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INTERVIEW: ‘Teenage’ Filmmakers Matt Wolf & Jon Savage Make A Doc That Swings

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Teenage is as rebellious a film as the territory it covers. Based on punk author Jon Savage ‘s 2007 book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture 1875-1945 , Matt Wolf’s documentary eschews the talking heads and Chyroned dates that dominate the genre to immerse the moviegoer in a visually and aurally sumptuous history lesson. Wolf uses rare archival footage, period-piece recreations and a score by Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox to depict the evolution of teen culture via a number of influential and unconventional subcultures — swing kids, Boy Scouts, flappers, the German Wandervogel and even Nazi Youth — that coalesced from the late 19th century through the end of World War II. Understand them and today’s teens don’t seem so mystifying. I sat down with Wolf (he’s in the center of photo at left), Savage (he’s the one wearing orange pants) and the movie’s executive producer, actor Jason Schwartzman ( Moonrise Kingdom ) at the Tribeca Film Festival. Below is an edited version of our discussion: Movieline:  Jason, how did you get to be the executive producer of Teenage ?  Jason Schwartzman:  When Matt’s movie about Arthur Russell came out, Wild Combination , I saw it multiple times in the course of a couple days, told everybody that I could possibly tell about it and showed it to one of my best friends Humberto Leon , who owns the fashion company Opening Ceremony .  And when he saw that it was directed by Matt Wolf, he said, “Oh, Matt’s a really good friend of mine.”  One thing led to another and Humberto connected Matt and I to make a short film for his store opening in Japan. We spent a lovely beautiful afternoon together in Toronto. It was just a beautiful day, and I felt instantly connected to Matt.  I hope it’s okay that I say that. Matt Wolf: Please. Schwartzman: Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Wolf: No, I’m okay. Schwartzman: Too much pressure?  After that,  we started talking about books and music, and Matt said he was trying to make a documentary based on Jon Savage’s book Teenage . Being a fan of music and culture, I knew and loved Jon and was excited about this idea. And then a couple years later? Wolf: A year or two, I don’t know. Schwartzman: I reached out to Matt and said, “What’s going on with the movie?  Is there anything I can try to do?”  That began a process of getting the word out there and finding a way to finish the movie and make it happen. Movieline: You’ve taken a very unorthodox approach to making a non-fiction film. You call it “living collage.” Can you explain what you mean by that?  Matt Wolf:   When I read Jon’s book Teenage I didn’t just see it as source material.  It helped me imagine a philosophy for the filmmaking. John is well known for his book on punk,  England’s Dreaming , and in  Teenage,  he treated history in a punk way.  Early on in our collaboration, he told me about something he observed in the 1970s: He saw these teenage punks wearing thrift clothes from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s and they would cut them up and reassemble them with safety pins into something new.  He called that “living collage.”  It really struck a chord with me and made me think, “Well what about living collage as a kind of filmmaking style, where we pick and choose these kind of documents and fragments from previous youth cultures and reassemble them into something that feels fresh and new.”  And so living collage plays out visually in the way the film looks. In terms of the storytelling, the reason it probably feels unconventional is that, rather than telling the story with experts and historians, the film is told from the point of view of youth.  And in John’s book, a huge basis of it is actual quotes from teenagers that are sourced from diaries and journalistic sources and books.  And we kind of did a living collage of these quotes as well. You go so far as to not always identify who is talking. The moviegoer is essentially left to absorb what’s coming at him.  Jon Savage:  In an earlier edit we had lots of dates and times and Matt decided, and I thought it was a great idea, to actually take them out. Although it was good to have them, they were like the foundation. In any production, you have to start with a foundation and when the product is actually made, you don’t need [that foundation] any more.  It’s not as if you need to explain Hitler Youth to a lot of people. It’s interesting that you say that because I thought the movie flowed like a piece of music — a punk symphony, you could say. Wolf:  Yeah, that analogy makes sense to me, too. Music exists almost wall-to-wall through the film, and I perceive the voiceovers as being like lyrics. Very little of the archival footage we source has sound on it. . The voiceover is meant to provide a narrative foundation and to deepen the emotional impact of the film.  It’s also meant to provide context in a personal way where it’s helpful.  So kind of like lyrics in a song, you can just listen and hear it and have an emotional response to what you hear. Or that experience can be deepened by listening to the ideas in the lyrics. One of the first things I did when I started making this movie was to match archival footage to contemporary music that felt really transformational.  It felt like a departure from how we normally see archival footage being used. How did you come to use Deer Hunter’s Bradford Cox to score the movie? Wolf:   Bradford is my favorite contemporary musician, and we had actually corresponded as teenagers on an early blog that he ran. We reconnected over a music-themed film I made called Wild Combination years ago, and I approached him very early on in the process of Teenage to ask him if he’d like to score it.  He wrote back saying, “Yes,”  right away.  But, like I said, the film is wall-to-wall music, and I’ve also included some pre-existing songs in the film as well. Savage:  I gave Matt a hard drive. Wolf: Yeah, Jon gave me a lot of ideas for that music, too.  I think our shared taste in music also was a helpful starting point. Jon, should someone who plans to see Teenage read your book before or after watching the movie?  Savage:  Whichever way, but, actually, I think the movie stands on its own. War plays an important role in this movie: On one hand, it’s responsible for the cross-pollination of teen cultures from around the world. On the other, it turns teens into adults very quickly.  Wolf: It destroys them. At the beginning of this story, young people are perceived as a social problem.  They need to be controlled. They’re sent to war and what happens to them in World War I is a kind of foundational trauma that creates teenage rebellion as we know it. It creates generational tension, and it drives the whole story.  Then you have World War II, where young people are essentially sacrificed as cannon fodder by adults. But, at the same time, war stimulates the economy and enables teens to earn money and have a certain level of freedom.  It’s as consumers that teenagers become the ultimate stakeholders in societies. War can lead to the destruction of their innocence, but it can also empower them with a certain level of freedom in terms of time and space and economics.  War is the rear prism through which youth found their place in society. Savage: In our different ways, when I was doing the book and you were doing the film, we both fund the wartime stuff very hard. Wolf:   Totally. I think the Hitler stuff is really intense.  It’s at once totally intoxicating and absorbing. The reason Hitler and the Nazi experience for youth is a big part of the film is that Hitler both empowered and destroyed youth like no one else in history. In youth, he saw the potential to reimagine the world, but to very destructive and evil ends. It seems like every generation of adults laments how adventurous or promiscuous teens have become. But after watching this film, I wonder if that’s a myth. For instance, the German Wandervogel you depict from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were quite free-spirited and daring.   Savage: The cycle is the same, but the circumstances are different.  Each generation has similar characteristics because it’s a physical and developmental stage of life that happens to everyone but within different societies and different context.  I think there’s always a proportion of teens that are going to be rebels.  There’s always a proportion that are going to be extremists and they’re always going to be the much larger proportion against whom the rebels and the extremists act: kids who just want to carry on and live life just like their parents did. Wolf: The focus of our film is these exceptional teenagers who are inventing new styles of communication, who are reimagining the future and the Wandervogel — this youth-led movement that’s incredibly liberated — is an example of that. Savage:  Matt found extraordinary footage that  hasn’t been seen. Schwartzman: I don’t believe that Wandervogel footage has ever been seen in a documentary.  It comes from a museum for youth movements in Germany who do not typically license out their footage. When I look at pop stars like Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber, I feel like we’ve entered a period of extended adolescence.  Wolf:  The starting point for me has always been, why is the culture obsessed with youth and where does this obsession come from?  I do think that obsession has only intensified over time, but it’s hard to speculate about why that is. You mentioned the archetype of Justin Timberlake . In Teenage , we’re really finding the root and source of that, beginning with Rudolph Valentino, and with kids who fashioned their hair to look like him and who rioted at his funeral, and then progressing to Frank Sinatra , the first giant teen commercial pop star. Savage:  Matt’s totally right.  It has intensified because it’s become a huge industry.  I’m much older than [Matt and Jason] and when I was a teenager it wasn’t this thing it is now.  Since I was a young man, the whole area of pop culture and media has expanded exponentially. Wolf:  Films that are about youth culture are usually focused on the now, and I thought it was a provocative strategy to make a film about youth that is based completely in the past — not even the recent past, the distant past.  So it’s not working against the obsession with youth but it’s trying to attack the ideas and issue of youth culture in a totally different way.  Instead of making a film about punks and hippies and skaters and Justin Bieber , it’s about flappers and jitterbugs. Schwartzman: He is making a movie about the punks and the skaters and Bieber. It’s called Teenage 2. That was going to be my next question.  Would you consider making a Part 2?  Wolf:   Part of the reason Jon wrote the book in the style that he did is that, after the war, youth culture becomes this global phenomenon.  The American model of the teen years spreads everywhere.  It proliferates at such a rapid pace and is so gigantic that it’s probably not possible to explore the subject in a comprehensive way.  Looking at this pre-history that led up to the creation of the teenager felt like the perfect way to explore the themes and ideas of youth culture in a deeper sense. So, to me, this film completes the idea. Schwartzman: He had planned to go to the ’60s but he ran out of computer space. Savage: If I was able to do a follow-up to the book — and I think it would actually make a good film — I would go from ’45 to say ’54. Elvis. But then it just gets insane. The level of data  increases exponentially. Wolf:  And then it becomes like a TV special or a textbook that doesn’t really go deep into much at all.  After the war, it’s really difficult to not be just a greatest hits compilation. Watching Teenage left me with the distinct impression that if you had to choose the one medium that has had the most influence over youth culture, it would be music.  Savage:  Music is very, very important.  Again, from a European prospective, America’s great gift to the world is black American music. I’m still in awe of it after listening to it for 50 years, and to me one of the high spots of the film is the section about Swing. My single favorite piece of footage is the Chicago Swing Jamboree with 200,000 kids going crazy in 1938. There’s an integrated audience, everybody is going nuts you see this black American guy with a bowler hat — and he’s pogoing. That said it all to me. Wolf:   When I started making the film I thought it would be a deeper investigation of pop culture, but it ended up becoming much more political than I ever expected. I feel like the story of the German Swing Kids is the perfect synthesis of all the themes and the tension between politics and pop culture in the film. Here you have these kids who are like proto-punks:  They have wild fashion, they dress very flamboyantly, they’re smuggling in music from America, and they’re doing it as a form of rebellion against the Nazi regime. They don’t perceive themselves as activists, but they’re doing it with great courage. It shows the political power of popular culture in a certain context. The film is also about the spread of American culture throughout the world and music facilitated that like nothing else.  In the 1920’s, the British narrator says, “I got my hands on all the jazz records.  My mum asked me why it was good and I said, ‘Because it comes from America.'” Savage:  Swing looks to me like the proper birth of youth culture, certainly in a mass form, even more so than jazz in the ’20s. Wolf:   The Chicago Swing Jamboree is so meaningful because you see these teenagers pioneering this new style of expression and dance. It has its own slang, its own music vocabulary. Savage: It’s own lifestyle. Wolf: And it spreads to become a mainstream phenomenon. What’s next for each of you guys? Wolf:   I’m in the early stages of developing a bunch of projects. Jon and I are hoping to collaborate on a new film based on an unprecedented archive of gay life that this collector has.  It’s a personal photography collection of early gay life. I’m also working on a documentary portrait of Hilary Knight , the illustrator of Eloise . Savage: I’m writing a new book about the year 1966 in pop culture and youth culture. Schwartzman: I just finished a film about the making of Mary Poppins .  Sounds so dumb compared to what you guys just said. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on  Twitter. Follow Movieline on  Twitter. 

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INTERVIEW: ‘Teenage’ Filmmakers Matt Wolf & Jon Savage Make A Doc That Swings

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INTERVIEW: ‘Teenage’ Filmmakers Matt Wolf & Jon Savage Make A Doc That Swings

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Teenage is as rebellious a film as the territory it covers. Based on punk author Jon Savage ‘s 2007 book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture 1875-1945 , Matt Wolf’s documentary eschews the talking heads and Chyroned dates that dominate the genre to immerse the moviegoer in a visually and aurally sumptuous history lesson. Wolf uses rare archival footage, period-piece recreations and a score by Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox to depict the evolution of teen culture via a number of influential and unconventional subcultures — swing kids, Boy Scouts, flappers, the German Wandervogel and even Nazi Youth — that coalesced from the late 19th century through the end of World War II. Understand them and today’s teens don’t seem so mystifying. I sat down with Wolf (he’s in the center of photo at left), Savage (he’s the one wearing orange pants) and the movie’s executive producer, actor Jason Schwartzman ( Moonrise Kingdom ) at the Tribeca Film Festival. Below is an edited version of our discussion: Movieline:  Jason, how did you get to be the executive producer of Teenage ?  Jason Schwartzman:  When Matt’s movie about Arthur Russell came out, Wild Combination , I saw it multiple times in the course of a couple days, told everybody that I could possibly tell about it and showed it to one of my best friends Humberto Leon , who owns the fashion company Opening Ceremony .  And when he saw that it was directed by Matt Wolf, he said, “Oh, Matt’s a really good friend of mine.”  One thing led to another and Humberto connected Matt and I to make a short film for his store opening in Japan. We spent a lovely beautiful afternoon together in Toronto. It was just a beautiful day, and I felt instantly connected to Matt.  I hope it’s okay that I say that. Matt Wolf: Please. Schwartzman: Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Wolf: No, I’m okay. Schwartzman: Too much pressure?  After that,  we started talking about books and music, and Matt said he was trying to make a documentary based on Jon Savage’s book Teenage . Being a fan of music and culture, I knew and loved Jon and was excited about this idea. And then a couple years later? Wolf: A year or two, I don’t know. Schwartzman: I reached out to Matt and said, “What’s going on with the movie?  Is there anything I can try to do?”  That began a process of getting the word out there and finding a way to finish the movie and make it happen. Movieline: You’ve taken a very unorthodox approach to making a non-fiction film. You call it “living collage.” Can you explain what you mean by that?  Matt Wolf:   When I read Jon’s book Teenage I didn’t just see it as source material.  It helped me imagine a philosophy for the filmmaking. John is well known for his book on punk,  England’s Dreaming , and in  Teenage,  he treated history in a punk way.  Early on in our collaboration, he told me about something he observed in the 1970s: He saw these teenage punks wearing thrift clothes from the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s and they would cut them up and reassemble them with safety pins into something new.  He called that “living collage.”  It really struck a chord with me and made me think, “Well what about living collage as a kind of filmmaking style, where we pick and choose these kind of documents and fragments from previous youth cultures and reassemble them into something that feels fresh and new.”  And so living collage plays out visually in the way the film looks. In terms of the storytelling, the reason it probably feels unconventional is that, rather than telling the story with experts and historians, the film is told from the point of view of youth.  And in John’s book, a huge basis of it is actual quotes from teenagers that are sourced from diaries and journalistic sources and books.  And we kind of did a living collage of these quotes as well. You go so far as to not always identify who is talking. The moviegoer is essentially left to absorb what’s coming at him.  Jon Savage:  In an earlier edit we had lots of dates and times and Matt decided, and I thought it was a great idea, to actually take them out. Although it was good to have them, they were like the foundation. In any production, you have to start with a foundation and when the product is actually made, you don’t need [that foundation] any more.  It’s not as if you need to explain Hitler Youth to a lot of people. It’s interesting that you say that because I thought the movie flowed like a piece of music — a punk symphony, you could say. Wolf:  Yeah, that analogy makes sense to me, too. Music exists almost wall-to-wall through the film, and I perceive the voiceovers as being like lyrics. Very little of the archival footage we source has sound on it. . The voiceover is meant to provide a narrative foundation and to deepen the emotional impact of the film.  It’s also meant to provide context in a personal way where it’s helpful.  So kind of like lyrics in a song, you can just listen and hear it and have an emotional response to what you hear. Or that experience can be deepened by listening to the ideas in the lyrics. One of the first things I did when I started making this movie was to match archival footage to contemporary music that felt really transformational.  It felt like a departure from how we normally see archival footage being used. How did you come to use Deer Hunter’s Bradford Cox to score the movie? Wolf:   Bradford is my favorite contemporary musician, and we had actually corresponded as teenagers on an early blog that he ran. We reconnected over a music-themed film I made called Wild Combination years ago, and I approached him very early on in the process of Teenage to ask him if he’d like to score it.  He wrote back saying, “Yes,”  right away.  But, like I said, the film is wall-to-wall music, and I’ve also included some pre-existing songs in the film as well. Savage:  I gave Matt a hard drive. Wolf: Yeah, Jon gave me a lot of ideas for that music, too.  I think our shared taste in music also was a helpful starting point. Jon, should someone who plans to see Teenage read your book before or after watching the movie?  Savage:  Whichever way, but, actually, I think the movie stands on its own. War plays an important role in this movie: On one hand, it’s responsible for the cross-pollination of teen cultures from around the world. On the other, it turns teens into adults very quickly.  Wolf: It destroys them. At the beginning of this story, young people are perceived as a social problem.  They need to be controlled. They’re sent to war and what happens to them in World War I is a kind of foundational trauma that creates teenage rebellion as we know it. It creates generational tension, and it drives the whole story.  Then you have World War II, where young people are essentially sacrificed as cannon fodder by adults. But, at the same time, war stimulates the economy and enables teens to earn money and have a certain level of freedom.  It’s as consumers that teenagers become the ultimate stakeholders in societies. War can lead to the destruction of their innocence, but it can also empower them with a certain level of freedom in terms of time and space and economics.  War is the rear prism through which youth found their place in society. Savage: In our different ways, when I was doing the book and you were doing the film, we both fund the wartime stuff very hard. Wolf:   Totally. I think the Hitler stuff is really intense.  It’s at once totally intoxicating and absorbing. The reason Hitler and the Nazi experience for youth is a big part of the film is that Hitler both empowered and destroyed youth like no one else in history. In youth, he saw the potential to reimagine the world, but to very destructive and evil ends. It seems like every generation of adults laments how adventurous or promiscuous teens have become. But after watching this film, I wonder if that’s a myth. For instance, the German Wandervogel you depict from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries were quite free-spirited and daring.   Savage: The cycle is the same, but the circumstances are different.  Each generation has similar characteristics because it’s a physical and developmental stage of life that happens to everyone but within different societies and different context.  I think there’s always a proportion of teens that are going to be rebels.  There’s always a proportion that are going to be extremists and they’re always going to be the much larger proportion against whom the rebels and the extremists act: kids who just want to carry on and live life just like their parents did. Wolf: The focus of our film is these exceptional teenagers who are inventing new styles of communication, who are reimagining the future and the Wandervogel — this youth-led movement that’s incredibly liberated — is an example of that. Savage:  Matt found extraordinary footage that  hasn’t been seen. Schwartzman: I don’t believe that Wandervogel footage has ever been seen in a documentary.  It comes from a museum for youth movements in Germany who do not typically license out their footage. When I look at pop stars like Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber, I feel like we’ve entered a period of extended adolescence.  Wolf:  The starting point for me has always been, why is the culture obsessed with youth and where does this obsession come from?  I do think that obsession has only intensified over time, but it’s hard to speculate about why that is. You mentioned the archetype of Justin Timberlake . In Teenage , we’re really finding the root and source of that, beginning with Rudolph Valentino, and with kids who fashioned their hair to look like him and who rioted at his funeral, and then progressing to Frank Sinatra , the first giant teen commercial pop star. Savage:  Matt’s totally right.  It has intensified because it’s become a huge industry.  I’m much older than [Matt and Jason] and when I was a teenager it wasn’t this thing it is now.  Since I was a young man, the whole area of pop culture and media has expanded exponentially. Wolf:  Films that are about youth culture are usually focused on the now, and I thought it was a provocative strategy to make a film about youth that is based completely in the past — not even the recent past, the distant past.  So it’s not working against the obsession with youth but it’s trying to attack the ideas and issue of youth culture in a totally different way.  Instead of making a film about punks and hippies and skaters and Justin Bieber , it’s about flappers and jitterbugs. Schwartzman: He is making a movie about the punks and the skaters and Bieber. It’s called Teenage 2. That was going to be my next question.  Would you consider making a Part 2?  Wolf:   Part of the reason Jon wrote the book in the style that he did is that, after the war, youth culture becomes this global phenomenon.  The American model of the teen years spreads everywhere.  It proliferates at such a rapid pace and is so gigantic that it’s probably not possible to explore the subject in a comprehensive way.  Looking at this pre-history that led up to the creation of the teenager felt like the perfect way to explore the themes and ideas of youth culture in a deeper sense. So, to me, this film completes the idea. Schwartzman: He had planned to go to the ’60s but he ran out of computer space. Savage: If I was able to do a follow-up to the book — and I think it would actually make a good film — I would go from ’45 to say ’54. Elvis. But then it just gets insane. The level of data  increases exponentially. Wolf:  And then it becomes like a TV special or a textbook that doesn’t really go deep into much at all.  After the war, it’s really difficult to not be just a greatest hits compilation. Watching Teenage left me with the distinct impression that if you had to choose the one medium that has had the most influence over youth culture, it would be music.  Savage:  Music is very, very important.  Again, from a European prospective, America’s great gift to the world is black American music. I’m still in awe of it after listening to it for 50 years, and to me one of the high spots of the film is the section about Swing. My single favorite piece of footage is the Chicago Swing Jamboree with 200,000 kids going crazy in 1938. There’s an integrated audience, everybody is going nuts you see this black American guy with a bowler hat — and he’s pogoing. That said it all to me. Wolf:   When I started making the film I thought it would be a deeper investigation of pop culture, but it ended up becoming much more political than I ever expected. I feel like the story of the German Swing Kids is the perfect synthesis of all the themes and the tension between politics and pop culture in the film. Here you have these kids who are like proto-punks:  They have wild fashion, they dress very flamboyantly, they’re smuggling in music from America, and they’re doing it as a form of rebellion against the Nazi regime. They don’t perceive themselves as activists, but they’re doing it with great courage. It shows the political power of popular culture in a certain context. The film is also about the spread of American culture throughout the world and music facilitated that like nothing else.  In the 1920’s, the British narrator says, “I got my hands on all the jazz records.  My mum asked me why it was good and I said, ‘Because it comes from America.'” Savage:  Swing looks to me like the proper birth of youth culture, certainly in a mass form, even more so than jazz in the ’20s. Wolf:   The Chicago Swing Jamboree is so meaningful because you see these teenagers pioneering this new style of expression and dance. It has its own slang, its own music vocabulary. Savage: It’s own lifestyle. Wolf: And it spreads to become a mainstream phenomenon. What’s next for each of you guys? Wolf:   I’m in the early stages of developing a bunch of projects. Jon and I are hoping to collaborate on a new film based on an unprecedented archive of gay life that this collector has.  It’s a personal photography collection of early gay life. I’m also working on a documentary portrait of Hilary Knight , the illustrator of Eloise . Savage: I’m writing a new book about the year 1966 in pop culture and youth culture. Schwartzman: I just finished a film about the making of Mary Poppins .  Sounds so dumb compared to what you guys just said. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on  Twitter. Follow Movieline on  Twitter. 

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INTERVIEW: ‘Teenage’ Filmmakers Matt Wolf & Jon Savage Make A Doc That Swings

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INTERVIEW: ‘Antidote’ Director Brandon Cronenberg Discusses Fame & Father

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

A word of advice: Don’t go to see Brandon Cronenberg’s   unsettling Antiviral   if you’re getting over a cold or have recently undergone a medical procedure that involved the withdrawal of blood or a skin biopsy. The 33-year-old filmmaker’s debut feature makes such effective use of hypodermic needles and flesh samples that I left the screening room on unsteady feet, feeling like I’d just donated a pint of my own plasma.  But do go see the movie. In a world in which Jay-Z and Beyonce’s trip to Cuba can hijack a news cycle that should be focused on gun control, sequestration and the false positives of our current economy, Antiviral is a squirm-inducing corrective for our obsession with celebrity that resonates long after the closing credits. The premise alone is perversely brilliant: Cronenberg has brought to life a queasy world in which preoccupation with fame has metastasized to the point where civilians pay good money to be infected with the copyrighted STDs of their favorite celebrity and to dine on pale, gristly cuts of meat grown from their tissue cells. At the center of this story is Syd March, played by Caleb Landry Jones , a dour salesman of celebrity sickness who, behind his employer’s back, is infecting himself with his company’s offerings so that he can extract his own bootleg versions to sell on the black market. Phil’s extracurricular dealings leave him constantly sick, but when he becomes infected with the most sought-after celebrity virus of all, things get much, much worse. I sat down with the thoughtful, soft-spoken Cronenberg in New York on Tuesday to discuss Antiviral  and his own encounters with celebrity as the son of Cosmopolis director David Cronenberg . He had some particularly interesting things to say about critics who contend that his film is too similar to his father’s early work in the horror/sci-fi genre. Movieline: One of the messages I took away from Antiviral was that the lure of celebrity is irresistible, no matter how horrific or deadly it becomes.   Brandon Cronenberg:   The character of Syd definitely sees himself as superior to that culture and removed from it, but it has actually totally defined him and he can’t escape from it. We’re all products of our environment, and it’s hard not to be affected by that stuff in a certain way. But I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to resist. I want the film to be partly an active resistance. It does work as a corrective, especially if you are celebrity obsessed and squeamish about hypodermic needles. I think we can change the part where we’re not complicit in creating that kind of culture and supporting that industry by engaging with it in a certain way. Antiviral also works as a metaphor for how celebrity has infected news reporting and even our government. Jay-Z and Beyonce are in the news today because of their trip to Cuba when there’s so much more important stuff that should be dominating the news cycle. In the film, no one’s famous for any reason. It’s purely the industry of celebrity going as far as possible — or almost as far as possible because there’s still some loose connection to real human beings.  In Japan for instance, there are purely digital celebrities, and I think probably the most extreme level would be when human beings are abandoned altogether. Then it becomes an industry that fabricates digital celebrities and prints money because people are willing to do anything to feel somehow connected to these creations even if they’re not real. Celebrity dominates the news in a way that’s often fairly stupid because it’s not about anything really significant.  At the same time, it’s what gets people’s attention, and as long as those are the news stories that are getting the most hits or the biggest ratings, they will continue to get big play because news is a business. Can you envision any kind of a turning point?   I don’t see it changing anytime soon, but it could in theory, so it’s important to think about it. I noticed that the name of your protagonist is the same as the artist and sculptor Sydney March, who was involved in the creation of Canada’s National War Memorial.  Was that intentional? What? The name is even spelled the same. That’s one of the most interesting things I’ve heard all day.  I mean it’s probably embarrassing that I don’t know that, but that wasn’t intentional. I just liked the name and probably some combination of Syd Barrett and [Cid from] the Final Fantasy video games .  I took the last name from the Saul Bellow novel The Adventures of Augie March . You grew up with a fairly famous father. What was the take on celebrity in the Cronenberg household?   I think there were two aspects to it.  One was that I saw people who were celebrities who had this media alter ego, or this persona that was so unrelated to who they were as human beings.  And that’s definitely one of the themes in the film: celebrities as these media constructs or cultural constructs that exist purely in the public consciousness and are, in many ways, fictional and unrelated to the real human being.  The human being as an animal, as a body, becomes totally eclipsed by this idea that runs rampant. The body eventually dies and the idea lives on, for however many decades, to appear in commercials, to perform on stage — it goes on endlessly.  That sense of a runaway double that isn’t related to the person was interesting to me thematically. And then, on a personal level, I didn’t experience anything too extreme because my father’s a director and we’re still living in Toronto. So, it’s not like we were being hounded by TMZ or anything. But it still — I would go to a school and see someone I didn’t know and they’d come up to me and be like, “I heard you were coming and we have a lot to discuss.”  And that was pretty weird. They behaved as if they knew you.  Yeah, exactly.  So, I did have a taste of that weirdness that is fame by proxy or fame by association. You’ve said that you immersed yourself in the tabloid world of TMZ and other celebrity media to research Antiviral . Did you, or do you find any celebrities genuinely fascinating?  Not so much. I think there’s a line between taking an interest in someone because you respect their work versus obsessing over them. I went through a period of reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson and he especially puts his life — or his version of his life — in his work. So, through an interest in his writing, you can’t help but be interested in what he’s done and, [wonder] how much of his writing is his own fantasy of himself and how much of that is real. But I don’t think anyone going to Cuba is that interesting. Most of it is an industry that thrives on hooking people with trivial but juicy details and playing to that gossipy society. So who are some of your other influences?  There are a lot of writers I like, and a lot of filmmakers and musicians. I wouldn’t know how to begin listing them all, but I think [their influence] sort of comes to me subconsciously. I know some people usually have a particular influence that stands out and they emulate that person and learn from them.  But for me it’s not really a conscious process. I felt like George Lucas’   THX 1138   was an inspiration.  Only in that I’ve seen that film once.  I’m not a huge THX fan and I wasn’t trying to deliberately emulate that movie. Others have been talking about my “Kubrick shot” or whatever, and, again, I like Kubrick, but I’m not a huge fan.  I think it’s more that those films and filmmakers have an effect on the language of cinema in general. You told the New York Times that your father’s films have actually played a smale role in your work as a filmmaker, but a substantial part of the critical discussion of Antiviral is how much the film resembles some of his early efforts.  I think you have a distinct style and vision as a filmmaker, but for those who don’t, what would you say they’re missing about your work?  It’s not so much what they’re missing. I think there’s an assumption about my intent when it comes to that discussion. The assumption is that [ Antiviral ] is a deliberate emulation, that I must have been watching my father’s films since I was a kid and was brainwashed. It wasn’t really like that. As a father he had a huge influence on me obviously – genetically and because I grew up around him and we have a very good relationship.  So, it’s not weird that there are overlaps when it comes to our interests and our esthetic sensibilities. Good point. And then when I got into film, I just knew that if I worried about that, that would become everything, you know?  If I was just trying to avoid anything that could be associated with my father, that would be my entire career and that would define my work and that’s a really shitty place to be working from. So I just decided to do whatever I felt like doing and it became this.  I can see the similarities – some of them are legitimate — but I also think some of them are very overstated because people like that narrative and they like to make that assumption. It’s an easy narrative. Yeah, exactly. In terms of the similarities, I’d say I come to them honestly. They’re honest to my own interests. For instance, some people talk about some of the hallucinatory, biomechanical stuff in Antiviral being related to his work.  And I guess it is, but that scene in the closet… Where Syd merges with the machine that he’s using to make the bootleg viruses? Yeah.  That was based on some old drawings that I had done. I wanted to see what they would look like as a film, and I knew as I was writing it that people would make that connection [to my father]. But I thought I just had to make sure that I didn’t avoid doing anything just to avoid that comparison. Your father is not the only filmmaker who has explored those man-meets-machine themes.  Right, and my father has done a lot of other types of movies, too. He hasn’t really been making horror films for a while now. What’s the best piece of advice your father has given you about filmmaking? I don’t really have a good answer for that.  He has given me some advice but there isn’t one thing that stands out. Did you show him the film early?  Did he give you advice? Not really – he was pretty busy during the actual making of the film.  I forget what he was doing: promoting A   Dangerous Method or finishing Cosmopolis but he actually wasn’t really around during production.  There’s that point where you feel the film is polished enough to show to your family and friends to get as much feedback as possible, and he saw it then. I got notes from everyone, but I don’t remember him having any dramatic advice. You don’t know what you’re doing next at this point?  Not really.  I mean, I am writing but it’s still in the early stages. Do you think your next picture will be in the horror-science fiction genre, or will you do something different?  I don’t really like target a particular genre in advance.  I wasn’t thinking horror-sci-fi when I started Antiviral , but it developed into that.  And the next one probably will be, but I’m not specifically trying to do that. We’ll see where it ends up. More Antiviral coverage:  REVIEW: ‘Antiviral’ − Brandon Cronenberg’s Piercing (And Icky) Look At Celebrity Obsession Follow Frank DiGiacomo on  Twitter. Follow Movieline on  Twitter.  

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Interview: Hey Girl! Meet Ryan Gosling’s Porn Doppelganger

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Hey girl, did you know Los Angeles is big enough for two Ryan Goslings ? Meet Richie Calhoun, the adult actor who’s the porn industry’s go-to Gosling equivalent since he starred in the XXX parody of The Notebook , Diary of Love.   Calhoun — at present, a smart blonde with big blue eyes, a degree from a top-15 U.S. News & World   Report  college and an address in L.A.’s very hip Echo Park neighborhood — is such a perfect match for Gosling’s lover/fighter/poet shtick that he was asked to play him again for the adult remake of Crazy Stupid Love   (aka Crazy in Love ).  “I understand, yes, that from a certain perspective it’s a huge compliment,” says Calhoun of being cast as the porn doppelganger for womankind’s dreamiest hunk of man meat. So the former improv comedian took the job seriously, studying The Notebook to mimic the way Gosling kisses, cries, and—yes—even dangles from a Ferris wheel. “I watched for the way he pauses during a speech, where he would look when he was talking. Just the simple little things that I needed to do to have some kind of vague resemblance to his character.” Then he boned his very own Rachel McAdams , starlet Presley Hart. No other man in Hollywood is as physically linked to Baby Goose , so in honor of the most romantic week of the year, Movieline seized the chance to ask Calhoun about Gosling’s seduction secrets and the probability of getting sex-drenched remakes of Drive   and The Mickey Mouse Club. Alas, Gosling’s latest flick, Gangster Squad   did so poorly at the box office that it won’t get a vintage-styled XXX salute. But Calhoun isn’t waiting around to see if The Place Beyond The Pines  rates a remake. Ever the heat-seeking missile, he recently dyed his hair red to play the Sergeant Brody character in the porn parody of Homeland , which just picked up three Golden Globes .  Movieline:  Are you aware that Calhoun, the last name you chose for your career, is the same last name of Ryan Gosling’s character, Noah Calhoun, in The Notebook ? Was that a subliminal way to get women to like you? Calhoun: I’m aware of that now. I was not aware of that at the time. You’ll have to take my word on it. The origins of my last name were sort of random. I just like that name and I think it has a masculine sound to it with out being too bludgeony, too blunt. When I discovered [that it was the same as Gosling’s character], I realized that people would wonder what you’re wondering, and I don’t care. If you had done it on purpose, it’d have been brilliant. Yeah, but it’s not the tone I was going for with the name. I didn’t choose Timberlake or Swayze or Bieber — although people wanted me to choose Bieber and I thought about it, to tell you the truth. I considered it very seriously just because it would be provocative and funny. But ultimately, I realized that there would be a lot of under-aged girls searching for “Bieber” and I just wanted to play fair. Had you seen The Notebook before you were cast? I hadn’t. I wasn’t necessarily avoiding it, I just don’t watch a lot of movies. So I watched it once for research. I didn’t cry, although I did find it emotionally affecting. I was paying a lot more attention to Ryan Gosling’s mannerisms, so my appreciation of it was probably blunted. Could you see why that role is such a crazy turn-on for women? Sure. I could understand why that’s true of almost every role he’s taken. He does a very good job with his choice of projects: he’s a complete dick who’s actually the sweetest guy on earth. That’s pretty much every movie he’s ever been in. I think that’s a recipe for success in becoming a heartthrob—if that’s your goal. Diary of Love  uses some of the same names of characters in The Notebook and even some of the same dialogue. What is the legality of that? Well, it’s certainly an area of the law that is evolving. There are parodies, and then there are remakes or homages. I think when you slip into homage, certain parody-related laws don’t apply anymore. It’s tricky. Tell me about shooting some of the iconic scenes: “Say I’m a bird!” or your big breakdown in the rain where you tell Presley you wrote her a letter every day for 365 days. I think that Presley leaps onto me probably ten times in the movie. We did a lot of that at construction sites, at the beach—those were easy to shoot. Then I had to start talking and it got harder. For the bird scene, we just marched out onto the beach and found a random hunk of beach that we could use. We got this shot where a train almost hit us. The rain scene was cool because that was actually at the end of the whole thing. We’d been shooting all day and we were hurrying because the light was changing and we were making fake rain. It was cold and we were freezing and wet. We couldn’t stand still—we were just freaking out and jumping around—so that added a lot of energy. Does your version of The Notebook envision the kind of sex those characters would have had? I think the dynamic that Presley and I have is slightly different than theirs. You’d probably get closer to the real thing if you did an animated version, though I would say Tommy Pistol [the star of Horat: The Sexual Learnings of America for Make Benefit Beautiful Nation of Kaksuckistan ] does an amazing job of getting inside his characters. I think there’s a certain similarity between me and Ryan Gosling and people can project fantasies onto whatever they’re watching. But I think, ultimately, every sex dynamic you watch is unique to those people. I wouldn’t presume to say it’s like watching Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams having sex. Did you know they were a real-life couple when they shot the movie? I didn’t know that! I think that’s charming. That’s a great move for producers and directors to try to engineer something like that. If it works, then you’ve got a legendary romance movie on your hands.   You’ve also shot the Ryan Gosling role for Crazy in Love , in the porn parody of Crazy, Stupid, Love . Did you do the Dirty Dancing lift? No, we didn’t! And actually, lifting my partner in it would have been easy as pie. The Ryan Gosling/Emma Stone storyline in the porn is minimized compared to the older couple’s story, Steve Carell and Julianne Moore . Our romance didn’t occupy that much of the space, but I think the best parts of the film are Gosling as a foil to Carell—they’re sort of both ridiculous, and shooting those with Steven St. Croix were really fun. Okay, I can see how you could play the Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love and pull off being sexy. But how do you manage it when you’re playing the Steve Carell character? Well, he is sexier than Steve Carell. That’s the way porn works. Someone might not have a fantasy about the Penguin from Batman having sex with Catwoman. But if you make that porn movie, then he’s a little slimmer, he’s got abs, [but] he’s still the Penguin. True, but it’s perilous. I saw a still of James Deen dressed as Quagmire in the Family Guy porn parody, and now I’ll never be able to find him attractive in anything. In an adaptation of Drop Dead Gorgeous , I played the creepy judge with the comb-over and the Member’s Only jacket, and it was the same thing. My character is not sexy in the original—and he’s not really sexy in this film—until suddenly the sex scene, and then hopefully it’s sexy. To tell you the truth, I think you can do certain things to try to ensure that you’re projecting a sexy image versus a comedic image, but comedians do serious roles and then they go back to comedy and nobody goes, “I don’t find him funny anymore!”   Interestingly, Ryan Gosling is one of the few Hollywood actors to shoot a sex scene that was deemed too hot by the censors: the NC-17 Blue Valentine . I haven’t seen Blue Valentine , I should check it out. Who’s the girl? Michelle Williams. I’m on board. Good work, sir. What other Ryan Gosling films would make good XXX features? They’ll probably do Drive . But I guess it would be hard to do all the driving sequences on a porn budget.   He came of age doing the Mickey Mouse Club in the same generation as Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. Would you want to play Gosling in a porn parody of that? I don’t know that that’s mainstream enough to make a lucrative porn movie. I would think not. Furthermore, there are difficulties creating pornography that portrays anyone under 18. You could do the Smurfs because everyone assumes the Smurfs are adults, but if you did Goonies , you would have to age up the characters because you can’t portray 14-year-olds in braces having sex with each other. You’d have to make them 18 and in college. How good of a pick-up line is, “Hey girl”? I think it works just fine. I think a pick-up is everything that’s not that: whether a person is attracted to you and the rest of your dementia that would sell the line or not. But say, “Hey girl,” and then just don’t have anything else prepared—that’s a good way to do it. How do you react to being called Baby Goose? Baby Goose! That’s funny. That’s his nickname. Whose nickname!? Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling’s! I thought you were calling me a baby Gosling. I think that’s a really funny nickname. If a girl whispered that in your ear, how would you react? Am I having sex with her at the time? I wouldn’t mind. I think most people are flattered to be told by people of the opposite sex that they look like someone, if they can hear in their voice that they find them attractive. Even if it’s, “You look like John C. Reilly !” and then they kind of swoon a little. Okay, I’ll take that. I don’t know if it works the same with girls in the reverse direction, but guys, we know how to take a compliment. We’re like: “Fine. If it turns you on, that’s your business.” Do you have aspirations to cross over into mainstream acting like Sasha Grey and James Deen? Not in particular, no. Working on television for a corporation like ABC or Disney sounds like a nightmare. There’s a certain behavior contract that is formed in something like that. You can try to work a bad boy angle like Colin Farrell who just does whatever the fuck he wants. But though I like acting and acting is fun, it’s not as important to me as I think it should be for someone who’s an actor -actor. On top of that, what doesn’t appeal to me is the public scrutiny and the expectation of good behavior. I have no interest in behaving. Amy Nicholson is a critic, playwright and editor. Her interests include hot dogs, standard poodles, Bruce Willis, and comedies about the utter futility of existence. Follow Amy Nicholson on Twitter . Follow Movieline on  Twitter .  

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‘Glee”s Chris Colfer On ‘Struck By Lightning’: Not Another Teen Orientation Story

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

In 2009 Chris Colfer rocketed to stardom as the out and proud Kurt Hummel on Fox’s Glee , a role that nabbed him two Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe, and the adoration of legions of fans worldwide. This week the 22-year-old actor, singer, New York Times bestselling author, and screenwriter makes his feature film debut in Struck By Lightning , in which he stars as an ambitious small town teenager killed by a bolt of lightning, a coming-of-age story which he also scripted. Like Colfer’s Glee alter-ego, Struck By Lightning ‘s Carson Phillips is a restless young man with a yearning for what lies beyond the confines of his high school hallways. But the Glee comparisons fade quickly. For starters, there’s no singing — just a little blackmail, used by wannabe journalist Carson to coerce his rivals into joining an extracurricular program that’s bound to score him points on his college applications. More importantly: Struck By Lightning , a story Colfer first wrote in high school, never acknowledges its hero’s sexual orientation. “I don’t want to do another orientation story!” Colfer exclaimed to Movieline . “I don’t care what it is… I didn’t want an orientation to take away from someone learning the lesson of [Carson’s] story.” Colfer spoke with Movieline about his feature acting and writing debut, the real life upbringing in Clovis, CA that inspired Struck By Lightning , his burgeoning literary career, and more. (The film is available On Demand and hits limited release today.) Struck By Lightning is a project that’s been with you since high school – what was the original seed of the idea that inspired you to write this as your debate project? Even back then I knew I wanted to screenwrite eventually one day, so I started writing it as a screenplay back then when I was 16, and it was a way to vent about my frustrations with my peers in high school and whatnot. Then I got involved in speech and debate and decided to do it as one of the events there, so I compressed all the events into a ten-minute version and I played all the characters. I think I did pretty well with it – I’m not sure if that was the year I got the big trophy or the smaller trophy, but I did do well with it. Then when I finally got Glee and got into this world I started to pursue it even more. You based it on your experience growing up in Clovis, CA. What was it like? Very flat, very conservative, and very strict. Strict? Socially strict – they had a very strict dress code, like, guys weren’t allowed to have our hair grow past our ears, things like that. With all due respect to it, because it is my home, I think there is a lot of progress that could be made there – and even people there know there’s a lot of progress that can be made there. But even though the movie takes place in a place called Clover, it wasn’t me pointing at Clovis – it was more like me winking at Clovis, I would say. And it’s much bigger than Clovis is. Clovis is like 100,000 people and it keeps getting bigger and bigger; Clover is supposed to be this tiny, small, podunk town. How many of the characters of Struck By Lightning did you base on actual peers and friends and people you knew? Only a few, really. A couple of the characters are combinations of the people I knew but the only character really based to a T was Mallory [played by Rebel Wilson], who was based on my best friend Melissa. How did she react to seeing how you filtered her personality through your eyes, onscreen? She knows it was exaggerated heavily and that it was more for Carson having that sidekick like she kind of was for me. But she’s very excited about it – she’s in the movie! She has a cameo, in the scene where I’m arguing with the chemistry teacher and she goes, “I believe in Creationism!” and he goes, “Exhibit A” – that’s her, sitting right in front of me. She’s always been a part of it. Where did the screenwriting impulse come from? I’ve always loved storytelling and I think that’s the current-day method to do it. I think that’s the best way to tell stories and ever since I was a little kid I’ve been writing stories. It’s always been something that I had to do. What about directing? Are you making your way from actor to writer to director as well? Not so much, because when I think about directing I think about lining up shots; I don’t necessarily think about creating a story or characters, and that’s what I’d like to do. But I’d never say never. Which filmmakers most influenced you growing up? Oh gosh! I don’t know. Honestly, unfortunately, I was always more inspired by the characters in a story that I never thought about the people behind them. I always thought “X-Men,” I never thought “Bryan Singer” or “Stan Lee,” you know? I have my favorite writers that I love, like Diablo Cody, Jennifer Saunders ,Tiny Fey – I love that they can make every line funny. Every line is quotable. And I love Woody Allen. So you grow up in Clovis, you move to LA, Glee happens, and you realize you have the opportunity to break into film. How did you approach the task of expanding your Struck By Lightning script into a feature film knowing it’s your first film and such a personal project? A quote that gets out a lot is “Write what you know,” and I definitely knew this character well because I was this character growing up. I felt that it was a very endangered character; every movie is about the same type of person, like a jock with a talent or an aspiring cheerleader trying to be popular. I wanted to know where the stories were for the kids who had dreams and goals and their life was about accomplishing those. Not the John Hughesian archetypal teenagers – the other kids in the hall? With all due respect, because there’s no way this movie would have been made without John Hughes making a mark in the industry, yeah – kids like me! I felt like it was almost an ignored genre all these years. Structurally speaking, why start the movie by killing your protagonist off the bat before we even get to know him? I don’t know where that came from. That was a choice I made in the beginning and I made it work. It’s funny because I ended up making symbolism out of lightning but just the mental visual image of Carson being killed by a bolt of lightning in the beginning of the movie and the audience going, “What?!” I thought that was hysterical. You open this movie, you don’t even know who this kid is, and boom! I thought that was really funny. How fun was it to have the opportunity to cast your own movie parents? Oh, it was great – it was like reverse-adoption, almost. Allison [Janney] was the only person I ever had in my mind to play [Carson’s mother] since day one, and she’s the actress whose voice I had in my head when I was writing it. Dermot [Mulroney] was one of the miracles of the movie; I don’t know if we thought he would ever do it, but a friend of a friend of his said, “You know who’d be great in this? Dermot!” It was that easy. You’re also now a published author, with a companion book for Struck By Lightning out accompanying the film and a novelization, not to mention your own separate novels. How did your literary career come about? It was something that I’ve always wanted to do – I started with The Land of Stories , which is a novel that I’ve always wanted to write since I was 8. I came up with the story then and promised myself that I would get it done eventually, and I never tried pursuing it in any form other than a book, because it came to me as a book – this was going to be a book that kids could read and have an intimate journey with these characters. Struck By Lightning , I never thought about turning into a novel until my publishers saw the movie and asked me if I’d ever like to turn this into a novel and I decided ultimately, yes I would. But I think when you’re writing a novel you’re 100 percent responsible for the story. When you do a movie, you have help – you have a director, a cast, people to help you bring what you write to life. You’ve worked closely with Ryan Murphy on Glee and also read for Dustin Lance Black’s 8 ; what’s the biggest takeaway you’ve gotten from working with folks like these over the past few years? With 8, my involvement was very easy – I got a call asking, Would you like to do this? It was an amazing experience and I think what I learned the most from it was I love people’s stories. I love picking people’s brains. So whenever I get to be in a room, whether it’s Polly Bergen or Allison Janney or George Clooney, or Dustin or Ryan, I’m always picking people’s brains. That’s my favorite thing in the world, just hearing about experiences. There will be inevitable comparisons between Kurt on Glee and Carson in Struck By Lightning ; they’re both high school outsiders striving to be heard, although the similarities mostly end there. Knowing people might draw that parallel, was it important or not for you to present a character that was very different from your Glee character? It’s so funny – people make comparisons that are convenient to the tone of whatever they’re writing, and some people think I made Struck By Lightning only to play a different character and show that I could do something else, but that wasn’t the case. For one, the character’s been with me much longer than Kurt has been with me so I definitely knew who he was before I knew who Kurt was. And had I wanted to do something just to show the world I could do something else, it would have been, like, something on Mars – I wouldn’t have played another high school outcast! [Laughs] It’s ridiculous. But people still like to pigeonhole me into that with their opinions. Were there certain aspects that you deliberately wanted to emphasize, or avoid, in order to evade those Glee comparisons? Not necessarily to stay away from Glee but I never wanted to reveal a sexual orientation for Carson. For one, because I don’t want to do another orientation story! I don’t care what it is. That was number one. And number two, I didn’t want an orientation to take away from someone learning the lesson of his story, because in my Glee experience sometimes if you state a character is gay or straight, the other orientation stops listening or stops paying attention, and thinks, “Oh, I can’t relate to them now.” I didn’t want that for this character. I wanted everyone to be able to feel like they could relate to him. I made him very asexual for that reason but also, does every character have to be defined by an orientation? No! I don’t think you miss it in this story. He’s so set on something that you don’t focus on who he wants to sleep with. He wants to get into college! That’s who he is. It doesn’t matter. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .

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Tom Hooper Is Ready To Defend All Those ‘Les Miserables’ Close-Ups & Reveal Who’s The Bigger Musical Geek: Jackman or Hathway

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Now that   Les Misérables is expected to surpass its opening-day box-office expectations by  $5 million-10 million, director Tom Hooper could pretend that adapting the beloved musical for the big screen was a walk in the park, but he’d be lying. On Thursday,  Hooper spoke to Movieline from his Sydney, Australia hotel room and likened the challenge of directing the film to the massive tanker he was watching navigate Sydney Harbor.  “It was an extraordinary dance between musical structure and filmic structure,” Hooper explained in a revealing interview about the making of Les Miz . The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who’s expected to snare his second Best Director nomination on Jan. 10,  talked at length about his reasons for making the movie and the challenges of pacing and editing a film that is essentially sung through from beginning to end. He also  addressed criticism that he relied too heavily on close-ups in the film, divulged Eddie Redmayne’s technique for attaining such exquisite sadness in his performance of “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” and answered the burning question of the day: whether Anne Hathaway or Hugh Jackman is a bigger musical geek. Movieline: When I saw Les Misérables in New York, I was surprised by the audience’s passionate reaction to the movie. After certain scenes and songs, they were applauding and cheering as if they were actually seeing a live performance. Tom Hooper: It’s quite extraordinary. I’ve never sat in any cinema or any premiere, or any screening of one of my films and seen a response like this. It’s like you’re at some kind of happening, some kind of out-of-body experience rather than a movie. I was at the Tokyo premiere with the Crown Prince of Japan on Monday. It was quite a formal screening and the audience went kind of crazy. The Japanese broke into a standing ovation at the end, and  I was told that for people to stand in the presence of the Crown Prince without him having gotten to his feet first was a total break of protocol. Since you had the foresight to make this movie, what do you think is causing audiences to react so effusively? Actually, I want to ask you:  What about the movie connected with you? I’m very interested. Oddly enough, I’m not a big fan of movie musicals, but I liked that Les Misérables wasn’t afraid to wear its heart on its sleeve, especially in a year when Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty, which I also admire, are these relatively cool procedurals. I also thought that your decision to have the actors sing on camera paid off. There are some honest, raw performances in Les Miz   and, as a result, the movie ends up being quite a cathartic experience.  Yes, I think that’s the word. I always get asked, “Why did you do this film?” The very first time I saw the musical, the ending was what made me want to do the movie. There’s that moment where the hero of the story, Jean Valjean ( Jackman ), has just passed away and you hear the distant sound of “Do you hear the people singing?” — like an angelic chorus. I had a bodily physical reaction and was crying. I remember thinking what, why am I reacting this way? I was crying about my dad. My dad is alive and well and — but I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that this moment is going to come with my father. A few years ago, he went through cancer. He recovered, but when he was facing it, he told me, “Tom, I want to master the art of dying well.” And I said, “Dad, what on earth do you mean by that?” He said, “When I pass away, I want to do it in a way that’s as compassionate to my family as possible and that limits the pain they suffer. These words came to me when I was thinking about the end of this film. I thought, what’s extraordinary about Les Misérables is that it looks death square in the eye and says that if you navigate that moment with love, it’s possible to achieve a kind of peace. Valjean finds peace through his love of Cosette. He has loved this girl furiously since he met her and been a parent to her. Not only that, he’s rescued the man who’s going to marry her. He’s passed the duty of loving her on to someone else so he can leave this world knowing that she’s cared for and protected. And in the moment of his death, he’s able to tell his story. He’s able to say that this is the story of a man who turned from hating to love through Cosette. It’s like the line from “Finale”: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” It basically says that the only way to navigate our mortality, which we all face, is through love. And I think there’s something incredibly true about that message. But I think the thing that makes Les Misérables special is that it offers so many different ways in emotionally for people. It holds up a mirror to either your own suffering or the suffering of someone close to you, and it manages to process that suffering, leaving you feeling better about it by the end of the film. I’ll agree with you there. Over the past year and a half, I’ve lost a couple of friends and some people who played crucial roles in my life. So, “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” was pretty devastating to me, but I didn’t come out of the theater feeling depressed. I felt like I’d let something go. So much of filmmaking today is avoidance basically. It’s distraction, avoidance, irresponsible fantasy. Les Misérables is somehow not that. It manages to go to the tough places. It’s escapism with a moral compass, and I’m not quite sure people are aware how difficult it was to actually get the film to do what it does. There are some scenes in Les Misérables that aren’t in the stage musical. Can you tell me about what went into your decision to make these changes? There are actually a lot of changes to the screenplay that have gone largely unnoticed. I was working with Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, and Herbert Kretzmer, who were the original creative team on the musical and when the changes are done in a voice that’s so identical to the way it was originally written, they’re hard to detect unless you know Les Misérables really well. Basically, we disassembled and reassembled the musical in order to improve the storytelling. One small example takes place in the factory when the fight breaks out with Fantine (Hathaway). In the musical, there is no reason why Valjean is distracted from dealing with the disruption. He simply says to the foreman, “You sort it out.” The first time I saw the musical, I had the idea: what if the thing that distracted Valjean from focusing on Fantine was the arrival of Javert as the town’s new police inspector? In that moment, he sees this specter from his past and the world falls away. He sees nothing else but that. That led to the scene in the movie where Valjean sees Javert in the factor window. By adding this moment, it better establishes the guilt that Valjean has over the death of Fantine. You upped the emotional impact of Valjean’s relationship to Fantine. Yes, and it sets up this theme about how the ghosts of the past keep coming back to haunt you. You can never be free of them. And it sets up the whole dilemma where Valjean says, “Shall I finally free myself from this past by just admitting who I really am and facing the music?” But that modification required a new piece of music to be composed that went in the middle of the factory scene that, famously, never had had anything in the middle of it. So then, we had the challenge of creating a new melody that marked the drama of that encounter between Valjean and Javert and, yet, didn’t completely fuck up the unity of the factory music. How do you accomplish that? You’ve got to pre-decide on the length of the melody that you need to express this thought, and melodic construction is not that flexible. So Claude-Michel says we can use this bit of melody and Alain works its out and gives you, say, 16 lines.  But then you realize that 16 lines is too long and that we’re being repetitive. So, you go back to Claude-Michel and say, “Can you make the melody a bit shorter?” He says it either has to be 16 lines or, say, four lines to work melodically in that context. I don’t have the freedom to make it, say, 10 lines. So, we would say okay, Claude-Michel would play the piano onto his iPhone and email the recording to us so that we had a guide. And then Alain and Herbie would say what we needed to say in four lines. It was unlike anything I’ve ever done or will do because there’s this constant dance between how quickly melody exhausts itself and the amount of words you need to make the point. And I imagine that’s just the beginning of the process. That’s before you get to the edit process. Again, I’ve never done anything like it. The film is now under two-and-a-half hours, but in September it was running around two hours and 42 minutes. So, you spend a few days in the cutting room and let’s say you take five minutes out of the running time. You can’t just press play and watch your film because it doesn’t play. And the reason it doesn’t play is, wherever you changed the length, the music and the orchestration don’t work anymore. So, in order to see how you feel about the edits you’ve made, the composers have got to recompose all the bits where the lengths changed, and then the orchestrators have got to orchestrate it. We had programmers who basically programmed the music using sample sounds so that we didn’t have to spend money on orchestras. They rebuilt the programmed orchestra and then the music editors fit it to the picture. And then maybe about a week later, I could watch it and see the impact of my changes. It was an extraordinary dance between musical structure and filmic structure. Imagine what it does to pacing. With The King’s Speech , I could vary the pace of almost any scene by taking a second out here or a few frames there. In a musical, once the songs start, you can’t change the pace at all. So it was fascinating to learn how to control pace when you don’t have control of the timeline. You learn that there are points where you can actually take a little chunk out of the music, but in order to do that, I literally had to get to the point where I could read music again and read the score in order to work out what secret cuts I could take. So, you’re leaving me with the impression that making Les Misérables was like solving a Rubik’s Cube because the music and the story were so interwoven that you couldn’t just change one aspect of the movie without affecting a large swath of it. Exactly. You’re navigating whole blocks in the movie where the pace is what the music is. And, therefore, you have to use shot selection and editing to create any variations in that pace. The work involved in getting the movie to run under two-and-a-half hours was incredibly complicated. Not only does the stage musical run longer, we added material. So this movie was like an oil tanker. You’ve come in for some criticism in terms of the number of close-ups you use in the movie. What’s your response to that? I find that discussion interesting. I always give myself options. I didn’t assume that the tight close-up was the best way to do a song. So in “I Dreamed A Dream”, there was a close-up of Anne that we used but there were two other cameras shooting from other perspectives. The tight close-ups won out in the cutting room because, over and over again, the emotional intimacy was far more intense than when you go loose. In fact, in the case of “I Dreamed A Dream,” for a long time we were using a mid-shot of her at the beginning of the scene followed by a very slow track and maybe in the last quarter of the scene it was a medium close-up. And then Eddie Redmayne , who’s been a friend of mine since I worked with him on Elizabeth I , said to me: “Why aren’t you using that close-up that you’re using in that teaser trailer?” He was talking about the way you see all the muscles in Anne’s neck work as she sings and the raw power of that, and I thought, God, that’s interesting . So, it was actually Eddie’s suggestion to re-examine that scene, and the moment we put that close-up in, the film played in a completely different way. The level of emotion went up about a hundred percent. So the process of moving toward these close-ups was a process of discovery. Given the challenges that you faced, is there a scene that you’re particularly proud of? If I’m honest, it’s the final scene in the movie, because, on paper, the idea of the barricade covered in the ghosts of the fallen could be really corny and awful beyond relief. Instead, it creates this incredible emotion in people who see it. It’s something that I’m definitely proud of because, like The King’s Speech , I always knew that it was all about the end. And with Les Miz , I always knew it was about the way we go from the grief of Valjean’s death to the hope of the fallen. But it could have felt ridiculous, and the fact that we avoid the many pitfalls that existed in that scene is definitely one thing I’m at peace about. I’m also incredibly proud of what Eddie does with “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.’ Anne is evidently miraculous during “I Dreamed A Dream,” but I do think that there’s a balance in the movie that’s corrected by how brilliant Eddie is at that point. It’s a powerful performance. Do you know how he connected to his grief in that scene? It’s palpable. He wouldn’t tell me. It’s funny with actors sometimes. One feels that it’s wrong to pry. But he did have a rather unusual idea: Because the song deals with the devastation of the loss of his friends, he suggested that he sing it three times in a row without the camera cutting. That way, the devastation he’d reached at the end of the first singing would become the beginning of the second and so on. He kept pushing himself further and further into the pit of despair. Okay, so you’ve done the Oscar jockeying, and you won. As we get into the thick of awards season, are you approaching your second time any differently? As I sit here right now with the film – it’s opening in Japan today, it’s previewing in Korea and Australia, it’s opening in America on Christmas day — I’m incredibly occupied. It’s about getting through the next few days. But ask me again when I get through this bit. Given what you went through for Les Miz , would you do another movie musical and if so, what would it be? God, I would be open to it. It’s just that this is a very special case. This is arguably the world’s most popular musical and that musical version had never been made into a film until now. There aren’t that many really great musicals that haven’t been made into films. Have you decided what’s next for you? I literally have no idea. I did such crazy hours on this film for the last year and a half. I literally worked every hour I could stay awake and, therefore, I haven’t been able to read any material or any scripts. So, it’s a completely open thing at the moment. Okay, last question: who’s the bigger musical geek, Anne Hathaway or Hugh Jackman? Well, without a doubt, Anne is the bigger Les Misérables geek. It wasn’t just that her mother was in the American tour of Les Miz , she was the understudy for Fantine. So these high points of drama marked Anne’s early life. I remember her saying that, for instance, there would be a phone call telling her that her mother was going to go on as Fantine in Washington and could Anne get there from New York in time to see her mother play the role? So there was this idea that Fantine wasn’t her Mom’s right. It was this scarce gift that occasionally she was given to play, and, for Anne the role defined a certain electricity and audacity. Hugh is different because he’s actually starred in musicals on Broadway and on London’s West End. He’s a bona-fide musical star in his own right, where a lot of Anne’s singing has been in the privacy of her own home or at the Oscars, but not something like [ Les Misérables ]. It’s not something I can say, but Hugh feels that in a way he’s been a force in revolutionizing the way you do a movie musical. And that’s something I know he finds very exciting because I think he’s a real student of the genre and has seen it from so many different sides. [ Deadline ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter. Read More on Les Miz:  Early Reaction: Oscar Race Heats Up As NYC Screening Of ‘ Les   … INTERVIEW: Samantha Barks On ‘ Les Miserables ,’ Eponine….  

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Tom Hooper Is Ready To Defend All Those ‘Les Miserables’ Close-Ups & Reveal Who’s The Bigger Musical Geek: Jackman or Hathway

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Kristen Stewart Goes ‘On The Road’ & Chats Up Her Racy Role

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Kristen Stewart fans have undoubtedly waved a tearful good bye to the character that introduced her to most of her legions of admirers with the final Twilight installment, which opened to massive fanfare last month. While the saga may have been her longest running (and certainly highest paying) gig to date, few know that she vested a lot of time and heart into playing free-spirit Marylou in director Walter Salles’ On The Road , which opens Friday in limited release. Stewart committed to the role before she could legally drive and stuck with the project even as she rose to super-stardom courtesy of Bella and that band of Northwest vampires that captured the hearts and minds of many a tween, teen and beyond. In the film version of one of the most celebrated works of 20th Century American literature written by Jack Kerouac, Stewart plays the unconventional and racy Marylou, the former wife and still frequent lover of Dean Moriarty, a fast-talking charismatic with an insatiable libido. Dean and best friend Sal (Sam Riley), a young writer whose life is shaken after Dean’s arrival, take to the road. Marylou frequently accompanies Sal and Dean’s travels across the country in adventures fueled by sex, drugs and the pursuit of the ” It ” — a quest for understanding and personal fulfillment. [ Editor’s Note : Movieline spoke with Stewart who shared her thoughts on her character’s “hard love,” how she grew into Marylou and how this was the “biggest experience” she’s had on a set. This interview was first published in full during AFI Fest in early November where On The Road had its U.S. premiere. It is being re-published today ahead of its theatrical roll out starting this weekend via IFC Films. M.L. will publish interviews with On The Road co-star Garrett Hedlund and director Walter Salles later this week .] So what was your road to On the Road? I was 14 or 15 when I first met Walter Salles. I spoke to him when I was 17, I think I may have shot the first Twilight, I’m not sure — possibly I was about to go do it. At first I was talking about playing another part, so it’s been a long time coming. I don’t know how I was able to get around that kind of energy, but to convey that I loved this thing in the way [Walter Salles] does and as soon as you get around that energy it passes between you, nothing really needs to be said. I got the job on the spot, and I drove away just vibrating. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Plus I was very young, I wasn’t quite old enough for the part yet. When I read the book many years ago, I found it sprawling and didn’t seem to have elements that would make it translatable to the screen — at least I remember thinking that at the time. What did you think of the book when you first read it? I was reading it for school, so I had to read it. I did independent study when I was in high school. I remember, I took so long to read the book. All I had to do was read it and write a report, it wasn’t like I had to do an intensive study of the book, and it took me months and months — I was late. But, I think my teacher was OK with it because I think ultimately the paper was good. But, people say it’s different when you read it at different ages — but for me at the time, it was fun! At that age you start realizing you have a choice in who you surround yourself with. Up until that point, you’re just around circumstantially who you’re with — your family or whatever — but at that point you can start choose your family, and I’ve got a great family by the way. But I mean just the people you decide to surround yourself with. I don’t want to sound cliché, but people should pull something out of you that would otherwise remain unseen. And when I read the book I thought, ‘Gosh, I need to find people like that.’ I’m definitely not [my character, Marylou’s] type. As I continued reading it and got older, the weight of it started to mean more. I was totally enamored by the colors and the way he wrote it and jumped over words and how it read like a song. Then when I did the movie, to play a part like Marylou — she’s very vivid. She’s very colorful and interesting and on the periphery so you don’t know how and why she can do the things that she does. By the time it came to bringing it to life, I didn’t want to play just a crazy, wild sexy girl. I wanted to apply all the whys and get to know the people behind the characters. There’s a weight to it. It’s not easy to live a life like that. That’s what makes these people kind of remarkable. It’s a give and take. There’s no way to have this without pain, but they’re not frivolous, they can feel it… Marylou’s a forward thinking progressive soul, but she’s also surrounded by this situation with her ongoing yet ever-changing situation with her ex-husband, Dean, who is still an emotional roller coaster, both for himself and her. Did you ever judge her in respect to why she’d tolerate him for so long? No, I never had done so. I always wondered how she could take it. How deep is that well? How much can you give and how much can you let be taken from you? What I found about her is that she’s very unique to her time, but nowadays she’d be something else. Her capacity to see everyone’s flaws and appreciate them is really unbelievable. Any interview we did with anyone who was involved with them [before doing the movie] always said the same thing — that she was such a wonderful woman. She’s infectiously amazing. So, no I didn’t judge her. So then, how would you describe the relationship between your character, Marylou and Dean? They really are simpatico. It’s tumultuous. It’s hard to love like that. But they’re so in love with each other. You don’t know this from reading the book, but they stayed lovers until the end of his life. He kind of raised her and she always had a place in his heart, though I think the capacity was so enormous that there were also others in that heart, but she was at the center. And the same goes the other way around. I think they helped each other grow up and they raised each other. Undoubtedly some of your Twilight fans will be curious to see you doing something outside of Bella and this may be for many their first chance. How do you hope they’ll approach seeing this film? Well, I mean you just walk into a theater [laughs]… I think if I can have anything to do with just one person that would not have otherwise read On The Road, then that would be incredible and I’m very happy to be a part of that. I think that if you have any inclination of seeing this being a Twilight fan, I have to say I don’t have much control over the things that I choose because I do need to feel compelled to do the roles that I do. I very rarely tactfully think about my career and how people are going to perceive it and I think that’s what people appreciate and if that’s not the case, then it’s kind of like — um, that’s not going to go away. It’s a false thing. I think people will really like it and if you didn’t like the book, then don’t watch the movie. You know what I mean? However anyone wants to interpret it is all good with me. People describe On the Road as a “watershed moment” in American culture in that it upended the strict conservative culture that prevailed in the 1950s in the U.S. So from your perspective as a 20-something, how do you see it as relevant culturally today? I think this is a good time to see this story visually because most people can watch it and not be shocked by it as they might have before. Back then, it would have been so shocking to see people doing drugs and having sex that they wouldn’t have seen the spirit behind it — the message behind it would have been [diluted]. Though, maybe it would have been good because it would have forced people to look. But maybe they weren’t able to yet. There’s always going to be conflicting intuitions that might not even go together, but these are people who have the strength to be OK with people disagreeing. At that stage of your life, there’s so much ahead of you — at least it feels that way. The reach is so important even if something is unbeknownst to you, but you feel compelled to find out what it is… Don’t ignore it! At that age, it’s important to have a faith in feelings you can’t articulate because at some point you need to hold onto them. And these guys found a word for that, it’s the “It” and I don’t think that’s ever going to go away. So what is that ” It “? How would you describe the It? [Laughs] Trust me, we’ve talked about that so much… It’s the pearl. It’s that thing that makes your life bounce. I think if we knew it… I honestly think it’s an individual thing, but if something is funny to you and you’re alone you can smirk at it or whatever, but suddenly if you’re with a lot of people that also find it funny, you can be hysterically laughing. There’s something about life that you can’t completely describe. It also goes along with not ignoring that burn and going, ‘OK, I’m content right now to be smart and conservative and hold onto what I’ve got.’ I just think it’s important to keep going for it. How has your experience playing Marylou or in On the Road generally influenced your life professionally or personally? You said you’ve been a part of this project for a long time, so you’ve had quite a turn at experiencing this culture even as you took on other roles including, of course, Twilight . It was the most time I’ve ever spent feeling. Twilight was a good five years and was a very indulgent creative experience. [Most projects] are usually only about five weeks, three months or six months tops. But because I was attached to On the Road so long, the build up and pressure inside by the time we go there was just bigger than anything I’ve ever felt on a set. We had four weeks of proving that we were so thankful and happy to be there because we’re all fans of the book, but we had put in the work and we knew the purpose and the weight of it and how so important it is to so many people. It’s all to Walter [Salles’] credit, but if anything, what this has taught me is that if you stop thinking and just breathe through it, you’re such a better actor. You just have to put in the initial work and then not become too analytical because you have to trust that you’ve already done it all. So it’s opened me up in a way that’s appropriate to my age. I’m just a bit less inhibited. Just being able to not think so much before you speak is good. It has helped me in that way. It’s not being less shameful, it’s just being so much more unabashedly myself. I think that all started when I was 15. I can be around people and say what I think and have a conversation with a stranger and it’s all good. Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .

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Kristen Stewart Goes ‘On The Road’ & Chats Up Her Racy Role

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‘The Hobbit”s Andy Serkis: ’48 Frames Per Second Brings Immersive Experience’

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

The world premiere of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in New Zealand last week may have caught the attention of an entire nation and a good chunk of the world’s press, but the 166 minute feature’s New York premiere nevertheless turned into a lively event Friday night at the Ziegfeld Theater in Midtown. Peter Jackson , fittingly, kicked off the festivities introducing much of the cast, including Sir Ian McKellen (in fact there were a lot of “Sirs” Thursday night including Jackson himself), Martin Freeman , Elijah Wood , Andy Serkis and many of the dwarfs. [ Related: ‘Hobbit’ Fans Complain Of Dizziness & Nausea ] “It’s so exciting. Tonight was great because the Ziegfeld Theatre is where The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers opened,” Serkis told ML at the after-party at Guastavino’s, a venue beneath the Queensboro Bridge Thursday night. “It was the first time I realized that Gollum had worked as a concept and a characterization. I literally felt the audience sat forward in their seats. And I loved watching it tonight because I’m relaxed enough to watch it since I’ve seen it two times.” Not surprisingly, the movie is packed full of action, wizardry, surrealism, battles and amazing imagery. Serkis said that one time may not be enough for many fans since there “is too much to take in,” but Lord of the Rings adherents should be pleased. [ Related: ‘The Hobbit’ 3-D Early Review: Back Again, But Not Quite There ] The Hobbit also gave Serkis an opportunity to look at his character Gollum anew since the latest trio of films, set before The Lord of the Rings , gave Serkis the chance to re-introduce the Hobbit. “I have to really forget a lot of The Lord of the Rings because during that time, Gollum is driven by revenge because he’s crazed and depleted with the ring being away from him so physically he’s more wrecked,” said Serkis. “This is 60 years before and of course he doesn’t know he’s lost the ring…I’ve seen so many impersonations of Gollum that I’ve had to grab hold of him and make him mine again.” [ Related: ‘The Hobbit’ At 48 FPS: A High Frame Rate Fiasco? ] Serkis chatted with party-goers in the cavernous venue. Non- Hobbit invitees included Ben Affleck, Patrick Stewart and Terry O’Quinn, and Hobbit -inspired imagery was kept to a minimum save for the feast of food and drink that would satisfy many a dwarf. Given the recent media attention, it’s not surprising the 48 frames per second issue arose during casual chatter at the post-screening event, though an unscientific poll by people ML ran into gave the experience a thumbs up. Serkis spoke well of the visuals saying the effects combined with 3-D brought on an “immersive experience” that combined live action footage with the film’s expansive tech-generated material. “The trolls, the goblin king, Gollum, they all feel like they’re living in the same time frame and space as the live-action characters and you can’t deny that those two beings are in the same space and there’s something about 24 frames that draws a veil between the two worlds.” Watch the 13-minute The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey featurette below: Watch the video on YouTube. [ Top Image: Hobbit filmmakers and cast at the Ziegfeld in New York, credit: Getty Images ]

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‘The Hobbit”s Andy Serkis: ’48 Frames Per Second Brings Immersive Experience’

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INTERVIEW: ‘Killing Them Softly’ Star Ben Mendelsohn Talks Ryan Gosling, AC/DC & Not Watching His Own Work

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Ben Mendelsohn has played a lot of memorable criminals over the last two years, but it’s sign of his chops that the performances have virtually nothing in common. The son of a neuroscientist and a self-described “autodidact,” Mendelsohn, 43, began as a TV actor  in his native Australia in 1980s and encountered film stardom there in 1987 as the ill-fated juvenile  delinquent Trevor in  The Year My Voice Broke .   In 2010, Mendelsohn gave another breakthrough performance as Andrew “Pope” Cody, the oldest son of a notorious Melbourne crime family, in David Michod’s chilling   Animal Kingdom , and in the two years since has given three more riveting performances in key character roles.  He played the oily and corrupt billionaire Daggett in the final chapter of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises .  Early next year, he’ll be seen as Ryan Gosling’s cohort in crime in The Place Beyond The Pines , and this week he’s in theaters as the small-time heroin-addicted criminal Russell in Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly . Mendelsohn, who probably could have been a neuroscientist himself judging from the clinical, amused way that he looks at his craft,  talked to Movieline about his friendship with Dominik , his work in The Place Beyond The Pines and Gosling’s upcoming directorial debut, How to Catch A Monster , and how his performance in Killing Them Softly compares to a classic-but-underrated AC/DC song. Movieline: I’ll get to Killing Them Softly in a minute, but I’ve got to ask you about your character in The Dark Knight Rises . Where did you learn to play a Wall Street scumbag so well? Mendelsohn: I think there’s a lot of mythos about what’s required in acting. The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it’s a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it’s almost never true. You know, if you want to encounter these [Wall Street] types, it’s very easy now to get a feel for them. You’ve got the Internet, and if you’ve got a few years on the clock, you will have met a few people like that. But script and context takes care of so much. Unless you’re no good at this at all, you should do fine. You and Andrew Dominik are both Australian. How did you come to work together? Andrew and I have known each other for an incredibly long time. I’m godfather to Andrew’s child. So we’ve been talking about working together, or rather, he has been dangling potential roles in front of my face forever. Let me give you a little Mendelsohn 101: I came up in television in the early- to mid- 1980s in Australia. By the time the late ’80s happened, I’m something of a young semi- Tom Cruise — you know, leading man-child around there. Andrew and I knew each other from the mid-’80s but we weren’t friends. We come from Melbourne, but we both ended up shifting to Sydney, and by the mid-’90s, we were thick as thieves. We used to spend like every day together. There was a gang of about five of us guys and we would hang out all the time. You know, I was the big swinging dick on campus and Andrew was this ad guy aspiring filmmaker. At one point, we were even talking about doing Chopper. And then Andrew suddenly became the dude, and he would talk to me about this role or that role, but he never gave me any of them. He talked about this one, too. I was in Australia and I got a very frantic call, “Can you put down a test?” And I’m like, “Okay, I’ll put down a test.” I put down a test, and I didn’t hear anything. Like two months went by, and I was about to take another job, and I got a very frantic emergency call from him pleading and imploring me to take the role. And I’m like, “You fucking idiot. Of course, I want to do it.” I was impressed by how different your performances are in Killing Them Softly , The Dark Knight Rises and The Place Beyond The Pines. You play a sort of criminal in each one but the characters are totally distinct. You’ve seen The Place Beyond the Pines ? Yes, I love the ambition of that movie — the way that the story keeps passing the baton to a different set of characters. Yeah, I’m very proud of it. I haven’t watched the films I’ve been in for 10 years prior to this but I’ve seen Killing Them Softly and The Place Beyond the Pines because both were in festivals where it would have been a big deal to walk out. I’m not a jerk-off about this stuff, but I’ve kept away from watching my stuff. Dark Knigh t — I haven’t seen. Why not? I actually think that it helps me to get better when I keep the mental slate clean of the result. I find that when I do watch the result, the stuff that I end up being concerned about is not stuff that I can actually do much about. And by that, I mean the way your face moves, the way — anyway, real actor bullshit. In Killing Them Softly , you play Russell, a low-level heroin-addicted criminal who provides some dark comic relief. It’s quite an intense, sweaty performance. Yeah, he feels disgusting. It’s filthy, filthy stuff. Patty Norris — God bless her, who’s on the short list of best production designers out there — put me in this horrendous acrylic sweatshirt and, it was very muggy in New Orleans. So you put it on and off you go. But the most important thing to figure out when you’re playing someone who’s really stoned or out of it is, you basically want to let yourself go. You bend and sway and sort of get to be goofy, and that’s pretty relaxing. Watching you onscreen, I have to say, I felt like I was watching newsreels of Keith Richards from back in the 70s. Oh, that’s great. That’s highly praise, indeed. Look, there’s some brilliant footage of Sir Keith but he’s got a regalness to him, you know what I mean? Even during his post- Exile on Main Street period, there’s a regal royalty to his stoned-ness, whereas for me, Russell would be more like Lemmy [from Motorhead] if Lemmy was stoned — because Russell’s a bit rough. I can see that. Andrew and I plug into music a lot. We both happen to be very big, old AC/DC fans. So we use a lot of those templates too. We’ve got a bunch of good shorthand. So what AC/DC song best describes your performance in Killing Them Softly ? It is probably “The Jack,” or “Ain’t No Fun Waitin’ Around To Be A Millionaire.” It’s definitely high period Bon Scott — probably “Ain’t No Fun Waitin’ Around To Be A Millionaire,” which is a great, a profoundly underappreciated AC/DC song and one of my personal favorites. You and Scoot McNairy, who plays your partner in crime, have quite a realistic chemistry onscreen. Did you have to work at that? We were there first before anyone else, and we ended up staying the longest. We ended up living together and, I think that was the most important thing. Instead of standing there and pretending to be really angry with each other, we genuinely got to know each other.  Once you find the things about each other that piss you off, that’s love. That’s love. You’re going to be in Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, How to Catch A Monster . Did that happen because of your work together in The Place Beyond the Pines ? I’m pretty sure that The Place Beyond the Pines happened because of Ryan as well. I think Ryan had said to Derek, “What about him?” The [ Pines ] role, as it was on paper, at the time, was a lot different than what we ended up doing. I was originally going to play a very domineering, down-and-dirty, almost neo-Nazi puppeteer kind of dude who had gotten this guy [Gosling] who was vulnerable and was sending him out to do this stuff. That changed radically. We went a lot deeper in a very different direction, and it lent a very interesting twist to that relationship, which I think is quite beautiful. Can you tell me anything about your role in How to Catch A Monster? I think it’s probably too early. I’m not trying to be miserly about it, but you know, the part is still molten. It hasn’t set yet. We are very early in the figuring out phase of Ryan’s piece, but yeah I’m thrilled. I’m really thrilled about that one. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter. 

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INTERVIEW: ‘Killing Them Softly’ Star Ben Mendelsohn Talks Ryan Gosling, AC/DC & Not Watching His Own Work

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Bill Condon On That ‘Twilight’ Twist And The Shocking Character Fates Of ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Benny Hollywood| Leave a comment

Readers of Stephenie Meyer ‘s Twilight books know what happens at the end of Breaking Dawn … or do they? Movieline sat down with director Bill Condon for an all-out, no-holds-barred, spoilery chat about the shocking changes at the end of Breaking Dawn Part II that had fans gasping in theaters around the globe over the weekend — including how the filmmakers decided who lived and who died, and why if you blinked you may have missed the most earth-shattering character fates of them all. Spoilers abound from this point on! Now that you’ve all had a chance to see Breaking Dawn in theaters, it’s time to dive into the bounty of spoilery riches that Bill Condon left us with when he spoke with Movieline about all things Twilight . Such as: — Deciding who lived and who died in Breaking Dawn ‘s horrific, head-rolling, jaw-tearing bloodbath of a (dream) battle sequence. — Walking the fine line between Uncle Jacob being just protective enough of Renesmee and being totally creepy. — Which character’s battlefield speech was left on the cutting room floor — and which scenes will we see on the DVD? — How much real world political commentary can viewers read into Aro’s weapons of mass destruction-seeking, warmongering ways? (Also — if Condon used the “smaller” take of Aro’s gleefully campy cackle, what in the world did it sound like when Sheen cranked it all the way to 11?) — And, most shocking of all: Did you realize that Edward and Bella were meant to die ? PHOTOS: Stars Hit The Premiere Of Breaking Dawn – Part II You had just finished the last of the effects prior to release, working on the Renesmee CG. Hers stand out because it’s a kind of CG effect we haven’t seen before — applying Mackenzie Foy’s face to her character from birth to adulthood. How challenging was it to achieve the desired effect? Bill Condon: You’re building on stuff that was done on The Social Network and Benjamin Button , but it had challenges beyond what they had. She is a special creature — she’s not entirely human — so that helps us, a little bit. It is a bit uncanny, that CG baby face. Condon: Yes, I agree. We briefly see a flash forward to the grown Renesmee, living happily ever after with Jacob once she reaches her full maturity a few years down the road — when Jacob finally gets to date Renesmee. Condon: Finally, yes! On La Push. What was the trick to figuring out how to include that happy romantic ending for Jacob and Renesmee without it being creepy? Condon: Well the thing is, obviously it was controversial the minute it was written. But as a filmmaker you have a great ally in Taylor Lautner, and Taylor was concerned about it. But Taylor is a pure soul. He is able to look at her with love and it doesn’t have another component to it, and I think another actor couldn’t have done that. I think there’s something so essentially sweet about him that it’s a generous love. The humor element throughout the entire film helps relieve the pressure and the far-fetched nature of much of the mythology — what spurred you folks to add in more levity for the finale? Condon: Any time you can add humor it’s great, because it makes something more real. You take Billy Burke; he had to play a scene which is so incredibly hard I called him “The Miracle Worker,” in which a father has to accept that his daughter has become a vampire, but he also has to accept that she can’t tell him anything about it. He can’t ask questions, but he’s a cop. Billy went through a hundred changes through that scene, and you see it all on his face – and he’s funny the whole time he’s doing it. That deadpan, “Are you kidding me?” look really gets you through some of this strange stuff. You filmed Parts 1 and 2 simultaneously, sometimes having Kristen Stewart play weak, dying Bella in the same afternoon as strong vampire Bella. Condon: I really do think that Kristen Stewart is amazing, but I feel like in terms of this series she doesn’t get credit for how much she accomplishes. I think if someone were to sit and watch these two movies that we made together at the same time and realize that Kristen shot that all together, it’s just another level of her gift. She was stepping out of her comfort zone, because there was so much Kristen in teenage Bella — and now this was someone who she was just creating. I think Kristen, who’s tough on herself, was able to step out of all that stuff and just really own everything. Readers of the books have been defending Twilight for years now, understandably; Bella is a passive character early in the franchise, and we only see her grow into her strength in Breaking Dawn . Condon: That’s right — and she always had this latent power. In the beginning it was the thing that made her remote, but I love the last scene in the movie; it’s such a beautiful idea. It’s the reason he was interested in her the moment that he met her, but it’s such a metaphor for love, that you trust a person enough to let them see inside of you. You inherited much of your primary cast from the previous films’ directors, but in Breaking Dawn Part II you got to cast a number of colorful new additions. Like Lee Pace… Condon: Dreamy, right? Yes, and so funny with such limited screen time. Condon: I know! These actors all have a couple of scenes to establish these characters, and we have 25 of them, so we had to get actors who really pop. And they also had to know how to mine as much comedy as you can possibly get out of something. Did you feel a lot of pressure to deliver with the action sequence? Condon: I did! I loved it. It was like making one big musical number, because it’s all about rhythm in an action scene. It’s all about the way it’s like, my god, this is happening so we’ll slow it down for a bit, and you take a moment to really take it in – then things are going well, then they’re going badly. It’s like a roller coaster. I loved working on that, but it was the hardest thing. It was a two-year effort. We had an editor who just concentrated on that. Once we stopped shooting it started all over; we put it in a different order and rearranged things, reshot a little bit of it, to really make it work. I didn’t realize it right away, but the battle scene ends on a much darker note than I thought, so please set the record straight — after killing Aro in that alternate future-flash, do Bella and Edward die? Condon: Yes. There’s a hint of it; it’s about to happen. Edward gets surrounded and they’re coming right at her with the fire. It’s very subtle and there’s the switch. I didn’t want to spend too much time in there; it’s just a little hint in there if you can see it. What do you expect fans will be most shocked by? Condon: The moment when Carlisle’s head comes off, I’d think. I’ve seen it with an audience and I love it. The collective gasp in the theater in that moment is pretty fantastic. Condon: I know — it’s fun, isn’t it? I love that. NEXT: Deciding who would live and die Breaking Dawn Part II ‘s big battle, DVD deleted scenes, and more

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Bill Condon On That ‘Twilight’ Twist And The Shocking Character Fates Of ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’

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