E L James will share writing tips and more in the leather-bound journal, to be released May 1. By Driadonna Roland “Fifty Shades of Grey” book cover Photo: The Writer’s Coffee Shop
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‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ Journal Helps Fans Find Their ‘Inner Goddess’
Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Music
Tagged appid, context, detected, fifty-shades, Hollywood, invalid, News, writer, writing-tips
Has The Onion finally gone too far? The satirical website is under major fire today after Tweeting a message during last night’s Academy Awards about nine-year old nominee Quvenzhané Wallis. It has since been deleted, but not before millions read the following Twitter post: “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right?” Among those calling for an apology (at the very least) is Wendell Pierce, best known for his role on The Wire : “Identify the writer,” the actor Tweeted. “Let him defend that abhorrent verbal attack of a child. You call it humor, I call it horrendous.” Where do you stand, THGers? Was deletion enough? Or should The Onion apologize for this word use? Yes, how horrific! Nah, it was just a joke View Poll »
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Quvenzhane Wallis C-Word Tweet: A Step Way Too Far?
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Tagged before-millions, call-it-humor, celeb news, color-at-last, detected, Hollywood, hollywood-news, how-horrific, news update, other-creditors, quvenzhan, verbal-attack, wallis, writer
The Oscar season enters its last weekend, but one suspects it is far from over. Even if Academy members ultimately hewed to tradition and voted Lincoln and Steven Spielberg Best Picture and Director, respectively — as is the customary coronation for films with the most Oscar nominations — this outlier season will be studied and debated. For at least days to come. The Final Countdown To The 2013 Academy Awards The final week of voting saw pundits and bloggers get in their final shots, filibuster like Jefferson Smith for their lost causes (“the only causes worth fighting for”), issue their final predictions or revise earlier forecasts. Roger Ebert backtracked slightly from his self-described “cocky” “Outguess Ebert” boast that he had guessed every (contest category) correctly. “Every year it is the same,” Ebert wrote. “I came out of the gate filled with certainty, and as the deadline draws near I begin to falter.” Several enterprising writers persuaded some Academy members from various branches to share—anonymously—their Oscar ballots, and the results might give pause to anyone convinced that any of the major categories (except perhaps Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress) are locks. The Oscar Index views and duly notes these ruminations objectively. The reported (conjectured?) groundswells make for compelling Oscars storylines, last-minute cliffhanging drama and even, perhaps, better ratings for the telecast. The Index admits to a conservative risk tolerance here, but on Monday morning will probably say it knew De Niro would win Best Supporting Actor all along. Let’s look at how the Gold Linings playbook plays out on Oscars eve. Academy Award For Best Picture In Oscar season, as in war, the first casualty is truth. Three of the Best Picture nominees, frontrunners at various stages of Oscar season, took Battleship -like hits for remaking history. Critics of Zero Dark Thirty , said it was pro-torture — oh, for the days of the Orwellian Bush era and “enhanced interrogation techniques” — and heightened its role in the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Lincoln slandered the state of Connecticut by depicting its representatives as voting against the 13 th Amendment. And to read The New York Times ’ Maureen Dowd and Salon ’s Andrew O’Hehir this week, about the only things Argo got absolutely right was that there is a country named Iran and a CIA operative named Tony Mendez. I’m bracing myself for the eleventh-hour revelation that Quvenzhane Wallis is actually a 32-year-old psychopathic Russian dwarf pretending to be a child. Which opens the door for Silver Linings Playbook . Reconsiders Ebert: “( Argo ) was also my choice of the year’s best movie. Now, more and more, from many different quarters, I hear affection for Silver Linings Playbook . People tell me, I have a brother-in-law exactly like that. I sense a groundswell.” But just as those Iranian guards discovered as they chased the hostage-carrying plane down the runway (yes, I know; didn’t happen) there should be no stopping Argo ’s awards season take-off, lifted by wins from such major Oscar precursors as the PGA, DGA, SAG, BAFTA and, most recently, WGA (you know; the guild supposedly more terrifying than the Ayatollah). For awards bloggers, this Best Picture race has been all kinds of personal. Lincoln champion Sasha Stone at Awards Daily concedes the race to Argo , but will have none of it, diss-missing director Ben Affleck as “a movie star director…(who) finally made a movie people liked” and bemoaning the injustice suffered by “a film that good, that well intentioned.” Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells, too, picks Argo to win, but not before raging against the machine for the film he believes should win: “ Zero Dark Thirty , Zero Dark Thirty , Zero Dark Thirty , and I don’t care…going down with the ship.” The more journalistic pundits at Gold Derby and Gurus o’ Gold mostly favor Argo to win, but Anne Thompson sees echoes of last year’s race between The King’s Speech and The Social Network : “On the one hand, there’s recognition of what the older Academy goes for: quality, heart, period seriousness. On the other is a more youthful, ardent and in its way, au courant popular favorite. This year, both contenders are resonant and timely, but one seems more establishment while the other is the hip up-and-comer.” And the Academy, she notes, is more establishment than the guild members who honored Argo . As for the Academy members who shared their ballots with the media, they’re all over the map. Of the five ballots shared with Entertainment Weekly , Argo was the pick of the Executive and the Actor. The Director went with Silver Linings Playbook , the Actress, Life of Pi, and the Writer, Beasts of the Southern Wild . A Director sharing his ballot with The Hollywood Reporter went with Zero Dark Thirty. Apropos of nothing, the Oscar Index remembers vividly being in thrall to Argo . When it was over, I leaned over to Mrs. Index and said, perhaps facetiously, “Best Picture.” Like Lincoln , it celebrated America at its best. But it also celebrated Hollywood at its best. It was not a valentine to the movies like The Artist ; it was more of a “We love this country, too,” pat on the back. But with all the potshots that Lincoln has taken over the last few months, it should be noted that the film truly did make history. After seeing the film, inquisitive Mississippi moviegoer Dr. Ranjan Batra discovered upon further research that the state had yet to technically ratify the 13th Amendment. He got the ball rolling and on Feb. 7, the state’s ratification became official. So Lincoln ’s got that going for it. 2013 Oscar Nominations For Best Director Here’s one of the categories in which we are fending off a little Index remorse. Steven Spielberg edges out Ang Lee , according to pundits Gold Derby and Gurus o’ Gold. With Affleck out of the running, this might be the category in which Academy voters choose to acknowledge Spielberg’s achievement. But The Wrap’s Steve Pond posits: “…as much as voters admire and respect ( Lincoln ), they don’t seem to love it, and as a result I think he is going to lose. The huge Actors Branch could sway things in favor of David O. Russell , whose film has been coming on strong in a typical Harvey Weinstein-engineered surge. But I suspect that the rest of the Academy will lean toward the spectacle of Life of Pi , and give Ang Lee his second Best Director award without a corresponding Best Picture win.” What do those shared Oscar ballots in EW reveal? The Director went with Russell (“the heart of the job remains performances”), but the Actress, Writer and the Executive went with Lee. The Actor voted for Spielberg. Academy Award Nominees For Best Actor Raymond Massey couldn’t do it. Henry Fonda couldn’t do it. Rex Hamilton couldn’t do it (that’s for any Police Squad watchers out there). Daniel Day-Lewis will be the first actor to win the Academy Award for portraying Abraham Lincoln. Oh, and he’s poised to become the first three-time Best Actor Oscar-winner. On this, Oscar-watchers are near unanimous. He was also the pick of four of the five members who shared their ballots with EW. The Actress went with Bradley Cooper . If she’s available and she ever runs into Cooper, it will make a nice icebreaker. Oscar Nominations 2013: The Best Actress Contenders This is another category that seems to be in last-minute flux. Jennifer Lawrence has retained her frontrunner status among pundits, but several are noting the intangibles attached to 85 year-old Emmanuelle Riva, not the least of which is the “too soon” factor. In other words, Lawrence and Chastain will be back and this is Riva’s first, and presumably last, bid for an Academy Award. Then again, three of those five EW ballots went with Naomi Watts in The Impossible . Could enough votes divided among the top three contenders make that possible? 2013 Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor Nominees Former frontrunner Tommy Lee Jones has endeared himself to no one this Oscar season and stayed off the campaign trail. On the one hand, you’ve got to grudgingly respect that. On the other, he might get the Golden Globe glums again watching Robert De Niro pick up his first Academy Award since Raging Bull . De Niro can be as taciturn and intimidating as Jones, but he gamely put himself out there this season and revealed an emotional side that swings votes. Now that is acting, dear readers. Twelve vs. nine of Gold Derby’s experts are now on Team De Niro. The Gurus o’ Goldsters also now rank De Niro as the frontrunner, dropping Jones to No. 2. Two out of three of In Contention’s experts are also in De Niro’s camp. If De Niro does win, he owes it to Katie Couric to acknowledge her in his acceptance speech. But there is one Silver lining — for TLJ: Nate Silver , the breakout prognosticator in the last presidential campaign, predicts Jones (and Spielberg) will win. There has, too, been some late-breaking buzz for Christoph Waltz. That Director who shared his Oscar ballot with the Hollywood Reporter admitted that he did not vote for Jennifer Lawrence because he was offended by her Saturday Night Live monologue (on principle alone, can his privileges be revoked?). I wonder what he thought of Waltz on “SNL” as “Djesus Uncrossed”? Oscar Nominations 2013: Best Supporting Actress Nominees This Oscar has a first name; and it’s Anne. LAST WEEK IN THE 2013 OSCAR INDEX: OSCAR INDEX: Will Academy ‘Amour’ For Emmanuelle Riva Lead To Best Actress Upset? More 2013 Oscar Nominations: Academy Award Nominees Announced – ‘Lincoln’ Leads 2013 Oscar Noms Oscar Nominations 2013 — The Biggest Snubs & Surprises Of The Year 2013 Oscar Predictions By The Numbers: Which Nominees Are Hot (Jennifer Lawrence) & Not Follow Movieline on Twitter .
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Oscar Index: Anne Hathaway Is A Sure Bet For Sunday, But Jennifer Lawrence Shouldn’t Get Cocky
Accused murderer Jodi Arias told jurors in court that she killed Travis Alexander in self-defense, but doesn’t remember stabbing him nearly 30 times. “I just remember dropping the knife, being very freaked out and screaming,” Arias, 32, said after two weeks of explicit direct testimony about her sex life. She says the knife was the same one Travis Alexander – with whom she often engaged in kinky sex – had used that afternoon when he tied her up. Facing the death penalty if convicted, Jodi Arias says her memory of the June 4, 2008 slaying finally clears up when she put the knife in the dishwasher. Driving off barefoot, she brought the rope she said Alexander had used to tie her up and a gun that she pulled from his closet before shooting him. “I was very scared and very upset … I just wanted to die,” she testified. “I thought, ‘My life is probably done now.'” She says she decided to bury those feelings and try to act normal as she drove north into Utah to visit another man she already had plans to see. At that point she says she … Tossed the gun in the desert. Dropped the rope in a Dumpster near St. George, Utah. Washed the blood from her hands with bottled Costco water she had in her car. Put on a spare pair of work shoes. The man she met, Ryan Burns, earlier testified that Jodi Arias was frisky and affectionate when she visited on June 5, the day after she killed Travis. Arias testified that she kissed Burns and cuddled with him after killing Alexander because, “I felt safe right there and, I figured, I just wanted to seem normal.” “I wanted to feel like I didn’t just do what I just did.” Arias’ testimony was the long-anticipated centerpiece of her defense. Once that’s done, prosecutors are expected to spend days trying to pick it apart. Arias talked about how she and Alexander, a charismatic Mormon motivational speaker, had an off-and-on relationship – one sometimes violent or sadistic. She says she had arrived at his Mesa, Ariz. home at 5 a.m. and took photos and video of themselves having sex. That sounds pleasant enough. However, Alexander allegedly became enraged with her – for giving him badly scratched CDs of photos of their trips together, then for dropping his camera. She says that as Travis Alexander chased her through a walk-in closet “like a linebacker,” she grabbed a gun that she knew he kept on a top shelf. She says she held up the gun, expecting that Alexander would stop charging at her, but he didn’t. That’s when her memory becomes hazy, she says. “The gun went off, I didn’t even mean to shoot, I didn’t know my hand was on the trigger,” Arias testified. “I have no memory of stabbing him,” she added. Jurors have already heard graphic testimony that Alexander was shot in the head and repeatedly stabbed, and that his throat was slashed ear to ear. Arias testified she remembers standing in his bathroom, dropping the knife on the hard floor, and thinking, “that I just couldn’t believe what had just happened.” Arias also testified that she still loves Alexander: “It’s a different love but yes, I do.” Since the slaying, Arias has changed her story, first saying she had no connection, then saying two masked intruders killed Alexander and almost killed her. “I basically told everyone what I could remember of the day, and that the intruder story was all B.S.,” Arias said Wednesday afternoon at the close of her testimony. Prosecutors suggest Arias killed Alexander out of jealousy after he pushed her out of his life and started dating others, and that the gun was actually one she stole.
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Jodi Arias Does Not Remember Stabbing Boyfriend 30 or So Times
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Tagged arias-picture, chase, Gossip, Hollywood, hollywood-news, invalid, knife, make-memorable, news update, Sex, stars, writer
Lou Myers, who played Mr. Gaines on A Different World, has died. Myers passed away on February 19 at Charleston Medical Center in West Virginia after undergoing a heart-related emergency and falling into a coma. He had previously been hospitalized in December for pneumonia. A Different World ran from 1987-1993 and was conceived as a spinoff from The Cosby Show , in which the characters attended a historically black university. Myers starred on the show alongside Lisa Bonet and Jada Pinkett. In his later years, Myers would also make memorable appearances in The Wedding Planner, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Tin Cup and All About the Andersons .
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Lou Myers Dies; Different World Star Was 77
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Sony made the announcement the tech world anticipated last night, telling fans at a New York City press conference that PlayStation 4 would be on sale this holiday season. But the electronics company didn’t reveal the device itself, much to the chagrin of many on the Internet. The price of PS4 has not yet been determined, said Jack Tretton, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America. But it will likely go for approximately $500-$600, the same as PS3 when it debuted over six years ago. The PlayStation 4 console , meanwhile, will be part of a new ecosystem focused on hardware, software and “the fastest, most powerful gaming network,” according to Mark Cerny, Sony’s lead system architect on the item. PS4 will also… … have a Blu-ray disc drive. … lack the ability to play games created for previous PS editions. … feature a button that allows one to broadcast video of one’s game play virtually, across social networks. Labeling PS4 a “supercharged PC,” Tretton said: “One of the big challenges we faced in the past was that we created great technology that we handed over to the development community, and they had to go through a learning curve before they could harness it. And when they did, we saw some phenomenal games. We wanted to lower that barrier of entry and really give them the ability to create tremendous gaming experiences from Day One.”
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PlayStation 4: Unveiled! Sort Of!
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For the latest movie news , turn to Mark Hamill himself apparently. The last Jedi standing recently opened up to ET about his possible return to Star Wars in Episode VII, and weighed in on many other topics regarding the film. Hamill says there aren’t any deals in place for himself, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford returning to Star Wars yet, but Lucasfilm is negotiating with them. “They’re talking to us,” Hamill said, and they have for some time. “George [Lucas] wanted to know whether we’d be interested. He did say that if we didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t cast another actor in our parts.” “I can tell you right away that we haven’t signed any contracts. We’re in the stage where they want us to go in and meet with Michael Arndt, who is the writer.” “They want us to meet Kathleen Kennedy, who is going to run Lucasfilm. Both have had meetings that were postponed – on their end, not mine. They’re more busy than I am.” What does Hamill, now 61, think Star Wars: Episode VII holds for Luke Skywalker, the character he made iconic more than three decades ago? “I’m assuming, because I haven’t talked to the writers, that these movies would be about our offspring … like my character would be sort of in the Obi-Wan range.” “[Luke would be] an older, influential character.” “When I found out [while making the original trilogy] the ultimate good news/bad news joke – the good news is there’s a real attractive, hot girl in the universe. The bad news is she’s your sister – I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to wind up like Sir Alec [Guinness]. I’m going to be a lonely old hermit living out in some kind of desert igloo with a couple of robots.'” He also has some reservations about returning without his costars, and about the new trilogy and any Star Wars spinoffs being too reliant on CGI. “Another thing I’d want to make sure of is are we going to have the whole gang back? Is Carrie and Harrison and Billy Dee and Tony Daniels, everybody that’s around?” “I want to make sure everybody’s on board here, rather than just one.” “I also said to George that I wanted to go back to the way it was, in the sense that ours was much more carefree and lighthearted and humorous.” “In my opinion, anyway… I hope they find the right balance of CGI with practical effects. I love props, I love models, miniatures, matte paintings ̬ I’m sort of old school.” “I think if you go too far it winds up looking like just a giant a video game, and that’s unfortunate…. If they listen to me, I’d say, ‘Lighten up and go retro with the way it looks.'”
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Mark Hamill: Returning For Star Wars: Episode VII?
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Tagged carrie fisher, film, hamill, news update, opinion, pistorius, star wars, TMZ, writer, writers
After Lindsay Lohan’s got busted for allegedly slugging another woman at a New York nightclub in November, I wrote her off as a lost cause , but Stephen Rodrick’s fascinating New York Times piece about Paul Schrader’s making of The Canyons with Lohan left me thinking that there’s still a talented actress in that scandal-ravaged psyche worth saving. Although Lohan exhibits plenty of ridiculous (and tragic) behavior in the story that would prove my original point, and the media has predictably chosen to run with that, I was struck by a few passages in the story that indicate Lohan is more than just a self-destructive starlet whose career is hanging by a thread. Here are three of them: “The next day, Lohan arrived relatively on time for a makeup test. She sat behind a table with a can of Sprite, looked into the camera and flashed a wholesome smile that would not have been out of place in the world’s best soda commercial. Schrader grabbed my arm and pointed at Lohan’s image. ‘See? That’s why we put up with all the crap. You can shoot bad movies with actresses who are always on time. But look! The rest is just noise.’” Then there’s Rodrick’s description of Lohan’s preparation for a scene in which she was required to be scared and emotionally naked: “All that remained was to get a close-up of Deen touching Lohan’s face with a blood-streaked finger. Only half of Lohan’s face would be in the shot. Most actresses would pop in some Visine to well their eyes with tears and be done with it. Instead, Lohan went back to her room, and everyone waited. I was standing by her door, and soon I could hear her crying. It began quietly, almost a whimper, but rose to a guttural howl. It was the sobbing of a child lost in the woods. She came out of her room, and I watched the shot on a monitor. Now, without the garish makeup, Lohan looked sadly beautiful, and it was easy to see why men like Schrader were willing to put their lives in her hands.” The last excerpt appears at the very end of the story when, after all of the drama of shooting The Canyons, Rodrick asks the writer of Taxi Driver and the director of Affliction and the underrated Auto Focus , if he regretted casting Lohan: “He shook his head. “No, she’s great in the film.” Schrader then told me a secret. Until the screening disaster, Schrader had been in talks with Lohan to star in a remake of John Cassavetes’s “Gloria,” about a woman on the run from the mob. The director lighted up, childlike; hope triumphing over memories of being stripped naked. “It doesn’t involve a co-star. She would be perfect for it.” One of the things that makes Rodrick’s piece so good is that with passages like that, the reader has to make a judgement call: Is Schrader deluded because he really needs this film to move the needle, or is that the veteran filmmaker in him — the one who’s worked with Robert De Niro , Martin Scorsese and his brilliant, late brother Leonard Schrader — talking? I say it’s a mixture of both, but more of the latter. And though Rodrick certainly leaves the impression that The Canyons is a problematic film (that was rejected by the Sundance Film Festival), he also writes this passage about Lohan’s performance that suggests that, with a lot of tough love and self-discipline, her career is salvageable. “But about 15 minutes in, something clicked….Lohan was equal parts vulnerable and dissolute.” I know what you’re thinking: That line is a distillation of Lohan’s recent life, but go back and re-read the description of Lohan’s crying scene. In the right hands, Lohan is capable of tapping into all of chaos and pain she’s experienced and putting it into her performance. It’s too bad that Exorcist: The Beginning was such a debacle for Schrader. LiLo could probably turn in quite a performance as a woman possessed. As the Times piece demonstrates, the promising actress that Lohan once was is still alive in her. It’s just that the demons keep dragging her down. More on Lindsay Lohan: Lindsay Lohan Busted Again − Is She Beyond Help? Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
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What People Are Missing In The NY Times Story On Lindsay Lohan
Judd Apatow knows that in casting his real life wife and children in his latest film, the seriocomic Knocked Up spin-off/sequel This Is 40 , he’s inadvertently invited the world to peek into his own life, marriage, issues, and neuroses. Still, despite the many parallels one might draw between Paul Rudd ‘s Pete (now a struggling indie record label owner) and Leslie Mann ‘s Debbie (whose own small business and marital woes are nothing compared to impending big 4-0), Apatow insists most of This is 40 is fictionalized. Okay, much of it. Well, he doesn’t escape to the bathroom to play games on his iPad like Pete does. “I’m more about reading the Huffington Post ,” Apatow joked. Apatow may have built his comic empire on R-rated man-child tales rife with fart and dick jokes (not to mention sweet, sweet bromance) but with This is 40 the writer-director takes a considered look inward at marriage and relationships. They’re never perfect — even between Hollywood creatives like Apatow and Mann, whose daughters Maude and Iris play heightened versions of themselves in the film — but as Apatow mused in our conversation rife with relationship real talk, personal reflections, and necessary tangents about Maude’s real life LOST obsession and Apatow’s 1995 kids’ camp movie Heavyweights : “Imagine that you had to spend every second of the rest of your life with your best friend. How often do you think they would annoy you?” Out of all the characters you’ve created onscreen, you spun off Pete and Debbie into their own film — the two characters whose lives are closest to your own. What was the impetus for wanting to explore this particular relationship further? I have two interests; I’m trying to make funny movies and I also want to explore the human condition, and I want to be truthful about it. And the truth is in any relationship you have good times and loving times, and sometimes it goes really dark. And sometimes out of nowhere, something just blows. People bring a lot of baggage into their relationships and I think most people are pretty neurotic. Life is pretty overwhelming for most people. If you have any concern about being a good spouse and parent and having your job work out and your health — you’re just spinning too many plates. And once in a while we snap, so I was trying to show a truthful version of what happens when that occurs — sometimes that’s really funny and sometimes it’s just sad, and people’s fears come out. When you first began working up the seeds of This is 40 , was there any hesitation knowing that people out there might watch the film and wonder, ‘So that’s how it is in their family?’ about you and Leslie? For some reason I didn’t worry about because I thought we already did it with Knocked Up. And it is a mutated version of us. It’s very heightened — a lot of the moments, the worst moments, for dramatic and comedy purposes – but for the most part we’re pretty boring. Once in a while it does go the wrong way, but then you have to figure out how to get it back. That’s what a long-term commitment is about; sometimes you make mistakes and you have to apologize and be kind to each other again. I always say to my kids whenever they ask me, ‘Why do you guys fight?’ — I say, ‘Imagine that you had to spend every second of the rest of your life with your best friend. How often do you think they would annoy you?’ And, you know, that’s how we feel about it. We love each other but we’re complicated people — and it’s hard for me to know if part of it is this is why we’re in this business, because we’re sensitive, complicated, wounded people and we’re trying to get along with each other. [Laughs] But most of it is fabricated. Nothing in the movie feels specifically true, it didn’t happen to us, but the emotions are very truthful, the feelings and the conflicts are all based on things that we relate to. Even so, you know that some folks out there are going to imagine you sitting on the toilet playing Words With Friends on your iPad every morning. I’m more about reading the Huffington Post . [Laughs] I would sit on the toilet all day if my legs wouldn’t go numb. If I could create a toilet seat that didn’t lead to my legs going numb… This is 40 is also a rare opportunity to see Leslie front and center; she has this wonderful ability to play deep sadness and humor simultaneously. Do you have a favorite scene of hers from the films you’ve worked on together? My favorite scene that we’ve ever done together was the scene in Funny People where Adam Sandler’s character apologizes to her character for cheating on her when they were young, and ruining their chance at having a long-term relationship. We shot it with three cameras and it was very emotional, and I was proud of both of them. Of everything I’ve done it’s one of my two or three favorite scenes. She has a way of being very funny while also being deeply emotional, so she can be dramatic and show pain and get laughs at the same time. I’m not even really sure how she accomplishes that, it’s just some aspect of her vibe which allows her to do many different colors at once. That’s the fun of working with her. And she’s always willing to do whatever it takes to get to an honest moment. She never says, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ or ‘That would be embarrassing,’ if anything she pushes to go farther and wants to get to the core of her character. There were definitely moments when we were making [ This is 40 ] when we said, ‘What are we doing? This is crazy’ — especially if there was a day when we weren’t getting along. We’re making this movie about a couple and their love and their troubles, so on the days when we’re not liking each other it just feels like a complete waste of time. Did it also then help to be making this movie? You have entire scenes where the dialogue pokes fun at couples therapy-speak, and it’s hilarious to point out how much, in the heat of the moment in a fight with your significant other, no amount of preparedness or civility training helps. Yes! I know everything about therapy and so can break every rule of how you’re supposed to communicate in five seconds. You just have to learn to slow your brain down and be patient and not feel the need to win every moment, and I don’t know if there’s anything harder on Earth than doing that. Giving up your need to be correct is brutal, especially for me because I think I have to be very confident in my day job. All day long I’m making decisions very quickly and I have to be very strong about it, so for me to come home and be soft and open and not leap to pounce on a problem and come up with an answer and execute it is hard for me — and it’s truly annoying to Leslie. [Laughs] I can imagine! Any time a problem comes up, my thought is ‘Let’s solve this in the next five seconds and move on!’ And Leslie might want to explore the emotional life of some issue and tell me how she’s feeling for a really long time, and I just want to give her five seconds. That’s a big adjustment. This is 40 is also really about parents and children — every one of us is messed up because of our parents, and by the same token we’re great because of our parents. Pete and Debbie both deal with that burden. Whatever you didn’t get from your parents, you want more of from your spouse. So if you feel like you were abandoned, you’re going to be needy. If you feel like your parents were engulfing, you’re going to want to push your spouse away. It’s really hard to fight against that; I find that the imprinting you have when you’re a kid is really difficult to wipe away. Whenever I’m really upset about something it’s always a result of something from the past. But that’s a revelation that you really only have when you’re in your thirties, maybe. I don’t know that I would have really understood it so much when I was 20. Well, people are so busy trying to earn a living they put very little time into understanding themselves. That’s something that happens later in life, and partially what the movie’s about. I find myself embarrassed that I’m still neurotic about things that happened to me as a kid, because my memory’s disappearing so I don’t even remember the incidents, but I remember the neuroses are and they’re not going away. How do you think viewers of a younger generation will react differently to the film? A lot of it depends on what you’re looking for in a movie. Some people go to movies to escape. I like movies that make me think and feel and I don’t necessarily have to feel good the whole time. So I like movies to be as entertaining and hilarious as I can make them, but I’m also trying to stick in your craw a little bit and talk about some tougher ideas. If that’s what you want, I think it’s a movie you’d really enjoy. But if you really want to shut your brain down, then I have other movies that you can rent. [Laughs]
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‘This Is 40’: Judd Apatow Gets Real About Relationships (And ‘LOST’ And ‘Heavyweights’)
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Tagged comic, earth, film, Funny or Die, Hollywood, ideas, Music, price, Relationships, writer
Music not only serves as the subject but informs the very fabric of Not Fade Away , David Chase’s savvy ’60s-set feature film debut. Aided immeasurably by his keen ear for dialogue, Chase filters a suddenly tumultuous, transformative decade through the restrictive prism of conservative suburbia in this story of a New Jersey boy’s coming of age, as political instability, class awareness and rock ‘n’ roll break in waves over the still-inchoate consciousness of several friends trying to form a band. Though starless, save for James Gandolfini’s knockout supporting perf, this dynamic pic should resonate with auds countrywide upon its Dec. 21 release. Not Fade Away injects the past with the nervous energy and exciting uncertainty of the present, devoid of nostalgia or biopic baggage, and infused with all the wicked wit that characterized Chase’s The Sopranos and his bygone standout episodes of The Rockford Files. The move from TV to a theatrical canvas is mirrored in the picture’s very conception, presenting the New Jersey microcosm as no longer a self-contained unit. Still, the film rarely leaves its setting, where Doug (John Magaro) lives with his looming, disapproving father (Gandolfini), his quasi-hysterical mother (Molly Price), and his little sister (Meg Guzulescu), who supplies voiceover narration and performs a wonderful curtain-dropper to boot. Macrocosm first meets microcosm when Doug returns to Jersey from college sporting longer hair, Cuban heels and anti-war indignation, quitting his studies to devote himself to the rock band he started in high school. Chase’s writing shines in this intricate relationship between world events and their impact on the everyday: Drawing from his own, decidedly more lackluster experience as a band drummer, the writer-helmer surrounds Doug with friends whose talents are not necessarily congruent with their ambitions and whose class differences manifest themselves erratically. Thus, after lead singer/guitarist Gene (Jack Huston) temporarily knocks himself out by swallowing a lit joint, Doug takes over as vocalist, wowing the local crowd with his rendition of “Time Is On My Side,” a glamorous position he soon assumes permanently, to Gene’s ongoing resentment. Meanwhile, well-off Wells (Will Brill) wrestles with the philosophical implications of imminent fame, always worrying they’ll “lose the mystique” they’ve built up with their barely existent fanbase. The group covers the Rolling Stones , the Kinks and Bo Diddley with varying degrees of fidelity, but Not Fade Away pointedly refuses to follow either a difficult-road-to-success or downward-spiral-to-failure scenario. Instead, the music feeds off surrounding chaos, anchoring Doug’s existence and coloring snapshots of various stages of his youth. His questioning whether to go for a more melodic or bluesier vocalization while listening to Leadbelly equates to his deciding on different attitudes toward life. Even movies and TV shows are defined through their music: The Twilight Zone announcing its presence to the protag through its signature theme, while Blow-Up confounds him with its silence. Doug’s evolving relationship with wealthier girlfriend Grace (Bella Heathcote) forms the film’s other throughline and, like his interaction with certain band brothers, brings up issues of economic disparity. But Chase excels at diverting attention from the obvious and foregrounding the particular, as in how Doug’s cramped kitchen contrasts with Grace’s Toulouse Lautrec-wallpapered rec room, where his band plays parties. And when Doug is shown digging ditches at Grace’s country club, the scene’s focus stays completely on Doug’s failed attempt to musically bond with Lander (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), a conservative black co-worker who only likes church music. The young thesps play their characters, interestingly, as socially inept, with varying levels of self-assertion and intellectual pretension. Magaro’s Doug, maturing in fits and starts, contrasts strikingly with Gandolfini’s brilliant turn as a father undergoing a late-blooming epiphany. Chase often matches and sometimes even betters Cameron Crowe or Floyd Mutrux in granting present-tense immediacy to the rock ‘n’ roll on the soundtrack, never smothering it with hindsight. In this endeavor, he was undoubtedly greatly assisted by exec producer/music supervisor Steven Van Zandt. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Read more from the original source:
REVIEW: David Chase Rocks The ’60s In Dynamic, Witty ‘Not Fade Away’
Posted in Celebrities, Gossip, Hollywood, Hot Stuff, News
Tagged chase, david-chase, Hollywood, interaction, isiah whitlock, james-gandolfini, Music, price, writer, youth
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