Daily Archives: September 24, 2009

Radha Mitchell on Surrogates, and Why She Loves Her iPhone

Interviews

Radha Mitchell’s mid-afternoon plans have been waylaid, but you wouldn’t know it from her sunny disposition, and a laugh that can split the air. Traffic hampered our respective arrivals at the coastal hotel that serves as our meeting spot, and now — because this is Los Angeles, after all — there’s a deejayed potable water benefit raging at the pool. “I had this whole plan where we’d chat outdoors, and afterward I’d go sit in a patch of sun, read the rest of this thing,” she says, indicating a script in her bag, “and then take a swim.”

No worries. Repairing to a quieter spot indoors for drinks, we swap stories about the somewhat abstruse, themed billboards that have just gone up all over the city for her new film, a couple of which look an awful lot like Angelina Jolie and David Beckham. “That’s [popular] according to Disney marketing, which must be based on some reliable statistics,” she says. A chattering, water-supporting socialite wanders by, and conversation amiably turns to social networking, text-messaging and Mitchell’s iPhone, only the latter of which she loves. “I do love accessing the web on the phone,” she says. “It’s changed conversation. There are no questions. And it’s not really about the facts anymore, it’s about how you use the facts spontaneously. You don’t have to know anything, which I love.”

She’s kidding, of course. Mitchell must know plenty, because in her decade-plus in Los Angeles, the Australian native has effortlessly straddled the fence between art and commerce, deftly juggling popular studio fare (Man on Fire, Silent Hill, Pitch Black) with equally well received independent films (Melinda and Melinda, Finding Neverland, Henry Poole Is Here). Even her two forthcoming projects perfectly illustrate this split.

The Waiting City, which details a young couple’s journey to India to collect their new adopted baby, has just had its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival announced. Then there’s Jonathan Mostow’s brawny Surrogates, in which Mitchell plays an FBI agent alongside Bruce Willis, investigating the mysterious murder of a college student linked to the man who helped create a phenomenally popular technology that allows people to purchase robotic versions of themselves — fit, good-looking, remotely controlled machines that enable users to experience life vicariously from the comfort of their homes.

“It’s a comment on the state of culture now, and not that far from the way a lot of people live their lives, I guess,” says Mitchell of Surrogates. “It’s a pristine, manicured reality where you get to feel everything, because the sensory stimulation goes into your body, but it filters the pain out, and can modulate your experiences, if there are smells you don’t like or whatever.”

“At times my character is operated by other people, though I can’t tell you who, or why,” Mitchell continues. “You meet her as a real person briefly, which is interesting. It’s funny, because all the real people in this movie are fat, I guess because they’re sitting in their chairs. So I’ve got this really fat bum. I don’t know if it’s featured in the movie, but it took a while to make. And I have fake teeth. It’s quite a good look. There’s a different look with the surrogate — she had a padded bra and long hair. But what I discovered is that if there’s no other preference, the fat ass was a bit more comfortable.”

Sagging asses give way to talk about mortality, and before long we’ve tripped headlong into a heady discussion of the possibility of virtually freezing time. At what point would one want to stop aging, though? “In the 30s,” Mitchell says, point-blank, then pauses. “But then I think there’s something interesting about being in your 60s or 70s. I’m sure it’s not great, going through that process of decay. But it must be interesting, and there’s something quite important about that cycle of taking care of your parents and then being taken care of — the reversal of that situation.” When I point out Americans typically aren’t as hands on in elder-care as other cultures, Mitchell has a one-word rejoinder prepped: “Florida.”

The Blue Tooth Virgin

Film Reviews

In college, where self-indulgence and pretentiousness are practically
their own electives, especially in the creative arts, a theater
acquaintance who dabbled in his own brand of snarky, self-referential,
low-fi music, wrote a song (for another friend’s original stageplay,
it’s worth noting) in which he wearyingly noted it was “time to go put
on the ‘Good work!’ facade.” The Blue Tooth Virgin intriguingly
transposes this notion of necessarily glad-handing feedback to
Hollywood and the independent film realm, and chronicles the hurt and
petty jealousy — common to almost any creative individual, as well as
anyone who’s felt the sting of a loved one or family member’s shrug —
that comes bubbling to the surface when niceties fall away and shared
opinions aren’t all rosy.

The film centers around two Los Angeles wordsmiths, Sam (Austin Peck, above left), an aspiring screenwriter with a cult success, short-lived TV credit to his name, and David (Bryce Johnson, of Sleeping Dogs Lie), a successful magazine editor at a locally based laddie publication. The duo have been friends for years, but when David doesn’t appreciate Sam’s latest script it opens a fissure in their friendship that spreads through the rest of their lives. Ultimately, both guys must reevaluate their motivations for writing, their need for outside praise and validation, and what it means to see yourself as you actually are.

Written and helmed by Russell Brown, a still-young multi-hyphenate with the benefit of both previous directorial know-how as well as different industry experience and the perspective which that provides, The Blue Tooth Virgin is named after the achingly arty screenplay Sam passes off to David for feedback. A noirish character study (because Sam is really all about character, as he frequently intones) full of transsexuals, private investigators, time-traveling and mystery, the narrative within the movie seems like a cheeky nod of homage to Tom DiCillo, who’s aped the well-traveled grooves of independent cinema in movies like Living In Oblivion and The Real Blonde. It’s the perfect leaping-off point for a discussion of what film could and should mostly be — a challenge to audiences, or a salve?

The nice, conversational rapport between Peck and Johnson — a sort of budget lookalike for Paul Walker — is the film’s strongest selling point, and Brown imbues his work with real, lived-in dialogue that captures the ways we frequently muddy our feelings in trying to dance around directness. There’s the danger of the movie becoming too insular, an inside-the-Beltway-type circle jerk of specifically artistic competitiveness and grievance. Brown mitigates this somewhat with an argument between Sam and his white-collar wife, Rebecca (Lauren Stamile), that, while solid in theory, needs to be anchored a bit more in tongue-loosened drunkeness than how it plays.

Interestingly, and decidedly for the better, The Blue Tooth Virgin also trades in long-form scenes that serve as call-and-response mirror images of one another. (Quotations on the turmoil of the artistic process help serve as chapter divides within the film.) Though this tack could be sacrificed and tweaked a bit up front for more energy and surface appeal, it helps him more or less get to the meat of his conceit, and pays dividends later in the movie, in a pair of engaging scenes in which Sam and David crawl inside their own heads (the former with a New Age-y creative consultant, the latter with a more conventional therapist) and try to root out what their writing means to them. Captured in simple, point-and-shoot, low-fi strokes, The Blue Tooth Virgin doesn’t aim for grand-gesture profundity; it’s nervous and ambivalent about “correct” notions of modern cinematic storytelling, as reflected in the gulf of opinion between its characters. But it entertainingly captures the ever-present tension between art and commerce, and again sets on a tee the age-old question: is it an audience that makes a work a legitimate piece of art? (Regent, R, 79 minutes)