Sporting his trademark silver-rimmed sunglasses (even indoors) and a staccato laugh that pops out when a particular reminiscence strikes him as amusing, Wong Kar Wai exudes a quiet yet immediately graspable warmth somewhat at odds with the interpersonal emotional coolness often explored in his films. He made his English-language debut with 2007’s My Blueberry Nights, and followed it up this year in mold-breaking fashion with an out-of-competition Cannes presentation and commercial re-release of a redux version of his abstruse 1994 samurai epic Ashes of Time, the film that first helped earn him a reputation for long shooting schedules. Never officially released outside of Asia, the ruminative, desert-set movie features a new score, swapped-out takes and other tweaks. I spoke with Wong recently about the unique perils of Hong Kong storage houses, the just completed Olympic games, and what to do when your cinematographer gets drunk and naked. For the full Q&A interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
Trolling through some transcribed interview tidbits, I came across this bit recently from the press day maybe two months back for Henry Poole Is Here, in which Radha Mitchell talks about her work in Jonathan Mostow’s forthcoming The Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, Rosamund Pike and Ving Rhames. Better late than never, as they say:
“It’s set like tomorrow, only 10 or 20 years in the future, but there’s this conceit that people don’t live in the world, they just sit at home in these simulated chairs and experience everything through technology,” says Mitchell. “And a robot does everything for them. So the whole concept of identity is very interesting, because you play different genders and different ages, and who you are is kind of abstract. So I play two people surrogates, and then I play my operator. It’s funny — I get taken over by men, and then I’m a woman [too].”
The scale and logistics are a lot different from her work on director Mark Pellington‘s film, which was shot over a cramped 30 days in La Mirada last August, but Mitchell doesn’t mind. The Surrogates is “based on a graphic novel, and it’s a big action movie. It’s extravagant, like a big event,” she says. “I just finished two days ago, so my head’s in a new gear. It’s exciting and fun to be able to do a movie like Henry Poole Is Here and then a movie like that, and then this Australian movie in India I’m getting ready to do, The Waiting City, which is a tiny, beautiful character piece. But I do like the theatrics of the big films.”
And as for Bruce? Mitchell pauses, laughs a bit, then offers: “He’s interesting… he’s dynamic, and very much the tough guy. He’s very macho.”
Multi-hyphenate Clark Gregg didn’t have a lot of money for his adaptation of Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke, opening this week, but that’s OK — his cast was more than game to throw themselves into the somewhat spartan, briskly paced shoot.
“I’ve been able — once in a while, quite thankfully — to go do a big Disney movie and make some dosh, but then you’re faced with something like this, which is interesting and a little warped and strange,” says Anjelica Huston, who plays Sam Rockwell’s memory-stricken, institutionalized mother, Ida, in the movie. “And I brought my own wig to this show, a wig that I wore in a thing called Family Pictures, over 20 years ago. So I brought that wig into the mix for the older character, but we didn’t have any money to go out and have wigs made. My hairdresser on the movie had this wig that she was going to use on my stunt double for some of the younger stuff with my character, but we had no look for me as a younger person. Ida is kind of a mistress of disguise, so I slapped on the stunt girl’s wig, which was some vinyl thing that was bought on a corner in New Jersey, and it was like, ‘Yeah, that kind of works.’ It’s weird, you’re not quite sure if that’s her hair. But for me it kind of works for the part. We weren’t spending thousands of dollars, as one usually does in these movies, but… you don’t necessarily have to have a lot of money to throw at something in order for it to be good or convincing. And I always like scrapping things together a little bit.” For more information on the film, click here.
Scripted hour-long American television famously gives the impression that there are maybe two dozen occupations in the entire country, with doctors being investigated by forensic specialists, lawyers suing fashion magazine employees (and perhaps one another), and cops chasing crooked psychologists while desperate housewives sip on spiked coffee behind their picket fences.
Both independent film and their low-budget documentary brethren, however, often offer all sorts of opportunities to explore the great, untilled territory of more off-the-beaten-path jobs. In the past year and a half alone, there have been spotlights thrown on such atypical vocations as topiary gardening, commercial fishing, vacuum cleaner repair and library work, to name a few.
Debut feature director Wayne Price’s The Doorman (Gigantic Pictures, unrated, 73 minutes) spawns similar intrigue as to the make-up and routines of its subject subset. It was, after all, a doorman at the Beverly Hilton Hotel who recently helped rescue former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards from a bathroom and, at 2 a.m., escort him past tabloid reporters seeking corroborative photographic evidence of his presence at the hotel at the same time as his now-confirmed mistress, Rielle Hunter. At trendy clubs, bars and hotels alike, doormen are the first face of the establishment and the image it wants to project — demi-gods, and arbiters of cool who, in certain situations, decide who ends up gaining admittance and who is destined to spend an hour or more standing in line outside.
A New York-set mockumentary about a smooth-talking, high-end gatekeeper, The Doorman follows a film crew who set out to make an insider’s guide to the legendary New York City club scene, using as their host and guide Trevor (Lucas Akoskin), an Argentinian who looks like a cross between Andy Samberg and Aaron Eckhart. Trevor has the power; he knows people. But more importantly (as Trevor frequently points out), he knows people who know him.
Or maybe not. As the film wears on, Trevor seems much less a player and more of a hanger-on. He mysteriously loses his job, struggles to keep up appearances in front of the camera, and gets caught in various lies that undermine his boastful self-presentation. Director Price (also playing himself on camera) becomes more and more exasperated, finally forcing the issue on Trevor, who admits to not being all that he seems.
Despite the fact that it features dozens of cameos by real-life boldface names — including Peter Bogdanovich, Thom Filicia, Denise Quinones, Amy Sacco, members of the band 311 and even lingering background footage of Paris Hilton — the film itself is a mess. If one takes honestly the notion that an outward face is super-important for glamorous, high-end nightclubs, then it makes no sense, I’m sorry, to have as your entrée into this world a smarmy braggart who pronounces Las Vegas as “Bay-gus.” Forgetting for a moment that the reality of Trevor’s grifter-type existence is completely at odds with all the interstitial talking head interviews that tout him as a global sensation (!), the satire here is simply nowhere near sharp enough. The concept is golden, worthy of a Borat-style treatment that skewers club owners and patrons in equal measure. The Doorman, though, comes off as a lazy execution of its distilled, single-sentence pitch line, in every way, shape and form.
Still, I left the movie intrigued. I wondered what kind of interesting glimpses into the lifestyles of privilege, and all the illicitness and rich-bitch fits that might theoretically entail, such occupational proximity would afford. So over the course of a couple weeks, I discreetly approached a couple real-life doormen at various Los Angeles hotels — people that I didn’t know by name, but a couple of whom I’d seen certainly dozens of times after more than a decade of conducting press junket interviews at such locations. Interesting stories about pre-“Brangelina” Brad Pitt and John Travolta ensued, as well as anecdotal bird’s-eye views of infidelity, something few other occupations offer. For the full, original piece, from FilmStew, click here.
Straight-shooting Transformers costar Megan Fox has given an interview to GQ, touching on her disdain for the pro forma apologies of starlets, her affinity for both occasional ball-cupping and playing Metal Gear on Xbox with fiancé Brian Austin Green, and her teenage crush on a Russian stripper. It’s here, if you need it. Or you can just click here for a photo, save yourself the read, and hear about it later from a friend.
For English beauty Sophia Myles, 2006 represented a sort of coming-out party, with the period piece romance Tristan & Isolde and the vampire-and-werewolf action sequel Underworld: Evolution releasing within a week of one another, and a plum role in Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential following five months later. Myles’ latest film is writer-director David Mackenzie’s Mister Foe, in which she stars opposite Jamie Bell as Kate Breck, a middle-management hotel employee who enters into a warped relationship with a mixed-up kid, Hallam, who starts spying on her because she reminds him of his dead mother. I spoke with Myles recently about working with a pervy, adult Billy Elliot, Mackenzie’s deft touch with sex, and fan reaction to the recently canceled CBS vampire drama Moonlight. For the full Q&A interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
I spoke to the loquacious Robert Englund recently, for a feature piece about both Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and his career as a horror icon. Wrapping up, out of left field I couldn’t resist asking him about how insane Neville Brand may or may not have been, since on the audio commentary track for the DVD release of Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive — the movie that sparked Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill homage of Englund’s character and his signature sleazy line, “My name is Buck, and I wanna fuck” — costar Roberta Collins talks about Brand trying to sexually assault her.
“I’m not sure,” says Englund, seemingly genuinely stumped. “I don’t even remember him being extremely eccentric. He was Neville Brand, but I think he might have been having problems with his family in Malibu — that’s something in the back of my head, that he was going through a bad divorce or maybe some problems with his daughter. I don’t know, I vaguely remember that. And he may have freaked out after I left the project.”
Henry Poole Is Here represents a very personal project for filmmaker Mark Pellington, the visually stylish director behind Arlington Road, The Mothman Prophecies and Pearl Jam’s notorious “Jeremy” music video, among many others. Pellington was deep in pre-production on a Harrison Ford film that would eventually become the much-less-interesting-without-him Firewall when, in late July, 2004, he suddenly lost his wife (a matter addressed in this long-form music video made for Keane, never commercially aired after it was deemed “too depressing”), leaving him as a single father of a three-year-old daughter.
Admittedly devastated, Pellington sank into a depression. He returned to work on the small screen with a few episodes of Cold Case, but began searching for projects that he felt spoke to a deeper emotional and personal truth than his first couple movies. Almost immediately, his mind returned to Henry Poole Is Here. “I first read it in 2003,” recalls Pellington. “My manager brought it to me, I read it, liked it, but I
was engaged in another film at the time. [In late 2004], I was looking at my own films and
thinking that they weren’t feeling right. So I re-read the script and met with
(writer) Albert (Torres) again, and said, ‘This is what I’m drawn to and
interested in,’ since Albert owned the property. For me it was about ideas of image and loss and
memory, and I said there was some other stuff I’d like to shave away. Every
writer and director have to sort of fuse together and ask, fundamentally, ‘Do we see
the same thing?’ in order to venture forth on a path to get it made.”
“It’s about turning the page on the past and being present,” continues Pellington of his film, which details a man (Luke Wilson) in crisis who moves back to his adolescent neighborhood and encounters a woman (Adriana Barraza) who believes she sees the face of Jesus Christ in a stain on the side of his stucco home. “I never felt like we were making a religious picture. The characters are religious, (Adriana) is a Catholic woman who sees this, but that’s the character’s story, not anything outside of that. It’s not like, ‘Oh, let’s make this dogmatic, religious film that pushes faith.'”
The experience proved a cathartic one for Pellington, as a place to channel his feelings. “I can hear a song and feel the loss of my wife, and then put a lot of that into my interests, because of what I do,” he says, of his music video work. But this was a grander scale. “We had 30 days. You have a picture in your head, and when you start everything goes away, and each day is like a jigsaw puzzle — you try to formulate the reality of that picture. Maybe about 10 days in, you start to see connections and relationships, and new shapes emerge. Because what I learned — probably my biggest growth as a filmmaker, and in life — was to be completely planned and then get there on set every day and say, ‘I have no idea.’ Not being chaotic or crazy, but just being free to say, ‘OK, let’s see what happens.’ Not controlling as much, because implied with the control is fear. To say I’m going to trust and love my actors and let them do what they want since everyone is on the same page with the text.”
“Each film is different because I’m at different places in my life — they’re different cars, different engines,” Pellington concludes. “I think The Mothman Prophecies was propping up a very weird narrative with a lot of style. The style and the sound of it kind of was the experience, whereas this was the opposite — kind of get out the characters’ way.”
With The Daily Show, including correspondent Aasif Mandvi, heading to the respective Democratic and Republican national conventions over the next two weeks, I thought I’d delve back into the archives for a little extra material from a not-too-long-ago chat with the aforementioned actor. Since he was a working (and Tony Award-winning!) thespian prior to his visibility-increasing small screen gig, I asked Mandvi if there was any apprehension to making a go at The Daily Show, since it sometimes seems to muddy the casting water for its supporting performers.
“For me, no,” he says. “I was a huge fan, and I got brought in as a one-off deal, and then they asked me back. It was never originally a permanent gig. It was kind of just one of those things where they called me when they needed me, and I was a contributor in that way. And then it became a permanent gig with a contract and everything. But I was always excited about appearing on the show, and it wasn’t that much of a departure for me because I’ve always done comedy. When I got out of school I was doing improv comedy at the Disney MGM Studios in Florida, I was doing a lot of sketch comedy… so for me it felt like it wasn’t that much of a departure.”
As for where this election cycle is headed, Mandvi won’t make any predictions, but he doesn’t see any single potential twist or turn as fatal to The Daily Show‘s comedic head of steam. “I don’t think there’s any shortage of material, of being able to make fun of anyone,” says Mandvi. “The system is absurd sometimes, you know what I mean? When you plug into the system, there’s an innate absurdity to it. We’ve had eight years of this sort of manna from heaven when it comes to comedy material, so whether Obama or McCain ends up in the White House there’s enough within politics and the media and the hypocrisy and absurdity of it all [to keep things interesting]. I don’t think we’re going to be out of business. That’s the great thing about what we do — it’s not predicated on who’s in the Oval Office, it’s about always finding the absurdity and ridiculousness within our own systems of society and government. That’s what satire has always done. And I think it’s healthy, too.”
With dozens of people already posting horrified YouTube video reactions to its trailer, George Lopez seems to realize that Beverly Hills Chihuahua represents a certain cultural flashpoint. I asked him about forthcoming animated movie at the Los Angeles press day for Henry Poole Is Here over the weekend, and he seemed to walk the line between good-natured, company-man endorsement and conceding, albeit in coded fashion, that the movie is a flaming trainwreck-in-waiting.
“I’ve heard [about the viral videso],” Lopez says, a broad smile breaking out across his face.
“I think Garry Shandling said one time, ‘I don’t care if they laugh or
moan, it’s still a reaction, and I accept both equally.’ So I know that
people are mocking it, they hate it, and the New York Times did
a story about how annoying the trailer is. And when you can get that to
the New York Times, that means… well, I mean, if we make everybody sick by the
time the movie comes out, I think the movie will be a huge success.” (Side note: huh?)
“But this movie is either the best trailer you’ve ever seen, if you’re under 10, or the most annoying thing you’re ever going to see,” Lopez continues. “That song will get in your head, and you’ll be singing ‘Chihuahua!’ at work. That trailer with the chihuahuas in headdresses walking down an Aztec temple singing this rap song — it’s a wonderful place for Latino actors to be able to do a movie like this, that the whole Disney machine is completely behind. I think kids will love it, and some parents will… well, have to take their kids to it. And the story of a chihuahua from Beverly Hills who’s trying to find its bark is not very unfamiliar from some of the greatest movies ever done. I say it’s like Citizen Canine.”
Producer Gary Lucchesi, who together with Tom Rosenberg runs Lakeshore Entertainment, had a sour experience with his first foray into the horror genre, in the form of Midnight Meat Train. Distributor Lionsgate dumped the movie on 102 screens, including many discount and dollar theaters, merely to to fulfill the letter of its contractual obligation. At the recent press day for Henry Poole Is Here, I asked him about what happened, from his perspective.
“A disaster — we were completely screwed. It was a nightmare,” says Lucchesi. Lionsgate explained their rationale, “but it went from being the highest-testing trailer they ever had, with a different regime, to it being, ‘We couldn’t figure out television spots.’ And then they said it was like this movie Bug that they had made, but at that point it was a different executive team at Lionsgate, and that’s the reality. Sometimes… in this business you need advocacy on the marketing and distribution side just as much as you need an advocate when you start making the movie. We have an example here with Overture, who I presume is treating you nicely; they’ve treated us great. You believe that they’re sincere about their affection for the movie, they’ve worked very hard on the television spots and the trailer. There was thought that went into the poster, there was attention and care given to everything that’s going on, they’re spending money to try to market it. There’s a game plan, and if it works it will be a credit to their tenacity and their steadfastness. That’s usually the normal thing, but then there are times when the studio says, ‘Hey, we don’t get it. We wish we hadn’t made the movie.’ I mean, they had money in the film, just like we did, and they said, ‘We don’t want to do horror anymore,’ basically. And we hadn’t done any horror prior to that. We liked Clive (Barker), he’s a great guy. Ryuhei (Kitamura, the director) came in, we hired him, he worked really hard.”
Here Lucchesi pauses, and cocks his head slightly to the side for just a moment. “I like staying alive, I enjoy what I do, I enjoy the challenges,” he continues. “To make losers makes it harder to make anything, and we make a variety of product. I will tell you that had Midnight Meat Train worked, it would’ve been easier to make another Henry Poole. That’s the reality. Right now, in terms of the future, we’re looking at probably doing slightly bigger titles (at Lakeshore). We have Underworld 3, Crank 2, we have The Ugly Truth, which is a comedy with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler; we’re doing Fame, The Lincoln Lawyer — they’re bigger titles, they’re not as susceptible to the (marketing) challenges of smaller movies. But we did a number of them. That’s Hollywood.”
At this past weekend’s Los Angeles press day for Henry Poole Is Here, Luke Wilson mentioned that — after wrapping up writer-director Mike Million’s Tenure, opposite Gretchen Mol — he’d like to jump back behind the camera.
“I’d like to try and get this movie made from a book that I’ve adapted into a script, [Jim Lehrer’s] White Widow,” says Wilson. “I’d really like to try to get that made. It’s about a bus driver in Texas in the 1950s who kind of falls in love with this unattainable woman. I figure it’s gonna be very easy to get the funding — a bus driver in the ’50s, a period piece? People say, ‘Yeah, great…'” Wilson says that he would also star in the film, but rope in his brother Andrew, with whom he previously collaborated on The Wendell Baker Story, to co-direct, because doing it by himself “is just too hard.”
Politico has up an interesting interview with Dennis Miller in which the actor-comedian talks about his political views, characterizing them as eclectic pragmatism. “I have wildly swinging opinions, but through some sort of
ideological feng shui they end up in the middle — some swing far to the
left, others to the far right,” he says. “I’m for the war, but I’m also for gay
marriage. I don’t care if two folks with the same genitalia want to get
hitched, I just don’t want some asshole from another country coming over
here and blowing up their wedding to make a political statement.” This is another way of saying Miller is engaged with the culture and world around him — someone who reasons through a social or political issue, not merely filtering it through a lens of partisan ideology, and arrives at a personal feeling about how it impacts him. Regardless of what you think of the guy, or any of his specific views, we need more people thinking like this.
At yesterday’s Los Angeles press day for Henry Poole Is Here, as word spread about Bernie Mac, who passed away early Saturday from
complications with pneumonia — after suffering for quite a while from
sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease that produces tiny lumps of
cells in the body’s organs — fellow actor and comedian George Lopez shared a few thoughts about the Emmy-nominated multi-hyphenate, who escaped a hardscrabble upbringing in some of Chicago’s tougher neighborhoods, rising to become one of those unlikely middle-aged, air-quote overnight success stories.
“I’ve known Bernie for about 10 years,” says Lopez, understandably having trouble making the proper leap in tense. “I think when The Original Kings of Comedy came out he was the least known of the guys — Steve Harvey had a show, Cedric had had some success, D.L. Hughley had had some success. I think Bernie was the least known but probably the funniest one, and technically the strongest one, of all the kings of comedy. And he paid his dues. He was at it for a long time, which is the way that a lot of comedians had to do it. Not so much now, because with the Internet you can kind of be success quick, but [he was] a guy who paid his dues first, and then had success with TV and movies and made the transformation. And then to be such a great husband and father is a testament to him and to the strength that he had. I knew that he was ill, I think, for about six years, and 50 years old is way too young. For us, those who have been doing [comedy] so long, we’re like soldiers, so it feels like we’ve lost a brother. He’ll be sorely missed, because he was so unique.”
While sarcoidosis isn’t being officially mentioned as a contributing factor in Mac’s death, it was clearly an ongoing health issue and concern for the actor (he even mentioned it some in interviews), and that just further underscored a special, personal health blessing for Lopez. “I had a congenital kidney disease when I was born, and I didn’t really find out until my late 30s,” he says. “And I had to get a transplant. My wife was a perfect match for me — in my house, the only person tested. So it’s been a little bit more than three years, I feel fantastic, and I don’t know what my options would’ve been if that didn’t happen. I knew they probably weren’t going to be good. So that’s a miracle for me, that I can be fully healthy for the first time in my life, and that the actual donor was the person who snores right next to me every night.”
He’s become known for playing himself, and lowering the satirical boom as the “Middle Eastern correspondent” on Comedy Central’s hit, Peabody Award-winning The Daily Show, but Aasif Mandvi is also an OBIE award-winning actor with a successful, decade-long career that’s spanned film, television and stage. In addition to assaying the 2008 presidential election on the small screen, Mandvi will next be seen in David Koepp’s Ghost Town, with Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear.
I had a chance to catch up with Mandvi recently, and even share a mildly racist-sounding anecdote involving him. Phoning from New York, after a muggy morning of filming on his new movie, 7 to the Palace, Mandvi gamely talked about the “different kinds of brown people in the world,” dentistry, and telling off comedy superstars. For the full Q&A feature, from H Magazine, click here.
If cigarettes didn’t already exist, they’d have been invented for Michael Madsen. The raspy-voiced actor — known to a generation as the razor-wielding, feet-shuffling, psychotic Mr. Blonde — has over the course of his career, and its almost 150 movies, cultivated a screen persona that frequently makes use of his quiet gravitas, low growl, thousand-yard stare and penchant for flipping pinched cigarette butts out of frame. Madsen’s most recent film is the chopper opera Hell Ride, a dusty, very stylized motorcycle gangland drama, produced by Quentin Tarantino, in which he plays a gun-toting good guy known as The Gent. In advance of its release, Madsen graciously took the time to chat about the movie, his career as a whole, and his history with fisticuffs, among other topics. The conversation is excerpted below:
Brent Simon: So Larry Bishop says that the role of The Gent was written for you, or with you in mind.
Michael Madsen: Larry asked me to be in it, and the first time
he gave me the screenplay it wasn’t really a script, it was like a
dictionary. It was way too thick for me to read it, so I pretended that
I read it, and told him I loved it; I knew it was a motorcycle movie,
that’s all I really needed to know. And I also knew that we were a
long, long way from being able to make it, and that I had plenty of
time to read it. So I waited until I got a condensed version of it,
then I asked him if I could wear a tuxedo, because the character was
named the Gent and I thought that it would be interesting to put my own
little spin on it. I kind of figured that he would say no, but when he
said that I could I knew that we were on the same page with each other,
and I knew then that the movie was going to be really cool. But it took
almost two years to get done — it wasn’t like suddenly Quentin came
along and we made Hellride. It doesn’t really work that like. It takes a lot longer to get these things done.
BS: Was it a matter of scraping up financing money?
MM: I wouldn’t say scraping — I’d say that they were very, very careful about getting the money together, because it’s been a long time since anyone’s made a motorcycle picture and I think they were a little scared of it. Both Larry being more or less a first-time director, and the screenplay — I’m not so sure that they really understood what it was about, and I think that it was a long time before he was able to convince anyone that he did know what it was about. But Quentin hung in there. You know, Quentin was originally going to be in the movie, he was going to play Comanche. And when he bowed out the whole thing went up in smoke for a while. But it came back together.
BS: You said the script was dictionary-thick — was it language about the style and look of movie, which is very distinctive?
MM: I think that some people are scared to death of that because they’re not sure whether or not the filmmaker can pull it together, and you have to have so many people lined up that know what he’s trying to do, and make sure that everyone — even on down to the bike builders — knows exactly what the intentions are. It’s hard to get a group of people together like that. And it was a very time-consuming thing, but thank God it came together.
BS: Your bar brawl scene with Eric Balfour was pretty intense —
MM: Yeah, considering the fact that we didn’t have any break-away furniture, and we didn’t find that out until the day we were actually going to do the fight, and by that time we didn’t have much of a choice except to just break the real shit. So we just had to trust each other and realize that we didn’t want to hurt each other — that it was only a movie.
BS: It gives me the impression that you might have had some personal experience with bar fights. Is that true?
MM: Well, I’d hate to admit it, and I don’t need to incriminate myself, but (pointing) I have a dent in my forehead right here from being knocked unconscious by the butt end of a pool cue riding my Triumph into a saloon in Arizona.
BS: Was this days of misspent youth, or was this after you’d become an actor?
MM: Misspent youth that actually later came to help me understand some of the things I was being asked to do.
MM: Yeah, I had a thing that went down with some guys in a hotel lounge in Baltimore, and they sued me for a $1.5 million but they lost the case. A couple guys started some shit with me and my assistant. And they came after me with a baseball bat, but we outfoxed them in a chase through the hotel, and they were done in. They made a big deal out of it and tried to get a bunch of money from me, but in the end their lawyer was a buffoon who ruined the whole case, and that was the end of that.
BS: Good Lord. Are most location experiences much more pleasant than that, or is there always some sort of wild and woolly war story?
MM: I mean, there’s always some things that go on, and they’re not necessarily good or bad. Making movies is a really bizarre experience, and it’s really hard — you never know what really is going to happen. I suppose that’s part of the attraction of doing it.
BS:Hell Ride is all about these guys who live for one another, but also love their motorcycles. You’re a big car and bike guy in real life, too, right?
MM: Well, when you grow up with nothing and then suddenly you have a little bit of money, the first thing you have a tendency to do is start buying all the shit that you never had as a kid. And then once you get all that stuff you realize that you don’t really have anything but a bunch of dead batteries and flat tires, and no place to keep them. And then you realize that you probably should have spent your money on the stock exchange, or maybe you should have invested in a restaurant, or maybe you should have spent your money in a wiser way. But it’s too late, and then you have to sell all your cars and motorcycles to pay the IRS, and everything else that may be held against you. And then reality kicks in.
BS: So when did the acting bug bite?
MM: At the moment of birth, when I had to pretend like I was happy to be here. (laughs) Well, look, I can honestly say that when I was babysitting for my mom’s sister’s kids and I was about… I think I was 14 or 15. There was a movie on TV called Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, and Mitchum was playing a Marine trapped on an island with a nun. And his performance was so compelling to me, I remember sitting there going, ‘Wow.’ I couldn’t believe how somebody that looked like that and had that personality could do that in front of a motion picture camera and maintain humility. I just found it to be fascinating. I think that’s the first time it ever crossed my mind, and it wasn’t until years and years and years later that I actually had the opportunity and wherewithal to try it.
BS: You have a hell of a lot of movies to your credit — are you a workaholic?
MM: I’ve been off for the entire month of July. I have five sons and I stay home with them and take everybody to school and play Mr. Fix-It at the house. My kids ride motorcycles, and I spend time with my family and do the dad thing, and I’m very happy and blessed to be able to do that. But at the end of the day I’m not really happy unless I’m working, and also if I don’t work then I’m not going to be able to keep my family in the lifestyle that they presently enjoy. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Are we all supposed to move to a trailer park while I wait to get that one great role? I mean, that’s never gonna happen. I wanna stay busy and keep working and keep everyone in clover. I like to have everybody happy, and have what I never had, and that makes me happy, to know that they’re happy. That’s what drives me to go on. I work a lot because I have to pay the mortgage, not because I’m trying to be a big shot, or I’m secretly stuffing bundles of cash in a mattress. My money is spent before I make it. I’m trying to maintain the lifestyle that I already have, and it’s tough.
BS: Wrapping up, you’ve written a book of short stories and poems, Burning in Paradise — is that something that you do with consistency, or is it a different creative outlet that you dabble in and come to as need be, as a sort of pressure release valve?
MM: Oh, it’s definitely a creative outlet, and it’s something that’s given me a great deal of solace. Making movies is a very lonesome profession sometimes, so I took up writing, an
d writing about things that I saw around me. And I never intended it to be in a book, but it ended up being so. It’s not for everybody and some of it I wish I hadn’t written, some of it’s a little too personal. But then again, you can’t unring the bell, and it is what it is. I’m happy that some people like it, and some people don’t. I wrote down a lot of stuff that was true, I wrote a lot about growing up, and I haven’t written anything in quite some time. I have a writer’s block, I suppose. But I would call it social observance, not poetry. But I would hope to keep doing it, and I will. The greatest gift to me is that my son is reading Burroughs and Kerouac and Ginsberg, and reading about the Hell’s Angels. It’s wonderful, to me, that my son is studying and learning more about the people that I grew up reading, and knows more about it than I do, for God’s sake! All that literature is very important, and it’s really insightful stuff.
I missed it, from a few weeks back, but over at FilmStew, from the “keep on keepin’ on” files, Richard Horgan has up a nice happenstance-encounter riff about Dennis Woodruff, the wildly colorful and self-promoting aspirant actor-filmmaker whose armada of intricately decorated and customized automobiles are familiar to most Los Angelenos. It seems Woodruff has a new 36-minute documentary, Surfin’ in the USA, available via his web site (it sounds like his Heavy Metal Parking Lot), and is otherwise just still exercising his creativity in nutty, idiosyncratic fashion.
In contrast to its snowy environs, the Sundance Film Festival has been responsible for a lot of heat over the years, helping launch, solidify and re-brand the careers of any number of filmmakers and actors. This year’s belle of the ball might have been writer-director Courtney Hunt, whose debut feature, Frozen River, is about a struggling mother of two (Melissa Leo) who gets caught up running illegal immigrants across the border through a secluded Mohawk reservation along the edge of Quebec and upstate New York. The film wowed audiences and won the Grand Jury Prize, with jury member Quentin Tarantino famously confessing that it “put his heart in a vice.” In advance of the movie’s release, I spoke with Hunt recently about the sanctity of the festival experience, the hoity-toity nature of film criticism, and what to do when you fall asleep with the camera rolling. For the full read, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here. More from the interview, and on the movie, next week.
So with news swirling about studio suitors for Quentin Tarantino’s long-gestating, Nazi-scalping World War II epic Inglorious Bastards, which the filmmaker has of course promised to cast, shoot, edit and have ready to screen by next year’s Cannes Film Festival, I chatted Tuesday with Michael Madsen, the only actor who was ever “confirmed” to appear in the film — in the role of Babe Buchinsky, a part that no longer exists in the most recent draft of the script. A friend and frequent Tarantino collaborator ever since displaying one of cinema’s most enduring psychopathic jigs in Reservoir Dogs, Madsen certainly has the smoker’s growl to play a WWII grunt. But mo’ (studio) money may equal mo’ problems, it seems, at least for Madsen. For the full read, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
It’s the last interview of the day for filmmaker Jonathan Levine, just in advance of the opening of his new movie The Wackness, and he’s feeling a bit angsty about having carved lines into the side of his head, what with his haircut now being captured for posterity during television interviews. “I didn’t think that part of it out,” he says,” and I look ridiculous. I haven’t seen my girlfriend yet, but I sent her a picture via text message and she was like, ‘You moron.’”
Levine will more than gladly take a bit of good-natured ribbing to help get his film out there, though, especially after all the curious delays on his first movie, the teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, that have helped render his chronological follow-up his actual big screen commercial debut. As The Wackness — a sensation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award — makes a slow summer crawl across the United States (it’s currently grossed just under $600,000 in major cities), the 32-year-old Levine indicates he’s just happy to finally have a film see commercial release. “It’s cool in many ways,” he says, “and it’s fine for this to be my introduction to audiences because it’s a very personal film for me.”
Never in his wildest dreams did Levine imagine that his script — about an angst-ridden, high school pot-peddler who starts swapping Ziploc baggies of weed in exchange for therapy from an equally neurotic, screwed-up therapist — would elicit an Oscar-winning star to make comparisons to the Bard’s Henry IV. For the full interview with Levine, from FilmStew, click here.
Stephen Dorff has cracked skulls, drained blood, cried and dropped trou for his craft, and in his latest film, Felon, he shaves his melon and engages in some prodigious, prison-set knuckle-dusting. The independently financed movie, written and directed by Ric Roman Waugh, stars Dorff as small business owner Wade Porter, whose modest life with his fiancée and their three-year-old son is upended when he’s convicted of killing a man who breaks into his home, sentenced to state prison, and then ends up caught up in a self-perpetuating cycle of gladiatorial violence overseen and encouraged by a crooked prison guard. For Dorff, it was an intense experience, so much so that he even got tattooed by a convict after the production. In advance of the film’s limited theatrical release, Dorff graciously took some time to chat by phone, both about this movie, the nuttiness of Uwe Boll, and the forthcoming Public Enemies, directed by Michael Mann. The conversation is excerpted below:
Brent Simon: When I saw all the prison-yard fighting in Felon, in which you’re wearing very little, and sometimes shirtless… I was reminded a bit of the shower scuffle from Eastern Promises, and in talking to Viggo Mortensen last year he said basically you just have to resign yourself to the fact that it’s gonna hurt like hell.
Stephen Dorff: That’s a cool correlation, because it felt so bare. Obviously not as bare, because I’m not naked, but just in these thin boxers and high tops. That’s what they wore, and it was just intense, because they weren’t fights that we would really choreograph. We wanted to bring in this MMA (mixed martial arts) vibe, because that’s what’s going on in the prisons, as UFC and all this stuff is taking over sporting. I think that’s infiltrated a lot of the prisons, from Ric’s research. So we wanted the fights to be very frenetic, not as staged, no 1-2 punches. All the prison stuff I’d seen, excerpts from Corchran State Prison and some of the shivings and stabbings, they all happen at lightning speed — you come out on the yard and boom!, you get clocked. And I think Ric really stayed true to all that. He wanted them to not feel like big bouts. During filming I even thought, “Wow, are they too quick?” But I think in the end they’re not, because that’s what they are.
BS: So did you have any pads underneath?
SD: Not really. I did most of it myself, but worked with a couple other guys. The only other people that aren’t principals that aren’t actual parolees or guys that have been institutionalized in the film in real life were three or four UFC guys that came out and helped. Tommy Gunn was my double, and did some of the things were I could’ve gotten really hurt — some of the big flips and stuff. He would take some of those hits. It was cool to watch, because I didn’t know what was going on while we were doing it, they’re so frenetic that I didn’t know what was happening. But when I saw it pieced together it was very realistic.
BS: The film is shot in a very hand-held, confessional style, really up close — was that something you talked about with Ric early on, and does that change what you do as an actor?
SD: Ric knew what he wanted. I didn’t have much to do with those choices. I wanted to know who was shooting the movie — I’m always kind of curious, even when I’m just an actor — and he had this guy Dana Gonzales who is just awesome. He shot it on these little cameras, and it had this grain, and a beautiful look, I thought. We had small cameras so we could go into these cells where we don’t have any room. So again, keeping everything realistic, you’d never be able to fit a 35mm camera on some of these sets. I remember when Mike Figgis told me he did Leaving Las Vegas in 20 days in 16mm, and I remember going “Fuck!” To see what what Ric did with Super16 on this movie, and then have it blown it to 35mm, just looks so much cooler. We did the movie in probably 35 days, or maybe less — compared to Public Enemies, where we had 100 days. I knew we made something good, I could feel it, but I’ve been gone for five months and finally got home and [got to see it] and I was really proud of it. I hate seeing movies that I make; even if I like them, I don’t really like to watch myself, but I was so proud of (costar) Val (Kilmer), I thought he knocked it out of the park. I thought Harold Perrineau was so strong too — just all the actors did a really good job.
BS: Shooting at New Mexico State Penitentiary — were there special precautions taken, and had you ever done anything like that before? (Warning: slight spoiler at end of Dorff’s answer to this question.)
SD: No, I never had. We shot most of the film, where the SHU (Special Housing Unit) and the Yard are, in the old part of the prison, which is shut down, and they have shot a couple films there, some of that Adam Sandler football prison movie. They’re actually a little more friendly there, because there are so many movies being shot in New Mexico. The other part of the prison, where the bus pulls in, is a level five or six prison, which is a serious prison, and working and open, there were felons walking around in their jumpsuits. It was weird, and we were the first film, I believe, to shoot beyond those gates. When you have a film crew come into a prison that’s fully running, it’s probably not what they want, but Ric did a great job PR-wise with the warden and the mayor and governor, and worked those angles. We were kind of the underdog movie, and we didn’t have a ton of money to give them. …The actual scene where I come out, at the end, is where they really release prisoners. A guy that’s coming out after 15 years is going to come out through that same room that I came out of, and you definitely feel it.
BS: Throughout your career you’ve worked with some notably intense and/or out-there directors — Bob Rafelson, Tony Kaye, Oliver Stone, Uwe Boll, to name a few…
SD: Wow, that’s funny that you put Uwe Boll in that category. (laughs)
BS: Maybe he’s more of a category unto himself.
SD: That’s probably the best pairing he’s ever had, considering I read an article in some magazine where they called him the worst director of all time.
BS: He’s a real character, though, right?
SD: Yeah, he don’t give a fuck. He don’t give a fuck, I’ll tell you that.
BS: So who’s the most out-there director with whom you’ve worked?
SD: Well, I like artists, so I don’t mind if a director is out there. Oliver Stone is out there, every director is out there. Actors are out there. Creative people in general kind of have their own approach and their own madness, you know? And I don’t really get weirded out by that at all. Someone like Ton
y Kaye I’d been friendly with, because years ago he met me for American History X and I was kind of in between the ages — I wasn’t old enough for the Ed Norton part and I wasn’t young enough for the part of the younger brother, but I really loved that script. And then all the drama happened with him and he went off and just did commercials. But then Black Water Transit came around — which hasn’t opened yet but is going to be a pretty cool movie, I think, since we did a lot of cool shit on that. Michael Mann is pretty intense — great experience, he’s one of my favorites. I’m kind of interested in that even more now, great directors. For a minute there I did a couple films I probably shouldn’t have done, or didn’t want to do, that I made a bunch of money on, and that was fine, but ultimately it’s the director and the actors that I’m working with that I’m the most concerned about, it’s not really the size (of the film).
BS: I’m guessing Alone in the Dark was maybe one of those in that category.
SD: Yeah, I mean, you know, I was friends with Christian (Slater), and they payed me an awful lot of money for two-and-a-half weeks of time. It wasn’t really my movie, I felt like it was more Christian’s, because I wasn’t the lead in that film by any means. But Uwe and I got along great. He’s just what he is — he’s not a real filmmaker, he’s more of a videogame guy. I don’t know how he’s done what he’s done, but he keeps making his movies, so God bless him, you know? I don’t have anything negative to say about him.
BS: In some ways I think he’s the P.T. Barnum of our age.
SD: Yeah, totally. But he is crazy. (laughs)
BS: You mentioned Public Enemies — what was that experience like, and what’s the tone and look of the film?
SD: It was awesome. We just finished last week, and it’s a full-on gangster flick — 1934, the last year of Dillinger’s life, and shooting real Tommy guns and hanging out of cars, having a ball. It was a journey, with a bunch of great actors. Johnny (Depp) was incredible to work with, and very sweet to me. I’ve known him for years, but had never gotten to work with him. And Marion Cotillard is an incredible actress; Christian Bale, the list goes on. There’s so many great actors in that film. I had a really good time with Michael on it. It was long, but I think it’ll be a really good movie. I think they’re talking about a trailer or teaser going up soon, and it’ll probably be out next summer.
Jenna Fischer has been getting a lot of love recently here on Shared Darkness, but I’m sure you don’t have a problem with that. (You’d better not.) The secret to her success? Sure, sure, other than talent and charm? You might be surprised. Then again, it’s mentioned in the title above, so probably not. Here, I’ll let her explain, from a recent interview.
“The audition process for The Promotion was really funny. Jessika (Goyer), the producer, really hates it when I tell this story. I had only been on The Office; Blades of Glory hadn’t come out yet, or Walk Hard. I was in fact shooting Blades of Glory when I went on this audition. I went over and met (director) Steve Conrad and Jessika, and auditioned for the movie, and really felt like I connected with Steve. I was like, ‘I think he liked my work!’ But I didn’t know what was going to happen. So I got a call from my agent and he said, ‘Here’s the thing: they loved you, you’re their first choice, but…'”
“The role is of a Chicago nurse, struggling paycheck to paycheck,” Fischer continues, “so I showed up looking as real as possible. And they said you were great, loved the acting, but we’re not sure if you’re going to pop on camera. Like, are you a movie star? We need you to come back and do the same performance, but look really hot! Eww, right? So I’m on the set of Blades of Glory, and the day we shot the lingerie scene was the day of my callback for this movie, so I had hair and glamorous eyelashes and I wore this low-cut, red blouse that on every audition I wear it I get cast. I was told, ‘Harvey and Bob (Weinstein) are going to watch the tape on their jet while they’re going somewhere, and we’ll let you know if you’re OK.’ And so I did and felt like such an idiot! Because I’m all glammed up, and reading this realistic dialogue about nursing and struggle. But they called and said thank you so much, that was perfect, you have the role, you have the job. So it wasn’t just the audition, it was also my red boobie shirt that got me the role,” which Fischer later confides makes her look “kind of like a sexy Minnie Mouse.” The kicker? “Of course when I made the movie they made me look like a real Chicago nurse,” she says with a shrug. “Sometimes that’s part of it.”
The Cannes Film Festival is known as an annual market for movers and shakers, and a great launching pad for international directors as well. It was there, in 1993, that Guillermo del Toro (below right) first made a name for himself as a filmmaker, after having established his own special effects and make-up company in Mexico, and years of television work there. His debut feature film, Chronos, picked up a special Critic’s Prize in competition at Cannes, and went on to a stunning sweep of eight Ariel Awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars. Since then, del Toro has steadily worked his way up the Hollywood food chain — all the while never forgetting his roots, and sprinkling his filmography with personal, and often fantastical, Spanish-language period pieces.
His latest movie, this week’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, finds del Toro working with his biggest budget yet — though surely a
drop in the bucket compared to the combined price tag of the two Hobbit prequels he’s signed to next direct, for producer Peter Jackson. It may
seem strange for a series based around a giant, red, petulant demon
spawn who begrudgingly works for a secret government paranormal
investigatory unit yet really just wants to watch TV and play with his
cats, but the character of Hellboy holds a special, and very personal,
appeal for del Toro. For the full interview feature, from Reelz Channel, click here.
It’s been said that no matter how crowded it gets, there’s always more room in hell. That may or may not be true, but the Hellboy movies sure have proven to be inclusive ensembles. Though sprung from the imagination of Mike Mignola‘s mid-1990s graphic novel series — about a giant red demon spawn rescued from occult Nazi forces during World War II, and raised as part of a clandestine, paranormal crime-fighting organization — the movies are of course largely the product of the expansive imagination of Guillermo del Toro, who has written and directed both feature films. Though he takes Hellboy, his pals and some other characters straight from Mignola’s work, others are tweaked mightily, and still more created from scratch. The result, especially in this week’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, is a dizzily detailed world, crammed with creatures both gorgeous and grotesque. For a fun, handy primer on some of the movie’s major supporting players, from Reelz Channel, click here.
