 and Command Central Number 2.<br /><br />We both were kind of married to our computers, headphones in our ears, and constantly watching, listening, absorbing and then going out and doing.<br /><br />So the only kind of separation [that] occurred is a part of trying to capture somebody who was. And that that requires a certain amount of technical attention.<br /><br />Q: Eddie Redmayne said one of the great things with the whole production was the sense that you shot in the same studio that The Prince and the Showgirl was shot in.<br /><br />MW: My dressing room was Marilyn's actual dressing room when she was making The Prince and the Showgirl.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Was it hard to leave Marilyn behind at the end of filming?</strong><br /><br />MW: In some ways, something that I like so much about what I get to do is that you never have to leave people behind. There's not a part of my contract that says, "You must abandon your character when you finish shooting." So I get to keep her with me in any way that I choose.<br /><br /><strong>Q: There's a difference in celebrity culture between the '50s and today. The film seems to to comment on that. What do you feel is the difference in celebrity culture now versus then?</strong><br /><br />MW: The internet. It's the acceleration and proliferation of information. It has always existed and it just has more forms to take.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How have you viewed her as a woman from a very different time with very different expectations of women?</strong><br /><br />MW: I wish that she could experience what I've been able to, which is to work outside of a studio system, to not be bound to playing the same role, to not be a contract player, to not basically have to be on salary and have to take what's given to you.<br /><br />I wish that [she] could experience choice and independence and exert her sort of creative will, like I feel very lucky to have been able to.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Why do you think the world continues to be fascinated with Marilyn?</strong><br /><br />MW: Because there's something indescribable about her, even though she's been so examined and so much has been made of her. There's still something mysterious.<br /><br /><em>For more stories by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com" target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com</a></em>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-29541075243837431252011-12-18T05:13:00.000-08:002012-01-11T03:12:04.156-08:00George Clooney Is Having A Very Good Year<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDNWeosVoFdqqYLMsqq0N4sJPEWYVc1QailqJH-eQ314dN2guU0pNZXYYQExFpvrRlT0spLBLpVWUdmip6nTLjB976ExpW-8N0g33TtDM_HXMzi7bEkC7YA_EdRtr375cwEGMvSApE7tFp/s1600/geo-clooney.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 378px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDNWeosVoFdqqYLMsqq0N4sJPEWYVc1QailqJH-eQ314dN2guU0pNZXYYQExFpvrRlT0spLBLpVWUdmip6nTLjB976ExpW-8N0g33TtDM_HXMzi7bEkC7YA_EdRtr375cwEGMvSApE7tFp/s400/geo-clooney.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687458723661988418" /></a>Despite the inordinate gossip-media attention George Timothy Clooney gets for his love life, this dapper male star deserves the spotlight for his other assets -- acting talents, social concerns, creative work, self-effacing humor and general good-guy demeanor.<br /><br />Earlier in 2011, <em>The Ides of March</em> was released, a film Clooney directed and performed that's earning his co-star, Ryan Gosling, award noms including a Golden Globe. And now that the suave 50-something has starred in award-winning director Alexander Payne's latest, <em>The Descendants</em>, Clooney's revelatory performance is garnering numerous nominations, some of which will surely result in wins.<br /><br />Clooney plays Matt King, scion of an old Hawaiian land-owning family, who re-connects with his two daughters -- 17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and 10-year-old Scotti (newcomer Amara Miller) -- after his wife Elizabeth winds up in a coma through a boating accident. While coping with this tragedy, he grapples with new and old responsibilities.<br /><br />They travel from Oahu to Kauai to confront the young real estate broker, Brian Speer (played by Matthew Lillard), who was having an affair with Elizabeth before her misfortune. But there's much more to Payne's adeptly woven story than this simple plot line.<br /><br />Born in Lexington, Kentucky, George is the son of local newscaster Nick Clooney, who hosted a talk show on a Cincinnati station for many years. Since he was five, he often frequented the studios at Clooney senior's invitation. Declining to compete with his father, he quit broadcast journalism to pursue an acting career and made his TV debut in 1978.<br /><br />As Clooney gained fame portraying Dr. Douglas "Doug" Ross on the long-running medical drama ER (from '94 to '99), TV provided him with his first accolades. During the series, he attracted a range of leads in films such as 1997's <em>Batman & Robin</em> and <em>Out of Sight</em> (1998), where he first teamed with frequent collaborator, director Steven Soderbergh.<br /><br />In 2001, Clooney's celeb status expanded with his biggest commercial success, Soderberg's re-invention of <em>Ocean's Eleven</em>, the first of a profitable trilogy based on the 1960 movie of the same name starring Rat Pack members including Frank Sinatra, who played Danny Ocean, Clooney's character.<br /><br />Clooney made his directorial debut a year later with the 2002 bio-pic thriller <em>Confessions of a Dangerous Mind</em> and has since directed <em>Good Night, and Good Luck</em> (2005), <em>Leatherheads</em> (2008) and now <span style="font-style:italic;">The Ides of March</span>. He won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the Middle East thriller <em>Syriana</em> and has received two Golden Globe Awards as well.<br /><br />Also a social activist, this Renaissance man has served as a United Nations Messengers of Peace since 2008. Clooney's humanitarian work also includes seeking a resolution for the Darfur conflict, raising funds for the 2010 Haiti earthquake, 2004's tsunami and 9/11 victims and in creating documentaries such as <em>Sand and Sorrow</em> to raise awareness about international crises.<br /><br />The following Q&A is culled from a New York Film Festival press conference preceding its 2011 NYC premiere and following its debut at last year’s Telluride Film Festival.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you come to do this film? </strong> <br /><br />GC: Well, Alexander failed to find me fascinating when I met with him for <em>Sideways</em>, which I've not yet let go.<br /><br />Then it was about two years ago -- this time, almost [of the New York Film Festival premiere of the film] -- that we met in Toronto and [Alex] came and said, "I have a script coming I'd like you to look at." And I said, "I'm doing it whether I read the script or not" -- which didn't work with <em>Batman & Robin</em>, by the way. <br /><br /><strong>Q: And how did you work out your scenes with Judy Greer, who plays adulterer Speer's wife -- which are very intense, pivotal moments in this film?</strong><br /><br />GC: Do you remember what our first scene was ever? Not in this movie. We did a scene in Three Kings and our first scene together is us having sex up against the desk.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Surely George Clooney in real life will never be cheated on by a woman, so what would you do if it ever happens to you? </strong> <br /> <br />GC: No idea, because I know how any answer will read.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So much depends on your relationship with the daughters in this film. What was the process of your coming together as a family? Did you do any sort of bonding exercises?</strong><br /> <br />GC: Yes, we did bonding exercises. I would say, "You guys stay over there and don’t talk to me."<br /><br />No, it’s a process that I very much embrace in the rehearsal process. We’d go over the scenes a little bit, but mostly it’s about spending time with one another.<br /><br />Because the truth of the matter is, once you get to a set, everything is so different. We could sit here and work out the hospital scene, but the blocking alone is different. <br /><br />Everything changes so drastically when you finally get to do that.<br /><br />The rehearsal process in general is about trusting one another, and so a big part of it was just getting to know the gang and all of us getting the ability to feel comfortable enough to give each other shit. But there’s some truth in that, and once you can get to that place, it’s easy.<br /><br />The lucky thing is that they’re all such talented actors. But we got a really good script and a really good director, and that sort of protects everything else. <br /><br /><strong>Q: They really managed to put you into the ugliest pants.</strong> <br /><br />GC: Those were my pants. <br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you work with the costume designer and why wear those pants? </strong> <br /><br />GC: I’m not completely against khakis, it’s just the level you have to wear them at. The higher you pull them, the more excruciating it is.<br /><br />This whole process was just about schlubbing up a little bit, and this seemed kind of easy to me. I grew up in Kentucky; this is standard, just different colored shirts.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Speaking about colored shirts, how was it filming in Hawaii?</strong><br /> <br />GC: Well, most of the time I’m working in places I’m not familiar with. Sometimes that’s Slovakia, and then sometimes it’s Hawaii -- and not to bash on Slovakia, but I really did enjoy Hawaii, as you can imagine.<br /><br />I think everybody will agree, it’s a great script, great director, and you’re shooting in Hawaii; there’s no downside to this. It was fun for me. I haven’t spent much time there, and certainly not in Oahu, Honolulu, so it was fun to see.<br /><br />It’s such an island, it really is an island. On the freeway the speed limit is like 45 miles an hour, and it takes you awhile to get into that rhythm. So I’m driving behind people and I’m like, "Move it!" and they’re like "Hey, hey, hey."<br /><br />I was an alien because I wanted to go 50 miles an hour. But that’s just my problem. Eventually you got into their rhythm, so that was fun. I really enjoyed it there.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: So how different then was it to shoot in Hawaii versus being in your places of origin like Cincinnati, where you shot some of shooting <em>Ides of March</em>?</strong><br /> <br />GC: Well, I didn’t have relatives on the set every day. When you’re shooting in your hometown, you’ve never met so many cousins. I mean really, they were like, "This is your cousin;" I’m like, "I have no idea who that is, but okay, you’re my cousin." I didn’t have a whole lot of that in Hawaii. <br /><br /><strong>Q: The crux of <em>The Descendants</em> is notions of forgiveness, maybe redemption. What are your thoughts on forgiveness, both in the context of the film and in real life?</strong><br /> <br />GC: "I forgive you. Now I don’t forgive you. I take it back." You’re absolutely right, there’s a big part of it [that's] forgiving yourself... because so much of what happened was also his responsibility.<br /><br />I think a big part of that release at the end, when he’s with his wife and he looks at her and he kisses her goodbye, is understanding his part in this as well. Yes, she cheated on him, but he was not there and he was not a good father as much as he thought he was. He was busy working. And that happens.<br /><br />So part of it was coming to understand that, and I think that forgiving yourself is a very big part of that. I think we all go through those experiences of understanding that the older you get, the more forgiving you are of other people’s mistakes.<br /><br />When you’re young, you find that anything that stands against something you believe in is just plain wrong. I remember there would be relatives of mine who would say something and I would say, "Well, he’s a bigot," and then come to find out later that I was way too judgmental. I was making the issue much bigger than it was.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-87758585329163787882011-12-09T08:41:00.000-08:002012-01-27T10:46:38.089-08:00Michel Hazanavicius' "The Artist" Goes Beyond Words & Wins Awards<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRFNrp0jS5YReTzUOuIer2Mlvw0RuhKvPKR8ttz6kb_MdRS4CLIYKF8PtrrjZPkO_8Ok6dRXrU5l0T9-Gtn6f2AorVZOc28xX6WReb_Nxa4kap6lsklzJ5zOZQ8YiIJ13NNyUFYIzagtYH/s1600/haz.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRFNrp0jS5YReTzUOuIer2Mlvw0RuhKvPKR8ttz6kb_MdRS4CLIYKF8PtrrjZPkO_8Ok6dRXrU5l0T9-Gtn6f2AorVZOc28xX6WReb_Nxa4kap6lsklzJ5zOZQ8YiIJ13NNyUFYIzagtYH/s400/haz.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5684170014046572498" /></a>Wily provocateur and indie screen mogul Harvey Weinstein sees beyond the obvious and recognizes value in some rather offbeat films. Thankfully, that support has so far paid off. Four of Weinstein’s pictures won awards at this year’s Golden Globes, with a bloc going to one of 2011's most unusual films -- <em>The Artist</em>.<br /><br />In making <em>The Artist</em> a black & white, silent movie, French director Michel Hazanavicius defied expectations. For anyone else, this would be not only a strange concept, but a retrogressive idea, simply a throwback to another era. Yet this veteran French filmmaker employed a sufficient sense of irony to take the idea beyond preciousness and imbue it with a wit and charm that makes it feel both classic and contemporary.<br /><br />The director works from an eternal scenario. In 1927 Hollywood, the arrival of talking pictures creates turmoil for silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) who fades into oblivion as he resists the change. <br /><br />Meanwhile, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), a young dancer gets a big break by meeting Valentin, shifts into stardom by embracing the talkies while George sees a reversal of fortunes. As he slips into near-poverty, George and his dog Jack (Uggie) stay true to each other as everyone else moves on -- except Peppy, who, in the end, offers him a chance to redeem himself and share the spotlight with her.<br /><br />And now that the film has been nominated for 10 Oscars, the film racks even more attention as a cautionary tale: adapt to new technology or get left behind.<br /><br />The following Q&A with director Hazanavicius is excerpted from an exclusive roundtable held before The Artist’s American debut at the 2011 New York Film Festival.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Even before the pitch, why did you think you could do this and that we would want to see it?</strong><br /><br />MH: You never know, actually. You can't be sure. I said to the producer, "First, I have to write the script, and I'll know after that if the movie's doable or not." In writing the script, I had to find all the solutions of how to direct a silent movie, and what you're going to ask of the actors and what you're going to ask of the director.<br /><br />In this case, [the director is] myself, but, in a way, it's pre-directing the movie. I had this exit in a way, and if the script was not convincing, we would never do the movie.<br /><br />Everybody tells you that nobody wants to see a silent movie, that nobody wants to see a black & white movie. People think that black & white, silent movies are old, and they're right. But they're old because they were been done in the 1920s, not because of the format.<br /><br />The format is really good. I had the hunch that the format would allow me to do a very specific movie. You just have the hunch that there's a good movie to do. <br /><br />If you do a script with the normal paper and letters like this, when people read a script, they just read the dialogue. They never read the action, except maybe for action movies.<br /><br />It was really just action here, and over three pages you have just one card. So we tried to do a nice object, and that's what we did. We did an object that respected the ratios.<br /><br />It was a square paper, old paper, like a little bit yellow, typewriter letters, a little bit bigger. That makes people think that it was easy to read because they turn pages often, more often than like this. We put a lot of pictures, photos in the script. It was the producer's idea and I think it was a really good idea.<br /><br /><strong>Q: The script will be a collector's item...</strong><br /><br />MH: Yes.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How long did it take you to storyboard it?</strong><br /><br />MH: The script was, strangely, very fast to write -- four months, which for me is very fast, and especially because I spent a lot of time watching movies. Usually it takes me six or eight months, and it's not the dialogue that takes me four months, it's very easy to make the dialogue.<br /><br />The storyboard, I don't know. I drew [them] myself, so I would say three weeks or maybe a month. But it's during the preparation, so I don't do just that. I work on the storyboard the morning and the evening and then do other things.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you cast Dujardin and Bejo?</strong><br /><br />MH: I wrote the script with them in mind. I wanted to see them as actors in that kind of story, in that kind of element.<br /><br />They have ageless faces, and are really credible in period movies. They don't have modern faces. And when you put a costume on an actor, that helps a lot. [Actors] don't move the same way [in a costume].<br /><br />The other actors, the American cast, I found with casting director Heidi Levitt, who was really great; we tried to work with some expressive actors because there are a lot of great ones.<br /><br />When an actor like John Goodman (who plays the studio mogul, Al Zimmer) says something, all of his body and face express what he's saying, so I had to work with that kind of actor. I've been very lucky that a lot of great actors joined us on that movie.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Was Uggie the dog -- playing one of the film's best actors -- always part of it?</strong><br /><br />MH: He was in the story from the very, very beginning, in the movie before Hollywood. Hollywood came after the dog.<br /><br />I didn't realize exactly how important he was at the very beginning, but now when you do the promotion of the movie, you talk and talk, and in talking, you realize things that you've done and you have another understanding of your work.<br /><br />I realized that that dog is very important for two reasons. The first one is the character -- it changed the main character.<br /><br />When you create a character, you don't just create one character, you are helped with the other ones, they put another light on the character.<br /><br />The character of George Valentin is not very sympathetic; he's very egocentric, selfish, and he's very proud. He started the movie with a woman and he finished with another woman.<br />But the fact that he has a dog who loves him and follows him all over the movie, in a way, it saves him because you trust the dog. You think that the dog knows, that he has instincts, so if the dog loves him, somewhere he's a good person.<br /><br />The other thing is, this dog is the only friend of George. George has a problem with sound, with the talkies, and his only friend is a character that doesn't speak either because he's a dog. So yeah, he's very important.<br /><br />You think he's a good actor but he's not. He's a dog. He doesn't act, he doesn't read the script, he doesn't care about the situation, he doesn't care about his partners. He just cares about sausages. That's what he wants for real.<br /><br /><strong>Q: <em>The Artist</em> was shot in only 35 days. What did it take to make a film in such a short time?</strong><br /><br />MH: It’s as if you tried to paint the Mona Lisa on a roller coaster -- it's crazy. You have to go very fast. The preparation of the movie is really, really important. We always speak of the shooting, sometimes the editing, sometimes the writing. But the preparation -- you [make] all your mistakes in shooting through the preparation, so the more you prepare, the [easier] the shooting is.<br /><br />That's why I storyboarded everything. We worked very quickly. It was not so difficult to edit because the movie was really well prepared and I didn't do a lot of takes because I had to go fast.<br /><br /><em>For more stories by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com" target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com</a></em>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-35747218500066232292011-10-26T06:51:00.000-07:002011-10-30T18:15:45.911-07:00Juno Temple & Jeremy Dozier Bring Alive "Dirty Girl"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdY6icN-elj6-uB2NpnKlzkb02rYBIVo-JL4u33epZY005nu63HtN77Mmdmn2phjFxl3_w67xXw8E0FAipGTV3RIxzOfD8dV_NphKwS3KqhW6fV132On416EiEEJEfGxDn5TC8ctrLxq-u/s1600/juno-%2526-Jeremy.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 352px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdY6icN-elj6-uB2NpnKlzkb02rYBIVo-JL4u33epZY005nu63HtN77Mmdmn2phjFxl3_w67xXw8E0FAipGTV3RIxzOfD8dV_NphKwS3KqhW6fV132On416EiEEJEfGxDn5TC8ctrLxq-u/s400/juno-%2526-Jeremy.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5667798561014345122" /></a>Despite a substantial effort to integrate gays into mainstream America, anti-homosexual violence continues for those who don't conform to this country's far too conservative attitudes. Though it's hard to believe that it continues, bullying still spurs teen suicides in a country charged by tea party extremism.<br /><br />So first-time director Abe Sylvia used his juvenile experiences as a gay kid growing up in 1980s Norman, Oklahoma, as a starting point for his debut feature, Dirty Girl to inform us about his efforts to escape such abuse. His comedic search for identity and the redemptive power of friendship provides a context to illustrate the effect of such repression and the will to escape it.<br /><br />The "dirty girl" of Norman High School, Danielle (Juno Temple) sluts her way through high school but her misbehavior gets her banished to special ed. There she teams up with innocent but abused closet-case Clarke (Jeremy Dozier). Together they head out on an illicit road trip to escape the repression and discover themselves through their unexpected and funn friendship.<br /><br />Coming from an English showbiz family -- mom is producer Amanda Temple and dad is director Julien Temple -- the younger Temple has been a schooled actress since elementary school. Relative newcomer Dozier has only done a few shorts but shares in Sylvia's experience growing up in conservative small town Texas.<br /><br />Though Sylvia began his career in NYC as a Broadway hoofer working with such talents as directors Susan Stroman, Mel Brooks, and Tommy Tune, the grind took its toll and he turned to film, television and commercial work in 2001.<br /><br />After graduating from UCLA's film school, Sylvia's four short films have screened in over 100 international festivals; he's also won several awards including the Jack Nicholson Distinguished Director Award, the James Bridges Prize in directing and was a finalist in the 2006 Chrysler Film Project. Through Paris Films and Christine Vachon's Killer Films, Dirty Girl did the festival circuit including Toronto FF 2010 and is now being released this October. The following Q&A is culled from a recent roundtable with Temple and Dozier.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Q: Much has changed in society since 1987 so what did you learn about the time period and what were your impressions?</span><br /><br />JT: We had to do a lot of research on the music and stuff.<br /><br />JD: I really hadn't listened to Melissa Manchester or anybody like that, and she's this icon for Clarke. So I did a lot of research and watched her YouTube videos. I found it fascinating how powerful she was on stage.<br /><br />I also did lots of research on the time period, on the clothes and everything, which was a lot of fun. It was a time when being gay wasn't really talked about so I think that's changed a lot since then, thank God.<br /><br />We'd walk onto set and everything would be decked out in '80s gear. It was so much fun walking into this different world.<br /><br />JT: it was like walking into a new world in a puff of smoke.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you ask your older cast members such as William H. Macy or Milla Jovovich to give you some tips or references for the '80s?</strong><br /><br />JT: Kind of. But we're a different generation to them in the movie, too. My parents were a big part of the '80s rock and roll music scene, so I know quite a lot about that part of the '80s.<br /><br />So this was like a whole new part of the '80s in that we're listening to this great power ballad, music you can't help but move your body to.<br /><br />JD: What was great about working with Abe [Sylvia, the director] is that he grew up in that time period and had so many references for us. Movies like The Breakfast Club and different movies for us to watch.<br /><br />JT: We watched some good movies.<br /><br />JD: The music plays a huge part of the movie, and he knew what songs he was going to play over which scene before we started.<br /><br />JT: We were given the soundtrack before.<br /><br />JD: That helped us inform the scenes and get the tone [right].<br /><br /><strong>Q: You have your come-on line, which is "Are those Bugle Boy jeans?" I hadn't heard that in so long.</strong><br /><br />JD: I thought that was such a weird line. I shot the entire movie not knowing where that came from. Just last week, Abe posted the commercial on Facebook and I was like, "It all makes sense now."<br /><br /><strong>Q: Any other references from the '80s that you didn't know about?</strong><br /><br />JT: There was a line that was cut out where Clarke says to Danielle, "Let's sing 'Don't Cry Out Loud,'" and I'm like, "I'm more of a White Snake girl."<br /><br />That was the kind of vibe that Danielle is more into, like hair metal. The thing I loved about Danielle was that she was kind of '70s in this '80s world.<br /><br />She got all her mum's hand-me-downs, so she's in these little rompers and fur coats and '70s platform heels. She looks like even more of a misfit. She doesn't get so '80s until the end, with the polo neck and the camel toe shorts.<br /><br />It was interesting because also it's so Abe's world -- it's based on his childhood story. He written the bible for you in that situation because he knows it better than anybody else.[He‛s] a man you trust so dearly that he opens your eyes to this whole new world and you just become lost in it. So [we spent] a lot of time talking with Abe.<br /><br />I grew up having a really vivid imagination. So when you have a director that has this incredible vision that he's just giving to you, it's like walking through the Narnia closet or something, like walking through a whole new doorway.<br /> <br />Even before we got on set, we did dance and singing rehearsals. We grew up going out dancing, and it's like you just wriggle a bit, you don't really have proper dance routines. So you get there and are learning how to do all these crazy moves that you haven't seen since an '80s music video.<br /><br />That was so fun, taking you to a whole new part of your brain that you haven't really ever accessed before.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you keep any of the clothes?</strong><br /><br />JT: I wanted the Laura romper that Abe actually had bought years ago for the movie and brought it in -- it was a perfect fit. It's pale beige. It was kind of Cinderella-esqe. It's the one in the campfire scene. Unfortunately it was sent to a Universal storage lot.<br /><br />But it was meant to be mine. One day I'll get it back. It's very hard to find a good velour romper that suits you and fits the right areas correctly, I guarantee you.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How would you describe this film's tone?</strong><br /><br />JD: This movie is like a roller coaster. There are really emotional scenes and then there are comedy scenes, so there's something for everybody. There's singing, dancing, and it deals with a lot of issues that are pertinent today.<br /><br />JT: It's timeless, I think.<br /><br />JD: It's a movie set in the '80s but it is so important to today, especially in today's climate. With all the gay teen suicides and all of that, learning to love yourself and coming into your own and figuring out who you are -- It's a great message movie.<br /><br />JT: Yeah. It's "don't judge a book by its cover” -- that's the best thing you can tell people, because it's the worst thing you can possibly do. You miss out on so much when you just judge someone by their cover.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Is it hard for you to believe that after all this time since '87, there are still these teen suicides because people are hassling others for being gay?</strong><br /><br />JD: It's crazy.<br /><br />JT: It's ridiculous, to be quite honest with you. We still haven't been able to find out a way to be okay with letting people be what they want to be. I think it's part of the reason why you get angry.<br /><br />But whatever happens, I think in high school there's going to be something that someone's going to get bullied about -- like the size of someone's nostrils, or whether they have a weird toenail on their big toe.<br /><br />People find the weirdest stuff to destroy children's lives about. That's why I think this is such a great message, because it's really like, "look beyond that."<br /><br />When you first meet Clarke and Danielle in the movie, you wouldn't picture them being best friends at all. It's this weird chemistry that just explodes. Because actually, for the first time, they meet someone [who] wants to listen to them. They meet someone who wants to be around them, someone who thinks they're so great for who they are, and to help entice that out of them.<br /><br />That’s something that people should so look for in high school. If you don't get on with everybody, you don't get on with everybody -- you're not going to. But when you find the people that really get you and just love you for who you are, then everything kind of figures itself out and falls into place. I think that's such a good message to be sending.<br /><br />JD: Bullying ultimately comes out of ignorance.<br /><br />JT: And jealousy.<br /><br />JD: I think we've made a lot of progress, but there's still a lot of progress to go.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It‛s amazing how people in high school or in junior high will type each other and then suddenly a year or two later they become best friends because they have more in common.</strong><br /><br />JD: It's the message of this story too. It's so about becoming who you want to be versus what you're labeled as in high school, and that's exactly what these characters are doing over the course of the film.<br /><br />JT: Life’s so much bigger than that.<br /><br /><em>For an extended version of this story and others by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com" target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com</a></em>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-54067922630483051192011-10-20T06:47:00.000-07:002011-10-22T02:43:57.398-07:00In Oka!, A Filmmaker Explores an Unseen, Unheard African Community<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TT8Nq0rTo2nBNL4RN2J-o7YB92FhqP6D5X-RB-LutDHKjXuaCjGZn9-BzANp_0e3uZSzcph65nFCGRvPX2jPx-nudK8hVeTTconbiP36darY7XnB4xks7r1EX2U2PSZsQ8Ms3_WzVZOI/s1600/lavina.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TT8Nq0rTo2nBNL4RN2J-o7YB92FhqP6D5X-RB-LutDHKjXuaCjGZn9-BzANp_0e3uZSzcph65nFCGRvPX2jPx-nudK8hVeTTconbiP36darY7XnB4xks7r1EX2U2PSZsQ8Ms3_WzVZOI/s400/lavina.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5665538063910278658" /></a>Boy, did director Lavina Currier take on a challenge. Not only did she elect to direct the film <em>Oka!</em> in Africa, but she made it about a people, the Bayaka, and in a country, The Central African Republic, that’s thoroughly unfamiliar with modern filmmaking. <br /><br />Based on an unpublished book by an obscure author/musicologist with few veteran actors (Kris Marshall and Isaach de Bankolé) and a cast that includes the indigenous tribe playing most of the characters, the film defied conventional market strategies.<br /><br />And that’s just the basic outline of this project’s unique nature.<br /><br />After American musicologist Louis Sarno decided to live among a Bayaka Pygmy clan in the Central African Republic in the mid ‘80s, he wrote a book chronicling his experiences, Song From The Forest, and recorded their music. Those recordings became <em>Bayaka: The Extraordinary Music of the BaBenzl Pygmies</em> (Ellipsis Arts), a two-CD/book package of never-before documented material.<br /><br />Though raised in New Jersey, Sarno has called the CAR his home for the past 25 years with intermittent visits the States. <em>Oka!</em> -- which means “listen!” in their native language -- is a dramedy that retells his tale of when he first arrived in the jungle -- based on an unpublished memoir. <br /><br />Since Currier’s previous films have already taken her all over the world, she had an idea what she was getting into making <em>Oka!</em>. She visited Tibet in working on The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom and the Sahara for Passion in the Desert. And her philanthropic work includes environmental causes -- <em>Oka!</em> was filmed carbon-neutral in the Dzanga-Sangha Nature Reserve of Central Africa, a site growing in popularity with eco-tourists. In fact, for her work on behalf of Tibetan refugees, the Dalai Lama presented her with his Truth Award.<br /><br />Nonetheless, as revealed in this exclusive interview, her experience didn’t entirely prepare for the singular act of shooting among the Bayaka and the dominant Bantu-speaking people who offered unique challenges to the filmmakers as well. And now that film is being released, audiences can share in the experience.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Why did you make a film in an African country where there are virtually no film resources, as opposed to one say like Nigeria or South Africa?</strong><br /><br />LC: I've always loved Africa. I found this region while casting a film about Ota Benga. Do you know the story of Ota Benga? <br /><br /><strong>Q: No…</strong><br /><br />LC: He was the pygmy who was brought to the World's Fair in 1905 -- a very sad story. I wrote a screenplay with a wonderful novelist [about him]. I was so proud of this screenplay; everyone who read it cried and said, "This has to be made." It was during that period of racial ignorance and horror. <br /><br />[There were] many reasons I didn't make the film -- 9/11, and funding for example. There was another film made by Regis Wargnier, who did <em>Indochine</em>, called <em>Man to Men</em>, about a pygmy couple who was brought to Scotland. It took place 40 years earlier. It was kind of the missing link.<br /><br />And I watched it. I had to chase it [down] in this little cinema in Paris, and found it so depressing.<br /><br />I was talking to the Bayaka about the story, and they said, "That's a terrible story." I said, “Yeah, it is, but we learn from our mistakes and don't repeat history and all the things in our culture." And they said, "We would forget a story like that. There are so many nice stories." <br /><br /><strong>Q: At what point did you know you had a story to tell?</strong><br /><br />LC: When we were there for Ota Benga and decided not to do Ota Benga, I went back and said to Louis [who helped with our research], “What about doing a slice of life in the village? Do you have any manuscript that you haven't used, you haven't published that we could use for that?"<br /><br />And he said [he had a manuscript at his Mother’s.] We had to find this [floppy] disk. Nobody could read it, so I took it to a decrypted or whatever you call it.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Backwards technology...</strong><br /><br />LC: After reading it, I laughed and said, "This is wonderful," because he gets out of the way, his character is very self-deprecating, and you really feel the life of the village and the forest. <br /><br />So that's how we came to it. I wanted to do something, as a white woman telling a story about African people can…<br /><br /><strong>Q: That's a whole other issue -- what a white woman has to deal with in those areas.</strong><br /><br />LC: They have so many problems with the Bantus that they like white people. They didn't go through colonialism; it's not a post-colonial culture.<br /><strong><br />Q: Even though the French were there?</strong><br /><br />LC: The Bayaka didn't. Central Africa was affected by slavery, but not by colonialism -- not in the sense that there were big plantations. It wasn't an easy place. <br /><br />But when we were back there -- aside from showing the film and doing some politicking -- we also did more music recording. The composer Chris Perry, an amazing African, was married and lived in Zimbabwe for seven years -- he had been was [Zimbabwe's dictator Robert] Mugabe's boy.<br /><br />His wife's father was attorney general, I think, for Mugabe, and then fell out of favor and was killed by Mugabe.<br /><br />So Chris, who has an amazing facility for understanding African music, did the recording the first time. He went back with us in the forest in August, because we're doing an album for the film. <br /><br />He did what he calls radio cues, but more modern kind of dance music out of the Bayaka rhythms. He had these women from the forest laying down multi-tracks. They'd never had earphones on… These women would come from the forest. They say they dreamed their songs and would say, "I dreamt this song some time ago in the forest." <br /><br />One of them said, “When I woke up my husband was dreaming the same song and we were singing together." <br /><br />One woman from the Congo -- she had leprosy, no toes, no fingers -- and she’s sitting there, trying to get into it, and she's hearing her voice for the first time through the headphones. The first couple of times, everyone's laughing and laughing because they're not kind and polite in that way. Then suddenly, she starts singing.<br /><br />Chris said they just took to it. They would be standing in line for Chris in the morning, they got into it so much. So we've got a good album, I think.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you videotape this?</strong><br /><br />LC: Yes we did. We did a little sort of "Return of," because we didn't do a “Making of.” It was too stressful.<br /><br />We barely got through our days and the producer was constantly doing the 16-hour trek up to jungle to make sure our set wasn't going to be closed down by goons. <br /><br /><strong>Q: Too bad you didn’t videotape as you shot the film.</strong> <br /><br />LC: I know. I wish so, too. That was the intention of the producer, but he was so stretched he couldn't do it.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You're going to have to go back -- you have that additional footage.</strong><br /><br />LC: We do, actually, which is great. It was really interesting.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did this film follow your budget or did you have cost overruns, because of all the issues paying off people?</strong><br /><br />LC: We never paid anyone off, which is why we kept getting stopped.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Were you worried that if you paid one, then you'd have 50,000 hands out?</strong><br /><br />LC: Right. We made a deal with the Minister of Culture in the beginning and paid a location fee, which is normal. <br /><br />The Minister of Finance came and said, “And mine?" And we said, "Well, we were told that film went through the Minister of Culture." He said "I don't know who told you that."<br /><br /><strong>Q: How'd you get around that?</strong><br /><br />LC: In that case it was pretty hairy, because he was a pretty tough cookie. He's not there anymore. And he said to the producer "By the way, our bank account was messed up, so I want you to write the check to Mr. XYZ." <br /><br />He had been sending his goons down, the producer was intimidated, so he wrote a check. [The producer] got a copy of it, and as he left the office he put a stop payment at the bank. The Minister of Finance himself called the teller and overrode the stop payment.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So you did end up paying him?</strong><br /><br />LC: That was the only one. And other than that, we didn't.<br /><strong><br />Q: When did you know you had an ending?</strong><br /><br />LC: The ending should have been a real elephant hunt, because the <em>molimo</em>, this mythical instrument, is associated with the elephant hunt. You kill an elephant and the <em>molimo</em> is happy and it comes out. <br /><br />And the elephants, after three days of chasing them around and getting them to do this and that, lost patience with us. And my crew said on the third day "We're not going back. We don't care what you pay us; we're not going back because we're going to be killed." And it was getting dangerous.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Killed by the elephants?</strong><br /><br />LC: Yeah, by the elephants. And we'd been going on the good will of the elephants who had been accustomed to this researcher, this lovely woman, Andrea, who herself has been there 20 years.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Elephants are incredibly intelligent.</strong><br /><br />LC: Very intelligent. And they'll stop you. They'll warn you with a couple of charges and then they'll charge. <br /><br />I am fearless with animals. I never feared snakes or elephants or anything.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you have any big cats?</strong><br /><br />LC: I never saw them. There are leopards, but I never saw them.<br /><br /><strong>Q: There are jungle leopards. </strong><br /><br />LC: That was my last film, Passion in the Desert, which was about a Napoleonic soldier and a leopard.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you contend with distribution for that one, or this one for that matter?</strong><br /><br />LC: Well, it's not a good period for this level of budget. We don't have a big name, although [British actor] Kris Marshall is coming into his own. <br /><br /><strong>Q: Why did you cast him?</strong><br /><br />LC: I had been talking to a couple of bigger names who wanted essentially the budget of the picture, and I really had some doubts about whether a star would make it through. <br /><br />Kris is a very physical actor, especially for an Englishman, who are [usually] very text-based, on the whole. I knew that he had that kind of British "it's a job, I'm going to do it” attitude. I mean, that man was so sick that he was lying on a bench in the forest.<br /><br /><strong>Q: He's not only sick in the movie but was also in real life?</strong><br /><br />LC: He was very sick. I would say, "Kris, you can take a day off. You don't have to be here." "No. It's my job. Call me." <br /><br />I had an instinct that this guy was crazy enough. He's been run over by a bus, broken every bone in his body, and had so many accidents, that I just had a feeling he would stay the course.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you happen to pick African actor Isaach de Bankolé for the villain?</strong><br /><br />LC: He's a wonderful actor. Louis Sarno went to school with [director] Jim Jarmusch. Jim introduced me to Isaach, and Isaach was so charming when I met him in New York.<br /><br />But then during the shoot -- he's a method actor -- he became this mayor [Mayor Bassoun], and everybody was terrified of him including me.<br /><br /><strong>Q: And he's the nicest guy in reality.</strong><br /><br />LC: Nicest guy. But on the shoot, he was terrified until not only his last scene, but four days later. He insisted on staying on. <br /><br />I said, "You can go early, Isaach, since you seem to be so unhappy," and he said, "What do you mean? I'm not leaving. I’m going to stay until my contract." And then he sort of decompressed and he became again the nicest guy. <br /><br />But he became the Mayor to such an extent that he would go around in town and people would say, “Monsieur Bassoun, can you help us with this and that?" And he had everyone terrified. <br /><br />The tailor said "Please, could you send somebody other than Isaach to check on his clothes?"<br /><br />The real Mayor was absolutely furious and jealous. He used to come in his motorcycle, this horrible illiterate bully, and scream at me about something, and I think it was because Isaach was being considered as the mayor.<br /><br /><strong>Q: I've listened to some of the pygmies' music and it was probably recorded by Louis.</strong> <br /><br />LC: It's either his or [anthropologist] Colin Turnbull‛s. We put everything from traditional Bayaka music to cues from the film to these kind of radio cues, these modern dance things.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Had you taken an interest in African music in general?</strong><br /><br />LC: I've always loved African music. But the Bayaka's music is considered the most ancient -- they were brought to sing for the Pharaohs. It took me awhile to understand the Bayaka music. <br /><br />That's why Louis Sarno‛s <em>Song From the Forest</em> was so crucial. Louis was sent to Africa by Colin Turnbull whol wrote <em>The Forest People</em> and also wrote the book about the Ethiopian people, the Ik -- the mountain people. <br /><br />And he got into incredible hot water because he dared to say the pygmies are good and the Ik are bad, and the anthropological community said, "You can't say that. You can't make those judgments.” He said, "I know. I've looked in their eyes and lived with them." <br /><br />But I think that Louis has an amazing appreciation for this music. It's really complicated music.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It doesn't fit normal musical structures.</strong><br /><br />LC: Not at all. They think in 28 phrases. Their cycles are huge, and most people just get lost in them -- they go, "What's happening?" It's chaotic. <br /><br />They sing in the way nature sings with itself. Birds and animals wait for the empty space and jump in, and they'll do this -- though not necessarily on a regular basis.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It's not like there's a harmonic layer.</strong><br /><br />LC: Right. You opportunistically jump into a silence, and the Bayaka have incorporated this into their music. <br /><br />The first time I ever heard them, I was in a canoe and we were with a Bantu guy. I said, "What are those birds?" and he said "Those aren't birds. Those are the little people." <br /><br />Then we saw these women walking single file, very quickly, and were singing to each other at quite a distance. Maybe for a quarter of a mile that they were actively singing. It was the most extraordinary thing, because there were these bell-like, beautiful yodeling sounds that I had never imagined.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Have you learned any of the language?</strong><br /><br />LC: I did learn some rudimentary [phrases], which is not a difficult language to learn -- just to direct people, because most of our actors didn't speak French.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So you went to university but when did you get involved with film?</strong><br /><br />LC: I studied a tiny bit of film at Harvard. But basically, I studied poetry with Robert Fitzgerald, and I think my major was Religion. I was in the Religion Department.<br /><br /><strong>Q: At what point did you decide to go with filmmaking?</strong><br /><br />LC: I came to film through theater. I went to Paris from university and started an American theater in Paris with some friends from Harvard, which was a lot of fun. We didn’t do anything too great. French people came to learn English, basically, but we had a great time.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you meet Africans while you were there?</strong><br /><br />LC: No, I didn't. But you know, it was a different complexion back them. On the last trip to Africa, I stopped in Leone, and Leone is a Pan-African city.<br /><br /><strong>Q: One of the reasons I was fascinated by this movie, and movies about this, is that in some way it's like dealing with another world.</strong><br /><br />LC: It is another world.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Like you've landed on another planet.</strong><br /><br />LC: And you feel that, and everyone feels it -- even the crew from Los Angeles -- they were in utter culture shock when they arrived there. Oh my god, and with the big Panavision camera, [it was] like moving a fire hydrant around.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did people do it because they just wanted the chance to go to Africa?</strong><br /><br />LC: People did it because Conrad Hall -- the DP that we chose, son of the famous Conrad Hall -- insisted on bringing his group. And we said, “Not a good idea, Conrad," but he said, "These guys are going to take care of the camera." And he was right, but they were in shock. They were duly warned.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It's not even like going to Nigeria which has a fully realized film scene.</strong><br /><br />LC: No. This is not Abercrombie & Fitch. This is forest camping; don't think luxury. But then, after a period of time, they said, "There's something here with these people." <br /><br />Everyone feels this magic. Seen from the outside, Africa is just a disaster of statistics, right? But when you go there, especially with people like the Bayaka, you feel so hopeful. You feel like you're connected to something that's ancient. <br /><br />We all have this history of having come from the hunter-gatherer tradition at some level, and you feel this kind of connection. And even these guys [from] L.A. -- who would have preferred to be doing a Mercedes commercial -- they felt it too.<br /><br /><strong>Q: When would they get another chance to shoot in Africa?</strong><br /><br />LC: I'm not sure they were sure they were going to get back [laughs].<br /><br /><strong>Q: Were they terrified?</strong><br /><br />LC: Terrified. And we had a lot of interference from the government.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you really?</strong><br /><br />LC: We did. A lot. These guys would come down with machine guns and stop the film.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Really? It's the former French Congo, right?</strong><br /><br />LC: It was called Ubangi. It was always that little central landlocked country where the two rivers, the Ubangi and the Congo, came down. So the neighbors are Rwanda, Chad, Congo and Cameroon.<br /><br />We just took the film back in August because I had promised to bring it back to show it to the Bayaka. And the first screening was in the forest.<br /><br /><strong>Q: The very, very first?</strong><br /><br />LC: Yeah. The first in Africa.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You screened it at the Telluride Film Festival by then. You couldn't get more contrasting.</strong><br /><br />LC: I know. It had cables, and the producer Jamie Bruce, was practically manning the sound system in the forest. It kept tipping. <br /><br />All the Bayaka were there, it was only Bayaka for the first screening in the forest.<br /><br /><strong>Q: But where was Sarno?</strong><br /><br />LC: He was there. It was behind his house in the forest. Of course they said it was the best film they'd ever seen; they'd never seen a film before.<br /><br /><strong>Q: At least they knew to compliment you.</strong><br /><br />LC: Yes. Then we moved up the country and the last screening was with the president of CAR, [François] Bozizé, in the presidential palace. And I had brought the actors, because it's very important for them. <br /><br />It was a really tremendous experience. When we screened in the capital, we did questions and answers afterwards. <br /><br />And the comment we got universally was, "We're so happy to see a film where the white guy is kind of hopeless, and our little people" – they call them the little people – "our little people have to save them, they can't do anything. We're tired of having these films where all our problems are solved by some white guy coming in."<br /><br /><strong>Q: Next the Chinese will make their movies and they will be <em>saving</em> them.</strong><br /><br />LC: Our Chinese character has been not appreciated [who also is villainous]. Not by the UN. We were supposed to have a screening there.<br /><br />The French, the Lebanese, they've all been in there. So it's just a new wave. I felt the Chinese character, he could have been American, Lebanese or French, but he was Chinese. The reaction has been very strong.<br /><br /><strong>Q: The scene with the bush meat that he's eating: is it implied that that was elephant meat? </strong><br /><br />LC: It was elephant. The bush meat is crucial, because for the Bayaka to survive they have to have small game to go after. <br /><br />When I first went in 1999, they said they had to travel about 20-30 minutes to get food. I mean, they could hunt within 20 minutes of the village. Now they have to go a half day, sometimes a full day. Sometimes they come back empty-handed. <br /><br />So the less they can depend on the forest, the more they have to depend on the Bantu, and they get paid three cigarettes and a few stalks for a day's work.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Are there still diamonds there?</strong><br /><br />LC: There are a lot of diamonds.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So there are potential resources.</strong><br /><br />LC: But the diamonds are so prone to corruption. <br /><br /><strong>Q: You'd think that tourism would be the way. </strong><br /><br />LC: And that's the hope.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Eco-tourism is the thing that can save Africa.</strong><br /><br />LC: Right.<br /><br /><strong>Q: They said you were a philanthropist.</strong><br /><br />LC: The philanthropy associated with this film -- people say, "Are you giving back to the Bayaka from the film?" <br /><br />Well, if the Bayaka had to wait for this film to give back [to them], the forest could be gone at that point. <br /><br /><strong>Q: It might bring them some publicity. </strong><br /><br />LC: I've been active there since I first went to cast it, and I saw there was such a tremendous need for health and education for these people, as well as to protect the forest. <br /><br /><strong>Q: We keep forgetting that if we strip away the rainforest, we strip away basically our ability to regenerate the ozone layer.</strong><br /><br />LC: So it's for us. But also, if we're going to have cultural diversity, these [people] are [among] the last hunter-gatherers on Earth. <br /><br />You have the Bayaka, and in the equatorial forest you have other pygmy groups. You have a group in Borneo, and that's it.<br /><strong><br />Q: What about in South America? Isn't there one group that's still surviving?</strong><br /><br />LC: I guess you could still say there are some groups that are still hunter-gatherers, but the South American rainforest is being cut all around them as well.<br /><br />The really crucial thing for the Bayaka is the forest, because it's really hard to imagine this particular people transitioning successfully into village or urban life.<br /><br />They shouldn't have to. They should be able to have education; they should be able to have basic health care.<br /><br />But what's interesting is that you're dealing with a culture which is anarchistic, non-hierarchical, non-representational -- like some of our American Indians -- and you're asking them to speak for themselves. <br /><br />We're going in and we're saying, "But you guys have to be educated so you can stand up in front of the UN and express yourselves."<br /><br />Well, it's not a culture that develops that at all. It's a culture that's absolutely communal, decisions are made by consensus. Just by hearing their music, you hear this. The way they opportunistically sing in this amazing kind of participatory, polyphonic way, it expresses everything about them. <br /><br /><strong>Q: Where do you live now?</strong><br /><br />LC: I now live in Virginia, and I grew up in New York. I'd been living in Hawaii. I made the film from Hawaii, which was not a smart thing, but I did.<br /><br /><strong>Q: And this is your fourth movie?</strong><br /><br />LC: This is my second feature.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How did you find your distributor, DADA?</strong><br /><br />LC: I think our counsel knew the distributor, and we really liked what they were doing on <em>Last Mountain</em> -- a very powerful film about dysfunction of our government here, talking about corruption and bribery. We liked very much the way they were handling it and the style that they have of distribution.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Now that you have a distributor, you're not doing the festivals anymore?</strong><br /><br />LC: No, we're not.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you go to some other festivals?</strong><br /><br />LC: We did not go international with the film. It's a co-production with Central Africa, and they've submitted it as a contender for the Foreign Film Oscar.<br /><strong><br />Q: Would that be for this year?</strong><br /><br />LC: Yeah. First film ever that they've had, so they're very excited about that.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Have you toured this film in Africa at all?</strong><br /><br />LC: Just this last trip in August. We just went to Central African Republic from the tip, where the Bayaka are, up to the capital.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You've got to get it all throughout Africa.</strong><br /><br />LC: And they're very interested in that. The Minister of Culture now is a wonderful man, who's one of [the late dictator Jean-Bédel] Bokassa's sons. He's been doing some really interesting things, including reconciliations about his dad. Very enlightened fellow. <br /><br />And he's taken up this film. He wants to take this film all over, because for them it shows their country in a positive light. Otherwise, with Central Africa, you hear about Bokassa and you hear about the Lords‛ Revolution Army on the northern side.<br /><br />So they're excited to have something that is good news and to showcase their country. They're really motivated to take it around, so I think we will. But so far, we have only been to Central Africa.<br /><br /><strong>Q: And how about yourself, traveling in Africa?</strong><br /><br />LC: I love Africa.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How many other areas?</strong><br /><br />LC: I've been around. When I was a child, I was in East Africa -- Kenya and Tanzania. I've been to Central Africa quite a few times.<br /><br /><strong>Q: We need movies like this. And doing it as a fiction film, that will get people more attracted than a documentary.</strong><br /><br />LC: I know. There have been so many documentaries, especially about the Bayaka.<br /><br /><strong>Q: But to actually see people behaving in an acting scenario is much more interesting.</strong><br /><br />LC: And the fact that they're good actors is pretty extraordinary. That was a great surprise to me.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Where do you go from here?</strong><br /><br />LC: I need to make a film locally because I have a son, I have a young 10 year old. I did take him to Africa, but being a mom and a film director is not a great combo. So I'm going to try to find something locally. I have a few scripts that I'm working on -- a trilogy that I began that I want to complete.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Are you going to draw from cultures that are disenfranchised and have their problems?</strong><br /><br />LC: I would like to. There's so much happening right now that one wants to do something useful. <br /><br />I would like to tell an American story for sure. There's so much happening in this country now.<br /><br /><strong>Q: And these will be fiction films?</strong><br /><br />LC: Fiction, yeah. I don't feel I have a good journalistic bent.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Well, the best thing for a journalistic bent is like a six year old, "Why?"</strong><br /><br />LC: Yeah. Curiosity.<br /><br /><em>For more stories by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com" target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com</a></em>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-52753291280080742032011-10-15T16:54:00.000-07:002011-10-16T17:06:07.694-07:00Step Into This Incredible Doc -- Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWr_-7P5dCdvJSEOo0HsBB4lBW_cFoUq3oIjVNVXc7NboxFvmBslWXXC9B3rH6Rk2zBergl4HsfmB7gG209xI-801vhqGakdNZu1dKKWwtuA4ORvnCPP5I1tdDQpTgF8AVR1fvL14hO7Xb/s1600/alex-sundance.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWr_-7P5dCdvJSEOo0HsBB4lBW_cFoUq3oIjVNVXc7NboxFvmBslWXXC9B3rH6Rk2zBergl4HsfmB7gG209xI-801vhqGakdNZu1dKKWwtuA4ORvnCPP5I1tdDQpTgF8AVR1fvL14hO7Xb/s400/alex-sundance.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5664077269024595250" /></a>Having grown up enjoying Roger Corman’s filmic retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s horror tales -- many with the legendary actors Boris Karloff and Vincent Price -- his garish productions were lodged in my brain forever. This was the guy who inspired so many trendy directors -- such as Quentin Tarantino -- to go into film-making. <br /><br />So when I saw <em>Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel</em>, director Alex Stapleton’s relatively short doc on the great master of indie, genre, and cult cinema, at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, a flood of memories returned. <br /><br />Thankfully this film has gathered steam, hit the festival circuit, and has landed in this year’s New York Film Festival on its closing day -- October 16th -- with a special screening at 1:30 pm. Since Roger Corman has been in town for the NY Comic Con, hopefully he will join the director after the screening.<br /><br />The following short Q&A is culled from comments made after her Sundance showing.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What inspired you to make this film about this legendary Hollywood rebel?</strong><br /><br />AS: I'm a secret nerd on the inside. I grew up watching most of all these movies, and growing up in Texas, I was obsessed with Pam Grier as a nerdy, black, young woman. <br /><br />So I grew up totally in love with [Corman]. Probably when I was 19, I learned he did a film called <em>The Intruder</em>, which is a big part of this film. <br /><br />And that's when I got the idea that it was so amazing that one man could be responsible for so many types of cinema and could do a movie like that before Martin Luther King was even a household name. I just wanted to celebrate his legacy, so that's basically it.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What was the movie you saw 10 years ago that changed your life?</strong><br /><br />AS: <em>Hedwig and the Angry Inch</em>. It was a midnight screening, and it was awesome and the energy of the crowd was awesome. I can't believe that this film got a midnight slot. And you guys were great; you laughed.<br /><br /><strong>Q: A lot of great people weren't in the film. Will you include them when the DVD comes out? Why didn't they make the cut? How long would it have been if they had?</strong><br /><br />AS: Six hours.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Is there anyone you regret not including?</strong><br /><br />AS: I have no regrets. I'm really happy with this film. The great thing is that when we put out a DVD, we have our work ahead of us when we get back to LA. <br /><br />This will be the biggest, badass, most bitching DVD you will ever have in your entire life. There are probably going to be five DVD extra discs -- like Jack Nicholson going on and on about more stories. It will be like a galaxy.<br /><br /><strong>Q: When <em>Jaws</em> and <em>Star Wars</em> were released, that was a rebirth of Hollywood cinema. In this light, those big fun movies are now the big money makers. </strong><br /><br />AS: Everyone in this movie is a graduate of Roger Corman -- except for Eli Roth, who started with James Cameron. James Cameron also started with Roger, [but] he's not a part of the story. <br /><br />[Francis Ford] Coppola was as well. He made the first blockbuster with <em>The Godfather</em>, and then obviously we all know what James Cameron is up to today. There's a great irony that these guys came from the biggest penny pincher in the industry. <br /><br />I hear all the stories of these young filmmakers who are out there making features for a hundred thousand dollars or less and working really hard and tirelessly to just go out there. They have that DIY attitude of just getting your hands dirty, using what you have access to, and making film. <br /><br />There's a renaissance happening of that culture again. Hopefully, [with] a film like this, you can look and see that these guys were doing this in the 1950s. <br /><br />And everything's cyclical, so hopefully you'll be making the next best thing and you'll change the system. <br /><br /><strong>Q: With the popularity of superhero movies, it was surprising that you didn’t include something about Corman’s version of <em>Fantastic Four</em>. Was that ever part of an initial cut?</strong><br /><br />AS: It's a 90 minute movie. We leave the chronology in the early '80s. <em>Fantastic Four</em> was made in '92 or '94, and Roger did it for like $2 to try to keep the rights. <br /><br />That was kind of the beginning, the brink of the resurrection of comic book movies in mainstream cinema. There's not enough room, not enough time.<br /><br /><strong>Q: When did you make a movie for Roger?</strong><br /><br />AS: I was the second unit director on <em>Dinoshark</em>, I recorded sound, was an actress in the movie, and those were all things that I had to do. That was the deal that Roger made with me in order for me to go to Mexico and make that movie. I feel like I'm now a graduate of the Roger Corman School.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Halfway through the movie he says he thinks it's morally wrong to make $35 million a movie, and that that kind of money would better be used to [build a city]. </strong><br /><br />AS: When Roger was here at Sundance, this question came up and I agreed with his answer. Talking about a movie like <em>Avatar</em>, [by] one of his protégés, he doesn't mind it when there's money used towards films at that level, when it's innovative and you're using every dollar. The money is on the screen, right? <br /><br />But there are all these movies that are made that have these huge budgets and it's just two people talking to each other for an hour and a half. I think that's where he draws the line; he's like, it's a waste. That quote was said in 1981, and it's coming off of the Spielberg-Lucas bonanza, so you've got to put it in context. <br /><br /><strong>Q: What was his relationship with agencies and managers? Were they willing to work with him or were some agencies just not willing to work with him at all?</strong><br /><br />AS: I think they appreciated him over the course of history because great talent came out of him. I don't know if it was "fun" to work with him, because there wasn't a lot of money. I don't even think agents and managers were really in the picture for most of these films. These are kids that didn't have agents and managers when they were working for Roger.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How much money will Roger make off of licensing these clips to you?</strong><br /><br />AS: Roger really likes me, so he gave me the rights. Well, this is a fair use documentary, first of all. Second of all, with the clips that he owns, he agreed to let me use all of his films for free. So I'm very honored and blessed that we got that opportunity.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Earlier in the film somebody said nobody really knew what Roger did after the shooting was over, what kept him occupied and what he liked to do. Is he still a mystery once the shooting is over, and on a personal level, what gets him excited?</strong><br /><br />AS: What gets Roger excited is being able to get a deal, like Paradise Village. He gets really animated. He's an engineer; that's what he studied. He has that kind of a brain, so figuring out really hard problems gets him really, really excited. <br /><br />He still is very mysterious even to me. I've been working on this for five years and I still don't understand the boiling inferno completely. But I like that; I think it's a little interesting. <br /><br />Sometimes the point of a movie like this is not to really explain it, because who knows? It's all in Roger's head. I was more fascinated with the extreme difference between his conservative nature, [and being] a Stanford grad.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Does Corman have any regrets about not being more [vocal] about social issues?</strong><br /><br />AS: I don't think that Roger cares. Roger is a walking legend. He's a mascot for independent cinema, and that what's more important for him is to stay in business and be his own boss, which is like the great American tradition. <br /><br />I mean, that was me -- I aspired to. So I think that comes with a price, and the film shows you that he went down that way to maintain his independence, and I think he got what he wanted.<br /><br /><em>For more by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com " target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com </a></em>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-29306196991621165132011-10-14T05:34:00.000-07:002011-10-16T17:04:40.346-07:00Actor Jason Momoa Brings Conan the Barbarian's Sword to NY Comic Con<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQYTeBPQQytuVaGpwc91aLo6wx15YR_e-kMs_-8MazbCM5_dLU905sn9Itj0jIiKkWR5Fu532YLJGn_R5hTtpRcPzM6NKd2w8QVUfoIbj4EKVHnIxETV03gF1zA_wyo0CxAtSkf67T7Wrh/s1600/momao-with-sword.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQYTeBPQQytuVaGpwc91aLo6wx15YR_e-kMs_-8MazbCM5_dLU905sn9Itj0jIiKkWR5Fu532YLJGn_R5hTtpRcPzM6NKd2w8QVUfoIbj4EKVHnIxETV03gF1zA_wyo0CxAtSkf67T7Wrh/s400/momao-with-sword.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5663325656822988402" /></a>Conan The Barbarian will be among the many personalities attending this weekend's New York Comic Con at the Javits Center. Well, not exactly, but the 6' 4" Jason Momoa, who played the sword-slashing Cimmerian in the recent reboot of the series that came out this summer will be there -- though maybe not with blade in hand.<br /><br />When the massive Momoa stepped into Planet Hollywood a couple of months ago to leave his big ol‛ paw-prints and fighting sword there, he could have been any big brute with a cowboy hat on. But once it was doffed and he flung around his locks, the former Hawaiian clearly displayed why he was picked for Conan. <br /><br />Add in a resume that includes playing Khal Drogo, a powerful warlord from George RR Martins' <em>Game of Thrones</em> or fighter Ronan Dex from <em>Stargate Atlantis</em>, and Momoa certainly has the right creds to handle such an iconic character as Robert E. Howard's Conan. And if you make it to Javits on this Sunday at 10 am where he will appear on a panel with co-stars Rose McGowan and Stephen Lang, you can see and hear him in all his rippling glory.<br /><br /><strong>Q: This movie could have easily been cheesy, but it doesn't come close to that. What did you do to make sure it didn't go that way?</strong><br /><br />JM: I wouldn't want to be a part of it if it did. I didn't want it to have that campiness to it. <br /><br />When I was a little kid, I would read Robert E. Howard and look at a Frank Frazetta painting and they would reach out to me. I wanted to take the character and rip it right off the canvas and put it up on the big screen. <br /><br />It deserved to have the grittiness and the dirtiness. [Director] Marcus Nispel [<em>Texas Chainsaw Massacre</em>] was fantastic about it. I thought he did a really good job at making that world.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It's great that he is an actual barbarian, not the typical hero...</strong><br /><br />JM: That's the fun thing about Conan. He eats, he drinks, he's a thief, he's a pirate. The fun thing about him is he's not the saving-the-damsel-in-distress [type]. It's not very PC, and I think that's what Marcus didn't want. <br /><br />He should be this barbarian towards a woman, in a sense. But what's beautiful about it is you see the vulnerable side, and he gets saved by a woman in the heat of the moment where he was supposed to kill. <br /><br />So you get to slowly warm up to him. I think that's nice to have a little bit of humanity to the character, a sense of humor, that makes him relatable.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Actor Stephen Lang -- who plays the evil Khylar Zim -- said that he stabbed himself in the ass at one point with a sword. Do you have any similar stories?</strong><br /><br />JM: I've got all kinds of horror stories. I almost died on a horse a couple of times. I broke my nose. I wanted to make it look like he was more barbaric, so I had a buddy punch me in the nose.<br /><br /><strong>Q: They have makeup for that, too.</strong><br /><br />JM: Yeah, I didn't think about that.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So you're all into it.</strong><br /><br />JM: Yeah, Conan should have a broken nose. He should always have a broken nose, I think -- a constant flow of blood coming out of his body somewhere.<br /><br />Q: When you were getting ready to play Conan the Barbarian, was there a different workout regimen in getting ready for the type of fighting that you‛d be doing?<br /><br />JM: Yeah, we did a lot of Bushido, basically a samurai training. I wanted to incorporate that Asian gracefulness to this barbaric character; I wanted to do the sword work. <br /><br />But as far as working out, we did like six hours a day, stunt work and stunt training, and it was how to fall and lift heavy, heavy weights.<br /><br /><strong>Q: A lot of the fighting looks like a dance.</strong><br /><br />JM: Yeah, absolutely, choreography. It absolutely is a dance and I think that's one of the great things about Conan: he speaks through his movement and his action. That's why I wanted to do all my stunts, because he speaks through that. <br /><br />I studied a lot of lions and panthers, and I wanted to be able to move like a feral cat. When I read those stories about him, he just comes across as that nimble product of his environment, kind of king of his own jungle thing.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Were there any stunts you wanted to do that they wouldn't let you?</strong><br /><br />JM: No, because by the time it was the ones I had to do, I was so broken [in] I was like "Dude, you've got this one. Take it. Take it, please."<br /><strong><br />Q: What was the most difficult, the most challenging thing to get through?</strong><br /><br />JM: Trying to keep injury at bay. Like I said, there's a flow of blood coming out of your body at all times. For five months, you're always injured. It's just to be able to stretch and keep that motor running for that.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you have any fears of living up to Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan?</strong><br /><br />JM: Not at all. I think Arnold did a really great job. It's kind of like comparing Sean Connery and Daniel Craig. They're both amazing Bonds. Arnold's Arnold, and I didn't play anything like him and he really can't play anything like me, so it's two different perspectives, really.<br /><strong><br /><br />Q: What's your thoughts on the romantic side of Conan?</strong><br /><br />JM: It was really fun. It's nice to see that side of him. I think, as a character, he's such a brute force that it's nice to go there, to see that softer side of him. <br /><br />We weren't sure how to do it, because when we did <em>Game of Thrones</em>, it was so raw and passionate and at the very beginning it's raping and very barbaric. I felt it probably wouldn't be in the best interest to be doing that in this new Conan.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you get to read all the books, the comics and all that stuff?</strong><br /><br />JM: Not all of them. I had six weeks to get ready. So aside from doing six hours of training every day, I did read a lot of source material, but I couldn't get through all of it. <br /><br />Of all the comic books, I went to Dark Horse the most because that's what they tried to emulate, really, for the costumes and look of the world, I think Dark Horse was the closest.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Of all the characters you've played, who would you like to meet?</strong><br /><br />JM: Drogo [the warlord] and Conan are great. I'd follow them into battle anywhere.<br /><br /><strong>Q: With your characters on <em>Stargate Atlantis</em> like Ronan Dex and <em>Game of Thrones</em>, do you gravitate towards these warrior types or is that just something because you're 6'4" and huge?</strong><br /><br />JM: When I did <em>Stargate Atlantis</em>, I wanted to work and it was a great opportunity, four years of working on that. <br /><br />I think when Drogo came along, that's a once in a lifetime chance to play anything like that. I've never seen a character like him in the movies or on TV. He's such a powerful, raw character. That role was the first time I've ever wanted a character in my life. <br /><br />Because of that, the same casting director came on <em>Conan</em> so everything just kind of lined up that way. <br /><br />I don't know, we'll see. Hopefully there's a rom-com in there somewhere coming up.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Will it be tough for you to adjust to the cushy lifestyle if you end up doing a romantic comedy or something?</strong><br /><br />JM: Oh no. I look forward to it. I'm doing a job right now where I'm wearing a suit and playing a villain. I get to shoot people with a gun; it's so much easier. It's like , "Bam -- dead." It's so much better.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Now you're now officially cemented in Planet Hollywood history. How does that feel?</strong><br /><br />JM: Really, really cool. Really cool! It's a trip. I'm working with [Sylvester] Stallone right now, so you walk in and this is his place!<br /><br /><strong>Q: And you get to see him hanging naked from the ceiling.</strong><br /><br />JM: Is that what that is? What movie was it?<br /><br /><strong>Q: <em>Demolition Man</em>.</strong><br /><br /><em>For more stories by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com" target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com</a></em>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-15478633420072622682011-07-30T13:07:00.000-07:002011-07-31T02:36:52.678-07:00Oscar Winning Director Kevin Macdonald Assembles Crowd-Sourced Life in a Day<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSlJCu0-IIg0-9m1IX3XmT5lj9aPorhB3Q1dMjZJEAyCI2hoLO8kzGVespb4P40a_FBJNSDMOhFjssc3jmoxMYVgQ7ftGlglwT09i_GuMMqjAt8kGSDVMfTrzcM0iIZd5yB_SvN_1k7hJv/s1600/kev-mac.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 377px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSlJCu0-IIg0-9m1IX3XmT5lj9aPorhB3Q1dMjZJEAyCI2hoLO8kzGVespb4P40a_FBJNSDMOhFjssc3jmoxMYVgQ7ftGlglwT09i_GuMMqjAt8kGSDVMfTrzcM0iIZd5yB_SvN_1k7hJv/s400/kev-mac.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5635239889983792754" /></a>A little over a year ago, I responded to the announcement of YouTube's global film experiment, to be called <em>Life In A Day</em> -- shepherded by producers Tony and Ridley Scott's Scott Free UK and director Kevin Macdonald -- by writing about it in a HuffingtonPost post. <br /><br />I blanched at trying to record something of my life on that day, July 24th, 2010, so I didn't. Instead, I wrote about the trauma of making such a public document.<br /><br />Now, a little over a year later, I find myself marveling not only at what ended up as the 90-minute crowd-sourced compilation curated by veteran director Macdonald, but at the very feat of putting it together.<br /><br />So, however you react to the mix and the feel-good message of the film, it's awesome to think of how the filmmaking process has changed through cheap digital recording and editing tools, and what lowering the bar of entry has meant to the future of long-form movie-making.<br /><br />That consideration formed a large part of our conversation and made the following Q & A as much a continuation of that discussion on the future of film and media. <br /><br />While Macdonald has made major fiction features -- including <em>The Eagle</em>, <em>State of Play</em>, and <em>The Last King of Scotland</em> -- the 43-year-old Scottish director has won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for his 2000 film <em>One Day in September</em>, about the Munich Olympics hijackers. His other feature documentary, <em>Touching the Void</em> (2003), enjoyed critical and commercial success on its release. <br /><br />Such experience informed his curatorial approach and made him a good choice for overseer on this project.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You’ve done documentaries like <em>Touching the Void</em> and action features like <em>The Eagle</em> -- very different things. How do you make a balance between that and your documentary work?</strong><br /><br />KM: I like to take a little of what I learned in fiction and apply it to documentary and vise versa. But my job is not a traditional director’s job in this film. I didn’t shoot any of the footage here. <br /><br />My job was a curatorial one, primarily about giving structure to this amorphous mass of stuff and saying, "How do we make this feel like it’s a movie?" -- something that actually works as a whole, rather than just a series of clips, like a ‛best of‛ selection. <br /><br /><strong>Q: A narrative?</strong><br /><br />KM: Not necessarily a narrative in this case. But actually, feeling like it’s a whole comes from fiction films rather than documentaries.<br /><br /><strong>Q: When did this concept come about and when did you get involved?</strong><br /><br />KM: I came in right at the beginning. YouTube and Scott Free were talking about making a movie. <br /><br />YouTube wanted to do a movie to celebrate or help celebrate their fifth birthday, which was last year -- amazingly, because it feels like YouTube has been around forever.<br /><br />So then Liza Marshall, the producer, came to me because we knew each other, and said, "What can we do?" We came up with this idea together, which for me was inspired by something I’d learned about when I was studying documentaries. <br /><br />There was this man, Humphrey Jennings, who made one of my favorite films, <em>Listen to Britain</em>, which is a 20-minute film with no dialogue, but sights and sounds of different places around Britain during the war in 1943. It’s a classic and beautiful. There’s inspiration in that. <br /><br />He also was part of creating a movement -- which sounds like something from George Orwell in 1984 -- but it’s called the Mass Observation Movement. And what they did was, they asked people in Britain during [WWII] and just before the war to write diaries detailing the mundane details of their lives.<br /><br />They’d also ask them questions, actually. They’d ask them, "What do you have on your mantelpiece? What are the names of five dogs you’ve seen this week?"<br /><br />Things that were sort of seemingly mundane, and they’d ask them these things, get them to write these diaries. <br /><br />And then they would take those diaries and form [them] into books or magazine articles or whatever, trying to discover the extraordinary, the weird, the interesting in what seemed to be the ordinary.<br /><br />I thought that’s a great model; we could do that with YouTube. That’s a way of exploiting this extraordinary tool, of all this material that’s out there and all this material that’s uploaded all the time.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Is that how you came up with the three questions?</strong><br /><br />KM: Yeah.<br /><br /><strong>Q: And that’s the point?</strong><br /><br />KM: That’s where that came from as well. So I thank this very obscure British filmmaker, Humphrey Jennings, for [my] stealing all his ideas for this.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Were you torn between doing one movie of one question, then one movie of each of the other questions, or did you always want to integrate them? And then how did you decide on how much of each you wanted to run?</strong><br /><br />KM: Obviously, the point of the questions was to allow us to get a way into talking about important, intimate things. That love question obviously is transparent, the fear question’s transparent. <br /><br />The question about your pockets or handbag, that’s really a way of getting to talk about materialism, consumerism, inequality, possessions, all those sort of things.<br /><br /> But that was just one way of structuring the film. Because there’s no real traditional narrative, you find other means of structuring the film. <br /><br />So there’s the microscopic structuring of a montage about people brushing their teeth and going to the toilet, and [you say] okay, I’m going to make a two-minute thing about that.<br /><br />Then there’s the structure of pieces of music -- like the end girl and woman who are singing and beating their corn, and that structure’s about food consumption and production.<br /><br />So anyway, there’s a lot of very obscure stuff.<br /><br />Overarching it all, you have the structure of the day starting at midnight, ending at midnight, and you have a structure of different characters appearing then reappearing.<br /><br />That gives you a sort of tension, a suspense. Because you’re not sure -- is that person going to reappear? "I want to know more about them". Then maybe they do, maybe they don’t, and you learn a bit more. <br /><br />So that was really my role, to try and figure out a way to make the film [all] of a piece.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You had all those assistants. You’ve probably never had so many.</strong><br /><br />KM: It was great. A megalomaniac’s delight. Nobody could watch all of this material on their own. Well, it would take them two years. I’ve calculated.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How many hours?</strong><br /><br />KM: 4,500 hours. That’s a lot of material. It took 24 or 25 people who spoke many different languages. <br /><br />We had a Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Danish, a Swedish one, French, Italian and whatever speakers, and they watched all the stuff that came from their countries or in their languages. And then we had to send some out.<br /><br />We had some very obscure languages. We had some Pygmy language from Cameroon, and that song of Angolan singers -- actually, they sing three different songs that weave into each other and they’re in three different dialects. <br /><br />There’s something in a Balinese dialect of Indonesia. [It] was incredibly hard to find someone who spoke that in London. <br /><br />Those people watched everything, all four and half thousand hours, 12 hours a day. It took them two and a half months. <br /><br />As they were finishing that, I took a month off after the filming day and let them start, and then came back.<br /><br />So what they did was rate it from one to five. One star for really terrible -- where they made less effort filming this than we were watching it -- up to five stars, "this is great, there’s something fascinating here." <br /><br />The editor, Joe Walker, is the unsung hero of this. We watched the four- and five-stars, 350 hours of them. We sat down and watched the best stuff.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You had more bad than good?</strong><br /><br />KM: By the very fact that there were only 350 hours of four and five stars. It was all just different. <br /><br />I’m not going to say it’s bad. There was some bad stuff in there. But my attitude is, everyone who got involved in this was being incredibly generous, because they were doing something in which they had no chance of financial gain.<br /><br />There was a prize in effect, I suppose, that people whose clips we thought were the best got invited to Sundance. Twenty people from the film were there -- the little Japanese boy and his father, the Peruvian boy and his father. <br /><br />But other than that, people did it because they wanted to be involved in something and be generous and share something from their own lives. <br /><br />So I’m not the one to say to them, "What you did was horrible.‛<br /><br /><strong>Q: You show the film of the Japanese kids who recently lost their mother. Part of being Japanese is they are confined in a tiny room. Did you consciously choose this cultural element for them to represent?</strong><br /><br />KM: I chose the clips that were the best clips, and I thought that that single clip was the most beautiful short film I’ve ever seen. You learn something every second. <br /><br />You learn something every moment as it’s going on, until you get this [revelation that] his mother has passed away, so he’s in mourning, he goes and lies back down. It’s incredibly moving. <br /><br />But it’s also a piece of film art, whether it is intentional or accidental. It was almost a single shot; there’s one cut in there. <br /><br />If only I’d had 10 other films as good from Japan showing people on a farm, on a mountain or in a palace, I would have used them. But I didn’t. So any sense that it’s portraying clichés of any country is purely accidental. <br /><br />The tricky thing was finding characters like that who made a film or, through a series of very short clips, you felt like you learned something about their lives and you got involved in the story about them and that you related to.<br /><br />And those few people who managed to achieve that, those were the backbone of the film. Into that we poured all the different ingredients.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How has making this film changed your life -- both you as an artist and as a person?</strong><br /><br />KM: It’s changed me in both ways. It’s made me even more aware of the use of serendipity, of luck, in filmmaking. I’m really admiring a lot of the visuals in this film. People have shot really beautiful things and there are ideas to steal in there.<br /><br />I realized there are things that you can only shoot with a home video camera -- that you couldn’t shoot with a professional camera. The fly being picked off the windowpane by somebody [for example]. <br /><br />You film by camera here, fly goes up to his hand, takes the fly, holds it in his hand, films his hand, goes through a door, the iris changes, the focus changes, he lets it go, you see the fly going off. <br /><br />To do that using a conventional professional camera would be millions in special effects. Maybe not millions, but it’s a big, complicated shot to do something that’s very simple. There’s a beauty to that, there’s a whole aesthetic of the amateur, and I came to appreciate that. <br /><br />I also think, from a personal point of view, I learned to be less cynical about the world, I suppose. I think about people maybe more positively. I’m a cynical person who’s normally attracted to the dark side of things.<br /><br /><strong>Q: We know from some of your movies.</strong><br /><br />KM: Actually, in this I felt like: Yes, you confront the dark side of things, there’s a lot of death, pain, illness and tragedy and whatever in there. <br /><br />But overarching everything in the material I saw, I got this sense of this tremendous life force, that people -- even when they’re in their last hours or days of life, confronting death -- they still have this sense of wanting to live, of life being special and wonderful. That made me more optimistic.<br /><br />A lot of people who filmed in this were very -- for want of a better term, I would say -- ordinary people. <br /><br />They were not people who are part of the media, not the kind of people that I would necessarily meet when I come to America or go to Japan or whatever. They’re not people in the film business, not people that are involved in media in any way. <br /><br />There’s something great about that, about giving voice to people who are just people, first and foremost -- before they’re commentators, before they’re this, before they’re that. And that was kind of lovely.<br /><br />For an extended version of Macdonald's Q&A and more by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com" target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com</a>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-46815838404042579212011-05-16T07:55:00.000-07:002011-05-20T05:09:03.924-07:00British Director Justin Chadwick Gets the Gold Star for The First Grader<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQOTsVIPYWo5zFpKThPsJUqpoYNzRseFEAlH7P6D1-qLSwxbjoIIaQt4giJQKtHywUPdRu-ldse3Llbahde9aim8d-Ypz4Gc_BdVy5f_JvnIMEq_smiKB68KBQQkN9cFtbjcYh6_tbljm8/s1600/justin-c.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQOTsVIPYWo5zFpKThPsJUqpoYNzRseFEAlH7P6D1-qLSwxbjoIIaQt4giJQKtHywUPdRu-ldse3Llbahde9aim8d-Ypz4Gc_BdVy5f_JvnIMEq_smiKB68KBQQkN9cFtbjcYh6_tbljm8/s400/justin-c.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5607328865662280050" /></a>On the surface, <em>The First Grader</em> tells a basic heartfelt story about an older man, the 84-year-old Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge, finally fulfilling a long-unresolved dream -- to learn to read. Against much prejudice and bureaucratic nonsense, he enrolls in a primary school out in the countryside with first graders to take advantage of a new law that makes primary school free and available to everyone. <br /><br />Of course there are many more wrinkles to the story than just that premise. This all takes place in Kenya, a country fraught with many tribes, conservative customs and a resistance to things that rock society -- which is why the Mau Mau rebellion that eventually drove out the British in the late '50s/early '60s, took a long time to happen. Maruge had been one of those rebels and had suffered dearly for it. <br /><br />British director Justin Chadwick's film reveals both the horrors that Kenyans had experienced and the beauty of this country by documenting Maruge's very human struggle here. Too often such struggles are portrayed in simplistic and cliched terms.<br /><br />During an exclusive interview, the 43-year-old veteran BBC filmmaker tells of creating a touching story that is both affecting and worth recommending to those curious about this continent and the complex societies situated there. <br /><br /><strong>Q: When did you start filming? How long did it take?<br /></strong> <br />JC: Well, very short. The prep [time] was the longest thing, to listen to stories, not just with the children, but because what happened in the '50s, the records had been destroyed. <br /><br />I had to listen as much as I could in the prep to the stories that were coming in. And the way the communities then started to realize I was making the film there was a certain trust, so things would come back and I would get to talk to people about their experience in the '50s. Because the colonial period, in the '60s when independence came, their first president said, "We move on from the past, we forget it." <br /><br />Kenyans as much as the British, didn't know about this past. We knew about the one sided, bloody past from the Mau Mau, but we didn't know to what extent the Kenyans had really suffered. So it took a while. We started shooting I think in late October. Four or five weeks was the shoot.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Why was there such a lag between <em>The Other Boleyn Girl</em>, your previous theatrical release, and this film? <br /></strong><br />JC: I never imagined myself doing a period piece, I really didn't. <em>The Other Boleyn Girl</em> started as a small movie. I'd done a lot of TV and done a miniseries, <em>Bleak House</em>, which was very, very fast paced. I was modernizing Dickens. So I really wanted to earn my experience before I ventured into doing features. <br /><br />My feeling was you only get to make one film in England and then if you don't do a good job you're out and you don't get another chance. So I never expected that. <br /><br />Then I got this little, tiny script, The Other Boleyn Girl, and thought who would I really love to work with? And I've always loved those two -- Scarlett Johansen and Natalie Portman -- and Eric [Bana], and so I just put them together, and before you knew it, it [went from being] a small BBC film and then all of sudden Sony, Universal, the whole kind of kit and caboodle. <br /><br />Everybody got involved and it became this bigger film. It didn't feel like it when we were making it, it felt like this small film when we were making it, with a small team of people that I'd grown up with in my work that I'd done in England in my TV work. <br /><br />David Thompson from the BBC, one of the producers who started that process [for<em> The Other Boleyn Girl</em>], sent me this script for <em>The First Grader</em>. I had never been to Kenya. I thought this was quite a simple but inspiring story and something I didn't expect coming from Africa. It wasn't issue driven; it made me feel good. <br /><br />And I knew it was about children -- the hope of children and education. It was the chance to do something that was uplifting. <br /><br />And there was money set up in South Africa, so I got on a plane and went to Kenya, supposed to be going to look to see if it was possible to do some [establishing shots there], then go to South Africa where we'd do the movie. <br /><br />I met Maruge, the real man the film's based on when he was 89 and was in a hospice. I went in with Kikuyu guys, the same tribe as him, sat with him, talked to him, and he was completely inspiring guy. <br /><br />I phoned up the BBC and said, "Listen, I've really got to stay longer." Every day I'd phone up the BBC. Although he was ill, he wanted to have his lessons, so you couldn't disturb his lessons. He was on grade five at that point. He was very sick and still demanded his teacher. This guy was amazing. Sometimes I'd have to leave and go, "All right, you've got your English teacher in."<br /><br />I went around and started to look at the country and it was unbelievably beautiful. It's stunning. It's just amazing. So I said, "Look, we have to shoot it here," and with that we lost all of the budget, because there's not a perceived infrastructure in Kenya in film terms.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What were the challenges of that.<br /></strong><br />JC: There have been movies made in Kenya -- <em>Out of Africa</em>, <em>Tomb Raider</em>, <em>Constant Gardener</em> -- but most of the films that are made there they ship everything in; the crew...<br /><br /><strong>Q: ... Were from South Africa?<br /></strong><br />JC: Everywhere, all over the world. Plane loads of equipment, food, crew, everything is brought it, so Kenyans never get a chance to get into film [production] in any way. So when we lost the money I said, "We'll just go with the money that we've got. Let's just go."<br /><br /><strong>Q: You then lost the South African money at that point...<br /></strong><br />JC: We lost a lot because of the decision to shoot in Kenya. The investment, the crews and all of that. We went to Kenya with nine people in the end, and the ethos was that if the talent was there we would find it, and if the talent wasn't there we would train it and incorporate it into the film. <br /><br />Then there was the question of the school. I'm sure you remember your first grade at school. All those characters you meet.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: You think I remember my first grade?<br /></strong> <br />JC: Of course you do. I bet you remember who you were sitting next to.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: All I remember is the crossing guard, my mom.<br /></strong> <br />JC: You must remember those friends that you had at primary school.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: I've blotted it all out. You still remember that?<br /></strong> <br />JC: I can remember them. I thought I'm going to choose one school then I am going to incorporate every child. If they want to be in this film they can be in the film. No one will be excluded, but no one will be forced to do it, and I thought in my way, although you two may be different [countries], the kids in Manchester, England can't be that different from the kids in Kenya.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: You're right about that.<br /></strong> <br />JC: I dropped into one school. These kids were amazing. They hadn't seen a TV, have never seen a film. They were Maasai children in the main, or Kikuyu children as well, from these tribes. [They were] very shy; to even look at an adult is disrespectful. So I knew that I would have to use that as a way of...<br /> <br />I talked to the elders and went into school on my own and just let the children come to me. I watched them, observed them, guided the characters in the film to the children. So all of those characters, all the characters that you see in the film came out of the children I saw everyday. Like Agnes, she wasn't written in the script. I became like their teacher really.<br /><br /><strong>Q: I bet your biggest moment of anxiety was finding Oliver Litondo who played Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge.<br /></strong> <br />JC: Yes, that was tough.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: If you didn't find the right guy to play Maruge, he is the movie. Naomie Harris was reacting to him. Everybody was reacting to him, so he had to carry that movie, and you really took a risk.<br /></strong> <br />JC: You are exactly like my producer David Thompson, who was on <em>The Other Boleyn Girl </em>with me. He kept saying, "Four weeks to go, and we don't have Maruge. If we don't have Maruge we haven't got a film." <br /><br />The first thing the Kenyans said was, "You're not going to find him here. You'll never find him." And we went on a goose chase around the world, England, here, Paris, you can imagine.<br /> <br />We went all over to try and find Maruge. We got close to a couple of guys. There was this beautiful actor in Paris that we met who basically, just couldn't pass his medical.<br /> <br />He was so old, and that was a lot of the problems. So we went back to Kenya on my second trip there I was going, "Okay guys, forget an actor. I know that there's not going to be this amazing actor, experienced actor sitting in Kenya that we don't know about." There isn't the kind of TV or film industry there that would generate that kind of actor. I do not speak Swahili, but if I could...<br /> <br /><strong>Q: And they have another language as well; Maasai is the other one.</strong><br /> <br />JC: Swahili, Kikuyu, and Maasai. But the real Maruge would have spoken Kikuyu in the main. That's why I was with Kikuyu guys when I went to meet him in the hospital and talk to him. That's where he started opening up to me.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: You can't do it in the wrong language.</strong><br /> <br />JC: No, and also, he would never have told me about his wife, about this bond he had to the land. He made that bond; he was 89. They never [broke him], the British, you know. He wouldn't utter a word of that oath; he still carried that at 89. <br /><br />Then someone on the crew said, "I know this guy. He was a news anchor and my parents talk about him in the '70s." So we managed to track Oliver down, and word got to him. He didn't have a phone or anything so someone went in his village up to his house, and he'd fallen on real hard times. He got on a bus -- this is incredible -- he got on this bus, six hours later he met me in [Nairobi], and he looked really whacked, poor guy. But as soon as I met him he was like...<br /> <br /><strong>Q: How old is Oliver now?<br /></strong> <br />JC: He would never tell his age. But when we met him he looked like he'd fallen on hard times, he was having a tough time. Then he got his suit and looked fantastic. He went to his doctor, got through his medical [exam], thank god; the doctor put him on a strict diet and sorted his eyes -- he had problems with his eyes. <br /> <br />I just knew as soon as I met him that the kids would love him. Inside and out he's a beautiful man, this guy. He's so eloquent the way he talks about education. You can see it in his face, can't you? <br /><br />He was not experienced as an actor, and sometimes I'd be talking to him off camera while we were doing the scenes just to talk him through stuff, and you could just see it in him.<br /> <br />Q: Were those all lines he was saying were memorized and hw knew how to say them?<br /> <br />JC: Sometimes it was. Sometimes we improvised. Sometimes we let scenes role, like for example, the scene with the little girl. The little Agnes girl was the quietest, shyest girl. She was the one the teacher said, "Oh no." <br /><br />Her mom and dad were trying to hide her from coming to school because her legs, she had small legs, she's got a prosthetic. She was at the back of the class so she was behind; the children were very, very shy, but she was particularly shy in the corner. [She] wouldn't come to me for a long, long time, and that was the child that I thought was the best to bond with Maruge.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: The boy we sitting with Oliver getting shown how to make a "5"; didn't he bond with Maruge?<br /></strong> <br />JC: He was from another school because, amazingly, in that school the concept of bullying didn't exist for some reason. I got to know all the children, all the characters, and it just wasn't in the children that were there. It wasn't in their comprehension. <br /><br />I was like, "You're joking, come on! There must be some sort of..." and they just couldn't get that. So I had to bring somebody else from another school into that environment, and he came in and it worked for the character for the film.<br /><br /><strong>Q: The DVD should have some of this other material on it.<br /></strong> <br />JC: I recorded every meeting I had with Maruge. The last thing he did was sing me a song about his life. Often when I was with him, because it was with these guys that he was speaking his first language, Kikuyu, as well as English, I was with Kikuyu men. These men would turn round, these are Kikuyu where [it is rare] to show any emotion [to someone] you don't know as a man, and these guys were like, the tears streaming. That's where the power of the pen came from. All of those quotes came directly from him, how he talked about his wife, and his children.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Finding Maruge was such a challenge but how did Naomie fit into that process? Because you and Naomie are both of English descent. how did it affect both of you and how did she become the obvious choice?<br /></strong> <br />JC: She was the first choice.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Was she was always there?<br /></strong> <br />JC: She wasn't always there. When I read the script the very first time before I'd been to Kenya, Africa or South Africa, I thought of Naomie because I love her work. She's subtle, she's got good heart the way she talks about her work. I know she's a good woman, and I love the way that she's a chameleon. She's got a great body of work behind her. It's not obvious acting with her but she really inhabits her characters. So she was the first person that I thought of for the role.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: It's good to have a seasoned actor as the anchor.<br /></strong> <br />JC: At that time the character was written as a 53 year old who had two children.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Was that the reality?<br /></strong> <br />JC: Yeah, that was the reality. Then when I went to Kenya, I was very, very keen on going around the schools. I was seeing young Kenyan women struggling with professional and home life, and family, when to have kids, when not to have kids, could you do the two things, and culturally, what that meant to those young women. <br /><br />So I thought to make her younger, as an inspiring role model to other people and inspiring to the children -- and Naomie stuck with me. <br /><br /><strong>Q: You're British and are making a movie about what the British did to these people -- it must have had a strange resonance. There's a lot of brutality in British history.<br /></strong> <br />JC: I am amazed and ashamed that the British do not know this side of history. I did not know. It's not history learned in school.<br /> <br />I knew about the brutality of the colonials, we all know that, but [it was] the scale of what went on in Kenya, and we didn't know that they destroyed the records afterwards. But what was really surprising was that the Kenyans didn't know. The Kenyan crew didn't know. <br /><br />And just the way that we made the film. The guy who plays the Mau Mau leader, he went back and talked to his parents. He then went to his grandparents and over five or six weeks, the parents started to come out. They had been in those camps. <br /><br />That music he's singing at that point in the film is music that directly goes back to those camps and his grandparents. It was a voyage for all of us really, the Kenyans as well. That's why it was the most humbling, amazing thing that I've ever done, and was the best thing I've ever done. Every day these amazing things would happen.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You see a movie like this and wonder, will the audiences come out to see a movie about Africa? What made you believe it will click with audiences?<br /></strong> <br />JC: That's the difficult, hard thing, and there has to be. We showed this film at [Telluride], we went to Toronto, we've shown it at some great festivals throughout the U.S. and the world, and audiences have just connected with it. If audiences get into the cinema and see it they will go through this emotional, moving, funny, uplifting story that is challenging but also celebrates life. <br /><br />Surely, there has to be a space for films like this. The production values are really strong; it's made as a piece of cinema, to be enjoyed in the cinema. I was very careful to shoot it with the cinema in mind so that audiences could go and see it on the big screen. It's stunningly beautiful. We've placed the camera so that it catches these fantastic shots of truth from these children who have never acted before. <br /><br />Alongside the blockbusters that have the machinery behind them of publicity and money, there has to be a place for audiences to go to see different stories. Stories that they wouldn't have known but also still have great production values, fantastic performances, and a different story that isn't the usual thing that we haven't seen, and there has to be a place for that. <br /><br />People say to me, "What was the toughest thing in making the film?" There was nothing tough about making the film. It was the easiest thing because everything just rolled into place. If we had any kind of hurdle, as the money, we'd just go and do it in another way, never impacting on what was up on the screen. <br /><br />The challenge now is for word of mouth. And fortunately, in these festivals that it's been to, and when it's screened, it wins all the audience awards.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: It's definitely an audience award winner.<br /></strong> <br />JC: Because people love to go into the dark, I'm sure of it, and celebrate these stories.<br /><br />For more by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com" target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com</a>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-2413423227052564942011-05-15T09:57:00.000-07:002011-05-15T10:01:57.399-07:00New York Character Re Defined For A Weekend<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQJeKwjeLI0kA5ZiICqqyl4LDGoHyHlcnoj8FkW-fAh3JkTdsm_CpQMMB9zilUcJP9tFbW6NaZZGqZDqF8YqCYnHT70xHkG7ayz0X7fc6H6UlUjU4EcDvawEoDwWWO7MX8J7fT_Ues2wbG/s1600/character+box.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQJeKwjeLI0kA5ZiICqqyl4LDGoHyHlcnoj8FkW-fAh3JkTdsm_CpQMMB9zilUcJP9tFbW6NaZZGqZDqF8YqCYnHT70xHkG7ayz0X7fc6H6UlUjU4EcDvawEoDwWWO7MX8J7fT_Ues2wbG/s400/character+box.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5606648256575241122" /></a>Sometimes the visual dynamic of New York, and Manhattan in particular, can be too much -- too much a jumble, or a clash of priorities and styles -- a cavalcade of dissonance. But sometimes, something comes into view that re-orders the environment so much so that it both jars the visual ecology and redefines it. That happened yesterday when I saw three large brightly colored metal shipping containers stamped CHARACTER PROJECT on the front and back sitting in various public spaces in Manhattan.<br /><br />Plopped down into high trafficked public pavilions these boxes captured the attention and altered the impact of the space they occupied. But because they are there as pop-up movie theaters, meant to feature eight shorts commissioned by the USA Network and RSA Films (Ridley and Tony Scott's company), they did more than visually affect the street dynamic -- they became site-specific gallery spaces as well.<br /><br />Having started yesterday, Friday, May 13, this cinematic experience can be found in Manhattan throughout this weekend, continuing today (Saturday, May 14) to tomorrow (Sunday, May 15) from 10am-10pm at three locations: Gansevoort Plaza (9th Ave between Gansevoort and Little W 12th Streets); Flatiron Plaza, Broadway between 22nd & 23rd Streets and South Street Seaport (Fulton between Water and Front Streets).<br /><br />Somehow, the impact of these containers on the visual ecology stirred further musings in me about how a graphical strong statement alters something prosaic as a public walk space. And that has led me to muse on today's start of the annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair -- the long-standing /exhibit/conference held in the Javits Center that runs from 10 am today through Tuesday, May 17th. This event also heralds Design Week in Manhattan.<br /><br />Inside the Javits, the ICFF exhibitors take up 145,000 net square feet with 500 exhibitors displaying contemporary furniture, seating, carpet and flooring, lighting, outdoor furniture, materials, wall coverings, accessories, textiles, and kitchen and bath for residential and commercial interiors. This throng re-defines the Javits space, offers an unparalleled view of recent design developments from all over the globe and presents a broad selection of the world's best, most innovative, and original objects for the home, office or any space for that matter.<br /><br />Simultaneously, on various streets (such as Tribeca's Franklin St.) and pockets through Manhattan such as the Noho design district (and even some of the other boroughs) stores and firms band together to host open houses, receptions and celebration of their wares as well. Though the ICFF is mostly for industry insiders, the closing day, Tuesday, May 17th from 10 am - 4 pm, is open to the general public as well.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-23609675732505930172011-01-17T10:06:00.000-08:002011-02-18T12:04:36.445-08:00Robert Duvall Wins High Praise for Get Low<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5VvfsNzWuCI7nrmNeINn13D0McXcNg3IuZQ10cpVKWTtKuy-K2YNrknHy7cehJFbOjSpCosnzQIt_RHg64DW7mprsWgR2im5FnvtYE3DTjlteXsZnSmZJ_o5WY83_dAJnPVN7JRR5XhVe/s1600/duvall.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 398px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5VvfsNzWuCI7nrmNeINn13D0McXcNg3IuZQ10cpVKWTtKuy-K2YNrknHy7cehJFbOjSpCosnzQIt_RHg64DW7mprsWgR2im5FnvtYE3DTjlteXsZnSmZJ_o5WY83_dAJnPVN7JRR5XhVe/s400/duvall.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575038086507414706" /></a> Story by <span style="font-weight:bold;">Brad Balfour</span><br /><br />When <em>Get Low</em> hit the festival circuit earlier this year coming to New York during the Tribeca Film Festival, veteran actor Robert Duvall hit the town and did a few interviews to discuss this film, his career, and playing roles like the irascible Felix Bush. The grungy, ill-kempt Bush is this mysterious hermit who throws his own rollicking funeral party -- while still alive -- in 1930s Tennessee. He confront the folks who run the funeral home --played by Bill Murray and Lucas Black -- and his long-ago ex-love, played by Sissy Spacek, with his odd event with both touching and tragic results.<br /><br />A remarkable actor, going back to his days on television in such series as <em>The Outer Limits</em> (his two- part episode, "The Inheritors," is considered a classic) or films such as <em>MASH</em> or the original <em>True Grit</em>, the 80-year-old is now considered one of the Olympians in that starry universe of Hollywood.<br /><br />Yet he has often stood apart from that celebrity-centric world. He has an estate in Virginia, is married an Argentinian, Luciana Pedraza (who is 41 years younger than him), and has his own film and television production company. His politics leans towards libertarian/conservative and he loves the western -- all things that haven't set well with the Hollywood insiders and tastemakers.<br /><br />In the last two films he performed in, <em>Get Low</em> and <em>Crazy Heart</em>, Duvall co-produced them, and much to his surprise, won back-to-back hurrahs, awards and many nominations.<br /><br />With a crinkle to his eyes, a big smile and that good ol' boy geniality, The Texas native makes for a perfect interview subject. Whether he's doing a long string of one-on-ones, roundtables, or Q&As, he shows an infectious enthusiasm and openness that makes each one seem like he's doing it for the first time.<br /><br />Q: How do you prepare for a role like this -- what's the process with such a complex character? <br /><br />RD: I didn't do a lot, but just thought about it. Though this year I couldn't because I had to work, we usually go to Argentina where my wife's from, we go up to the North, to the Jujuy [region]. We cook on Christmas Day, we'll cook meat and then her old man will jump off with one of the sisters zipped up and hang glide with the condors, the biggest bird in the world. <br /><br />While we're there, there's this is hotel where we stay, there's a window and a place where you sit, the patio, and I would sit there, I'd say it's a perfect [environment] if you were going to write something, and I would look at those mountains and work on this part. <br /><br />That sense of being with nature and looking at, not the hills of Tennessee or Virginia, but -- and just, it's just a matter of thinking about it, thinking about it a lot and not necessarily doing research other than using my imagination. They say play the parts closest to you, to your imagination and I think there was a part of my imagination -- this was close to [me] and I didn't want to go in it for any way on accident. [He] was just a little bit like my dad who's from Virginia -- my family's from Virginia.<br /> <br />Q: Did you carry such a powerful character with you upon leaving the set at the end of the day?<br /><br />RD: Sometimes when I carry him with me I get pissed off or like if things weren't going right or I didn't think it was just right, you carry that frustration with you, sometimes. <br /><br />But usually at the end of the day if it went well then you go off and have a meal. And there was a great Chinese restaurant down there in the middle of nowhere. It was terrific.<br /><br />The better things go, the more relaxed and relieved you are at the end of the day. If it doesn't go so well then you feel, ahh, you know? You just go home, get your rest and come in the next day.<br /><br />Q: During the shoot, were there other things that you, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray spent doing on your downtime?<br /><br />RD: We all went out to eat, to different restaurants, and had fun down there going out, yeah. We'd go to a party and showed Bill Murray a tango. He said he wanted to learn the tango. He likes to try everything, Murray. The guy's a character.<br /><br />And Lucas Black -- it's great to work with the guy. [He's] from Alabama, with that thick accent -- you need subtitles for the guy, you know [laughs]. And Sissy is -- [they're all] wonderful, talented people to work with.<br /> <br />Q: Is your character manipulating other people? At one point somebody says, "I think he's got an idea and he's playing all of us."<br /><br />RD: That's what that guy said. I'm not so sure -- even having played the character, I'm not so sure if that's true or as much, percentages, or that's what they perceive in him. They perceive him to be a tough old guy, but he's not necessarily that. You know, he lives off these stories that he likes, you know, "You boys come out here and throw rocks at my windows for 25 years." <br /><br />I think that they build up this myth about this guy being a mean old guy, but maybe he's not that. He could have been a lawyer, he could have been a doctor, he could have been a schoolteacher, he could have been a world traveler, merchant marine. <br /><br />He's not a dumb guy; he could have been a lot of things. But, he chose to live in the woods out of this deep sense of guilt or being ashamed of what he did or what he thinks he might have done.<br /><br />Q: Producer Dean Zanuck said it had been 10 years and that you had stayed with this project...<br /><br />RD: No, I think it was about five... Yeah.<br /> <br />Q: What was it that made you say to yourself, "Whenever it comes, I'm going to be there, ready to do this."<br /><br />RD: Well, I'd given up on it. The initial thing of a guy setting up and going to his own funeral was very unique -- they're not going to do a remake of this in 12 years like they did of<em> True Grit</em>. This is so unique and original, they're not going to do a remake, but I'd forgotten about it. They came to my farm once and then they came again. <br /><br />The initial script was good, then they rewrote, and it wasn't so good. Then they got a guy, Charlie Mitchell from Alabama, who put in the final touches. This guy's a terrific storyteller; if he hadn't come on, I wouldn't have done it. But even when that happened, they didn't have the money, so I'd be sitting sometimes -- I don't live in California, I go out there sometimes to work or whatever -- in a Palm restaurant and the Zanucks would be there. <br /><br />I said, "If the Zanuck dynasty can't raise $7 million, who can?" So I forgot about it. "Well, that's a good project, but, you know, I'm on to other things." Then a couple of years ago in December, they said, "Now's the time." I said, "I'm not ready. I can't." But they said, "Oh, we've got to." <br /><br />I thought to myself, "I better do it now. This is a wonderful [story] ..." But, you know, I wasn't like waiting, I'd kind of given up on it, and thought of other things because they didn't have the money. But when they did, then we went.<br /> <br />Q: This film has stirred almost the same response that <em>Crazy Heart</em> got...<br /><br />RD: People have said that. They spent a lot of money on <em>Crazy Heart</em> and it's different. This is my wife's favorite film I've done in maybe 15, sheesh, years; she loves this film and the script. But, we'll see. I don't know. <br /> That made a lot of money for an independent film. I don't know who made that much money. It made, what... It grossed almost $39 million.<br /> <br />Q: Your performance here is dead on, just every minute of it works.<br /><br />RD: Well, I don't always get leads in movies, and I'd rather play sometimes cameos or supporting, but when something like this comes along I feel maybe I can do this in a unique way. <br /> <br />Q: What did she love about it? <br /><br />RD: She just loved the writing and there's so much, and the performances. But she loves what this guy, Charlie Mitchell, who brought [to it] a unique script, just a certain aspect of humanity that's in the script in a different, very unique story. <br /><br />We sold it all over. It won some award in Italy at a film festival, then it went to here, and it went there. They're taking it everywhere [laughs]. They're trying to build it up in a prestigious way, but also hopefully that it'll be a commercial success.<br /> <br />Q: Have you ever gotten a great script and as you were filming, things went haywire and it didn't end up the way you expected as with this film?<br /><br />RD: did it end up the way I envisioned it?<br /> <br />Q: Yeah, in the past.<br /><br />RD: Yeah, I think so. But with this writer, there was a time when they rewrote it, it didn't work, I said, "I'm not doing this." Then when they brought Charlie Mitchell on he added those touches of a southern storyteller that was terrific. Little things, like the woman in white at the end coming in an apparition, like a Southern Gothic story. And when that hearse went away, they didn't know that it was going to be and they passed her coming on film and they all got like goose pimples. They didn't know what it was about. <br /><br />And the things with Sissy, when I explained how I loved her sister, not her and then I have a thing where I fall over from like an illness, he added that. He added those things, those things with Sissy in the beginning about the -- he really took the basic story and made it more direct and made it work and that's what really bonded me to the project was his writing and that's why my wife loved it, was the writing so much and the way it was executed.<br /> <br />Q: Was that scene where you beat up the guy who was harassing you in there originally?<br /><br />RD: When I hit him? Yeah, they had to put stuff on him -- Scott Cooper, he directed <em>Crazy Heart</em> -- I whacked him good [laughs].<br /> <br />Q: Is there a theme or a line running through the roles that people think of you the most? I'm thinking of <em>Tender Mercies</em> and these country men.<br /><br />RD: I played a city guy in The Godfather. I played Stalin once [laughs]. But, yeah, yeah, I like to play -- my favorite part was in Lonesome Dove, when I played the Texas - I love westerns because that's our thing. I said the English can have Shakespeare, the French Moliere, [Anton] Chekhov the Russians and the Argentines have [Jorge Luis] Borges, but the western is ours from Canada on down. <br /><br />I say let the English play Hamlet and King [Lear]; I play Augustus McCrae [laughs], because you have eight hours to develop the character. But, you know, I like city guys, country guys, whatever. I've played German guys, I've played Eichmann, Adolf Eichmann, that's where I met my wife in Argentina. Eichmann went to Israel and got, you know, they killed him and this Eichmann got a beautiful woman from Argentina, my wife [laughs].<br /> <br />Q: Do you still dance the tango with her?<br /><br />RD: Yeah, we do.<br /> <br />Q: Since the recession hit do you find yourself taking roles and doing business differently?<br /><br />RD: Doing business differently? Well, the business aspect of it might be different because you always try to raise money and with my company we're always trying to do movies under $10 million. We did... Another one of my favorite things was <em>Broken Trail</em>, a two-part miniseries for AMC. We did that and Eichmann, we did the tango movie, we did The Apostle, we did, what do you call it? We did <em>Crazy Heart</em>. <br /><br />We've had a good run, my company, in doing producing. But as far as taking the parts, it's the same thing. You read it and say, "Oh, I like this part." You go with your first instincts. "I think I can do this part. I like it." Then you say, "Who's going to be the director? How much? [laughs] Usually the independent movies not much, so you still do them because you love them.<br /> <br />Q: How much does "how much" matter?<br /><br />RD: It depends. If you're going to do a big film, how much does matter. You know, it does matter, you know, in this country. We had to cut Jeff Bridges' salary, you know, he does a hefty thing. We make more in this country than other countries, you know, and also I suppose it's more expensive in a way to live in this country, so how much matters some.<br /> <br />Q: You're batting pretty well though.<br /><br />RD: Oh, very good. My little company's as good as any of the other companies as far as doing -- we've done well, especially doing something under $10 million. Somebody said that there's a list every year of the 10 best movies that never get made, so that happens, so we've done well. It's tough to get these things going. We got things we're trying to get going right now that hopefully, you know.<br /> <br />Q: What do you think when you hear people say, "This is one of the best Robert Duvall performances ever; you're going to get another Academy Award for it?"<br /><br />RD: Well, listen, the Academy Awards can be very political [laughs]. People think of that, you know. When I did <em>The Great Santini</em>, I was sitting in my chair just meeting the producers and they said, "Well, they're talking about Academy Awards..." [And that was ] before we even rehearsed it or anything [laughs]! <br /><br />Especially in Hollywood, there's a strange preoccupation about [awards] in this country. If those things happen it's a secondary thing; you just try to do a good job. I like this role a lot, maybe it's one of my [best] -- I don't know. I can't [think about that] -- there's a friend of mine coming tonight, I'll see what he thinks. He's known me for years, he loved the script when he read it, so I'll see what he thinks. <br /><br />Q: So many people, after doing this for 20 or 30 years... You look at them and say, "God, it's like they forgot how to act or something."<br /><br />RD: But I have more than that my amigo [laughs].<br /> <br />Q: What keeps an actor fresh through the years?<br /><br />RD: It depends on -- whatever you read is you're going to jump in and do, no matter how long you've been doing it, you still have a certain hunger to do it. You're still a bit hungry. I'm getting offered more parts now than ever. It's as good as ever. I was considered as a late bloomer, but I'm blooming into eternity [laughs].<br /> <br />Q: What's the name of your company?<br /><br />RD: Butchers Runs Films. Down in Virginia the small creeks are called runs. I don't know what that comes from, Bull Run, the Battle of Bull Run. My father grew up on South Run in northern Virginia. They were southerners during the Civil War, tobacco farmers, pro union behind confederate lines, pro union! They named my grandfather Abraham Lincoln Duvall. He was behind enemy lines, but they were Southerners.<br /> <br />Q: And they didn't get hung for it?<br /><br />RD: No, they didn't. They had some dicey times when it came to it with the bayonets and the stuff they had to hold, the babies and stuff.<br /> <br />Q: What part of Virginia was this?<br /><br />RD: In Virginia near Fairfax County. We live now in Fauquier County, my wife and I. My wife loves Virginia. <br /> <br />Q: How did you know that your wife was the one? In the movie, your character talks about when he knew the woman he loved was the one. When did you realize that about love...<br /><br />RD: You mean in this movie?<br /> <br />Q: No, in real life.<br /><br />RD: I guess after the fourth marriage something better work [laughs]. She's very smart. She did an interesting documentary on Billy Joe Shaver; I put her in the tango movie though she's never acted, but she had a certain kind of middle class street mentality of Buenos Aires. <br /><br />She went down to take care of her mother, and strapped $15,000 in her purse to go through customs and she knows how to... I put her in the movie -- she said, "If you think that young actress is going to play the part, I'll take it." <br /><br />Now I know she didn't have to go to Lee Strasberg, because she said to her sister, this cop stopped them through a yellow light like, "Whatever I say, you say, "Si. Si." The guy said, "You were going through a red light." "No, a yellow light." "Si, si, going through a yellow light." <br /><br />She saw the crucifix, she played on it, "If you're going to give me the ticket, come here. I have my papers here, I'm on my way to the hospital, I'm dying of cancer." Tears. The guy never gave it. So I said, "If you did this, you don't need to go to Lee Strasberg." [Laughs] I put her in the movie; she was terrific. She stole the movie!<br /> <br />Q: You met her when you did that movie?<br /><br />RD: No, I met her before that. I introduced her to the tango. The other night I was with the guy that danced over the closing credits, he's a great tango dancer -- he was in town on his way to France, so we had dinner and everything; he's one of the good guys.<br /><br />Q: On the subject of great movies that never got made; will <em>The Man Who Killed Don Quixote</em> ever happen?<br /><br />RD: I hope so. What a script. It's like Shakespeare. I read it and still don't understand all of it. You know, Terry Gilliam has his own thing. I want to do this film, I just hope there aren't too many dwarves running around, you know? But, it's terrific. It's different from the version that failed eight years ago that he had to scrap because the guy got hurt -- the French actor [Jean Rochefort]. This is totally different. <br /><br />I did a thing with Richard Harris where I played a Cuban barber in <em>Wrestling Ernest Hemingway</em> and he saw it and liked it -- if he hadn't seen that he wouldn't have offered me the part because I worked very hard putting on the accent and everything.<br /> <br />Q: Now that he's got you, what's the roadblock?<br /><br />RD: It's a little more than like this. It will be three times the budget, something like $25 something, $20, $25, yeah [million].filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-2080106261422224022010-10-30T20:34:00.000-07:002010-11-02T19:01:07.018-07:00Garspar Noe Shows How He Enters The Void<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBccdDaXPRtpNHHizeGBQ6-_NkJ2f8cKktH3Zih57IJxZGWmW4-rXD1dE9mJR3F6c5mzpSIUoWBsraz9QQVBvdtCWJIiap9YygHOyS7W2InOHGML2ZptJdOtbb86p6di-NW0CXJtkni5fH/s1600/noe-.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 324px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBccdDaXPRtpNHHizeGBQ6-_NkJ2f8cKktH3Zih57IJxZGWmW4-rXD1dE9mJR3F6c5mzpSIUoWBsraz9QQVBvdtCWJIiap9YygHOyS7W2InOHGML2ZptJdOtbb86p6di-NW0CXJtkni5fH/s400/noe-.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534539297610120738" /></a>The week preceding Halloween provides an opportunity to celebrate the genres of the supernatural, fantastical and horror film. The Film Society of Lincoln Center presents its fourth edition of its annual Scary Movies series (through Oct. 31). Clint Eastwood's neo-supernatural <em>Hereafter</em> has just opened and other film centers around town have offered their share of creepy cinematic offerings. <br /><br />At this time, Gaspar Noe's <em>Enter The Void</em> is still playing in town. Though not strictly a supernatural film, it draws on some of the genre's conventions to offer an surreal, visually odd film with a unique point of view.<br /><br />Over his relatively short career, Argentinian-born French filmmaker Noe has garnered a disproportionate amount of press for his controversial films. First he made <em>I Stand Alone</em>, then <em>Irréversible</em>. Both provocatively deal with violent men in violent situations; in the first case, incest, and, with the second, brutal rape. <br /><br />Then he made the mystically-infused <em>Enter The Void</em> featuring the ever-seductive Paz de la Huerta (now starring in <em>Boardwalk Empire</em>). Though it is rife with violent scenes, it is not a violent film like the others. Based on a reading of the <em>Tibetan Book of The Dead</em>, <em>Enter The Void</em> takes the audience through a man's first few minutes after his death. As his spirit, essence, or whatever you want to call it, travels through the city, over rooftop, we see a series of flashbacks until his "soul" reincarnates in the next vessel that will emerge as another life takes shape in a graphic sex scene.<br /><br /> Q: The idea in Buddhism is what is real/what is not real is illusory; that's why <em>the Tibetan Book of the Dead</em> has connected with people tripping on acid. Both the book and acid raise the question what's real and what's not real. Am I really seeing this, am I not really seeing this? Is that also what you were raising was the question of what is reality in a sense?<br /> <br />GN: Ask yourself what is present and real, why your own memories get so blurry when you have a blackout or even why you try to remember what you did two weeks ago.<br /> <br />Q: The Buddhist notion that life is an illusion or that in life the only unchanging thing is change links with the feeling here that life is cheap, and that these Japanese seem to regard these Westerners' lives as cheap.<br /> <br />GN: What happened in the movie would never happen. It could have happened in some other countries but not in Japan, but I needed some dramatic [element] to start the movie. At the end of the movie you don't know if his memories were not an illusion. He comes back to life to understand that the whole mental state that you were going through actually was just a dream. All that in the movie is just an illusion but you can think that even his whole life is an illusion before that.<br /> <br />The truth is that you don't know at the end of the movie. You can't tell anymore what's real. But in the case of his dream at the end of the movie you don't know if he's not going to simply just wake up in a hospital and be sent to prison; you can't tell if he died or not. It's making a dream out of all the elements that he went through. He read <em>The Book of the Dead</em> and promised to never leave her so he decided to reincarnate.<br /> <br />Q: Your other films have equated sex with violence. Though there are elements of that in this film, it also has, at least by the end, the flip side, where sex offers a resurrection, reincarnation or redemption. Is that what you were showing in terms of your own evolution and in the evolution of the film?<br /> <br />GN: There is no reincarnation because at the end he comes back through his mother's belly and we don't know if he's going back into the loop and coming back to life through his mother's belly or if he's just remembering or reconstructing a false memory of the most traumatic moment of his life -- the moment he discovered his life for the first time. I don't know if there is any redemption in heterosexual love here but you see a woman and a man making love.<br /> <br />Q: Are you familiar with Wilhelm Reich -- the radical psychologist who posited that sexuality and sex was the most important release of energy.<br /> <br />GN: He constructed a machine didn't he?<br /> <br />Q: The orgone box [orgone accumulator].<br /><br />GN: I've read about him but never read his books.<br /> <br />Q: This movie deals more with sex as a positive energy release as well as negative energy release; you're looking at both sides of it here. Was that your message, about the negative and the positive of the energy release of sex?<br /> <br />GN: I don't believe in good and evil, I don't believe in positive and negative energy. There is an energy of life or course that fights for the survival of the species, so whatever keeps you alive is good for the survival of the species. There is a meaningful energy which is the sexual energy.<br /> <br />Q: The most important thing though I think in making this movie work was having Paz, because you had to have somebody with that sexuality and that power to sort of reconnect throughout. Was she the toughest person to get for the film?<br /> <br />GN: No, actually I met her almost one year before I met Nathaniel [Brown, who is the man getting killed] and I really liked her and I wanted to have her in the movie. But I had problems, believe it or not, to find someone to play the brother, because I wanted to have some physical resemblance between the brother and the sister. And also I knew that I wanted to avoid a professional actress because as a concept of the movie I knew that if I had a professional actor he would have a vision.<br /> <br />Q: This movie fits into a canon of films about the experience just before death. There's that movie that was one with Ryan Gosling in it. Marc Forster directed called <em>Stay</em>. Have you seen any of those movies -- were they an inspiration?<br /> <br />GN: Of course there were other movies that had complex special effects, like <em>The Matrix</em> but in many ways this movie is simpler than those others.<br /> <br />Q: I see a science-fictional influence in this film. Will you be moving more towards science-fictional films?<br /> <br />GN: Actually I'm going to go more [towards] erotic movies. I shot a documentary but I guess I'll go to a safer place.<br /> <br />Q: Buddhist thinking also involves that peace, satori or enlightenment, the idea of not killing, not damaging life. Do you see yourself moving more in that direction creatively and conceptually as well?<br /> <br />GN: I know that I wouldn't want to kill an animal. Even when there's a cockroach in the kitchen I don't kill the cockroach.<br /> <br />Q: Did you become more Buddhist-oriented in making this movie?<br /> <br />GN: I'm not Buddhist. I don't believe in religion; I don't even believe in the survival of the mind after death. I believe that there are forces and connections between humans in their lifetimes but I don't think they will ever exist on another dimension.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-72896915985059751022010-10-13T16:29:00.000-07:002010-10-13T19:50:15.008-07:00Actor Elias Koteas Steps into "Let Me In" And other Genre, Arthouse Films<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgygM3eKosywBGyhkn0ih7D9tRXcbCCbCJmq0p_NPKz9M1gYPjqqDySR_YAYd1Hqiy0yN87kF5ELXc43irY-GcwTU6d6Bbtx9HX_An3XKX17mc_fR99DzFbTKiY_Ew1dLyiCKFUXHg25EIz/s1600/koteas&chloe.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 316px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgygM3eKosywBGyhkn0ih7D9tRXcbCCbCJmq0p_NPKz9M1gYPjqqDySR_YAYd1Hqiy0yN87kF5ELXc43irY-GcwTU6d6Bbtx9HX_An3XKX17mc_fR99DzFbTKiY_Ew1dLyiCKFUXHg25EIz/s400/koteas&chloe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5527677606761552146" /></a>What makes Canadian-born actor Elias Koteas so fascinating, is that he doesn’t like to play it safe. In his latest film the vampiric Let Me In, he plays the policeman who discovers the true nature of the mysterious 12-year-old killer Abby (Chloë Moretz) and pays for it. In the process, he shows a humanity that's needed to charge this dark and chilly film. <br /><br />This 51-year-old handles gritty roles full of dark and light mixtures from the auto/erotic-obsessed Vaughan in David Cronenberg's Crash to the stalwart Captain James Staros in Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line.<br /><br />Though Koteas first got known by playing Casey Jones in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies he moved onto a number of genre films such as as the horror thriller Skinwalkers (2006), David Fincher's Zodiac, Shooter (both released in 2007), the Denzel Washington starrer Fallen (as the demon-possessed serial killer Edgar Reese) and as the priest-turned-detective Thomas Daggett in The Prophecy -- which also starred Christopher Walken, Viggo Mortensen, Eric Stoltz and Virginia Madsen (with whom he appeared in The Haunting in Connecticut).<br /><br />But he's done lighter fare as well, appearing in John Hughes' Some Kind of Wonderful and in Disney's golfer bio-pic The Greatest Game Ever Played. He's also done a ton of television series guesting on CSI: NY, The Sopranos and House, in which he plays a man who shoots Dr. Gregory House.<br />Born in Montreal, Quebec, to his Greek mechanic father and milliner mother,. Koteas is tri-lingual. He left Canada in '81 for New York City's American Academy of Dramatic Arts and later, the Actors' Studio where he studied under Ellen Burstyn and Peter Masterson. While at the AADA, Koteas was in the school's production of The Devils adapted by John Whiting from thecontroversial Aldous Huxley novel, marking a provocative start to his career.<br /><br />Q: You’ve done such amazing extreme characters that push the envelope or live in an envelope-pushing place, whether it's in a film like Crash or Prisoner. How do you so lose yourself in these characters that sometimes the viewer doesn’t even realize it’s you? <br /> <br />EK: I can’t believe you saw Prisoner. I don’t know what to say other than thank you.<br /> <br />Q: What makes you fascinating as an actor is that you don’t like to play it safe. What's your process of inhabiting these arch characters?<br /> <br />EK: There’s no rhyme or reason; for better or for worse, these jobs, they find me. I like to think that. Sometimes you develop a relationship with them, and sometimes the character pitches a tent outside your front door and doesn’t leave unless you invite him in. It sounds hokey, but I don’t know what to say about it, you know what I mean? You try to give as much of yourself as you can to each role.<br /> <br />Q: Look at the policeman you play in Let Me In. You have to make it appear that an extreme situation is slowly revealed to him, and that he's being blown away. Literally. What did you do to make that work for you?<br /> <br />EK: When I first read [a script] there are odd things that happen. You never really know what it is that’s going to set you off or set you on the track to where you need to go with this thing. For some reason Abraham Lincoln came into my life. I read voraciously about Lincoln; what that has anything to do with the movie I don’t know. <br /> <br />Other than that it allowed me to somehow think about the higher nature in man and somehow the compasionate qualities in people and to see both sides of something and to bear witness. It’s odd to try to make that connection, but my life at the time was going through a lot of changes. Then how do I make it personal? How do I make the part relevant without being obvious? <br /> <br />Somehow he felt like a ghost to me, like somebody who was in a room observing, bearing witness. Then at the same time you spend a lot of time alone. Your life somehow dictates that, and if you’re open and sensitive, one feeds the other. And the atmosphere and arena that director Matt Reeves created sort of allowed you to be open, vulnerable and to explore different ways about playing this guy. <br /><br />I didn’t really know how; I didn’t have any preconceptions other than I felt it needed to have a sort of compassionate tone. Then with a hope and a prayer, you dive off, and hope for the best. It’s always a crap shoot; you never really know what’s going to happen on that day.<br /> <br />Q: Your role in Let Me In is an important one, if secondary, to the two kids.<br /> <br />EK: I feel so blessed that I’m able to do this. Then you work with these two children, and after all these years of my so-called experience, having been on stage and gone through it, To this day, I still feel like, if I got another job it would feel like I have no experience at all. It’s starting over, and I’m beside myself, hoping that I asked the right questions in order to get the ball rolling. <br /> <br />So the toughest part is getting up in the morning and actually showing up. That’s the scariest part of the film for me. But then you show up and you work with these two children who are so unaffected, so incredibly phenomenal. They’re so pure that it’s just humbling to be in their presence. You have a lot of kids at that age who aren’t able to reflect back what they see, but here are these kids just so soulful. <br /> <br />There’s almost something divine about it that as an actor I look at that and go to myself, "Oh my god! As an actor that what I pray for: to be as affecting and as moving as these kids are capable of being." So in their presence, I don’t know anything about acting.<br /><br />Q: You're also in a segment of Eric Mendelsson's 3 Backyards which screened at The Hamptons Film Festival last week -- a really wonderful film with three separate stories that are interwoven in one way or another. No one story dominates and nor does any one overwhelm the others, so it’s more about the film as a whole. <br /><br />EK: It was a great two weeks of guerilla film-making with people who are really passionate about what they do. Ultimately, it’s a crapshoot whether it comes together in a meaningful, affecting way, but the journey of making [a film like that] that and being entrusted in that [performance] was what I remember. There was a lot of kindness on that set.<br /><br />It’s a small film [which won an award at Sundance where it debuted] and got a little bit of [exposure] in New York [at the New Directors/New Films] in the spring. I’m very proud of it. I’ll be curious to see what your thoughts are [about it]. I haven’t seen the [completed] picture but I’ve heard that it’s kind of like an everyman [story], and if I can tap into that, that’s the toughest part, in relation to what you just said, where you could just be almost everyman in a situation.<br /><br />Now It’s just doing the festival thing and I think this spring it might play some more dates in New York. <br /><br />Q: Sometimes, you have this slightly deranged streak, and yet at the same time, a sympathetic quality. With Vaughan in Crash, he has to be somehow sympathetic to show how he draws them in to his little cult -- that was one reason that it got you so much attention for that role.<br /> <br />EK: That part to me was a metaphor for love and for making the connection. And it doesn’t make sense, but I saw it from a young boy’s perspective with wonderment. Everything that he did was with a sense of wonderment; I haven’t thought about it in 16 years, but that’s what I recall from it. If you leave yourself open to just making discoveries without any sort of preconception then anything can happen.<br /> <br />Q: You’ve done such a range of films. One of the through lines seems to be that you often understand characters who are either pushed to an edge or stand at an edge. Do you feel that’s true?<br /> <br />EK: You know what, I don’t know, man. It’s really in the eye of the beholder. I’m living my life the best way I know how -- try to be curious about things and open, and work through my own neurosis and fears and hopes. And somehow, for some reason that’s beyond me, they translate that way on screen. So where that comes from I don’t really know. I don’t know what it is. I wish I had a better answer.<br /> <br />Q: In capturing the duality of darkness and light, you're in some ways a successor to what Robert De Niro is able to do.<br /> <br />EK: You flatter me putting me in that company. He’s certainly somebody that I admired during my studies and during my career. In response to that I just feel like I haven’t even started yet, so I feel with your thoughtful words and kind words that maybe in my life I’m opening up that ways that would invite different experiences, different roles. <br /> <br />I don’t even know how to explain it; all I know is that I’ve barely begun. It feels that way. I feel like a late bloomer even though I’ve done 70 movies. I just feel like I’m just getting started. It feels that way. So if you can compare me to an actor like that then you flatter me. I should be so lucky.<br /> <br />Q: Reflecting on your career, which roles were linchpins for you?<br /> <br />EK: You want me to think about the roles that I’ve played and how they’ve had some kind of effect on me?<br /> <br />Q: Your relationship with Atom Egoyan -- being in Exotica as well as other of his films The Adjuster and Ararat, -- has been very important. You had to have extreme talent to be able to play that character in that very tough film. Was that a critical role for you, and maybe a chance to make something of a statement?<br /> <br />EK: A lot of these roles that I feel like I’ve had some sort of impact, or that have had an effect on me, have always been with directors who have the time to somehow get to know me. Any good director’s going to be curious about who it is that’s coming aboard. Because of lack of time a lot of directors hope that you just have the character in your pocket and you just show up and do it. and controversial production. Egoyan is very intuitive and he was very inclusive about getting to know you and hanging out. <br /> <br />That breeds an environment that allows you to be open and to sort of explore and to trust. David Cronenberg just left me alone. I kind of somehow knew the role for some reason, and it was just all about finding your light. The whole experience with Crash was I felt like I was in a state of grace. I felt that we were making discoveries as the camera was rolling, and that was very exhilarating. <br /> <br />The Thin Red Line was an experience where, again, the director would get to know you and push you in a way that it’s a tough act to follow. Most directors don’t know -- they don’t really know what questions to ask and how to inspire you. I feel like I’m at my best when there’s a relationship with a director, and you feel safe and that you can fall on your face and make mistakes. I could go on.<br /> <br />Q: Your ability to give yourself to each of those situations allows you to go from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to Shutter Island. You’ve worked with directors like David Fincher and Martin Scorsese who are known for a degree of meticulousness. What do you think they find in you that works with this meticulousness?<br /> <br />EK: With David Fincher first of all, it’s just a blessing that he would see me as the color that he would invite along to help him tell the story. That’s just the luck of the draw. You know people, you’ve done enough work, and you know the right people who would get in touch with you and put you in his line of sight. <br /><br />And so there you are, and you’re scared and nervous and this and that. I consider him like a big pillow. Like if you’re going to be nervous on that day, scared out of your wits, you know you’re going to be there, and you’re going to work through the scene until it happens. <br /> <br />That to me was like a comfort know that you’re not going to move on; you’re going to do it 20, 30, 40 takes, whatever it takes, to make it happen. And he’s such a brilliant filmmaker and storyteller; you could just let it go and just try to do your part and you’ll be taken care of. <br /> <br />With Marty Scorsese, oddly enough I felt like I was home, and I don’t really know how else to describe it. The whole experience of making that film was like going to church almost. It was a very quiet set and then suddenly there you are with all this makeup and everything stops, everything’s in slow motion. There’s Mr. Scorsese and there’s the set and the cinematographer. It’s a little surreal. <br /> <br />You’re plucked out of your own life, and then suddenly you’re thrown into this situation and you’re asked, “Okay, what are you going to do?” I don’t really know how to articulate the adrenaline that is shooting through you at this moment, but somehow you have to remember your whole life has prepared you for this one specific moment, that you are here, you are where you have to be. And Marty Scorsese was just so open to trying a lot of different things, any fear that you have is your own, and he’s there to help you along.<br /> <br />Q: You’ve done two films with David Fincher, so obviously you have some understanding of him. Have you seen his latest? <br /> <br />EK: Social Network? No, I’m going to. It looks pretty interesting.<br /> <br />Q: He’s becoming heralded on a level he didn’t get with Zodiac or even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. What’s the secret of working with him?<br /> <br />EK: I wish I knew. He is an incredibly bright guy, very visual. He knows what he wants. It’s all about rhythm in the scene...He’s very thoughtful and open, but like any creative person, it doesn’t have to be the most comfortable, and sometimes it’s very frustrating. <br /><br />It’s a lot of different things, so some days it can be very difficult, and some days he might not even know what he wants. But that’s all part of the process, so you’ve got to be willing to go through it. <br /> <br />At the end of the day what’s up on that screen is what’s important. I’m so happy for him because I remember when Zodiac came out, it [was the] beginning of the year [but despite] glowing reviews somehow at the end of the year it was like, “Zodiac what?” There wasn’t any sort of acknowledgment, and I thought to myself, What’s at work here? But then it goes beyond that. The guy is able to make his films, and he’s able to tell a story, and the fact that he’s as prolific as he is these past few years is awesome. He’s got a lot to say and he’s just getting started, and I look forward to seeing anything that he does. It’s poetry.<br /> <br />Q: You’ve been in films, sometimes in a critical role or as a supporting figure who understands isolation and alienation, and you deal with directors who show the dark side of humanity, like Michael Winterbottom with The Killer Inside Me, or with James Gray, showing that crazy side in Two Lovers. What is it that you get about these characters? Are you slightly crazy?<br /> <br />EK: I don’t really know…It’s all instinctual…it’s really my makeup I guess, and in some way I’m able to find a voice within my own struggles with why I’m here and what my purpose is and what my conflicts are within myself and family and relationships; whatever it is. <br /> <br />I have an idea of what my own personal demons are, and somehow the more aware I am of those maybe perhaps the work will get even more honest -- and perhaps get close to what those children were doing -- at the tender age of 75. Maybe then I’ll be able to figure it out.<br /> <br />Q: When did you decide you wanted to be an actor?<br /> <br />EK: I don’t know. It was like overnight almost. I was watching Rich Man, Poor Man with my mom, and I was deeply affected by that series for some reason. Nick Nolte’s character blew my mind. There was something about his character that somehow, I don’t know, as a 10-year-old, as a 15-year-old, whatever I was at the time, what I saw in it -- the idea of affecting people. Like I sat and watched after his character was killed; I was crying, I was weeping, I was inconsolable. Somehow there was something about that that wanted me to do that and affect people that way, make them see their own mind. <br /> <br />At the time I didn’t know that; at the time I was more like, Let’s pretend. Let’s make you forget about your life. Let’s entertain you for a while. Let’s tell a good story. You want to be affecting, you want to be doing scenes where when somebody’s watching it they’re not just saying, “Oh wow, what a wonderful scene,” and then go off and have a sandwich. In some way you want to open the door to the view in their own hearts, their own life. To touch someone and make them see themselves perhaps.<br /> <br />Q: But you were able to get outside of yourself.<br /> <br />EK: A lot of times I don’t watch anything that I’m in because I’m going to nitpick it to death or I don’t see it behind the eyes or I could have made that choice or they could have done this. So I don’t even bother. And the fact that I’m able to watch – I saw Let Me In three times in one week, and each time I saw it everybody got better and I got worse. It’s tough, man. I mean Ritchie Coster as the teacher, he was lovely. He had a limited amount of time.<br /> <br />Q: Whom would you like to work with again?<br /> <br />EK: Atom Egoyan, obviously, and David Cronenberg, I would be back there. I’d like to say Terrence Malick because of the arena that he creates and the poetry of his films, but for better or for worse I’m always Captain Staros to him, and I don’t know if he’ll ever see me in any other aspect. And that’s not an indictment; it’s just the way it sometimes is. <br /> <br />Q: You can proudly say you’ve been in both a werewolf and a vampire movie. You’ve covered two of the great iconic…<br /> <br />EK: I grew up watching these guys, man. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, later Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing -- they were my idols as a kid. The outward monster, but then inside there’s this conflict, this battle with one’s good and bad side. Somebody outside looking in, trying to belong, being a freak. <br /> <br />Maybe that has something to do with the kid that was sitting in front of a TV late at night. Maybe I should have been supervised, maybe I shouldn’t have been allowed to watch TV, like endlessly watching horror films. I’m sure that had some sort of weird affect on how I look at the world and how I look at myself in this world.<br /> <br />Q: You've been in ghost stories, played a priest, been in a vampire movie, been in a werewolf film. But I haven’t seen you as a space captain. You’d be the perfect captain of some ship in space dealing with the dark and light sides of encountering aliens.<br /> <br />EK: I don’t mean to be glib but do I have to wear like tight, spandex uniforms? As long as I don’t have to do that then I’ll be okay. I’m taking the question seriously. Hey, you know what, if it’s a good story out there in space. Can you image being out there light years away from earth? Can you imagine what it was like being in that capsule going around and round the moon? You’re just by yourself.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-23833971498359057962010-08-25T14:03:00.000-07:002010-08-27T05:02:39.171-07:00Movie Review: A Trio of Films Offer Inspiration, but Only Two DeliverBy <span style="font-weight:bold;">Brad Balfour</span><br /><br />Two of last weekend's movies served up satisfying, feel-good fare without the pretense of the weighty message that <em>Eat Pray Love</em> promised but failed to deliver. Despite expectations for this big Hollywood production with megastar <strong>Julia Roberts</strong> as author <strong>Elizabeth Gilbert</strong> on her journey of self-enlightenment, the film neither gives much sense of the author's inner odyssey nor elucidates. Mostly we learn that Gilbert was so restless that a cure for her ennui -- sex with a younger man (even one as tousle-haired as <strong>James Franco</strong>) -- didn't do it for her. <br /><br />Viewed through <em>Sex-and-the-City</em>-colored glasses, the film by <em>Glee</em> co-creator <strong>Ryan Murphy</strong> comes off more as a tony travel brochure for Italy, Indian ashrams and Bali than as a source of transcendent insights. The only real journey provided takes us up Robert's ski slope nose, down mounds of spaghetti and into <strong>Javier Bardem</strong>'s soulful eyes, which has its momentary pleasures, but also risks disappointing fans of Gilbert's book. <br /><br />That this antidote to testosterone failed to perform elevated the other pair of films by comparison -- both satisfied for very different reasons.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirAIwd-c2IKqa2NJZWjdA4AoaD-oAiUz84nTJ4jNEd8hL4QHGiTVsP1-s9K2TulN8sG1V1H4FJhhp-CbiWqqIDLUekQ_h5lSs_2qxGJUlOfyV94iCGpTksOxRcgL30xV4A0XTx-Z3yR1T4/s1600/nanny_mcphee.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirAIwd-c2IKqa2NJZWjdA4AoaD-oAiUz84nTJ4jNEd8hL4QHGiTVsP1-s9K2TulN8sG1V1H4FJhhp-CbiWqqIDLUekQ_h5lSs_2qxGJUlOfyV94iCGpTksOxRcgL30xV4A0XTx-Z3yR1T4/s400/nanny_mcphee.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5509456577348374818" /></a>While <em>Nanny McPhee Returns</em> cannot stir great philosophical expectations, it oddly has something of a subversive nature, one far less contrived and conniving than <em>Eat Pray Love</em>. And when it comes to entertaining, <strong>Emma Thompson</strong> and her energetic film do that for both kids and adults. As directed by <strong>Susanna White</strong> -- herself a parent -- <em>Nanny McPhee Returns</em> doesn't look down on kids or parents but reminds us that kids can rise to the occasion, especially when it seems that the adults are overwhelmed and nonplussed.<br /><br />Summoned through the ether, Nanny McPhee appears to straighten out the little brats and put everything right in the world while taking the piss out of those too full of themselves to see beyond their -- or her hugely bulbous -- nose. She means business, but she's not above having fun. As she explains, "Once they want her but no longer need her," she moves on to bring her message elsewhere.<br /><br />Even more fulfilling with all its sentimentality snuggly in place is <em>Mao's Last Dancer</em>, a film couched full of larger issues but in the end, a plain and simple tale of redemption and personal growth.<br /><br />The film has to accomplish a huge amount in scant time: it must create a sense of Mao's China without seeming ideological; it must show the life of Chinese ballet student <strong>Li Cunxin</strong> (played as an adult by dancer <strong>Chi Cao</strong>) in an entertaining fashion without becoming overly technical; and when the narrative shifts from China to the US, it has to show with some depth the conundrums Cunxin faces while trying to making it in a drastically different society. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA6FAM39ZYnvNELRxtqOkTYq7oydCMP7TcpziulTkmkshkvOOZYiZ4atm7QtsExVlXgA1O4xAepg17ptLmhpwzLoNSmdXYfLZiwMrm5e9cFRBB7bBSWGBXbCWvSHSBBiUzrVkaldmup4q8/s1600/MaoOneSheet.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA6FAM39ZYnvNELRxtqOkTYq7oydCMP7TcpziulTkmkshkvOOZYiZ4atm7QtsExVlXgA1O4xAepg17ptLmhpwzLoNSmdXYfLZiwMrm5e9cFRBB7bBSWGBXbCWvSHSBBiUzrVkaldmup4q8/s400/MaoOneSheet.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5510057503979613170" /></a>Thanks to the sure hand of Oscar-winning director <strong>Bruce Beresford</strong>, <em>Mao's Last Dancer</em> succeeds as a cross-cultural drama and finally as an epic of triumph when Cunxin breaks away from both his Chinese and American patrons in Houston. <br /><br />Taking into account all that this film has to cover, the moments when it falls back on easy emotion and tearful melodrama are more than acceptable given the complex elements in the true-story narrative. In any case, I'd rather see the interesting faults of an ambitious film rather than the dull perfections of a cookie-cutter toss-off.<br /><br />The scenes in China were the most compelling, both because they offered a look into a once-closed world and because they presented a sense of what people were like without falling back on cartoonish caricatures seen in other films about the China of this era.<br /><br />Then there's the essential message of the film -- not that Cunxin found love in America or chose our system over Communist China's (though that was the case), but that he negotiated his psychic survival between being a star and subsuming his ego as part of a troupe. Having had it thrummed into his head that he should have no bourgeois aspirations of fame and money, he struggled with his needs as an individual artist vs. his needs as a member of his beloved Chinese family vs his needs as a grateful guest (and later solo performer) of the Houston Ballet. Finding his way to his ego without losing his sense of balance is his, and the film's, great leap forward.<br /><br />For viewers pirouetting down to their local theater, all three films hold out messages of inspiration and aspiration, some more cogently than others.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-50607924279477306812010-07-30T14:20:00.000-07:002010-08-03T10:06:14.208-07:00British Auteur Ken Russell Makes Rare Appearance<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgymdFvWyB0ZnC5SCSv4edWkPuPhuL95CpeYJTCacWdF64S0_zRu1Xjq62C9ylMBqmAnvQXKgc7SskhEMqJZCifvezT_yKp_O0upM7oX1mS2rLl9HB263fBWfroGAD8mK-eM7rSLZHadKUP/s1600/Thedevils1971poster.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 255px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgymdFvWyB0ZnC5SCSv4edWkPuPhuL95CpeYJTCacWdF64S0_zRu1Xjq62C9ylMBqmAnvQXKgc7SskhEMqJZCifvezT_yKp_O0upM7oX1mS2rLl9HB263fBWfroGAD8mK-eM7rSLZHadKUP/s400/Thedevils1971poster.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499812601905614194" /></a>One of the greatest directors of all time, the 83-year-old <strong>Ken Russell</strong>, is enjoying a retrospective at the Lincoln Center Film Society, <em>Russellmania</em>, starting this weekend going on through July 5th. This is one filmmaker who pushed the envelope both creatively and professionally -- and in many ways changed both the face of cinema, inspiring many of my generation both aesthetically and personally,<br /><br />Not only will nearly all of his best films be screened there -- from some of my favorites such as <em>The Devils</em> (1971) and <em>Savage Messiah</em> (1972) -- but some of his most widely acclaimed films such as his Oscar-winning <em>Women in Love</em> (1969) and his extravagant version of The Who's <em>Tommy</em> (1975) will get a proper showing again.<br /><br />More importantly, the eccentric British filmmaker will also make an extended appearance here, spending six nights providing conversations with the audience about several of his most memorable and provocative films. <br /><br />Tonight, he discusses his experiences in making <em>The Devils</em>, his torturously graphic telling of an Inquisition-like persecution inspired by Aldous Huxley's <em>The Devils of Loudon</em> (with Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave). Though he had been in New York not long ago when his production of the play, <em>Mindgame</em>, was seen here, he has not been around the city for such a substantial time to really talk about his work publicly in years.<br /><br />On Saturday, July 31, Russell will answer questions about his sexually ground-breaking version of D.H. Lawrence's <em>Women in Love</em>. The film starred Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, and Alan Bates and is unforgettable for its nude wrestling scene, which showed male genitalia.<br /> <br />On Sunday August 1st, <em>The Boy Friend</em> will screen with Russell in attendance. This is one of his many musically-inspired films, this time harkening back to the Jazz Age starring famous model Twiggy and Glenda Jackson. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7e4s239FHrEtYaCYzxFvtoFR8NlvoHc3HZkD2l1494PWFfEM-ebtVqJ0uGWFaXb0Y5h9lMianrkpIPpHoyGAU6MdNqf9r7u9LI4oPFmRtFcfg1A5yEWn4j0-U-qX4VDMwimB7aay0CJ2y/s1600/Women_in_love.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7e4s239FHrEtYaCYzxFvtoFR8NlvoHc3HZkD2l1494PWFfEM-ebtVqJ0uGWFaXb0Y5h9lMianrkpIPpHoyGAU6MdNqf9r7u9LI4oPFmRtFcfg1A5yEWn4j0-U-qX4VDMwimB7aay0CJ2y/s400/Women_in_love.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5499813105866360402" /></a>On Monday Aug. 2nd, the burly director will join the audience in discussing <em>Mahler</em>, one of his several biographical films inspired by the life of a classical composer. Another one of those fascinating cinematic re-imaginings, <em>Lisztomania</em>, will have Russell on hand this coming Wednesday August, 4th. <br /><br />Finally, on Thursday August 5th, the Film Society will show his incredible visual fantasy version of the Who's landmark rock opera -- to be dissected by director and audience alike.<br /><br />July<br />Friday 30<br />2:00 Women in Love<br />4:30 The Music Lovers<br />7:00 The Devils + conversation<br /> <br />Saturday 31<br />1:00 The Boy Friend<br />3:45 The Devils<br />6:00 The Music Lovers<br />8:15 Women in Love + conversation<br /> <br />August<br />Sunday 1<br />1:15 The Devils<br />3:30 Mahler<br />6:00 Savage Messiah<br />8:15 The Boy Friend + conversation<br /> <br />Monday 2<br />2:30 Savage Messiah<br />4:30 Valentino<br />7:00 Mahler + conversation<br /> <br />Tuesday 3<br />3:30 Lisztomania<br /> <br />Wednesday 4<br />4:30 The Boy Friend<br />7:00 Lisztomania + conversation<br /> <br />Thursday 5<br />2:00 The Boy Friend<br />4:30 The Devils<br />7:00 Tommy + conversationfilmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-11584356750590520862010-07-11T10:46:00.001-07:002010-07-21T11:35:28.169-07:00Alice Braga Battles Predators and Repo Men<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmgQPkyh9O17aWwHGRuqDPWCbEde2MNUryf3KYiL__K35x3P30DqjX0im9SAzh3InI27lZHCs0gF6Nwt4B0zumpFd4X3FyZ-YPUuc7GqZZQ__QCPJzo6yhNLdx3tTp_iWjOaawQ8bSjYb_/s1600/alice-Braga.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmgQPkyh9O17aWwHGRuqDPWCbEde2MNUryf3KYiL__K35x3P30DqjX0im9SAzh3InI27lZHCs0gF6Nwt4B0zumpFd4X3FyZ-YPUuc7GqZZQ__QCPJzo6yhNLdx3tTp_iWjOaawQ8bSjYb_/s400/alice-Braga.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5492706674585452834" /></a> Interview By Brad Balfour<br /><br />Maybe it's because of her Brazilian genes that Alice Braga looks good even when sweaty after a jungle trek. Braga has become the go-to girl for sci-fi action thrillers with another one coming out this year not long after Repo Men -- the recently released Predators. This time, as the bust-ass female lead, IDF sniper Isabelle takes charge -- with co-star Adrien Brody -- of a pack of errant mercs, para-military, rebels and hardcore criminals who are forced to band together in order to survive after they are mysteriously chute-dropped into an unknown tropical forest on a distant world.<br /><br />Chosen because they can kill without conscience, these warriors, some trained, some not, battle a pack of 10-foot-tall Predators who are hunting them as prey. In this vast jungle, these human predators must learn who, or what, they're up against, and test the limits of their abilities, knowledge and wits in a battle of kill or be killed.<br /><br />Having appeared in several films, most notably as Angélica in 2002's highly acclaimed Cidade de Deus. she landed her first U.S. blockbuster with 2007's I Am Legend. Who else has starred in two apocalyptic films about the world's end within a year -- I Am Legend and Blindness (2008) -- and survived.<br /><br />Braga has learned to endure all kinds of abuse whether it's rolling around in slimy traps, or having a hand rammed into her gaping wounds. Maybe because she neither has the tough-as-nail glare of Angelina Jolie or the towering power of Uma Thurman, she suggests both intelligence and vulnerability.<br /><br />Coming from a cinematic family -- her aunt is the great Brazilian actress Sônia Braga -- 27-year-old Alice Braga Moraes got started at eight-years-old being in a yogurt commercial. Besides her native Portuguese, this native of São Paulo, Brazil also speaks English and Spanish, and shows a sort of pluck that propels her career.<br /><br />Q: You've done a lot of futuristic movies lately; do you have an affinity for them? Do you look for science-fiction scripts or do they happen to find you?<br /><br />AB: It was a happy coincidence. It was something that my mom always loved, so I grew up watching those types of films, but it wasn’t something that I focused on. These scripts came to me; I read them, had fun with them and liked them. I really had fun because this type of film really opens a door for your imagination. It was a happy coincidence.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Meeting you here, it's hard to believe they cast you as a tough "guy."</strong><br /><br />AB: Everyone tells me, “You look so much taller in the movies.”<br /><br /><strong>Q: Your character is Israeli military?</strong><br /><br />AB: She is a sniper. She’s a special force lady.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So are you chasing the predators? [chuckles]</strong><br /><br />AB: I’m being chased.<br /><br /><strong>Q: When did you finish it?</strong><br /><br />AB: We wrapped the second week of January [2010].<br /><br />Q: How was that experience?<br /><br />AB: It was great, really nice, a lot of running around -- running for my life as fast as I can. A great cast and crew. The photographer, Gyula Pados, was amazing. It looks really nice and the predators are dark, and really, really, scary.<br /><br />I think the fans are really going to be happy with it, at least I hope so. The director, Nimród Antal, is a fan of the films, so it was like a fan directing us. He was like a kid on set, and having that energy was really special.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Was <em>Predators</em> a tough shoot?</strong><br /><br />AB: It was a fun shoot. It was hard because of the weather conditions -- really cold and working outdoors. But it was a blast, and I think it’s going to be interesting.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwqhP97DgQ7cHNv_OZ_lyMnCe37Lz4MotT84LBFlWHRl9C9eYTOduV80fhuA7AHGirkgFzA_wWJLOJA7AYHZmYcztaLiMa6AeUm66Pd23KTheCFR0F0ZkKe2c40Fx1-Pbx16Mhz0b0tUC8/s1600/alice_predators.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 282px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwqhP97DgQ7cHNv_OZ_lyMnCe37Lz4MotT84LBFlWHRl9C9eYTOduV80fhuA7AHGirkgFzA_wWJLOJA7AYHZmYcztaLiMa6AeUm66Pd23KTheCFR0F0ZkKe2c40Fx1-Pbx16Mhz0b0tUC8/s400/alice_predators.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5492707066260218482" /></a><strong>Q: What’s it like acting next to some guy in a suit?</strong><br /><br />AB: Awesome. Truly, I had so much fun because in <em>I Am Legend</em> they were wearing suits with dots, so it’s like Teletubbies.<br /><br />I remember I took a picture when I met the guys because one of the guys who played the Predator, Derek Mears -- he also played Jason -- he’s so big, and I was next to him barefoot. He’s great. Having someone that tall, that big, with me -- and I’m like 5’3” -- that kind of vibe was great because it gives you [a sense of] that desperation.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What was it like working with such different people on <em>Predators</em>? It has such an interesting collection of actors, like Topher Grace and Adrien Brody.</strong><br /><br />AB: It was great because I think they wanted to do something different. Having Adrien as the hero was not the obvious choice, but he did great. I thought it was a great choice just to play around with acting in an action film.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It was R rated; was it ever going to be a PG-13?</strong><br /><br />AB: I don’t think they could have because there are some [really] dark scenes in it, like any other of this type of film. So I think it’s going to be hard. We never know what’s going to happen or what the studio’s going to do in the editing. But it looks really dark, and I had fun doing it.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Will you get your own action figure for <em>Predators</em>?</strong><br /><br />AB: I hope so. We did the scanning. I don’t know if it was for action scenes or post-production things, but I really hope I have an action figure. I would love that.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you think it one-up the old movies?</strong><br /><br />AB: I don’t know if it will one-up [the original]. I hope it adds up more than anything else. I don’t know if it ones-up the other ones. I think to become successful as the others I think it needs to add up. You cannot try to make something different because then you lose the fans. The best thing is to make a film for the fans. That’s why we’re making it.<br /><br />Q: Is there a possibility to get your own franchise out of this Predators movie?<br /><br />AB: I don’t know. I would love to, but I have no idea. I’m totally open for anything. People ask me, “What type of films do you want to make?” I want to make films. I have a blast when I’m on set. Seriously, I’m a kid, ask anyone that worked with me or saw me on set.<br /><br />Actually, what [director] Fernando Meirelles used to do with me on Blindness is he would keep me for last so that he could keep me on set. He knew that I wouldn’t leave. So if it comes up, definitely I would love to do more action and more stuff. I’m open for any type of acting.<br /><br />Q: Have you talked to Fernando recently? Do you have any idea what he’s going to do next? Are you going to work with him again?<br /><br />AB: I heard that he was going to do something with a Janis Joplin story or something, but I’m not sure. I heard that at a party at midnight in São Paulo, so that’s not a trustful source.<br /><br />He was doing a really wonderful TV series in Brazil about Shakespeare. He’s been writing, and I think he’s probably in pre-production or something. As I was shooting Predators I was away for the past few months so I’m not sure.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrk0GcBDXWarDd0wP51T0SHIA1IgCOhn8b1ddtqVv23Y28jJ0_oHcQfpn2MEA3WrxdVshqaS9q9SABVvugD3tPjFboFx8mDkAW7q5SBj1Eb4NhRXLt8RigSL0Uk2W48yvOAPOKMdxcH1ll/s1600/alice.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 221px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrk0GcBDXWarDd0wP51T0SHIA1IgCOhn8b1ddtqVv23Y28jJ0_oHcQfpn2MEA3WrxdVshqaS9q9SABVvugD3tPjFboFx8mDkAW7q5SBj1Eb4NhRXLt8RigSL0Uk2W48yvOAPOKMdxcH1ll/s400/alice.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5492706981634982514" /></a>Q: If you could work on any action film franchise or remake, do you have that ideal role in your head where you could be another kick-ass character?<br /><br />AB: I never thought about it. I’ve always been a small, short girl so I never thought about myself running around and kicking ass and punching and shooting. In Predators, I’m a sniper and truly, my gun was the heaviest gun on set. It’s 14 pounds and everyone is with a knife, a pistol, and I’m with a [huge] rifle.<br /><br />I totally love the challenge to portray someone like that character. It would be great if something comes up as another action figure. It’s a nice challenge physically and emotionally.<br /><br />Q: Your career seems to be moving not only in a sci-fi direction but in an action film mold. The world needs a really big Latina action star. They’re looking to cast Wonder Woman right now.<br /><br />AB: That’s great! But Wonder Woman is not going to be Latin for sure. With my accent?<br /><br />Q: Linda Carter is half Mexican.<br /><br />AB: Oh yeah but she didn’t have an accent like I do. That would be great though; Wonder Woman Latina. But I did City of God and Lower City and independent projects, and then I did some dramas. It was nice to face a film like Repo Men that has some drama, is a character that has some hard background stories but at the same time is running and training and firing. It’s cool.<br /><br />Q: When did you do <em>Repo Men</em>?<br /><br />AB: Right after, actually. I was shooting <em>Blindness</em> in Toronto and went to LA to audition with Jude [Law, co-star of Repo Men with Forest Whitaker] on a Saturday. Then I went straight back to Toronto to finish <em>Blindness</em>. Then I ended up shooting <em>Repo Men</em> in Toronto again.<br /><br />My mom always asking me, “When are you going to do a romantic-comedy without monsters?” and I’m like, “Okay, that’s coming one day. Let’s work for it.” But this is a happy coincidence.<br /><br />Q: Did you think of yourself as a female Terminator?<br /><br />AB: The way Beth’s going, she probably can be a Terminator because the only thing’s real are the lips.<br /><br />Q: One of those scenes near the end where he’s taking the parts out of you is really sick but also sexy in its own way. It recalls the movie <em>Crash</em>. In filming that scene, how did you play it so that it was both passionate but kind of sick and crazy at the same time?<br /><br />AB: When Miguel told me that he wanted to do that scene as a love scene I couldn’t picture it. Once we started doing it I was just trying to figure out how to play it, not to be overly painful or only love and forget the pain. I tried to stay in the middle and to just bring truth.<br /><br />It’s interesting that both characters are so in love and they’re fighting for their lives, yet they’re so connected at that moment in the film. I think pain and love go together. If you’re in love, you’re going to feel pain and the passion increases the pain.<br /><br />It’s hard to explain with a logical answer, but mainly I do think that’s what Miguel wanted, and I tried to put my heart into it and just bring it alive. It was fun to do it because it was so free to create anything. We are in sexual positions actually; it’s like we're making love. It was a great idea.<br /><br />Q: Do you think your character, Beth, in <em>Repo Men</em> was plagued by a love for the surgery? Do you think she was addicted to the surgery or she was just going along trying to fix things?<br /><br />AB: Miguel [Rosenberg-Sapochnik, the director,] and I spoke a lot about her past, about what she’s been through, what happened in her life, what was her background, why was she in that situation when we first see her in the film, just because I love doing that and Miguel also was really involved in the story.<br /><br />We wanted to understand what kind of emotional state she would show up in. It’s just life; we created a little background, like some disease, some problem, some lack of health, addictions maybe. As soon as she started getting new ones then it became an addiction I think, because it’s kind of hard to say she had all those problems. It was mainly an addiction, but it’s hard to say that it was only that.<br /><br />There was a line that ended up not in the film but is really fun. I looked at him and was like, “Did you get upgraded? Come on!” And that kind of line shows that she was always trying to keep up. It’s like us; you guys don’t have tape anymore.<br /><br />We’re always upgrading, always doing something new. Everyone has the iPhone; in a week everyone’s going to have the iPad. We’re always upgrading all the time, so I feel that’s what Beth did. And it’s nice. If someone’s boring talking to you, just turn it down.<br /><br />Q: How do you find the right level of empathy for a character that has so much of her body turned over to science and is a drug addict and does all those deals? How far do you go to make that character empathetic, and where do you stop?<br /><br />AB: Empathetic in what sense?<br /><br />Q: You want people to feel sorry for her so that you worry about her, but where do you stop? Because you also want her to be tough.<br /><br />AB: I don’t know if I want people to feel sorry for her. I never felt sorry for her. I always try to not judge the characters that I portray. I try to just understand, and get meaning and belief in the characters. But I always tried to make her as human as possible.<br /><br />All of us endure pain, sadness, loss. Life is not only happiness. But on the other hand, you can find love or happiness, or you can find anything else, so that’s the change she goes through her life. She’s giving up on herself when he finds her and that’s why I punch him in the face and am like, “Why? Why did you do that? You’re not going to save me right now. You’re going to go away.”<br /><br />Who knows, maybe 10 guys did with her, or her family did with her, we don’t know. I just tried to create a character that was human more than anything. I think feeling pity is a really strong thing to feel for someone.<br /><br />Q: Apparently, in the book version, your character had cancer which ravaged most of her body? Her husband at the time had been a doctor, so she got a discount, which is why she got so many body part upgrades -- he was just trying to keep her alive. By that time she was 74% artificial, and he couldn’t be with her anymore.<br /><br />AB: [Miguel] didn’t say anything. No but I wish he did. The script was so different in a sense, so we tried to build the story and background. There were a lot of different versions of Beth and Remy’s love story in the beginning, and then it changed through the course of the film until we started shooting.<br /><br />Q: Miguel said your character started out in a different relationship with Remy. What’s your reaction as an actress? You play a part a certain way, and then it’s edited and somehow it works in a completely other way that you hadn’t intended. What did you think when you see that?<br /><br />AB: My mom’s an editor, so I totally understand editors, which is great -- It helps. I’m kidding. I grew up in this world. My father’s a journalist, but he directed a lot of TV shows in Brazil. I never think too much about what they’re going to do. I always try to grab the script and learn it by heart and focus on that, and whatever they want to do later they can do it. I don’t mind.<br /><br />I’m passionate for the story and being part of something. That’s the most important thing. Funnily enough, in <em>Repo Men</em>, I prefer what I saw on the screen than what we shot. It works really nice. I don’t know how, because we had such a background in our minds –- me and Jude, Beth and Remy –- all the time that drove us through the journey towards the end of the film, and once we cut the part before they meet, where we meet them in the film, it could have gone wrong.<br /><br />What is great is that it was done perfectly, and it was even better. I’m glad he took it off because the story is even sharper. I think more important than you as an actor is the storytelling. Of course as an actor you want to show your work, you want to be on screen, but being part of a nice story, it’s really special. So I do think as an actress you need to know how to understand and how to put yourself into it. Everything matters; don’t take anything for granted. Be present in the moment. That’s the best thing to do.<br /><br />Q: At the end you’re still alive. Is there hope for a sequel that would include you?<br /><br />AB: Maybe. I'll give you Universal’s number so you can ask them. Then I’ll give you mine, and you call me. I have no idea what they think of it. I don’t think so. I think the story’s done.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-88875795925420400502010-07-03T06:50:00.001-07:002010-07-21T03:47:00.307-07:00Actress Christian Serratos Stays Human in The Twilight Saga<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgftK1ZZqq-_WOxVjHQfTAZ3V8LJ7Zs0Ewbo8PxDGU8_24ihHrFXGUXxWUoXmPtaQUPANseQSMaWGOduGhH2yF0DOnDIxI9UcZHHxbLqWYmhXHDal1lgHdVSxaF8AbeQf_f24cg5W6MpzV3/s1600/chris+serratos.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgftK1ZZqq-_WOxVjHQfTAZ3V8LJ7Zs0Ewbo8PxDGU8_24ihHrFXGUXxWUoXmPtaQUPANseQSMaWGOduGhH2yF0DOnDIxI9UcZHHxbLqWYmhXHDal1lgHdVSxaF8AbeQf_f24cg5W6MpzV3/s400/chris+serratos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489679121762300770" /></a>Exclusive Interview by <span style="font-weight:bold;">Brad Balfour</span><br /><br />As the ardor heats up for <span style="font-style:italic;">The Twilight Saga: Eclipse</span>, its leads and various beasties such as the vampires and werewolves, it's easy to forget all the humans except that most desired one -- <span style="font-weight:bold;">Kristen Stewart</span>'s Bella. But there are the others, from the ever-surging actress <span style="font-weight:bold;">Anna Kendrick</span> as head geek Jessica to <span style="font-weight:bold;">Billy Burke</span> as poppa Swan<br /><br />And then there's actress <strong>Christian Serratos</strong>'s bespectacled Angela Webber, who kind of reflects the film's own core girl-geek squad. <br /><br />After the 20-year-old Serratos made it into <em>The Twilight Saga</em>, she started to tour the con circuit making sure that the humans other than Bella weren't forgotten. So she made it to New York last October, to Anaheim this April and has had time to bare all for PETA. And her few moments of screen time in the installments reveals real flashes of talent -- part of what she discusses in this exclusive interview conducted during one of those con excursions. <br /><br />Though she has limited screen time again in the third installment, she does have this incredible ringside seat to see this Virgin-Vamp saga emerge and see how everyone has evolved in doing it. As close up to the center of the media circus as anyone, Serratos has not only witnessed the Twilight phenomenon from the inside out, she has felt the glare of that white hot spotlight that Kris Stewart and <strong>Rob Pattinson</strong> have been subjected to throughout.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Now that you know the characters, do you just go with it or do you rehearse?</strong><br />CS: We definitely go over our stuff, our lines and work together, even off-set when we want to. The only real rehearsals are to get the stunts down. So the Cullens and the vampires have to deal with that.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did the mood on set change over time since everyone was already like a family, or was there more pressure because of the success?</strong><br /><br />CS: If anything, it went the other way. Once everyone realized how intense it was, everyone calmed down and relaxed. "Let's not think about it. Let's just do what we're here to do, make the fans happy and go home."<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdSPEHv2lStOlPOBlbNhoTj3y9ri3-LzF-K1oVV0riFnFBwWAFE4Wy-FU8wWeN6IQbuJBYIDtDrOJjtcidzb-nMvzGcxsupWUWuTxV5ofTcQFIuEbfVw4zqFUqpd1Sw71ojnzh3m4TAoCF/s1600/chris_serratos.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 338px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdSPEHv2lStOlPOBlbNhoTj3y9ri3-LzF-K1oVV0riFnFBwWAFE4Wy-FU8wWeN6IQbuJBYIDtDrOJjtcidzb-nMvzGcxsupWUWuTxV5ofTcQFIuEbfVw4zqFUqpd1Sw71ojnzh3m4TAoCF/s400/chris_serratos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489678958160907986" /></a><strong>Q: Are the scripts tight or are there some things you get to make up while you're shooting?</strong><br /><br />CS: A lot of the improv was literally us trying to make each other mess up. It ended up working. It's really cool. It's funny to see what scenes they end up taking.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It seems like all the actors have built a real sense of family.</strong><br /><br />CS: It has.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Your character lasts throughout the series so you're there for the long haul.</strong><br /><br />CS: Yeah. It's been great. Everyone is definitely close knit. Everyone is family, we all take care of each other. We all pick on each other and so it's great. I love everyone.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you feel you learned anything from the more experienced actors on <em>Twilight</em>?</strong><br /><br />CS: Peter [Facinelli] who plays the dad, Dr. Carlisle -- he's pretty fatherly on set. But we all learn from each other.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you crack each other up on the set?</strong><br /><br />CS: Yes. They're not specifically planned, we just mess with each other in general. I'm usually picked on the most. I'm not kidding. I'm an easy target. They like to mess with me.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What did you do to immerse yourself in the whole vampire universe?</strong><br /><br />CS: What was really cool about this particular project is that we didn't have to. I mean, we did and we could, but we had the book.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So you read the book beforehand</strong>?<br /><br />CS: Oh, yeah.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Some people advise that you shouldn't read the book before the role and others go the other way.</strong><br /><br />CS: I couldn't help it. I remember being on the third one, and the fourth wasn't going to come out for another week or so. I could not possibly read just one page a day. I would go through a hundred pages a day. So I would force myself to just do one page a day, because I had to have my daily dose, but I didn't want to finish because I didn't want to have to wait.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Have you met the <em>Twilight</em> series' author Stephanie Meyer?</strong><br /><br />CS: Yeah, she comes to the set a lot. She's really hands on. She's really cool. I got a chance to meet her kids and talk to her about the movie and how she came up with it. She's really nice.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you ever discussed your character with her?</strong><br /><br />CS: Yeah. She gave me solid little tips and stuff and told us little tidbits about our characters. I think that a lot of what she told us is now in the public and so everyone really knows the inside stuff.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX-_27cSE7g8jCDsxhHlq6uunXfB5vKvU-uA0VKYaaGXLJw2yepcSciedroCjiMD7ARtNTaICW7EW36MOd6L-W-n7MbetrtwxftfYp4RjFRuXw5Rc_wQR6qnTrFDSeoBKCMcbqOtD1mfBM/s1600/eclipse-twilight.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 231px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX-_27cSE7g8jCDsxhHlq6uunXfB5vKvU-uA0VKYaaGXLJw2yepcSciedroCjiMD7ARtNTaICW7EW36MOd6L-W-n7MbetrtwxftfYp4RjFRuXw5Rc_wQR6qnTrFDSeoBKCMcbqOtD1mfBM/s400/eclipse-twilight.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494645327667276562" /></a><strong>Q: Who is your favorite <em>Twilight</em> character?</strong><br /><br />CS: It would probably be Edward. Edward and Alice. He's like the perfect guy ever and [she] is pretty, sassy and cool. She's got a lot of great one-liners.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Have you seen other vampire movies?</strong><br /><br />CS: Yeah, I've seen other vampire things, but not necessarily for research.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you see Daybreakers, where the blood supply is disappearing and all the vampires are going to die because they're losing their food supply?</strong><br /><br />CS: That sounds cool. I definitely want to go watch some of the other vampire flicks. I guess I have to go see that.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What do you think of all these vampire TV shows like <em>True Blood</em> and <em>Vampire Diaries</em>?</strong><br /><br />CS: I think it's cool. A vampire phenomenon. I have not watched any of them. I really want to get into <em>True Blood</em> because that's the one that everyone talks about.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you have any dream projects you'd like to do?</strong><br /><br />CS: Sure. I'm very open to anything. I'd love to play someone who's insane or something, just so I can go flake out. I like a superhero. I know that's ironic. That's where we are, but seriously, it'd be really cool to play a superhero.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Are you an anime fan?</strong><br /><br />CS: Not really. I'm not a really big comic book person. I know the typical ones -- Spider-Man and Wonder Woman and Storm and that stuff. But don't quiz me, because I'm not good at things like that.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Are you a fan of any specific characters</strong>?<br /><br />CS: I guess if anything, it would be [I Love] Lucy. I do have a lot of Lucy stuff.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What about being in a Lucy biopic</strong>?<br /><br />CS: That would be so cool. I know every single episode. The newer stuff would be <em>Friends</em>. I've seen every episode one too many times. I watch them for like the fifth time, each episode, and I still think they're funny.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You seem to have your share of one-liners. Do you have a comic side to you?</strong><br /><br />CS: Yeah. That's how I started.<br /><br /><strong>Q: When you think about your next project, do you want to look for a comedy, coming off of <em>Twilight</em>?</strong><br /><br />CS: I really like comedy. I'm into doing comedy. It'd be fun. [And] I would definitely like to do something a little more dramatic.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you also sing?</strong><br /><br />CS: I do. I took a break from that when I got <span style="font-style:italic;">Twilight</span> because it took up a big chunk of time. I'm going to get back at that, though. <br /><br /><strong>Q: What are your influences?</strong><br /><br />CS: I listen to the Mars Volta and Fiona Apple every day. I feel if you do write music, you write what you listen to and you couldn't possibly write in another genre. So those are the two that I usually use.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Have you thought of bridging the two interests and doing musicals?</strong><br /><br />CS: That would be really cool. It would have to be a really bomb musical.<br /><br /><strong>Q: A vampire musical?</strong><br /><br />CS: A vampire musical. That would be really cool. I'd be down for something like that. It would have to be something really creepy, like <em>Repo The Genetic Opera</em>. I feel if it's going to be a musical, it has to be really edgy.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Can you imagine a <span style="font-style:italic;">Twilight</span> musical?</strong><br /><br />CS: Imagine Robert [Pattinson] singing as Edward Cullen? That would be cool.<br /><br /><strong>Q: The emotions in the film would [work] for breaking out into song.</strong><br /><br />CS: I feel that, too. It's actually funnier when you really think about it.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Who else do you admire?</strong><br /><br />CS: I love Sandra Bullock. I think she's really cute. Chelsea Handler, although she's more of a comedian, but I still really love her. Ian McGregor--love him. Parker Posey. So many.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you have actors you admire that you want to work? I can see you doing something on the order of Parker Posey, who does all kinds of interesting roles.</strong><br /><br />CS: Right, and that's why I love her. There's nothing ordinary about the things that she picks. I think that you have to have guts to do some of things that she's done.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What would be the one person, the one choice that you think would be most unlikely?</strong><br /><br />CS: Probably Parker Posey. She's probably number one on my list, but I think that's the most unusual because of the things she chooses.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Are there directors that you want to work with?</strong><br /><br />CS: Gus Van Sant would be really awesome. I like Gus Van Sant. I like Steven Soderberg. The guy that did Pan's Labyrinth -- Guillermo del Toro. And Steven Spielberg, naturally, just because he's Steven Spielberg. <br /><br />But there's a whole list of people. I wanted to work with Catherine Hardwicke before I got to work with Catherine Hardwicke. So I got to check that off my list and that was really cool.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Would you work with her again?</strong><br /><br />CS: Oh God, yeah. I love Catherine.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Who do you get excited about meeting in the business?</strong><br /><br />CS: The J's from America's Next Top Model. I saw them at this US Weekly party and they were fabulous. I couldn't even go up to them. I just wanted to watch them, how they work, so that I can imitate it. They're so cool. Love that show,<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you get recognized a lot for <em>Twilight</em> or even for <em>Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide</em>?</strong><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNLXGolN6E4MavPW_uNyocGISt_EZohlV26fKq4bZkv_TZ9v_uX3kPBgVz_pEK1DvmQOtudJ_ZOSjN6luRebPOti5Iwd_FWN8AJ8-uMjJ4K1G8b0n2T5ko4jSOb4aHrl3f9Tq4xEIvIDHs/s1600/New_Moon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNLXGolN6E4MavPW_uNyocGISt_EZohlV26fKq4bZkv_TZ9v_uX3kPBgVz_pEK1DvmQOtudJ_ZOSjN6luRebPOti5Iwd_FWN8AJ8-uMjJ4K1G8b0n2T5ko4jSOb4aHrl3f9Tq4xEIvIDHs/s400/New_Moon.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489679221592916354" /></a>CS: It's usually when I'm in a <em>Twilight</em>-oriented environment. I do a lot of the Twi-Cons and I get recognized a lot. But I don't wear my glasses on a daily basis. Those are the ones that I wore in the film. So it's pretty easy. I just take off my glasses.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You haven't had to suffer too much from the press, right?</strong><br /><br />CS: Not too bad. There have been a couple of incidents. You think that you can ease into it. Not with this project. It's going to be hardcore.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you keep the fans in mind while making the film?</strong><br /><br />CS: Absolutely. When we first started working on it, we all did our research. We went online and saw what the fans had to say because this is definitely a fan movie. We love the fans.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Has there been something that a fan did that made you nervous?</strong><br /><br />CS: There was one guy in Vancouver. I don't even think he was fan. I didn't get close enough to ask. He sat outside our place. We had a Starbucks across the street, so we'd go over there every day. He would follow me.<br /><br />My friend came into town and I told her about it. We were having fun with it and trying to get away from him. We went behind the Starbucks into the alley, to go home because it connected. So we were strolling along, cracking up because we lost him. All of a sudden, he comes up the alley.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you think about not taking parts that give you a high profile?</strong><br /><br />CS: You're definitely right, yeah.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You were on <em>Hannah Montana</em>?</strong><br /><br />CS: I was on one episode and in one scene. Alexa -- that was the character's name. I was having a party and I wanted to invite everyone, and that was it.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Was it a big adjustment living in Vancouver?</strong><br /><br />CS: No, I love traveling. I love going to other places. It may be hard when I get there, like it was in Germany. I don't care. I like seeing a new place.<br /><br />Sometimes we're only there for a millisecond and all you get to see is things on a taxi ride to the airport. I still think it's cool. You walk away with souvenirs, like different currencies and stuff. That's fun.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitudhhKALni0wYRXsvSGguRs18MEfGNmSUSPSYp9ieCBXOGQUmYl1eDrMUDVqDxLQSifJ_fwZITygWk1teVtYi6hO821q_62aHwcKMCyP45DcqYZLLhUOHXPadouPrlk1ViH6HGp2Ib21w/s1600/chrisSerratos.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 304px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitudhhKALni0wYRXsvSGguRs18MEfGNmSUSPSYp9ieCBXOGQUmYl1eDrMUDVqDxLQSifJ_fwZITygWk1teVtYi6hO821q_62aHwcKMCyP45DcqYZLLhUOHXPadouPrlk1ViH6HGp2Ib21w/s400/chrisSerratos.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489758067522368322" /></a><strong>Q: What's the furthest you've traveled so far?</strong><br /><br />CS: Germany. It's so cool. They have amazing architecture. That place is beautiful.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you get jet lag traveling all over the world?</strong><br /><br />CS: I don't anymore. I think I've gotten use to forcing myself to fall asleep at a certain time because I have to wake up early.<br /><br />There are definitely days where I feel too tired and I feel my body can't take it and I feel like I'm going to pass out. Other days I'm just stoked.<br /><br />You have to wake up around 4:00 in the morning because we have 4:00 A.M. pick-ups. So sometimes we're like, "No, we're not getting up." That's why it's really cool to have everyone living next door to you in this big house. They just bang on your door. I don't know how many times we've woken up each other banging on the door, half asleep, saying, "Get up."<br /><br />Q: How much time do you have in between to do other projects and what opportunities has this opened up for you?<br /><br />CS: It's opened up a lot of doors. There are a lot of opportunities that get shot our way, which is great. But they've been doing these so quickly that no one really has time to do anything else. When they do, it's very planned out and very coordinated. So there's really no time for random things.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You started out pretty much as a kid. How does it feel maturing through this whole process? Do you take it less serious because you see it for what it is?</strong><br /><br />CS: I don't think I take it less seriously...<br /><br /><strong>Q: Will you do more risky roles, ones with more sexuality or nudity in them?</strong><br /><br />CS: I don't know about that. But I don't mind risqué or edgy. Nudity? I feel it's super-important when it comes to some projects, and I feel it's completely ridiculous and stupid when it comes to other. So it would definitely depend.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-89153966656863280192010-07-01T14:23:00.000-07:002010-07-03T06:49:57.223-07:00A Very Different Elvis & Madona Hit the Film Festival Screen<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-g2YjIPKThLzohJSTnCZ4BoLh-vV8XURqNYvzNC2H206wwjTnGMO4pkPV4LQ2A5_kxpcCB3XYnP_EkiB_iQ863Nqfr-i55D6cAOlHlWfg_c7AvtsenHDyjzDaajoFMJBIlC9UIEPwP0f-/s1600/e&m.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 353px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-g2YjIPKThLzohJSTnCZ4BoLh-vV8XURqNYvzNC2H206wwjTnGMO4pkPV4LQ2A5_kxpcCB3XYnP_EkiB_iQ863Nqfr-i55D6cAOlHlWfg_c7AvtsenHDyjzDaajoFMJBIlC9UIEPwP0f-/s400/e&m.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489052767809032226" /></a>Interview by Brad Balfour<br /><br />When the 8th Cine Fest Petrobras Brasil screened its 15 films in June, it wasn't the end of this traveling festival but only the beginning. As part of a growing trend this fest has become a huge promoter of Brazilian cinema worldwide. The fest moves to Vancouver in July (from the 15th to 18th ), then Miami in August 13th to 21st , and on to London (Sept. 1st - 5th) , Montevideo (Sept. 23th - 29th) Buenos Aires (Oct. 14th - 20th) Rome (Nov. 24th - 28th ) Madrid (Nov. 30th - Dec. 4th ) and finally, Barcelona (Dec 10th - 16th).<br /><br />Among the films seen during the festival (and earlier at the Tribeca Film Fest) was <em>Elvis and Madona</em> -- an off-beat, low-budget, sort-of romantic comedy timely in a special way. In light of the recent GayPride celebrations and the-soon-to-be-released <em>The Kids Are All Right</em>, it also envisions an alternative family, Brazilian style. Enhanced by a serious social message as well, with a bit more drama and soap opera (it's a lot less Almodovar and a lot more tele-novella) <em>Elvis and Madona</em> is more than a broad domestic-borne rom-com. <br /><br />Though promoted as a unique, fun comedy, <em>Elvis & Madona</em> offered some controversy for members of the gay and lesbian crowd and garnered some critical razzes as well.<br /><br />Written and directed by straight director <strong>Marcelo Lafitte</strong>, the film lightheartedly posits an enduring romance between a transvestite-maybe-transsexual hairdresser and his young bi-sexual lover who get knocked up so they live together struggling to produce his drag show. If successful it end all their financial troubles and make for a functional family.<br /><br />Set in the vibrant Copacabana district of Rio de Janiero, Elvis and Madona's unlikely love help them chase dreams, deal with the obstacles that arise along the way and fulfill Madona's plans for a spectacular drag show that redeems everyone. <br /><br />At audience Q&As, the film prompted its share of contention and praise for unique sexual stance. And director was bothered that so many descriptions of the movie (even in Tribeca's program) described Madona as a drag performer. The director pointed out to audience and critics alike that in Brazil, they would call Madona a transvestite not drag queen though it's not sure he saw the distinction between transvestite and trannie.<br /><br />Through the haze of terrible interpreter and a couple of prickly journalists, Lafitte tried to set the record during a small roundtable held in May.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhILhBSYEurLQlPCPKNqi9LDkZGBuFTqxjWEJg-hliWFCsHGAk4lrPOvfCJDFkfg8dcK57kpYxxF94qkUua5lEWc6Ii0uOSqjcUzmtG0Kw4mtJ7lmuEZCkn6NqgP8XFyILVTTRkBQV704nT/s1600/m&i.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 370px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhILhBSYEurLQlPCPKNqi9LDkZGBuFTqxjWEJg-hliWFCsHGAk4lrPOvfCJDFkfg8dcK57kpYxxF94qkUua5lEWc6Ii0uOSqjcUzmtG0Kw4mtJ7lmuEZCkn6NqgP8XFyILVTTRkBQV704nT/s400/m&i.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489052131102013266" /></a> [Marcelo & Igor (r)]<br /><strong>Q: So what prompted you to make this as your first feature film? </strong><br /><br />ML: This film had been [brewing] in me for a long time. I came out of doing documentaries; I even used to be the president of the Association of Documentary Filmmakers but I also did four shorts before <em>Elvis & Madona</em>. Though my name is so strongly associated with being a documentary filmmaker, for seven years I have been doing fiction films; I did the four fiction shorts because I thought it was important before I did this feature film because all the learning I acquired.<br /><br /><strong>Q: But why this theme?</strong><br /><br />ML: I wrote the script for <em>Elvis & Madona</em> a long time ago, in 2001, when I did my first short film. That’s when it came to me. I had been to a show with a transvestite and there was this story about a transvestite that had left his hometown as a man and years later comes back and he’s a [drag queen]. His father had remarried and he falls in love with the daughter of his father's new wife and he’s madly in love. That’s how I [got the idea] for <em>Elvis & Madona </em>back then. <br /><br />At first, my idea was to get a real transvestite/transsexual to do this, but then it was like where is the right one? I was searching and it was in the air but 10 days before the date when I had to have someone cast as Madona I was introduced to Igor [Cotrim] by a common friend and there you go.<br /><br /><strong>Q: The chemistry between Elvis and Madona is the whole fabric of the film. Was the audition process was complicated?</strong><br /><br />ML: It was of no use to find the ideal Elvis or ideal Madona if there was no chemistry between them. At the end of the day, it had to be Elvis <u>and</u> Madona. They go together.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So this has been a long process? </strong><br /><br />ML: It’s taken 10 years to make this movie. This is a movie of a lot of struggle and making dreams come true. And in a way, the film also talks about this: people trying to find and realize their dream.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So who is this movie made for? Is it for heterosexuals to enjoy lifestyles of people they may not understand.</strong><br /><br />It's to reach for this social inclusion. And yes, there is this tendency in society to look at this issue and bring about the need for the social inclusion. <br /><br /><strong>Q: Though many people feel they’re born a homosexual or a lesbian, It does not mean that they’re incapable of having sex with the opposite sex, and your comedy is about how that can happen. But in the eyes of some viewers, it could be seen as though you're saying, "Oh they just have to find the right opposite sex person to balance them out.</strong><br /><br />ML: My gay and lesbian friends in Brazil love the movie because they feel that it shows it as normal. The way it’s treated, the way it’s shown, it’s like everything is normal. Not only in Brazil, in Melbourne too, where the film has been seen, the gay and lesbian communities, and friends, they all liked it because they like how the normality, how the issue is approached. But in Sao Paulo, one lesbian came to say, “You are homophobic! Because at the end of the day what you’re saying is that a man can only be happy with a woman.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD9PSg7S86Jr_QT0e8skPmGaHtIrX9u9D7wg8pfpu7OM45KQvcA6rGZykvW1VHrLgE7nArE1jF2i8gx0BTqJZdmLgzG_N_aZFNPep13VlcZSuSMDviTh-giyiMdOG9cVU10Q45jj0MkxqM/s1600/Elvis-&-Madona.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD9PSg7S86Jr_QT0e8skPmGaHtIrX9u9D7wg8pfpu7OM45KQvcA6rGZykvW1VHrLgE7nArE1jF2i8gx0BTqJZdmLgzG_N_aZFNPep13VlcZSuSMDviTh-giyiMdOG9cVU10Q45jj0MkxqM/s400/Elvis-&-Madona.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489053754262761746" /></a><strong>Q: You were confronted by someone who is offended by the film, she’s making a serious critique. Without sloughing it off, how do you as an artist and filmmaker -- trying to do something serious in this movie -- reflect upon that kind of criticism?</strong><br /><br />ML: Maybe this person didn’t really get the idea of the film. Or maybe even she didn’t even get the idea of herself. If 99% of the people got it or enjoyed it and 1% was offended and hurt by it, there’s something being said right there. <br /><br />The one thing that is the mission of this film, and my mission as an artist who created it, is that it’s bringing about the debate, the issue to be approached. My mission as an artist is not to create the truth, a truth that he doesn’t even have himself, but just being able to bring the issues up to the discussion table and have people face it. <br /><br />Obviously Madona's tale is like a fable, that maybe in real life you’re not going to find a story like this, but maybe there will be a story like it. So it’s like a reference.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-9382578299693928852010-06-28T10:06:00.001-07:002010-06-28T10:14:25.034-07:00Salivating at The Summer Fancy Food Show<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjtEg8GmNfYlrA61a_567uWDMjr1NPDXeeRfMgjc9wZbYZPaP82G9N35x5011FC5hwoD4xp1enzHGLiGgOs00N_1yOyzXlfJJkgiADR61MFVKLEeNcdtbahYESBu9cPWDRwsQ5osRw0RXL/s1600/sofi-09.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 233px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjtEg8GmNfYlrA61a_567uWDMjr1NPDXeeRfMgjc9wZbYZPaP82G9N35x5011FC5hwoD4xp1enzHGLiGgOs00N_1yOyzXlfJJkgiADR61MFVKLEeNcdtbahYESBu9cPWDRwsQ5osRw0RXL/s400/sofi-09.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5487872062673780274" /></a>Of the many events I have attended at the Javits Center, the one that really stirs the juices is the Fancy Food Show. A phantasmagoria of every style of condiment, sauce, chocolate bars and various packaged smoked salmons among the many foods sampled there, the Summer Fancy Food Show provides an incredible education for any journalist or professional foodie in the edible delights of a region or a country. The show takes over the NYC's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center June 27 – 29, 2010.<br /><br />On the primary show floor, pavilions from countries such as France or Spain, or international distributors dominate and one can taste every variety of olive oil or pasta possible while sampling some new soda concoction or organic food phenomenon.<br /><br />As the largest marketplace for specialty food in North America, this event showcases food trends as they become packaged, frozen or dried, this show reflects also the growing inclination towards the organic and sustainable -- all a good thing in this word of the artificial and chemicalized. This show is for those who want the best and the brightest and can get a chance to taste it.<br /><br />To quote their own literature: "Since 1955, the Fancy Food Shows have been North America’s largest specialty food and beverage marketplace. Between the Winter Show in San Francisco and the Summer Show in New York City, the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade events bring in more than 40,000 attendees from more than 80 countries to see 260,000 innovative specialty food products, such as confections, cheese, coffee, snacks, spices, ethnic, natural, organic and more.<br /><br />The NASFT is a not-for-profit trade association established in 1952 to foster commerce and interest in the specialty food industry. Today there are more than 2,900 member companies in the U.S. and abroad. <br />Only NASFT Members can exhibit at the Shows, where retailers, restaurateurs, distributors and others discover innovative, new food and beverage products. The Shows are attended by every major food buying channel, influential members of the trade and consumer press and other related businesses."<br /><br />In addition to the two show floors, NASFT has scheduled the gala sofi™ Awards ceremony to take place tonight at the 56th Summer Show with internationally recognized executive chef Dan Barber to keynote<br /><br />The sofi Awards recognize excellence in specialty foods and beverages in 33 categories and are considered the top honor in the $60 billion specialty food industry. “sofi” stands for Specialty Outstanding Food Innovation.<br /><br />The awards are the highlight of the Show, and Barber, a prominent figure in the artisan and local food movement, was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2009. He co-owns the restaurants Blue Hill in New York City and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., and is a board member of the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture.<br /><br />In honor of Barber's appearance at the sofi Awards, NASFT will donate his speaking fee to City Harvest, New York’s only food rescue program and the Fancy Food Show’s charity of choice for the past 20 years, and to the Stone Barns Center. <br /><br />Barber is a member of City Harvest’s Food Council. Since 2007 alone, exhibitors at the Summer Fancy Food Show have donated more than half a million pounds of high-quality food to City Harvest, enough to fill 13 tractor trailers. The show donation has long been the largest single donation of perishable food to City Harvest each year. <br /><br />The sofi Awards will be presented June 28, 2010, at 5 p.m. at the Javits Center.<br /><br />For more information and to purchase tickets, goto www.fancyfoodshows.com/attend.<br /><br />The Fancy Food Show is a trade event open to members of the specialty food trade only.<br /><br />For more information on the NASFT and its Fancy Food Shows, go to www.specialtyfood.com.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-56447478751382327112010-06-16T22:49:00.001-07:002010-07-22T18:27:18.984-07:00Vincent Natali Fashion a Sci-Fi Horror Hybrid in Splice<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO17bPuUwCUL9veP5CfssXC1zWaEWAtFltLQD2-cwhxH_-ThM1xGl808yebbyImNb-ZctR04Ul-BBdNo9dvE46Gx8yTyczE65WmqCKs7It_zMswsT72xH4BTo0Fn48eufgPvgCJjfAyb3J/s1600/vin-naf.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 303px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO17bPuUwCUL9veP5CfssXC1zWaEWAtFltLQD2-cwhxH_-ThM1xGl808yebbyImNb-ZctR04Ul-BBdNo9dvE46Gx8yTyczE65WmqCKs7It_zMswsT72xH4BTo0Fn48eufgPvgCJjfAyb3J/s400/vin-naf.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483616904653077618" /></a>Exclusive Interview by Brad Balfour<br /><br /> Every year at the Sundance Film Festival, the Sloan Foundation gives out special awards to filmmakers and screenwriters who craft a project with a science underpinning. Splice could have been one of those films with its forceful depiction of actual science at work.<br /><br />Genetic modification scares the bejeezus out of people. They don’t want to allow such manipulation of humans, and least of all, cloning. But in Splice, the implications of such fiddling go beyond mere medical expediency. Such holding creates a being beyond human control.<br /><br /> Famed young scientists Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) have a talent for splicing DNA from different animals into bizarre hybrids for medical purposes. But in this sf-horror film, they go a step too far; they splice in human DNA. Their corporate backers are aghast. So Clive and Elsa experiment in secret, and Dren (Delphine Chaneac) is the result.<br /><br /> She is an amazing creation whose rapid life cycle takes her from baby to adult in a matter of months. Clive and Elsa struggle to keep "her" a secret, but their connection to their "offspring" devolves from the scientific to the personal. Ultimately, Dren exceeds the couple’s wildest fantasies – and their most terrifying nightmares.<br /><br />Best known for writing and directing his debut Cube in 1997, American-Canadian Vincenzo Natali masterminded Splice. Cube became a worldwide success, grossing $15 million in France, emptying wallets in Japan and breaking box office records for a Canadian film. It took Best Canadian First Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Natali went on to direct Cypher (2002) and Nothing (2003).<br /><br />Born in Detroit, Michigan, to a nursery school teacher/painter mother and a photographer father, Natali is a cultural hybrid (with Italian and English coding in his DNA). Raised in Toronto, Canada, he attended the Ryerson University ilm program before getting hired as a storyboardist at the Nelvana Animation Studios.<br /><br />Following the release of Splice, Natali's next efforts are expected to be an adaptation of High Rise and a 3D remake of the Wes Craven natural horror film, Swamp Thing,for producer Joel Silver. A May 2010 item in The Hollywood Reporter, however, announced that Natali was to replace Joseph Khan as director of the highly anticipated adaptation of cyberpunk author William Gibson's 1984 masterwork, Neuromancer.<br /><br />As a certified sci-fi geek, I was psyched for a verbal poke around Natali's past and future film lab. <br /><br />Q: Rather than worrying about narrative implications, you err on the side of the fantastical, creating a creature that serves a science-fiction fan. Am I wrong or right?<br /> <br />VN: I always felt the most human character of this film was going to be Dren. And really, if there’s something special about the film, it’s the fact that it’s about how the monster emerges in the humans.<br /><br /> Unlike a lot of Frankenstein-type stories it’s not about the creature escaping into the world and wreaking havoc. It’s the opposite. It’s about how the scientists cage their creation and it becomes a catalyst for opening dark doors to dark places within themselves.<br /><br /> <br />Q: Did it create dark places for the cast as well? Were there anguished debates?<br /> <br />VN: No, it was a surprisingly happy set actually. I was probably the only one who was anguished because it was such a tight shoot. But I had a lovely cast; they were very supportive of me and the making of this film. They have to do some pretty scary, transgressive things, and never bat an eye. They were very much into it all the way through.<br /><br /> <br />Q: I can imagine the debates between you and Sarah Polley, who is a political activist as well as an actor and director. Obviously you had to cast a Canadian for funding purposes. But besides that, Polley is the perfect person for a film with any kind of political implications.<br /><br /> <br />VN: Right. Sarah was always on the top of my list, regardless of her nationality, because she’s so intelligent on the screen and I needed actors who we could believe are brilliant geneticists while still being attractive. Also you have make an emotional connection to the characters, even when they’re doing really transgressive, horrible things.<br /><br /> Sarah was just great to work with. I really respect the fact that, in spite of being an excellent writer/director, herself, she came to the film purely as an actor and treated me with tremendous respect. She’s a lovely person. They’re all great people.<br /><br /> <br />Q: What was the discussion like?<br /> <br />VN: If you were in on some of the rehearsals, you would have thought we were making a Generation X romantic comedy because we were really talking about the characters and their relationship to one another and not so much about the morality of the science or anything like that. That kind of came along for the ride.<br /><br /> It was very important for me with Clive and Elsa that we believe this couple, that we like them, that we understand the dynamics of their relationship, because they’re fairly complicated. That was mostly where the discussion took place.<br /><br /> Other than that, Sarah and Adrien just got it. When Sarah read the script, to be perfectly honest, all modestly aside, she said there was no role she’s ever read for that she wanted more. She didn’t read for the role, we offered it to her, but there’s no role that she had read that she wanted more than Elsa. She just got it and I think the same was true of Adrien.<br /><br /> <br />Q: Polley isn’t known for her science-fiction film roles but Adrien certainly is, having done King Kong. That must have been an interesting pair; that was another transgressive situation. Did he appreciate the irony? Did that have an influence on your choice?<br /> <br />VN: No I don’t think so. I cast Adrien for exactly the same reason as Sarah in so much as I thought he comes across as highly intelligent, a little bit geeky, and really lovable, and kind of hip too. I’m willing to bet that Clive in the film is about as close to the real Adrien as any part he’s ever played, minus sleeping with a mutant. But he’s a very affable, lovable person, much like Clive.<br /><br /> So that was really my motivation for casting him. It was good that he did King Kong because he understood the technology and understood what it means to work with creatures, real and imagined. And that was essential because Dren, much like Kong in the film, is a character, she’s not hidden in the shadows, she’s part of the fabric of the story.<br /><br /> <br />Q: I read that you found the actress who played Dren on the street, but then she came in for an audition.<br /><br /> <br />VN: It’s confusing.<br /><br /> <br />Q: I would have gone to Cirque du Soleil to cast that person.<br /><br /> <br />VN: We wanted to go to Cirque du Soleil, but they won’t share their performers. They wouldn’t let us. They wouldn’t share names or anything because they want to keep their talents. I met a girl from Cirque du Soleil once, and she took me to one of their secret performances, so that was interesting. That was years ago.<br /><br /> <br />Q: Sounds pretty provocative.<br /><br /> <br />VN: It was pretty provocative. But with Delphine, she was always coming into the audition.<br /><br /> <br />Q: And this is Paris?<br /> <br />VN: This is in Paris. We were specifically casting Dren in Paris because this is a France-Canada co-production, so it made sense to cast Dren there because she’s a non-speaking role -- and of course it’s not that hard to find beautiful women in Paris who don’t have to speak English. With Delphine, she was the very first person who came into the audition, so we happened to see her on the street, not knowing that she was going to be auditioning for us.<br /><br /> My producer Steve Hoban said to me, “Well that looks like a Dren,” and that turned out to be her. She’s very beautiful and a lovely person too. And very talented; she’s written two novels, she’s a musician as well as being an actor. She’s a very interesting person. I had a very intelligent cast. I had a very bright group of people working with me.<br /><br /> <br />Q: What did you do to research the science of it?<br /> <br />VN: I co-wrote Splice in quite close consultation with a geneticist. Then, when we went to make the film, we had several geneticists consulting with us. The amazing thing about those discussions was that whenever I would propose an idea I thought was ludicrous or beyond the realms of possibility they’d always say, "Oh, no, you can do that." The truth is stranger than fiction, especially when you’re talking about biotechnology. It’s fucking weird. It just gets bizarre. So in the process of writing the script, I began to realize we should make the lab environments real. We should scale everything down to a human, real level.<br /><br /> <br />Q: And you made it contemporary.<br /><br /> <br />VN: Contemporary, exactly. There’s no reason to set this in the future. There is some technology in the film that doesn’t currently exist, but it seems entirely plausible.<br /><br /> <br />Q: Do you ever worry about the film -- not just the cast -- being too smart?<br /> <br />VN: No. Is it that smart?<br /> <br />Q: Couldn't you have just made a story about scientists debating over this issue without adding in the creature? Why do you need the science fiction at all?<br /> <br />VN: It’s interesting because there are aspects of the film that are quite pulpy, which I like. I’m a bit greedy as a filmmaker, or desperate, because I don’t get to make movies very often and so when I do I throw in the kitchen sink, like I want everything.<br /><br /> Tonally, the film definitely goes in a number of different directions. There’s quite a bit of comedy and outrageous behavior in it. And yet at the same time, some of the moral questions and I think the complexity of the relationships…(operate) at a fairly high level. I think maybe there could be some discontinuity between those two things, but no, I didn’t worry about it being too smart. I just don’t think about those things.<br /><br /> Honestly, in all of my films, for better or worse, I’ve really tried to do something a bit different, and I’ve paid the price. All of these films have been really hard to make, and a number of them have languished in obscurity. I’ve made my bed so I’ll lie in it.<br /><br /> <br />Q: At least you got to be buddies with director Guillermo del Toro, who served as your executive producer.<br /><br /> <br />VN: Guillermo is truly a great impresario of the fantastic arts. I think he supported me -- he supported many other filmmakers and artists -- and I had met him at a film festival and he said, “I’d really like to produce a film for you,” which was extraordinary to me because I’m a huge admirer of his, and I immediately thought of Splice, which was a script that had been gathering dust.<br /><br /> <br />Q: That was your script?<br /> <br />VN: I co-wrote it, yes. It had been gathering dust on a shelf simply for the reasons stated, which are it’s kind of a hard thing for a studio to digest, and yet it could never be a low-budgeted film because the creature effects were always going to have a certain price tag and on camera all the time. So it was just kind of a bad combination in terms of trying to raise money.<br /><br /> When Guillermo came on board, a lot of doors opened. His name legitimized me and the film, and kind of contextualized it in a way that made people think this could be commercial. It’s been a very long and painful pregnancy and a difficult birth as well. Believe me, the metaphors are easy to come up with on this film because it questions life-imitates-art in the making of this movie, but it really felt like a pregnancy.<br /><br /> I had this movie inside me for a long time, and intuitively I felt if I don’t make this film someone else is going to do something very much like it. It was pregnant in the world, out there, just the real science seemed to be mimicking what we had written in the script, so I felt like this has got to be done. And it was.<br /><br /> In a way, the film has been imbued with this life force. And while at every step it’s been challenging it’s almost like it willed itself into existence; it sort of always found a way.<br /><br /> <br />Q: Does a movie like this always get developed with the potential of a sequel?<br /> <br />VN: No. I know that the ending is open and it seems leading.<br /><br /> <br />Q: It’s almost like a classic science-fiction trope.<br /><br /> <br />VN: No, it really does and I kind of resisted it a bit for that reason. But it’s the right ending; I thought this is the right ending for our characters and it just seemed very appropriate. But truly, I swear to God, I did not write it with any intention of sequelizing the film. Although, having said that, now maybe there will be a sequel.<br /><br /> <br />Q: You’re also interested in making a film of the late British writer J.G. Ballard's futuristic novel High Rise, and you’re working on William Gibson's Neuromancer. Which is coming first?<br /> <br />VN: High Rise is cheaper. It might be a little more dangerous commercially speaking, but I don’t know. I’ve been working on High Rise for a long time, so it’s at very advanced stage. I have a great producer, Jeremy Thomas.<br /><br /> <br />Q: Given the films he's made, he's the guy who gets it.<br /><br /> <br />VN: Exactly. He gets it and can make challenging films like High Rise. So I think High Rise is a distinct possibility. It’s shocking to me, talking about technology out of control, but it’s shocking to me how information travels now by the internet. I haven’t officially signed onto Neuromancer literally, but it’s all over the place.<br /><br /> <br />Q: Does that make production companies more or less interested to see it done?<br /> <br />VN: I hope more interested. That’s why I think maybe the internet technology is great. Certainly it helped Splice. Splice was languishing for a year after I finished it looking for distribution in North America, and it’s really thanks to the internet via Sundance that the film created a buzz.<br /><br /> <br />Q: How did Sundance help you?<br /> <br />VN: It saved the film. And truly our guardian angel was Joel Silver; he came in and swooped us away and has been nothing but supportive and protective of us.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-3793669974360090132010-06-09T01:44:00.000-07:002010-06-09T12:09:28.849-07:00George A. Romero Strives for Survival of the Dead<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8DJKM3sCO4or-P8DoScZi-ImWR31tUl2Ww9VMf8oXioPTe1E1SBncxa_JNEA4iHXcA-VGduCJ1ema_OMwUB2pAQbPo0Obd7xiFYJs9Oj_cAA2bKpFoOpGR5oCOshuP1lNfqhaazNoHyq/s1600/George.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 338px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8DJKM3sCO4or-P8DoScZi-ImWR31tUl2Ww9VMf8oXioPTe1E1SBncxa_JNEA4iHXcA-VGduCJ1ema_OMwUB2pAQbPo0Obd7xiFYJs9Oj_cAA2bKpFoOpGR5oCOshuP1lNfqhaazNoHyq/s400/George.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480833080220020098" /></a>Interview by <span style="font-weight:bold;">Brad Balfour</span><br /><br />Trundling down a portion of Second Avenue came a line of bizarrely dressed and horribly made-up folks -- okay so maybe not so weird or horrible for NYC -- until they hit the Village East Cinemas where legendary director <strong>George A. Romero</strong> waited to greet his fans and devotees before screening the latest in his Dead saga -- <em>Survival of the Dead</em>. <br /><br />For a few moments on a recent Sunday, the zombies invaded Manhattan. Well at least they ambled along from 23rd Street to the East Village theater. And I don't mean just addled club-goers getting home after the usual 4 am closing. <br /><br />That gave a few of us worshipful journos a chance to wedge in some questions in between the groaned and grunted queries by audience members -- zombie-fied or otherwise.<br /><br />Ever since he made the black & white <em>Night of the Living Dead</em> in 1968, New York-born Romero's name is mentioned in the same breath when the word "zombie" is thrown about. When the now 70-year-old went to Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon University, he started shooting short films and commercials but soon went on to produce and direct what became one of the most revered American horror films of all time (and was inducted into the National Film Registry in '99). Made for just over $100,000, <em>Night</em> returned its investment and was also hailed as a benchmark in indie flimmaking. <br /><br />Romero's next films such as 1973's <em>The Crazies</em> and 1977's <em>Martin</em> weren't as acclaimed as <em>Night of the Living Dead</em>, but offered social commentary while still being horror-related. Like almost all of his films, they were shot in, or around Pittsburgh.<br /><br />In '78, Romero returned to zombies with one that topped his first. In <em>Dawn of the Dead</em> (1978), four people who escape the zombie outbreak lock themselves up inside a mall before they become victims of themselves. Shot on a $1.5 million budget, the film earned over $40 million and in '03, was named one of Entertainment Weekly's top cult films. It also marked Romero's first work with brilliant make-up and effects artist Tom Savini.<br /><br />After that, the two teamed up on others including 1981's <em>Knightriders</em> starring an up-and-coming Ed Harris. Then came <em>Creepshow</em> (1982), which marked the first, but not the last, time Romero adapted a story by famed novelist Stephen King. <br /><br />To be the one voice who exemplifies this genre is accomplishment enough, but this summer, Romero has a new zombie film available, and it takes off from where his last film <em>Diary of the Dead</em> left off. Summer means horror films and for reanimated dead fans that means at least one by Romero. <br /><br /><strong>Q: What do attribute to the longevity of the series?</strong><br /> <br />GR: If I could figure that out, I would know why I'm still here. I don't know. Zombies have become idiomatic. Videogames [even] more than films have done that. For some<br />unknown reason my stuff has a shelf life. I think that I've always tried to have a little theme underneath and maybe the stuff looks quaint.<br /><br />It's like looking at an old movie like <em>A Gentleman's Agreement</em> -- it's like wow, "They were actually talking about something," and it becomes a bit quaint. I don't know. I should ask you; I'm not the guy to ask. I'm just happy that it's happened.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What was the inspiration that made you wake up and say, "Zombies?"</strong><br /> <br />GR: You mean way at the beginning?<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Day one.</strong><br /> <br />GR: I've never thought of them as zombies; I never called them zombies. When I made <em>Night of the Living Dead</em>, I called them flesh-eaters. To me, zombies were those boys in the Caribbean doing Bela Lugosi's wet work for him [in <em>White Zombie</em> (1932)]. I never thought of them as zombies.<br /><br />It was only when people started to write about them and said these are zombies that I thought maybe they are. All I did was make them the neighbors; take the voodoo and mysterioso out of it and make them the neighbors and I don't know what happened after that. The neighbors are scary enough when they're not dead. Maybe that's what made it click.<br /><br />Q: Are you producing or developing videogames? If you do that would be amazing for anyone who's played <em>Left for Dead</em> or <em>Resident Evil</em>.<br /> <br />GR: In the past usually people come to us and say they just want to buy my name or the brand or whatever and "stay home. You don't know about videogames." It's true; I don't. I'm not a gamer.<br /><br />I just did a talk show as part of the tour for this film where we looked at <em>Left for Dead 2</em> and zombies are like tarantulas; on the ceiling, up the walls, crazy, running. I understand that mentality that it has to be like Tetris; faster, faster, faster, faster.<br /><br />My zombies don't do that. My zombies are still slugging along just like the rest of us are. So I'm not sure that I get the mentality. I was talking to a game company executive and asked is it possible to do a slower, more intellectual game? And he actually said "I'm not sure." But we're talking to people about it - we're still talking to people about it - and I would love to be involved with a game, I'd love to write the story of a game, but I won't do it if it has to be...<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Are you ever going to switch over from slow to fast zombies?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Never.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What is it about slow zombies that you like over fast zombies?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Because that's the way they would be; they're dead. Like in the first film the sheriff says, "They're dead; they're all messed up." If they ran their ankles would snap so by me they move slow.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Would you outrun the zombies?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Yeah. The whole point is you can easily get away, just nobody addresses the problem and humans screw themselves up. With my movies that's what it's about; it's about humanity making the wrong movies.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Would have any advice besides run to survive a zombie?</strong><br /> <br />GR: You've got to talk to Max Brooks [who has written a series of zombie books such as <em>World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War</em>]. Max believes this is really going to happen one day; I don't. With me it's pure allegory.<br /> <br /><em>Q: How would you fare in a zombie apocalypse</em>?<br /> <br />GR: What I need to tell you first of all, is that it's probably not going to happen. If you want to know what weapon to buy, call Max. He's the guy to tell you. I think Max halfway believes that it might happen. He's a buddy of mine and we hang out and we argue about this all the time.<br /><br />I don't know. Come on! Find a tank; a tank is the best thing. Get inside a tank, you'll have a big gun, and you're safe in a big thing of metal. It's like give me a break over here. It's not going to happen. I promise you it won't happen. Or else, worse shit will happen before it does.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-epcnx2Fercrd-gKk7vAup2xV1vKxjGlL8ysmaErQZxZs1Au4NJVK-yY1l-4msziU-9dn01hBS8rpT0iNU1slaL0x3JrpXwCKd6MW4MdQ2aZiisbN1jz-KAk50UP7tso0PzHG_ciJvp2n/s1600/survival-dead-poster.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 306px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-epcnx2Fercrd-gKk7vAup2xV1vKxjGlL8ysmaErQZxZs1Au4NJVK-yY1l-4msziU-9dn01hBS8rpT0iNU1slaL0x3JrpXwCKd6MW4MdQ2aZiisbN1jz-KAk50UP7tso0PzHG_ciJvp2n/s400/survival-dead-poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480692174220483074" /></a><strong>Q: What allegory are you trying to tell with this film?</strong><br /> <br />GR: It's about the same theme that I've been beating on forever. It's war, it's like enmities that don't die, people, even faced with huge game-changing event still shooting at each other instead of addressing the problem.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you think that society's listening to what you're saying in your films?</strong><br /> <br />GR: No. Society doesn't listen to anything. Society has not listened to shit from the beginning of time.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: To be that one voice, is that why you make these films?</strong><br /> <br />GR: It's fun to be silly and make fun of people because people are just not learning. We haven't learned squat; we're still fucking fighting abortion and homosexuality and everything. We're still fucking fighting, it's like ridiculous. Give me a break; I thought we were past that.<br /><br />Q: You seem married to the horror genre. What is it about it that works for you?<br /> <br />GR: I love it, man. I grew up on EC Comics -- like <em>Vault of Horror</em> or <em>Crypt of Terror</em> -- and have a chance not only to work in the genre but be able to express my opinion. I've got a better gig than Michael Moore I think. I don't have to be real, I don't have to lie.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What is your favorite horror movie?</strong><br /> <br />GR: When you're a kid, it's like the stuff that impresses you the most or that scares you the most. I was 12 years old and I saw <em>The Thing</em> and it just scared the shit out of me. So that remains my favorite horror movie.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Would you ever consider wrapping up the whole zombie thing, like reversing the curse?</strong><br /> <br />GR: No. It's too much fun. I won't do it and the zombies won't take over because my stories are about the humans. I like being where we are with it; just leave it alone and let it be.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: You change the rules a bit in this new one.</strong><br /> <br />GR: No.<br /><br /><strong>Q: How important is the comical aspect of your zombie movies?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Oh man, like I said, I grew up on EC Comics; they were all bad jokes and puns. It was a giggle while you barf. So to me it's almost essential. These last two films that I did I had creative control and I was able to just do what I wanted to do with them, so humor was an important part of both. This one is really, there are some real loony tune moments in this one. It has to be part of it.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What's your favorite zombie kill?</strong><br /> <br />GR: I don't know; It's not a kill. Tom Savini did this thing with the guy with a real actor with his head down in a table and the guy's body was a real actor's body from here down, just some tendrils connecting him to her like a pulsing brain. It's not a kill but it's I thought a wonderful makeup and a really cool thing. I don't know, kill, I don' know. There's one in this movie with a fire extinguisher that I really love.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: For someone who hasn't seen your movies would you prefer them to start with <em>Night of the Living Dead</em> or <em>Diary of the Dead</em>?</strong><br /> <br />GR: I'd prefer them to start with <em>Knightriders</em> and <em>Martin</em> because those are films that were really from the heart. I like to think that these films are thoughtful but they're not me.<br /><br />To some extent they're commercial films but I'm trying to do something with them, but they're not me. Knightriders is the most me. Martin is my favorite film of mine, so anybody that wants to see something that I did I would prefer they watch those first and then watch these.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Which zombie one should they start off with though?</strong><br /> <br />GR: <em>Day of the Dead</em>. <br /><br /><strong>Q: Have you ever thought about redoing the original <em>Day of the Dead</em> the way you wanted to do it in the original script?</strong><br /> <br />GR: No. It's over. I've been able to use some of it; I used a little bit of it in<em> Land of the Dead</em> and a little bit of it in this film, actually. But no; that's over. That's a script I did for the original <em>Day of the Dead</em> and the company that was financing the movie didn't want to finance it because it was too much money.<br /><br />Actually it was a decision that we made -- my partner at the time and I -- because we wanted to release it without rating it. The [distributor] said "Okay, do it without rating it" but, we said, "Forget it, they won't [really] do that." So I decided to cut it down and do it without rating it. And the old script, I know people have it, it's on the internet, [and] people are digging it up, but I've used ideas from it so I don't think I'll ever go back to it.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Why do you think zombies are having a renaissance right now?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Beats the shit out of me. I don't know, what is it? Videogames. It's not movies, it's videogames. I think so. There's never been a huge movie hit; it's all videogames. That's what I think.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Do you think about going back to making more psychological movies like <em>Martin</em>, in between the zombie movies?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Yes, all the time. But I'm at an age right now where, Peter and I, we spent six years in Hollywood in development hell making lots of money and not making movies. It's like I'm at a point where I don't want to go and pitch something for two years and have it not happen. I can't afford that time.<br /><br />And yeah we have ideas and plans, we have things we'd like to do, but as I say, I'm at the point where I need to take the thing that I like the most that's easiest to do and get it done. I don't know how long I'm going to be standing. Listen, I'm never going to quit; I'll be like John Houston man, I'll be with the breather and the wheelchair still trying to make a film. I can't answer you what's going to be next. There are things I'd love to do; who knows.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What stories do you want to tell that aren't zombie related?</strong><br /> <br />GR: I might be passed that; I told them already. I have a couple of things, my partner and I, we have a couple of scripts that we're working on. I don't know; it's a long story and I'm too tired to tell it right now.<br /><br />I'd like to do a couple more of these and what I'd like to do is have a little set of these that all the characters would come out of <em>Diary</em> and have a little set and hang it up and go off and do something else.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Would you use the internet as a medium to tell them in short story form?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Maybe. I don't know. I'm very puzzled right now; I don't know what to do. You finish a movie and then all of a sudden you're still doing it and I'm still traveling with it. I'm just waiting to get off. I'm waiting for some time off and then maybe I can decide what to do.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What about returning to comic books</strong>?<br /> <br />GR: I'd love to. I'm talking to some guys now. I'd love to do it.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Would they be zombie related or something else?</strong><br /> <br />GR: I'd love to do something else but usually that's what they want from me is zombies.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What's next?</strong><br /> <br />GR: I'm hoping a couple of drinks at a bar someplace. I don't know, man. If you're talking about movies, I don't know. We don't know; my partner, Peter [Grunwald] and I, we have a couple of projects that are non-zombie but we don't know. If it happens that this film does well and we're asked to do another; my idea is to do two more. <br /><br />I wanted to do three; right from the puff I wanted to do three films with characters from <em>Diary of the Dead</em>, take them on their own adventures and be able to cross-collateralize characters, story points, stuff like that.<br /><br />I would love it and it would be like a vacation. If this film does well enough and somebody says hey let's do more I would jump at it. Sort of like I'd have a job for the first time in my life; I know what I'm doing for the next three years.<br /><br />I'd love to do it but we don't know what's going to happen with this. So far this film has performed pretty well with audiences and people seem to be digging it, so maybe it will happen. Otherwise, we have a couple of things that we're ready to do and really like.<br /><br />I would love it if I could do a couple more of these because it's where I've lived. I love playing around with new zombies. By the way, thank you. I can't believe you guys go to this amount of trouble and energy and glue that goop on your face. Anyway, it's much appreciated by me and thank you; thanks for doing it.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What do you think of the remakes that have been made of your various films? Are you happy with them?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Not particularly. No.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What do you think that they misunderstood or didn't get</strong>?<br /> <br />GR: I don't know. The remake of <em>Dawn</em> was more like a videogame than a movie. The first 20 minutes were really hot and then it lost its reason for being. <em>The Crazies</em> was the same thing. <em>Crazies</em> was a film of a certain time; we were pissed off about Nam. The new film might as well be <em>28 Days Later</em>. Both directors did good jobs with <em>Dawn</em> and with <em>Crazies</em>, they're just not films I would have made.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What are your favorite horror movies?</strong><br /> <br />GR: When you're a kid it's like the stuff that impresses you the most or the stuff that scares you the most. I was 12 years old and I saw <em>The Thing</em> and it just scared the shit out of me. So that remains my favorite horror movie.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Any directors working now that you're excited about?</strong><br /> <br />GR: Well Guillermo del Toro's my man right now. He's a great guy. Such a sincere guy; he makes a commercial thing and then goes off and does what we wants to do. He's great.<br /><br />And John Carpenter's doing a new movies, I have big hopes for Carpenter. I hope he's back in the ring. That's it pretty much.<br /><br /><strong>Q: A lot of people consider you the grandfather of independent film in many ways. What do you think about that</strong>?<br /> <br />GR: Come on.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Come on, you did one of the first real indie films</strong>.<br /> <br />GR: There are a lot of guys that have just figured out a way to do it without selling out or whatever. John Waters, man. He gets my vote.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: When you go, what do you want on your headstone? When you rise, what do you expect to see?</strong><br /> <br />GR: I don't know man. If I manage to get back when that happens I'll just look for a camera.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-23723898048420198642010-06-05T08:51:00.001-07:002010-06-09T01:57:34.191-07:00Zoe Kazan Explodes with A Behanding in Spokane<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3vcurgmlOjc6GsXnqmi90761Nz_OJjUjd48sDYbu4tfMF9TjfqplvAcc4_3HZox_QD5-Rmo_lNuBPFf8N9VWUJCtGteHk6yKjdr5X5EhFty34ESg4fPSNZP37tRlnezBf4vQbjNaLOgO/s1600/zoe.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 309px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3vcurgmlOjc6GsXnqmi90761Nz_OJjUjd48sDYbu4tfMF9TjfqplvAcc4_3HZox_QD5-Rmo_lNuBPFf8N9VWUJCtGteHk6yKjdr5X5EhFty34ESg4fPSNZP37tRlnezBf4vQbjNaLOgO/s400/zoe.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5479353988501677106" /></a> Exclusive interview by Brad Balfour<br /><br />With <em>A Behanding in Spokane</em> playing on Broadway through this weekend and with feature films -- including the recent <em>The Exploding Girl</em> -- coming out, actress <strong>Zoe Kazan</strong> is one of New York's go-to talents. <br /><br />Though the Los Angeles born daughter of screenwriter <strong>Nicholas Kazan</strong> and multi-hyphenate <strong>Robin Swicord</strong>, and granddaughter of late film and theater director <strong>Elia Kazan</strong> has an insider's edge, this 26 year-old has really established a presence on her own.<br /><br />While the pixie-faced Kazan doesn't look much older than a pre-teen, she has played a remarkable range of characters from the befuddled pot-dealing Marilyn in <em>Behanding</em> to the epileptic college student Ivy in the New York-centric indie <em>The Exploding Girl</em>. And since <em>A Behanding in Spokane</em> star <strong>Christopher Walken</strong> got the Tony nomination for best actor in a Drama, the play's been on the hot list all along.<br /><br />While having a vet playwright like Irishman Martin McDonagh such a fan to cast you in a four-hander along with Walken, <strong>Anthony Mackie</strong> and <strong>Sam Rockwell</strong>, is compliment enough, Kazan keeps getting the work. But given all the acting she's done, it's surprising she still finds time to write her own scripts -- something she is getting known for as much as she is for her on-camera time.<br /><br />Though she has said she didn't know that grandfather Elia was famous until she was 13, the genetic link is obvious. And with more movies coming out this year -- one by director <strong>Kelly Reichardt</strong>, (<em>Meek's Cutoff</em>) as well as the <strong>Josh Radnor</strong> directed film, <em>Happythankyoumoreplease</em> (a Sundance Audience Award winner out this August) Kazan will not remain in the public consciousness. And hopefully, through this Q&A, which draws on a roundtable and exclusive one-on-one, she offers some enlightenment on her time on stage and in front of the camera.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ2BbsEjyFjpWwvsiFctc1eBWZUEXa1zi3omgDHobL6NWMjTUQFyCfS-IIi3fC4WEuBhmGaGpEhFVeGZQ2v5ldJDV8IAsJ8X4iG5dCX_xgAJtWwQsgc4Vy4Fr8sObSg3A6qymQfdOOl_mo/s1600/zoe-k.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 254px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ2BbsEjyFjpWwvsiFctc1eBWZUEXa1zi3omgDHobL6NWMjTUQFyCfS-IIi3fC4WEuBhmGaGpEhFVeGZQ2v5ldJDV8IAsJ8X4iG5dCX_xgAJtWwQsgc4Vy4Fr8sObSg3A6qymQfdOOl_mo/s400/zoe-k.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5479337632568874642" /></a><strong>Q: You have a particular affection for playwright Martin McDonagh.<br /></strong> <br />ZK: I did one of Martin's plays in college, The Cripple of Inishmaan, and had seen <em>The Beauty Queen of Leenane</em> when it was on Broadway when I was kid and I had read for it before, so I was already a big fan of his. Then I saw a play of his in 2005 and it just blew me away.<br /><br />Truly, I think <em>A Behanding</em> is the most exciting theater experience, and I wonder if anything will ever top it for me. It's the most extraordinary play and that was the most extraordinary production. So when I head that he had written a new play I jumped at the chance. The fact that we've become friends out of this process is just an added bonus.<br /><strong> <br />Q: It's a pretty dark black comedy.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: Yeah. My dad has similar sensitivities to Martin's. My dad has a very dark sense of humor and definitely that was reflected in the bedtime stories that I heard as a child and the movies that were shown to me.<br /><br />I have a gothic, and by that I mean Victorian gothic, sensibility myself. So many great stories, so many primal stories have both of those elements -- the humor and the terror. If you look at something like Grimm's fairy tales, or even look at stories in the Bible like Job, Jonah and the Whale, or Noah's Ark. Most of the storytelling that gets absolutely at the root of our civilization has both of those elements.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Having done more than one McDonagh play do you find that you have a good idea of him and his work?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I was young when I did <em>Cripple</em>; I was in college, I was like 19 or 20 years old, and I don't want to belittle myself, I'm sure I was fine in the part, but it's just completely, completely different than anything that I'm doing now in terms of my command of language and my command of my body. I'm just a different actor than I was.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Did it give you a leg up on understanding him, or do you have to approach it differently with each play?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: It's different every play. He's writing different worlds. It would be one thing if it was all the same world, but the plays have so little in common.<br /><br /><strong>Q: When you're working with a new play that doesn't have a history like something by Chekov. you're really defiining the characters; you are all defining it each night, it's not like something you can fall back on archetypes and things like that.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: In some ways it's both more and less creative than interpreting a part that's been played before. When I was playing Masha in <em>The Seagull</em>, everyone knows my first lines in the play; they could practically say it along with me. Everybody knows who she is and if I deviate from the way that people normally play Masha, it's not going to get lost in the mix. It's like you have a coloring book that's already half colored in, so if you color in the rest. It's fine.<br /><br />Whereas, if I play Marilyn against what Martin's written on the page no one's going to get to see the play. It's just a very different responsibility as an actor. It is amazing to be in a play with so few people; when we did our first run-through and I saw everybody afterwards and it was just the three of them and me, I thought, "Holy shit. That's not a lot of people to be pushing this boat forward." Being the only girl in the cast, I feel really lucky; they're such great guys and they all take really good care of me and I'm learning a lot.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: The only bad thing is you can't step outside yourself and watch yourself in the play.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: It's true, but you can't really do that in any show because you can't watch yourself. You can watch the rest of the play and see how it's going but at a certain point you don't want to do that anymore because it takes you out of your concentration on your character. <br /><br />Like when I was doing <em>The Seagull</em>, there were large portions of the play when I'd be offstage, and I had to stop watching because when I went onstage I wasn't thinking about Masha, I was thinking about the play as a play, not as the real world I was living in. So I'd go upstairs and I'd put on my music and I'd knit.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Once you've done a play, it's not like each night after it's totally new. Doing a character in a movie is experiencing the experience as it happens. If you don't want to know anything about your character other than your experience of living as it's happening you can do that. Does the theatrical familiarity make it easier or harder to come at it with the freshness of the experience as it unfolds?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: Like you have to have perspective on it?<br /><br /><strong>Q: On the one hand it's a good that you know the play so well that you go in and do it, but how do you make it fresh every time? With a movie, you don't have to read the book, you don't have to read anything but your part, and can come into the movie like it's all new to you as it is happening to you.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I always read the whole script of whatever I'm doing, even if I have just a little scene, just to get the sense of where I belong and what the tone of the piece is. So there's not a huge difference for me in what I know and don't know.<br /><br />It is different though because you're doing the same thing every night, night after night, eight shows a week, weeks on end, for months at a time. That does get -- I don't want to use the word -- monotonous, but it can become practiced or it can become rote if you're not careful. You know how sometimes when you're tired and you drive home and you get home but you don't remember how you got there because you've done it so many times you can almost do it in your sleep?<br /><br />Doing plays sometimes gets like that where you through a scene and all of a sudden you're like, "Did I say that line or did I not say that line? Did that part of the play already go by?" It can become disorienting in that way. And I think one thing that helps that is you usually get bored with yourself, right?<br /><br />You are aware of what you're doing every night. But my costars Sam and Chris and Anthony, are always infinitely interesting. They're always doing something different even if they're not aware that they're doing it. Whenever I get bored I just plug into the people around me I guess.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You're a writer as well. Does it helps you to work both in film and in theater? Or do you lean towards theater in your writing?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I grew up mostly exposed to and loving movies. My love of theater is something that came a little bit later in my life. I love plays and feel absolutely passionately about the theater, but in terms of where my imagination goes, I think more cinematically than I do theatrically, and writing a play is a very difficult thing.<br /><br />It's not difficult for everyone, but for me the thing is getting people on and off stage and writing in a theatrical way, in a way that's specific for the theater and couldn't interchangeably be a short story or a movie. I get a great deal of pleasure out of it but it doesn't come as naturally to me as writing for the screen does.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: You'd think it would come naturally just because of genetics.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: Right. Well, that's the other thing. I've been reading my parents' scripts since I was a little girl, like since I could read, since I was five. They gave me their scripts at that age to give them notes on it, so they were exposing me at a very early age to scripts. I've been reading scripts and learning about script structure since I was a little girl, so it's not in my blood but it's definitely upbringing.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Did your grandfather have any influence; did you know him much?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: He passed in 2008. I was 24 then, so yeah, of course he was a big part of my life growing up. As for artistic influence on me, I think every actor working in a naturalistic way now is indebted to my grandfather. So in a professional sense, he has had an impact on me, or his work has had an impact on me. But on a personal level, I didn't ask him for any advice or anything like that.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Is it easier to go from a play to a play, or from a play to a movie then to a play? For some people it's easier to break it up. Once your chops are down and you're going play to play, is it easier to get into that mindset? What works for you?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I did three plays back to back in the 2007 / 2008 season, and that was a mistake. I shouldn't have done it. I was so tired by the end of it. By the third play, which was <em>Come Back, Little Sheba</em>, I had very little appetite left for it.<br /><br />It was the only job that I've ever done that felt like a job, and it's not the fault of the play, I love that play, and I had a great cast around me and a really good director, and I'm still proud of my work in that show, but I wasn't curious anymore, I was just tired.<br /><br />I'll never do that again; I might do two plays in a season, but not back to back and definitely not as much. I think it's easier to go from a play to a move to a play because it's a different way of working and you can kind of get your appetite up.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: You grew up in Venice, California; I find Venice an interesting bohemian enclave. Do you feel that was helpful? If you had been more in the high-speed LA, Beverly Hills world would it have changed you?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I do. I think my parents did a very smart thing. Especially the neighborhood I grew up in, in the 1980s, early '90s, when I was a really young kid, it was such a sheltered way to live. It was not a very affluent community then, and there were a lot of artists.<br /><br />I was not raised in any way like an LA child. When I got older and went to high school I was exposed to more of that but my parents were very careful about the way they raised us and were really determined that we were going to be like those kind of kids.<br /><br /><strong>Q: It feels like you've done a million movies before you did <em>The Exploding Girl</em>.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I did a lot of movies that didn't come out for a while, so I don't know because I can't remember at what point that was.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So do you like working on big mainstream films or the indie ones? </strong><br /><br /> ZK: Everybody needs those mainstream ones. I love going to the movies and watching a big cushy movie. I really like getting the big cushy paycheck too, but that's not an issue. Everybody has to do some for the money, but I definitely prefer a smaller scale. Especially coming from a theater background, and because my parents are in the industry, the values I grew up with were values of collaboration and doing something all together. <br /><br />On the big budget movies you're always squirreled away in a massive trailer and alone, then you're brought to set and have to look perfect and all of that. That's not really what I got in it for.<br /><br />I love not having a trailer, just being thrown into bathrooms to change and being with your costars all the time and not having a thousand people fussing over you. It seems much more conducive to the work to me. <br /><br /><strong>Q: Of the recent characters that you've played, which ones do you think are closer to you? </strong> <br /><br />ZK: Well, it's funny because, with <em>It's Complicated</em>, Nancy [Meyers] is a screenwriter and a director, my mother's a screenwriter and a director. Her husband's a screenwriter and a director, my dad's a screenwriter and a director, she has two daughters who went to private schools in LA who are friends with people I know; I went to private schools in LA.<br /><br />There's a lot of overlap between us, and then in some ways there's none. Nancy lives in this perfect world where everything's from Shabby Chic and looks really beautiful and I grew up in this kind of grungy Venice world with my parents and there was never a lot of money thrown around.<br /><br />In some ways our values are really similar and I totally got who that character was, and in some ways I'm like, "Why remodel that kitchen?"<br /><br />So when Nancy met me she was like, "You're my girl; you're exactly who I wrote on the page," and I was thinking that's not who I am at all. So it's all about perception.<br /><br />I feel like probably of all the characters I've played, I don't really feel like I've played someone close to myself on film. I did this play, <em>Things We Want</em>, at the New Group and I feel like that character is probably the closest I've ever played to myself. Even though she's a concert pianist so we have nothing in common that way, she's an artist and her psychology was closer to mine.<br /><br /><em>But definitely between <em>The Private Lives of Pippa Lee</em> this one, and Happythankyoumorepleas</em>e that was at Sundance, all girls are very different from me.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What drew you to the role of Ivy?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I auditioned for Brad [Bradley Rust Gray, director] almost four years ago for another movie he was making, and he didn't end up getting to make that movie right away. I didn't get cast in it, but he remembered me and I remembered him.<br /><br />About a year and half after that he called and said, "I want to make a movie with you," and I remembered him because I loved his movies so much in the first place.<br /><br />I said, "Okay. What's it about?" and he was like, "I don't know. I haven't written it, I have no idea what it's going to be about. I have an idea but I can't tell you about it. Do you want to do it?"<br /><br />I was like, "Yeah, I do." So we started meeting and have these epic walks around Manhattan. We'd walk for hours. I was doing <em>Come Back, Little Sheba</em> at the time and I actually got bronchitis from walking around with him and had to miss a show. So I blame him for that completely. Like in the middle of January and February these massive eight-hour walks and we would talk about love and life and how we grew up and just kind of getting to know each other, almost like a blind date.<br /><br />Then I went away to shoot <em>Me and Orson Welles</em>, and when I got back he had a script and he said, "Read it, and if you want to do it, let's do it."<br /><br />I loved it. Ivy is so unlike me in so many ways, so I was really surprised that he had written this character because Brad's worked mostly non-actors before and written characters very close to the people themselves so they could play them. I was really excited that he had written something so different from myself for me. But it's funny; it was hard for me to talk about Ivy while we were shooting it. We had a lot of shorthand, like he'd come over and be like, "No, no, no, no, no. The way you're breathing isn't right."<br /><br />We both had a picture of her in our heads and knew what we were aiming for, but we didn't have a lot of coherence talking about her, and it's only been afterward when I look at the movie that I realize what her qualities are. When we were playing it was all much more unconscious.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you relate to your character's sense of detachment given that you went to college and had the whole college experience?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: A detachment from home?<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Or a detachment from what's going on. Being home on break is a weird situation.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: It is a weird situation. Brad and I talked about that. There's Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's movie, <em>Café Lumière</em>, that we looked at a lot. There's a moment where the lead character comes home in that movie and she falls asleep on the couch, or lies down on the floor, and we thought about that, about what it's like when you come home and it's sort of your home but it's not your home anymore. She's definitely in that liminal space between childhood and adulthood where she doesn't quite belong there anymore but it's still the only home she has.<br /><br />Brad and I talked about that and about wanting to capture that feeling. But I'm an actress and I think that there is some truth to the stereotype that comes along with that. I'm very emotional and I have very easy access to my emotions, and I hesitate to say it because I'm sure my family is going to laugh at me, but I think I burden other people with my emotions sometimes, like "Take care of me."<br /><br />Ivy is not at all like that, she's incredibly self-contained, and some of that feeling of detachment that you get in the movie comes from that. She does not want to be a burden to anyone and she doesn't want her illness [epilepsy] to be a burden to anyone. So when the breakup happens she keeps that to herself, she doesn't even tell her friends, and I think there's a kind of strength in that, and I think there's deep loneliness in that. I also think it would be much better for her if she had more access to self-expression.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you study about epilepsy?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: Yeah, I did. I don't have a chronic illness but I know people who do and I didn't want to dishonor anybody by doing it wrong. Not just the epileptic seizure itself, but also the psychology behind having something that you have to take care of and that way of taking care of yourself. <br /><br />I actually read a lot of parenting books for parents who have children who have epilepsy because I wanted to think about the way that she had been raised, especially because her mother's a single parent and I feel like Ivy's taken on a lot of the burden of parenting herself because of that. And also we watched videos of seizures online; not on YouTube, although a little bit of that, but a lot of those are hoaxes.<br /><br />There are videos on medical sites about epilepsy; diagnostic videos basically. We looked at those and we looked at the brain scans of what happens to the brain during the epileptic seizure, and I practiced it at home. I was really anxious about doing the whole thing because it's so out of your control when you do it and it seemed like such a big part of the movie that I was going to have to tackle. I was really freaked out about it and finally I thought, "This is silly. I've just got to do one, and if I do one then I've done one and I don't have to worry about it anymore."<br /><br />I was lying in bed and my boyfriend was in the other room brushing his teeth and I was like, "Baby, can you come in here?" So he comes in the room with a mouthful of toothpaste and I was like, "Watch this. Tell me if it looks real."<br /><br />I do the seizure, and he's standing there with his toothbrush, and I open my eyes afterwards and ask how I looked and he was like, "Never do that again! Are you crazy?" <br /><br />And I was like, "But did it look real?" and he was like, "Yes it looked real! You're freaking me out!" And I was like, "Sorry, brush your teeth. Go spit." <br /><br />But I practiced it that once and then I didn't practice it anymore, and we did two 15-minute takes.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: It's not like you can go ask an epileptic, "Hey do a seizure for me."</strong><br /> <br />ZK: Yeah, exactly.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You mention that gap between childhood and adulthood and since this was a two character story and that's interesting. I don't know if this was a conscious effort by the director or not.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I think it was.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: One reason it works is because Ivy is so complex. She's not a child but not quite an adult; she has that wide-eyed, childhood, idealistic expression that you do so well. Mark Rendell plays his character the same way, but is a male version, also between childhood and adulthood, idealistic with everything still new, yet he seems to have a much easier time.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: Well he's a boy.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Was that in the script or in the characterizations that you were drawing on?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: It has something to do with the script. It has more to do with their characters than anything. First of all, Ivy's more grown up than Al is; she's just had to take care of herself at a younger age. Epilepsy, like diabetes, is something that you have to take care of; you have to mind what you eat, you have to mind how much sleep you get, what kind of stress you're under.<br /><br />And to be a young person and to be minding those kinds of things, most teenagers aren't capable of that, let alone someone who has a mother who's not 100% present. So I think that there's a way that she guards herself, takes care of herself, that's much more akin to an adult than anything that Al's had to go through. She does his laundry for him; she takes care of him in an unconscious way, not in a manipulative way.<br /><br />She's not trying to prove anything by taking care of him; she just takes care of him. And I think that he brings to her, like what the trade off is, is that he brings a lot of childish joy, and I think it's one of the reasons that they make a really great pair, really great friends. The other half of it is that Mark is like Al.<br /><br />For one thing, Mark's a lot younger than I am. I'm 26, and when we shot the movie I was 24, and Mark was 18. So that's a big age different; we would never have been in high school together. I think when you watch the movie you don't see it because I look young and Mark has an ageless kind of look to him. We could be almost any age within a certain range.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: That's a testament to your acting too, because it's not easy to pull that off.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: Yeah, totally. It's funny because Brad said something, and I don't want to age myself too much, but Brad said something to me recently and he was like, "We wouldn't have been able to make the movie now because I've grown up two years since we made the movie. I'm not in a very different place in my life, but I feel older in a way." <br /><br />And when I talk to Mark now, he's older too. When we met he'd never had a girlfriend, he was living with his parents still, and there's something very endearing about that to me, and I think that informs what you see on screen a little bit too.<br /> <br />Brad has a real sense of decorum as a filmmaker. He thinks about the characters as being people, and I think that one thing he was very concerned about was giving Ivy her privacy. So the breakup scene, the scene where she cries, the seizure, those are all things that he shot from further away and with objects between them. <br /><br />And he did that very purposefully. Of course as an actor, I'm like, "Put the camera on my face when I'm crying, dude. Don't back-light me and make sure nobody can see my face, you asshole."<br /><br />But he knew what he was doing and I think that there is more emotional impact because you're given a little bit of distance. Sometimes when you're forced to look at something in close-up all the time it kind of becomes about the acting and not about the character, and I really respect what he did with that. It's just a very different style of telling stories. If you look at <em>It's Complicated</em>, you couldn't have two more different movies.<br /><br />On <em>It's Complicated</em>, every scene we shot with a wide-shot, a two-shot, close-up, close-up, medium-shot, medium-shot, over the shoulder; I mean she got coverage on every kind of coverage you could possibly want.<br /><br />So the way that movie cuts together, it cuts together in a much more conventional way. You get into the scene on the wide-shot and then you go in, and you go in, and you go in. We didn't have the money to do that, so part of what is happening is that there are solutions having to do with economy. <br /><br />We just didn't have the time; we shot this in 17 days, so if he could get it in one shot that was a wide-shot he would get it in the wide-shot. But because of that he had to make specific decisions before he edited about what he wanted it to look like.<br /><br />In some ways it made my job much easier because I only had to do it a couple of times. Especially with the seizure; only having to do that a couple of times was a godsend because it's really exhausting. And other times I was begging him for another take.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: When you're in between being a kid -- dependent on your family -- and being an adult, on your own, there's a bohemian ideal where you don't have to be doing things for a job. Do you think the film is communicating to the audience about that period of life?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: Ivy has to work; she helps out at her mom's studio during her break. She's not going to have a lot time where she just gets to sit at home and figure her life out; she doesn't come from that socio-economic background. But I do think that when you're in college, especially when you're on break and you don't have any homework, it is a feeling of being a kid again. Like summer break or spring break, suddenly you're not a grownup living at school, having your own life.<br /><br />I remember this so clearly, being at school and taking care of myself; I feed myself all my own meals, put myself to bed whatever time I want. Then I come home and my parents are like, "Where are you going? What time are you going to be home?" and being 19 years old and being like, "I don't have a curfew at school." And I do think there's some of that liminal space.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Does being a New Yorker now...</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I've been here five years.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: For living in such a crowded city, feelings of loneliness can pervade because everybody's doing their own thing. Did that informed the role for you.</strong><br /> <br />ZK: In New York, there's a sense of being alone in a crowd of people all the time. I grew up in Los Angeles and I think LA is a much lonelier city than New York is. You're alone in your car or your house, people don't really go out in the same way that they go out in New York, so if you don't know anybody in LA I think you're much lonelier.<br /><br />In New York it's much easier to be alone than it is in Los Angeles because you can always go to a bar or a coffee shop or go to Film Forum and there are people around you and you feel like you're in a community. But I think that when you have that much availability to people and there's still no connection, that's the kind of space that Ivy's in. Her mother isn't really taking care of her and her boyfriend isn't really available to her.<br /><br />She's self-sufficient, but I think she's lonely, and I can definitely understand that. There are times when being on the subway, like when you're depressed, it's physically painful because there's no privacy, there's no space. Like after her breakup when she's taking the subway home, there's no space for her to be alone and cry, and I think that there is a kind of prison of publicness that is happening in the movie. <br /><br />Even when Greg calls her when she's at that party, or having the seizure at that party, the door is open, there are people walking by. There's a sense of there's no place for her to be alone.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What did you hope this film conveys to an audience?</strong><br /> <br />ZK: I hope people can see past Ivy and Al's youth to the [see the] universality of the story. It's about loneliness and learning how to connect with other people. It's about the thing of not being willing to know your own heart or not knowing your own heart. I do think it's specifically about young people and about a very young stage of life; I hope that it has more to offer than that.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Was it weird working with your boyfriend Paul Dano in the upcoming Kelly Reichardt film, <em>Meek's Cutof</em>f? </strong><br /><br /> ZK: It was really normal actually. There was another actor that was supposed to play the part Paul played and the actor had a visa issued but couldn't come at the very last minute. Like literally two days before we were going to shoot Paul came in to do it and I think he was more nervous about it than I was.<br /><br />We met doing a play together, so we had worked together before, so I knew how he was as an actor. But it was actually an incredible thing because it was a very grueling shoot. We were in the middle of nowhere, like in the desert of Oregon six hours from civilization.<br /><br />We had no cell service, very little internet, and we were in these incredible salt flats with all this alkaline dust. It was like two hours from our motel to the set everyday over literally no road, just over dirt, with dehydration and sunstroke, then hypothermia. <br /><br />We had such grueling conditions, so to have someone there with me who I loved, who at the end of the day would just be content to help me get some food and help me get to sleep was great.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-2979990990858272842010-06-02T04:49:00.000-07:002010-06-02T05:04:04.501-07:00Photog Greg Friedler Becomes Stripped Naked In Las Vegas, So To Speak!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrhDYZm4ep3uSU8T1RL3vqkQhtCh9h0sZOyuzwOr_atk_FdBHWrU7KUZ1rGc3uHcWhu_XixO2OJqJIe24WPWzp9eczAygyivkFjiJjMsayg3vxpyxJZYYpPdgAOxvwfsI-vNwGuIhE_FME/s1600/greg.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 384px; height: 396px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrhDYZm4ep3uSU8T1RL3vqkQhtCh9h0sZOyuzwOr_atk_FdBHWrU7KUZ1rGc3uHcWhu_XixO2OJqJIe24WPWzp9eczAygyivkFjiJjMsayg3vxpyxJZYYpPdgAOxvwfsI-vNwGuIhE_FME/s400/greg.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5478142184928103874" /></a>Q&A by Brad Balfour<br /><br />I got a press release about this film, <em>Stripped: Greg Friedler's Naked Las Vegas</em>, that was being released as a DVD and as part of Showtime's rotating schedule. I figured, "What a weird thing to do to yourself." Here is a film shot by a doc filmmaker about a photographer as he photographs people willing to be photographed naked for a book.<br /><br />So when visual artist <strong>Greg Friedler</strong> decided to mine the making of his latest book as material for a documentary, what happened in Las Vegas didn't just stay in Vegas. The feature-length documentary chronicling this photog creating his latest book in his <em>Naked</em> series premiered on Showtime in March.<br /><br />The shootist got a chance to have others step into his world when he enjoined director <strong>David Palmer</strong> to fashion this film. A New York native, Palmer has worked in Hollywood for over a decade as a director, photographer and editor on docs, features, commercials, branded content and music videos for such talent as Nelly, Toni Braxton, Lil Wayne, The Dandy Warhols, The Charlatans UK, and Tripping Daisy. Palmer has completed two half-hour TV docs for Rip Curl, and making an indie mocumentary, <em>Brothers Justice</em>with Dax Shepard and Tom Arnold.<br /><br />But this isn't 39-year-old Friedler's first nudity project -- he made three previous books before this one, set in New York, London and Los Angeles. Most photographers are lucky if they have one book in their lifetime; he has these four and more. And he has had two films made about his work already: <em>Naked London</em> shown on the BBC in 1999, and now <em>Stripped: Greg Friedler's Naked Las Vegas</em>.<br /><br />Still garnering attention; <em>Stripped</em> will be featured at the Las Vegas Film Festival on June 6th, 2010, with the Colorado-based photographer attending. Currently shooting three new art projects, Friedler's teaching his workshops, writing a book about human suffering and is to shoot his first narrative short this summer in Denver. And he is launching a new website, <a href="http://www.friedlerthinking.com" target="_hplink">www.friedlerthinking.com</a>, that will be live this week alongside <a href="http://www.gregfriedler.com" target="_hplink">www.gregfriedler.com</a>. Still, he found time to sit down and denude the core of his art.<br /><br /><strong>Q: What's the fascination with getting people to expose themselves, of becoming naked in public?</strong><br /><br />GF: Spencer Tunick is [the photographer] who does [the public thing].<br /> <br /><strong>Q: By "in public," I mean you’re seeing them clothed, then seeing them naked. It’s in a book and a movie going out to the world. So it’s "public" in that sense. <br /></strong><br />GF: This deals with documenting people in a non-sexual, non-erotic way. This is not about sex; it’s about showing the entire person as they exist in society. <br /><br />The clothed and unclothed, what they do for a living, their age -- all ties into my fascination with documenting society. Showing how someone looks if they’re a banker. How do look in their clothing? Then, how do they look when they’re naked? <br /><br />When they’re naked they’re on [an equal] playing field because there are no demarcations of what they do for a living, their wealth or their poverty or whatever. It’s just the raw person. I saw the opportunity in Vegas because of what I did in London and the BBC documentary in London. I just had a vision for it and we did <em>Stripped: Greg Friedler’s Naked Las Vega</em>s.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: When you made the film, did people react differently than when you made it strictly as a book? You’re asking people to be in a movie about it, so it has a different layer or level of exposure, so to speak.</strong><br /> <br />GF: I took photos of 170 people in Vegas, which is a huge number because only 75 people make it into the book. I think only one out of those people didn’t want to be in the movie, only one. So they went for it and it was great. <br /> <br /><strong>Q: There’s got to be a slightly different permutation to making a movie versus making a book.</strong><br /> <br />GF: Well it’s a different paradigm; it’s a different starting place. The book is, “Okay, I’m going to shoot you clothed in three shots, three shots nude, ask what you do for a living and your age, and then, 'nice meeting you,' ” and moving on to the next person. <br /><br />The film is just a different set of assumptions. But only one person out of 170 did not want to be in the film, so it worked out.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: In New York, you can walk up to people on the street and say, “You want to be naked in a book?”</strong> <br /><br />GF: That’s not my style exactly. <br /><br /><strong>Q: You obviously were trying to get different walks of life, so how did you find people when you got to individual cities? </strong><br /> <br />GF: I found people through websites; I placed ads on places like Craigslist. You find people however you can find them. I talked to the bartender at the Stratosphere, where I was staying, and he did it. You just talk to people and you feel them out and see if you think it would be something they’d be interested in. <br /><br />When you show them a published book like Naked New York or something, all they can do is say yes or no, and I would say I’m 50/50 -- 50% of the time they say yes.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: How different were each of the cities?</strong><br /> <br />GF: Well, New York was the original city, so I did it as my thesis for grad school at the School of Visual Arts. I shot in a friend’s dingy, tiny loft in Chelsea on West 27th Street between 10th and 11th before it became nice. <br /><br />I shot that over a year. I placed an ad to begin with in the Village Voice, and 11 people responded. I met with them at the School of Visual Arts in a studio and talked to them, then somewhere within those two weeks, I decided I didn’t want to shoot them naked in the studio. I wanted to shoot them clothed and naked in a loft, and did that. <br /><br />I shot it over a year and it was an amazing project. LA was next and that was quite different because LA’s got a very different feel to it, a different energy and culture. LA was good but not great. <br /><br />London was amazing. Not exactly with LA, but New York and London are very, very old cities with deep roots. Vegas isn’t like that. It’s a very new city. It’s a very specific, transient culture in Vegas.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What was a common thread with the people that were willing to be naked?</strong><br /> <br />GF: Well you have your nudist contingent. You have the everyday Joe Blow lawyer accountant who’s got kind of a wild streak to them who wants to be in it. You’re got your sex workers, which were a very huge population of Vegas. You have people that are dealing with entertainment and gambling. <br /><br />But I knew going in I wasn’t going to get celebrities, or get people that are “Playboy” models; and I wasn’t going to get people that are hanging out at the Palms casino. I wasn’t going to get that demographic because they have no reason for doing it. It doesn’t promote their career at all. <br /><br />Some of the people I shot were high on meth. The meth problem in Vegas is worse than anywhere else in the country; it’s insane. There were four people I tried to track down. I went through friends, and they were like, “Yeah, they’re dead. They moved.” Meth is a huge problem in Vegas.<br /> <br />Q<strong>: How did it feel to be the subject as opposed to being the documentarian?</strong><br /> <br />GF: I don’t really love it, but I put up with it. I cringe when I see myself on screen.<br /><br /><strong>Q: This film project was directed by David Palmer. Did you ever consider directing it yourself?</strong><br /> <br />GF: I was thinking about it. The whole thing was my idea; I came up with the notion of doing Naked Las Vegas and documenting it. In 1999, I went to London for eight weeks and they did a documentary about me shooting Naked London, which aired on the BBC. <br /><br />Q: What was it about this particular director that made you feel he was the right guy to do it?<br /> <br />GF: He was very excited about it. He had the right kind of energy and ideas, so we hooked up.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Did you fight the urge to micromanage?</strong><br /><br />GF: I didn’t want to micromanage. <br /><br /><strong>Q: Were you shooting the movie while taking the pictures?</strong><br /> <br />GF: During the entire month of August 2007, I was shooting pictures and he was shooting the movie.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: How different was it having David shoot the movie while you’re doing the pictures?</strong><br /> <br />GF: Not very different. I tried to keep it real and just let him do what he wanted to do. He would have me go and open a door or do certain things so that he could edit it back into the film later on.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: The difference between the book and the movie is that people are sharing directly into the camera. You’re getting their feedback. There’s something communicated by the wordlessness of the book, but by having the words heard here, what effect did that have for you and the viewer? Does it change or enhance the experience? You're the subject of the film, but you’re not; you’re the generator of it but you’re also the subject. Being videotaped doing the process makes for two different subjects</strong>.<br /><br />GF: Sure. The real subject matter…<br /> <br /><strong>Q: There's documenting you doing it; it’s a layer upon a layer. It’s different from documenting something that’s just happening. It’s one thing to go into the whorehouse and go in to videotape it.</strong><br /> <br />GF: It’s a documentary of me on my journey and <em>Naked in Las Vegas</em>. It’s a documentary that has its ebbs and flows of what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, what I’m wanting. <br /><br />During some of the film I’m really down. I’m not in a good mood because Vegas is an exceptionally crazy place to go for 30 days; it’ll hurt your soul big time. <br /><br />I ran into a lot of problems with not being able to find people to shoot, and what I ended up doing, which was very wise, is Vegas, like Denver and some other cities, has First Fridays. <br /><br />Usually I would shoot over a weekend and shoot 15, 20 people a day, if that. On First Friday in August of 2007 we put up a banner and I shot 55 people in the back of a gallery in three hours.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: What were the similarities and differences between people from New York, LA, London, Vegas?</strong><br /> <br />GF: One good one is there was a gap from London, which is 1999, to eight years later in Vegas. One big thing is lack of pubic hair. A big lack of pubic hair, almost no pubic hair. <br /><br />Lee, the guy in the film who’s the homeless man -- I fell in love with him -- is just amazing, he doesn’t have any pubic hair. The guy doesn’t know where he’s going to sleep every night, and he’s shaving his pubic hair. That befuddled me. <br /><br />That's why I am into being an artist, to ask, "Why is this woman wearing fake nails and why is she wearing this type of fake nails and what does that mean about her and what does that say about her humanity?"<br /> <br /><strong>Q: You are right. What amazes me is that even normal, ordinary people shaved in this thing.</strong><br /> <br />GF: In the film, I talked about the lack of pubic hair and then -- Oscar Goodman’s the mayor of Vegas -- I say as a joke, “Yep, it’s almost like Oscar Goodman put out a mandate: 'No more pubic hair for females.' ” He’s in the film; it’s hilarious. I cannot believe he signed a release and went in the film, but it’s hilarious.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: But not naked...</strong><br /> <br />GF: No. Are you kidding me? He’s with the book and says, “I’m going to have to look at this after 10 martinis."<br /><br /><strong>Q: Do you think of the gap in terms of era? Or is it more about place?</strong><br /> <br />GF: Something changed in society. I don’t think it has to do with London versus Vegas. And I wonder about these things. Where do they get the idea of shaving their pubic hair?<br /> <br />Q: You say there’s an obvious gap between New York, London and this book. New York was your first shoot.<br /> <br />GF: New York was in 1995.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Would it be interesting to go back and do an addendum to New York and see if it was any different?</strong><br /> <br />GF: It would be interesting to see if people look any different, if the people that came forth did anything different for a living.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Or go back to the same people.</strong><br /> <br />GF: Well that would be the only way to do it. I can’t do it because I don’t have contact with those people, but if I so choose, and I wouldn’t choose, but I would probably go back and do London if I could find those people. London was a very rich experience. It’s an amazing city; it’s a big city, and I got people from all walks of life. When I get my hands on Naked London, I’ll send it to you. You can watch that DVD.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: And how was LA versus New York?</strong><br /> <br />GF: LA was very difficult. I succeeded, I did a good job, but it’s not as powerful a book.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Who would have thought LA? Because they go to the beach and they’re virtually half naked.</strong><br /> <br />GF: It’s hard to get in touch with people in LA. They’re so spread out and it’s a car culture. It’s very different. LA was not my favorite at all.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: I was in LA recently; I stayed in Venice part of the time.</strong><br /> <br />GF: Venice is where I shot the LA book.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: I love Venice.</strong><br /> <br />GF: I do too. I shot in a private outdoor courtyard.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: How did you find it?</strong><br /> <br />GF: Through a friend who’s an artist who had a space next door. A guy that used to date Sandra Bullock who’s an artist found me the space; it was brilliant.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Did you find a difference in the kind of jobs that people had in LA versus New York or any of the other places?</strong><br /> <br />GF: No.<br /> <br />Q: What also interests me is the difference between the men and the women. Do you find that the women are more willing to be naked -- or the men?<br /> <br />GF: You know what? It’s even. There’s no way to really know it. People came forth, and they were very open, very loving, very nice, and they didn’t have a problem with it.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: Any differences in terms of age range?</strong><br /> <br />GF: It’s always harder to get older people, always.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: I'd be hesitant just because I’m fatter than I used to be and it bothers me.</strong><br /> <br />GF: Younger was not a problem. Middle-aged was not a problem. It’s just a little older and was a little bit harder. I got more people in New York and London that were older.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: You were saying that when you do a book like this, you’re also getting a sense of the character of the people.</strong><br /> <br />GF: I do a book in a specific city because I’m interested in the culture; I’m interested in the people; I’m interested in the place. I get to know the people through the city and the city through the people. It’s all one.<br /><br />It’s not about shooting naked people; it’s about educating yourself about what a place is about. What is the culture? What are the trends? What’s the energy?<br /><br />And I did it in Vegas, and that’s why Tokyo would be exquisite. If I do another book, like in Tokyo, I’d want to do that a little bit more, but it will not be another Naked book. It will be a massive survey of Japanese culture which involves my photographs and the work of three writers. We’ll see what happens.<br /> <br /><strong>Q: That’s another reason why it was good documenting London or Vegas as a film… you’re learning about the people there. That isn’t easy to convey unless you have a camera there to share it.</strong><br /> <br />GF: It’s conveyed in <em>Stripped</em>. It sheds light on a lot of things.<br /><br /><strong>Q: The books offer one kind of aesthetic experience. Seeing images is one kind of experience. Seeing them in a film, it’s almost like an adventure story unfolding as opposed to just seeing the end result, a document.</strong><br /> <br />GF: Of course; it’s a film versus a book, a film versus an art project. It’s seeing something on a printed page versus motion picture. It uncovers a lot more.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Did you ever think about getting naked yourself and doing your own portrait?</strong><br /> <br />GF: Not really in these books. I’m in a couple of books naked. There’s a book called <em>Self Exposure</em> where I do a self-portrait. <br /><br />For now I’m over the naked thing and just moving on to other things. Things kind of ebb and flow as an artist, and you’ve just got to shoot what you want to shoot.<br /><br />For more articles by Brad Balfour go to: <a href="http://filmfestivaltraveler.com" target="_hplink">filmfestivaltraveler.com</a>filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1411093635499254227.post-2478050685660886222010-05-28T05:24:00.000-07:002010-06-16T22:49:33.468-07:00Michael Stephenson & George Hardy Turn Back To Troll 2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1zDemgFAubBQYcQw2JoHPAK3_7MYrxHOJmavHHWZuVaPiseC64RtOoBV0fPgLEEG0InpjuWv0abFFT_FSp6EKQumnXyyybGQE6S-azzH53AbMNyv4JKlffyq8zFR8TvNRjwYTc2S8diJ6/s1600/Troll_2dvd.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 281px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1zDemgFAubBQYcQw2JoHPAK3_7MYrxHOJmavHHWZuVaPiseC64RtOoBV0fPgLEEG0InpjuWv0abFFT_FSp6EKQumnXyyybGQE6S-azzH53AbMNyv4JKlffyq8zFR8TvNRjwYTc2S8diJ6/s400/Troll_2dvd.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5476297736459510018" /></a> Exclusive Interview by Brad Balfour<br /><br />When I was a kid, I discovered horror films and loved them all -- whether they were good or bad, black and white or garishly colored, muddily shot or poorly conceived. No idea was so terrible that I couldn't watch it. Seeing the many ways someone can rethink the familiar tropes whets the interest of the true horror fan.<br /><br />In 1989, several unwitting Utah actors starred in the almost-undisputed worst movie in genre history: <em>Troll 2</em>. Directed by <strong>Claudio Fragasso</strong> under the pseudonym Drake Floyd, the 1990 horror film, <em>Troll 2</em>, was known as <em>Goblin</em> during production but, upon its U.S. release, the title was changed in an attempt to cash in on the more established horror flick. Despite the title, no actual trolls appear in this one.<br /><br />The plot revolves around the Waits family, who are taking a trip to visit a small town called "Nilbog" (goblin spelled backwards), but are plunged into a nightmare as they are relentlessly pursued by vegetarian goblins, who turn people into plants in order to eat them.<br /><br />Most of the cast, such as George Hardy (as the father), Michael Stephenson (as the son), Margo Prey, Connie Young (credited under McFarland) and Jason F. Wright, subsequently sought anonymity upon its release -- until now.<br /><br />Two decades later, the film's child star, Stephenson, makes a documentary about the film's improbable revival as a so-bad-it's-great cult fave. The result, <em>Best Worst Movie</em>, unravels the heartfelt tale of the Alabama dentist-turned-underground movie icon Hardy and this Italian filmmaker Fragasso, who has yet to come to terms with his legendarily inept, internationally revered cinematic failure.<br /><br /><em>Best Worst Movie</em> begs the viewer to wax philosophical on what it means to make a bad horror film -- or a good bad one -- that was created without guile or irony, yet that finds a new audience once the irony-tinted glasses come on.<br /><br />For a long time, alot of young filmmaker wanna-bes were lost in the swamp of Hollywood movie hell. But thanks to the down-and-dirty genre of horror, and totally trashy indie flicks like <em>Troll 2</em>, fascinating docs like <em>Best Worst Movie</em> are made, gets its boost and now gets to connect with a substantial public.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWci-lUUj0Yj2ouUDnWHRDHI1RCpDKZQIxDcZTHyYSYqweTxUk6llW76LPsKNCjUgzun7_XtZuvcrAkLFPAne4KC6ieeoVUYdTul7oIAUjeHHhtcXY-zMJSJmwATELLe6sY9hUCP5hRAZR/s1600/Troll2Team.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 332px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWci-lUUj0Yj2ouUDnWHRDHI1RCpDKZQIxDcZTHyYSYqweTxUk6llW76LPsKNCjUgzun7_XtZuvcrAkLFPAne4KC6ieeoVUYdTul7oIAUjeHHhtcXY-zMJSJmwATELLe6sY9hUCP5hRAZR/s400/Troll2Team.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5476295971367699090" /></a><strong>Q: You realize, this movie is a permutation on a permutation on a permutation…</strong><br /><br />MS: Yes, I do.<br /><br /><strong>Q: The original movie, which was not about trolls but goblins, is made by an Italian director who can’t speak English with...</strong><br /><br />MS: Actors who couldn’t act, all [shot] in small-town Utah, around a plot that involves vegetarian goblins attempting to turn my family into plants so they can eat us.<br /><br /><strong>Q: That has to be one of the most outlandish horror film premises. Then, of course, the lead actor is a dentist in real life.</strong><br /><br />GH: I was a practicing dentist before I was an actor. It takes on this whole weird life of its own for this film. I was actually thinking about going to that event [a screening of the original movie] when it was in New York. I’m a horror fan from word go. So it’s like, how do you put it all together? Do you sit there and marvel?<br /><br />MS: As clichéd as it all sounds, it’s just meant to be. It’s weird because when I look back four years ago and until I had the idea for the documentary, up until that point, I wanted nothing to do with Troll 2. I was too cool. I was embarrassed by the film. And it never went away.<br /><br />I actually continued in my life to pursue areas within the industry like everybody else does; writing scripts, auditioning; I was sending out head shots, resumes and all that sort of stuff.<br /><br />Then, all of a sudden, fans started contacting me on MySpace with these messages out of the blue. This was before the resurgence, and I remember just waking up one morning -- I’ll never forget this -- and staring at the ceiling having this crazy kind of warm feeling, just smiling ear to ear and thinking, "Wait a minute, I’m the child star of the worst movie ever made; there’s a story here."<br /><br />All of a sudden it was like, this is perfect for a first film, something that’s so personal and accessible to me. It became this compulsion, and I kept thinking, “What does Claudio think about this film being loved because it’s awful?"<br /><br />It also felt like there was this critical mass, like it was building, and I kept thinking about this guy doing dentistry while we were filming the movie.<br /><br /><strong>Q: Oh, you had appointments in the middle of the movie?</strong><br /><br />GH: Oh yeah.<br /><br /><strong>Q: You didn’t take off a week or anything?</strong><br /><br />GH: No, no, no -- I was practicing and had to go back and forth.<br /><br /><strong>Q: And after the film, did you stay in touch with anyone from it?</strong><br /><br />GH: No one.<br /><br /><strong>Q: So you get this phone call -- can you recreate the moment that's in the film?</strong><br /><br />MS: It really started with the fans. There was a fan in Utah -- this wasn’t in the film -- who had organized this small cast members' screening in Utah, and George went to that. I didn’t actually end up going to that screening. Then a couple of weeks later, we were on the phone for the first time since working together 20 years ago.<br /><br />For me, it was one of these moments that I’ll cherish because from the very first word I could feel the love for life that this guy has, and we were sharing experiences. He had notes on MySpace; I had notes on MySpace; we started talking to other cast members. And then, the next thing I know, there was a New York City screening and that was the very first screening I filmed. And that was the very first screening I went to. <br /><br />I actually remember going to it and being terrified. I didn’t know what to expect. I really thought, "Are people going to laugh at us? Are they going to throw tomatoes at us? Are they going to boo and say, "You guys suck"?<br /><br />I really thought the worst, and the only reason I went was that I had a camera in hand and was making this film. I thought, "This may never happen again; here’s the first time that cast members and fans are going to be in New York."<br /><br />Q: Do you have big posters or anything on the walls in your office now?<br /><br />GH: No.<br /><br />Q: Obviously you aren't apologetic about it, but aren’t you exploiting it?<br /><br />GH: I’ve thought about that and thought I should be documenting this whole thing that’s happening to us now, because I do have in my garage that the theater department at Auburn University did a Troll 2 party.<br /><br />MS: He’s had people drive for hours to go to his dentistry practice.<br /><br />GH: Just because they’re Troll 2 fans.<br /><br />MS: You can buy Troll 2 in his office.<br /><br />Q: You should be selling this movie in your office.<br /><br />GH: Well I will once it comes out. But I thought, I haven’t even gotten the movie poster yet, Michael, I need to get the Best Worst Movie poster that’s just come out. Have you seen it? It’s beautiful. You’ve got to see the poster.<br /><br />Q: The other irony of it is of course the trolls, or the goblins, whatever you want to call them, have the worst teeth possible. Has anybody ever pointed this out to you?<br /><br />GH: Oh yeah, all the time.<br /><br />Q: Have you had this fantasy moment where you improve their teeth?<br /><br />GH: Hopefully when the DVD comes out we’ll have some incredible outtakes. The bottom line is I think we’ve even got that documented.<br /><br />MS: There’s a scene that will be a DVD extra, I’m sure, but the witch from Troll 2 ended up having a last-minute dentistry need while we were in Utah for that last event, and she called George and asked to get his advice, and he basically said, “I’ll take care of you right now. Let’s go down to the office.”<br /><br />He called the dentistry office. He ended up doing dentistry on the witch’s tooth in the same office that he practiced in 20 years ago. It was really surreal. And I travel with this guy everywhere and his first impression is, “Man, that guy has got good teeth.”<br /><br />Q: I need work.<br /><br />GH: Come to Alabama.<br /><br />MS: This is so telling of who he is. At the horror convention, when nobody cares about Troll 2 and there’s that down-note in the movie, and George is in his darkest hour, the worst thing he can say about somebody is they don’t floss their teeth or that they have gingivitis.<br /><br />Q: Then you bring in the Italian director, and he really doesn’t quite see it for what it is. Is it just language issues?<br /><br />MS: Have you ever thought that maybe we just don’t get Troll 2? It’s funny because I’ll tell you, this whole experience has messed me up so bad that I can’t say that Troll 2 is a bad film. Think of how many films you watch and you’re bored to tears, even films that have far greater resources and are forgettable the instant they’re made.<br /><br />You have a film like Troll 2 or even Plan 9 from Outer Space or some of these bad movies that were made with such sincerity and are so genuine. I mean 20 years later they’re still making impressions on people; you can’t pay for that.<br /><br />Even though it fails fundamentally – acting, writing, directing – I mean horribly, abysmally, just awful in every possible way -- it was a cinematic car crash -- but the level of heart that it has!<br /><br />Q: What happened with the one actress that you had to go and track down? What has happened since?<br /><br />MS: Margo. Nothing really. She’s a shut-in. It’s complicated with her. I should say that when I started making this film and as it continued to progress, Troll 2 kept resonating with me, both on this triumphant and tragic level.<br /><br />As we started seeing some of the other side and who these people were and actually seeing the human element connected with the worst movie ever made, it had its ups and downs.<br /><br />Q: I'm still not sure if it was the worst movie ever made or not.<br /><br />MS: No. And I would say it’s not. For me I found Margo very likable. Her experience with Troll 2 wasn’t that much further from Claudio’s, and there was a sense of tragedy to it. But when we showed up it was like the bright spot in her year; she was so happy to talk about Troll 2. A shut-in, she takes care of her mom, she’s very… She doesn’t want pity. And even though her experience of Troll 2 is far different than what most people would say is normal, it’s still her experience with the film.<br /><br />Q: What was Claudio doing between the time when you got back in touch and when he made the film in '89? What's he doing since?<br /><br />MS: He saw the documentary and wrote in an email, “It’s beautiful. I love it.” I talked to him just a couple of days ago; I still talk to him. He’s written Troll 2 Part 2. It’s crazy because he continues to get movies made time and time again.<br /><br />If you think how difficult that is, just think how difficult it would have been for him to make Troll 2, work with actors who couldn’t act in small-town Utah; he got it made and still it’s having an impression on people. So he continues to make films.<br /><br />Q: Darren-- who played Arnold -- is closest to the acting world, how’s he doing?<br /><br />MS: He’s good. He’s living in Utah.<br /><br />GH: And works for the Salt Lake City Tribune.<br /><br />MS: Still going on auditions, a beautiful family; he’s happy. He’s actually been one of the guys from the beginning that has been really along for the ride and having a lot of fun with it.<br /><br />Q: How many of the people involved were Mormons?<br /><br />MS: I’m Mormon. There were a few of us. As far as in Troll 2, I want to say the majority. I am a practicing Mormon, that’s my belief, yeah. Generally speaking, there are a lot of misconceptions with every religion until you actually understand it. We don’t have 10 wives and all that other nonsense.<br /><br />Though Troll 2 has no direct connection to Mormonism, most of the people that were in the film were Mormons, and with Troll 2 being a horror film there's still a very family-friendly innocence to it.<br /><br />Q: It's in this area of, If it wasn’t made to be art, can it be art in some way? Or if it's art that’s made to be bad art; does that make it good art?<br /><br />MS: When you make art you’re never thinking about the end result. It becomes something different than what you started out to make. I know this sounds pretentious, but how many people look at art and one person says “That’s amazing. I see so much in it,” and another person says “That’s crap. I could do that.”<br /><br />It’s wild; I’ve seen Troll 2 in so many environments where people create friendships that will last a lifetime from the singular experience of watching Troll 2 together. And even though it was not meant to be what it is, it doesn’t take away from what it’s become.<br /><br />Q: Have you been to horror or science fiction conventions as opposed to these slightly tongue-in-cheek fan events? The fan world that appreciates your film about a bad horror movie is one thing, but of course, we’re in a universe where we give support to people making horror films even if they’re bad. Independent filmmaking comes out of horror films.<br /><br />MS: In the film there’s the horror convention that we go to and even amongst the horror fans…<br /><br />Q: Where theoretically they embrace horror film, good, bad or ugly...<br /><br />MS: They were more interested in Nightmare on Elm Street 5. It takes a very certain type of person to like Troll 2. Even in the UK, that audience wasn’t the Troll 2 audience. The Troll 2 audience that might have been the original audience, they like any bad horror film. Then there’s the Troll 2 audience which approaches it with that degree of irony that you use maybe when seeing say, The Rocky Horror Show, which actually was a good film.<br /><br />MS: You have the Troll 2 audience that will go to their graves saying it is not a bad movie. That’s the thing; bad is completely relative. What do we go to movies for? To have an experience. So whatever experience that person has with that film is personal, it’s theirs.<br /><br />Who’s to say my experience with the movie should be the same as somebody else’s? And something I’ve really learned about guilty pleasures; guilty pleasures I don’t know if I believe in. You either enjoy it or you don’t, and, if you enjoy it, why are you too scared to admit you enjoy it?<br /><br />Q: I’m not sure how much I liked Troll 2 itself, but I love the documentary.<br /><br />GH: It’s just all about laughter, that’s what it is. It’s about relationships and laughter, and that’s the way I’ve looked at this whole thing.<br /><br />Q: How do you view all of this? You’ve just been living your normal life, but you’re really enjoying it.<br /><br />GH: Oh I’m enjoying it. What I’m enjoying is the sense of humor; that’s what I’ve enjoyed more than anything else -- and many of the fans and just being around this whole resurgence of Troll 2 and making the documentary, there’s just so much laughter. I just find that’s what I love about it.<br /><br />In this time of recession and all this bipartisan, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Tea Party deal or whatever, with the terrorism and real estate prices dropping, with empty buildings here in New York City, people are laughing when they come to see Best Worst Movie.<br /><br />There are 150 belly-ache laughs in Best Worst Movie and the same thing in Troll 2. I mean my gosh, what’s wrong with laughing and having fun? So I’ve embraced that part about it.filmfanwriterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06068266877470608831noreply@blogger.com0