Adult film isn’t typically thought of as a playground for high art, but tucked away from all the wall-to-wall gonzo and parody titles is a certain market for challenging, outré and sometimes downright bizarre features. If the sex is the sizzle that sells the finished product, auteur-minded filmmakers can sometimes be otherwise left to experiment wildly within the narrative parameters.

Case in point: writer-director Gary Orona’s Sanatorium, a twisted, labyrinthine and very stylized story about an iconic porn star (Tabitha Stevens) who discovers a secret, dark world of politicians, lawyers, priests and other do-gooders whose public images stand in stark contrast to their private lives. While awaiting a sexual liaison in his hotel suite, a U.S. Senator who enjoys kinkiness other than what his anti-porn crusading platform might suggest listens to a porn star’s story of her descent into insanity, all while waiting for his opportunity to seduce her. This twisted subplot then spins back in time, detailing her sex life and intense personal journey, and underscoring the politician’s hypocrisy.

Shot in four states over a five-year period, on both 35mm and digital high definition, the film stars Stevens, Kagney Linn Karter, Sara Sloane, Raylene, James Deen, Nick Manning, Ron Jeremy (in a non-sex role, the film’s press release somewhat amusingly stresses) and others. Accompanying the thriller is an original soundtrack composed by Guns ‘n Roses Teddy “Zig Zag” Andreadis, Billy Idol’s guitar player Steve Stevens and Static X’s Tony Campos and Koichi Fukuda. An interview with Orona, Stevens and Karter follows below:

Brent Simon: For everyone, what’s it like taking what for most people is a passionate, fun, almost extracurricular activity, let’s say, and making it fit within the confines and schedule of a regular job?

Gary Orona: There isn’t really a lot of glamour in it, because it’s very intense and there’s no such thing as a 9-to-5 day in film production, adult [or otherwise]. I come from the mainstream first, and I’ve done a lot of adult work as well, and it doesn’t change — you have 18 and 20-hour days. The interesting thing I’ve noticed is that when you go to shoot a sex scene… well, I have no idea of what the public’s perception of what that process is like, but I’ll tell you that as a filmmaker after the first 5 or 10 minutes it’s incredibly tedious. Sanatorium is an extremely unique and rare exception to that, but typically it could take you an hour or two to get all the coverage and positions you need. It’s very tedious. It takes a lot of work and time to get it done.

Tabitha Stevens: I would have to agree. Especially since I’m a producer of this film, I’m a star of the film and I have a lot of sex in the film. That makes for very long days. In my case, we shot in desert locations, and for me to stay fit into character and do sex on top of it, when I’m starving myself because I go on a vision quest in the film, so I’m not really eating and I’m going down to 89 pounds — it was intense. We had over a 100-page script for the film, so I had to learn lines and know them. And being in these crazy locations, and then doing scenes that take a long time, you do get tired. It wears on you, but as long as you know what the end product is going to be, you get excited so you give it your all. I don’t think anybody in this film lacked in any respect at all — whether it be a sexual performance or the dialogue. Everyone did a wonderful job, and seeing that unfold along the way pumped you up a little bit.

Kagney Linn Karter: I would have to say, coming from my generation, obviously this type of (adult) production is an extreme production. Where I come from, you don’t know whether you’re going to be on set four hours, two hours or 16 hours, so you have to be able to really stay professional and say, “Today could be a long day or today could be a short day.” A lot of times you might know [in what order] a studio will shoot, but sometimes you don’t so you just have to take the good and the bad, and stay on your toes.

BS: I understand this film came about through some fairly unique circumstances — that it was initially conceived of as a regular, non-adult feature film. And it was shot on both 35mm and digital. So Gary, what was it like, this five-year journey of taking an idea with the same narrative kernel, and then re-contextualizing it?

GO: We didn’t steer too far from its origins. We started five years ago, and the story was about a legendary porn superstar who’s dealing with a deep depression rooted in the stigma naturally applied to porn stars, and this journey that she goes through to find her true self. So it’s really interesting in that aspect, because you don’t typically see a porn film with that sort of storyline. It was originally designed to be R-rated, or maybe a NC-17 film. We shot it on 35mm with very high production standards, just as if I was shooting one of my HBO shows. I brought that to the table, a mainstream sensibility, if you will. Then what happened is that when we finished, we realized it was a little incomplete and we got busy with other projects. It took us about a year to get to that point. We put it on the shelf for a few years, and then a little while back we started seeing a lot of these politicians popping up in the media, leading these very twisted double lives, a very hypocritical thing. We had touched on this in the film, the fact that we’re stigmatized by people who behind closed doors are as twisted if not more so than anybody in porn ever was. Once that started happening, we realized we had a pearl incubating in a shell, and realized it was ready. We decided about five months ago to add hardcore sex scenes, which it really should have had originally because it would have told the original story better, and we added another subplot about a particular senator who’s leading a double life. And that really brought the whole thing together. That gestation period was what the film needed to become something truly original. And it’s very authentic. I think that the performances, locations, production value, what the message is — I don’t know of any other porn I’ve ever seen like this.

BS: There’s the old saying about making a film three times — in casting, shooting and post-production, but was this the most radical recombination of elements you’ve ever had professionally?

GO: Oh, absolutely. And I could have approached this in a very direct, typical, banal, Hollywood fashion, and said it’s this battle of mainstream versus pornography and the stigma, make it a very A-B-C three-act play, but I didn’t want to do it that way. I wanted it to be unique and interesting, and so being a fan of David Lynch I decided let’s go non-linear with this and bury the story with tons of symbols and metaphors and iconic images that you have to figure out. So viewers will hopefully watch a few times for the sex, and then hopefully want to watch it a whole bunch of times to figure out what the messages are. And it’s all twisted backwards and inside-out and every which way. To get to that point required what Tabitha said — the cast is phenomenal, that’s one point. It’s stellar, everyone fits perfectly. There’s hundreds of hours of editorial work that went into this to make it what it is. And typically a porn feature will be shot in maybe three days and edited a week later and then out the door, but this is completely different beast altogether. The elements that went into the production design were (very thought out). I’ll throw out one example: Kagney plays Web Girl, and the image we created at the beginning of her scene, she’s in front of this little tiny flip-camera on this big set of sticks on a big soundstage. There’s just a couple lights around her, and she’s on a little mattress. And I’m sure when people first see her they might say, “What?,” but what’s going on is that she personifies what the business is now — it’s about hard, intense aggressive performances where we don’t really care so much about the production value. As long as we get something decent that we can throw up on the Internet, that’s all that matters. Really, though, it’s all about the sexual performance.

BS: Tabitha, it sounds like you go to pretty outrageous places in the movie — you talked about starving yourself, and shooting in desert. Did Sanatorium speak to your experience in the adult industry?

TS: This is me, this is the truth, this is what I’ve gone through personally, and so that’s why it touches me more so than anything I’ve ever done. We created this story, [Gary and I]. I talked with Gary one time, and he said, “Maybe we should do something about that, maybe we should get into a story,” so pretty much what you see on film is what I’ve gone through, even with the stunt work. When you see me hanging from a tree I’m actually hanging from a tree, that’s me hanging from shark hooks by my flesh. These are other things, of course, that I wanted to do. I wanted to go through a vision quest, and feel what it was like. And I had to almost beg Gary to let me do half of the things that I do in the film, but it’s because Tabitha Stevens, the character in the film, is really the Tabitha Stevens that you’re here talking to today.

BS: Jenna Jameson once said that younger adult film starlets today are interested in sexual performance in a way that she didn’t comprehend when she entered the business.

KLK: Absolutely. For me, performance is everything. The point of being a sex symbol is to perform to your fullest, and give those who are the viewers what they want. That’s why you get into a business like this, to give to others in a way. And enhancing your performance, obviously with limits, is a way to do that — taking yourself to a place that could be a bit of a push is taking somebody else to a place where maybe they appreciate that, because it’s someplace they want to go in their fantasy. And that’s the job. That’s why it’s a job for us, and fantasy for them.

TS: And I think what Jenna was talking about was probably because Jenna was mostly shooting features — I think she only shot a couple shows that weren’t features. And being that I’ve been in the business for a very long time, since1995, I’ve shot my share of features as well as what we now call gonzo, and when you’re in a feature I think you’re more directed as to how you should have sex. I think that’s what Jenna was actually going through. It wasn’t more about, “OK, be free to be yourself, and take control.” That’s what you can mostly do in gonzo, and I believe that’s what I’ve always done. I notice that. A lot of times, in feature films you’re constantly told now do this position and this position; it’s very structured. When Gary shoots, when you watch these scenes [in Sanatorium], they’re not structured scenes. I did discuss with the talent what positions would feel comfortable, because you always want to feel comfortable, but we just went ahead and did what we felt was going to be great, and what we liked to do. I think that with most features you can’t really get to be your free self, let’s say.

BS: Visually the film seems pretty striking. But adult films and even mainstream films in general are typically less interested in trying to [explore a sort of] dream consciousness that might attract and bind us together as human beings. How did you work to achieve a sense of overarching visual style, and still fit that together with certain sex scenes?

GO: I think the film is better because it has sex in it. When we finished the film originally it [became clear it] needed it, because the film is about a porn star dealing with stigma. I think the reason you’re seeing these vivid visual elements is important because this film is extremely psychological and appealing to every single one of us. It’s part of a code. So if you watch it with the director’s commentary it’s all there, or if you want to watch it 10 times to figure it out, all the symbols are there, there are Jungian archetypes sprinkled all over, it’s a classical hero’s journey. What I did was twist the journey around a bit to make it harder to figure out. I think that makes it more fun. The sex is critical, and I think that the hardest part of producing and directing sex in a film like this is to do it in such a way that it’s not gratuitous, because by its very nature pornography is voyeuristic and gratuitous — it is what it is, and that’s its intention, and the experience. And so to try to produce a film that’s real, and doesn’t have any awkwardness when all of a sudden we’re thrown into a sex scene is difficult. In this one it works perfectly, because it’s integrated into the story, and when we shot those scenes — for instance, the one with Kagney I noticed an intense, absolute chemistry happening between herself and James Deen, and I knew well enough, through years and years of shooting linear narrative and what not, to step back and not become that over-imposing director now because the lighting is not quite right or because my camera angle is not right. I said what I’m going to do is let this thing run and I’m going to move this camera around and find my spots as quickly as I can while they go. They had something going on that rarely happens in porn, and that’s the eye contact — it was completely dialed in, as if we weren’t there. And so I let that go, I let it ride.

With Tabitha in all her scenes it was exactly the same thing. The only specific instructions I gave to her before her first interracial, which is in this movie, was do things very slowly and deliberately, and it’s almost like a worship before you start doing your thing. And: eye contact, keep those eyes connected. You don’t see those kinds of things happening in porn. What you typically see is a choice of three or four or five positions, and, “We need 10 or 15 minutes of it, flip over, blah blah blah.” It’s this very sterile, clinical process that has virtually no emotion in it. What I wanted to do was let these things go, even if the shot wasn’t perfect, because I think the realness of it completely trumps any artificial set-up. I can’t think of one instance in this movie where I think, “Wow, that kind of feels out of place.” Every sex scene is vital, furthering the story, explaining how her character is fighting her demon.

BS: Is “mainstream” part of the goal for adult film stars today, or is that just maybe an adjunct, because there are a lot of people who watch adult films but maybe don’t talk about it, so you become accidental superstars in a more digital, plugged-in world?

TS: I think it depends on the person. I got into the business I was in a marriage that didn’t have a lot of sex in it. I was 25 years old, married wealthy and was a bored housewife. It was something different. I had been doing national television commercials, I had been modeling, and I’d been going to acting classes in college. So I wanted to be more of an actress, and then I thought, “Sex would be kind of fun to do on film, why don’t we try that?” And I did, and did pretty well at it. And I’ve always liked acting, and being in front of the camera. For me, I like doing the crossover mainstream projects, I have a great time with them. I feel like I can pull off a performance, so I find it to be very sad that a lot of times in the mainstream when a porn star is cast into a role, you’re cast as either a porn star, a stripper or a hooker. That’s very sad to me. When I was given the opportunity to do the reality show Dr. 90210, we talked about plastic surgery and I went in to be truthful, and say I’m Tabitha Stevens, but I’m also a human being, and I went in to show people how I bettered myself through plastic surgery — though sometimes it can get twisted. My goal was to do things in the porn industry, but dabble in the mainstream as well. I don’t see why we can’t do both. I feel like I’m a good enough actress, and I see some actresses on television and think, “Wow, really? I think I could have done a better job myself.” (laughs) But I love what I do. I love performing for the camera and I love sex, so I think that if I can do both that would make me happy.

KLK: For me, from day one, I’ve always had high hopes and goals of creating a lot of buzz for myself. I don’t want to be a mainstream actress. I did, but when I found out you could act and have sex as well, it seemed like, “Hey!” (tilts head in mock realization) I think it’s great when people like Gary and Tabitha do movies like these because it shows that they can go together, and it can be amazing and work. Because there’s never been a film like this before, it makes me happy — because this is what mixing mainstream and porn is. So that’s definitely always a goal of mine — I want to dabble in both, and maybe bring mainstream attention to my career just because I have conviction in what I do. I think it’s wonderful, and I think everyone else should think that way too.

BS: Even mainstream studios are struggling with new ways to provide content to viewers. What about new business models for the adult industry. Has it been hit hard by the recession, or more the cratering of the DVD market as relative to what it was maybe 10 years ago?

GO: I don’t think the recession has a lot to do with it. I think it’s headed down basically the same path as the music industry, where piracy is increasing and become a huge problem. We released a film last year, and the same day as its street date it was already available on a whole bunch of bitTorrent sites, pirated all around the Internet. I know that mainstream film studios have the same problem. I don’t think the porn industry has any of the answers yet, nor the mainstream. They’ve been fighting piracy battles since even before the Internet came around, and it will continue until the encryption is better, or there’s some macrovision-esque coding that actually works, that some hacker the next day isn’t going to break. I think it’s tricky, and a bit of a slippery slope that we’re on right now, any industries that are relative to intellectual property online — we’re all sort of in that same boat, whether we want to be or not. But the DVD business is dying, and will probably be done here pretty quick. Most of it’s going online and VOD, and there will still be some broadcast outlets, but it’s a brave new world, which will create some interesting scenarios and possibilities.

BS: Tabitha and Kagney, a credit that perhaps isn’t fully bestowed upon adult performers is an entrepreneurial instinct that has to go hand-in-hand with a performer that is going to achieve success and longevity. It isn’t just about making movies. So how comfortable do each of you feel in exercising your own creative ideas as it pertains to growing your careers?

TS: That’s important. We all should have our own web sites. I think in the future the girls, or the talent, will be the ones taking over. I believe that we have the ability to create our own companies — to where I could be hiring people for my site, or we could do trading content, which is popular — where you don’t necessarily have to work for a company to be successful. And I think having a book written, that’s another step. I look at Jenna Jameson and what she’s done — telling your own personal story is very important.

KLK: Well, I have my own company, so I’m always thinking of new ways to create new jobs for myself. I have five different jobs now, all tied up in porn. I do have my own web site, but taking it a step further, like Tabitha said, [helps showcase] a more creative side in what I do, like taking more time to really produce good content for my site. Also, the book thing; and I want to do a line of DVDs: I’m really good at pole-dancing so I’d like to do volumes one through four, from beginner to excellent [or advanced] dancer, all with choreography. (laughs) It’s [all about] setting goals and accomplishing them, being the best performer that you possibly can.

For more information on Sanatorium, or to purchase the movie, click here.

Over on LAExaminer.com, Marvin Miranda has an excellent interview with Tamra Davis, the director of Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which bows at the Nuart this weekend in Los Angeles. More on the film to follow shortly.

Over at Eco Stiletto, Sophia Bush talks in admirable detail about her dedication to environmental causes, but why she can’t completely give up meat. And no, that wasn’t a double entendre, sickos.

In advance of its premiere at the forthcoming sixth annual HollyShorts Film Festival, I had a chance to talk with Zachary Quinto about his new short film, Hostage: A Love Story, his own production company and how receptive the Heroes and Star Trek fanbases are to his efforts to branch out. Excerpts from the interview are as follows:

Brent Simon: What’s your relationship with (director) Hank Nelkin, and how did you come to be involved in Hostage: A Love Story?

Zachary Quinto: Hostage came to our company through the writers, Holt Bailey and Brian Steele, who are old friends. Neal Dodson, my business partner at Before the Door, had worked with Hank on some movie projects at Warner Bros. Through several weeks of preparation with our other partner, Corey Moosa, along with Hank, Holt and Steele, we developed the final script for the project and scheduled the shoot.

BS: What was the shooting schedule for the production?

ZQ: We shot the short over a very hot weekend in July. We shot all of the locations in two days — from a bakery to a medical center to a West Hollywood bar. Some of the film was shot in the Before The Door office. We took advantage of any opportunity that we could to really develop the locations and make this short something that was more complex than many short films, especially those shot in only two days.

BS: Heroes and Star Trek obviously each have large and passionate followings. As a general rule, do you find that those respective fanbases are interested in following you through on to other projects, or are they mostly just focused on your specific work on that show and film?

ZQ: The Heroes and Star Trek fans have been a great support as we have grown as a company. They are very active in our online community on my website. No matter what projects we have put before these fans, they have been exceptional in spreading the word and making sure that we are encouraged to continue bringing new material to the world — whether on the big screen or on their computer screens.

BS: How does having your own media production company, with all its attendant projects — including a graphic novel and assorted web shorts — satisfy creative urges you couldn’t otherwise “scratch,” as it were? And do you see the creative landscape changing radically for actor/performers in the coming years?

ZQ: Before the Door has given me the opportunity to look at projects more objectively. I’m not reading scripts or developing films just for myself, but for a community of people, including the writers and artists and actors, who will all be involved in bringing new stories to the world. It has been both inspiring and humbling to delve into this side of the business. The creative landscape is always changing. As a performer, I see that there are a variety of new media opportunities in which to express myself and to stretch my abilities. As a producer, I can see a great number of changes for everyone, as more and more people are looking to be entertained in places other than just their living rooms. There is a rich landscape for creative people who want to explore more of their opportunities on the web, for sure. In doing a few short films for Internet release, I realize just how many projects there must be around the world waiting for people to discover them online. And I have really enjoyed being able to play different roles and show more of my sense of humor to people who might have only seen me in Star Trek or Heroes.

Hostage was a new experience for all of us. It brought Hank, a feature writer-director, into a new medium. Holt and Steele have continued to develop concepts for the web, and have begun a hysterical series of their own videos. Our company has since also had the opportunity to work with another Before the Door collaborator and friend, Victor Quinaz, on his Periods web series.

BS: Have you had any experience before with the HollyShorts festival, in years past?

ZQ: I haven’t had the pleasure of working with HollyShorts in the past. This is our first year [with a film there], and it will hopefully lead to more chances to work together in the future.

For more information on the HollyShorts festival, which runs August 5 through August 12, click here. For more information on Zachary Quinto, meanwhile, click here.

Over at the Independent, Robert Chalmers has some self-analytical postmodern fun, but also works it deftly into a wonderful interview with Isabelle Huppert, who would likely be much more well known Stateside were it not for her 1) almost willful inscrutability, and 2) aversion to crap Hollywood studio product. The big scoop? Huppert confesses her only real vice at the article’s end: broccoli.

A couple days old, but over at The Wrap, Steve Pond has a nice piece about the special challenges in trying to mount a film festival in the city of Los Angeles, where every day is its own competition for eyeballs. Thursday night’s downtown opening night of the festival, opposite the Lakers’ Game Seven NBA championship efforts, is especially illustrative of this.

Resisting the urge to open our conversation with, “Foursomes… I’m
something of an expert, and felt the geometry was off — the physics
too. Care to comment?,” I chatted by phone recently with 25-year-old Jillian Murray, the star, along with Ashley Parker Angel, Marnette Patterson and John Schneider, of Wild Things: Foursome, a characteristically twisty continuation of the sex-soaked and deceit-fueled series set in Southern Florida.

The movie’s story? When race car-driving hotel magnate Ted Wheetley dies
suddenly, his hard-partying son Carson (Angel) submits to a quickie
marriage to his girlfriend Rachel (Patterson, who’s apparently already
had the film scrubbed from her IMDb profile). A rape accusation follows
from the less privileged Brandi Cox (Murray, above), and the double-crossing and back-stabbing
slowly starts to unwind, as detective Frank Walker (Schneider)
investigates, seemingly unable to remember (or access any public records
that would show) the exact same things that have happened recently in
the tony little town of Blue Bay. My conversation with Murray is
excerpted below:

Brent Simon: So… what gives with Blue Bay? All this lying, murdering and sexual promiscuity…

Jillian Murray: It’s an interesting town, right? I want to live there.

BS: When you’re doing a film that basically has an airy sense of self, and a sense of its purpose, yet tracks so closely to the plots of its predecessors, and is in fact set again in Blue Bay, is there any benefit to going back and watching the other films in the series?

JM: I don’t think there is a benefit, no, because you’d be copying someone else’s character. I mean, it’s not the same characters, [and] it’s more stylized, but it’s (still) a lot of seduction and murder and wealth in Florida. Those are things that you don’t need to watch the other ones for. You’d be doing it just for the character stuff, and I don’t really want to get lost in what their ideas are of their characters. It’s easier for an actor to just focus on their own thing.

BS: Tell me a bit about your background. You moved out west when you were still a teenager, is that right?

JM: I was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. My father retired, so we moved to Arizona, and I went to high school there. And then the day I turned 18 I went to L.A. to try to act.

BS: Was that all surging adolescent confidence, or did a performance instinct kick in when you were younger?

JM: Actually, I wanted a career that had to do with being creative. I read a lot as a child, I loved novels and would create additional backstories for characters as I would read them. And then I saw that there was a casting cattle call, an open call, in Tucson for an independent film. I guess about 2,000 people went and I got my first audition, and started acting. I liked being able to let loose in an audition room. It just felt right. You got to do whatever you could, and if it worked great, and if it didn’t it was, “Oh well, on to the next thing.” It felt freeing.

BS: I think a lot of people are fascinated by actors partially because of auditions, and the idea of continuously interviewing for jobs.

JM: You have to have a very thick skin, because you’re going to be dealing with hundreds or thousands of people telling you, “Oh no, you don’t have the right look. You’re not pretty enough, or tall enough, or skinny enough, or whatever.” Right when you become insecure, you lose, you don’t book anything. Because you won’t be able to go into a room and convince someone that you’ll be able to carry a film and have them bet this many millions of dollars on you. So I think if you’re thick-skinned you can handle it. And you can get very close to booking something, and then the money falls through [which has nothing to do with you]. It’s definitely a roller coaster.

BS: And yet auditioning is a different animal from actually performing on set.

JM: It is. In auditioning, sometimes you don’t even have the script. You just have to make really strong choices, and assume this character may be doing this because of this (other thing). In a way it’s exciting when you put it all out there, because you don’t know what will happen.

BS: I understand Wild Things: Foursome was shot on location in Florida. Being in a place can sometimes help with the story, I imagine, but there are also a lot of distractions, especially if you’re close to the night life of Miami.

JM: Most of the films I’ve done have been on location… and it’s usually more beneficial. You can get sucked into this whole family with your cast and crew, so you’re very comfortable. There’s no L.A. distractions, no agent calling you and saying, “Well, you’re off on Saturday, so can you do this audition?” Miami was a little different because you do have the nightlife and you do have the beaches and the warmth, the sexiness of that whole state. So that was a little distracting, but you work with it. (laughs) I definitely did some Miami nightlife; I went on some boats on the weekend, hit the beach at night.

BS: I don’t know if the working title was Wild Things: Foursome, but —

JM: (interrupts) It was not. I’m not a fan of the title, I’ll just put it out there.

BS: Is that simply because then you have to have that conversation with your parents, telling them its title?

JM: Well, my mom knew about the film, and I told her what I was going to be doing. We’re not really that close-minded, or old-fashioned. I guess I’m young, so I might as well do [nudity] now if I’m going to do it at all. (laughs) But it was originally called Criss-Cross. And then it changed to [just] Wild Things. It was always the same company. They were implying it was going to be another Wild Things installment. And then probably after the fifteenth day of filming (we heard) the studio wanted to call it Foursome. Every single actor had a meeting in my hotel room, and we flipped out. We had people crying. It was bad. I was crying, I was really upset about it.

BS: I’m so sorry.

JM: But you know what — it’s just a name in the end. The movie’s not that bad. It makes it sound like some softcore thing, which it’s not. I understand as a title it’s catchy, and I hope it sells because of that. But I would have preferred a different name.

BS: When you’re doing a scene like the one that lends the movie its title, I imagine it’s important to establish a certain level of rapport with the actors, yet you don’t want it to be too choreographed. I imagine it’s not something you want to rehearse a lot.

JM: You’re talking about the shower scene, I assume? I thought I was going to be so shy, but I was the only person that was like, “Woo, let’s start, let’s go!” They put a little sticker around your private parts, and you’re pretty much walking around like a Barbie doll. I’m amazed. I thought I was going to be shy, but it felt so freeing to walk around naked.

BS: I’m reminded of the famous Red Hot Chili Peppers photo, and how Anthony Kiedis talked about how freeing walking around basically naked was…

JM: That’s funny. I think Ashley wore a sock. And especially the fact that most people would not be comfortable in that situation makes you like, “Oh, yeah!”

BS: As Brandi you have another element of physicality — you get to run around and fire a gun a bit.

JM: I’d never done that before, and it was really exciting, though. It’s a real gun with blanks, and you have spots to hit as you’re running. So you’re living in a videogame, with this one continuous run-through. We had about an hour-and-a-half with the police. I used to go to the firing range years ago so I had some knowledge, but it makes me want to buy a gun. (laughs) But I’m so emotional, I’d probably snap one day at the mailman. So to avoid jailtime I think I’m going to keep a gun out of my house.

BS: The scenes that unfold post-credits and fill in the double-dealing and back story — was it a chore to keep those straight? Because Brandi has a lot of side deals, as do other characters.

JM: It does get a little confusing, because everything is done out of order, and (owing to) whether certain actors are available on certain days. I have a formula I started using on another film: on every page, I just put where the character is on that day. That’s the easiest way to keep track.

BS: What’s next on the horizon for you?

JM: I have a comedy with Lara Flynn Boyle called Cougar Hunting; I play her daughter. And I have a bunch of films I’m producing this year that hopefully you’ll hear about and see very soon.

Small screen sensation Lost may have wrapped up this past week, but there’s another showdown this week set largely on an island and centered around feuding factions — some desperate for survival at any cost and others more sanguine about their fate. With his sixth zombie film, Survival of the Dead, writer-director George Romero tells the Hatfield-and-McCoy-esque story of one banished patriarch, hell-bent on clearing Plum Island of zombies like so much dead brush, who hooks up with a group of self-interested mercenaries and clashes with a longtime nemesis who thinks it morally wrong to dispatch afflicted loved ones. I recently caught up with Romero to talk about his filmmaking niche, tribalism, balancing practical and CG effects, and why he doesn’t think zombies have health club memberships. For the interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.

Brett Ratner is credited with helping Jackie Chan cross over into American superstardom via the Rush Hour series, so it’s perhaps less curious than on the surface it seems, him lending his pop cinema instincts to another filmmaker. Director Anurag Basu’s Kites is a unique Bollywood movie in a number of ways, not the least of which is the fact that it unfolds mostly in English and Spanish, with a pinch of Hindi. Then there’s its unprecedented release strategy, which sees a reworked 90-minute version, “remixed” by Ratner and featuring a new score by Graeme Revell, land in theaters May 28, one week after the 130-minute original. A multicultural mash-up, Kites centers on a carefree Las Vegas grifter and dance instructor (Hrithik Roshan) who haphazardly reconnects with a Mexican beauty (Barbara Mori), one of many illegal immigrants he’s married for money. On-the-lam shenanigans ensue. I caught up with Ratner recently to talk about the globalization of film, spare Bollywood foley work, and what on his Wikipedia page haunts him. For the interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.

It’s perhaps difficult to use the word “anonymity” in relation to a three-time Oscar nominee, but like her husband Warren Beatty, Annette Bening exhibits a choosiness that often keeps her a bit removed from the front-loaded memories of those who dissect and debate screen acting. That will likely change in 2010. While the Chinese New Year may nominally denote it as the year of the tiger, Bening should be receiving massive amounts of ink well into next winter, courtesy of superlative turns in two films, including Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right. First out of the gate, however, is Rodrigo Garcia’s Mother and Child, in which Bening breathes life into Karen, an abrasive single woman who’s still carrying emotional carrying baggage from a teenage pregnancy when, in short order, she loses her elderly live-in mother and finds her interpersonal defenses slowly ground down by Paco (Jimmy Smits), a sensitive coworker. I caught up with Bening recently to talk about playing a woman in turmoil, teenage pregnancy, and the motivation of fear. For the interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.

Over at Cinematical, Todd Gilchrist has a nice interview with Nicolas Cage about his work in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and specifically both how he mapped out behavior for his character depending on what illicit substances he was abusing in given scenes, as well as his view of people that would characterize his acting choices as somehow weird, while giving folks working in other mediums an “artist pass.”

Also, still and forever true, despite the most unfortunate gift delivered unto Dook last night.

The 2004 release of Alexander Payne’s celebrated Sideways launched Thomas Haden Church, then toying with the idea of retiring from acting to tend fulltime to his four Texas ranches, into high demand. He’s kept busy since, with voiceover work, a litany of supporting turns and of course a high-profile gig as Sandman in Spider-Man 3. His latest performance is the quiet title role in Don McKay, a woozy adult drama/mystery, studded with moments of dark humor, whose hazy machinations are revealed deep in its running time. Church plays a janitor who returns to his small hometown, drawn by a letter from his high school girlfriend (Elisabeth Shue), from whom he drifted apart after devastating events 25 years earlier. I caught up with Church recently to talk about the long, slow haul of getting an independent film made, even in the wake of an Oscar nomination, as well as his role in the much-buzzed-about John Carter of Mars. For the Q&A, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.

Starring opposite George Clooney in Up in the Air was, at least at first, a nerve-wracking experience for Anna Kendrick. “Yes, let’s just say I was terrified,” she laughs. “Who wouldn’t be? I mean, come on, it’s George Clooney, and he’s one of the biggest stars in the world.” You’d never know that she suffered from a touch of nerves. On screen, the actress gives a remarkable performance as a self assured young career woman, Natalie Keener, who has to learn the ropes from an older, more experienced colleague, Ryan Bingham (Clooney).



Kendrick was recruited for Up in the Air by director Jason Reitman who was fresh off his Oscar-nominated triumph Juno, the bittersweet comedy about a pregnant teenager played by Ellen Page. In fact, says Reitman, Page and Kendrick have a similar approach. “I’d seen Anna in Rocket Science and was just blown away by her,” says the director. “I just think she has such a unique voice, similar to Ellen Page — just a voice of her own amongst a generation — and I needed somebody who can be witty and fast, and really sharp and go toe to toe with George Clooney, giving him shit the entire film. And there was no one that came close to Anna.”

In Up in the Air, as in Thank You For Smoking, Reitman delivers another acutely observed tale about a shark-ish businessman who spends most of his life in a self-created bubble of isolation — this time moving from one city to the next doing the undeniably unpleasant job of firing people. Bingham lives out of an impeccably packed suitcase, stays in stylish hotels, and clocks more frequent flier miles than a pilot. His life is as neatly packed as his luggage until the outside world — in the shape of two very different women — begin to make him think that he might just be ready to make a real connection.

Up in the Air filmed at four different airports in the United States, and the cast and crew were constantly on the move during production. “I don’t have a fear of flying,” says Kendrick. “But I don’t really care for air travel, probably for the same reasons that Natalie doesn’t. It’s that thing of being at the mercy of other people.”

Originally from Portland, Maine, Kendrick is now based in Los Angeles and is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the brightest new female stars to emerge in recent years. She started acting professionally as a child and she became the second youngest Tony Award nominee ever when she was nominated as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance as Dinah in the Broadway revival of High Society. “I danced when I was a little kid,” she says. “And sang all of the time, too, and I was just one of those kids that wanted to perform and wanted to be on stage. And when you’re six you just want to jump around and then when I was about 10 I still really wanted to do it, to sing and dance and I was lucky enough to have parents who treated me with an incredible amount of respect for a 10-year-old girl. They really listened to me — even when that 10-year-old was telling them that she really wanted to be on Broadway. They supported me and let me take a real run at it and I’ll be forever grateful to them.”

Her first feature film role came along when she was 16. Camp, fittingly enough, was a musical comedy about a group of youngsters at a performing arts camp. It provided the perfect cross over from theatre to film for Kendrick. Both the film and Kendrick went on to win huge acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival. “We shot the film at the camp, we were all sort of living there, and occasionally we would go in and shoot a scene. Actually, I think a lot of us thought that it would never see the light of day,” she laughs. “We were just a bunch of little hoodlums singing and dancing. It was so much fun.” A redacted question-and-answer chat follows:

Q: Is it fair to assume that the character you play is a long way from your own personality?

AK: (laughs). Oh yes! But that was the fun part about it. Natalie does so many things that I would like to do, and she is unapologetically who she is in a way that I wish I was. Sometimes there are things that you wish you would say or do and you think about it. And it was easy to transfer that into someone else. Personally, I generally avoid confrontation so it was a release to play Natalie because she’s not going to back away. And getting to yell at George Clooney was pretty cathartic.

Q: Have you met people like Natalie?

AK: I think we all have. She’s a little rigid and a little annoying and she has a strength that she’s not afraid of. But there’s also a weakness there — and actually you probably see her at her weakest in this film, it’s probably the most vulnerable time of her life. I imagined that she was the sort of person who prides herself on the idea that she’s overcome a lot of challenges in her life and I think that in reality this is the first time she’s ever been challenged.

Q: And what was it like working with George Clooney?

AK: George is a really smart guy and a really sensitive guy and I’m sure he looked at me and knew that I was pretty terrified. I think you’d have to be insane not to be a little intimidated by him. And he’s aware of the effect that he can have on people but he does everything to make you feel at ease. He sort of encouraged a really playful relationship — a relationship where I could kind of give him crap and he could make fun of me and I’d give it right back to him. So that when it came to do time to do it on screen it seemed perfectly natural. Really, and I know everyone says this, George couldn’t be nicer. The thing is George makes it OK for you to relax and he makes so much effort to put everyone at ease. And it gets pretty easy after that. I really loved working with him.

Q: But you were terrified at first?

AK: Yes, let’s just say I was terrified. Who wouldn’t be? I mean, come on, it’s George and he’s one of the biggest stars in the world.

Q: Is Jason the kind of director who gives you a lot of time to prepare for a scene?

AK: Well we didn’t have any rehearsals at all, which was interesting, and certainly made certain things challenging, but at the same time, kept a lot of things really fresh. And he’s certainly very willing to talk about anything with you — he’s incredibly available. But he knows exactly what it is that he wants and just sort of tells you to give it to him that way, and you can try it your way, but you know that he knows what he’s doing and what he is going to want in the end.  And so even if it doesn’t make perfect sense to you yet, you know that this is a guy that you should trust.

Q: Did you talk to Jason about the themes the film explores?

AK: Oh yes, I think it’s about isolation in the modern world. And it’s about these people who think that they have their life philosophy all figured out and it’s what it does to them when they realize that they haven’t.  I just loved the script. Jason writes so beautifully and he’s so funny and yet it’s really quite poignant too, because you meet these people at a time when things are starting to unravel for them.

Q: You started acting at a very young age. But you don’t come from a family of actors, do you?

AK: No, my Mom was an accountant and my Dad was a teacher.

Q: Did you see a lot of Broadway shows yourself as a kid? 

AK: You know, honestly, it wasn’t as though I went to New York and saw a Broadway show and thought that’s what I wanted to do. It was more of an idea — just the idea of being on stage in front of real theater fans. 

Q: Did you get nervous appearing on stage as a child?

AK: No, it was just huge fun — I think it probably gets harder as you get older (laughs).  When I was 17, I did A Little Night Music at New York City Opera, and opening night I became incredibly aware of how many people fit in that room, and I really sort of psyched myself out.  But then you do it and it’s fine and you forget that anybody is even watching you.  But yeah, I had a little panic attack moment, when I thought about how many people would be looking at me — and 17 is an age where you are not sure if you want people to be looking at you or not.

Q: And you made your first film at what, 16? What was that like?

AK: I turned 17 when we were filming Camp. You know, it was one of those things, it never really felt like we could possibly be making a real film, because it was just a bunch of kids who’d never been in a film before (laughs).

Q: Did making a film feel different from being on stage?

AK: Yeah, it did. But you know it was a unique and special first film and none of us had been in a film before, so that was rare. And we all came from a theatre background so we all had the same kind of experience. It was like “What just happened? Did we just film something?” (laughs). Because there was no audience reaction, of course. On stage, something happens and there’s the energy of the audience and you can feel it — it’s very real.

Q: So film is a different discipline that you had to learn.

AK: Yes. And each of us sort of realized when they turn the camera on and they say action, nothing actually happens (laughs). And you have to make it happen. But it was this incredible thing where you felt like that couldn’t have possibly been it, that couldn’t have possibly been a performance. Because I know what a performance feels like, and that was just me talking and them pointing a camera at me. So that was a very strange hurdle to get over. But you know, it’s a different way of doing the same thing. You have to learn that too and I really enjoy the difference.

Q: So do you still miss that reaction you get from being on stage?

AK: Yeah. I mean it’s such a cliché, but there really isn’t anything like it, and it’s one of the weirder parts of the transition — not having the immediate validation. I think we were a bunch of very needy little actors (laughs) on Camp. Our poor director probably had to tell us how great we were, even more than most directors have to tell their actors.

Q: Well, you were young.

AK: We were young, and we just didn’t really understand how do you know it was good, no one applauded, so how do you know?

Q: But how does it feel now a few years on, when you do a film like this, which, again, calls for a very finely tuned performance?

AK: Yeah, I think it’s a tricky thing, there’s this expression about actors, that they get paid to wait, and I feel like you get paid to multitask, you know? You can be really good at your job, but then you have to remember to turn your face so you’re in your light and drop your shoulder, because George is in the background or something. And you’re going to cut him off and the whole shot is not going to work if you can’t do all of these things. And just slowly but surely, experience is the only thing that’s going to help that. Hopefully I’m getting better at it. 

Q: Will you continue to do stage and film?

AK: Well, I haven’t done stage in a while. I think the last thing I did on stage was probably A Little Night Music, and I want to do it again. It just gets scarier, the more time you spend away from it. But also I love film, I love the medium and I’m having fun doing it, so I’ll figure it out.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not working, what kind of things interest you?

AK: I watch a lot of films and I bake — just desserts and stuff. I make a flourless Hazelnut chocolate torte that’s great. I usually take that if I’m going round to friends for dinner. My life is always sort of a mess and it’s spilling out everywhere (laughs), so I like to go to other people’s houses.

Q: Do you enjoy living in Los Angeles?

AK: Yeah, it takes about a year to kind of get used to it, and it’s a kind of lonely city at first. And when I first arrived I didn’t know anybody. But one morning you wake up and it’s home. There are certainly people who seem like they are straight out of Beverly Hills 90210 (laughs). But I don’t know those people. And I’ve got some great friends there now and it’s good.

The acclaim surrounding Jeff Bridges’ turn in Crazy Heart — in which everyone seemingly slaps their foreheads in remembrance of how talented the guy is — also recalls William Hurt, another actor with a penchant for blending seamlessly into his surroundings. In The Yellow Handkerchief, Hurt plays a recently paroled convict who, beset with inner conflict about whether to try to reach out to a past love, crosses paths with a young duo (Kristen Stewart and Eddie Redmayne) on a post-Katrina road trip through Louisiana. I caught up with a bearded Hurt in a Beverly Hills hotel suite recently to talk about his career, shrinking IQs and what Sally Field said to him when he won his Oscar. For the Q&A, with New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.

Over at the Huffington Post, Alex Leo has a solid interview with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in which they get into the recent Blackwater subsidiary arms smuggling scandal involving Eric Cartman, as well as their equal opportunity instincts for comedic savagery, last year’s Muhammad cartoon controversy, and cat orgies. It’s a nice, rangy chat.

Mother’s Day may be a bit off on the calendar, but it’s presently a particularly maternal time for Emily Mortimer. She just had a baby, her second, with husband Alessandro Nivola, and our conversation occurs with lamb curry in the pot and her own mother set to arrive shortly from England for a visit. More darkly, onscreen, in Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, Mortimer plays Rachel Solando, a mother held at a remote asylum for the criminally insane after killing her three children. When Rachel goes mysteriously missing, Leonardo DiCaprio’s federal marshal is called in to investigate. I caught up with Mortimer recently to talk about the joys of both motherhood and fake blood, the zen tranquility of a Scorsese set, and her scotched plans to play Alfred Hitchcock’s wife. For the Q&A, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.

Over at the Los Angeles Times‘ The Envelope section, Glenn Whipp has a chat with James Cameron in which the writer-director talks frankly about pissing off conservative pundits with Avatar (some of whom, like The Weekly Standard, have lambasted the movie as a “deep expression of anti-Americanism”), and 20th Century Fox’s desire to suppress some of the movie’s environmental themes. Their reaction, from the piece and according to the filmmaker, was: “We really like the story. It’s great. But, well, is there a way to not have so much of this tree-hugging, Ferngully stuff in it? I said, ‘Not with me making it.’ Because that was my purpose in making the film. I wanted to make an environmentally conscious mainstream movie. And to be fair to 20th Century Fox, any of the other studios would have said the same thing. Fox ended up being enormously supportive and wrote this huge check. But they would have been much more comfortable if I had eliminated what they called the ‘tree-hugging’ elements.”

Also, in unrelated linkage, Todd Gilchrist has up a nice wrap/overview of the eighth annual Oxford Film Festival, over at Cinematical.

Over at the New York Times, Terrence Rafferty manages to work a mention of W.H. Auden into the lead of his interview with Martin Scorsese on Shutter Island, which I’ll hold my water on for now but will be getting into next week.