What the hell??? You can’t trust anyone these days. According to The New York Post , the children’s mother was at her three-year old’s swim practice and came home to a horrific scene. An Upper West Side nanny stabbed to death two small children who she was taking care of while their mother was out, then slit her own wrists in a failed suicide bid this afternoon, sources said. The children’s 36-year-old pediatrician mother came home from running errands at about 5:34 p.m. when she walked into the nanny — Yoselyn Ortega, 50 — in a pool of blood in the kitchen, sources told The Post. She rushed to the West 75th Street apartment’s bathroom, where she found her two youngest children, ages 2 and 6, with several stab wounds in their small bodies. “Something happened to my kids!” the sobbing mother screamed, according to a witness. The kids appeared to still be breathing when they were rushed to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, but they were pronounced dead on arrival. The mother — who was out with her 3-year-old child — was also taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt, where she had to be sedated, a source said. Ortega, who was is in police custody, was taken New York Presbyterian Hospital in critical but stable condition. The children’s father was on a plane from San Francisco and had not been told about his children’s death, a source said. A neighbor told The Post she heard “the mother screaming hysterically” when she arrived at the apartment. “It’s horrifying, it’s a very quiet building,” said the neighbor, who met the nanny for the first time yesterday and described her as “very quiet.” Hope the nanny makes it through the night so she can spend the rest of her life rotting in a cell. Images via twitter
Look at this Leah Francis….all topless for Zoo….doing that Glamour Model “I coulda been a stripper, but I do this instead”….all looking like a delicate flower that I want to nurture and protect and write love songs for…cuz you know a girl who let men take pics of them like this for the world of blue collar people who still buy magazines….in exchange for money have their priorities straight and are the kind of person you want to bring home to your mother…but more importantly…turn into a mother who can pass on these values to your kids…. Leah Frnancis…is my angel…but maybe I’m just blinded by her level of class and sophistication…
Alec Baldwin says the documentary he’s making with filmmaker James Toback , Seduced and Abandoned , continues to take shape. I spoke to Baldwin briefly at the reception that Hamptons International Film Festival Chairman Stuart Suna threw at his East Hampton home on Saturday afternoon. There, the actor — who arrived at the party gallantly carrying his new bride Hilaria Thomas’s high-heeled party shoes — explained that interviews he and Toback conducted with venerable filmmakers Martin Scorsese , Francis Ford Coppola , Roman Polanski and Bernardo Bertolucci will comprise the core of the project. “They are the pillars of the film,” said Baldwin, who described Seduced and Abandoned as a “meta” documentary about filmmakers who venture to the carnival-like South of France festival to raise funds for their latest projects. The “meta” aspect of the film stems from Baldwin and Toback’s plans to appear in Seduced and Abandoned as themselves as they attempt to scare up funds for a small movie they may or may not make. Baldwin also said that the incorporation of the Cannes festival footage the men shot on Croisette in May will depend what falls under the “fair use” doctrine of U.S. copyright law. He also confirmed that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will not appear in Seduced and Abandoned. Weinstein drew Baldwin’s ire when he declined to be interviewed for the film at Cannes, although the two men made peace a few days later. In May, Toback told Deadline , “We will talk to every billionaire financier in Cannes, to a few directors and movie stars to get a sense of where film is today and how it is changing as a business, and the whole evolution of Cannes from a pure festival to this bizarre mix of wildly diverse elements. It still clings to the pure notion of film, with all sorts of other ramifications from financial to maritime implications that make it so complex.” Baldwin let drop another nugget of interesting information later that night at a Q&A he conducted with actor Richard Gere at Guild Hall in East Hampton. There, the 30 Rock star said that he might be teaching at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he is an alumni, in the spring. Although it’s a fair assumption that Baldwin will be teaching some form of acting class, he did not elaborate upon his comment. I’ve put in a call to his spokesman and to NYU and will update accordingly. Also in attendance at the chairman’s reception in East Hampton were Gere, Sting, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Adam Driver and Dree Hemingway. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The scene outside East Hampton’s usually civilized Guild Hall was almost as frenzied as a mosh pit on Saturday night when an overflow crowd turned up to watch Alec Baldwin interview fellow leading man Richard Gere . The spirited conversation, which focused mostly on Gere’s pre- Pretty Woman career, was a precursor to the Arbitrage actor receiving the Hamptons International Film Festival’s 2012 Golden Starfish Award for Lifetime Achievement in Acting. Over the course of the discussion, Gere talked about some of his more unusual moments working with such storied directors at Terrence Malick, Richard Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader. For instance, he recalled his frustration working with Malick on Days of Heaven because of the lack of guidance that the filmmaker gave to his actors. Malick “is a really interesting guy,” Gere said, “but one of his quirks is that he doesn’t always know what he wants.” Indeed, during one frustrating scene, Gere said he found himself asking that very question of the director who then pointed to “linen curtains blowing” in the breeze of an open window. “I meant like that,” Gere said Malick told him, and in that case, the actor told Baldwin, “I knew exactly what he meant.” The silver-haired Gere also talked about Brooks’ secrecy regarding scripts. He recalled that when he asked the director if he could see the screenplay to Looking for Mr. Goodbar , Brooks invited him to his Los Angeles home, where the filmmaker’s wife, actress Jean Simmons greeted Gere and led the actor to a “romantically lit room.” There, Brooks gave him a half hour to read the script, which Gere implied, was not enough time, until he discovered that Brooks had “blacked out everything that was not my part.” The discussion took an amusing turn when Baldwin brought up the subject of American Gigolo and asked Gere if he was uncomfortable about his emergence as a sex symbol. The actor replied that it was an “interesting dilemma” and eventually invited his WME agent Andrew Finkelstein, who was sitting in the audience, to join the conversation. (Finkelstein was an assistant to the late ICM agent Ed Limato, who worked with Gere at the time of that 1980 movie.) Finkelstein replied that Limato “didn’t like” that the media was focusing on Gere’s “hunkishness,” adding: “You were a better actor than a hunk.” The line drew a big laugh from the audience, and Gere, wearing a wry smile on his face said: “I’m a better actor than a hunk. Thank you, Andrew.” Finkelstein recovered nicely by yelling out: “Richard is now looking for an agent.” Shortly before Gere was presented with his Golden Starfish award, Baldwin asked the actor if any of his leading ladies had ever fallen for him. “Someone told me that one of them had, and I said, ‘I wish they had told me!'” Gere replied. “But I’m not going to answer that question.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
An invitation-only crowd at the Hamptons International Film Festival got schooled on”The Secrets of Schamus” — that’s Focus Features CEO James Schamus — by his former producing partner Ted Hope on Friday night. Schamus, whose career includes screenwriting credits for The Ice Storm and an Oscar nomination as producer of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain , was the recipient of the festival’s Industry Toast at East Hampton Point. For A Good Time Call actress Ari Graynor emceed the event, which included toasts by Sony Pictures Classics Co-President Michael Barker and producer Christine Vachon and videotaped remarks from actor Gary Oldman , who got his first Oscar nomination starring in Focus Features’ 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. “He is a collaborator: an artist with his head in artists’ clouds and a business man with his business feet firmly in the box office,” Oldman said of Schamus before getting big laughs by poking gentle fun at the Focus exec’s mystique as a professorial indie-film rainmaker. (He’s not just a studio executive, he’s a Professor of Professional Practice in Columbia University’s School of the Arts.) “Did you know that he has won trophies for merely thinking?” said Oldman, adding: “He’s the only man ever to ace a Rorschach Test….Whenever he goes for a swim, dolphins appear….If he were to mail a letter without postage, it would get there.” Hope, who was honored with the festival’s Industry Toast in 2006, followed with a wry — and lengthy — recollection of his years spent working with Schamus at their seminal indie production company Good Machine. Under the guise of revealing the business “Secrets of Schamus” — which included “manufacture desire” and “make them want to pick up your phone call” — he amused the crowd with tales of how his bespectacled, bow-tie-wearing partner repeatedly managed to outshine him. “I’ve been a little competitive with James,” Hope said. “It’s hard to keep up with all those accolades.” The newly minted executive director of the San Francisco Film Society recalled how when they were bringing Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking to the Sundance Film Festival in 1996, Schamus convinced him to put the $17,000 cost of a private plane flight on his credit card after their eleventh-hour commercial flight to Utah was grounded. According to Hope, when they learned that the private plane could not accomodate all of their fellow travelers, Schamus stayed behind, leaving his partner to pull an all-nighter in Sundance in order to sell the film to then-Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein. The morning after the sale, Hope said, “I pick up the paper and see that James Schamus had sold the film to Harvey Weinstein.” Hope concluded his remarks by telling the crowd that when he got his business cards from the San Francisco Film Society, they read: “former partner of James Schamus.” Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
AFI Fest released more details for its L.A. event. Selections in its Young Americans and New Auteurs sections highlight emerging U.S. first and second time global filmmakers. As previously announced, the World Premiere of Hitchcock will open the festival, while Lincoln will close out the event, which takes place November 1 – 8 in Los Angeles. “Our New Auteurs competition section is an opportunity for us to highlight some of the strongest filmmaking by first and second time directors this year. These are films that have been garnering acclaim and winning awards at festivals all over the world and are now being showcased together for the first time,” said Jacqueline Lyanga, Director of AFI Fest via a statement. “Last year this section included Michael Roskam’s Oscar- nominated Bullhead and Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet . Every year, it’s exciting to see the talent that emerges from this showcase of new narrative feature filmmakers.” Announced titles with film descriptions provided by AFI Fest : Young Americans Selection All The Light in the Sky : Jane Addams stars as an insomniac actress facing the waning days of her career when her niece pays a visit to her house on stilts overlooking Malibu. DIR/SCR Joe Swanberg. CAST Jane Addams, Sophia Takal, Lawrence Michael Levin, Kent Osborne, Larry Fessenden, Ti West. Ape : Trevor is the poster child for post-adolescent malaise. His sole ambition of being a famous comedian leads him to madness when he makes a deal with the devil. DIR/SCR Joel Potrykus. CAST Gary Bosek, Teri Nelson, Joshua Burge, Benjamin Riley. Electrick Children : Rachel is a 15-year-old Mormon girl who finds herself miraculously pregnant after listening to a rock song on a cassette tape. DIR/SCR Rebecca Thomas. CAST Rory Culkin, Julia Garner, Liam Aiken, Billy Zane, Bill Sage, Cynthia Watros, John Patrick Amedori. The International Sign for Choking : When a commissioned filmmaker arrives in Argentina in search of a film subject, he finds the camera turning toward his own aimlessness and discontent. DIR/SCR Zach Weintraub. CAST Zach Weintraub, Sopia Takal, Roger Delahaye, Barbara Cameron, Mariano Blanco, Ximena Brun, Ezequiler Etcheverry. Kid-Thing : Annie is a young girl leading a lonely existence in Austin, Texas, whose life takes a fascinating turn when she hears a plea for help coming from the bottom of a well. DIR/SCR David Zellner. CAST Sydney Aguirre, Susan Tyrrell, Nathan Zellner, David Zellner. Only the Young : Best friends Garrison and Kevin are equally passionate about the gospel, their girlfriends and the half-pipe in this non-fiction look at teenage life in America. DIR Jason Tippet, Elizabeth Mims. CAST Garrison Saenz, Skye Elmore, Kevin Conway, Robin Levy, Kristen Cheriegate. Pearblossom Hwy : Friends Corey and Anna drift through life – he longs to appear on a reality TV show and she sells sex for money in order to gain her citizenship. DIR Mike Ott. SCR Mike Ott, Atsuko Okatsuka. CAST Atsuko Okatsuka, Cory Zacharia, John Brotherton. Somebody Up There Likes Me : After Max discovers his wife in bed with another man, he tries to get a grip on his life with the aid of a mysterious suitcase that might just hold back time. DIR/SCR Robert Byington. CAST Keith Poulson, Nick Offerman, Jess Weixler, Kevin Corrigan, Jonathan Togo, Stephanie Hunt, Kate Lyn Sheil, Alex Perry, Marshall Bell. Starlet : The unlikely friendship between a young, rootless porn actress and a prickly octogenarian results in a combative, yet tender mother-daughter bond. DIR Sean Baker. SCR Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch. CAST Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson, Stella Maeve, James Ransone, Karren Karagulian. Sun Don’t Shine : Crystal and her boyfriend Leo embark on a mysterious road trip across the haunting Central Florida landscape, her disturbing past riding close behind. DIR/SCR Amy Seimetz. CAST Kate Lyn Sheil, Kentucker Audley. Tchaopitoulas : This dreamlike documentary from the brothers Ross follows three young boys across the Mississippi into New Orleans’ French Quarter for a kaleidoscopic night of revelry. DIR Turner Ross, Bill Ross. New Auteurs Selection After Lucia : After arriving in Mexico City, a girl is brutally victimized by bullies and disappears, pursued by her heartbroken father. DIR/SCR Michel Franco. CAST Tessa Ia, Hernan Mendoza, Gonzalo Vega Sisto, Tamara Yazbek Bernal, Francisco Rueda, Paloma Cervantes, Juan Carlos Berruecos, Diego Canales. Mexico. Antiviral : When the frantic obsession with celebrity leads to the trafficking of stars’ diseases to their fans, death is sure to be waiting in the wings. DIR/SCR Brandon Cronenberg. CAST Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Gadon, Douglas Smith, Malcolm McDowell. Canada/USA. Clip : Writer/Director Maja Miloš makes her directorial debut with this searing portrait of a rootless Serbian teenager who captures clips of life with her camera phone. DIR/SCR Maja Miloš. CAST Isidora Simijonovic, Vukašin Jasnic, Sanja Mikitišin, Jovo Makisc, Monja Savic. Serbia. Eat Sleep Die : Raša, a Montenegrin-born factory worker, loses her job in rural Sweden, runs a gauntlet of job-seeking disappointment and bureaucracy and defies the odds. DIR/SCR Gabriela Pichler. CAST Nermina Lukac, Milan Dragišic, Peter Fält, Ružica Pichler, Jonathan Lampinen. Sweden. Here and There : Winner of the top prize in the Critics Week section of Cannes, Antonio Mendez Esparza’s directorial debut brilliantly captures the complex homecoming of a loving father and a family’s journey to normalcy. DIR/SCR Antonio Mendez Esparza. CAST Pedro de los Santos, Teresa Ramírez Aguirre, Lorena Guadalupe Pantaleón Vázquez, Heidi Laura Solano Espinoza. Mexico/Spain/USA. A Hijacking : When Somali pirates seize a Danish cargo ship in the Indian Ocean, high-stakes, life-or-death negotiations commence in this work of fiction inspired by today’s headlines. DIR/SCR Tobiaas Lindholm. CAST Pilou Asbæk, Søren Malling. Denmark. In the Fog : In Nazi-occupied Belarus in 1942, a man and his captors come under fire, forcing all to make radically divergent, but equally harrowing choices. DIR/SCR Segei Loznitsa. CAST Vladimir Svirski, Vlad Abashin, Sergei Kolesov, Vlad Ivanov, Julia Peresild, Nadezhda Markina. Germany/Russia/Belarus/The Netherlands/Latvia. Not in Tel Aviv : A repressed high school teacher loses his job, kidnaps one of his female students, kills his invalid mother and reconnects with a former high school crush. DIR/SCR Nony Geffen. CAST Nony Geffen, Yaara Peltzig, Romi Aboulafia. Israel. Simon Killer : A young college graduate travels to France where he becomes involved with a prostitute. DIR/SCR Antonio Campos. CAST Brady Corbet, Michael Abiteboul, Constance Rousseau, Lila Salet, Solo. USA.
It’s a good fall for ambitious movies. In the wake of the September release of Paul Thomas Anderson ‘s The Master , Warner Bros will open Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings’ Cloud Atlas to theaters on Oct. 26, and a trio of TV spots has begun building awareness of the film adaptation of David Mitchell’s 2004 novel. Check out the clips after the jump and stay tuned for Jen Yamato’s upcoming report on the film’s debut at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX on Wednesday night. Mitchell’s story featured six interconnected stories that spanned from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future. Judging from the TV spots, which feature Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugo Weaving, among other cast members, Tykwer ( Run, Lola, Run ) and the Wachowskis have remained true to the book’s central themes about the cyclical nature of life and the universality of human nature. What do you think? Follow Frank DiGIacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
“ What is an ocean but a multitude of drops? ” The affecting spirit of Cloud Atlas was palpable last night as Fantastic Fest unveiled its second Secret Screening — the ambitious sci-fi adaptation — with Lana and Andy Wachowski (“Formerly the Wachowski brothers, now Wachowski Starship,” quipped Andy) making a rare public appearance. The Wachowskis, who wrote and directed the ensemble epic with Tom Tykwer ( Run Lola Run ), are notoriously press shy . But Cloud Atlas , adapted from David Mitchell’s novel about humanity, interconnectivity, transformation and free will, is much more a personal mission statement than their last few Matrix hits and the typically daring Fantastic Fest crowd made for a perfect fit, anointing Cloud Atlas with an also-rare post-screening standing ovation. Following an unprecedented structure, Cloud Atlas flits back and forth between six disparate stories of characters in different eras and lands, each story connected by a thread — a journal, a piece of music, a collection of handwritten letters, an oral history — the same actors (Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, James D’Arcy, Xun Yhou, Keith David, David Gyasi, and Susan Sarandon) playing multiple characters throughout. In any given minute Cloud Atlas may jump from a mercantile ship circa 1849 to 1936 Europe, 1973 San Francisco, futuristic Neo Seoul, present-day England, or a remote village “106 winters after The Fall.” Lana, speaking after the screening, described the story’s structure akin to skipping stones — “only it’s a narrative structure that skipped pieces.” In today’s world of self-inflicted multimedia ADD, as we divide our attentions between cell phones and texts and television and the constant din, however, doing a bit of brain-juggling to sort it all out should only be easier. Still, the cumulative effect may prove disorienting to some viewers, particularly since some characters’ motivation can get lost in the sprawl. (The original script ran 275 pages, according to Andy Wachowski: “The book is so rich that we had a lot of dead babies in the end.”) But where Cloud Atlas soars is in its emotional richness and stirring sentimentality; it’s a challenging film that asks a lot of its audience but wears its heart on its sleeve, swelling with genuine humanity and a deceptively simple provocation: Will you allow yourself to be changed by the love and kindness of another? The Wachowskis and Tykwer add to Mitchell’s text the use of multiple actors in multiple roles, often obscured via makeup and prosthetics, and frequently (controversially) transformed into other races and ethnicities. Hanks’s alter egos as a British thug with a terrible accent and later (or rather, earlier) a ginger-haired, knob-nosed 19th century doctor test the limits of believability. But Sturgess, transformed via prosthetics as a 22nd century Korean freedom fighter, is actually quite wonderful; disappearing into the role beneath his “Asian” face, Sturgess does some of his finest work to date and “transforms” into a bona fide action star in the Neo Seoul segment’s Matrix -esque action sequences. The race issue is just the opposite in Cloud Atlas — whites plays Asian, Asians play latina, men play women (and when it’s Hugo Weaving as a Nurse Ratched type, boy, whatta woman). And it’s not just exterior boundaries that get toyed with; Cloud Atlas ‘s movie stars play background parts in various segments, too. That Korean actress Doona Bae — a force to be reckoned with as the futuristic “fabricant” Sonmi-451, a clone with soul and a Joan of Arc haircut — steals so much of the film is an acting coup and a stroke of meta-storytelling genius. Cloud Atlas also soars on its hauntingly evocative score by Twyker, who wrote the film’s music and key themes before filming began. The Wachowskis’ minds were blown by the process, and they described it as akin to discovering the world was not, in fact, flat. “We’ll never go back,” they said. “[Now] we’re round-earthers.” Read more on Cloud Atlas , in theaters October 26. Read more from Fantastic Fest . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Max Thieriot began his career opposite Twilight ‘s Kristen Stewart (in 2004’s Catch That Kid ), and this week he finds himself romancing Hunger Games ‘ Katniss Everdeen herself, Jennifer Lawrence — albeit against the advice of her mother, the neighborhood, their classmates and, perhaps, insidious forces that linger in secrets and shadows in The House at the End of the Street . In recent years the former child actor has navigated his way toward increasingly interesting projects (Atom Egoyan’s Chloe , Nick Cassavetes’ Yellow , the Toronto entry Disconnect , and the upcoming Bates Motel series on A&E) — and one thing that helped was making a conscious decision to live outside of Hollywood, as Thieriot told Movieline recently. The 23-year-old actor, who made his biggest recent mark starring in Wes Craven’s My Soul To Take , grew up in Northern California (where his family once owned the San Francisco Chronicle) and still lives there. “I always told myself that no matter what happened, how famous I became, I didn’t want to change the person that I am,” Thieriot explains. He spoke about the challenges of revealing just enough information to the audience in House at the End of The Street , if he really is in a genre phase right now, what he’s looking forward to in the Hitchcock-based Bates Motel , and the single best perk of growing up the scion of a newspaper family. You live in Northern California – tell me about the decision to stay there instead of Los Angeles. I moved to L.A. right after I finished high school, for three years, because everybody was telling me it was important to get down there, and then I kind of just decided for myself that I didn’t need to be there to be doing this. I wanted out of some of the chaos that comes with living here and being an actor. And I spend so much time away from home anyways, filming and stuff, that I might as well make home base somewhere I want to be. I grew up swearing that I’d never move to L.A. and yet here I am. L.A.’s fine! But I don’t know, I love Northern California. Jennifer Lawrence describes you as an unconventional actor type – you spend time in your trailer listening to country music, not really concerned with typical showbiz stuff. Do you feel like your approach to the industry is drastically different from the norm? I’d say so. Different from your typical actor, for sure. I don’t know – it’s just the way I was raised. As much as I appreciate acting and enjoy it, and like it, it wasn’t something where I grew up wanting to be a movie star. So when it happened I just took it as it came and always told myself that no matter what happened, how famous I became, whatever, I didn’t want to change the person that I am. That’s one of the reasons I still live in Northern California – it helps me stay grounded and to remember all those things. That must be all the more important given that you started acting so young. Exactly. But I definitely take it seriously. Well, Jen Lawrence also compared you to Paul Newman, so you must. [Laughs] I take it seriously, but at the same time I don’t let it get to me. You’ve got House at the End of the Street coming out but your last mainstream film was horror film, My Soul To Take . Next you’ve got Bates Motel . What’s behind this run of genre fare, and what do you feel like is pulling you toward this material? Honestly, I don’t even know. It’s funny, when I started acting I watched some horror films but I generally didn’t like the acting in them. I’d never thought about doing one, and then I did My Soul to Take and for that was like, well, if I’m going to do a horror film Wes Craven’s the guy to do it with. When this came along, to me it plays so much more as a thriller and not a horror film, and it’s a very different movie for the genre. The character was a character that I wanted to play, as opposed to just getting into this type of film. It’s tricky to talk about because we don’t want to spoil anything, but even as the story goes on the script reveals more and more to the audience. How tricky was that line to walk as a performer, conscious of what information is in the viewer’s mind at any time? It’s definitely hard to play because by the end of the film you hope that the audience goes, ok, and they look back at things that took place, or different expressions, and go, wow – got it! That’s why this happened. That’s why they made that face. It’s a tough line to walk as an actor to try and have that in scenes without giving away something. You know too much. You do. I know too much, but at the same time I want to show them something without having them notice that I’m showing it to them. It’s all about secrets, showing them a secret that they don’t even see until the end. You started your career with Catch That Kid , which was also one of Kristen Stewart’s first films. How did being a child actor influence your later choices? Well, Haley Joel Osment had some and Dakota Fanning had some roles that were very different and extremely challenging, but other than that the norm was these kind of normal sort of roles which to me weren’t that challenging. There wasn’t a whole lot of variety, you know? So once I got to an age where that started to change I made a decision to try and do a little bit of everything to not stay stuck in one category. How old were you when you were first conscious of trying to mix it up? 17 or 18. And since then it seems like I keep doing all this horror thriller genre stuff but that’s just the stuff that’s been in the public’s eye the most, because I’ve done like three movies that are waiting to come out that are all so different. In this Nick Cassavetes film Yellow I have a Southern accent in Oklahoma in the late ‘80s selling drugs and I have all these tattoos, and I put on a bunch of weight and got all buff, and in Foreverland I play a guy who has cystic fibrosis. Disconnect , which was just at Toronto and Venice, I play an internet webcam stripper, so I got buff and lost a bunch of weight and got all shredded for that, the way I felt an internet webcam stripper should look. [Laughs] I’ve really been trying to mix it up a lot since My Soul To Take. And we filmed House at the End of the Street two years ago, and since then I’ve done four movies or something. I only recently considered doing television and this last year I did a pilot for ABC for Roland Emmerich, so I’m open to that now and that’s how this Bates Motel thing came up. Alfred Hitchcock is so iconic in this business and in general and it seemed like a great opportunity to be a part of something that’s a 10 episode show, on A&E, for great producers, with Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore who are great actors. And yours is a new role we haven’t seen portrayed before – Norman Bates’ brother. It’s exciting too because as cool and fun and challenging as it is to play a character who’s never been played, it’s also fun to play something like this in such an iconic film now turned into a prequel to a TV show, because he’s unknown. You kind of know what you’re getting with Norma and Norman, but Dylan is this unknown guy thrown into the mix. Yeah, how messed up must that guy be? We know he doesn’t make it to the house later, but what happens in between? But honestly, this has all happened in the past few days, since like Friday. [Laughs] That’s when it all became official. I met with the team via Skype about a week ago, and we talked and all of a sudden the deal was happening. What was it like growing up with your family owning the San Francisco Chronicle, having such a history with institutions like that? It was interesting – I grew up actually hating the fact that my family owned the newspaper, because I was teased a lot at school as being the rich kid whose family owned the newspaper. It was hard because it wasn’t like the Press-Democrat, it was the San Francisco Chronicle. As a kid it seems people used to tease people over anything, and it seems like such a stupid thing to get upset, to get bummed out over something like that, but when you’re little it was like that. So I was happy when we sold the company. Like, great – now people aren’t going to give me shit. But it’s definitely something I appreciate and find to be fascinating, and obviously I’m just born into it, but I look at the history of it all and how it came to be. My great-great-grandfather started the paper in 1865 or something, and when the 1906 earthquake happened he separated himself from the Hearst family who owned the Examiner, and when the earthquake happened he was the only person to release a paper that day. He started it by literally typing it at home and selling it on the street corner. His last name was De Young and he had like four daughters so now there are no more De Youngs that are direct descendants from him… it’s interesting and kind of funny, and my family’s been doing stuff in San Francisco forever. It was also neat as a kid because the company sponsored the local sports teams, like the 49ers. I noticed from your Twitter feed that you’re a bit of a Niners fan. I’m obsessive about the Niners! One of my buddies from Sonoma County just got signed by them this year, so I’m like, yes – now I get to go to some games. That was probably my favorite part as a kid – we sponsored them, and the Giants, and the Golden State Warriors, so we always had company tickets and I took full advantage of that as a kid. There was a petition to get you cast in The Hunger Games as Finnick, which would have been a reunion with Jennifer Lawrence. How far did that actually get? They had specific people and they wouldn’t let others audition, so I didn’t get a chance to audition or anything. You’d think making out with Jen Lawrence for what seems like forever in House at the End of the Street would give you an edge of some sort. You’d think! I can shoot a bow better than anyone in that movie. But I’m over that now. I found a quote you gave in what must have been one of your first interviews, for Catch That Kid , in which you give the following sage advice: “Just be yourself and try not to be too over the top.” Nice. Does that still apply? Yeah! I think that’s still valid. Those are two very important pieces of advice for this industry. [Laughs] Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Ever wonder where Donald Trump got his take-n0-prisoners executive style? Well, based on his favorite movies, it’s part Corleone family , part Tommy DeVito , part Rhett Butler and part Blondie from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , although, frankly, it was Clint Eastwood who could have used a little of the Donald’s mojo when it came to that lame-ass speech the actor-filmmaker gave at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. After the Today show aired an unseen GOP convention video on Wednesday that featured the real-estate tycoon and reality-TV-show host firing President Obama Celebrity Apprentice -style — check out the video after the jump — Movieline got to thinking about what films Trump might like to watch when he’s not the one on camera. We inquired, and he graciously provided us with a list that, if you ask me, provides an interesting glimpse into his business philosophy. The son of the late real-estate developer Fred Trump, Donald didn’t just follow in his father’s footsteps, he built the Trump name into an internationally recognized brand and became a hip-hop idol in the process. Given his beginnings, it’s not surprising that one of his picks deals with another type of family business. Another choice, reveals that for all the firing he does, Trump is a romantic at heart. Herewith, are Trump’s five favorite movies, along with commentary from the man himself. 1. Citizen Kane (Director, Orson Welles; 1941): ” It is one of the greats of all time. The acting, the story, the production values are all superb. The fact that it was Orson Welles’ first feature film is also impressive, and the mystery of Rosebud in the midst of a narrative about a business power play gives it further resonance. Hard to beat.” 2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Director, Sergio Leone; 1966) ” It’s tough. It’’s real. It’s well done. The music is unforgettable. The characters are well developed and sometimes remind me of some of the types I’ve had to deal with over the years in business. No weak points here.” 3. Gone with the Wind (Director, Victor Fleming; 1939): “It’s a classic. It has stood the test of time. For me, it’s a love story combined with a time in our country’s history that was pivotal in our evolution. The scope of the storytelling is tremendous.” 4. G oodFellas (Director, Martin Scorsese; 1990): ” Great entertainment, with a stellar cast and terrific direction. The intensity propelled the story forward and the ‘business’ and how it was handled was impressive.” 5. The Godfather (Director, Francis Ford Coppola; 1972): Another classic, as was The Godfather: Part II. The story is riveting and the characters were perfectly cast and directed. The family aspect intrigued me as did their business and history. Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
