Tag Archives: the movieline interview

Breaking Bad Creator Vince Gilligan on AMC’s ‘Big Balls’ and a Potential Fifth Season

Over the course of three seasons, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has transformed his protagonist from a spineless husband and chemistry teacher into a cold-hearted meth chemist who neglects his family in order to churn out hundreds of pounds of lethal crystal for cash. The role, born somewhere deep in Gilligan’s subconscious, won star Bryan Cranston back-to-back Emmys, and tied together three seasons of one of the best (and darkest) dramas on television today. Gilligan himself, though, could not be any more different than the grim world and characters he created. In anticipation of this Sunday’s season finale, the native Virginian — who also wrote and produced over 30 episodes of The X Files and penned the Will Smith blockbuster Hancock — phoned Movieline to cheerfully talk about the nuttiest scene he ever wrote for Walt (that never made it to air), the encouragement of AMC, and the possibility of renewing Breaking Bad for a fifth season.

Follow this link:
Breaking Bad Creator Vince Gilligan on AMC’s ‘Big Balls’ and a Potential Fifth Season

Tyler Perry Blames Rainbow Quitter Mariah Carey For Ruining Vacation, Mai Tai

Nothing warms the heart quite like a note from Tyler Perry to his fans, who this morning took a break from pursuing his credit-card hackers to get the lowdown on his sumptuous island getaway with an unnamed “very special friend.” (“We’re sunbathing and swimming, I’m flying my RC planes.”) A sumptuous island getaway which, by the way, Mariah Carey happened to cut short when she suddenly dropped out of his film For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf less than a week before shooting.

View post:
Tyler Perry Blames Rainbow Quitter Mariah Carey For Ruining Vacation, Mai Tai

Steve Zahn on Treme and the Joys of ‘Magic Time’ in New Orleans

Perhaps the only endeavor more difficult than saving post-Katrina New Orleans was creating a television series that intimately captured the perspective of the disaster-torn city. But that is exactly what Steve Zahn and the ensemble cast of HBO’ s freshman series Treme have done under the guidance of The Wire ‘s David Simon and Eric Overmyer. Zahn portrays a passionate disc jockey and musician whose frustration with the Big Easy’s snail-like rebuilding pace leads to brilliant anti-administration country songs and random displays of passive-aggressive rage. As the series nears the end of its freshman season, Zahn phoned Movieline yesterday from his Kentucky farm to discuss his transition into television, his hope that Treme will cover the BP oil spill and the one biopic he’d love to headline.

Read this article:
Steve Zahn on Treme and the Joys of ‘Magic Time’ in New Orleans

Rachel Weisz on Agora, Her Job Description and the Cinema of Ideas

This week’s sweeping epic Agora is a bit of a headscratcher — not necessarily for its concentration on the bloody collision of religion, science, romance and politics in 4th-century Alexandria, but instead for the fact that a film so serious and substantial wasn’t itself made extinct somewhere along the development pipeline. Credit Rachel Weisz, the Oscar-winner whose commitment to writer-director Alejandro Amenabar has resulted in one of 2010’s unlikeliest biopics.

Go here to see the original:
Rachel Weisz on Agora, Her Job Description and the Cinema of Ideas

Bret Easton Ellis on How The Informers Went Wrong

Bret Easton Ellis has written six books (his seventh, Imperial Bedrooms, comes out next month ), and all six have been optioned by Hollywood. Of those six, four were made into movies, and they run the gamut from iconic to underseen, acclaimed to lambasted. Each day this week, Ellis will tackle a different adaptation of his books for Movieline, giving his take on what worked, what didn’t, and what went on behind the scenes. Gregor Jordan’s The Informers begins with a quick, abrupt car accident, but to hear Bret Easton Ellis tell it, the production was something like a car crash in slow motion. Though it’s the only adaptation of Ellis’s novels where he actually served as a producer and co-writer on the film, he’s not happy with how it turned out, and he’s hardly alone. When The Informers was released last year, audiences stayed away and critics were scathing (pundit Devin Faraci, unwilling to review the film according to a normal ratings system, scored it a “F**k God out of 10”).

Read the rest here:
Bret Easton Ellis on How The Informers Went Wrong

Bret Easton Ellis on The Rules of Attraction and Its Sexy, Illicit Spinoff You’ll Never See

Bret Easton Ellis has written six books (his seventh, Imperial Bedrooms, comes out next month ), and all six have been optioned by Hollywood. Of those six, four were made into movies, and they run the gamut from iconic to underseen, acclaimed to lambasted. Each day this week, Ellis will tackle a different adaptation of his books for Movieline, giving his take on what worked, what didn’t, and what went on behind the scenes. When Bret Easton Ellis wrote The Rules of Attraction in 1987, it came burdened with heavy expectations, as his first novel, Less Than Zero , had made him a literary wunderkind two years prior. In a similar way, Roger Avary’s 2002 film adaptation of The Rules of Attraction came two years after the relative success of Mary Harron’s film version of American Psycho , and if ever Ellis were to become a book-to-film crossover franchise a la Stephen King or John Grisham, Rules would serve as a litmus test.

View post:
Bret Easton Ellis on The Rules of Attraction and Its Sexy, Illicit Spinoff You’ll Never See

Kevin McHale on Glee’s Wheelchair Controversy, His Dream TV Role and Celebrity Gleeks

Although Glee ‘s ensemble cast sometimes prevents characters from getting their fair share of Ryan Murphy’s spotlight, every now and then an episode airs that manages to tenderly chronicle the plight of one glee club member. In tonight’s episode, “Dream On,” Artie — the white-rapping, wheelchair-bound character played by Kevin McHale — supports one of the most emotionally gratifying storylines of the season. In anticipation of tonight’s episode, which was directed by Joss Whedon and guest stars Neil Patrick Harris, McHale phoned Movieline to discuss his questionable guitar skills, his boy band days and the one fan anecdote that made him appreciate Glee even more than he already did.

More:
Kevin McHale on Glee’s Wheelchair Controversy, His Dream TV Role and Celebrity Gleeks

Jesse Eisenberg on His New Films, Old Insecurities and Nice Guy David Fincher

It’s purely accidental that Jesse Eisenberg should have three movies opening in theaters in the next 10 days. Still, it’s all the reminder you need that the 26-year-old New Yorker is as in demand as virtually any young actor in the business. Coming off 2009’s mainstream tandem of Zombieland and Adventureland , Eisenberg begins an all indie May this Friday in New York with the microbudget marvel The Living Wake . He follows that next week with the drug-running drama Holy Rollers and the Michael Douglas showcase Solitary Man (as well as Wake ‘s L.A. opening). And then there’s David Fincher’s The Social Network , which he just completed as well. Needless to say, we had plenty to catch up on recently when Eisenberg called Movieline HQ.

See original here:
Jesse Eisenberg on His New Films, Old Insecurities and Nice Guy David Fincher

Lost’s Jeff Fahey on the Fate of Frank Lapidus and that Machete Trailer

Last week’s pivotal episode of Lost brought with it many casualties, and though Jin, Sun, and Sayid all got their due, we at Movieline would like to sing a ballad for Frank Lapidus. Over the last three seasons of Lost , Jeff Fahey has managed to make his errant pilot character one of the show’s most-liked with little more than a pocketful of one-liners in his arsenal. He may never have gotten his own flashback episode, but damn if we didn’t love him all the same. Last week was a big one for Fahey, between that nutso Lost episode and the trailer for Machete , where he reprises his Grindhouse role for director Robert Rodriguez. I called him up yesterday to chat about both.

Continued here:
Lost’s Jeff Fahey on the Fate of Frank Lapidus and that Machete Trailer

Katee Sackhoff on 24 and the Unlikely Thrill of Being Waterboarded

Katee Sackhoff is a self-admitted thrill junkie — that’s why she was a perfect fit for the daredevil pilot Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica , and it’s what made her casting on the final season of 24 sound like a no-brainer. Still, her character Dana Walsh hasn’t always had an easy time of it; during the first half of the season, she was often stuck in a subplot involving a no-good ex-boyfriend, and it’s only recently that Sackhoff’s gotten to show off her action-packed bona fides as Dana was revealed to be this season’s obligatory, villainous mole. In advance of tonight’s episode, Movieline spoke to the always-candid actress to get her own feelings about her character’s arc and to hear about the torturous stunt she couldn’t wait to do herself.

See the original post:
Katee Sackhoff on 24 and the Unlikely Thrill of Being Waterboarded