Posts Tagged ‘interview’
Ashley Judd is Helen
Whether surrounded by rowdy, chest-painted frat boys at Kentucky Wildcats basketball games or sporting a Kentucky Derby-style hat and nervous grin while watching her husband, Dario Franchitti, whip around the Indianapolis 500 racetrack, actress Ashley Judd seems like the picture of happiness.
Judd, 42, best known as the star of thrillers like “Double Jeopardy” and “Kiss the Girls,” is in a good place in life. In May, she received a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, her husband recently won the Indy 500 and Judd’s coming off a string of impressive roles in smaller, character-driven films like Joey Lauren Adams’s Sundance drama “Come Early Morning” and William Friedkin’s psychological horror film “Bug” that really show off her range as an actress.
It’s a far cry from 2006. That year, Judd had come off her biggest critical and commercial failure yet, the nonsensical thriller, “Twisted.” What’s worse, she was suffering from a bevy of personal issues and ultimately entered a program at Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap, Texas, and stayed for 47 days. There, Judd was treated for depression and codependency.
In a stunning example of art-imitating-life, Judd’s latest starring role is in HELEN. Directed by Sandra Nettelbeck (“Mostly Martha”), Judd stars as Helen, a seemingly-happy music professor who, unbeknownst to her husband (Goran Visnjic) and 13-year-old daughter (Alexia Fast), suffers from severe depression. When Helen relapses, her life begins to unravel. She finds solace in one of her young students, Mathilda (Lauren Lee Smith), who is afflicted with the same disease. Similar to her standout Sundance performances in the aforementioned “Come Early Morning” and her breakthrough role in 1993’s “Ruby in Paradise,” HELEN is more than anything a showcase for Judd’s acting talent.
MMM chatted with the incredibly articulate Judd about her own battle with depression, her politics and political aspirations, being typecast in thrillers and, last but not least, Kentucky Wildcats basketball.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: What attracted you to the character of ‘Helen?’
ASHLEY JUDD: I thought it was a beautiful, powerful screenplay. I think it was about page 12 and I was reading it and thought, “I absolutely have to do this.” I had no idea where this film was going but I had a really deep sense of identification.
MMM: Did you see similarities between Helen’s descent into madness and Agnes’s in “Bug?”
JUDD: Oh, what an interesting question! I love Agnes. I love that movie. On occasion, I’ll be in an airport – or some big public space – and an anonymous member of the throng will point their finger at me with their eyes wide and start to back away. “Oh, you’ve seen ‘Bug’!” [Laughs] I think that Helen is much more conscious about her trajectory than Agnes is because Helen knows where she’s going. She’s been there before, and that’s really common with people who have depression. There can be, oftentimes, a foreboding sense around a certain time of year or around the anniversary of a triggering event, and folks get really scared and think, “Oh crap, am I going to go there again?” There’s a wonderful saying around recovery circles that ‘we’re only as sick as our secrets,’ so, in addition to living with untreated depression, Helen is keeping a toxic secret about being there before. Agnes and she share the isolation.
MMM: But Agnes was pushed into madness by Peter [Michael Shannon.] Did your husband’s character in Helen [Goran Visjnic] have a hand in Helen’s relapsing?
JUDD: No, I don’t think so. I really think Helen was a biochemical baseline mood brain event. I think Goran’s character was the untreated codependent in the relationship, whereas Agnes is the one who’s very codependent in “Bug.”
MMM: The film seems to advocate hospitalization and medication to combat psychiatric illness—
JUDD: —Oh no, not at all. That’s a part of Helen’s journey, but I don’t think in any way, shape or form this film is advocating that. The director, Sandra Nettelbeck, was very clear in filming this one scene when Helen is insisting on being discharged, that the attorney representing her points out that some psychiatric patients succeed in committing suicide while in the hospital. Now, if you want my personal view, they absolutely have a place in treating major recurrent suicidal depression. And, in this day and age, we’re fortunate that there’s a full arsenal of tools that are useful and effective and they all need to be used in a concerted and coordinated effort.
MMM: So you’re not with the Tom Cruise camp on this one?
JUDD: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I think medication can be crucial for stabilizing baseline mood and only from a stable baseline can the daily pick-and-shovel work of cognitive and behavioral therapy – experiential therapy, of which I am an impassioned proponent – and other modalities, can genuinely stand a chance of staying effective. Chat therapy on it’s own, lets be real clear, does no good. It can in fact be abusive because it regurgitates the problem instead of creating a design for living that helps move the person forward in a dynamic and real way.
MMM: As far as the ending is concerned, with Helen receiving electro-shock therapy, many critics have found it to be a bit “tidy.” What are your thoughts on the ending?
JUDD: Sandra is a German auteur, so “tidy” is not in her vocabulary. [Laughs] I’m not jumping on any electro-shock therapy bandwagon. It was part of Helen’s journey. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived with or known someone battling with major recurrent suicidal depression. It is not a thing to be trifled.
MMM: I understand you had your own battle with depression in 2006. How did your own experience inform the way you approached the role of ‘Helen?’
JUDD: Well, it certainly made me love Helen in a special way, and I think those of us who have been there can understand like few others can. When I started reading the script and, on a pretty deep, intuitive level, understand what it was about, I started to weep. “But for the grace of god go I” was the constant refrain in my mind, because it very easily could have been me if I had not gotten the kind of help I did when I got it. I was on an airplane when I was reading the script and as soon as I landed, I called two of my mentors and said, “I have to send you this screenplay. Do you think I can play the disease without being ‘in’ the disease?” And they said, “How dare you not. You of all people, you can carry the message of recovery because, in a way, you’re uniquely qualified.” I identified a lot with Helen’s story. Some of the major things were different but the essence was the same. This is going to sound perverse, but it was really fun. I got to play the disease without myself being in it. From an artistic point of view, there was something really incredible about that.
MMM: Ever since “Twisted” in 2004, you’ve come a Sundance darling so-to-speak. I know you got your start at Sundance with “Ruby in Paradise,” but you’ve really been acting in a lot of independents and staying away from the thrillers. Why the change?
JUDD: I like you! [Laughs] I burnt out. For some of Helen’s reasons, I was just ready to take a step back and opting out felt really necessary, and it also felt really good. I really enjoyed making “Come Early Morning” with Joey Lauren Adams. And then “Bug” was just a riot. I think I was being really nourished creatively and having my needs met.
MMM: But do you feel like the thrillers weren’t stretching you enough as an actress? Because in these independents you really seem to go for it.
JUDD: I always work hard in the thrillers. I show up and do whatever I have to do on any particular day. I was actually thinking about how, for that period of time, I was associated with those films, but I was also doing “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and “De-Lovely.” Maybe because of [the thrillers’] commercial success, and audience familiarity, I seem a little over-associated with those than what’s really reflective of the totality of my work. “High Crimes” was a really difficult film for me. I was not in a good place, personally. When I look back on it, if I had been a little more empowered at the time, I probably wouldn’t have made “High Crimes.” And then I think it ended up setting up “Twisted” to look like one too many. Working with Philip Kaufman, Sam [Jackson], it was a great group of people, but I was personally in a really bad place. I was really in a pickle. That can’t help but be reflected in what goes out into the world.
MMM: I understand you just received your Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and you’ve done a great deal of advocacy work. Is it your goal to one day run for public office?
JUDD: No, it is not ultimately my goal. I would like to be of maximum service to the god of my understanding, and right now, I’m not sure that’s the best use of me. I was surprised during my time at school that I had, if anything, a deeply affirming recommitment to the power of individual consequence in the world. And work on the grassroots level, right now, is where I belong. But I am very active in Washington D.C. and I enjoy the advocacy that I do. Marsha Blackburn, who represents our [Tennessee’s 7th congressional] district in congress, is coming over. We have absolutely nothing in common except for a chromosome and our residency, but we’re going to be talking about intimate partner violence and we’re going to be putting our heads together to stop male sexual coercion and aggression.
MMM: Just wondering – did you attend any college parties at Harvard?
JUDD: That’s a great question, actually. I hosted a few parties and my class had this thing called ‘Dinners for Seven,’ where groups of seven students are randomly put together for a fortnight for a potluck. And one of the last ones I hosted I was the only American. It was the nastiest dinner ever. So gross. One of my Korean cohorts brought spongy cookies with orange stuff and we had Indian food, Greek food—
MMM: —Not sure how all those foods mix together in your stomach.
JUDD: Yeah. Totally. I just brought biscuits and gravy! [Laughs] But, in terms of beer-swilling kinds of parties, no. People do have fun and cut-up and we did karaoke and all that, but it was a pretty earnest bunch who wanted to get down to business and change the world.
MMM: Now let’s segue to sports. I know you’ve been married to Dario Franchitti for almost a decade. Is there anything more nerve-wracking than watching him race?
JUDD: Um… Watching West Virginia’s 3’s go down when ours don’t? Watching the [Kentucky Wildcats] start 0-20 from 3 in the Elite Eight?
MMM: But it must still be pretty difficult for a spouse.
JUDD: I honestly don’t get nervous. It would be a terrible way to live to be caught up in that fear or even excitement. I try to maintain a pretty even keel in life. But I enjoy it, I’m excited for him and I hope he has the opportunity to succeed at the highest levels because he has that kind of talent.
MMM: And speaking of your Kentucky Wildcats superfan status, how do you think the team will do now that they lost so many players to the NBA?
JUDD: I think they’ll do well! There’s a rule in the NCAA that a team can do something prior to the academic years, so Coach Cal is taking the team for a 3-game tour in Canada. Interestingly, that hasn’t been done since the beginning of the ’96 season when Pitino took the team that ultimately won the national title to Italy. We have a lot of incoming freshman, so we could potentially start five freshman – I don’t think we will – but we have the #1 recruiting class in the nation, again, so I think it will be an exciting year.
MMM: How do you think John Wall will do in the NBA?
JUDD: I think he’ll do great. But I’m really interesting in seeing how the others will do as well. I always thought [Eric Bledsoe] was a major star and he was just eclipsed, understandably so, by Wall, but he is phenomenal. And I think DeMarcus Cousins has the opportunity to play at a high level right away. I’m so excited for Patrick Patterson who’s one of the most popular players in UK history and he’s going to be playing with Chuck Hayes [for the Houston Rockets], who’s the other bring-the-work-pail-to-lunch type player who does everything. They’ll have long careers in the NBA.
MMM: I was always waiting for Al Pacino to play Rick Pitino in the Kentucky Wildcats movie.
JUDD: [Laughs]
MMM: Could you talk about your upcoming film “Flypaper” with Patrick Dempsey?
JUDD: It’s Patrick Dempsey, Tim Blake Nelson, Matt Ryan, Jeffrey Tambor – really fun cast, like, “Costumes go to two, Ashley’s wet herself again can we get her double?” I had so much fun on that film. It was a very spontaneous, last-minute thing. I just finished school and turned in all my papers, and Dario had just won the Indianapolis 500, it was filming in Louisiana, which isn’t too terribly far from where we live, and Tim Blake Nelson is really special to me from “Come Early Morning.”
MMM: So it’s a bank heist comedy?
JUDD: Yeah, it’s a bank heist comedy. I play a teller who has this annoying, strange guy with obvious psychiatric issues who comes to my station right as the bank is closing, and just as she’s about to leave she realizes the bank is about to be robbed, and the gag is that the bank is robbed by multiple crews at once and we’re all taken hostage and it plays out over eight or ten hours. And the congresswoman’s here so I need to scoot!
HELEN opens on July 30th in select theaters nationwide.
Tags: ashley judd, helen, interview, marlow stern
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Tribeca Interview: Bill Murray & Sissy Spacek Get Low!
By Marlow Stern
Two veteran actors sporting wildly divergent backgrounds.
One: Bill Murray. After starting on “Saturday Night Live,” he built a reputation as one of the most celebrated comedic actors with hits like “Caddyshack,” “Ghostbusters,” “Groundhog Day” and much more. Following a few less than stellar choices in the mid-90s (“Larger than Life,” “The Man Who Knew Too Little,” “Wild Things”), he reemerged stronger than ever as a midlife crisis-suffering rich father in Wes Anderson’s 1998 film “Rushmore.” From there, he reinvented himself as a multi-dimensional actor with dramatic roles as the disillusioned movie star in “Lost in Translation,” which garnered him an Oscar nod, and a nostalgic bachelor in Jim Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers.” He’s also reteamed with Anderson on “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”
The other: Sissy Spacek. A cutesy Texas native, Spacek made an early splash in film as the murderous Holly in the Terrence Malick 1973 classic “Badlands.” She followed this landmark film with a star making and Oscar nominated performance in the 1976 horror flick “Carrie,” in which she played a humiliated prom queen coming to grips with puberty and her telekinetic powers. Spacek would win a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of country music singer Loretta Lynn in the 1980 biopic “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Although she continued to appear in film and television during the late 1980s and 1990s, Spacek devoted most of that time to her family. Then, in 2001, she returned to the big screen with a powerful performance as the grieving mother of a murdered son in 2001’s “In the Bedroom,” which earned her a sixth Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Their latest film is GET LOW. Directed by Aaron Schneider, the films centers around Felix Bush (Robert Duvall), a bearded hermit living deep in the backwoods of 1930s Tennessee. Rumors surround him, and the locals think he’s a killer. The town is thrown into disarray when Felix suddenly shows up one day, demanding a “living funeral” for himself. Frank Quinn (Bill Murray), the owner of the local Funeral Parlor, sees an opportunity for some money, and agrees to Felix’s terms: letting the townsfolk tell Felix Bush the stories they’ve heard about him at his “living funeral.” Things get messy when an old mystery is brought back by Quinn’s protégé, Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black), involving a local widow named Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek).
MMM sat down with Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek during the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival for a long chat about GET LOW, their first loves, their storied careers and, last but not least, all those “Ghostbusters III” rumors.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: I was just talking to the film’s producer, Dean Zanuck, about the way you do business – solely through your lawyer, as opposed to having a manager and/or agent. What are the advantages of doing it that way?
BILL MURRAY: Well when I had an agent they have people there whose job is to reach you on the telephone. I never had an answering machine in my house or anything like that so if someone would say, “Get me Bill Murray on the phone,” and that person would dial your number and let the phone ring 90, 100 times.
SISSY SPACEK: During dinner?
MURRAY: During any hour of the day. You think I’m not getting that and the phone would just keep ringing for minutes. And you’d think why would I ever want to talk to anyone that would let the phone ring that long? So first I got this 800 number and that was really the key to it; it just eliminated that completely. And then getting rid of the agents, that was like…
MMM: Can you talk about your process of actually signing on to “Get Low?” I’d be interested to hear your version of the story.
MURRAY: It gets more boring each time I say it. I got a message that this fellow was going to write me a letter, and it was a letter from Dean. And I thought that’s kind of interesting. Zanuck. I know who their family is but I don’t know this guy. So I call him on the phone and had a wonderful talk with the guy. He’s not like other people in show business. He’s a really real, genuine, wonderful guy. He turned out to be a fantastic producer – just consistent and constant, didn’t get emotional. But then they slowly get you pregnant like they do. I got a letter from Aaron.
SPACEK: Did you get my letter?
MURRAY: I don’t know if I got your letter. I don’t think so. Then there’s a letter from him and then he sent this DVD of his movie that he made that he won an Oscar for. He made a short called “Two Soldiers” that’s a really great thing. I thought it was going to be five minutes long. It’s 40 minutes and you go, “This guy’s good, this is good.” The key was I watched on this DVD, they have the making of, behind the scenes stuff, and that’s really interesting because then you can see what these people are really like.
SPACEK: Was he eating?
MURRAY: [Aaron] has a gargantuan appetite. It’s insane. He eats like for four people every meal. But watching him behind the scenes with all these people he made this little movie with. He was really kind and genuine and I thought, “Well, alright.”
SPACEK: How bad could it be?
MURRAY: How bad could it be? And then I didn’t know Sissy was on until after I was already doing it. I figured, “Well, no one ever asked me to work with Robert Duvall before. That would be swell.” And then I said okay and then they said, “Okay, and Sissy’s going to do it too.”
SPACEK: Well I was waiting to hear if you were going to do it.
MURRAY: They didn’t tell me anything about casting. They didn’t say anything. So then I was like, “Sissy?” Because we did ‘Saturday Night Live’ together.
MMM: What about these characters that you’re both playing? They seem to be like the proverbial fit like a custom made leather glove or something. It just seems shaped and I understand they weren’t.
MURRAY: Well, that’s the deal. I think I speak for any good actor, or one that thinks that he is or she is, and you get the script and your job is to do it every day and make it better than the script. So that’s what you do. It’s like a winning streak: you do it every single day. But the writer, this Charlie Mitchell, and Chris Provenzano did the original. [Chris] was there every day, always really encouraging. His writing is really, really fine.
MMM: Did you guys enjoy working in that period and investigating that period in various ways? And of course the music must have touched a note for you.
SPACEK: All of us were wild about the music. I liked the 1930s, I mean I loved investigating the 1930s, but women wore so many undergarments then. In that respect it was a real bummer.
MURRAY: And that was a bummer for me too, baby.
MMM: You were pretty dapper there.
MURRAY: We had a great costumer on this movie, one of the best I’ve ever worked with, named Julie Weiss. Everyone’s clothes – Bob’s clothes are unbelievable. Everyone had amazing clothes. And you had amazing hair too.
SPACEK: Yeah my hair took them four hours. But I like to point out, every time I would come out of makeup after four hours of sitting under a hairdryer [Bill] would say, “Hey Grandma!”
MURRAY: Well she had my grandmother’s hairdo. [Laughs]
MMM: The movie is about true love in a way so can you tell us about your first loves and what you remember about that experience?
SPACEK: I have a great story about my first love. His name was Clifford Zack Cane. He was just the cutest boy. We were boyfriend and girlfriend from like five years old on. In fourth grade a new girl moved to town. In the meantime his mother, Imogen, who was a friend of my mother, said, “What’s Sissy’s ring size? Cliff wants to give her a little ring.” So she measured my finger. A week later Cliff presented me with this beautiful sterling silver signet ring with his initials on it. I was just thrilled to death! Well, several weeks pass, and a new girl moves to town and she’s got breasts. I can’t remember her name but he quickly broke up with me, wanted his ring back, and next thing I knew his girl had the ring on her finger. There’s a moral to this story: never give a ring that you’ve measured for one girl to another girl. Because it got stuck on her finger and so her dad cut if off with metal clippers and gave it back to him in two pieces when she broke up with him. I would cut my finger off before I’d cut the ring off. That’s the story of my first love. Heartbreak. Isn’t that sad? Men.
MURRAY: Can we move on?
MMM: I don’t get to hear about your first love?
MURRAY: No I can’t top that. Forget it. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing.
MMM: You’ve never done standup comedy.
MURRAY: No. When I lose my mind I will do standup comedy.
MMM: Why is that?
MURRAY: Because they all just seem so unhappy. They seem miserable. We used to go to the clubs and see them and they all just seem miserable. It was like golly, I’m glad I don’t do this. But I mean if you were at the end of your life and you couldn’t move or you were immobile, they could roll you out in Vegas and you could do a show. I don’t think it’s that impossible. But it’s really about hating the audience. It’s weird. It doesn’t suit me.
MMM: So you just went right into improv? That was your start, improv comedy?
MURRAY: It wasn’t just comedy. You learned how to improvise in any sense. Even comedy’s playing straight so you learned how to exchange and you learned a lot about rhythm. You always had to be available and don’t try to do the same thing twice.
MMM: Were there improvisational opportunities or moments in this film that you guys were able to employ at one time or another?
SPACEK: Occasionally that would happen when they would rewrite the scene and forget to give us the new pages. So after we shot the scene, we did a little improvising then.
MURRAY: The script is in two dimensions and it doesn’t take into account the third dimension, so when you actually do it in space there’s a different thing that happens that you can’t write on a page. So that’s what being trained in improvisation does for you. It enables you to go from this is happening in space now, how do I get from this moment to this moment? And it’s physical as much as anything else and it’s being able to go, “Now this is how we resolve this scene.” It’s usually audio, it’s usually a word or something, but most scenes end on a noise, on a sound. You just have to figure out the sound, the pitch, that ends that scene.
MMM: While you were shooting the film did you realize it would be a good one?
MURRAY: I’ve developed this mantra where I say I’m not a worrier so I don’t worry about it. As far as the jobs go, I sort of realized a long time ago that I’m just going to do the ones I like and one of them is going to hit. People feel like I’ve got to have great success to pay for my house or whatever, you’ve got to have this success thing rolling, and I just said, “I’m going to do the ones that I like and something’s going to hit,” and they do. You always know it’s pretty good. I don’t think we do bad ones anymore. We’re sort of through the reef in a way. Now, whether or not a movie is financially successful you can’t have any control over, and that makes a career. You make a movie that’s a good movie and no one sees it. It happens all the time. You make a movie with a studio and everyone quits or gets fired six weeks before it gets out, so the movie doesn’t happen. Or you can make something that everything goes well and it’s a big, big thing. But as far as knowing it was good, we knew the script was really good and we knew the other guy, the old guy [Duvall], his thing was ridiculous.
SPACEK: The hardest part was doing a scene with him and not just kind of thinking, “Oh! I’ve got the next line.” Unbelievable.
MURRAY: Yeah it’s really kind of mesmerizing because he’s so powerfully present. It really touches the walls. It’s really powerful; it passes through your body.
SPACEK: But what he [Bill Murray] did was equally powerful on the other side.
MURRAY: Even better.
SPACEK: Because it balanced it out. It gave it buoyancy.
MMM: Your character is surprised when he realizes that this kooky hermit has hatched this plan.
MURRAY: Well it’s really good writing and [Duvall] is so good. He really has that effect because he knows what the intention of every line is. He knows that script inside out. It’s like a radiant heat. You just get this heat of it all in your body and he really informs you and you really get the information physically. It’s a really powerful thing working with the nut.
MMM: Did you guys talk about it or did you just go in and do it?
MURRAY: Talk is for losers. Shut up and work. Turn the camera on, let’s go.
SPACEK: Hit your mark and speak.
MURRAY: Just hit your mark and show up on time.
MMM: What was it like driving those old cars?
MURRAY: Driving the old car was really fun. It’s about an 8,000 pound Hearse and when you got going 40 it was like a train. It would take you 300 yards to stop the thing. It was kind of scary. We did a little stunt driving and the guy who owned the car would run after us. He’d really say, “Not through the woods!” He thought we were going to go really just into the woods.
MMM: There was an interesting point made by Zanuck that you’re superstitious about signing things, especially contracts. How did you handle that earlier in your career? Now that you’re who you are I can understand how people would go along with you. But when you’re just starting out how do you get people to agree to you not signing stuff?
MURRAY: They just want you to work. It’s not superstitious, there’s just a bunch a bureaucrats going “sign your contract,” and I’m like “Sign your contract? You have me confused with your mother or something like that okay. I’ve got to go to work tomorrow. I don’t have time to be reading this stuff.” I just show up and work. My word is my contract.
SPACEK: It used to be we never signed contracts and they wrote them up, but you never signed them. Your word was your bind. But now it’s different.
MMM: What do you think the most significant motivation is for his quest? Is it about life and death?
SPACEK: Felix Bush? I think he was riddled with guilt. I think he wanted to punish himself and to listen to people tell horrible stories about him so he could cleanse his soul before he really died. I think it was just another form of more punishment. But maybe I’m wrong.
MURRAY: I’d say that’s right. He didn’t know how to do penance; he couldn’t get it out of himself, he couldn’t speak the words. So he went off and became a hermit for 40 years. And now that anger and that toughness about him, he was so angry that even flagellating himself like this and doing his penance, it still didn’t feel good. He wasn’t over it yet and all he could think of was what if everybody said horrible things to him. As far as my guy goes, well, Frank gets to see, and I think all the characters in the film and even the audience get to see, what if this were myself? This is me. I’m going to be there, he’s just ahead of me in the row. What have I done with my life and what about my regrets and how can I change the sort of behavior that’s made me the kind of guy or girl who would take a long car ride with all the money in the car and think about maybe not coming back, and yet I can’t up on myself yet, I’m going to come back and try again.
MMM: So he does change? Frank really becomes a nice guy due to this?
MURRAY: Well I think everyone is affected by this. I think Felix is affected and I’m affected. Certainly Sissy’s character has this staggering revelation, which is really the news, and is probably most devastating to her more than anyone else. And to have to come to some sort of peace with that, even though the pain of it is jarring and disturbing and everything, the idea that some mystery, some question that you never had answered was answered.
MMM: Bill, what’s going on with “Ghostbusters III?”
MURRAY: This started, and it’s really the studio starts this stuff. They start saying “Ghostbusters,” they want to do it. And it’s really the world of sequels and bringing these things back again. And then some wiseacre said, “Hey, we’ve got a couple of new writers that are going to write something. And I thought, “Well, maybe there will be some writers, and there was always this joke, half-truth, half-joke thing of well I’ll do it if you kill me off in the first reel.” That was my joke. So, supposedly, someone was writing a script where I actually got killed in the first reel and became a ghost, and I thought that’s kind of clever anyway. But then these guys [Lee Eisenberg & Gene Stupinsky from NBC’s “The Office”] that were supposedly to be the writers who were going to do it, they wrote a film [“Year One”] that came out and people saw the film and went, “We’re not going to do it after all, are we?” So it’s just kind of a dreamy thing. They want to create a new generation of Ghostbusters. They’d just like us to pass the torch.
MMM: If it happened it wouldn’t actually be a nightmare for you right? It’s a great thing in your past.
MURRAY: Well, it’s true. We made a great movie and then… we made another one. We went to the well twice and it’s almost impossible to do the second movie as well. Only horror movies get better as they go along, because they have more money to spend on crazy effects. I actually thought the other day, it’s become so irritating, but I actually heard young people that saw the movie when they were kids, and I thought maybe I should just do it, maybe it would be fun. Because the guys are funny and I miss Moranis and Annie and Danny. I miss Moranis. He was a really big part of it.
MMM: The two of you seem to be in a mutual admiration society. Do you have a favorite Sissy Spacek movie and do you have a favorite Bill Murray movie?
MURRAY: Sissy does this thing in this TV show called “Big Love” that I find is so different than anything I’ve ever see her do. She’s this really scary dame. She’s really scary and she scares the scary Mormon people on the scary Mormon show. So it’s really a big time creepy performance and I’ve never really seen that out of her.
SPACEK: I’ve tried to protect you from that side of me.
MURRAY: Well, there are glimpses. I love lots of things that she does, and she can sing really well. She really is a good singer. I just think that “Carrie” was such a misunderstood young girl.
SPACEK: Poor girl. I love “What About Bob?”
GET LOW opens on July 30th in select theaters.
Tags: bill murray, get low, interview, marlow stern, sissy spacek, tribeca film festival 2010
Posted in Featured, Festivals, Interviews | 8 Comments »
M. Night Shyamalan talks The Last Airbender!
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film, a big budget adaptation of the Nickelodeon television series “The Last Airbender,” had all the ingredients for a Hollywood disaster.
Shyamalan’s last three films – “The Village,” “Lady in the Water” and “The Happening” – were critically panned, with each receiving a Metacritic score lower than the last (44, 36 and 34, respectively).
Then came the casting controversy. Whereas the original Nickelodeon show has an all-Asian cast, Shyamalan cast several Caucasian actors in prominent roles, and was accused of “whitewashing” the production. Venerable film critic Roger Ebert was critical of the decision, noting: “The original series ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ was highly regarded and popular for three seasons on Nickelodeon. Its fans take it for granted that its heroes are Asian. Why would Paramount and Shyamalan go out of their way to offend these fans? There are many young Asian actors capable of playing the parts.”
And then the reviews started rolling in for Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender.” It wasn’t pretty. Time Magazine called it the “worst movie epic ever,” and it’s currently sitting at a ‘20’ on film critic aggregation site Metacritic. Making matters worse, Paramount is gambling big on “Airbender,” since the film boasts a $150 million budget and an additional $130 million in its promo campaign. Oh, and lest we forget the unnecessary last-minute 3D conversion. Despite all the obstacles, Shyamalan once again proved everyone wrong: “The Last Airbender” grossed $70.5 million in its first week.
The story follows the adventures of Aang (Noah Ringer), the last of a long line of Avatars – those who can bend or control all four elements – who must put his childhood ways aside and stop the Fire Nation, led by banished Prince Zuko (Dev Patel), from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations. The film also stars Nicola Peltz as Katara, a waterbender, and Jackson Rathbone as her older brother, Sokka.
MMM sat down with M. Night Shyamalan to chat about his latest epic, the casting controversy and what he really thinks about his critics.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: I heard that your daughter played a prominent role in you developing “The Last Airbender.” I was wondering if you could elaborate on that.
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN: I had light talks about doing the first “Harry Potter.” It didn’t work out, but that got me thinking about how I’d love to do a large scale story; something larger than my thrillers. The edict to the agents was: “Find me the next ‘Harry Potter!’” “Find me the next ‘Jurassic Park’ in manuscript form!” And it turned out my seven-year-old was the one who brought me the property.
MMM: How did she do that?
SHYAMALAN: She kept watching [“The Last Airbender”] and I would catch glances of the show, but I didn’t get into it. My mother was babysitting when my wife and I were going out and she was watching the show from the family room and I heard her scream, “This is like Indian stuff! It has Indian fire and all this stuff! They’re taking from Indian culture!” And I was like, “That’s great Mom! I’ll be back at eleven. See ya.” Then, my daughter wanted to be Katara for Halloween and I had my costume crew look up Katara. Finally, the DVD came out of the first season and, to humor her, I said, “Alright. We’ll watch with you.” We all sat down and watched the first episode and I said, “This is cute.” And then they start to get their legs and we watched episode two, three, four. We started to realize, “This is actually compelling! There are all these philosophies – Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto. We had to take a break because we had this huge marathon all day long so we went upstairs, I opened up the fridge and went, “Man, this would make a great movie.” And everyone went crazy. This search that I’d been on for nine years was in the house before I realized it.
MMM: What happened next?
SHYAMALAN: The next day I called up and found out who owned it. It was Nickelodeon, who was owned by Viacom who owns Paramount. I called and scheduled a meeting with Paramount for New York with [Paramount President] Brad Grey and we sat in an empty restaurant and I said, “Look, you have this thing that is incredible. I would love to make you three movies on this. It’s going to be a big, big undertaking and something that all of Viacom will have to get behind.”
MMM: Are you signed to direct all three movies?
SHYAMALAN: This is the hope, that we’ll make three movies. I know that they’re not going to, in this day and age, greenlight three movies right away, but it’s a story told in three parts and it’s going to be interesting.
MMM: You deal with a lot of material when you adapt a TV show to film. What did you feel you had to capture in the first installment as far as setting up a potential franchise?
SHYAMALAN: As a writer, every scene in a movie is about a single theme. And water was the goal. What does water teach him? What does he learn from this element? What does it teach us as human beings? It became obvious that, out of the 20 episodes of the show, six were pretty episodic and just vamping. Then, there’s all the mythology and all the characters you have to introduce. Very early in the game I lost a very important character when we were editing and it was very painful but [Azula, played by Summer Bishil] is going to come in during movie two if it gets made.
MMM: There’s been a bit of controversy in the casting of this film because it’s an all-Asian cast on the TV show, but in the film there are a lot of white actors portraying them.
SHYAMALAN: Well, great news is I’m Asian, so that worked out really well. This would be different if Paramount called me and said, “Hey, would you look at this series called ‘Last Airbender’ and see if you’d be interested?” Here, one of the actual fans of the show – myself – asked to make the movie. I begged them to make it. I got to know [Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the creators of the TV series] really well, and what their limitations were. They were making it for a certain demographic – Nickelodeon – but the story was darker. It was talking about reincarnation and genocide – things you couldn’t dwell on too much because it was for a six, seven-year-old to enjoy. I wanted to bring all those flavors to the forefront. I really went through and methodically made everything grounded for me. I can’t say “Ang,” I have to say “Ong.” That’s gonna be symbolically the difference between the movie and the show, the Asian pronunciation of ‘Ang.’ It’s ‘Ong Lee.’ At the end of the first movie, Aang became a giant water fish and stands up. That’s a direct pull from the Miyazaki movie “Princess Mononoke,” so I couldn’t use that.
MMM: Well, back to the casting of the film…
SHYAMALAN: Oh, the casting. The movie was a wonderful opportunity to me to make a world of diverse nationalities. It’s one of the great assets of the movie, that it borrows from all cultures – Indian, Thai, Japanese. There’s a small group that are vocal about how I didn’t cast the “correct” Asians in it. Here’s the thing: anime is an art form based on ambiguous facial features. It’s part of the art form. You got a problem with that? You talk to the people who invited anime. [Katara] looks like my daughter. [Aang] looks like Noah. There is no Inuit that looks like Katara. It’s just not true! Our family saw ourselves in it. My daughter’s best friend is Hispanic and their family saw themselves in it. That’s the beauty of anime – we all see ourselves as incredibly ambiguous and wonderful. This wasn’t an agenda for me.
MMM: What about the casting of Dev Patel?
SHYAMALAN: So, Dev was the crux. Who was going to be Zuko was the issue. There were a lot of finalists, and there was this goofy kid in London who tried out. He killed the audition. I was like, “There’s no way I can cast this guy! Could I?” Then “Slumdog Millionaire” came out and I called Paramount and said, “This guy should play this prince who’s too sweet and too soft for his Dad, who thinks he should be ruthless. It’s a totally different way to go, but I would love it.” So, we had him come in and I was like, “This is the guy!” That decided the Fire Nation for me. It was Mediterranean, Persian, Indian. And I was lucky enough to find Shaun Toub – who I loved from “Iron Man” – to play my favorite character, Uncle Iroh, who’s the sage. For me, I didn’t know Noah’s background. Noah for me felt mixed. So, I made all of the Air Nomads mixed. Gyatso is African-American and Spanish, and everybody’s mixed. The Earth Kingdom, which is the largest, got cut down because the second movie is all based on the Earth Kingdom. But there’s a Mongolia town, a Korean town and a large African-American town. There was a large sequence that got cut, but in the second movie it’ll all be good. And then Nicola came in and I said the Water Tribe is going to be the Anglo-European look. I just didn’t want blonde people in the movie. It just pulls me for some reason. I looked at the world and thought it was going to work well, because the second movie is entirely in the Earth Kindgom and the third is entirely in the Fire Nation. And when we’re done with these three movies, it will be the most culturally-diverse movie made by Hollywood. So, you look at me and say I’m a problem? I’m the poster child for racism in Hollywood? You look at the movie poster and see Noah and Dev back-to-back with my name over it and this is your issue with the state of Hollywood? I’m saddened by it!
MMM: What was it like working with Dev?
SHYAMALAN: He’s just a super softie. He’s a man-child. Don’t tell him I said that! But I love it. If his Dad was a big football player Dad, he’d be all over his ass saying, “Toughen up, man!” Because he’s goofy. He’s slightly effeminate. If this was the Prince to Cliff Curtis – out of “Training Day” with the gun in his hand – that’s his Dad? I’m like, “That’s cool!”
MMM: Did you happen to read the Joel Stein piece about Indians in Edison, NJ? Its really come under fire in the Indian-American community.
SHYAMALAN: No, I haven’t!
MMM: Does it take a childlike sense of wonder to be a filmmaker?
SHYAMALAN: A certain type of filmmaker, for sure. Certainly in the Spielbergian world where I came from I think you need to be a kid.
MMM: Your last several films have been very poorly received by film critics. How do you feel about that? And do you feel like a different filmmaker in your position would be treated differently?
SHYAMALAN: No, I think they would have. It’s a compliment when everybody is up my ass all the time. It really is. They’re trying to dissect you to show you why you’re not that great. It’s a wonderful thing for them to do for my entire life. My job is to just keep making movies. It will go away. I’ll prove them right or wrong. Time will tell. I’m fine with that. Your critics are like your hard teachers who tell you “you’re no good, you’re no good,” even if they secretly believe the opposite. It’s good to be tough on yourself.
Tags: Dev Patel, interview, M. Night Shyamalan, marlow stern, Noah Ringer, The Last Airbender
Posted in Featured, Interviews | 1 Comment »
The Entire Cast – and Creator – of Sex and the City 2!
By Marlow Stern
For better or worse, the HBO television show “Sex and the City” changed Manhattan forever.
Whether you agree or disagree with how it transformed the Big Apple, the quirky series, based in part on writer Candace Bushnell’s book of the same name, compiled from her column with the New York Observer, and created by Michael Patrick King and Darren Starr, ran six seasons from 1998-2004 and provided an insightful examination of how changing roles and expectations affected the lives of four big-city professional women at the turn of the millennium. To call the show a cultural phenomenon would be an understatement. The characters’ ruminations on sexual desires and fantasies, and their travels in life and love, became highly relatable experiences for exiled single women in their 30s/40s, and the show’s fashion choices – from costume designer Patricia Field – were trendsetting to say the least.
The show’s narrative focused on Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker, the sensible center, whose inner monologues are expressed through voiceover narration), and her three best friends, Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon, the rigid lawyer), Charlotte York (Kristin Davis, the cheery housewife-to-be) and Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall, the slightly older sexpot).
The series’ first film adaptation, written and directed by Michael Patrick King and released in 2008, dealt with the difficult transition from single-to-married life, as Carrie (Parker), is finally planning on getting married to her Mr. Big (Chris Noth), when her three best girlfriends (Miranda, Charlotte, Samantha) must console her after one of them, Miranda, inadvertently leads Mr. Big to jilt her. “Sex and the City” was a massive success, with an opening weekend just north of $57 million – the biggest opening ever for an R-rated romantic comedy – and went on to gross over $400 million worldwide.
Naturally, the buzz was massive for the film’s inevitable sequel.
SEX AND THE CITY 2 sees Carrie and her formerly-single, sexually promiscuous gals having trouble adjusting to domesticated life – except Samantha, who, at 52, is battling menopause any which way she can. Charlotte’s two children are a handful, Miranda’s lawyer job is giving her hell and Carrie wants to go out all the time, while her man, Mr. Big, prefers to veg out and watch his new flat screen TV. So, when Samantha is given a free trip to glamorous Abu Dhabi, the four ladies jump at the opportunity to get away. But there, a whole world away, Carrie’s resolve is tested further when a former flame, Aidan (John Corbett), reenters her life.
MMM attended the New York City press conference for the film where the entire cast – Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth) – as well as the show’s co-creator and both films’ writer/director, Michael Patrick King, chatted about the new film and the series’ indelible impact on NYC. And, since the actors/actresses in the series are so synonymous with their characters, we decided to address them as such below:
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: To the five actors, if you could all just talk about your issue in this movie and whether or not you related to it.
MR. BIG: Mine was a very interesting journey on the nature of how to define what a marriage means to two people who have had a very intimate and long relationship, and how they kind of miss each other on just what that tradition is, and what it should be according to what’s in your head, and maybe what the difference between that and what’s real for both of you and how to bridge that gap.
MIRANDA: I think that with Miranda the real issue that she’s been dealing with is what to do when you have a really terrific job that you’re well paid for, that you’ve worked for decades to get there, and all of a sudden you’re just miserable. I can totally relate to that. No, I’m kidding. I think that the part of it that I can relate to is as you get older and as you get more of a sense of yourself, which I think is what’s happening to Miranda in the movie, learning to value yourself and learning to say you know what, if someone is treating me badly, even though it’s in my vested interest to keep my mouth shut, I actually have to speak out for myself and I have to protect myself. I may define myself as a lawyer, but if I’m a miserable lawyer it’s better not to be a lawyer at all.
CARRIE: As I’ve been saying lately, there was a wedding and now there has to be a marriage, and the two are very different. I think where Carrie finds herself at the top of the movie is starting, as she typically does, to ask questions about the environment in which she currently lives. And those questions, and the big theme of the movie for all of us in our own way, as Chris pointed out, is tradition and why do we run toward it and why do we push it away and why do we so willingly want to commit to conventions like the institution of marriage? Do we find ourselves squirming and asking questions and how do we redefine tradition for ourselves and how do our friends around us redefine tradition and do they want to? And what better place to ask these questions than in the Middle East?
MMM: Could you relate to that personally
CARRIE: I think that women of a certain generation aren’t even conscious of the fact that we are asking ourselves, we are in the process of redefining our roles all the time, it’s the great gift that our mothers gave us. It’s this opportunity to rethink the roles that we take on in very conventional institutions. Whether it’s in a partnership that’s sort of defined by society or in a work environment, whether it’s the way people see us in our work, the fact that there are so many women in our workplace, which is very different than most conventional sets. So we do it all the time and women who are home with children are rethinking it all the time. So it’s kind of a privilege to talk about this topic because it feels so relevant to me without being preachy.
SAMANTHA: Menopause. And I didn’t need to do any research. I don’t need to say any more.
CHARLOTTE: For Charlotte, obviously, kind of on the same thing that Sarah’s saying about traditions. You know, Charlotte’s always been very, very traditional and she has very, very, very high expectations of herself in those traditions. And often times she doesn’t live up to them and possibly the things she’s trying to control in life are not really things that you can control, so she’s faced with, yet again, her own kind of lack of the perfect picture that she’s trying to create and even having trouble being honest with herself about the stress involved. I think one of my favorite things about what we did in this movie is that her friend Miranda can see through her façade and what she’s creating and she knows she needs to be honest, and that’s something that I think is a wonderful thing about friendship, is that you sometimes can see that your friend actually is not doing herself a service by keeping the façade up, that honesty is what’s needed. That’s what’s wonderful about going away, the fact that the girls get to go away and get to a deeper level together. Sometimes when you get out of your own normal, day-to-day existence you get to appreciate it and look at it and analyze it and share about it and have this freedom that we have in the Middle East, which is ironic, as Sarah Jessica pointed out. And sure, I relate to that, but not with the children part obviously.
MMM: Why do you think that gay men are as excited about seeing this movie as women, presumably your primary audience? And also, could one of you talk about the “Newsweek” article that recently came out about how gay people shouldn’t play straight?
MICHAEL PATRICK KING: I will start because I do feel that every single person up here could certainly answer that question. When I’m asked that, and I’m going to call it, antique question about why are gay men liking these characters? And I always said the reason that “Sex and the City” actually became present in people’s mind as it had is there was a voice that needed to be heard. And, at that time, it was the single girl as leper voice; the outsider, anyone who wasn’t married in their 30s, when society told them they should be married. So, I think anyone who’s ever been an outsider, whether it be due to your sexual orientation or your anything – your gender, your race, your anything – these four girls have moved through the world trying to claim themselves. And what’s great about the movie for me is that it’s an evolution still. The reason we’ve gone from a TV show to a movie is because we’ve been daring and allowing people to change. They’re individuals, I think, and if gay men, women, children, animals, like this movie, I think it’s because of the story about looking for love, maybe with someone else, but of course looking for a love of yourself in this great society that we have. I think that the villain, in any great story you need one, and I think ours is still society. I think society tells you to be some way and the individual always pushes through that bag, punches their way out, and I have four great characters, and even Mr. Big is quite individual in his attack on society, and we all love it. But it’s really about being an individual, so I don’t really think that gay men are drawn to this any more than anyone who likes a good story.
CARRIE: But I also think it’s hard to deny that there is, as you said, this wonderful search, this endeavor for love, that there is an emotional ingredient that, when I talk to people in the gay community, that the clothing is fun, it’s the cherry on the sundae, it’s the soufflé. But I really think it’s this ability to articulate emotion, embarrassing and candid and intimate, and the humorous way of observing our emotional journeys, that a lot of my gay friends really, really love, and I think that they are very comfortable saying that. And it’s taken maybe the straight community, the men, a little bit longer. They used to at the luggage carrousel go, “I watch your show,” or they’ll say, “My wife/my girlfriend forced me.” Now they seem to volunteer more freely that occasionally they even watch it on their own; the remote got stuck or whatever. I don’t know. That’s been my experience.
MIRANDA: I think also because “Sex and the City,” right from the very beginning there was a very conscious decision made that we would never see these people’s parents, we would never, with maybe one exception, see their siblings – two exceptions – because they were each other’s family. And I think certainly for many gay people and for many non-gay people that’s reality now. Maybe you have a family that you come from that you love or maybe you have trouble with them, but that you come to New York and you create your own.
MR. BIG: But I think what Michael said also, the way I figure that out, is it’s a conversation between the head and the heart often that all of us have. And often what the head is dealing with are all the shoulds that society puts out there. Like my particular journey about what marriage should be as opposed to what it is between two people that are real. And then there are all these other shoulds all through the series that we defy in the show and take on.
MICHAEL PATRICK KING: And sometimes embrace.
MMM: For a lot of women you embody what a fun and fearless woman is and that age doesn’t define what you do with your career choices, with fashion, with motherhood, and of course with sex— I think you’ve opened up a lot of our eyes on a few different positions there. I was wondering if the ladies wouldn’t mind personally saying what’s the most fun or one of the most empowering things you find about being a fearless woman is?
CHARLOTTE: I’m not quite sure how to answer this. I think the thing that I love the most about the general thing that we’ve gotten to be a part of for all of this time is that we are together in it, and so it’s women who are different. We’re different in life, our characters are different, yet we’re very, very together. No matter if we always agree, sometimes the characters disagree – like Charlotte judges Carrie and I love that part of the story line because I think we do this in life, and it doesn’t really serve anybody, but this is a human nature thing. And then, luckily, she has enough time and honest conversation to realize, “That’s really unfair of me to judge my friend and try to put my own preconceived notions on my friend.” But I love the fact that what we’ve created all together and what Michael has created in the writing for us are these really powerful women who can each be powerful in their own right and still be together. And to me that’s my favorite part of the whole experience – living through it together, and also what we represent.
SAMANTHA: I think the most powerful thing for me is that we have encouraged a lot of women to change the way they feel about being single, about having careers, all the story lines about getting married and then being deserted, being alone, being lonely. I think we’ve addressed them and encouraged them to come together, and I think that’s a very powerful thing. In this era of post-feminism I think that we’ve helped define what it is to be successful, smart, and also feminine.
CARRIE: I tend not to ponder too much what we may or may not have done because I like hearing from other people what they think. But I will say that in an era that there is this beacon which we seem to be moving toward where women are really unkind to one another and call each other kind of horrible names, and there’s a vernacular that our ears have adapted to which I find really objectionable. I really, really love how these women love each other, and I love how decent and honorable they are toward one another. I love how much they respect one another. I love that they were never made to be friends. Their DNA is so radically different from one to the next and they have found this incomparable friendship that is really, truly inspiring to me and it changes the way I think about my friendships constantly. It changes the way I look at friendships, the way I respond to friends’ choices, and that is in large part the writing. Well, it’s not even in large part, it is the writing. For me, when I look at a lot of what’s available on television and I see how women treat each other it’s stunning to me, it’s arresting, and I like that there is some place that we still like to illustrate that women would much rather be allies than adversaries.
MIRANDA: I think they’ve pretty much said it all but there was a time when Charlotte and Miranda were having a big fight about Charlotte’s decision to stop working and to focus on having a child, and Miranda was very disapproving and Charlotte really called her on it. Charlotte said, “Isn’t that what the feminist movement is about? It’s not about you have to work or you have to stay home; it’s about choices.” And I think that, as Sarah said, these four women are so different from each other and they have such different points of view and they’ve made such different life choices, but they love each other and they’re not shy about offering their opinions to each other and their advice. And I think that that’s one of the things that I’m proudest of. I think we’re a feminist show, but being a feminist show doesn’t mean yeah you have to have a career, or you have to not be married, or you have to be married. That really, for these four women who are very close but very different, we see a whole range of what’s available out there and what direction you might want to take your life in.
MMM: What was it like shooting in the Middle East? How much research did you do in order to put this together?
MICHAEL PATRICK KING: We shot in Morocco for Abu Dhabi. Morocco has a great history of a tradition of filmmaking. They did “Ben-Hur,” they did “Lawrence of Arabia.” We actually shot on “Lawrence of Arabia” dunes. We had New York, which was here – Bergdorf’s in front – with thousands and thousands of people watching and supporting and it’s like an interactive theatre piece. The girls go to talk, everybody shuts up, I say action, quiet, lines, then applause. And I call that sometimes the celebrity petting zoo. Every now and then someone breaks through and we have to stop and get everybody back behind the barricades. When we went to Morocco, one, two, three, four, sorry Chris, not five, in the Sahara Desert, not a sound, not a paparazzi, just the crew, the hot sun, and the sun falling out of the sky quickly, and us. It was a completely different bizarre and magical time. Different colors, different sounds, different smells, great crew, South Africans, Moroccans, Brits, Germans, everyone. It was an IHOP of crew. Big meals in tents.
CARRIE: I’m worried that it’s not sounding like the extraordinary experience it was. It was laborious and it was Herculean but it was one of the great experiences of my professional life to live and work with this cast and that crew every single day, to see the sun rise and set over our locations in the most far-flung places, to lie in a bed all day with these women exhausted and laughing, to be on a camel with Kim Cattrall as it disobeyed all orders.
SAMANTHA: Not many people can say they’ve done that.
CARRIE: But I’m telling you, it was indescribably wonderful to be so far away in such a wonderfully foreign place to have this incredibly cinematic experience. To be in the dunes of the Sahara for days and see things that we will never see again, to smell things, to eat things. Yes, it was hard, but we could not have done it anywhere else this way.
MICHAEL PATRICK KING: No, it’s big old-time, old-fashioned movie making. We actually went far away and made a Hollywood movie.
MMM: Michael, can you talk about what your inspiration was for this movie? I remember for the first film you said it had taken you a number of years to get the story line and the structure for it. What was your inspiration this time around?
MICHAEL PATRICK KING: My inspiration for the first movie was the girls reuniting, and my inspiration for this movie was the audience at the first movie. When I would see the audience showing up dressed and having cocktails before and in groups and going out, and I saw some people taking pictures of themselves in the theater seats, I thought this is an interactive party; this is no longer a movie. And when we were lucky enough, because of the love that was thrown our way by the box office of the first movie to do a sequel, the first thing I knew was I wanted it to be a continuation of the party for the audience. I also knew I wanted it to be completely different than the first movie. The one rule we’ve always tried to follow on “Sex and the City” from the writing camp is don’t repeat. Dare yourself to change it, move it forward. It started out as four single girls and very early we married one of them off; we defied the rules. So I knew it had to be a different vibe, and I sat down to write in what was the beginning of an economic downturn, and we still are in it, and I thought what’s my job, I’m not a banker, I can’t go and balance your books, I’m a movie maker. Happily, I want to make a movie. Like they did in the Great Depression, I thought Hollywood should take people on a big vacation that maybe they couldn’t afford themselves. So I thought it’s going to be a big party, I want to make a big extravagant vacation, I don’t think it was my job to have Carrie Bradshaw sell apples under the 59th Street Bridge. I think it was our job to give everybody the vacation that maybe they can’t afford now, and they can go with their girlfriends to the night out and go on vacation with their other girlfriends, which are these four ladies.
MMM: Could each of the girls talk about what was their best memory of Morocco?
MIRANDA: I feel like those very heady days in the desert. That was such an introduction; it’s like wow, we really are far, far away in a place that we’ve never been before. And what was so great was we were mostly in Marrakesh, but then our first filming was out in the desert, so we all, cast and crew, were on a plane, and when we arrived they had musicians waiting to greet us. And scarves we were then taught, not us because we were in wardrobe, but everybody else was taught to tie into turbans to help keep you cool in the desert. And it was just so amazing to land in this small airport and to be greeted. It was amazing.
CARRIE: I would say that the thing that I cherish most about it, and therefore is the most vivid memory, is that I got to live with this cast. We were removed. We weren’t shooting out of country the first time. We’ve never done that. We had this chance to live together and to know one another in a way we’ve never had the opportunity to do so in New York. In New York, we go home to our friends and our family and our children and our animals, and for me it just changed everything. I just came away loving them more than I ever have because I got to see them in a new way. And I was so reliant upon them and they became evermore necessary, and I was so challenged by the work that they were doing and how good they were and what thoroughbreds they were, and how nothing could get us down, no matter how hungry we were or how much we had to go to the bathroom or hour 18 of day 58. And the crew, looking around the crew and knowing the people that we had brought, how we could see in their eyes that this was the day they were missing their kids but they were sticking it out with us. That was kind of the tone and it was just incredibly impressive and inspiring, and frankly felt very buoyant on tough days.
SAMANTHA: We were so welcomed by the people of Morocco and so protected. We really did feel like royal family. I couldn’t believe that people actually watched the show – that was surprising, and knew the characters, and didn’t know our names in particular but kept calling us by our character’s names. And we would actually turn and say hello. But we also had weekends off so it was a bit of a vacation. Mostly on locations you don’t get that, you usually work on a Saturday, so we had this intense family time, which Sarah’s talking about, but on the weekends we got to go and explore. And if by chance you had a day off, which was very seldom, you could go to the mountains or you could go to the beach. It’s just such an extraordinary country, isn’t it?
CHARLOTTE: 100%. So beautiful, so beautiful. And I echo everything they said and I’m just going to say Thanksgiving, since we were together and we got to have two Thanksgivings. We worked on the actual day because obviously in Morocco they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
CARRIE: Apparently neither does Warner Brothers.
CHARLOTTE: So on the day itself our fantastic English caterers had made an American Thanksgiving for us which they thought just the Americans would want to eat. And then everybody wanted to eat it and they ran out of the apple pie, the pumpkin pie, and everybody loved it. And then, because the boys could come, Cynthia and Sarah’s sons came to visit for the weekend, we decided we would have another Thanksgiving at our hotel. And they did a fantastic job and we had snake charmers come for the boys because we were in Morocco. These are amazing memories that we have as well just as a group.
MMM: What will men learn from this when they go with their wives or girlfriends?
MR. BIG: What will they learn? Possibly nothing. I’m always a little suspicious about learning from an entertaining and fun movie, but possibly maybe to trust themselves in a tradition. I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ll learn. I really don’t.
MICHAEL PATRICK KING: The men will learn that Charlotte’s nanny is god’s gift to men. I think they’ll be surprised how much the movie’s for them as well. When I sat down to write it I realized that Mr. Big is now very, very prominently a part of Carrie Bradshaw’s life so there are a couple of deliberate shout outs to men in this movie in terms of their point of view because it is the struggle of the men and the women together that makes the women even better.
MIRANDA: There is something that happens, as you know, an event that happens that could possibly be poisonous to their relationship and a way is found, and I give credit to the writer and Mr. Big to turn poison into medicine. To not go to the impulsive place that men often do in an event like that and instead create a bridge to a deeper relationship.
CARRIE: It’s wonderful, the couple of people I’ve spoken to, they’re straight men, they might think that this whole franchise is anathema, but they have loved that there is not a villainous move by any man in this movie. Any consequences are on the part of us and the choices we’re making, and momentary reckless behavior or cavalier attitude about cultural standards, it’s all us. And we come home, frankly, a little wiser.
MMM: Do you think there will be a 3?
MIRANDA: No idea, no idea. If Michael has one to write then yes, but it’s up to him. He would know.
SEX AND THE CITY 2 sashays its way into theaters nationwide on May 27th.
Rachel Weisz is the star of Agora!
By Marlow Stern
With her distinctive Eastern European looks and Cambridge education, Weisz is far from your typical Hollywood siren, and her stardom was anything but sudden.
It all began with “Chain Reaction,” a 1996 film where Keanu Reeves speeds away from a nuclear explosion on a motorbike. Weisz played a physicist who helps Reeves’ lab technician publicize the invention of bubble fusion using sonoluminescence – the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound – despite the U.S. government’s attempts to prevent the spread of this technology. Yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds.
After starring in a series of so/so art films – Bertolucci’s “Stealing Beauty,” “Swept By the Sea,” etc., Weisz got her big break appearing as a clumsy, brash Egyptologist in the garish 1999 blockbuster “The Mummy.” This opportunity led to more fascinating roles – opposite Ralph Fiennes in 1999’s “Sunshine” and alongside Hugh Grant in the 2002 coming-of-age comedy “About a Boy.” That same year Weisz met her current fiancé, the acclaimed film director Darren Aronofsky. And three years later, in 2005, Weisz reached the summit, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as humanitarian martyr Tessa Quayle in Fernando Meirelles’s African-set conspiracy film, “The Constant Gardener.” In 2006, Weisz was given another gift – son Henry Chance, with her partner Aronofsky. The couple currently reside in Manhattan’s East Village.
Weisz’s career has been a mixed bag, yo-yoing between schlocky Hollywood films – “Constantine,” “Fred Claus” – and interesting, smaller fare like “The Fountain,” directed by Aronofsky, and Neil LaBute’s underrated “The Shape of Things,” with Paul Rudd. And then there’s the occasional head-scratcher: remember the disastrous 2004 comedy flick “Envy,” with Ben Stiller and Jack Black? Neither do I.
Despite her odd choices, Weisz remains a courageous, talented actress who almost always delivers the goods. And, over a decade later, Weisz is back in ancient Egypt in the historical drama AGORA. Directed by Alejandro Amenábar (“The Sea Inside”), it tells the story of Hypathia (Weisz), a female philosopher in Roman Egypt who is wooed by her pupil, Orestes (Oscar Isaac), but falls in love with a slave, Davus (Max Minghella). Soon, however, she finds her atheist beliefs clashing with the rising tide of Christianity.
MMM sat down with Rachel Weisz to chat about the making of Agora, the film’s relevance to the religious conflicts of today, her upcoming Jackie O. biopic with partner Darren Aronofsky and so much more.
[Weisz arrives 15 minutes late]
RACHEL WEISZ: So sorry I’m late!
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: Oh, it’s fine. But I’ve always been curious: how do you correctly pronounce your name?
WEISZ: With a ‘v.’ Opposite of ‘virtue.’ ‘Vice.’
MMM: Ah, I see. So, how difficult is it for an actress of your stature to find intelligent roles in intelligent films?
WEISZ: [Laughs] Um… This is a kind of unusually… Yeah, I do a lot of reading. I think that’s the simplest way to answer it. You have to read lots and lots of things, and there might be a script that’s intelligent and doesn’t grab you. It has to grab you. This one grabbed me. It had to do a lot with who was directing it, the fact that it was a true story and it just seemed very challenging. I like things that are very challenging, difficult and scary. It’s more fun than doing things in your comfort zone. I’m REALLY bad at science, I should say. Like, really bad. I failed all my exams – we call them O-levels in England when you’re 16. I failed math, physics, chemistry, biology, so it was a struggle here to actually sound like I know what I’m talking about!
MMM: Did you struggle to wrap your head around the concepts you were trying to put across in the film?
WEISZ: I mean, basically, the only thing I had to figure out was that the earth moved around the sun and vice-versa, and it doesn’t move in a circle, it moves in an ellipse. It took me a long time to figure out what an ellipse was, but it’s basically a circle without a center… or it has two centers… Well, anyway! [Laughs]
MMM: Sacha Baron Cohen turned down a role in “Agora” because he thought the subject matter was “too prickly,” so what attracted you to such divisive subject matter?
WEISZ: He said prickly?
MMM: Yeah.
WEISZ: I think it was to do with religious reasons, mainly. Well, what interested me when I first read it was I felt it was a movie about today. It’s a contemporary movie, even though it’s set in the fourth century. What’s changed? We’ve got antibiotics, we can go to the moon and we have cars, but we’re still killing people in the name of religion. Fundamentalism still exists. Islamic fundamentalists are probably a more violent force than Christian fundamentalists, but back then it was Christian fundamentalists. In the Middle East, women aren’t allowed to be educated. In America, there are issues with teaching Darwinian evolutionary theory, so science versus Christian fundamentalism exists right now in America. What struck me was, “Whoa! This is so contemporary!” There are basic things that haven’t changed that we haven’t figured out.
MMM: But is it a divisive film?
WEISZ: I don’t think it’s an anti-Christian movie. I think it’s anti-fundamentalism. It shows some really beautiful aspects of Christianity – the idea of charity, feeding the poor, “blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.” The pagans were all enlightened but they thought it was cool to have slaves. That’s messed up. Christianity came along and you can see why it caught on. It’s a brilliant idea – everyone’s equal and we’re all god’s children. It happens to show a moment in history – which is true – where Christians aren’t just preaching but they’re a part of a militia. It was a time of violence.
MMM: You’re playing an ancient historical figure and there’s limited information about her. What surprised you the most about playing this character?
WEISZ: There is some source material but it’s pretty hard going to read. There are letters between herself and Orestes. I read some letters and I read – “The Chronicles,” is what it’s called. It didn’t help me find the characters. We know that she was a virgin; we know that she was killed by Christian fundamentalists; we know that she had pagans and Christians in her class, so she was tolerant of both; she was born a pagan but she didn’t really practice; we know her father ran the library and she edited Ptolemy’s texts with him. I’m not an academic. I’m an actor. My job was to make her flesh and blood. The way I got into it – because I was scared of all the science – was, I’m really passionate about my job, acting. So, if I could have the same passion for the stars as I do for acting, maybe she’ll be a warm, alive person.
MMM: The film was shot in Malta but did you get a chance to actually go to Alexandria?
WEISZ: No. Didn’t need to. They build it in Malta!
MMM: You also starred in “The Mummy.” Did making that film spark an interest in the place or period?
WEISZ: It’s funny. As an actor, you deeply immerse yourself in something and you know a lot about it, but your brain only has so much storage that you’re just onto the next and you dump out the last thing. So, it’s really interesting to dip into things. We had a historical advisor on the film called Justin Pollard and he wrote a book about what it was like to live in Alexandria at the time that was very vivid [“The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World”], so I studied that. But I’ve never been to Alexandria, or Egypt.
MMM: This is a $73 million production starring an Oscar-winning actress and directed by an Oscar-winning filmmaker. It had trouble finding distribution out of Cannes despite all of these elements and the fact it was well-received at the fest. What do you think that says about the current state of the industry?
WEISZ: Right now, to even get a drama made for under $20 million starring a woman is extremely hard. Extremely hard. It’s because of the budget and it’s drama. Drama has become a dirty word now in the film industry. They’re almost impossible to get made and totally impossible to get sold.
MMM: And, ironically, it has the same distributor – Newmarket – as “The Passion of the Christ.”
WEISZ: Oh… Oh yeah! That’s right. It is ironic! I don’t think it’s going to be shown in the churches!
MMM: What are you working on next?
WEISZ: Well, since this film, I did an independent film with a first-time director called
Larysa Kondracki, which is a true story about a cop from Nebraska who went to Sarajevo in the late-90s as part of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force, and she uncovered a huge sex-trafficking scandal that was covered up by the U.N. It’s called “The Whistleblower.” She blew the whistle on the U.N.
MMM: Lots of sex there but, and excuse the transition, what was it like to play a character in this film that hadn’t had… sex?
WEISZ: Yeah, a virgin! It was impossible! Every day I struggled! [Laughs] We don’t know if she ever took a lover or not. Alejandro felt very strongly that her passion was for her work and that she didn’t have the time, space or inclination to take a lover.
MMM: I read that you filmed in Malta. What was that like?
WEISZ: Lived in a village called Marsaxlokk and it’s a fishing village. We rented a house and the whole family was there. It hadn’t changed much since the middle ages, in terms of the geography of it. The fishermen came in with the boats and he watched them repair their fishing nets in the morning. It was a really idyllic, beautiful little village. It takes a half hour to drive from one side of Malta to the other. It’s tiny. But they drive like the wind! They’re frustrated by the size of their island, I think. The roads are very dangerous. Great fish restaurants. It’s beautiful. I think the Queen goes on holiday there, if that makes anyone want to go! [Laughs]
MMM: And debuting your film at Cannes last year?
WEISZ: I only went one time before on one of my first films – this Bertolucci film “Stealing Beauty,” at the beginning of my life as an actor. It’s a great festival for international films. Unfortunately, you don’t get to see many of them. But it’s the Riviera. It’s very glamorous. There are people who walk along the street who pretend to be paparazzi and take pictures of everybody, and then you buy your paparazzi shot!
MMM: You mentioned your family earlier. Do you and Darren ever consult with each other on your respective film projects?
WEISZ: We definitely talk about our choices, and of course, geographically – since we have a child – where we’ll be on the planet. But, I’d say we make our creative choices in isolation. Separate. Because, if it turned out wrong and the other person said, “Do it,” it’s a recipe for disaster.
MMM: And you two are working together soon I heard?
WEISZ: Darren has a script about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and it’s the four or five days from the assassination to the funeral. Not a biopic. It’s a script he was sent and it’s setup. He’s cast me as Jackie. So, we’ll see. It’s going to be developed and it’s a really, really good script.
MMM: Is it similar in tone to something like “The Queen?”
WEISZ: I would say that’s a good… Yeah. Tonally, yes.
MMM: And what’s with the rumors that you’re starring as Bond’s love interest in the upcoming Bond film by Sam Mendes?
WEISZ: Yeah, that’s… I know, I know. That I know nothing about. I just worked with Daniel Craig and Naomi Watts on a Jim Sheridan film called “Dream House.”
MMM: What’s that about?
WEISZ: I’m married to Daniel Craig and we move into our dream house with our two little children and Naomi live across the street. We find out that there are murders that have happened in the house that we bought. Our dream house is not so dreamy! And that begins the… thriller? I don’t know what you would call it. And Jim Sheridan – what a blast! He’s a character.
MMM: Since you’re New York based, are you thinking about acting in any plays here soon?
WEISZ: I’ve been meeting with several New York-based directors to talk about doing a play here. I get offered a lot in London because I know the London scene more. I’ve never done one here and I need to!
MMM: Lastly, Darren has a reputation for being very forceful on set. So what’s it like when you’re working with him? Is it different?
WEISZ: Yeah. He’s no pushover! I wouldn’t say “forceful,” but he has a very strong point of view and he works his actors very hard.
MMM: Does that stand in stark contrast to life at home?
WEISZ: It’s exactly the same at home. [Laughs] No, of course not! He’s great guy.
AGORA opens on May 28th in limited release.
Tags: agora, darren aronofsky, interview, jackie o., marlow stern, rachel weisz
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Michael Douglas is a Solitary Man!
By Marlow Stern
Michael Douglas is a Hollywood institution.
The son of legendary screen actor Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas began acting in a string of bit TV and film roles before making a big Hollywood splash in 1975, winning the Oscar for Best Picture as producer of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Douglas then starred in heroic roles in a number of action films like “The China Syndrome” and “Romancing the Stone.” Then, in 1987, Douglas become a bona fide star, appearing as the antagonist/corporate slime-ball Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s ever-prescient film, “Wall Street.” With his signature line: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” Gekko has become a symbol in popular culture for corporate greed/malfeasance.
Post-Gekko, Douglas followed in his father’s footsteps, playing a string of dark, edgy roles in B-movies like “Fatal Attraction” and “Basic Instinct,” before doing a career 180 and playing the commander-in-chief in “The American President.” Since then, he’s appeared in a diverse array of films, most notably: Stephen Soderbergh’s ensemble drug saga “Traffic” and Curtis Hanson’s “Wonder Boys.” Douglas has experienced a bit of a career lull of late, with forgettable fare like “The Sentinel,” “You, Me and Dupree,” “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” etc. Making matters worse, on April 20, 2010, Douglas’s son Cameron was sentenced to five years in prison for possessing heroin and dealing large amounts of methamphetamine and cocaine.
However, Douglas’s career is poised to be back on track again with his first-rate performance in “Solitary Man,” as well as reprising his Gekko character in Oliver Stone’s sequel, “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps,” and a pair of films reuniting him with “Traffic” director Soderbergh: “Liberace,” a biopic on the famous entertainer, and the ensemble action/thriller “Knockout.”
SOLITARY MAN sees Douglas return to award-worthy form as Ben Kalmen, a car dealership scion about to turn 60 with a medical condition who sees his auto business liquidated due to corporate malfeasance; his marriage to Nancy (Susan Sarandon) over thanks to his infidelity; and his flakiness ruining his relationship with his daughter (Jenna Fischer) and her young son. Ben accompanies his current girlfriend’s (Mary-Louise Parker) college-bound daughter, Allyson (Imogen Poots), to Ben’s alma mater so he can sweet talk the dean. On his journey, Ben encounters a nerdy sophomore, Cheston (Jesse Eisenberg), who he offers advice on women, his old friend from school (Danny Devito) and butts heads with – among other things – with the headstrong Allyson. The film is directed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, the scriptwriting team behind Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Thirteen” and “The Girlfriend Experience.”
MMM sat down with the inimitable Michael Douglas to chat about his films “Solitary Man” and “Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps,” what he learned from his father, Kirk, his longstanding friendship with Danny Devito and his son Cameron’s legal troubles.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: Do you see Gordon Gekko and Ben as related characters in a way?
MICHAEL DOUGLAS: I was arguing the difference before I heard my writer/director make the comparison. They’re urban, New York guys. Both of them came from Long Island. One’s world is a little bigger, a little bigger stage – Gordon and the size of that. Ben is probably a little bit more of a little fish in a big pond.
MMM: He’s a very self-destructive character. Is his cynical outlook symptomatic of a midlife crisis?
DOUGLAS: No. I think it’s a third act and a mortality issue. He’s running on empty. He’s living for the moment, thinking of his life. There’s a certain desperation, but he’s a car dealer and so he’s a motor-mouth and doesn’t necessarily think about what he’s saying or really the repercussions of his actions. Then I think this situation sobers him up.
MMM: You embody this type of character so well. Why do you think that is?
DOUGLAS: Well, without blowing smoke up Mr. [Brian] Koppleman’s butt, it doesn’t hurt that you’ve got a really good screenplay. Steven Soderbergh, who works with David [Levien] and Brian, first introduced me to this project. I read it through just once and said, “This is great writing, wonderful. This is a good chance.” So, I think I just really always go with the script and don’t worry so much about the part. I mean sometimes you get a really good part like this but if you think it’s a good story, also the unpredictability. I think if you’re going to do these kinds of characters you really have to be unsure of where you’re going as opposed to most movies where you can kind of guess the ending.
MMM: Do you think your character mirrors what’s going on in society today? Men in high positions in a downward spiral?
DOUGLAS: That’s a good question. Selfishly, I sort of think about the film and the project rather than that. That’s almost like your job – to give it some resonance as to how it reflects. I think that we all read the papers and keep in touch with what’s going on and it probably strikes us. I know that Brian has talked about how he saw this character. He actually saw him in real life. I said, “I don’t see anyone in New York like this.” I’m not actually checking out guys in black pants and black jackets and then the next thing you know you go to restaurant and there’s three of them, just the way he said. Black-on-black. Look in the mirror, check themselves in the reflection.
MMM: Do you think there’s added sympathy for the character because of his medical condition?
DOUGLAS: Well, that’s a good excuse for part of the screenplay to possibly get away with this behavior and to spend close to two hours with this guy as your protagonist without wanting to let him have it. I think that was a good device that Brian came up in the screenplay.
MMM: Your father was famous for playing an unlikable, cynical kind of character. You haven’t done that so much except for “Falling Down” and—
DOUGLAS: “Wall Street.” My dad did the sensitive young man for about six or seven pictures before he did a movie called “Champion,” which he got nominated for, where he played a nasty in 1950. I had essentially the same thing until “Wall Street” and then all of a sudden I’m playing these darker, edgier guys. The fun part of this one was the tragedy/comedy and I thought that it went really well and that both Brian and David did just a great job of kind of keeping that balance. I was just so happy to see Imogen Poots, who played that poor young lady. I thought that it was interesting that we could not find a sophisticated New Yorker.
MMM: What was the key lesson you learned from your father concerning career longevity?
DOUGLAS: Well, I think it’s stamina. Stamina and tenacity. My father, he likes to give a lot of advice. He says, “Look, son, you do the best that you can. You do the best you can and then fuck it.”
MMM: You’ve unfortunately been in the headlines a lot recently with your son Cameron’s troubles. How is he doing?
DOUGLAS: He’s doing as well as can be expected. He has been sentenced now so it’s actually now a little bit of a relief. It’s been a long year, dealing with it. Life goes on and hopefully he’ll be a better person.
MMM: How did you feel on the days you were shooting the college kegger scenes? Did you feel like one of the guys?
DOUGLAS: I love all the college stuff. The moment after they have the fight and goes up to Jesse Eisenberg, to the dorm room where he puts on that t-shirt. The whole fish out of water element. The kegger party was fun, too, watching them get shutdown. It was a great scene. When I saw the picture I was so honored by one of the scenes there, with the simplicity of how they shot it, how they directed it, allowing that one long dollying shot where I’m telling Jesse the ways of life. I couldn’t believe it. It’s so nice to see directors who trust actors and not feel a necessity to show their wares or this or that. It takes great maturity.
MMM: Well, Brian said that you nailed that in three takes while they were pushing, which meant that they didn’t have to cut away at all, and there are very few actors – if any – who can do that.
DOUGLAS: Well, listeners. Jesse Eisenberg is one of the best listeners. They always talk about your acting, but it’s also listening. That’s something that my father used to talk about. He’s great, just great.
MMM: What is it about Danny Devito, having worked together on a number of films, that brings out the best in you as an actor?
DOUGLAS: I understand why actors like to work with each other over and over again. With Danny, this is the fourth picture. Making movies and acting is not a natural situation. There’s cameras and lights and all of that. Then you add to that actors who have to meet each other and shake hands and this and that. So, when you’ve got an old friend, a Simon and Garfunkel song, it wasn’t a large part. He wasn’t there very long but there’s a comfort fact that makes it easier. I was again amazed with their sensitivity. It was almost the silences. The scene when I come to his house, it was the silences between them talking. With as fast as this picture moved it gave me a sense of two old friends that know each other. Danny and I, we met each other in 1967. We were roommates in ‘69. I wish I’d done more with him. This is the first since “War of the Roses.” But that was Brian and David’s idea, really, thinking about who the guy was. They said Danny and I said, “I’ll call him and see if he can come in for a little bit.” It added like a good old robe that you wear. So I enjoyed that.
MMM: As far as the “comfort factor” is concerned, you’re going to work again with Stephen Soderbergh who you worked with on “Traffic.” What can you say about your upcoming collaboration, “Knockout?”
DOUGLAS: I don’t know. Maybe we should go back to “The Girlfriend Experience,” but we’ve got to get Stephen to stop watching television too much. I was there for a very short period of time but basically Stephen has discovered this Gina Carano who’s an ultimate fighter. She’s one of these ultimate fighters. She’s quite attractive and I think in the spirit of a super-action-Bruce Lee-as-a-leading-lady in a good story that he’s built around, but with action scenes that you don’t cutaway from. She gives as good as it takes. It’s a little disturbing to see a lady get hit in the mouth right on camera and then come back. It was pretty good. I had a short stint in there with Antonio Banderas.
MMM: How did you go about preparing for the role of Ben?
DOUGLAS: Well, I guess I’ll use the example of when I was doing “Fatal Attraction.” Someone told me early on that the camera can always tell when you’re lying. Oh, my God. So, I used to act painfully. I would act in such pain. I remember starting “Fatal Attraction” and there are two types of actors: one is building the character and putting a character on and then it just donned on me. I said, “Wait a minute, we lie all the time. We lie everyday.” So this all of a sudden came over me and it started with “Fatal.” I said, “Well, I could be a lawyer.” So that’s the question; rather than putting the makeup on it’s about stripping it off. Wiping your face off, wiping it all off. It’s just trying to get down to some kind of truth. When you have something written as well this, I mean the character is there on the page for you. The rhythm is there. He’s a car dealer and so you have that and you know the pace that you’ve got to get up to dialogue-wise to make it work. So then if it’s good it takes off by itself.
MMM: Your character sleeps with a teenager. Do you think he’s using sex as a substitute for everything else he’s lost in his life?
DOUGLAS: Sure,I mean, that’s a part of it. He’s definitely medicating, whether it’s sex or anything else, in one sense. But he’s reaching out. He’s drowning and trying to get out and isn’t thinking straight. Mind you, I think they did the scene very well. I keep defending them. Imogen is a lovely young lady but the character is right there, too. It’s not as if I’m hustling her.
MMM: How does it feel to play the character of a middle-aged man who is sleeping with a 19-year-old and it’s meant to come off as normal?
DOUGLAS: Well, that’s the way that it goes. I enjoy provocative things, provoking or questionable, but the gay and lesbian movement killed Sharon Stone for portraying a lesbian as a murderer. There’s always somebody or something. You really do it for ourselves. You hope that if it turns out good, the only joy – I do – is I figure that someone else there might like it. I really don’t worry too much about that.
MMM: Is this your first time working with two directors? What was that like?
DOUGLAS: No. It’s my second time. They were brothers. I can’t remember. It was good. I mean I was curious how it was going to be but I have to say that it wasn’t good cop bad cop. Every once in a while they would come in with a suggestion, very good ones, I might add. They were very sweet and patient. There were times, because of the schedule and everything, that I might’ve been a little curt but they were cool about that. They just did a nice job. Casting is really everything because if you cast a movie right, directors have so much else to do besides tell actors what to do. There are so many issues and problems and if you’ve cast it right you should be able to let it go and they’re going to play it out and they might even surprise you. I have to say, most of the time actors elevate things. They don’t screw things up most of the time. It’s a tribute to Brian’s script. That’s a part of why we got so many wonderful actors to come in on an ensemble-type situation.
MMM: Now that your wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, has had such a big hit on Broadway, do you have the urge to star in a Broadway production?
DOUGLAS: I had been exploring that but now, after watching Catherine work, I’m re-evaluating the situation. I don’t think we’re quite ready as a family unit to start up for next season and it looks like I’m going to do “Liberace” with Stephen Soderbergh and Matt Damon in the early part of 2011.
MMM: What do you look for in new projects? And why did you think it was time to revisit “Wall Street?”
DOUGLAS: Well, I look for, really, a good piece of material. A movie, not a part. I look for, “That’s a movie that I’d like to see. That’s a movie I’d like to be a part of.” Sometimes with this you get the great parts. With “Wall Street,” Charlie Sheen carried that movie the first time. Gordon Gekko is a great written villain but it was a small chunk of that whole film and it was well written. It came up. They asked me. It was after ‘07 when it all happened, they asked me about the idea of doing a sequel and I thought that it sounded like an appropriate time. It was kind of interesting and I started thinking, “Ah, that’d be cool.” We thought, “Lets see, ‘86 or ‘87,” and we figured out with Oliver [Stone] that, “Alright, he fought for appeals for about five years. ‘92. He went to jail for eight years. He gets out in 2001. He can’t trade anymore. So in ‘07/’08 he’s got a book foreseeing what all happened.” So it just seemed appropriate. There was a little bit of pressure because it wasn’t a simple entertainment, action kind of picture but I’ve seen it. I haven’t seen the whole complete version but I saw it before they took out the last couple of minutes and it looked really good.
MMM: How did it feel being back in those shoes again?
DOUGLAS: Well, they were very different shoes. Gordon has been in jail for eight years.
MMM: And working with Oliver again?
DOUGLAS: Those are the same shoes. Same shoes. He’s a very, very talented guy but he does test his actors. And his idea for getting the best performance, I don’t take it personally, but he tests you and he’s really good and then the picture turned out good. You can’t argue. Almost every picture he’s done actors have given their best performance going back to Jimmy Woods in “Salvador” and everybody.
SOLITARY MAN opens on May 21st in select theaters.
Tags: interview, kirk douglas, marlow stern, michael douglas, solitary man
Posted in Featured, Interviews | 7 Comments »
Thomas Balmes Talks Babies!
By Marlow Stern
Four babies from four countries – and an excess of cuteness – invaded movie screens on May 7 with the release of the new documentary Babies, by Thomas Balmes. For his film, the French director simultaneously followed the lives of infants from all over the world – Ponijao (Opuwo, Namibia), Bayarjargal (Mongolia near Bayanchandmani), Mari (Tokyo, Japan) and Hattie (San Francisco, USA) – from birth to first steps.
The four countries were familiar terrain for Balmes. The filmmaker, working as an independent director and producer of documentary films since 1992, has helmed nonfiction films all over earth, including his first film, 1996’s “Bosnia Hotel,” the story of U.N. Kenyan peacekeepers in Bosnia; “Maharajah Burger,” about the mad cow crisis in India; “The Gospel According to the Papuans” and “Waiting for Jesus,” concerning the conversion to Christianity of a Papuan Chief; and “A Decent Factory,” about a Nokia executive who inspects a mobile phone factory in China. In addition, Balmes has produced several television series’ for NHK Japanese television.
In our exclusive interview with Thomas Balmes, we spoke about his latest film, Babies, raising his own children while filming from far-flung corners of the earth, his favorite documentary films and much more.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: How did you develop the concept of “Babies?”
THOMAS BALMES: The idea of doing something about babies came from a very famous French director/writer/actor, Alain Chabat, who gave me a call ten years ago about an idea of doing wild life documentaries about babies. We ended up with this final concept of being there from birth to first steps in four different countries.
MMM: Why did you choose these four different countries, specifically?
BALMES: First of all, because they were spaces I used to work in before so I knew them and I thought they would be interesting. It’s four relationships with modernity and with the western way of living from the most basic way of living in Africa. It has nothing to do with poor and rich countries. They’re all wealthy families. The African family, for example, had big cattle and, according to their people, are quite rich. What I was looking for was the different level of connection with modernity.
MMM: Is the message here one of equality? That we’re essentially all the same when we’re born?
BALMES: This is something you can read and something I’ve been discovering myself as I’ve been doing the film. I don’t go in with a specific agenda when I’m doing a film. I just have one idea of looking at a story, or in this case four stories, and trying to have it speak for itself. The idea was really not to be judgmental on any cultures but, by comparing them, offering the viewer the opportunity to put themselves in their shoes.
MMM: How did you find these four families and four babies?
BALMES: By doing a huge casting in each country – casting a pregnant mother, because we didn’t have a baby at the time. By looking at their environment, by looking at the relationship between mom and dad. I was looking for people who would be happy to have these kids arriving and it wouldn’t be a problem. I wanted the four of them to be equally loving to their kids and not incorporate problematic social things. It was difficult to find a family living in the center of Tokyo and agree to being filmed during such a long process. The apartment spaces in Tokyo are amazingly small and the time commitment is different then me being in Mongolia where I was just filming them milking the cow or whatever they had to do. Finding the American family and the Japanese family was a bigger challenge, definitely.
MMM: There is that old Hollywood saying that kids and pets are the most difficult to shoot…
BALMES: To me, this is an excuse. The film isn’t only about babies. It’s about what it means to be a human on earth. As a parent myself, I could observe many things that happened over the years that would make great scenes for a documentary and I thought juxtaposing different ways of raising your kids would be quite interesting.
MMM: You’re a father of three and the fathers in this film are absent for the most part.
BALMES: That’s the reality, and maybe the one with the most presence is the American father. In Africa, the father was taking care of the cattle and being far away from the home. He was a loving, present father when he was around, which wasn’t that much. In America, the father was a part-time cinematographer and the mother was a teacher at Stanford, so he was spending most of the time dealing with the baby. You have a diversity of presence with the fathers, but they’re all there in their own ways. The Japanese father is there, but he’s always doing something else while taking care of his child. I definitely see myself both in the Japanese family and the American family in my relationship with my kids.
MMM: How do you see yourself that way? And how was raising infants for you? As a documentary filmmaker who works all over the world, you couldn’t have been around very much.
BALMES: With iPhones and Macbooks and everything you’re always connected to everybody, and I see myself as the father who’s with his kid but also on a phone call for hours, doing two things at the same time. I think this is totally metaphorical of our way of behaving with our kids. It’s very unusual for us to be just alone with them and, in the same way, usually they are alone without all the technology we’re surrounding them with. We wanted to show something different where instead of toys and games you can see other babies growing up with the sky to watch, the wind to feel – very basic things. Maybe just challenging the concept of comfort we have in the west as the only way to behave.
MMM: I’m curious how you shot those scenes where the babies are alone. Did you just place a camera in the baby’s room for an extended period of time?
BALMES: I would never leave the camera by itself. I was always behind the camera. I was trying to anticipate when something was about to happen. Moments where there would be a connection or interaction between the baby and cat, baby and brother, whatever – you must be ready to film those moments. I was looking for all the first times in their life that they’d be touching, eating, hearing something; all the first experiences that a child would go through in their first year.
MMM: Was there ever a moment where you felt you had to step out from behind the camera and intervene? There are scenes where animals get very close to the children, etc.
BALMES: I made a very clear deal with the parents at the beginning of shooting that I would not be there to babysit their kids and they should not hold me responsible. Even if you don’t see the parents in the frame they are never far away. They can be in the next room working on the computer or in the field milking the cow but they always have a read on what’s going on. I was just an observer.
MMM: You must have had hours and hours of footage. How long was the shoot?
BALMES: We had like 400 hours of rushes, which is a lot and not that much. I spent 400 days, so I was shooting about one hour per day. The time spent is huge but I tried to alter the budget costs by doing it in the most basic way of filming but with a lot of time. This is the anti-“Avatar” and the opposite of “Iron Man” and the other big fiction films that have been released this year. This is a simple film. Nevertheless, I think there is a lot of humor and action but it’s done differently. It’s just reality.
MMM: You yourself directed in all four countries?
BALMES: I directed and shot eighty percent of the film.
MMM: And there weren’t any logistical hang-ups during shooting?
BALMES: Everything went quite smoothly. It was a huge challenge keeping up with family life while being around the world for such a long time. I’ve got three kids – three, five and seven – and to be married at the end of this process is a miracle because my wife had to be alone with three kids for 72 weeks. Personally and physically, to go from one country to another was really exhausting. Maybe the most difficult thing was to not be too disturbing – especially in Japan, where the spaces are so small. It’s tough to be in a 20-square-foot apartment and not be intrusive.
MMM: That must be pretty meta to have a few young children of your own while shooting “Babies.”
BALMES: Yeah. This is the life of a filmmaker. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the personal life to do films. But, my whole family survived and when I’m home, I’m trying to be really at home and not do twenty things. When I finished this project, I hesitated to start another film and spent about a year catching up on lost time. You are totally right. There were moments where I was like, “Oh my god… what am I doing?” But, at the same time, this was a unique opportunity to do something which I felt was worth doing.
MMM: Were you ever tempted to add narration?
BALMES: Absolutely never. I never use narration in any of my films and I didn’t think it was necessary for this one more than any other. What is very unusual is that there is no dialogue. I felt the small scenes are so moving or funny that you didn’t need to add anything on top of that. The power of the film is the simplicity of the pictures, which speak for themselves.
MMM: And you always planned on finishing the film with all four babies’ first steps?
BALMES: Yeah. There were other ideas like the eye contact of all four babies realizing there was someone behind the lens watching them. But the walking scene is something so fascinating and connected to independence that very early on we were like, “OK, this is where we’re heading.”
MMM: Are you worried that people will think, “Oh, I’m looking at cute babies for eighty minutes. This is cloying?”
BALMES: I’m definitely worried that people might think that before. But, after they see the film, they’ll realize it’s not just about cuteness. The cuteness thing will be part of so many other things that people will confront that it’s not a main thing.
MMM: You’ve based many of your projects in America. Why are you so fascinated with United States?
BALMES: First of all, American people are fantastic characters for reality or documentary filmmaking since the presence of the camera is never a problem for the people there. They are very good “actors of reality.” If you did the same thing in France people would be overacting or underacting or being shy, but never smooth and interesting. Another thing is, we always say in France that whatever happens in America will come to Europe later on, so you’re a metaphor for something much bigger than American society; there’s a universality. I never do anything in France. I think France is too specific to be universal.
MMM: Did you grow up with American films?
BALMES: I grew up with the great documentaries and many of them came from America like the Maysles Brothers, Frederick Wiseman. You have created direct cinema, which is what I’ve been doing for twenty years.
MMM: Do you have any favorite documentaries?
BALMES: Well, one of my favorite documentaries is this Maysles Brothers film, “”Salesman” (1968). It was a film about a man selling Bibles. More recently, I loved “Grizzly Man” from Werner Herzog. So unique!
BABIES crawls into select theaters nationwide on May 7th.
Tags: babies, interview, marlow stern, thomas balmes
Posted in Interviews | 2 Comments »
Naomi Watts is Mother and Child!
By Marlow Stern
British-born and Australia raised, Naomi Watts’ early years were characterized by heartbreak.
The daughter of Myfanwy Edwards, a Welsh costume and set designer, and Peter Watts, a road manager and sound engineer who worked with Pink Floyd, Naomi’s parents divorced when she was four, and her father passed away soon after. Following her father’s death, her mother, a hippie, moved the family all around London and Wales, usually to follow boyfriends. In 1982, when Watts was 14, the family finally made roots in Sydney, Australia. She first began acting in Australian television and soon segued into American films. But finding roles in Hollywood proved difficult for Watts. She appeared in numerous B-movie productions like “Tank Girl” (1995) and “Children of the Corn IV” (1996). Watts finally made her breakthrough in the 2001 David Lynch surrealist film “Mulholland Drive,” winning her the National Society of Film Critics Award as Best Actress and the National Board of Review award as Breakthrough Performance of the Year. The film has gone on to become a cult classic.
Ever since “Mulholland,” Watts has established herself as one of the finest actresses in Hollywood, appearing in a diverse array of films like “The Ring” (2002), “21 Grams” (2003), earning Watts her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, the ensemble comedy “I <3 Huckabees” (2004), the action adventure epic “King Kong” (2005) and David Cronenberg’s seedy crime drama “Eastern Promises” (2007).
Watts’ partner has been the actor Liev Schreiber since the spring of 2005. The couple’s first son, Alexander “Sasha” Pete, was born on July 25, 2007, in Los Angeles, and their second son, Samuel “Sammy” Kai, December 13, 2008, in New York City.
Her latest film is, fittingly, Mother and Child. Written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia (“Nine Lives”), the film follows three very different women, each of whom struggles to maintain control of their lives. There’s Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), a smart, successful and manipulative lawyer who starts a romance with her boss (Samuel L. Jackson) and seduces her married neighbor (Marc Blucas). Karen (Annette Bening), meanwhile, is a bitter health care professional who gave up her daughter for adoption at the age of 14 and has never gotten over it. Finally, Lucy (Kerry Washington) is an infertile woman who has failed to conceive with her husband, so she attempts to adopt a child.
MMM sat down with the lovely Naomi Watts to chat about her latest film, shooting intense love scenes with Samuel L. Jackson and how motherhood’s changed her.
NAOMI WATTS: This [points to tape recorder] looks like my sound machine for my children to sleep with. So forgive me if I pass out. I travel with mine and I’m now slightly addicted.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: As a mom can you talk about the emotion of your character and thinking about your kids as you were going through this difficult situation in the film?
WATTS: Yeah. It just sort of brings up – I don’t know, I was trying to articulate it before. My feeling is that the minute you make the decision to become a mother you sort of bring on a lifetime of second guessing yourself. Everything that happens, the most minor things in everyday, you’re like, “Should I have done that? Should I have given him the present before I did that? Is that bribery?” That’s what comes with motherhood. Men seem to be absolved of that. No matter how invested or hands on they are as parents they just don’t get involved in all that guilt or second guessing themselves like women. It can hit in all different types, Kerry’s [Washington] character who isn’t able to have children. Once you make that decision, “I want to be a parent, a mother,” it just brings on all that stuff. I didn’t really have many ways to relate to Elizabeth. She’s quite a complicated woman and we’re not really that much alike. I was kind of afraid of her.
MMM: Annette Bening said her character wasn’t a weirdo but she was difficult. Is your character difficult AND a weirdo?
WATTS: Yes, I think, but I’m not sure that she wasn’t a weirdo either, that character. She is, definitely. But she also thought that her next door neighbors, that they were the weirdos, that they were the people that really don’t know what they’re doing. They have no conscious life in her mind. “Oh, hi! We’re from next door and lets all be friends!” She’s like, “Who are you? What planet did you just come from?” In all the things that I tried to sort of work out about Elizabeth the one issue that I had a problem with, I’m sure you know, the underwear in the drawer. I was just like, “Wait a second, is she truly evil?” Rodrigo said, “No. I just think she’s trying to get a spark out of people, trying to get them to see who they are and they’re not the people that they behave like.” “You think your husband is really that special? Well, guess what, honey, he was looking at me on the balcony the other day and he wants me.” I think she just had a low opinion of men – and not just men but human beings in general, because she’s been so hurt that she wants to expose their flaws. In her own kind of weird way she felt that she was giving her neighbor a gift.
MMM: She was helping a woman?
WATTS: Yeah, to see what a lie she was living.
MMM: Did you draw from anyone or anything, any situations in your past to actually help you project this character?
WATTS: You always take things from people you know or experiences you’ve had because it’s all about trying to get to the most truthful place and you have to connect with something that you’ve seen yourself and not that you’ve just read about it or imagined.
MMM: Did Rodrigo give you a format about where to go with this or did you take the character in this direction?
WATTS: He’s such a brilliant writer and he understands women in this unbelievable way. I have so much respect for him. He’s not a conventional guy in any way. He’s prepared to write women that are that complicated. I mean who goes off and gets their tubes tied at seventeen years old [like my character]. Lets think about who that woman is who had to do that. I think he’s really interesting. He’s got a great sense of humor and just a great understanding of human beings. As complicated and difficult as they are, they’re interesting and the way that he explains them you forgive them for being that way.
MMM: We don’t often see Samuel L. Jackson doing love scenes in movies. He’s usually the tough guy or the bad guy. What was it like working with him in those emotionally vulnerable scenes? Also, I read that you had your second child while you were filming this. What advice would you have actresses who have to film those kinds of intimate scenes when they’re in that vulnerable state of just having had a child?
WATTS: It was very difficult and it was very close. Basically they put the whole film on hold because of my pregnancy. We were supposed to do it back before summer, and I was like, “Okay, we’ve got to shoot this now,” knowing that I was pregnant and when I would start showing and what we could get out of the pregnancy. Then also the timing was bad because there was a SAG issue, a possible strike, and I think that Annette’s dates weren’t great. So we decided to shoot it at the end of the year and they would shoot Kerry and Annette and I would’ve had my baby in December and come to the set in February. So it was eight weeks old, my baby. He was eight weeks old. It was just kind of unheard of. But you have to remember that it was exciting for me to come back to work because I’d had a whole year off with Sasha. It was sort of fitting but sort of not fitting, the content of this material. Incredibly difficult. I had boobs like this [moves hands outward]. I just literally met Samuel. I think that we had one table read and then the second scene that we shot I was on top of him. So it was just odd, slightly odd. But he could not have been more soothing and just gentle and exactly what I needed. He’s amazing. What you said, I so didn’t think [of him]. He’s just not what I thought of first of all when I read that character. I just thought, “Oh, Samuel Jackson. That’s odd.” But he’s a brilliant actor and I’m so glad that he said yes to it because it was such a nice surprise to see him like that. He’s a really intelligent and gentle and sophisticated man. Just because he wears a different color tracksuit every day of the week doesn’t mean to say that he’s not highly distinguished. I loved every second of working with him.
MMM: Your character isn’t very sympathetic up until her pregnancy. How has pregnancy changed you in your real life?
WATTS: I love being pregnant. I feel my most strong and my most virile. The second time was actually harder and I think it was really because I was chasing a toddler at the same time. There was no putting your feet up and getting foot rubs, that sort of thing. But I do feel strong and alive and you’re just amazed what your body can do. I think that, yeah, Elizabeth allows no room for surprises in her life and finally when one happens it moves her into a real state of shock. I just think that she starts growing. It’s not just the baby inside. It’s her whole growth, her emotional growth.
MMM: After you had children did you have a realization that you had changed?
WATTS: Oh, everything. This is something that I feel guilty about because I go to work now and I’m getting paid to do something that I always feel that I’m not doing as well. In some ways, yes, I am because I think deeper. I feel things differently. I feel much more of a mindful and aware person, but I find it hard to live and breathe my work in the same way that I used to. I just feel that I’m desperate to get home. It’s as simple as that.
MMM: The scene in the doctor’s office where she finds out that she’s pregnant she’s very hostile to the doctor. He thinks she’s going to have an abortion. How did you go through that scene and that moment where a woman has to consider those kinds of choices?
WATTS: I think it’s so shocking to her that she reacts in such a way and I think she’s created her life in such a way that there are no surprises in it and it’s just so deeply controlled. She only gives this one version of herself to everyone. So, for someone to assume something about her makes her really angry because it’s not something she thought through.
MMM: She’s also reckless in some way because even though she’d had her tubes tied she wasn’t practicing safe sex in terms of AIDS and STD’s and things like that.
WATTS: Yeah, that’s a good point! [Laughs]
MMM: Are you and David Lynch ever going to get back together?
WATTS: I hope so! I’d like to know that myself! He’s just fantastic.
MMM: Has the baby been to Australia?
WATTS: Well, the first one, it was such a big deal for me, like going down to Bondi Beach where I have so many memories and dipping his feet into the water, despite the fact that it was freezing cold. I’d had my baby such a long way away from my home and then getting there, it was like, “This is my water, my country and now you are that, too.” It was really a big deal for me. But Kai, Samuel Kai, he came to Australia for the first time just this last Christmas and it was great. We stayed in Bronte Beach which is a beach close to Bondi and they can just run naked.
MMM: What are your thoughts on seeing Liev [Schrieber] onstage again in “A View from the Bridge?” So many people have been raving about his performance.
WATTS: He’s just magnificent as he always his and he just seems to keep getting better and better. I don’t know how that’s possible because I believe he’s the best-reviewed theatre actor there is in New York and he just keeps blowing everyone else away. It was so wonderful to see him play a brilliant character who’s got a great strength but vulnerability at the same time. I wept in that play. I must’ve seen it five times and every time it got me.
MMM: Which of your sons takes after you or Liev more?
WATTS: I think that Sasha looks more like his dad and Kai looks probably more like…actually I think he looks more like my brother. But in terms of personality, who knows, they change everyday.
MOTHER AND CHILD opens on May 7th in limited release.
Tags: annette bening, interview, liev schreiber, marlow stern, mother and child, naomi watts, rodrigo garcia
Posted in Featured, Interviews | 11 Comments »
Tribeca Interview: Rebecca Hall Talks Please Give!
By Marlow Stern
After making her feature film debut as the witty student activist – and object of James McAvoy’s affection – Rebecca Epstein, in the underrated coming-of-age comedy “Starter for Ten,” Rebecca Hall has achieved a strong acting reputation, attracting some of the film world’s finest directors.
The British actress’s follow-up was 2006’s “The Prestige,” where she played wife to Christian Bale’s tortured magician in the Christopher Nolan (“Dark Knight”) film. Then, in 2008, she got her break as one of the leads in Woody Allen’s ménage-a-quatre “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” Hall, playing a facsimile of her “Starter” character – Vicky, a practical PHD student in Catalan studies engaged to an unromantic partner – is the film’s moral high ground, and, despite Penelope Cruz stealing most of the film’s accolades as a fiery artist, Hall earned a great deal of critical praise, resulting in a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy. She also appeared in Ron Howard’s award-winning ensemble drama “Frost/Nixon” that same year.
Hall is the daughter of renowned theatre director Peter Hall and opera singer Maria Ewing. Her professional stage debut came in 2002 when she starred as Vivie in her father’s production of “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” at the Strand Theatre in London. Critics raved of her turn and she took home the Ian Charleson Award, given to the best British stage actress under 30. She’s continued to act in theatre, appearing as Rosalind in “As You Like It,” Hermione in “The Winter’s Tale,” and many more.
From acclaimed New York filmmaker Nicole Holofcener (“Lovely and Amazing”), who has a penchant for actress-showcasing ensemble seriocomedies, Please Give features sisters Rebecca (Hall) and Mary (Amanda Peet), two opposites – similar to the Vicky/Cristina divide – who care for their elderly grandmother. Well, Rebecca, a mammogram technician, cares for her. The pair of sisters soon clash with a married couple (Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt) who specialize in reselling the used goods of recently deceased geriatrics.
MMM sat down with the talented actress Rebecca Hall to chat about the similarities between Woody Allen and Nicole Holofcener, her proclivity towards American roles, mammograms and her favorite things about NYC.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: How were you approached to do this role and what was it about the script in general that made you want to do this film?
REBECCA HALL: Well, initially the fact that I was an admirer of Nicole’s [Holofcener] filmmaking and the fact that she writes incredibly subtle characters which gives you much more room for maneuvering and something to really flesh out and play with. I like playing ambiguity, I suppose. I like playing people who are complicated in ways that aren’t particularly obvious, a little bit opaque. I think that elusive quality in her writing appeals to me. She’s doesn’t write films about people who are particularly heroic. She doesn’t write films who are going to save the world from monsters or are particularly great or go through particularly dramatic events. That interests me because that’s life. So what you concentrate on as an actor are the details, the intricacies of day to day existence and then that relates to an audience on a grounded scale because it taps into a sort of common humanity.
MMM: How did you prepare for this role? Did you study mammograms?
HALL: Oh, I knew that was coming! [Laughs] You’re a courageous one. I did. I didn’t know an awful lot about mammograms. You don’t start having them until you’re a little bit older. I’d never had one and I didn’t know much about it. So I went to a mammogram unit. I went to the one that we filmed at and I sat with a nurse that works there for a day. I watched her perform the procedures and she taught me how to work the machinery. I learned about it. I think it’s sort of taboo especially in cinema to objectify any body part that’s usually eroticized and actually talk about it’s potential harm and it’s potential danger.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: Do you think that occupation affected her dating life?
HALL: No. I think that the character affected her dating life. I think her choice of occupation is telling of, as a character, she does things in her life that give her an excuse to avoid living. That’s her big problem. A lot of people tend to see the film and think that my character is the moral high ground, the moral center of the film, and I think that’s true to an extent, but I don’t think that makes her necessarily healthy. I think that every character in this film, all of them, is dysfunctional in the sense that they give for the wrong reasons or they take advantage when they think they’re giving. I think that Rebecca is another example of that. She just does it in an inverse way, as in she uses looking after everyone and taking responsibility for everyone else as a way to avoid taking responsibility for herself or living her life in any kind of round, happy, healthy way.
MMM: She’s about the only character that doesn’t have any guilt. Is that right?
HALL: I think she does have guilt. I’d say that. I’m not wanting to make sort of massive psychological generalizations when I’m not remotely a psychiatrist but I’d say that anyone that has that level of, I suppose, abstinence –
MMM: What about her mother who committed suicide, did she have guilt over that?
HALL: Yeah. I think she does. I don’t think she has guilt that she’s conscious of but I think she carries an enormous amount of guilt because I don’t really believe that anyone that insecure…and she’s a person who has no idea who she is and isn’t really willing to find out at the beginning of the film. She’d rather disappear from any situation and someone who is that unsure of themselves and that insecure, probably on some level they retreat out of guilt. She doesn’t let herself be happy because she feels horrific about all sorts of things but I don’t think she’s conscious of it. So it wasn’t something that I consciously thought of in the playing of it.
MMM: Did you actually get a chance to sit with Nicole and give your input on this character and how you wanted her to be in the film?
HALL: I think that’s a process that happens and I think there’s always input. A character doesn’t exist in an actor’s imagination, nor does it exist on the page. It exists when the two things come together.
MMM: But you draw from things, I’m sure, right?
HALL: Yeah, absolutely, but I don’t think that I went to Nicole and said, ‘This is how I see her.’ I don’t think that I’m really an actor that makes decisions separate to the text, if you see what I mean. I’ve never quite understood that idea of saying, ‘I don’t believe that my character would say this.’ If a character says it then it’s your responsibility to find a reason why and that’s where the character comes from, those problems. The more of those moments where you go ‘I don’t understand why this is happening’ is the more that you develop the character that’s separate from yourself. That’s sort of how you form their personality, if that makes any sense at all. I’m completely waffling.
MMM: How did you approach the loving granddaughter aspect of it? Was there something in your own family that you could pull from?
HALL: Not really. I couldn’t relate to that, no. I couldn’t relate to it at all. I have no surprising grandparents. They were alive for a little bit when I was younger but I didn’t really know them. My family life is incredibly diverse and broad and I suppose, under some sort of umbrella term, bohemian. I don’t have a normal upbringing at all. So this is kind of an anathema to me but on some level everyone understands about those kinds of family relationships in some instinctive place. I don’t know how, but they do.
MMM: The two sisters are opposites except there are things that bond them and so they’re also similar in certain ways.
HALL: I think that they’re both suffering from the same issues of growing up without strong parental figures and dealing with a lack of love and a lot of isolation. And it’s two perfect examples of how people react to that kind of situation. Either people introvert or they extrovert and you’ve got both examples in the same family.
MMM: So many people in America might be surprised that you’re English. Of the roles you’re being offered at this point, are they fifty/fifty British and American roles?
HALL: They’re one hundred percent. I’ve yet to play a Brit. No, I have.
MMM: I saw the “Red Riding” trilogy and that was excellent.
HALL: Which was also an accent as well. I was just playing a thick Yorkshire. That’s not my normal [accent].
MMM: “Starter for Ten?”
HALL: “Starter for Ten” was the one standing and “Prestige,” actually. I was English in “The Prestige” as well.
MMM: Why do you think you’re getting so many scripts for American roles?
HALL: It’s a combination of things. It’s a combination of where there’s stuff being made, first off, frankly. And also, American culture interests me. I’m not totally alien. I have a foot in both countries, so to speak. My mother is American. My mom is from Detroit originally and I grew up with a lot of American culture. I think that everyone in the world has. I think especially with stories from New York. There’s something about the iconography of New York, which has a global appeal. I always wanted to be in films about New York and was interested in films telling good stories and if they are American then that’s the way they are.
MMM: What’s your favorite part about New York?
HALL: My favorite part of New York is the walking. You can walk everywhere and everything is right there and you can get wheat-free pizza at three in morning.
MMM: Nicole bares many similarities with Woody Allen –
HALL: She’s small. She’s Jewish. She wears glasses.
MMM: Can you talk about how their directorial styles compare?
HALL: I don’t quite know why I have a sort of resistance to compare them. I think it’s probably out of respect for both of them separately and having actually genuinely had very different experiences. I think it’s impossible to come across a filmmaker today who makes films about New York that does not get compared to Woody Allen because New York culture is so pervasive and he put a stamp on it. I also don’t think that it’s possible to find a filmmaker that’s not been influenced by him. But as to whether they’re similar, I think she has her own voice. I do. I think she’s got her own way of doing things. The one way in which I would make comparisons is that they make films about life, about small aspects of life. They don’t tell great big stories. They talk about people and characters.
PLEASE GIVE opens on April 30th in New York and Los Angeles.
Tags: interview, marlow stern, please give, rebecca hall, tribeca film festival 2010
Posted in Featured, Festivals, Interviews | 1 Comment »
Jeff Daniels & Emma Stone Talk Paper Man!
By Marlow Stern
Actor. Musician. Playwright.
Since making his silver screen debut in 1981’s “Ragtime,” Jeff Daniels has been a consistent, reliable force in the entertainment world. His star was recognized in 1983’s “Terms of Endearment,” where he played neglectful husband/literature scholar Flap Horton. He went on to earn his first of three Golden Globe nominations in the dual role of archaeologist/actor in Woody Allen’s 1985 film, “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” Since then, he’s displayed great versatility, appearing as a member of the L.A. bomb squad in “Speed,” a bushy-haired imbecile in “Dumb and Dumber” and an idealistic ice cream shoppe man who brings a little color to the world of “Pleasantville.” Daniels also has a stalwart reputation on Broadway, recently receiving a Tony Award nomination for his performance in the hit play “God of Carnage,” which has been running for almost two years on Broadway.
And, after his Golden Globe nominated turn as haughty novelist Bernard Berkman in “The Squid and the Whale,” Daniels has been Hollywood’s go-to guy for novelists. He’s recently starred as a self-help author in 2009’s “The Answer Man” and now, as struggling novelist Richard Dunn in directing duo Kieran and Michele Mulroney’s PAPER MAN. In many ways, these characters of struggling, middle-aged novelists are grown-up versions of his Flap Horton.
In Paper Man, Daniels’ novelist crippled by writer’s block is aided by an imaginary superhero friend known as ‘Captain Excellent’ (Ryan Reynolds) and Long Island teenager Abby, played by Emma Stone.
While Daniels is the tried and true veteran, Stone’s star is fast on the rise. After making her feature film debut as the object of Jonah Hill’s affection in the 2007 comedy “Superbad,” she’s appeared in a string of high-profile comedies: as a badass bassist in “The Rocker,” a sorority swan in “The House Bunny” and a shotgun-wielding zombie killer in “Zombieland.”
MMM sat down with PAPER MAN co-stars Jeff Daniels and Emma Stone to chat about their immediate chemistry, their choice superpowers and who their own personal ‘Captain Excellent’ is.
MANHATTAN MOVIE MAGAZINE: How did you two get involved in this?
JEFF DANIELS: Kieran and Michele Mulroney called me and said, “Look – Emma Stone. We want to have breakfast. We’ll go back to the office, read the script, maybe do some scenes.” I said, “Yeah, ok. Whatever.” We went and sat down at Café Luxembourg. I remember it like it was yesterday. And [Emma] had the table and she was so funny, and we were bouncing off each other and laughing. After about twenty minutes I looked over at Kieran and Michele and said, “Yeah, we’re fine. We’re ok. See you in Montauk.”
MMM: So there wasn’t much rehearsing?
EMMA STONE: I don’t know that it would make too much sense for us to rehearse since you see the entire span of these characters meeting and interacting. There’s no backstory and you’re seeing everything that happens between them. Plus, we got to shoot semi-chronologically. That first day shooting in Montauk was the first day the characters meet as well.
MMM: This film’s been on quite an interesting journey. Could you talk about how you found the project and any challenges you’ve had to overcome?
STONE: [Jeff] was attached when I got the script and I went through a pretty rigorous audition process. It wasn’t an offer or anything, although the movie I’d done before it was “The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” so I don’t know that Abby was… [Laughs]
DANIELS: You were brilliant in that. Absolutely brilliant. I look forward to seeing it. It wasn’t as bad as they say! I don’t see anything anymore, but I’m sure she was wonderful.
STONE: [Laughs] But clearly they weren’t like, “Abby’s jumping out at us!” So I had to audition. I think I went in three times, and for each time I was in there for about an hour. They changed it up on me a lot, but it was understandable. But also, I got a really good feel for Kieran and Michele as directors through that, so that was good too because it was scary for me.
DANIELS: I read it a year before it was shot. I think we were going to [shoot] and then they didn’t have the money, then I went off and did something else, then I went and did a musical in Chicago. Then, I went, “I could do it between November and December. I’d love to do it, but that’s when I could do it.” And they were great. By that point, I think Emma and Ryan [Reynolds] were on it. It was one of my favorite scripts I’d read in a long, long time and thankfully they wanted me and were willing to wait.
MMM: Did either of you ever have an imaginary friend?
STONE: No… I feel like acting is being your own imaginary friend. Maybe I always wanted one and so I became an actor or something. There’s a little Freud for ya!
MMM: What was it like jumping into the waters of Montauk in November and December?
DANIELS: She became my girl that day because it was a godawful, ugly, cold, grey Montauk day. There was nothing warm about anything she had to do. And Emma was going to do it, but there was a little kicking and screaming going on. I think I said something like, “Jennifer Lopez would do it!” But she went in there 10, 12 times.
STONE: It wasn’t that many! Like five, six…
DANIELS: I had to just go up to my knees. That was nothing. She had to go underwater.
MMM: You’ve played many writers before like in your last film, “The Answer Man.” Where do you get your inspiration for playing these writers?
DANIELS: I’m generally depressed overall as a person. [Laughs] I write plays so maybe they think of me that way. I go back to Jim Brooks and “Terms of Endearment,” and say, “You’re the only guy that convinced me that Flap had read all those books he was supposed to have read.” And the fact that I’ve written, maybe they think I can do that. It’s also: you play a writer in “The Squid and the Whale” and they go, “Oh, you can play a writer. You did it for them, do it for us!”
MMM: Have either of you ever been in a creative rut? And if so, how did you overcome it?
STONE: Wouldn’t it be annoying if the 21-year-old was like, “Yeah… I’ve been in some serious ruts, so…” But we were just talking about what it’s like doing this job in 2010. It’s not quite a rut but there’s a lot of treading carefully into… what it could possibly be.
DANIELS: And the younger generation with the Internet, cell phone videos, YouTube and the whole getting you to do something to follow film. I never had to deal with that. But it’s in rehearsal. You make mistakes in rehearsal. It’s really hard rehearsing a play or rehearsing on any movie. That’s where you get to make your mistakes and you make BIG ones. Then, you learn from them and when you’re finally ready to shoot, your mistakes are out of the way. If you are not afraid to make mistakes then there is no writer’s block or actor’s block. You can’t rewrite nothing but you can rewrite 90 pages of shit. But as long as you’ve got your shit on the page, now you can go to work. Richard, in this case, he can’t get past sentence one. He wants it to be perfect.
MMM: How do you feel this film has to do with men who have trouble coping with women who achieve more than they do?
DANIELS: Well, it certainly doesn’t help. Could you be a little less superior? But, certainly that’s an element of what Richard’s going through. And I’m sure it’s out there. I’m sure it’s a problem.
MMM: How close did you feel your character was to yourself?
STONE: She’s alive in me in every way. She’s a huge part of me. It’s the first time I’ve ever had that weird thing where you really mourn a character when you’re done. It was so hard to let her go.
DANIELS: You really went for it with this one. You left a lot of yourself there.
STONE: Well, it was the first time a role really had catharsis for me.
DANIELS: They were on her too on the set. They were on me, but with her they were, “One more. One more.” Then they’d go off and pull her into the corner and whisper in her ear, and she’d have to dredge up all this emotion. She had to do that quite a few times in this one and when you do that, you’re leaving somebody behind.
STONE: And I’m still learning so much. This is my fifth movie but it felt like this was the first one where I was learning how to become an actor. I still use that as a reference point – when I was trying to cry and trying to cry. I kept trying to cry and I was so frustrated with myself. Jeff told me, “The audience is going to feel it for you. You don’t have to show them what to feel.” I went, “Jesus! There it is! You just have to be.” But for some reason it gets convoluted.
DANIELS: And we tend to forget that there are going to be violins under the scene too. You learn that later. [Laughs] But there was no rehearsal and we bounced off each other. The thing that Emma has that a lot of actors her age or my age don’t, is she bounces off you. She reacts. She listens. That’s the whole key – Spencer Tracy said it. I could feel it at the breakfast. I’d say something to her and she’d bounce it right back and I felt, “We’re going to be ok.” There was no, “Look at me! Look at me!” sitting in front of the mirror type of acting. And that’s why she’s going to be around, this one. Trust me. I have to work around that more often than not. “I’m here! I’m here!”
MMM: Have either of you had your own personal Captain Excellent? Someone who’s really your rock?
STONE: Oh, my mom. Definitely. And it’s strange because that Captain Excellent thing and needing to shed that happens as you get older. You still need that support and guidance, but not in that same way. Not without asking or begging for it. It’s been interesting because that period has happened in the last couple of years. I’m 21, so the voice in your head starts to sound more like you and not so much like your mom.
MMM: You don’t need to worry about your mom, right Jeff?
DANIELS: “Do you need to use the language that you use?” No, she’s gotten past that. “God of Carnage,” she rolled right with it. With my wife it’s, “I don’t need anybody. I’m my own critic. I know when it’s good… just tell me when it was good? Just tell me if it was good?” “Yes. It was fun.” At the end of the day, I just need the one, “Yes. It was.” That’s all she needs to do. Don’t go into detail, cause I don’t need you to tell me. But was it good?
MMM: Are you working on anything in the theatre?
DANIELS: Well I’m in “God of Carnage” ‘til July, so that’s really my life right now. But I wrote a play that we’re gonna do at Purple Rose, my theatre company, in the fall. I wrote it in January. It’s called “Best of Friends.” Having been in “Carnage” for almost two years now, it takes that comedic structure of just two couples, but I kind of attacked friendship – two people on the verge of becoming really close friends and you almost date as couples when you get older. Someone does something to sabotage it and carnage rolls into chaos.
MMM: What about you Emma? Any theatre aspirations?
STONE: I’ve got nodules, so truly in a day-to-day, projection basis, I don’t know if I would have enough endurance to do theatre. When I saw Marcia Gay Harden [in “God of Carnage”], that screaming every day, my voice would be done for two weeks if I had to do that performance. But, I mean, I would love to. But there are go-to girls for theatre. I am learning that upon moving to New York and inquiring. There are go-to girls that will get the role for me any day of the week. Some people won’t even let me audition! I tried to audition and they said, “Just go on tape.”
MMM: What have you heard about a sequel to “Zombieland?”
STONE: As much as anybody else has. But it would be so much fun! But that’s all I know. It’s such a fun movie. It’s an escape. It’s just 81 minutes of just forgetting your day and enjoying yourself. That’s why I loved the “Ghostbusters” reference in it, because it’s kind of like, “This is so silly. Let’s watch this!”
MMM: If you could have anyone do a surprise cameo like Bill Murray did in the first one, whom would you have for the sequel?
STONE: Jeff Daniels.
DANIELS: I thought you might say that. [Laughs] Then who?
STONE: Miley Cyrus! I don’t know. Bill, that was pretty awesome when he did that. That was pretty cool. He had said yes the night before. He doesn’t really call anybody back, but he called us back.
MMM: If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
DANIELS: The ability to make millions of dollars without having to work for it.
STONE: So, basically, your goal is to be Paris Hilton?
PAPER MAN opens in select theaters on April 23, 2010.
Tags: emma stone, interview, jeff daniels, marlow stern, paper man, zombieland
Posted in Featured, Interviews | 6 Comments »
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