Emma Enters the Adult World

2013 Tribeca Film Festival

 

Emma Enters the Adult World

 

from brinkzine.com (4/30/13) 

 

Emma Roberts

Photo: Perri Nemiroff

Perhaps it was because so few comedies were screened at the recent Tribeca Film Festival that I was so charmed by Scott Coffey's Adult World, a sweet-spirited little oddity featuring an engaging all-out lead performance by Emma Roberts. I'm partial to anyone--including Bonita Granville and Pamela Sue Martin--who plays one of my childhood heroines, Nancy Drew, so I've always rooted for Julia Roberts's niece to make good on her own. I was particularly impressed by her performances as the clever teenage sleuth and the fame-seeking teenage murderous in Scream 4, but as a young woman in Adult World she has really blossomed. Here the busy young actress plays Amy, a recent graduate from Syracuse, who is determined to be a professional poet, although her talent is dubious. To make ends meet, she must take a job in an adult bookstore. It's a peculiar place for her to work because she's a virgin who has spent her life reading books rather than experiencing life--including sex. She doesn't realize that her nice, handsome coworker (Evan Peters of American Horror Story and Roberts' real-life boyfriend) is attracted to her because she's too busy pursuing a has-been poet (John Cusack in fine form), hoping he will mentor her and, possibly, deflower her. Roberts throws caution-to-the-wind playing this endearing character who flops, fails, and suffers numerous embarrassments as she, like the actress, tries so hard. And Amy wins us over. During the festival I took part in the following roundtable and I was won over by Roberts, a smart, humble, and as nice a movie star as you'll ever meet. If she uses the word "cool" to describe most things, it's cool because she's cool. I note my questions. (The informal photos of Roberts posing alone and with me were taken by movie critic Perri Nemiroff.)
Q: You hadn't seen Adult World before its debut at the Tribeca Film Festival?
Emma Roberts: No, and it was so much fun. I was so nervous, I was white-knuckling the chair and felt like hiding under it, but then people started laughing so I slowly sat up and relaxed a little bit. It was definitely nerve-wracking because the things I laughed at weren't always the things anyone else laughed at, and those times I said, "Oh my god, that was horrible," everyone's on the floor laughing.

So it was hard for me as an actor in the movie to be objective about it, but I couldn't have asked for a better audience. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it.
Danny Peary: What is its appeal?
ER: I think it's a cute movie, because it's funny but it also says something. It's really current and talks about a lot of issues and feelings of young people. I feel like it captures a generation that hasn't really been captured in movies or on TV. I think it captures my generation's feelings toward the real world.
Q: How did you come to be in the movie?
ER: I was sent the script, and it was one of those scripts I thought was really special and different. It was just one of those things I loved and wanted to be a part of. I met with Scott Coffey, the director, and we had the best time ever, talking for hours and hours.
DP: Did you audition, either by yourself or with other people in the movie?
ER: I didn't audition, I just met with Scott and we just clicked. I know he read a bunch of actresses, so I was shocked that I got the part off that one meeting. That was awesome because that rarely happens. I couldn't imagine not being there, I would have been devastated if I didn't get it.
DP: What did he ask you?
ER: He asked me a lot about the character Amy, and the script. At the time I didn't think of it as my being interviewed, really, but I guess he liked that we had the same perspective and wanted to just tell the same kind of story. We wanted it to be a coming-of-age story but coming from a different direction, kind of anti-Hollywood. Girl gets out of college, what does she do? She fails, over and over and over and over again. That's kind of what happens to Amy. And we wanted to show that in an honest way instead of having her end up being really famous and successful! Obviously, it's not like that. Scott and I worked so hard on creating this character. I put a lot of myself into it, which was really cool to do with a role.
Q: Did this character speak to you?
ER: Definitely, I relate to having your life planned out for you, and then all of the sudden you're at the age when everything is supposed to already have happened in a certain way, and it hasn't--so you have to reassess your plan, whether professionally or personally. I think that a lot of people, especially from my generation, don't really have a Plan B. That's what is so funny about Amy. She has no plan besides becoming a published poet. So it's cool to see someone have to literally figure it all out as she goes along.
Q: She doesn't give up.
ER: You know, it's funny, because when I saw the movie for the first time, I realized Amy comes across as being much more optimistic than I had intended her to be, but I'm actually glad she does. She's a little bit ignorant, and that's why she's so optimistic. I don't think she realizes she has failed but the audience does. She's already messed up so much but she doesn't see it, and we wait for her to find out. That's why you root for her.
DP: Do you relate to characters who are searching for an identity?
ER: Definitely. I think it's fun as a young woman to get to play characters who are searching for something, whether it's their identity, or love, or something they can be passionate about.
DP: And you relate to that?
ER: Yes, of course, I relate to that because I'm 22 and I'm still figuring myself out in some ways, and finding out new things every day, and also finding things that are interesting and cool. Yeah, I definitely relate to that in my characters.
DP: In this film, Amy tries to communicate through poetry and in other roles you've played, on your Nickelodeon TV series Unfabulous and in your movies, your characters have communicated through music. As an actor-singer, do you particularly identify with characters who communicate through art?
ER: Definitely, I think it's cool to play characters like that. A lot of my younger characters are trying to communicate, like Amy, through poetry, or through singing or through whatever their ambitions are. Young people do try to communicate like that, trying to connect. I can definitely relate to Amy because I love to read and it's cool to connect with people through words. It's really big connection when you connect over a piece of work. With every part, you find yourself playing someone who likes something or does something, and you have to learn about it. For Amy, I definitely read a lot more poetry. I read lot of Anne Sexton. She is a great female poet and feminist, and I had her in the back of my mind when playing Amy. Amy would appreciate Anne Sexton because all of her stuff is kind of provocative and some of it is really ethereal.

 John Cusack and Emma Roberts

Q: Talk more about working with Scott Coffey.
ER: Scott is such an amazing director. I think it's because he was an actor. It does make him a better director, as far as being able to speak about the story with us. It was just fun because he and I became, like, best friends. During shooting we ended up having our own language, where we would talk and no one could understand us because we were going a million miles a minute. Then I'd say, "Okay, let's do it!" and everyone else would be like, What did you guys just say?
Q: What was it like to work with John Cusack?

 

 Emma Roberts and John Cusack
ER: I'm such a fan of John Cusack and all his movies, so to meet him and get to work with him was really, really cool. He was just so much fun, particularly with the adlibbing he would do. A lot of my reactions to him were genuine, because I'd be thrown off, or laugh, or be like, what? I'd listen to him go off on some story while in character. We both did that to each other. If you asked me to improvise right now, I couldn't do it, and I've been on movies where you're supposed to adlib and everyone just ends up looking at the camera. For me, it all depends who I'm working with. and on this the camera would roll for 7 or 8 minutes of adlibbing and that was really great.
DP: Why does your character work in an adult bookstore?
ER: Well, she couldn't get any other job, and for her I think it's weird because she's kind of a prude. She doesn't have any life experience yet she thinks she's bursting with life experience. She's becoming a woman and working in a sex shop, yet she's never had sex. She's never had a boyfriend. I feel that she's realizing she actually doesn't know everything and hasn't experienced anything, and that's kind of a subtle wake-up call for her.

Evan Peters and Emma Roberts

DP: But why do you think Scott places her an adult bookstore?
ER: I think the adult bookstore is a backdrop. This movie is not raunchy at all, it's really not over-sexualized at all. The store adds to the comedy actually, as opposed to the drama of it. The movie is more comedic than serious, including about sex. That part is actually light-hearted. I remember the first day we were shooting in the store, everyone was laughing and joking around and throwing sex items at each other, and picking up something and asking, What's this? And everyone's like, Emma put that down! Oh my god! I'm not embarrassed by that stuff at all, I just think it's funny, but I can definitely relate to Amy being like, What does this mean? and then being like, Oh my god, don't tell anyone I asked that!
DP: What did you think of working on location in Syracuse?
ER: Syracuse is the coldest place on earth. Literally. It is the coldest place I've ever been to and I was shivering all the time. My nose is red and my lips are blue in the movie. Clearly they let me wear no makeup. My mom saw the movie and she's like, You look really tired, and I'm agreeing that I look really tired and really cold, because I'm so pale. And when I get cold my dark circles get worse.
Q: What else are you working on?
ER: This summer I have a movie coming out called We're the Millers. It's with Jennifer Aniston and is a really cool family road-trip comedy. And I just did a pilot called Delirium for Fox: a one-hour drama based on a young-adult trilogy. I also did a movie called Palo Alto that Gia Coppola directed and that'll probably be out at one of the upcoming festivals, hopefully.
Q: Did you read James Franco's Palo Alto Stories?
ER: Yeah, I loved the book, I thought it was really cool and the movie was really, really cool. Gia did an amazing job with it. James is actually in the movie. He plays a teacher and I play a student and we have a romance.
Q: How old are you in that?
ER: I play 15 or 16, and they made me look really, really young.
Q: How hard has it been moving from kid to adult roles?
ER: It's one of those things that happens naturally and gradually, at least for me. I'm not opposed to still playing a teenager if the role is great. If the part's good it doesn't really matter, you know? But I also like playing older roles too, and obviously playing my age, like I do in Adult World.
DP: Who are your fans right now?
ER: It's pretty cool to have different groups fans, because people will come up to me about so many different roles. People will still come up to me about my show, and Nancy Drew and then people will come up to me about Scream 4, and then people who havent even seen Delirium are already coming up to me about it. So it's a big, wide group, which I like because I like to do to different things and see different kinds of people appreciating different things. The people who come up to me never like what I think theyre about to say they like, but like something else I've done. It's funny that everyone has such different tastes about everything. It's fun to keep it interesting like that!

Emma Roberts and DP photo: Perri Nemiroff

Three Stars Speaking About Nair's Eye-Opener

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Playing in Theaters

Three Stars Speaking About Nair's Eye-Opener

from brinkzine.com (4/25/13)

 Liev Schreiber and Riz Ahmed

Is it too much to ask that every American see Mira Nair's stunning adaption of Mohsin Hamid's best-seller The Reluctant Fundamentalist? Nair calls her film "a political thriller, a love story, and a coming-of-age-story, essentially, that tries to bridge a [cultural and political] divide that is so deep between two parts of the world." It's one of the most accessible, mature, and persuasive political narratives in some time and features a brilliant lead performance by British actor and rapper, Riz Ahmad. Here is the synopsis in the film's press notes:
2011, Lahore. At a cafe [in Pakistan] a Pakistani man [a leftist teacher who is a suspect in a kidnapping] named Changez (Riz Ahmed) tells Bobby (Liev Schreiber), an American journalist, about his experiences in the United States. Roll back ten years, and we find a younger Changez fresh from Princeton, seeking his fortune on Wall Street. The American Dream seems well within his grasp, complete with a smart and gorgeous artist girlfriend, Erica (Kate Hudson). But when the Twin Towers are attacked, a cultural divide slowly begins to crack open between Changez and Erica. Changezs dream soon begins to slip into nightmare: he is transformed from a well-educated, upwardly mobile businessman to a scapegoat and perceived enemy. Taking us through the culturally rich and beguiling worlds of New York, Lahore and Istanbul, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a story about conflicting ideologies where perception and suspicion have the power to determine life or death.
In anticipation of the film's New York release on Friday, I took part in the following roundtables. I note my questions.
Roundtable with Riz Ahmed and Kate Hudson

Riz Ahmed and Kate Hudson Photo by DP
Q: Can you talk about the time you saw the movie for the first time, and what emotions you had?
Riz Ahmed: The first time I saw it was at the Venice Film Festival. I saw it under circumstances of duress and I was cringing.
Kate Hudson: I saw it in Venice, too. It was very intimidating.
RA: It was huge, and the jury were so phenomenal, heroes of mine.
KH: You had a history with the novel.
RA: I read the book in 2008, I think, and I just loved it. I phoned the publishers to find out who had the rights. Years later I found that Mira Nair was doing it, and I've always wanted to work with her. So the combination of a book I love and a director I love made it kind of a dream project.
Danny Peary: What I find most interesting about Changez is the he's 100% honest. Is that how you played him?
RA: I think he's trying to get to 100% honesty. I think his goal is to see if he can live 100% honestly when person he is consists of contradictory things. I think that's what he's grappling with. That's something I can relate to, having grown up between classes and cultures. I think it's something you can relate to, too--I think it's something most people around the table can relate to. We are all hybrid now, and we often consist of contradictory things. That's the essential thread of the film: can you live authentically when what you are can be very confusing and contradictory. I think that's the central journey of the film and the character. I think Changez tries to get to that place, and that's why I figure there's a hopeful message in the film, even as there's a lot of tragedy and loss in there. I think there's hope.
DP: But does Changez tell a lie?
RA: In the whole movie, does he tell a lie? That's a great question.
KH: Think about what his family would say.
RA: Well, when he's on the phone to his mum, sorting out wedding arrangements, I don't think he tells her that he's with Erica. That's significant, because that's the most different part of his life. Those little white lies are actually often the most telling. With Bobby, I think Changez doesn't tell lies, but he allows ambiguity to persist, if it serves his purpose of having Bobby's ear and telling him his story.
Q: Kate, how did you personally relate to the remorse Erica has for the tremendous loss of her previous lover?
KH: Personally, knock on wood, I haven't experienced that kind of tragedy, but I think just as an actor, by nature, I'm enormously empathetic. And playing a character like Erica, I think I instinctively tapped into the idea of when you experience some kind of trauma in your life, you start closing off the ability to connect. I can relate to what it feels like when you start shutting certain connective things down in your life out of fear of being hurt again. I think what is wonderful about Erica and Changez's relationship is that he opens the door a little bit for her to start the healing process. A love connection becomes a place for them to know more about where they are in their lives and who they are. But she's not ready yet to really face it head-on. Although the film lends itself to extreme circumstances, underneath there's something everybody can relate to.

Ahmed and Hudson
Q: Obviously, all the Americans represent different segments in our country. Do you think your characters' representation is different from others?
KH: I don't think we approached it like that at all, as different sides of America. Mira especially conveyed each person's human conflict, what was going on inside them, and how we interact and communicate with each other.
RA: There is an element of allegory, something mythical, in the way the story is structured in the novel. I think as actors and Mira as a storyteller, it was about allowing all the characters to be three-dimensional and have conflict.
KH: Mira is making a narrative story and changing this metaphorical novel into flesh and blood.
RA: There's a trap that the story is asking us to avoid, in a sense. Can people be reduced to labels, either by themselves or with other people? That's what fundamentalism is about; fundamentalism as a pursuit is reductive. You're trying to reduce people to their labels; you're trying to reduce someone's lifetime goal to profit or loss; you're trying to reduce humans into targets of a bombing or a shooting. I think what Changez is trying to do is fight that reductive urge, which is fundamentalism, whether economical or political. He's trying to say, Yes, I'm a Muslim, yes I'm Pakistani, but I'm not just those things. The same is true for the Americans. They're not just the sum of their labels.
Q: Kate, how did you deal with the emotional impact of playing Erica?
KH: I was very tapped into my emotions on this movie. I don't know if it was just because I was breastfeeding, or if it was just coming up for me. I was going in and out of breastfeeding to being extremely focused on this extremely emotional character. So definitely, breastfeeding a two-and-a-half month-old baby, and tapping into all those emotions left me quite exhausted. Mira is very aesthetically oriented. Even to the tiny thing you wear on your wrist or your hair color, it's a specific choice. Mira was very specific about how she wanted me to look in the movie, and she wanted me to have dark hair. And I, as an actor, wanted to facilitate my director.
Q: What would you say about Changez character's teaching style in Pakistan?
RA: What's interesting is that we see different impressions of what he may be like as a teacher. 

We see when he's quite jingoistic and polemical in his lecturing, and then you see the other side of him, in a parallel universe where he's teaching students in a very different way. When he first starts teaching, he asks his students, What does Pakistani mean? What does American mean? The class falls silent. They think America has a very strong sense of what it aspires to be, whether it meets or fails by some standard. I think that's a very empowering thing to have, as a nation. I think there are lot of countries that are trying to find their way, they're in the midst of a very bloody debate about what their country should be. Great Britain, actually, is in the middle of one, real soul-searching. We're spending all this money on nuclear submarines, but who are we and how are we still relevant in the world?
Q: Do you remember an influential teacher you had?
KH: My most influential teacher was Hyacinth, and she was my English teacher for two years in high school, and my voice, speech and debate teacher. She was Jamaican, and she lived in Montreal and then moved to Los Angeles. She had a fascinating life, ended up in LA teaching at the school that I went to. She is truly responsible for my love of literature. As a kid, I wanted to be playing Kate in Taming of the Shrew, I didn't want to be reading Heart of Darkness. I wanted to be acting out and reading playwrights and she took me on this journey and opened a whole world of literature to me that still is an important part of my life.
RA: In terms of an influential teacher, I got into a lot of trouble at school, so I'm very lucky that I had some very patient teachers.
Roundtable with Kiefer Sutherland

Photo by DP
Q: You play Jim Cross, the managing director of a Wall Street hedge fund and Changez's boss as he tries to climb the corporate ladder. Who is he?
Kiefer Sutherland: He's an opportunist. [In regard to Changez], he sees a really good thing, he takes advantage of it, and when it no longer serves his purpose, he gets rid of it. My lines were so beautifully drawn in the script that there was no need for me to manufacture anything. I just didn't want to get in the way of my character. Playing the part was that simple.
Danny Peary: Does he have a family?
KS: It's an interesting question that I'd expect from a professor in theater school or something.
DP: Or me.
KS: I mean that respectfully. No, he doesn't have a family and the reason I can answer that so quickly is that--and it's not as pronounced as when we shot the scene--is that he is gay and has a lover. There's a sense of estrangement for him, and that's why he identifies with Changez. The reason why Changez admires him is because he is truly a self-made man in the sense that he had almost manufactured his life. He talks about his father, a shoe salesman. Clearly, for me,

Sutherland and Ahmed

the way he talked about him was that he had passed him and that was the end of it; he got to reinvent himself. And he admires Changez because he is doing the same thing.
DP: He's not necessarily a villain, but in reading the production notes I thought you seem to like him a lot more than I expected.
KS: I didn't and I don't. I would be deeply disappointed with myself if I was that man. There's a big difference between liking and understanding a character. I believe that I understood that character, but anybody who can invest that much in developing a person, and then be able to shut him out and cut him off as fast as he does Changez doesn't have a lot of merit [so I don't like him]. But, having said that, I'd have played any character in this movie. I wanted to be a part of telling this story; I thought it was important. As an actor, I try to choose a story that I want to be a part of telling, as opposed to chasing a role.
Q: How did 9/11 impact you?
KS: Profoundly. I dont think there's a day that goes by that I don't still think about it. It brought my family a lot closer together, but it was just one of those huge, moving moments. And my focus was always focused on the people in the towers and the people on the planes, and their families and their friends, and the loss of that. What I had failed to acknowledge was the profound ripple effect that 9/11 had. People of different races and ethnicities would have their lives inexplicably altered as well--based on prejudice, ignorance, anger, racism. When I read the script for the very first time, I was kind of ashamed of myself because I hadn't thought about it in a larger perspective. So I desperately wanted to be a part of this film.
Q: What do you think this film is about politically and ideologically?
KS: It's about what we missed. When we focused all our attention on the immediate issue of 9/11, we forgot about the ramifications of what we've done, and the truth is that--in regard to racism and prejudice and ignorance--we changed some people's lives in a very negative and horrible way. I think we need to take a serious look at that so we don't do that again. And I have to be honest before I kind of get all lofty like that: I was one of those, too. I was angry after 9/11. Complaining about profiling, are you fucking kidding me? All the bombers came from Saudi Arabia, bomb the hell fucking shit out of it. I was wrong. I was wrong, and when I read this script, I knew that. And I hope that the film has the same impact on an audience that it had with me when I read it.
DP: On the set, did people sit around and talk about politics?
KS: Not really. I think Riz and I had a conversation here and there. He told me an amazing story. I was in Sweden, doing a film for Lars von Trier, so I wasnt here for the whole thing about the mosque [that was supposedly going to be established] just down the street from Ground Zero. I heard about that mosque in Sweden and it was reported that they were building it on the site of the bombing. They were wrong. I was like, "Well, that's stupid, why would they do that? Why would you ask for that fight?" But in truth it was a mile and a half away so that was bullshit. 'Riz told a story about how he was just walking home, in New York, and came across a rally against the mosque. And the protesters saw him and went after him, and he had to run. He was telling me that story, and I said, "Well, that's why we're making this film. Because I think so much of this is born out of ignorance and fear.
Q: Talk about Mira Nair's approach as the director.
KS: I'm going to contradict myself. I didn't find her viewpoint womanly or feminine, I think it's that of a person. I think she has a very pragmatic, almost asexual point of view with regard to filmmaking. Having said that, on the set, she is the mother you wish you had. There's an unbelievable nurturing quality that she has as a filmmaker, that is extraordinary. And she creates an environment that is unbelievably comforting, that is warm, that allowed me to go through two or three different dialects before we settled on the way Jim Cross would speak in the movie. I would never have thought of trying that. She creates an atmosphere for you that's so comfortable that it allows you to try something different. I think that kind of work she must do in the script before, because the script was so solid that really, as an actor, I just had to make sure not to ruin it.

Redford is Good Company

 

 

The Company You Keep is Playing in Theaters

 

Redford is Good Company

 

from brinkzine.com (4/4/13)

 

 

In my first book, Close-Ups: The Movie Star Book, published way back in 1978, I wrote an essay on Robert Redford that was very flattering but ended with a mild slap at the political liberal for making films with political themes that did no more than express already acceptable liberal attitudes. I concluded: "It is odd that for someone with a reputation as a political maverick and a Hollywood misfit, his movies have been relatively tame in content...There's no denying that Redford, who could handle it, has avoided controversy in his choice of subjects. That is his major failing." Since then, I have admired Redford's career as an actor and director, not to mention his amazing support of independent filmmakers through Sundance, but he never made that daringly political film I was waiting for. Until now. Scripted by Lem Dobbs from Neil Gordon's novel, The Company You Keep, which Redford directed and starred in, is probably not the most radical or bold political film to ever come out of Hollywood, but there aren't many other ostensibly mainstream fiction films that give such a respectful, empathetic portrait of the individuals who comprised the militant Weather Underground (or that subtly link today's invasive FBI with that of the J. Edgar Hoover era). I'm sure veteran leftist actors Julie Christie and Susan Sarandon were delighted to join Redford in his daring endeavor in which sixties radicals don't express terrible remorse for their extremist actions during their youth. Redford plays liberal Albany lawyer Jim Grant, who is a widower raising a young daughter, Isabel (Jackie Evancho). After Sharon Solarz (Sarandon in a small but effective role), a former member of the Weather Underground, is arrested after more than thirty years of living under an assumed name, an ambitious, apolitical young reporter, Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) blows Grant's cover--he was once Nick Sloan, and, with Solarz, was part of a group of Weathermen who pulled off a bank robbery in which someone was killed. With an FBI agent (Terrence Howard) and Shepard on his trail, Grant searches for his long-ago lover, Mimi (Christie), the only person who can tell authorities that he wasn't present at the bank. In anticipation of the film's release tomorrow, I was at a press conference on Monday with Redford and cast members, Stanley Tucci, who plays Shepard's editor, rising star Brit Marley, who plays the daughter of Grant and Mimi, and Evancho. It was moderated by Annette Insdorf.
Press Conference
Annette Insdorf: Robert, what drew you to the material? Had you read Neil Gordon's novel of 2003 or was it Lem Dobbs' screenplay that attracted you to this?
Robert Redford: It was the book that I read about five or six years ago. I was drawn to the book--it was big and wide-ranging and had a lot of plot lines and characters. There was something at the core that captured my attention, and Lem Dobbs was hired to write the screenplay. Four or five years were spent shaping that material into what could be a film. There were many iterations of a screenplay that was reshaped and reshaped and reshaped, so it was kind of sculpted.
AI: Brit, you've starred in wonderful, idiosyncratic independent films like Another Earth and Sound of My Voice, both of which you co-wrote. But here you play a young woman who turns out to be the biological daughter of Julie Christie and Robert Redford's characters, and in Arbitrage, a year ago, you played the daughter of Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere, another pair of Hollywood icons. For you, is there is much difference between making low-budget indie films and these dramas with major stars?
Brit Marling (laughing): The crafts service table is different. I guess in some respect there are other differences. but for me honestly it always comes back to the story. How attracted am I to the story? When I read this script I was really moved by the idea of the Weather Underground and how it's not set back then but in the present day, with the group coming of age and now having wisdom and experience. And they're looking back, wondering about the radicalism of their youth, and whether they made the right choices. Would they do it differently now? I think my generation is grappling with a lot of the same ideas. I was very attracted to that part of the story.
RR: Can I add something to that? We were overjoyed to launch Brit's first film and her second one at the Sundance Festival. That's how I came to know Brit. Her work was really, really special. And I thought that some way and some time, I'll find a way to work with her. I was very motivated by what I had already seen, so it was a particular joy for me to be able to invite her onto this film.
BM: I should add to that the fact that I've been able to make a living as an actress and a writer solely because of Robert Redford and Sundance, the institution he created as a safe haven for artists and filmmakers to work independently. Without that I might be in investment banking--who knows what I'd be doing right now.
AI: Stanley, your character belongs in this wonderful tradition of hardboiled newspaper editors. How did you approach your role and how much was he a result of improvisation vs. rehearsal in order to find the nuances of the character?

 Shia LaBeouf and Stanley Tucci
Stanley Tucci: I have to say it was all there on the page. The character was very well written, very well-realized in the script. I dont know that I had to do that much. And I had Shia LaBeouf's energy to work off in my scenes and Robert's very clear and succinct directions. Rehearsal was really minimal for the most part. Shia and I rehearsed one day and then we did it. The scenes are very straightforward. Ray Fuller is the classic curmudgeonly, exhausted editor. I think particularly in this day and age he's interesting because he's part of a dying breed. We're not going to see those guys around too much any more.

RR: I want to add a few words about Stanley. We have some history together; we go a ways back, and like Brit, I'm very indebted to people who come in for no money at all, and volunteer their services to help. Stanley was one of the first advisors that we had at Sundance--he gave up his time at a crucial point in our development. That's how Stanley and I got to know each other, and then we did the first film that he directed and that was a joy for me. And over the years Stanley and I have engaged at different points in time. To be able to cast Stanley is one of the great honors I'm able to share with you all. Let's face it, there's no money in film these days and you have to depend of the kindness of colleagues to come in and help you. I was blessed by having a wonderful cast, certainly with Stanley and Brit and Jackie. Stanley didn't have to come in, there was nothing in it for him except the joy of working with me [laughter]. But he came in, and to show you what a pro he is, he didn't need any rehearsal, because he's such a well-crafted actor. He so understood the part. He just talked about Shia's energy, and Shia has a fast mind and a fast tongue, and Stanley was able to work with that and still be the character that he had to play. He had to play a man in control within an industry that was going out of control, which adds its own dynamic. The fact that he could manage the energy by creating a counter-energy as Shia got more crazed. Stanley goes the other way, which creates a dynamic. As Shia slows down, Stanley goes for his throat. I enjoyed watching that.
AI: I think it helps when the director is also an actor.
ST: See, that's the thing. Robert is an inspiration for me. first as an actor, and then as an actor-director. If he can do it, anyone can do it! To watch him as an actor is always enjoyable, but then to see the movies that he directs, and the way he so effortlessly goes back and forth from one side of the camera to the other is an inspiration. And then the creation of Sundance, which gave us all a huge, huge opportunity and continues to give us all an opportunity [to make movies], is a great thing. For that reason alone, to be in this movie was an honor. You want to give back whatever you can, even if it's just, "OK, Ill be in your movie, if that makes you happy." Robert, why that would make you happy I dont know [laughter], but Im glad it did. It was great.
AI: Jackie, you're a newcomer among these acting veterans. Your background is singing--since 2009, you're recorded at least five albums, including one platinum and one gold, with three Billboard 100 top-ten debuts. In 2010, you competed on America's Got Talent and finished second. I'm curious, what led you to acting?
RR: Let me do the lead, because it's a wonderful story. I was in Vancouver getting ready to film in a few days, and I couldn't find a young actress to play my character's 11-year-old daughter. I was flustered in the interview process, because I was interviewing girls who were lovely, and fine, and their mothers were dressed like they wanted a part in the movie, too. I like kids to just be and these kids were too busy acting. I was sitting in a hotel room, depressed, mindlessly surfing the channels although I don't watch much television, and suddenly boom. There's this vision on the screen, an angelic creature who was 11-years-old. I said wait a minute, what's this? She's singing Puccini. How does that work? So the camera pulls back, and there's this huge orchestra in a symphony hall, and this creature standing there is just belting this music out,; it was so powerful. I said somebody who has that composure, who can do that in front of that kind of an audience, with that kind of register, that kind of complexity, maybe that's the one. So I contacted our casting person, and they found out she was in Pittsburgh. They went there and sent back a tape of her. It was clear that she didn't know what was going on, but I thought there was something and decided to take this chance. She was hired on Tuesday and we filmed on Wednesday, the first day I met her. We had fun together, improvised together, and I can only tell you that from that point on I figured I am one lucky man, because she turned out to be absolutely lovely. I ended up the beneficiary of risk-taking.

Jackie Evancho: All I can say is that I'm extremely honored to have had the chance to actually act with you guys, I was really, really excited that I got the role, and I really had a lot of fun. So thank you.
AI: Were you nervous the first day?
JE: I was extremely nervous, I didn't know what to think.
RR: She was nervous, but she was so busy having fun that it disguised her nervousness.
AI: Jackie, did you know the name Robert Redford, and had you seen any of his films?
JE: My dad always talked about him with his brothers, so I knew the name, but I wasn't very familiar with it. The only thing that I knew was that my dad told me he played a cowboy. That's all I knew!
Q: Robert, what do you want people in the 21st century to take from this movie about the legacy of the Weather Underground?
RR: There are probably a number of things I'd like people to take away. To simplify, I'd say probably the biggest thing would be that they think. Some films are made not to necessarily cause anyone to think--it's like eating cotton candy and you have a wonderful ride and that's all you really want. And other films are designed in a way to make you think about what happened and make you ask questions afterward and maybe have a dialog with somebody. That's what I would prefer. That would be the first thing I'd want, and the second thing has to do with a criticism I have of my own country. I don't think we have been very good at looking at history as a lesson to be learned, so that we don't repeat a negative historical experience. We're not good at that. Looking back and kind of saying this happened then, what can we learn from that? I just think it's an American tradition to be so busy looking forward and driving forward and doing, doing, doing, so we don't look back and say, Gee, what can I learn from the mistakes I made before? So I guess the hope, that's all it can be, is that [this movie] makes you look back at that moment in time. By the way, when [the Weather Underground] happened, I was of that age. I was of them in spirit, but wasn't part of it because I was starting an acting career in the New York theater and was also starting to have a family, I was obligated to those tasks. But I was certainly empathetic to what they were doing, because I also thought it was a wrong, unnecessary war that was costing lives. It was also a war designed by people who had never gone to war. [My making this movie] had a lot to do with the kind of tragic history of the United States and the mistakes it has made and never seemed to learn from--that's my own personal criticism about my country and history. So I guess I would hope we look back, and this time it's not about what happened then but it's about those people more than thirty years later. There's a wonderful poem by Yeats, one of my favorite poems. Yeats was so sick of what was happening to Ireland; he could see that calm Ireland was about to be disrupted by vandalism, by revolt, and by revolution, and that Ireland would probably never be the same, and so he was bemoaning that by taking a conservative stance. In that poem there's a line--"The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity." It was such a nice thing for me to play with. As these people who were filled with that passionate intensity grow older, and look back, they're trapped by their pasts because in order to stay free from the law, they must go underground with false names. How long can you live without your true identity? That's what interested me, to tell that story. Not then but now.

Q: Have you had the opportunity to meet any of the people who are represented here?

RR: No, I didnt feel I needed to. I was already aware of them, as I said earlier. And I saw a documentary several years ago on the Weather Underground, I felt that the documentary, about the actual people, was very well made. I didn't feel I needed to meet them because this was a piece of fiction that was really about their lives later. I did meet the son of Bill Ayers, who lives here in New York and Chicago. He's a teacher. That was it. I figured, it's dramatic fiction, and I wanted to be able to take it on, using people who really were as the basis but creating characters.



Robert Redford  Photo: Brad Balfour
Q: You wouldn't want to talk to any of them now?
RR: No. I'm happy to talk about this film, I'm proud of it, I'm proud of the actors who were in it, and I was able to make the film I wanted to make the way I wanted to make it, and I'm proud of that. But after you work onsomething if you stay with it too long, it's not a good thing.
Q: Are you critical of modern journalism in your film?
RR: Well, it's kind of tricky when an artist starts to mess around with journalism. I've done that before. I dont know that the media is comfortable being criticized so you have to be careful. Basically, I was tempted by a story that was written by someone else and just documented that. On the other hand, I have such a huge interest in the media because it plays such an important role in our society, and I'm very concerned if it's ever threatened in any way. And if it is threatened, I would like to know how and why. I think that the internet has so drastically altered the landscape of journalism because now we sometimes get too much information. How does anyone find the truth? Where do citizens find the truth? So much is coming at them. You have the far right and the far left hammering stuff, and so much of it is lying that the public just gets fed up and turns away. So I'm really curious about the state of journalism, where it is right now.
Q: Do you think the influence of journalism in this country is positive?
RR: I don't know about positive as much as valuable. I consider journalism so valuable. I would almost take it personally if journalism failed. It provides the one [way] we have to receive the truth. So if I'm going to portray journalism in a film, which is tricky business, then I want to at least give it its due, and I want to describe the threats there are against it. In this case, Shia's character Ben Shepard is interesting to me because our impression is complicated by the fact that we don't know if he if he is going after this story for his own personal aggrandizement, or for the thrill of just getting a good story? But what should be unmistakable is what he learns about himself. In his pursuit of finding something about somebody else, what does he learn about himself that may change him? That was exciting to me, but you have to be really careful about not being too pedantic or academic [when commenting] on journalism. You have to test certain things, and let the audience go with it. In terms of this film, there's a little hint of a story that I've always loved. There were two stories I loved as a kid. One was The Phantom of the Opera. I wanted to play that part. I really did ! The other story was Les Miserables and I saw similarities in Ben Shepard and Inspector Javert. And in a sense, my character is Jean Valjean. Jim Grant takes on a new identity to escape prison time. He too lives a clean life and has a daughter. The daughter, Isabel, means everything to him. He had to give up another daughter, Rebecca, before she meant too much to him to give up. That was painful, and he doesn't want to make that mistake again, and yet there's someone on his tail, the reporter, who might expose him in a way that will make it impossible for him to keep the love of Isabel. So that was the mix, the complexity, which sparked me to make this film.
Q: What exactly is the price that your character pays for his past?
RR: The price he pays is that he's going to have to give up the life he's been leading under an assumed name so that his relationship with his young daughter can be clean and pure. He was innocent of the crime. but he's not seen as innocent and the only way he can clear his name is by getting to Julie Christie's character Mimi.

Julie Christie and Robert Redford

The run is almost impossible; the odds are totally against him. He's willing to try to beat the odds because of his daughter. He wasn't able to live with his first daughter Rebecca--although (laughing) had I known Brit was going to play her, he probably would have had a whole different storyline. But it's all about cleaning yourself out, and sometimes you have to face a hard truth in order to do it. So I think that's what he has to do in order to be able to face his daughter again and live a clean, honest life. There are probably going to be some losses, but in the end it's worth not having to lie anymore.
Q: You worked with Julie Christie for the first time. She's great in this and I hope you're going to make an effort to get her an Oscar nomination.
RR: I would never try to get somebody an Oscar nomination. That's not my business. Awards are not my business. But Julie became my business because I knew her when she was younger. We were both roughly the same age, we both had film exposure around the same time, and realized that she was radical then, and thought that she might have stayed that way. I had no idea beyond that. She seemed to disappear from the face of the earth, then she showed up in a film about Alzheimer's, Away from Her, and I thought, unless that was a real-life thing for her, maybe I should call her and see what she's doing. It took a while to get her. She's remote, she's in a remote area of Spain and sometimes London. It took two months of trying to find her and then listening to her tell me why she shouldn't do it, didn't want to do it, and didn't think she could do it--until the day she finally came and did it. I think the effort should speak for itself.
Q: How did Terrence Howard come on board to play the FBI agent?
RR: He was in a movie called Hustle and Flow when I first met him. I wanted him in the role and I'm glad he did it. He's a wonderful actor.
Q: Mr. Redford, there's a wink in this film to your past, through the use of some of your early photos. Can you talk about your decision to use them?
RR: It's not terribly interesting, I just had to go through archival stuff and find old photos of myself and be depressed [laughter]. And some of the photos had to be right for the film, to show time passing and that people age.
Q: Were you trying to draw from anything in particular from your era, the sixties and seventies?
ST: I was four-years-old. I know I look a lot older, thanks very much [laughter]. I didn't have anything personal to draw on, only people I talked to, including a cousin who fought in the war for two tours, and things that I've read. But you know, when you approach certain films, after you've been doing it for a period of time, if it's there on the page, sometimes that's really all you need. Sometimes you do need a certain amount of preparation and research, but for this role, it was all really there.
Q: This movie is a family drama, a thriller, and a newspaper drama. I was wondering how your experiences with those types of movies in the past helped you.
RR: It helped in the sense that all three parts came together in one film. I made those films for specific reasons relating to those specific areas in our culture, and on this I saw a chance to combine them all into one film, and then have the relationship between the reporter and his editor drive the story. Get the story, wheres the story?, don't make any mistakes, be cool. That's the journalist part and it has its own energy. The thriller part is the man on the run to save his life and his relationship with his daughter. Then you have the family part because that's what it is about--a man who is haunted by his past having the chance to finally, after he failed before, to have a real life and a family.
Danny Peary: Jackie, if you really were Isabel what would you ask her father in their last scene together, when we can't hear them?
JE: I'd probably ask, "Where were you?, What were do doing?; and Why did you leave?"
AI: That's interesting, because we don't get to hear that because Robert respects their privacy.
Brit Marling and Jackie Evancho
Photo by Brad Balfour
DP: Brit, I really like you Another Earth.
BM: Thank you!
DP: If Rebecca got to ask Jim Grant, the father she's never met, one question, what would it be?
BM: It would be interesting to know what he think about radicalism today. The Weather Underground felt like the center of radical accountability for what their country was doing then. Where is that sense of radical accountability in my generation? How come we don't feel the same responsibility to create change and stand up for the things we believe in?
RR: I was thinking about that time. That was a young people's movement. And I think I know you well enough, Brit, to know you would have been somehow connected. But that generation came so close to getting to the final destination and it collapsed before it got there. It was a movement that kind of ate itself. I just wish it would have gone one step further, because that was the generation that was speaking for me. Now it's more than thirty years later, your generation is Occupy Wall Street or other organizations. I'd be curious about your personal feelings about that movement. 

BM: It's funny that [my writing partner] Zal Batmanglij and I were writing something that was sort of about the Occupy Wall Street movement before it happened. And when Occupy Wall Street happened, we went, "Great, someone's finally tapped into the collective unconscious [and started] organizing." But I think what happened is all these ideas came up but then it was, Where's the action? I dont know why the Occupy movement didn't quite take off but maybe so many people are so comfortable that they haven't walked away from their lovely comas. But I watched a lot of young people leave their jobs and go knock on doors for Obama because they were so excited about the possibility of change, so I still think it's very, very possible. Maybe my generation is straddling [the fence with] one foot in being an anarchist, and the other foot in playing by the rules and trying to change the system from within. Do you eventually have to pick a side or can you fall between? I'm not sure, I wrestle with that every day.
RR: It's interesting that you said it's a possibility. Because that's what your screen mother, Mimi, says in the film when she and Jim Grant are arguing. His argument is that Hey, it was over and we were wasting our time beyond a certain point. And she says, No, it's never over as long as the cause is there, that the reason to revolt is still there. That's a good point, and he's saying you dont want to waste your time, time moves on. So my character and Julie's character are having that debate, and I think it is structured in such a way that maybe the audience will [be inspired] to have that same discussion. But Brit, you wanted something to happen that would reflect the voice of your generation. One of the things that's beautiful about Brit, and makes her such a joy to work with, is that whatever she does, whatever way she plays, there's always the truth. She's a person of supreme truth in whatever she's doing. Truth just comes though. It's such a valuable asset. I felt that when we met and first talked, I felt that in her work that I saw at the festival. And she let that happen in the film. It wasn't anything I did or said [as the director], it was just, Brit, take it and go with it because I know that whatever you do the truth is going to come out. And that's going to be a powerful force against what Shia is playing with [in their scenes together]. I would think that maybe Brit [feels the same way] I did when I was young. I was disappointed with my generation and my voice [because] I wanted to succeed. We thought we were not being told the truth in this country, so we wanted to be the voice of truth, and the fact that we couldn't make it happen was kind of disappointing. Now I see Brit as an emissary for her generation.

(L-R) Brit Marling, Jackie Evancho, Stanley Tucci, Robert Redford, moderator Annette Insdorf

Photo: DP