Don Cheadle first garnered a lot of mainstream attention with his performance opposite Denzel Washington in Devil In a Blue Dress, for which he was awarded the Los Angeles Film Critics Association‘s Best Supporting Actor prize. Since then, of course, he’s appeared in a wide variety of mainstream and independent films, earning a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for the searing Hotel Rwanda, and further burnishing both his sociopolitical and off-camera professional credentials as one of the producers of the Oscar-winning Crash, which he was instrumental in helping get made. Heck, he was even nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004, for his narration/dramatization of the Walter Mosley novel Fear Itself.

In his new film, writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard, Cheadle plays a FBI agent, Wendell Everett, who arrives in rural Ireland to head up a large international drug trafficking investigation, and is then forced to rely on an eccentric small town cop, Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson), with a confrontational and crass personality. I had a chance to chat one-on-one with Cheadle recently, about working up a multi-layered accent for the film, the subversive racial humor coursing through this most curious and entertaining little dramedy, and his work on a long-gestating movie about Miles Davis, which will hopefully begin shooting in several months. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here.

A television writer nominated for five Emmy Awards, Michael Weithorn has had a successful career dating back to the early 1980s — mostly in sitcoms, from Family Ties, The Wonder Years and True Colors up through Ned and Stacey and The King of Queens. For his feature film debut as both a writer and director, however, Weithorn toned down the overt laughs, and instead took aim at something a bit more melancholic, laced with a quieter humor. Set in suburban Long Island in the summer following the September 11 attacks, A Little Help centers on a dental hygienist and mother, Laura (Jenna Fischer), whose marriage has become tense and loveless, and whose 12-year-old son Dennis (Daniel Yelsky) has become sullen and resentful. I recently had the chance to speak to Weithorn one-on-one, talking about the challenges of putting together an independent production, what it’s like to shoot in your high school hometown, and his own history of lying. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.

Independent film production encompasses many challenges, as well as an inherently skillful touch with the necessary art of compromise. But you wouldn’t always know it from interviews with filmmakers, many of whom have a tendency to latch on to one or two good anecdotes or merely fall back on thematic talking points when discussing their project. Refreshingly, writer-director Brian Metcalf is not of that ilk. His feature debut, the sci-fi-tinged adventure Fading of the Cries, faced many bumps and hurdles over the course of a 10-year period from initial conception to its eventual theatrical release this week, but perhaps none quite as rocky as a production cycle beset with fire, a compacted schedule, and on-the-fly script revisions. I had a chance to recently chat one-on-one with Metcalf, and the revealing conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.

The instincts of the average person, when faced with an occupational dismissal, might be to retreat and lick one’s wounds for a while, or at least enjoy the sort of deep exhalation and no-strings-attached vacation that adulthood rarely affords. When the firing is very public, one would assume some measure of privacy would be additionally important, or desirable. Of course, celebrity entertainers are not always your average folks, even when they really are. So Conan O’Brien, on the heels of being let go by NBC so that they could re-hire Jay Leno to front The Tonight Show, threw himself into a sprawling, live musical-comedy tour, and agreed to let director Rodman Flender come along for the ride, and document the entire experience. The result is Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, an engaging travelogue that also showcases the sort of on-the-fly creativity involved in undertaking such a high-wire endeavor. I had a chance to speak with Flender one-on-one recently, and the conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.

Michael Angarano is not yet 24 years old, but he’s already racked up an impressive list of credits, even if a lot of folks might recognize his face from a more cherubic state. He was the young William in Almost Famous, and the young Red Pollard in Seabiscuit. Other audiences might know him best from a stint on Will & Grace. Crucially, though, Angarano is in the process of showing he has what it takes to navigate the tricky terrain between adolescent performer and young adult actor.

A solid turn opposite Uma Thurman in this year’s split-generation romance Ceremony affirmed his keen touch with uniquely verbose sensitivity, and he gives a realistically frazzled performance opposite mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano in Steven Soderbergh’s character-rooted tale of AWOL-secret-agent vengeance, Haywire, which was just recently pushed to early 2012. Up next, however, is writer-director Gavin Wiesen‘s coming-of-age tale The Art of Getting By, in which Angarano plays Dustin, a young painter who befriends Freddie Highmore’s under-motivated high schooler, George, and becomes unwittingly caught up in a love triangle with he and Emma Roberts’ Sally. I had a chance to speak with Angarano one-on-one recently. For excerpts from the chat, trip on over to ShockYa.

A pinch of wry fatalism, and the ability to step back and view the trials and tribulations of adolescence as moments in time, fixed suffering on a much broader horizon, is an attractive quality in teenagers (and especially so once they age out a bit more, into their twenties, and begin to reflect back on younger years). It’s that sort of emotionally jumbled ironic detachment that drives writer-director Gavin Wiesen’s feature film debut, The Art of Getting By, a coming-of-age tale in which bright but undermotivated slacker George (Freddie Highmore) is befriended by and finds a kindred spirit in Sally (Emma Roberts). I had a chance to speak one-on-one with Wiesen recently, about his previous filmmaking experiences with Gwyneth Paltrow’s dad, the fierce hormonal grip of teenagedom, and his movie in general. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so trip over there for a look.

Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer may be the stuff of pat Hollywood drama, but Buck Brannaman, the quietly charismatic horseman who helped inspire both the 1998 film and the novel upon which it was based, is actually quite real. Cindy Meehl’s stirring Buck, then, is a soulful and delicately illuminating documentary portrait of the soft-spoken man — and a movie that also makes a persuasive and heartrending case for the boundless capability of human healing. The Audience Award winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the film is a must-see for horse aficionados, of course, but just as accessible and interesting for those who’ve never sat astride one of the creatures. I had a chance to speak with Meehl one-on-one recently, and the conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.

Few performances in 2010 were as difficult to watch as Lesley Manville’s turn in Another Year. A Razzie nominee, you ask? No, far from it. Tabbed by various critics’ groups for their Best Supporting Actress award, and a BAFTA nominee to boot, Manville turned heads and wrinkled so many brows in wincing, knowing exasperation because of just how skillfully she embodied the suffocating neediness and loneliness of Mary, an aging British singleton who serves as a boozy, chatty leech on the lives of her best friends, Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), and their adult son. In advance of the June 7 Blu-ray/DVD combo pack release of Mike Leigh‘s film, I had a chance to speak with Manville by phone recently, about her feelings regarding her character, her rich working history with Leigh, and the unique manner in which the award-winning writer-director shapes his material. The one-on-one conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa.

A lot of first-time filmmakers play it safe, or trade in cutesy, emo-stamped, indie-friendly clichés, seeking to woo audiences (and critics) with witty and slightly canted takes on extraordinarily familiar material, and then trade on that to-scale success for a call-up to big-league, studio filmmaking. For his feature film debut, Spencer Susser did no such thing. Hesher, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a gonzo turn in the title role, and featuring engaging supporting performances by Natalie Portman, Piper Laurie and Rainn Wilson, is a weird little thing — a warped, seriocomic effort about a sociopathic burnout who intrudes on the life of a shy, gangly teenager who has just lost his mother. It may not be for all tastes, but it’s definitely not boring or safe. I had a chance to chat one-on-one with Susser recently, and the excerpted conversation, complete with details about his new project, is available over at ShockYa. For more, click here.

Director Charles Ferguson has made only two films, but brought a crystalline, depressing clarity to both the run-up to the Iraq War and, now, with Inside Job, the 2008 financial crisis that brought America’s economy to its knees. I caught up with the filmmaker recently for a few questions, on occasion of his movie’s DVD release. The conversation is excerpted below:

Brent Simon: So I thought I’d throw you a curveball to start — the MGMT song that ends the movie, “Congratulations” — how did that come about? The audience might be expecting something more known or up-tempo, to punch home their simmering rage in a much more direct fashion.

Charles Ferguson: We heard it and we liked it. We were told by their representatives, fairly late in the process of making the film, that MGMT had just recorded this song that was about the financial crisis, in a very elusive, indirect, poetic way. So we listened to it, both [myself] and producer Audrey Marrs, who actually has a background in rock music, was a punk rock musician a long time ago. We both loved it, so we tried to license it, and we did.

BS: Six or seven minutes on Iceland open the movie, which is like a bracing splash of cold water. How early did the film’s opening coalesce around that idea, that area of focus?

CF: I think that I had the idea to do that as soon as we filmed in Iceland. We spent a week filming there, and it was a very extraordinary experience for many different reasons. We got there just at the start of Icelandic summer, a short period of time where Iceland very dramatically changes from its very stark, dark almost lunar winter landscape to this very lush, green place. We got there just as that was happening, and so visually the place was remarkable, and the experience of interviewing people… some of the most extraordinary ones didn’t make it into the film. Ger Hartegg, who was the prime minister of Iceland during the period of the bubble, and responsible for much of the deregulation, and was indicted, was extraordinary. The experience that country had was such a triple-distilled, utterly clear, crystalline version of what happened in a much more complicated way over a much longer period of time in the United States that I thought it was a perfect introduction to the issues. And also, in film terms, it was very cinematic, beautiful and visually striking, so it just seemed perfect.

BS: You don’t inject yourself into the proceedings to the degree that Michael Moore does, but given that you’d made No End in Sight, which had received acclaim and attention, were you worried that word would get out and people wouldn’t want to talk?

CF: I was concerned about that, and it turned out to be true. Not primarily, however, because of the film. The primary reason that my reputation preceded me, and I’m sure that played a role in why some people declined to be interviewed was on the contrary my prior life as an academic. You know, I know Larry Summers, and he knows me, and I know Laura Tyson, and she knows me. I know quite a number of people in the Obama administration, and many people in the economics discipline, and also a number of senior people in finance. I know John Thain. He agreed to speak with me off the record, and we had many long conversations, but he and most of the other people who know me declined to be interviewed. And I think part of the reason is that they knew that I was a diligent researcher and wasn’t going to be afraid — that if I felt like I had to ask something, I was going to ask it, whether they liked it or not, and that it wasn’t going to be easy for them to get away. And I’m sure that’s why Larry Summers declined to be interviewed.

BS: This leads into my next question, which is that the film isn’t predicated on “gotcha! journalism,” and yet one of the biggest takeaways for me was that you’re asking informed questions, but there were a number of interviewees who seemed to be shocked at the very nature rather than even the content of the questions that you were asking. It seemed that they existed in a bubble where questions concerning a greater good for society weren’t being asked, or weren’t paramount in their minds.

CF: I did notice that. I was very struck by their reactions in these interviews, and the sense that I had was not so much that they were completely oblivious to the idea of ethical standards or the greater good — not that I felt they had behaved ethically, I think that they may have behaved extremely unethically and were aware of that fact — but what was surprising was that it was extremely clear that nobody had ever asked them about these issues before, nobody had ever asked them about their financial conflicts of interest, the academic economists in particular. And I was shocked that they were shocked. It was extremely clear that they expected to be deferred to, and they found it absolutely stunning that somebody was pushing them on these issues. And I gradually realized, in the course of doing all the interviews, that they had never been asked these sorts of questions, which again, I found stunning.

BS: How do you take a film like this and help sell it to an audience outside of those who maybe are the choir, who have a native interest in politics, government and/or documentaries?

CF: It’s important, because I didn’t make this film for my six finance-geek friends. I made the film so that hopefully people in the world can understand what happened here, and that people will come to realize that finance is too important to just leave to the financiers — that we all have to do something about this. And so that certainly guided the way that we made the film. I tried very hard to make the film clear and accessible, and keep jargon out of it. I also tried to keep the film non-political and non-partisan, and I think that we succeeded in that. And I also tried to make it a cool movie; I wanted it to look good, I wanted the music to be cool, I wanted it to be an interesting, enjoyable, compelling experience to watch this movie. That was the goal — to make it as accessible to as wide an audience as possible.

BS: It’s not a thriller per se, but the dramatic components within the film are fairly timeless — greed, overreach, hubris, all those good, big meaty things. Taking a birds-eye view, do you think it’s essentially a story about addiction and the atavistic nature of humanity, a story that just happens to be writ large? Some of them are criminals, but some can be fundamentally decent people whose… ethical missteps, let’s say, have a hell of a lot more impact than someone who’s working at a gas station skimming profits from their owner.

CF: (long pause) I think it’s complicated. Part of what occured was the result of rational self-interest and greed. That’s certainly part of the story. There’s another part of what happened here which is about a different part of human nature. One thing that struck me was how disconnected these people had become from the consequences of their actions. They had come to have so much money and power, and came to use their money and power in such very specific ways to place themselves in this bubble where they never felt the consequences of the actions and were never criticized. That’s why I put in the information about the private planes and private elevators, the paying for sex, the drugs, the huge quantities of money that insulated them from all of the things that you or I would experience if we tried to behave in an equally extreme way. If we got into a car here in Los Angeles and floored it and tried to go 200 miles per hour down the city streets, we’d cr
ash and the police would come after us. We couldn’t just do that. But these people, because of all of these things, there was nothing and nobody in the world telling them to stop. And then there’s something else — it was this kind of very primal, competitive, testosterone-fueled thing, which also people talk about in the movie. There’s this amazing line in the first Wall Street: “Mr. Gecko, how many yachts can you water-ski behind?” So why did they do it? Once they had the first $500 million, why did they keep doing it when this was going to be the result? And it’s something about human nature.

To purchase Inside Job on DVD via Amazon, click here.

Over on her Forbes Girl Friday blog, I’m sourced in a piece by Meghan Casserly about potential breakout actresses of 2011, along with Fandango editor Chuck Walton. Who’s rising, who’s falling, and what input or say-so does the public have on Hollywood’s star-making formula? Read on, by all means.

Over at Huffington Post (which really needs the traffic linkage), in a nice piece, Katy Hall gets into it with Blue Valentine writer-director Derek Cianfrance about some of the ins and outs of production on his film, and how he set up some of the tripwires (including telling Ryan Gosling to make a pass at Michelle Williams) to help his actors painfully construct a failing relationship. I link to this mainly because the non-nomination of Gosling for a Best Actor Oscar statuette — since he didn’t have the benefit of Julia Roberts hosting targeted screenings for his film — is inarguably the biggest travesty of the awards season, bigger even the cresting appeal of the mannered, solemn, well-bred The King’s Speech. I hope to get into this more in the coming days; we’ll see.

Also, over at FrumForum, Telly Davidson takes a look at 127 Hours, and questions what qualifies one for “hero” status.

I’ve been slothful in getting this up sooner, but I had the chance to chat with Jacki Weaver a while back, in advance of the Golden Globes and her delightful Best Supporting Actress acceptance speech at the LAFCA awards ceremony.

Weaver’s justly lauded turn is of course at the center of the appeal and dark pull of writer-director David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, an exceptionally engaging Australian crime caper. The film takes a while for its heart of stone to manifest, and this serves to unnerve an audience, because they’re understandably wanting someone with whom young, newly orphaned Josh (James Frecheville) can identify. That person seems to arrive in the form of Weaver’s Janine Cody, aka Aunt Smurf, Josh’s semi-estranged grandmother and the matriarch of a group of bank-robbing and drug-peddling criminal low-lifes. First appearances can be quite deceiving, however.

A lively conversationalist (“I believe in hangovers, not jetlag,” she says, in a cheery tone that makes you believe her), Weaver says that the one-and-a-half weeks of rehearsal before filming were invaluable for establishing a rapport with Frecheville, an acting neophyte. “He was only 17 when we shot, they took him out of
high school for a term to do it,” she says. “But he was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.”

Remarking upon her character’s malevolent detachment and manipulation, Weaver notes that “there wasn’t room for another female
in Animal Kingdom. She wanted to be the center of all that attention, which is probably why she never had successful
relationships with all [of her son’s] fathers. In a way, they’re all a substitute for that.”

Though she’s dabbled in film for decades, Animal Kingdom represents a huge big screen Stateside breakthrough for Weaver, who’s mostly worked in theater, costarring in celebrated works like Six Degrees of Separation. “When we were making it there was a very good feeling on set, we had great camaraderie, and felt that we
were doing good work,” Weaver says. “And when we had a cast and crew screening we felt fabulous,
but maybe biased. It wasn’t until it won (the World Cinema prize at) Sundance that it seemed like this was really a film that could [capture a worldwide audience]. We had all gone to do some publicity because we were one of the 12 finalists in competition, but we didn’t expect it to win. When word came, everyone except
Joel (Edgerton) had already left!”

While more film roles will no doubt follow, next up for Weaver is a touring production of Uncle Vanya, along with Cate Blanchett, which will bring her back to the United States later this year.

Certain films meet the moment head on, and zeitgeist sensation Catfish, a nonfiction mystery unfolding within a labyrinth of online intrigue, is a movie which both takes and matches the temperature of the outside world in a variety of compelling ways. A divisive hit at this year’s Sundance Festival, the movie centers on 24-year-old New York City photographer Nev Schulman (one of the filmmakers’ brothers), who is contacted on Facebook by Abby, an eight-year-old Michigan girl who asks permission to paint one of his pictures. When she sends him her remarkable painting, Nev strikes up an online friendship with Abby, her mother Angela and the rest of the family. When Nev and his friends uncover some startling revelations, however, they embark on a road trip to find out the truth. In the midst of their own road trip, doing press for the film, I caught up with co-directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost. Spoiler-free excerpts from the conversation are as follows:

Brent Simon: What is it about Catfish that most causes people to doubt its veracity?

Ariel Schulman: I think it’s the style or structure of the film. It’s edited like a narrative thriller, which is not your typical documentary structure at all, and I don’t think a lot of people are used to seeing a true story told [in that manner].

BS: The reaction at Sundance was overwhelmingly positive, but some people immediately talked about it being staged, or phony. Was that surprising?

Henry Joost: No, we had a small inkling of it because at an early screening before Sundance where we started showing it to people who didn’t know us personally an older documentary filmmaker brought that up. He said, “I think it’s a great film, but it’s clear to me that you staged certain scenes. There’s no way that you had the camera all those times.” But that’s the truth, nothing is staged in the film. We pulled out our cameras, which are these tiny little things that we carry around all the time. It’s not like we’re carrying 16mm cameras in our backpacks, it’s just these little consumer HD cameras. So it wasn’t totally unexpected, but it did catch us a bit off guard at Sundance, because you don’t expect people to question a real experience that you have. But I think it’s a product of the way that we put the film together, and decided not to use talking head interviews or voiceovers or things that documentaries traditionally use. And also I think audiences are more suspicious these days, because of sneaky movie marketing and the fake documentary as an emerging style, like with The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. But this idea that we could have created such an elaborate fake documentary is to me inconceivable. It’s a little [flattering], on a certain level. It would mean that we are much, much more intelligent than we are. It would be up there with War of the Worlds by Orson Welles, and we just don’t think that way.

BS: One of the things that people respond to is the degree to which fraternal jocularity informs the narrative. The first third of the film unfolds over eight months, in grab-as-grab-can snippets, and then the narrative reaches this tipping point and gathers all this downhill momentum.

HJ: That’s kind of a generational thing, and ties into social networking also — I feel like people take a lot more photos and videos of themselves these days, and are a lot more comfortable sharing things, so they understand that [condensed backstory]. And we’ve actually never really shared these little things that we shoot before this. Ariel and I do it mostly for ourselves, making these little short films. We’ve also gotten a lot of a feedback from people [in their 50s and 60s], and I feel like sort of almost unintentionally the movie explains how Facebook and Google Earth work to people our parents’ age, who say, “OK, I finally get it.”

BS: On some levels, the film could be read as a luddite’s manifesto, a tech-age cautionary tale. Where do you guys come down on the revolution in social media?

AS: My social networking is below average among our friends. I really just use it as much as I feel like I have to to stay in touch with people I want to stay in touch with, and check out their photos. (laughs) But social networking has made me a little uncomfortable from the beginning, even though I recognize its value. My favorite thing about it is that it’s allowed me to connect again with people I went to kindergarten and middle school with that I probably never would have seen again.

BS: The reception of this film has obviously opened a lot of doors — what’s next?

HJ: We always had dreams of making a narrative fiction film, so we’re thinking of doing that next, and we’d love to continue making feature documentaries also. But we’re not going to plan on it, we’re just going to be ready if happens, I guess. It’s obviously a very hard experience to duplicate, but right now we’re writing and looking forward to getting back to work. We’ve been doing screenings around the country and doing Q&As, and every time we screen the film a great conversation follows. Another thing is that people have been sharing their own stories with us. And usually people want to know how Nev is doing — they’re concerned for him. He’s very vulnerable. This has sort of reinvigorated his photography career, and he’s also traveling around with us. People want to meet him more than us.

Catfish expands in theaters today. For more information on the film, click here.

Adrian Grenier became famous on HBO’s Entourage playing an actor who shoots to stardom and has to cope with paparazzi marking his every move. Naturally, Grenier then became a real-life target of the paparazzi. Last year, Grenier directed a movie, Teenage Paparazzo, which introspectively chronicles the true story of his unlikely, evolving relationship with a precocious 14-year-old paparazzo, Austin Visschedyk (below left). And while I talked to Grenier a couple weeks ago about this project, in advance of its September 27 premiere on HBO, paparazzi snapped his photo. Snake, meet tail! The conversation is excerpted below:

Brent Simon: The idea of a youngster skulking about at night as a paparazzo evokes a strong first response. How objective or subjective did you want your film to be?

Adrian Grenier: Well, obviously I have my own opinion about paparazzi, especially so often being the victim of their disrespect. I think when I saw Austin that was the last straw for me. I knew I had to do something. I had to figure out, just for myself, what was going on in a culture that would embrace that, and encourage young people to engage in it.

BS: Austin comes across as pretty bright, if typically self-involved. How reticent was his family to participate?

AG: Oh look, there’s a paparazzo! (pause) You should put this shot they’re taking of me right now with the article. There they are. I hope I look OK. (laughs)

BS: Irony of ironies! How much of an influence are paparazzi on your everyday decisions?

AG: They always tend to dominate a situation. You could be having a casual stroll with a friend or loved one, and they just come in and destroy any nice moment. But I think as an actor and performer, we speak in the language of images and stories, and paparazzi are really no different. They get content for tabloids to make stories. And who better to use than performers? What upsets celebrities is that they don’t have control over the story. I don’t think I’ve met any celebrity that doesn’t love a nice fluff piece about them, a picture that says look how gorgeous they look. But what they don’t like is when all the media can’t be positive about them; they can’t take the bad with the good.

BS: Paris Hilton has some interesting insights in the movie.

AG: One thing I really respect about Paris is that I consider her an artist of a different art form — her canvas is the tabloid media. She’s extremely talented in being able to utilize and create on that platform, and I look up to her for that. She taught me a lot about how to be able to roll with it, embrace it.

BS: What percentage of paparazzi maybe is charged mainly by the thrill of pursuit, and actively antagonizing celebrities?

AG: Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s the same proportion of douchebags in any population. They’ll make more money if they can conjure a good story [and] prod a celebrity to do something, whether it’s do a little dance, hold up a peace sign, pose, or throw a punch. They’re like mini-directors on some level, I guess, no different than Stanley Kubrick pushing someone to the brink of sanity to get the shot. The only difference there is that the actor is a willing participant who’s being paid.

BS: The film talks some about parasocial relationships, those one-way feelings of intimacy people have for celebrities. Are any paparazzi like this?

AG: I think we mostly tend to have very simple relationships in our capitalist, consumer society, and paparazzi aren’t different necessarily. They look at celebrities as a paycheck, as food on the table. One thing I am excited about is that the Creative Coalition has invited the film to be part of their spotlight initiative slate, and take it to high schools and colleges around the country as a way to invite students to look at the way they consume media. And I hope TeenagePaparazzo.com will be a continuation of the film, where people who’ve seen it, and users in general, can have a two-way conversation.

BS: How about Austin today? Are you still in contact with him?

AG: Austin will be a presence on the website. I want to give him an outlet to express himself, and also give people an opportunity to see what he’s up to, and what sort of photos he’s taking. Right now we’ve yet to see. I think he’s growing up in his own way, and thinking about college. He’s a much more mature person than he was, and I’m curious to see what the experience of the film’s release will mean for him.

For more on the film, click here.

Over at the L.A. Weekly, Karina Longworth chats up Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, who is pushing 60, remarkably enough, and has a new Movie Macabre, launching tomorrow in syndication.

Twenty years after the making of GoodFellas, GQ interviews nearly 60 members of the cast and crew, for a comprehensive look back at one of the most endlessly rewatchable American movies ever made. Sadly, there isn’t a knife fight about the various spellings of the film’s title. Money quote from the piece, from John Malkovich, who turned down the role of Jimmy Conway: “It sort of came at a bad time in my life, when I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to think about working. It’s hard to explain why you end up in Eragon and not GoodFellas. But Robert De Niro is fantastic.” For the full read, click here.

Iowa may not seem like the most logical destination for a film premiere, but when the movie in question is about one of the Hawkeye State’s longest-running sociocultural landmarks, it’s a good fit. Such was the reason and case that I found myself in Sioux City a bit over a month ago, just a couple miles from the Nebraska border, for the debut of A Million Spokes, an engaging independent documentary charting the annual RAGBRAI marathon.

RAGBRAI is an acronym for the Register’s Great Annual Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, since the event is sponsored by the Des Moines Register, and has been ever since it was first thrown together in late August of 1973, as part of a friendly challenge between feature writer/copy editor John Karras, a biking enthusiast, and Don Kaul, the newspaper’s Washington, D.C. bureau columnist. What began in modest fashion as an invited ride-along for Register readers has evolved into a sprawling seven-day event beginning the last week of July along the western border of the state and ending a week later along the eastern border. (Participants typically dip the back wheel of their bike in the Missouri River upon the event’s kick-off, and then celebrate completion by dipping their front tire in the Mississippi River.) The route changes every year, with overnight camping locations rotating among dozens of small towns, many of which understandably see a good portion of their burgh’s businesses enjoy a big boom in sales, since the event routinely draws over 10,000 week-long riders (some from as far away as Australia) and 1,500 or so “day bikers.”

Directed by Varda Hardy and produced by Talia Rodriguez-Shakur and Ken Gorrell, A Million Spokes focuses on a handful of bicyclists, each of whom has a different motivation for taking part in the ride. Some are first-time participants drawn to the sociability of the event, others are hardcore biking enthusiasts (and even competitors) who enjoy RAGBRAI as a sort of late summer tune-up. The challenges facing independent film — of effectively and economically locating a given niche or submarket, and the audiences that are most likely to respond to that sort of storytelling — are myriad, but A Million Spokes, while playing a bit for the heartstrings, admirably encompasses a more robust humanity than a simple glance at its logline might indicate.

Ostensibly a feel-good tale of community spirit and familial bonding, the film does feature some moving narrative strands, including a young, widowed participant riding for his recently deceased wife, with whom he had enjoyed the trip the previous year. But there is also a subject who suffers from severe alcohol poisoning (visiting all sorts of assorted small town watering holes is a big tradition for many riders), and one of the couples in the movie, who good-naturedly joke about their widening personal differences during filming, have since split up, we come to learn in a coda. The movie, in other words, is by turns touching, funny, poignant and sad (like life, really), as well as just flatly curious about its backdrop.

In a lunchtime conversation with the Santa Monica-based Hardy — who was brought on to the project after Rodriguez-Shakur secured an exclusive term-contract window for film rights, and contacted her — the filmmaker confesses no great passion for cycling, per se. Instead, she comes off as someone for whom curiosity is just second-nature, even turning a little flip-cam on her lunchmates to query them about tangentially related matters. It’s that innate trait that helps power A Million Spokes; the level of thought and care that went into capturing the actual RAGBRAI ride, and conveying its experiential essence, rivals that of a production with a hundred times more means and man hours. For the filmmakers, it was important to be able to give viewers various and sundry engaging personalities with whom to identify along the trip, but also a sense of something a lot of us miss these days, in the hustle and bustle of our ever-connected, digital-era lives — of existing within nature and passing through a space not as a silent, distracted traveler, but someone actively doing, in this case quite literally, the legwork of locomotion. To achieve this tack, they commissioned the construction of a special rig which allowed for them to place a cameraman alongside bikers on the route, and also deployed mounted cameras in choice fashion. Finally, certain participants were also given mini-cameras and asked to record their thoughts along the trek, which are then woven artfully into the chronological narrative.

The film’s Friday evening premiere — at a local commercial theater near the Stoney Creek Inn, where an equally convivial dinner reception was held afterward — was a nice affair, attended by several of the film’s subjects, as well as participants and media covering the impending RAGBRAI 2010 launch. The Sioux City humidity — a throwback to childhood for this Southern-raised writer — dampened the enthusiasm not one bit, but instead just made it a bit thicker. Plans for A Million Spokes‘ distribution are currently up in the air, though several heartland-centric film competitions, in addition to other festivals, remain in the mix as possibilities. Stay tuned for updates. For more information on RAGBRAI, meanwhile, click here.

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.