She received an Oscar and BAFTA nomination for her starring role as Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in the aptly titled Frida back in 2002, an Emmy nomination for her appearance in TV’s Ugly Betty (where she was also an executive producer) and has been in films from Puss in Boots (ok, her voice), Desperado to Dogma and her latest pic, Savages , directed by Oliver Stone . Yet Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek told a German magazine that she was in fact ready to end her acting career. The 45 year-old actress told German Vogue that Oliver Stone’s Savages persuaded her to stay on in front of the camera. Her husband Francois-Henri Pinault also encouraged her to take on the role in the drug thriller. “Roles like Elena don’t come along frequently,” she is quoted as saying in the publication via NDTV Movies . “I didn’t want to do another movie to be honest. Francois convinced me of that. Actually, I quit acting.” But now that Savages has been released both in the U.S. and abroad, will she continue to act? Apparently it’s not clear, but she did say she would have done Savages even if it would end up being her final performance because it was directed by Stone. “It at all I just wanted to do it for fun,” she said. “I didn’t take it that seriously anymore. And then [Stone] came. To be honest even if I didn’t like the part I still would have said yes just to work with Oliver.” In Savages , Hayek plays the role of a cartel leader. Even if the acting thing isn’t for her anymore, the movie biz will likely still be ongoing. She founded her film production company Ventanarosa in 2000 and she is currently producing The Prophet , an animated feature slated for next year. And a quick look at her IMDb page shows that she has two acting gigs in the works, Here Comes the Boom and Grown Ups 2 . [Sources: NDTV , IMDb ]
Having labeled the 1990 sci-fi Total Recall “ cheesy ,” it was only a matter of time before the makers of this summer’s lackluster Colin Farrell-starring remake had the tables turned on them by Paul Verhoeven , the original film’s director. And so, Friday at a sold-out screening of the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, Verhoeven seized the opportunity for a little payback, a good-natured gleam in his eye. “Colin Farrell called it in an interview ‘kitschy,’” he declared with a smile. “So I dare to say that his version was not good.” Verhoeven revisited the making of the film over 22 years ago over the course of an hourlong Q&A, joined by screenwriters Ron Shusett, who first optioned Dick’s short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” and co-scripted Total Recall and Alien with the late Dan O’Bannon, and Gary Goldman, who came on to help flesh out a third act and penned many of the film’s memorable one-liners. The trio shared memories of the film’s long journey to the screen, the difficulty in adapting a writer as brilliant as Philip K. Dick, and the unique challenges and benefits of writing for a star like Schwarzenegger. Scroll down for these and more highlights from the evening, including Verhoeven’s favorite scene! Why he cast Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct ! The connection between Total Recall and Alien ! (Plus: an update on his Winter Queen adaptation, which was to star Milla Jovovich but, he says, “fell into the wrong hands.”) 1. VERHOEVEN ON THE TOTAL RECALL REMAKE “Arnold being there made the movie a little light, and I think that’s very important for these Philip Dick stories,” he said. “I think if it would have been done in a straight way, I’m not so sure that it would have worked – at least, not at that time. And recently [in the Total Recall remake], it did not. I get to say that because the producer of the new one said that this was cheesy or something. And Colin Farrell called it in an interview ‘kitschy.’ So I dare to say that his version was not good.” 2. THE LONG ROAD TO TOTAL RECALL A notoriously long and troubled development saw Total Recall nearly derailed many times, as Shusett recalled. “Sets were being built in Germany, in Australia, and Mexico City — all over the world — and being cancelled. At that time it was the most expensive movie ever made… it was cancelled so many times that when I asked if they would save it, they said the only way we could do this was if we called it Partial Recall .” Once Schwarzenegger signed on, he lent his star power to supporting collaborators behind the scenes. Shusett, who’d written and was producing the project, was nearly removed from the film until Schwarzenegger stepped in on his behalf; the actor also handpicked Verhoeven to direct, as the filmmaker remembered. “Arnold picked me,” said Verhoeven. “Arnold was after this project for a long time… they had started to shoot in Australia and then [Dino De Laurentiis’] company fell apart and went bankrupt. Then Arnold convinced Mario Kassar of Carolco to buy the script out of the bankruptcy. And at the same time he said to Mario, ‘I want Paul Verhoeven because I have seen RoboCop .'” Even with Verhoeven onboard, the script was missing a conclusion. “I felt that something had to happen in the third act that would also be also a little bit philosophical or ambiguous or something, but that was not there,” he said. “And I really got scared – there were like 40 drafts where it was not solved. I thought, it’s unsolvable! It can’t be done! But I had signed already.” 3. THE PHILIP K. DICK CHALLENGE “The other Philip Dick movies all failed for one reason,” declared Shusett. “He’s so brilliant with his set up, he paints you into a corner, he has no ending, there’s barely a second act, and if you don’t match his brilliance with a third act the audience is disappointed. You have to go to extreme length, talent and luck, and come up with an ending that’s worthy of his brilliant set up. That’s why it took six years to get a third act!” Verhoeven’s ambiguous ending leaves open both possibilities that Quaid is either experiencing real life or a fantasy. “I felt that it should be both. I thought in retrospect this is probably the first post-modern film,” said Verhoeven, adding that “the producer of the new one asked me [if it’s real or not]. I said no it’s both, and he said, ‘That’s nonsense.’” 4. SHARON STONE: FROM LORI TO BASIC INSTINCT “For me, casting Sharon was very handy because I started to realize during the shoot what she could do,” revealed Verhoeven. “There’s this beautiful moment when they kick the shit out of [Schwarzenegger] and Rachel [Ticotin] comes out of the elevator and starts shooting. Sharon is on the ground and looks at Arnold … and it was exactly these 5, 6 seconds that made me decide to take Sharon Stone for Basic Instinct . It was based on the fact that she could do that so fast and so believable and she is so mean and so nice and charming, one after the other, that I thought she would be perfect for Basic Instinct .” 5. THE REAL LIFE INSPIRATION FOR RICHTER’S DEATH As a child, Verhoeven played in an elevator that he briefly thought might cut off his legs as he dangled them over the side. He exorcised his lingering horror at the thought by condemning Michael Ironside’s Richter to death by elevator amputation. “I often think about it; I would have been without legs.” 6. VERHOEVEN’S FAVORITE SCENE “I came to the scene that is still one of my favorite scenes, the Dr. Edgemar scene with Roy Brocksmith, who comes to Arnold on Mars and says what we see in him, ‘You are not here.’ I thought that was such a fascinating scene to dare to do that, to say something to the audience that they have been looking at something that is completely not true, and then prove to them that it’s true again.” 7. PAUL VERHOEVEN’S CRUSADE , STARRING ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER Verhoeven spoke fondly of Crusade , the famously never-produced period epic that would have reunited Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger in 1993. “We tried very hard when we were setting up The Crusades. The script was written by Walon Green, and we were supposed to shoot it then Carolco went into Chapter 11 and the movie was never made. Certainly Ridley Scott did Kingdom of Heaven but it was, again, with Arnold, a lighter version of The Crusades but very critical of the Christians.” 8. ABOUT WRITING FOR/DIRECTING ARNOLD… The Quaid character was originally written as an accountant, but that idea (not to mention the suggestion that he could pass as an everyman) went out the window when Schwarzenegger was cast. “It seemed completely ridiculous,” Verhoeven said. “We realized we had to give him a completely different job. Jackhammer worker. We adapted everything to Arnold because I felt that you could not go around Arnold!” “We wrote it like he was just an ordinary Joe, like Jeff Bridges, one of the earlier persons who was going to do it,” said Shusett. “And you don’t know he’s a super agent but Suddenly he’s believable – so he could be a nerd, and not. But we realized everybody knows Arnold’s going to be the real secret agent … but if you can get it made, it turns your mind around.” “In retrospect,” Verhoeven added, “I’m very happy that Arnold was forced upon me.” 9. TOTAL RECALL AND ALIEN Schusett took the audience back a few decades to tell the story of how Total Recall and Alien sprang from a moment of mutual writer’s block between him and Dan O’Bannon. “He said a lot of people want to be writers – he was very blunt and could cut you down in a minute, but he was always truthful,” Schusett laughed, remembering his initial meeting with O’Bannon. “‘Can you show me something you’ve written?’ I went home and gave him something I wrote, a spec script. He said, ‘You’re good – come on over, I have a proposition for you: I can help you finish this if you can help me finish this .’ And he pulled out this thing, he had 29 pages written. He said, ‘You can’t take it with you because I don’t know you and I don’t trust you yet, sit down here and read it.’ And I sat down and read it, and it was the first 29 pages of Alien . I said ‘This is brilliant.’ He said, ‘Yeah – and I’m stuck. What I see in you, I think you’ve got a good enough mind to help me make it work. So I’ll help you fix Total Recall and make it a reality, at least the script, and you help me fix Alien .’ And that day, both movies were born.” BONUS: THE WINTER QUEEN IS DEAD Verhoeven explained why the adaptation of Boris Akunin’s Russian novel he was producing is no longer happening. ” The Winter Queen fell into the wrong hands, so it will not be made,” he said. “I think the time might have passed for this kind of lightness that was in the movie – nowadays everything is so hard and serious. It would have been a very light adventure story at the end of the 19th century, Russians – I mean, played by Americans or English [laughs] but I don’t think that’s going to be made, no. I would have loved to do that five years ago.” Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Premium Rush is about speed. So let’s not pussyfoot around and get right to the action. The action flik, which led this week’s box-office newcomers with a reported $6.5 million take, features Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Wilee, a bike messenger being pursued through the streets of New York City on his brake-less “fixie” — fixed-gear — rig. Among those chasing Wilee is corrupt detective Bobby Monday, played by Michael Shannon , who is hell-bent on intercepting the package that Wilee is carrying. In advance of the film’s release, Movieline sat down with director and co-writer David Koepp and his writing partner John Kamps ( Ghost Town ) to talk about writing a white-knuckle action movie without killing anyone and how cyclists are the most responsible travelers on the street. Why did Premium Rush need to be told? David Koepp: It needed to be told because John and I have seven children between us and they’ve got to go to school. [Laughs] I had had this idea kicking around in my head for a while because I live here and see cyclists. I wanted to do a chase movie on bikes, which I hadn’t seen. You follow the idea , and see how long it lasts. I realized at a certain point, Well, I’ve had this idea in my head for a while now. The only way to get it out of there is to just do it. So, for peace of mind, this had to become a film. Did you write this script with Michael Shannon and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in mind? DK: No, we always try to keep the characters the characters at first. Did either of them surprise you in terms of their performances? DK: I was pleasantly surprised by Joe’s fearlessness. Not because I’d heard he was a pussy or something — because, just to be able to be willing to put yourself on a bike in a lot of traffic and in that kind of danger, while acting, is really courageous. So, I was pleased and surprised by how much he wanted to do and how aggressively he was willing to do it. And, Shannon — you’re surprised every day by his performance because it comes out of this Michael Shannon place that only he has. And you just think, I never would have thought to deliver that line that way. That’s fascinating. What are the pros and cons of directing versus screenwriting? DK: I’ll make it succinct. With directing, you have tons of control. But, you have tons of control, which means you have tons of decisions to make and you have to be there. And you have to have an incredible level of input and your life doesn’t really belong to you so much. With screenwriting, you get a lot more quiet. You go to an office every day. Maybe you work with a collaborator. That’s nice. It’s a life that’s in here [pointing to his head]. I like to mix it up. You get crazy being in the room alone for too long and you certainly get crazy directing on the streets of New York. What was it like, logistically, to be filming people on bikes on the streets of New York City? I feel like few filmmakers have approached anything like this. DK : It was one of the most logistically difficult movies of the last 20 years. And I’m not overstating, because it’s not cars; it’s people exposed to cars. But they’re moving at car speed. And, because so much of the action was on the street, we needed total street closures. The city went out of its way to be accommodating. The cops were great. And it still was a mess because people, surprisingly, don’t like to have streets closed. [Laughs] You largely avoided CGI and relied on human stunts, yes? DK: That was important. This movie was about what human beings can do–not about what computers can do. I mean, clearly there’s some computer stuff: like when he’s picturing what would happen if he went to the right and he ends up getting hit by three cars and run over by a truck. Clearly, that wasn’t a person. Everybody knows it’s a joke. So, I’d say 95-96 percent of it is really people doing that. I read about Joseph going through the back of a cab and getting 31 stitches. DK: Yeah, a guy with diplomat plates cut into our shooting lanes right in front of him. Joe had to swerve to avoid him and ended up going through the back of a taxi. It was really scary. There were lots of crashes, but his was the worst. Of course, he’s the star, so he’s got to have the worst crash and get the most stitches. [Laughs] Our biggest fear [while] writing it was: Fuck, I hope somebody doesn’t get killed on this movie. Ya know? Absolutely. So, what was the motive behind Joseph’s character paying little regard to the welfare of other people on the road? DK: I don’t think he’s really out of line. I would say that the most responsible people on the street are cyclists. They may not obey all the rules, but they stay out of the way really well if you just leave ’em alone. Cars are second, because drivers are notoriously distracted. They feel safe inside their bubble and they’re often texting and that’s no good. And then the worst &mdash: the scum of the streets — are pedestrians. We’re awful because we don’t follow logical patterns. We’re definitely texting. Nobody’s looking where they’re going. Nobody . And they make irrational decisions, like in crosswalks. And that’s not good. How does this compare to L.A. traffic? John Kamps : It’s very different. With pedestrians, it’s like: You have the audacity to walk? DK: I think it’s legal to hit them. JK : Pedestrians are completely on the defensive in L.A. because people are flying down the street at 60 miles an hour. So, it’s not like someone’s going to stop and honk at you. They’re going to take you out. DK: There’s a pedestrian attitude in New York, which is, if you’re crossing the street and you cut in front of a car and you don’t look at the car, he has to stop. That’s just not really coherent. What was behind your decision to use a visual mapping element in this film to show where the characters are in relation to each other? DK: When John and I were writing it, we were saying, We want to know where everybody is, exactly, and at what time and how far [Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character Wilee] has got to go and how he’s going to get there. JK: A lot of the action you see doesn’t make sense geographically. It’s like, he’s on the building. Now he’s over there on the car. You have no idea what his goal is, how he’s getting from point A to point B. DK: Then, you’re editing it. And you think, Well, let’s see. We should move the bathroom scene up a little. And you can’t. You can’t move anything, because you’ve gone to great pains to say who’s where when. So, we cursed the script many times in the edit room. How long did Premium Rush take to shoot? DK: Fifty-one days — with about 30 days of second-unit shooting, concurrent. The wardrobe never changes. How many red shirts do they you through? DK: Dozens! To get the right red shirt was a big deal. That’s the other thing about a movie in contained time: you’re a one-wardrobe movie. You have to really fall in love with what people are wearing. What did you think of The Amazing Spiderman given your involvement in the first iteration? DK: I think they did a great job. It’s hard to do something new that’s just been done, and I thought that they came up with a tone and a look that I hadn’t seen or expected. Great performances. I felt like it was sort of old school—the way the high-school scenes played out and the relationship between Peter and Gwen. It seemed very… DK: John Hughes? Yeah. Nell Alk is an arts and entertainment writer and reporter based in New York City. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal , Manhattan Magazine, Z!NK Magazine and on InterviewMagazine.com, PaperMag.com and RollingStone.com, among others. Learn more about her here. Follow Nell Alk on Twitter. 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Let the slander ensue. 2016: Obama’s America didn’t come up short this weekend. The new conservative film that depicts Obama as defending his Father’s dreams of revenge debuted at Number 4 in the box offices this past Friday. It’s not clear where Obama’s America, distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures, will end up for the weekend, although most box office observers believe it will end up in the $6 million range. On Friday, the documentary upped its theater count from 169 to 1,090, just as Republicans began heading for Tampa, Fla., where the Republican National Convention begins on Monday. Obama’s America did well in a number of large cities where it opened Friday, including Denver, Phoenix and San Diego. Smaller markets also turned in steller numbers, including Baton Rouge, La., Wichita, Ks., Grand Junction, Co., and Albany, NY. Posing as a fairly measured and informative recap of Obama’s personal history, the film is trying to get us to sway our decision come November. Don’t believe the hype! Source Images via WENN/Youtube
God save the peen! Vivid Entertainment Offers Prince Harry $10 Million To Star In Adult Film According to TMZ reports : You knew it was coming … and now, so does Prince Harry — a multi-million dollar offer to get down and dirty in a triple-X movie … courtesy of the biggest adult film studio on the planet. Vivid Entertainment honcho Steve Hirsch just fired off a letter to the royal palace in London — offering Prince Harry $10 million to star in a big budget adult film called “The Trouble with Harry” … thanks to his recent nekkid romp in Vegas. According to the letter, the film would also star “little Harry” and would feature some REAL royal carousing — in the form of full-on boning. Hirsch writes, “We assure you the sex will be well-scripted, and the crown jewels will not be ‘minimized’ in any way.” $10 million sounds nice, but this guy obviously doesn’t need the money and he’s probably embarrassed the Royal Family enough for 10 lifetimes. Image via WENN
Octomom may star in an adult film, but she still has standards . Or something. Call it the Nadya Suleman version of standards. “I remain celibate to this day – it’s almost 14 years now – and I touch no one but myself [in the film],” the
The Farce is still strong in Seth Green and Matt Senreich. The boy geniuses behind Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken series joined collaborator Todd Grimes at Star Wars Celebration VI on Friday to unveil footage of their new animated series Star Wars: Detours . IGN reports that the comedic CGI animated series — which depicts the very familiar Star Wars crew in “exaggerated Chibi/super deformed style” (translation for the uninitiated: small bodies, massive heads) — takes place in-between Episodes III and IV of George Lucas’ Star Wars canon and will focus on the what these characters do in their downtime. “Where do Gamorrean Guards grocery shop? Does Darth Vader do online dating? The answer is yes,” Grimes told the gathered Star Wars super fans. ” We answer all these things.” Among the footage fans saw was Obi-Wan using a Jedi Mind Trick on his audience after he bombs at stand-up comedy. (“That joke was hilarious and you all liked it.”) In another scene, Jar Jar Binks asked Dexter Jettster why everyone hates him and Jettster replies by asking the Gungan how honest he wants him to be. According to IGN, the Star Wars: Detours team did not announce a debut date or even if they’d been picked up by a TV network yet, but the site estimated that the show would probably bow in 2013. That sounds promising. Earlier this year , when I spoke to Star Wars creator George Lucas — who was working with Green and his team, on the show — he told me: “We just can’t get anybody to put it on the air” because, he explained, the show doesn’t fit into a neat demographic package. Check out the clips: [ IGN ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Most movies get a soundtrack after they’ve been filmed. Boyd Tinsley doesn’t work that way. On Aug. 30, the violinist for the Dave Matthews Band will premiere Faces in the Mirror a film that was shot after Tinsley and a group of musicians that included Matthews, other DMB members and the groups Maktub and The Silent Comedy. Tinsley, who produced and conceived of the film, tells me that he’s wanted to make a movie ever since the band shot the Dean Karr-directed video to the DMB’s 1997 hit “Crash Into Me.” In December 2008, he explained, he took the first step by going into a studio with a hand-picked group of musicians. He explained to the musical artists that he had a bare-bones concept for a story of a young man dealing with the death of his estranged father. “I knew there was a rift and the father and the son lost contact, but I didn’t know everything about the story,” Tinsley said. “I didn’t know how it ended.” Having expressed this rough outline, Tinsley said, “I told them, ‘Go into the room and play from the heart. Don’t let your head come into it.” The musicians recorded over the next five days, much of it in between sessions for DMB’s 2009 album Big Whiskey & The GrooGrux King. “Everything you hear on the soundtrack happened in the moment. Music just materialized,” Tinsley said. “Things happened that just don’t happen.” First timer Aaron Farrington directed the moody, lushly shot film that was adapted to the music. Ryan Orr plays Ben Fisher, an angry young man who returns home to bury his long-estranged father. On the day of his dad’s funeral, Ben finds himself on a trippy, stranger-guided journey to self-realization, forgiveness and possibly love. “It’s raw and it’s real,” says Tinsley who will take part in a post-premiere concert after Faces in the Mirror premieres in Seattle on Aug. 30 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Snagfilms.com will webcast the film. You can check out the exclusive clip of the film here . There’s also a sizzle reel for the film that includes footage of Tinsley performing . Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Hollywood.TV is your source for all the latest celebrity news, gossip and videos of your favorite stars! bit.ly – Click to Subscribe! Facebook.com – Become a Fan! Twitter.com – Follow Us! The cast of “For A Good Time Call” celebrated the film with the New York premiere at Regal Union Square Theater. The film is the real life story of best friends who had a phone sex line in college to pay the bills. LaurenMiller stars with her husband Seth Rogan. Hollywood.TV is the global leader in capturing celebrity breaking news as it happens. We cover all the major Hollywood events including The Golden Globes, The Oscars, The Screen Actors Guild Awards, The Grammy’s, The Emmy’s and the American Music Awards, as well as all the red carpet movie premiers in Los Angeles and New York. HTV is on the streets 24/7, at all the industry events and invited by the stars to cover their every move in Hollywood, New York and Miami. Hollywood.TV is currently the third most viewed reporter channel on www.youtube.com YouTube with almost 400 million views, and our footage is seen worldwide! Tune in daily for all the latest Hollywood news on www.hollywood.tv and http like us on Facebook!
It looks like Salma Hayek is off the hook… for an insulting gaffe she never made in the first place! In a recent cover story for the German edition of Vogue , the actress is asked about her role in Oliver Stone’s Savages and was originally quoted as saying: “I am proud to have been involved in this film with all these great actors. Honestly, I hardly had any memories of what it is to be Mexican. My life is completely different now.” It’s true that Hayek is married to French gazillionaire Francois-Henri Pinault , but Hispanic blog Guanabee doesn’t see that as an excuse for ignoring her heritage. “What did Salma mean by basically saying she forgot what it’s like to be a Mexican woman?” the site asked in response to Hayek. “That she’s too French and rich for our blood?” Not at all, says the star’s rep. He contacted E! News and explained that the “whole thing has been lost in translation. Salma is not disparaging Mexico in any way.” Translated, this is Hayek’s full quote: “I am proud to be in this movie with all these great actors. The truth is that I almost have to try and remember what it’s like to be Mexican. My life is different now. You cannot make yourself represent something. You have to be an individual, by being the best you can be.”
