El Hosaini and Floyd on Award Winner

My Brother the Devil is Playing in Theaters

El Hosaini and Floyd on Award Winner

(from brinkzine.com 3/21/13)

Sally El Hosaini and James Floyd Photo: DP

Rarely, dating back to the 1950s, have we said that a film about youth gangs is heartfelt, but that's the case with Sally El Hosaini's bold, touching, and authentic feature debut, My Brother the Devil, which opens Friday in New York City at the Landmark Sunshine Theater and Film Society of Lincoln Center. Born in Egypt, El Hosaini lived ten years in her movie's locale, Hackney, which, as the production notes state, is "one of London's most ethnically-mixed and historically volatile neighborhoods," and got know, even befriend, countless young gang members, including those who have major roles or are extras in the movie. Her goal was to portray the youth and the neighborhood as she knew it to be, not as it has been portrayed in the British cinema. Her story is of two brothers, Rashid (charismatic professional actor James Floyd), and the younger Mo (newcomer Fady Elsayed, who the director met at an anti-gun crime event). Mo idolizes him but Rashid doesnt want his nice, smart younger brother to follow his footsteps and enter the gang life, and hopes to make enough money selling drugs to pay for him to go to college. But when the disenchanted Rashid pulls away his violent gang friends and spends less time with Mo--Rashid keeps secret his new romance with a male photographer, Sayyid (Moroccan-French star Said Taghmaoui), because all the gang members and Mo are homophobic--Mo joins the gang and threatens to expose his brother and put him in danger. My Brother the Devil won major prirzes at festivals in London and Berlin and I'm curious how American audiences will respond to it. I recommend it as the movie to see this weekend. Here is a brief interview I did with the personable El Hosaini and Floyd earlier this week:
Danny Peary: Sally, while growing up in Hackney, were thinking that this would be really great material for either a documentary or narrative film?
Sally El Hosaini: Actually, I grew up in Egypt, but I lived in Hackney for over ten years. I was inspired by my environment, just walking around the neighborhood, and I knew that I wanted to make a film about it. I knew I wanted to do fiction films, so it wasn't a question of whether I wanted to make a documentary about it. What I related to was the youth, because in them I could see this mix of all these different cultures, and I found that really fascinating--especially linguistically, hearing the way different words, from Jamaican patois to Arabic words, infiltrated that urban language. I was an outsider and I got to know boys who were in gangs in London and develop relationships with a few key people, one of whom played Repo, the guy with the tattoo on his neck in the film [see the group photo]. His name is Aymen Hamdouchi and he was my script consultant. My documentary film background really helped me, because I knew I didnt want to make a phony film. I wanted to make something really authentic.
DP: There's a young girl in the film, Aisha [Letitia Wright], who befriends Mo. I was thinking that maybe she was based on you.
SEH: No, I'd probably say I'm more a mix of Rashid and Mo. I've always been a bit more of a boy. In a way, I'm in all the characters, because when you create them from scratch, they come from parts of you. In some sense I injected a bit of myself into all of the characters, even the nasty ones.
DP: James, did you audition?
James Floyd: Yes. The audition process was just convincing Sally that I could be a gay Arab gangster.
SEH: I had wanted a non-actor to play Rashid because I was quite worried that an actor would come in and really stand out among the non-actors I was going to cast in the other roles. But I couldnt find a non-actor who wasnt homophobic, who would take this on. When I met James, we had an instant bond and chemistry in the audition room. I always hear that corny story about directors saying, "As soon as they walked in, I knew!" But James convinced me. Because of the amount of work and detail he had gone through just for the audition, he showed me an actor who was going to be extremely diligent, and who would prepare to use the resources I already had, essentially the real boys. And, James, you went and lived with the real boys for five months, and went completely method. And I knew you were going to dot every I and cross every T. It was a no-brainer casting you. We work in the same way.

Fady Elsayed and James Floyd                   Photo: Etienne Bol

DP: In terms of Rashid, James, when you first met and discussed the role, did Sally have the character down a hundred percent or was she flexible about you bringing something to the part?
JF: It was the best script I'd read. It was very unusual to pick up a script that is that exciting; it was a page-turner and constantly surprising. It worked . Everything in it was justified, nothing was forced. And the characters were all really there on the page. Sally had Rashid down but was very open to me doing my own thing. It was so easy that it was bizarre because we had the same ideas, pretty much, on how to play the character. When we first met in the audition, we high-fivede because everything we said was the same.
DP: Can you give me an example?
SEH: The hair.
JF: The hair is an example. I had noticed the hairstyle of this very famous rapper in the UK called K Koke, and I based Rashid's hairstyle on his. He also had a couple of scars and I mentioned these scars to Sally and she had already been thinking the same thing. They help tell his history.
SEH: They meant that he had been in a vicious fight. To have that haircut and those scars tells so much more about the character. We wanted to have nicks in Rashid's hairdo but we couldn't fit scars into his hair.
DP: Did you do tattoo research yourself?
SEH: I let all the actors who played the characters design their own tattoos. I let the ones who didn't have them evolve the tattoos they chose according to how they were constructing their characters. I wanted everything to be really organic. So as much as possible, my approach was to take what the actors were giving me.
DP: A major part of your technique, which was very effective, was using a lot of close-ups. James, did you know that would be part of her style?
JF: I can't remember if Sally had mentioned her use of close-ups to me in advance of filming. But it quickly became apparent that that was part of her style of shooting on this film. I had no problem acting with a camera right there. I really love the close-up because it's the cinema's most potent way of getting into the minds of characters, which is exactly what I want an audience to do. I think that is one of the reasons the film is able to take the audience on such an intimate ride with the two brothers.
SEH: The decision to shoot 2.40:1 or CinemaScope turned a mundane world into an adventure because the format forced us into using a lot of close-ups. The close-ups enhance Mo and Rashid's intimacy. During prep I was on the bus and there was a teenage boy sitting in front of me who had really bad skin. I remember thinking that's what this movie needs. I want to be close enough to the characters so that we can see their bad skin. I wanted to see their sweat, their acne, the meaty texture of their skin.
DP: My favorite shot in the movie, and I would guess it's yours, too, is taken above the bunk bed in the bedroom shared by Rashid and Mo. The smiling Mo is lying on his back on the top bunk and we also see Rashid on the lower bunk with his girlfriend. It's like in Rebel without a Cause when Sal Mineo's troubled teen forms a makeshift family in which his more mature classmates James Dean and Natalie Wood are his parents.
SEH: That shot was really a perfect collaboration between myself, my cinematographer David Raedeker, and my production designer, Stephane Collonge. We spent a very tense three weeks together that was crucial to constructing a successful film. I had ideas, they had ideas. They came to my house every single day for those three weeks and we went through literally every line of the script. We worked out how we were going to shoot each scene. We divided the film into five chapters, and each chapter had its own aesthetics. If you notice, in the beginning of the movie, Mos T-shirt is a vibrant shade of pink, and then later he's wearing the same T-shirt but we give it a darker shade as he progresses through the story. That's because the first chapter is Childhood, then comes Grief and Sexual Awakening. Those chapters define the costumes and the aesthetic of the movie, but also the shooting came out of that, because we didn't have a lot of tools at our disposal. We were making things subjective by, for example, having one style of camera for Mo and another style for Rashid. So that they had different compositional weights within the frame. These are very subtle things, but I think they make an enormous difference. That scene in the bed was our eureka moment, when we all came up with it together. Stephane actually told us that we were going to have these bunk beds where the bottom bed was bigger than the top bed. For us, this symbolized the way that Rashid was dominant within the bedroom, and [was consistent with] how we were going to design the bedroom. As soon as he told us that, David and I looked at each other and said, "We can do the top shot!" All three minds connected, and we all saw that top shot.
DP: Some of the shots were in such tight spaces. Did you hold the camera or was cast and your crew cramped in together?
SEH: I didn't hold the camera but I was in there too. I must say one of our unsung heroes is Chris Kane, the focus puller. He did an amazing job, if you consider the fact that we were shooting 360 degrees and it was handheld. He had to respond to our space situation and he got it right.
DP: Why is the movie called My Brother the Devil? Is Rashid ever so bad that he's the devil?
SEH: I left it ambiguous about which brother I am referring to in the title because I was conscious to the fact that certain audiences were going to find Rashid the devil and others were going to find Mo the devil.
DP: Or neither, because I don't find either the devil.
SEH (laughing): Well, that's because youre an elevated human being.
JF: We screened the movie for a lot of the kids from the area who were extras in it. Most of them thought Rashid's the devil because he's gay and they're very homophobic. But others thought Mo's the devil because he's homophobic.
SEH: Mo's homophobic and he's about to betray his brother.

JF: Also My Brother doesn't necessarily mean My Sibling.
SEH: The concept of brotherhood begins with tribes, and the gang is a surrogate family, really. The film is about brothers but I feel it's also a family drama about a bunch of youths.
DP: You've said how you think your film is about boys becoming men. Its production notes state the same thing.
SEH: I think it's rather about exploring masculinity. But yeah, I see it as exploring what it means for boys to become men.
DP: I'm actually thinking Mo reclaims his boyhood ultimately. That's more what I see as your theme, along with identity stuff--everybody coming to terms with who they are --the brother thing, and a call for an end to a cycle of violence and revenge and proving oneself.
SEH: I feel it is about identity more than about curbing violence. Let's say that really it's a story about the power of unconditional love. It's about brotherly love, and about having the courage to be different and to live in the true vision of yourself.
DP: And the reclaiming of boyhood?
SEH: I loved when you said that.
DP: I think that's why Mo doesn't want to leave Hackney. He stays and he's in control.
SEH: Yes. Well, ending on a note of hope was very important to me and I actually had a lot of resistance to that. There were people who would invest in the movie only if I killed one of the brothers at the end. To me, you have a responsibility as a filmmaker [to stay true to your vision]. All film is in a way political, and you have to be conscious of that and aware. I didn't have the heart, myself, to kill one of the brothers. I didn't want a "happy ending" but a realistic and bittersweet ending that leaves room for hope.
JF: Theres a reason why a lot of people in the UK would wanted to kill a brother. That's part of the urban-film genre that has been serving us lies for years about how there is no hope in that world. That's the reason we would come up against all that crap. The film industry is predominantly middle-class people who know nothing about this world, and think they see it through these terrible films. And in all these films someone gets shot.
SEH: There are a lot of preconceived ideas. When I was raising the money for the script, which was the hardest part of the whole six years it took to make the film, I told people it was set on a council estate in Hackney, and they went, "Oh, I get it. It's dark and depressing and grim." I said, "Wait a minute, I live on a council estate in Hackney and no it's not like that. There's grass and there's sky and there's flowers and there's childhood and there's love and there's hope." I really wanted to show those parts of council estate life. I chose to film at that specific estate, which is about ten minutes from where I live, because it's on a hill and there is a lot of sky and we were able to play with that.
DP: So, if I would say, pretending now not knowing you at all, that the filmmaker is trying to show that these Hackney kids are growing up in what is equivalent of a war zone, would I be right or wrong?
SEH: That's wrong. I would say that it's a brittle world but it also has hope and redemption and other [positive] things in it. These kids are lot more intelligent and do a lot more thinking than how it is perceived. Often I see these kinds of characters in movies and they don't have possibilities or hopes and dreams and all the things that make them human. I really wanted to humanize these youths. Also, I set out to make a non-Arab-terrorist film, and to have characters that were an authentic representation of Arabs, not the typical stereotypes you see in cinema. Also I wanted to do that with disenfranchised youth in general. They are the ones who were rioting in Hackney at the time we filmed the movie. Everybody's scared of them, but they are just kids. In the most violent scene in my movie, when everything goes still for a moment after the violence occurs--I really wanted the masks to drop off and for us to see children underneath, when they aren't doing their macho strutting and posing. They're young gangsters starring in the movies of their lives, and while it takes only two seconds to actually stab somebody, the repercussions of that can affect them for a lifetime.
 Elsayad and Aymen Hamcouchi

DP: To me, the gay element of the film--when Rashid acknowledges he's a homosexual and he and Sayyid [Said Taghmaoui] become lovers--comes in fairly late. But were there hints along the way that I didn't catch?
SEH: Yes, very subtle hints. If you go back and watch it a second time, you'll see many hints. From the first scene, in fact, when Rashid watches another guy in the gym.
JF: The key to what you're talking about is the relationship between Rashid and his best friend Izzi [Anthony Welsh], before [that violent scene occurs]. We put in a lot of little subtle things.
SEH: We used slow-mo in the scene where Rashid takes a joint from Izzi's mouth rather than wait for him to pass it to him.
JF: And you wrote that in the script. You have to remember that this is an extremely macho (so-called) heterosexual world, and taking a joint from another guy's lips is a no-no.
SEH: There were some actors on set and when James did that, they were like, that's a bit freaky.
JF: Our definition of what's slightly homosexual differed from what their definitions were. Another moment is when Rashid puts his arm around Izzi, and sits very close to him. He feels Izzi's bicep very briefly, as a joke. Those actors and extras, boys from the streets of Hackney, felt uncomfortable seeing that. They felt it was "too gay" and didn't understand the point of Rashid's relationship with Izzi.
SEH: The idea is that maybe Rashid's relationship with Izzi went a little bit deeper than just being friends, not that anything sexual ever took place. It has to be implied. It's only real when Rashid is confronted with a man who is confident and macho--then his world is shattered. If Sayyid was not the person he is, I dont know that Rashid would have the courage to come out. I think he comes out because of the kind of character Sayyid is. He's Arab, he's macho, he's hard coming from the streets, and he's gay and fine with it. And he's a nice guy--that's more of a threat than anything.
JF: True.
DP: James, with the camera right on top of you was playing intimate scenes with another male, whether it was veteran professional actor Said Taghmaoui or nonactor teenager Fady Elsayed, harder than anything youve done before?
JF: No, none of those things were difficult. I'm always amazed that some actors have issues with playing homosexuality. Last time I checked, I'm heterosexual, but you know, it's really about whether it works for the film. And is it right for the character? If Sally had wanted me to do even more intimate scenes...
SEH: He wanted to do more.
JF: Well, I wanted to give you the option. I wanted to say, "Look, I have no problem with doing even more physical love scenes, just in case when you get into that editing room, you realize you needed a bit more." It turned out we didnt need it, but if it worked for the story I would have done anything.
SEH: When you say I didn't need it,--one of the things people have asked is whether I shied away from showing more, but I don't think sex is actually that interesting and I wanted it be more about how people come together than them actually being together. Also, this movie isnt Rashid's coming-out story; I am consciously saying it is about something else, a story about prejudice, from the perspective of Mo. If I had gone further down that coming-out route, it would have tipped the balance of the movie. I think it could have overtaken the real story.
JF: I was just saying I had no problem giving you the option. I think his question touched on the fact that a lot of actors wouldn't play a gay character.
SEH: A lot of actors wouldn't.
JF: They do it for effect--a lot of actors do it for effect. A straight actor will play gay just to show how progressive he is. But do they really want to do it, or are they just doing it for effect? To me, I would do anything if it were right for the story and the character. It's that simple.
DP: It used to be that few actors would play gay characters because they thought it would hurt their images and career. But I kept thinking of My Beautiful Laundrette.
SEH: It's been referred to. I love Daniel Day-Lewis in that film, although I don't think that film has really stood the test of time.
Photo: David Raedecker

DP: In that film his character is in a romantic relationship between a respectable male shop owner and a male street punk, which is kind of a reverse of your film..
SEH: Yes, I can see that. I'm sure I've digested it in a lot of ways, but I'll say that a bigger influence was perhaps The Tree of Life, which I watched with Stephane and David when we were doing prep. I'm thinking of it in terms of developing our subjective style, how we shot the movie. We looked at The Fighter as well, seeing the way that had been shot. And Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park and Elephant were big influences. And the character Said plays in La Haine. Said and I worked together on another project and I was telling him what I wanted to do with this movie. He's from the streets of Paris, and was really enthusiastic about doing a very realistic film about Arab youth.
DP: When Rashid is spending a lot of time with Said, he is told by a gang member, "You've gone soft." That's a line told to Edward G. Robinson's gangster in Little Caesar, which was made in 1931, and the subtle implication i the script is that he's attracted to another man.
SEH: There are so many layers of things I put in my film, so many parts of myself, so many scenes, that getting the balance and the level of everything is almost like weaving a very complex tapestry. Even in the editing, we had to figure out how loud something should be. The biggest thing that I was up against creatively was this idea that I was trying to do something extremely realistic yet also poetic. And since it was a fiction, it would have to, in a way, create its own life. It's as far away from a documentary as you can get, in terms of the effect it produces.
DP: But you have a lot of feeling for the characters, which is kind of how it would be if you had made a documentary about such boys.
JF: A good documentary.
SEH: Absolutely.
 

Director Park and His Goode Bad Guy

Stoker Is Playing in Theaters

Director Park and His Goode Bad Guy

(from brinkzine.com 3/7/13)


(L-R): Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode

 

Stoker, Park Chan-Wook's erotic, beautifully-shot, cleverly-acted, and loony twist on Hitchcock's 1943 masterpiece Shadow of a Doubt breaks into national release Friday. If you're looking for a hoot this weekend, you probably can't do better than the American debut of the esteemed South Korean director (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance). In actor-turned-screenwriter Wentworth Miller's take, a charming but unhinged young murderer (fine British actor Matthew Goode as Uncle Charlie) moves in with his recently-widowed sister-in-law (Nicole Kidman as Evie) and niece (a mesmerizing Mia Wasikowska as India), who has turned eighteen and is feeling sexual impulses. Neither mother nor daughter knows he has left an asylum and they both are affected by his seductive powers to such a degree that they don't seem to care when they realize he is up to no good--in fact, that he may have been responsible for several characters' deaths is a turn-on for India, who apparently shares some of his baser traits. There's less blood here than Chan-Wook's Korean action films, mostly because Charlie's preferred method for disposal is strangulation, and spite and convenience are bigger motives for hostile acts than revenge, but fans of the director won't be disappointed. Kidman wasn't present at the recent New York press day for the film, and overly protective publicists wouldn't let me near Wasikowska, but I did take part in the following, brief roundtables with Director Park (as everyone calls him)--who had a translater at his side--and Goode, who thrives at playing interesting movie villains. I note my questions.
Park Chan-Wook RoundtableDanny Peary: In a previous interview, you said that one reason that you wanted to turn the film's script into a film is that you called it "quietly frightening." What do you find quietly frightening about this story?
Park Chan-Wook: This is a coming-of-age story, but it's unlike any other coming-of-age stories. The girl who comes of age doesn't become a good citizen. She doesn't become assimilated into society or conform to society. It's quite the opposite. What's frightening is how susceptible unstable pubescent minds can be to the seductiveness of evil.

Park Chan-Wook, photo by DP
Q: Please talk about how sound and color play such a big role in the movie.
PCW: I liked the script for being very quiet, and I could imagine right from the beginning how in the quiet Stoker mansion, sounds would inhabit the place. It would be something that your ears pick up on. I could hear, while reading the script, the tick-tock of the clock; footsteps on the creaking floorboards; the breathing of the characters; the sound of the wine glass as it is pushed across the table. It is these sounds that made me as a reader and the now audience be sensitive to the details. That's one of the big reasons why I chose to do Stoker. I could imagine all these sounds while reading the script and I really wanted to make good use of these elements. In the quiet environment, through these sounds, I wanted to create palpable tension. Now about color. In the film, the main characters don't reveal their emotions very much. India never really reveals what goes on inside her mind, what emotions she's experiencing. Uncle Charlie ostensibly is a very gentle character, but that's really deceptive because on the inside he's not like that at all. He's a very hypocritical character. Evie is the one character who expresses what she feels--her desires and emotions--but on the inside, she's very weak, fragile and brittle. All their emotions are not expressed by their dialogue or their expressions, so there has to be other ways for me to convey to the audience what really is going on inside them. It was done through color, props, camera movement, music, and editing. Another big reason why I wanted to do this script and turn it into a film, is that I saw an opportunity to include all these elements.
Q: To me, almost every character in this movie is frightful! That includes the high school kids and Whip [Alden Ehrenreich], the boy who at first seems nice to India. Do you also see this underlying sense of horror about your characters--and maybe life in general?
PCW: That's exactly right. This may appear to be a story centered around a very peculiar group of people, and their world may be a world very much unto itself, but it is not unrelated to the actual world that we live in. It may be an exaggerated view of our world, but that's what metaphor is all about it, isnt it? In that sense, this is very much relevant to the world we live in as ordinary people. There are elements that we identify with in this story--the family relationships, the emotions that each family member feels toward one another, and the confusing state of mind girls have during those sensitive years--which makes the idea of evil so seductive.
Q: Speaking of metaphor--in the second and the third acts you realize how the story is very much about nature vs. nurture. Can you actually change your nature? The turning point in the relationship between Richard Stoker [Durmot Mulroney in flashbacks] and his daughter India was when he saw a lot of Charlie in her and tried to curb her bad behavior. He knew he wasn't going to be able to change her, but he was trying to teach her so that she wouldn't end up the same as Charlie. But there's no saving this girl, and she's going to take over the antagonist role that Charlie had.
PCW: There is more than one role-reversal in this film. It's equally shocking when we realize that Evie is not really the oppressive and ostensibly strong character that we were introduced to in the beginning. As we follow the story, we realize that Evie's the most fragile of the three main characters. She's the only one of the three, maybe, that we can relate to. She's a victim who is prey to these two predators rather than an oppressive antagonist to India. So in terms of what the characters' personalities are, it's this great reversal that is a fascinating aspect and the turning point of the film.
SPOILER ALERTI like how the film lends itself to another interpretation as well. I am not sure how much of an antagonist India ultimately becomes. It depends on how you look at her decision to kill Uncle Charlie. Killing him is a very just punishment that she doles out to somebody who murdered her father. Also it reveals the last remaining emotion of love that India has for her mother. India wants to save Evie from Charlie, preserve her life, so she has to pull the trigger and kill Charlie, for whom she felt a huge amount of affection.
END SPOILER ALERTDP: You're known for being a Hitchcock fan, and obviously Shadow of a Doubt was Wentworth Miller's inspiration for his script, with Joseph Cotten playing the murderous Uncle Charlie and Teresa Wright as his good-girl niece he is bonded to. Mia Wasikowska reminds me of the young Isabelle Huppert and while watching Stoker I was thinking that it was if you replaced Wright's niece with the impassive murderer Huppert played in Claude Chabrol's Violette Nozire. Chabrol was inspired by Hitchcock, too, so I'm wondering if you were inspired by Chabrol as well as Hitchcock?
PCW: Chabrol made many great movies, so many that I haven't had an opportunity to see them all. Unfortunately Violette Nozire is one I havent gotten around to seeing. However, one thing that I can tell you is that in looking at Mia, I am always reminded of Huppert. They are remarkably similar. Let me say something about influences. Wentworth Miller confirmed that Shadow of a Doubt was an influence in writing his script, which was quite obvious from the pages. I had seen the film so long ago that I had to actually go into my DVD collection and watch it again to jog my memory. So all the influence from Hitchcock and Shadow of a Doubt is something that informed Wentworth's writing, rather than my direction. I saw Hitchcock's Marnie the other night, I'd only seen it a long a time ago and almost forgot what the movie was; and back then I saw it without subtitles so I couldnt understand everything that was going on in the film. I sought out Marnie and I was flabbergasted to find how many similarities there are between it and Stoker. For instance there was a shot of the mother brushing the daughter's hair--blonde hair, no less. And there is a woman who doesn't like to be touched in that film. What a coincidence! You can't explain things like that!

Matthew Goode RoundtableDanny Peary: The first time I interviewed you was when you played the bad guy in The Lookout, opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I titled the piece: "Goode Is a Great Villain."
Matthew Goode: I hope you write something similar for this!

Matthew Goode, photo by DP
DP: Is Uncle Charlie aware that he's a villain who does bad things?
MG: Thats a good question. The main question the film asks is: "Where does evil come from?" There is a predisposition to say bloodlines are responsible for the acts that Charlie perpetrates. But if it's what's inside him through no fault of his own that makes him want to do such things, then can he condemn himself? I didn't have my character judge himself for what's in his nature.
Q: You seem to like when there's a bit of insidiousness in your characters, as with Uncle Charlie.
MG (laughing): I'm a very insidious person. I think I'm pretty normal actually, but I keep doing this acting job, so there's obviously something damaged inside.
Q: I've seen you do some comedy, but you seem to really relish playing a character with an insidious smile or smirk.
MG: Charlie was a role that I pursued after my friend Colin Firth pulled out. It was by no means offered to me. I wasn't waking up every day and writing a begging letter to get the part, but I was trying to stay in the hat with the major candidates. I'm very aware of the other actors, British and American, in my age group, and I think that since we are often in the hat for good parts means that people think were quite good at our job. It's a small number of actors, and it just comes down to who the director thinks is the best fit for a particular part. It's still painful when you dont get the job, but you learn to appreciate the actor who got it. I'm always going, "You know, he's brilliant in that role." So I'm fortunate that on this occasion Park Chan-Wook chose me. It's a nice feeling. I've been very lucky, I think. If you look over my filmography, you'll see that I've bounced around between quite different characters. Just exploring, on my part. Acting is like adult dress-up, really. A dark character like Charlie, with sociopathic tendencies, is really interesting to explore. After Clancy Brown played a prisoner in The Shawshank Redemption, a reporter asked him if he'd talked to anyone and based his character on him. He said that if he met someone like his character he wouldnt admit it and he'd probably report him to the authorities. I suppose I could have gotten access to a patient in a lunatic asylum, but ultimately I just tried to work out the psychology myself. It's an interesting process--it's always a sort of puzzle when you go beneath the layers of a character like Charlie. You don't want to answer every question about, you have to treat the audience quite intelligently and let people come to their own conclusions.
Q: You got creepy Uncle Charlie down. He's very calm, calculating and mysterious in the beginning, and then he turns childlike towards the end, kind of like Norman Bates in Psycho.
MG: I haven't seen Psycho or Shadow of a Doubt, actually. Cinephiles will think less of me now! It's probably good that I haven't seen Psycho, because even subconsciously I could have fallen into the trap of repeating someone else's performance without trying to. As much as Stoker is a coming-of-age drama [not just for India but for Charlie, too, because he's been in an asylum since he was a young boy], I think there's an element of my character that's trapped in the past. There's a sad loneliness that this guy has, and I think that's why he wants a relationship with India. She's the only person out there who is like him. Despite his horrific acts, there's some sort of bizarre, childlike innocence to him. He's not really grown-up. I quite liked the idea that at moments he's quite masculine, and at other moments he's like a man-child.

India and her Uncle Charlie
Q: Whats your interpretation of the supernatural aspects that are hinted at in the movie?
MG: Nothing is spoon-fed, but there's a lot of symbolism. Chan-Wook is so detailed as a filmmaker. There are elements--Charlie wears sunglasses outside, he doesnt eat, and he is drawn to the virginal bride type thing. Chan-Wook says people can interpret it as a vampire film with a twist. You can also ask if Charlie even exists.
Q: We hope you exist!
MG: Oh yeah, I'm not into method, I like a good steak when I can get one.
Q: What was your reaction when you first read the script?
MG: I loved it! In a completely selfish way, I thought this wasn't something I havent done before. Ultimately, great scripts dont necessarily get made into great films, but everything was there to explore. And I'd get to act with Nicole, who I think is brilliant in the film, and with Mia, who is such an up-and-coming talent. And I'd get to be directed by Park Chan-Wook. Being a fan of Oldboy. I jumped at the chance. All those things coming together in one project made it a no-brainer, which I know is a sort of boring answer. It was a nice feeling to know that someone was entrusting me to work with people who are considered so good at their jobs. It's always the same process. You sit down and talk about it, you rehearse to get over your nerves of doing it. Then you concentrate between Action! and Cut! and get it out your own way, and than go, "Was that all right?"
Q: How did you get into Charlies head, for this? When you find out what he did to his younger brother, it's hard to find anything redeemable about the character you're playing.
MG: It's still about finding truth. I'm not going to have him just go batshit crazy. In a flashback, we get some idea of his childhood, and though I don't sympathize with Charlie, I am aware of his loneliness. Your question is tricky to answer because I worked very closely with my director and together we determined how I should play Charlie. I also worked very closely with Mia. I think much of the film is very underplayed. Our characters do a lot of listening and it's all about what's going on in the eyes, really.
Q: You mentioned Nicole before. Did you discuss with her the art of playing tortured characters?
MG: It's a bizarre love triangle really, isnt it? Evie has been in this marriage to Richard; she's had this child, India, which, she says, was to fix that relationship. She was always at home while India and Richard were off hunting. She's almost this gin-soaked Southern belle, kind of a Tennessee Williams character screaming to get out. So that was Evie's thing, and theres a shared link between her and Charlie.
DP: If Richard had decided to bring Charlie to live in the house after getting him out of the asylum, instead of choosing to send him off into oblivion, would Charlie have tried to seduce India anyway?
MG: Personally, I think he would have seduced Evie.
Spoiler AlertI don't think he intended to kill Richard, he genuinely loved his brother. I think one of the reasons he killed his younger brother when they were kids was that he was jealous of Richard's closeness to him.
End Spoiler AlertQ: You filmed in Nashville, where Nicole has roots. Did it bring things back to reality, to have one of the cast members live there?
MG: Well, I don't take stuff home with me at the end of the day. I'm not that kind of actor. Thank God for my family, who said, "You annoy the shit out of us every day when you're working." What was nice, in conjunction with the project, was seeing Nicole at home. I dont know what my preconceptions were, but she's completely un-starry and comfortable in her own environment and her own place. She showed us around, and we had real access to her. Sometimes you work with someone famous and they go home at night and you don't really get to know them, even if work with them all day. So I felt quite honored that we got close. Also, now that I'm a parent, it was inspiring to see someone successfully balancing work and family. I think one of the reasons we shot in Nashville was because Nicole has a family there and that's where she wanted to be.
Q: Did you go out and see any music?
MG: Yeah, absolutely. The musicianship there is phenomenal. We saw the Time Jumpers, who are an amazing bluegrass swing band. They've been doing it for like fifty years. My Mrs. and I would go down to Robert's, and it was great because there were fifteen-year-olds and seventy-five-year-olds, all from different areas of the world. It was kind of touristy-gone-wrong-gone-right.
Q: Can you talk about working with director Park?
MG: I loved it, I loved him, I'd work with him again at the drop of a hat. I found him very easy to work with and very collaborative. It's very gratifying to see things in the finished film that werent in the script but came from our sharing ideas. Regardless of whether people like the material or not, I think they will stand back and see its just so beautifully put together. The pace of it might turn off the MTV generation that likes fast cutting, but I quite like that it's a real slow-burning film.
Q: What are you doing next?
MG: Dancing on the Edge is coming out soon. It's a Stephen Poliakoff drama. I had one day off between doing Stoker and going into shooting that for five months. Also I'm doing The Vatican, which might become a series on Showtime, Ridley Scott [who co-produced Stoker with his late brother Tony] is producing and shooting the pilot. There are couple of other projects that I'm hoping to get.
DP: I'm sure you're name is in the hat!

Sweet Sixteen

Beautiful Creatures is Playing in Theaters

Sweet Sixteen and The Dark Road

(from FilmInk online, 1/21/13 and 1/28/13)

In this two-part interview with young actress, Emmy Rossum, FilmInk talks tackling the bad girl role in the next big supernatural teen sensation, ‘Beautiful Creatures’.

Emmy Rossum
While turning sixteen is a big deal to most teenagers, it’s an especially crucial age for Ridley and Lena, the two teenage witches in Richard LaGravanese’s Beautiful Creatures, who must decide whether they will become good or evil sorceress’ (or “casters” as they’re described in the story). For Emmy Rossum (Mystic River, The Day After Tomorrow, The Phantom of the Opera), who plays Ridley, it was clear that her character was always going to become a dark witch. But this twist of fate turned her against her cousin, Alice, and Ridley is determined to win her back. Rossum – currently best known for her role on the Showtime dramedy Shameless – talks about stepping into a supernatural world teeming with all the usual teenage angst.
In Beautiful Creatures, when Ridley and Lena turn sixteen, they must decide whether to be good or bad. Were you making such decisions at that age?
I was just an annoyingly goody-two-shoes, but I desperately wanted to be bad. That was it in a nutshell. I was going through a goth stage, which basically entailed wearing all black and reading Wicca books. I thought that was cool. The only time I ever cheated on a test was when I was going to summer school at the Brentwood School in Los Angeles.   I tried to cheat on a pop quiz in science by writing all the key facts on my hand. That was a novel concept! So I aced the test and the class continued. The teacher asked a question and I knew the answer and raised my hand like the goody-two-shoes I was. And the teacher was like, ‘What is that on your hand?’ I completely froze and had a meltdown.  So much for being a bad girl.
Did you know anyone like Ridley in high school?
Yes, I had to deal with my own Ridleys at school. I grew up and have the career that I want, and now they can suck it. I wasn’t cool when I was at school. I had short, dark, frizzy hair, and they were all really skinny and beautiful and blonde. They had perfect families, and I was that kid from a broken home with the single mom. And I was the weird girl who sang at the opera and didn’t sing in English; they just thought I was such a freak. It's not like I had no friends or that I was bullied because of it to the extent that bullying exists now, but people don't like people who are different. It was hurtful but I just kept doing what I wanted to do. When you’re a kid, you want to fit in and I thought about trying to suppress who I was and hide the stuff that I liked, but then I just thought, ‘Well, why do I want to be like everybody else?’ That's a theme of this movie.
Were you attracted to bad boys?
Well, everybody loves a bad boy. But not me. I’m a geek. Smart and nerdy, every time.
So when you get a character like this, with evil ingrained in her soul, is it a refreshing challenge to play her? 
I loved playing a character who is not living within the realm of reality, who has power, and who’s a lot of fun and a little evil. It was a fun challenge to play someone as bad as Ridley because I had to find an explanation for why she is that way. For me, the evil and malice comes from a place of deep-rooted insecurity. In the book it’s unclear, but in the movie there's a flashback and you see the girl that she was before. I imagine that the insecurity that she had was due to her being the less favoured girl in the family; compared to her cousin Lena, Ridley always was just second best. So she hungered for power, to not be second best. When Ridley was chosen for the Dark when she was 16, all of a sudden she had this immense power and she really pushes it way too far.
Talk about all the costumes Ridley wears that reveal her character. Was that a fun part of playing her?
Honestly, most of the work for that character was figuring out all the different looks and different personas that went with each different look.  It was fun. After reading the books, I kind of imagined Gwen Stefani’s Harjuku Girls, a plaid skirt and push-up-bra kind of a look. But when I arrived in New Orleans to do the film, I discovered that the director Richard LaGravenese and our costume designer Jeffery Kurland had envisioned a very couture, retro-Hollywood look. It blew my mind. It was exciting to see the character in a different way than I’d imagined while reading the books – she was much more sophisticated and alluring, and that was more in tune with her being a siren. At the first costume fitting, they showed me this piece of black lace, and said, ‘This is your costume’. I said, ‘This is it? Where’s the rest of it?’ I put it on and saw that it was tiny but had carefully positioned sequins to hide my personal bits.
You’ve probably created a new Halloween character as well.
Considering the fact that Halloween costumes have become just an excuse for girls to dress up in no clothes, I think you’re right. But once I had gotten over the shock of the initial fitting, I really embraced the idea that in-your-face costumes went with Ridley. There I was walking through woods and fields, and my Christian Louboutins were sinking into the grass! I had to make it look like it was quite effortless, but it was really a pain in the butt!  The costumes actually helped my performance. Because they were so over-the-top, I realised I had to push up the acting, and then I could take my characterisation of Ridley a lot further than I’d thought. I got to push the character really far. Everything got a lot bigger.
You’re a blonde in the movie…
Ridley's hair is blonde for pretty much no reason. We thought originally that we would just use my own hair but then we wigged every single look. Wearing the blond wig made me feel softer, more delicate, more feminine. I definitely felt stronger and more New York as a brunette. More myself. I liked being a redhead most, actually, and I liked having short hair for the first time since I was a kid.
What’s the deal with the lollipop? Is it like a wand?
The lollipop features more heavily in the book. It’s just kind of her Lolita seduction quality. We changed it in the movie so she’s only featured with the lollipop in one scene and in all other scenes there’s some other kind of sweet food that she’s eating, to show her as a consumer of food and sex and men and all that stuff. She consumes pears and plums and cookies and cakes, anything sweet. Cherries were kind of my tip of the hat to Witches of Eastwick, because I love that movie.
In regard to the good-and-evil theme and a young girl trying to elude "evil," did you relate this story with The Phantom of the Opera in some way?
Not really. But there are definitely similarities that can be drawn in regard to the universal themes of bad and good, the dark and light that is within all of us, and our choosing what kind of person we want to be. In this family, at least for the women of the Duchannes bloodline, you can’t choose. And because Lena’s a natural, she’s more powerful, and the evil forces worry that she might be able to control and suppress the dark. So Ridley’s evil aunt, Lena’s dead mother, played by Emma Thompson, sends Ridley to make sure that Lena goes to the dark. She's a bit like a henchman.

In the second part of our interview with young actress, Emmy Rossum, we dig into the psychology and motivations behind Ridley, the seductive dark teen witch in ‘Beautiful Creatures.’

What preparation did you do for the role of Ridley?
Because I’m such an audio person and I started in music when I was a kid, I had to figure out what my character should sound like, how she should talk, how she should phrase things. So I had to find the right accent, a kind of honey-soaked Southern Gothic sound, and make sure that Emma Thompson and I sounded kind of the same. We worked a lot on that with our dialect coach. Also, so that Ridley would be the physical embodiment of sensuality, I spent time in a lot of bars in New Orleans, drinking and infusing myself with that Southern sensibility – research is rough!
Did it take a while to get Ridley out of your system after you played her?     
I would love to play Ridley in all the sequels, but the second they said ‘That’s a wrap on Emmy Rossum’, I got into the car to the airport and bit off the fake nails and was like, ‘Ahhh, we’re done!’ And I started shooting Shameless the next day, with a total mental flip into Fiona.
You said you read the other books as well. To understand Ridley better, did you have to read about what happens to her in the future to understand her for the first film?     
I wanted to see her trajectory and to see where she went in the other books. She’s in the second book a little bit more and I could start to understand her temperament better.  I picked up on character traits in all the different books and brought that to the first film.
Since Ridley went Dark, does she miss being close to Lena?                                                   
Yes. She doesn’t have any sisters, so Lena’s like a sister to her, and she wants them to be together.  Ridley has a heart underneath it all and is capable of love. She loves Lena.
One of the problems I had with the first book of the series is that it doesn't seem that Lena, after Ridley went Dark, cared about her very much. Lena’s not asking, ‘How do we get Ridley back?’ There’s no effort on Lena’s part. Meanwhile, as you say, Ridley misses Lena.
I think the girls do have a distinct bond. They grew up together, they travelled around together. When Ridley went Dark, she went away, obviously to protect Lena, so that she wouldn’t hurt her. I think that love and understanding is there between the two girls, but now Ridley has had enough alone time, and so she has returned to her cousin.
So in the movie, as opposed to the book, there is that bond. Does Lena have it too?
Yes. Lena wants to trust Ridley. Lena wants to believe that underneath it all, Ridley still has a shred of goodness in her.
And the other person who sees that is Link, Ethan’s best friend.
Right. I think Link gets to her a little bit. She definitely feels affection for him. He’s funny, he idolises her in a way that’s so seductive to her. She likes how he makes her feel about herself.  He’s younger and puts her on this goddess pedestal, and she doesn’t want to hurt him. But she doesn’t want to hurt him less than she wants Lena back. So she does what it takes no matter who gets hurt. But I think her overall objective is to get Lena back, and that’s at the expense of anything else.
But it’s to get Lena back by making her Dark.
But I do believe, as Sarafine has told Ridley, Lena will go Dark no matter what. She’s not powerful enough to overcome that.
The family all comes together as Lena is about to turn 16 and go Dark. When Ridley went Dark, do you think people cared as much?
No, and I think that makes Ridley really angry. I think that’s why she wants her family back. She wants them to love her. There’s a love/hate thing going on between her and the rest of her family.
Richard LaGravense told me that he made Ridley worse in the movie, that she actually kills someone. He added that. From your standpoint, where you want to feel affection for Ridley, isn’t that going in the wrong direction?
No, because I have a way of explaining Ridley’s evil. She grew up in a family where she was less special than Lena. Like you said, the family didn’t try to save Ridley when she went Dark but sent her away to go change and live by herself. They cast her out in a sense and that made her very angry. And when she realised she had all this power, she tried to be special by using it even though it was Dark. Her hunger to be special overcomes any desire to try to retain her goodness.
You and I might consider her a victim, but does she consider herself a victim?
She’s definitely very angry and very childish in her actions, and so that’s a counterpoint to the malice and the chaos that she creates.
Do you think Ridley gave into her destiny, rather than fight it as Lena does? 
She was not as powerful as Lena, so I don’t think she could fight her fate and be someone other than who she is now. She didn’t have the strength of character that Lena does. She didn’t have the strong family upbringing, she wasn’t focused on as much as Lena has been, nor nurtured as much. I think she’s just a little bit more damaged.
Was she a hard role to play?
She’s a fun role to play. I don’t think about hard and easy, I think about just putting my head down – how do I do this?
In the book, she doesn't show up for about 160-something pages, and then she’s only in about four or five scenes. You’re top-billed, so what’s changed for the movie?
Ridley’s more of a central character because she was such a favourite of fans who read the book. She’s just so noisy and in-your-face in the movie that you can’t help but want to feature her. She shows up proportionately at about the same time she does in the book.
What plans do you have for your acting career?
Just creating different characters, having fun, challenging myself, doing stuff I haven’t done before. I’ve always thought that if I felt the artistic compulsion to do something, like make a record or play a part, that means it’s something I should pursue. If I don’t feel that kind of hunger or fire, then it’s not something that should organically happen.

Beautiful Creatures is released February 21, 2013. For more on the film, check out our interview with the director here and leading man Alden Ehrenreich here.

Resolution, a Revolutionary Chiller

In Theaters and on VOD

Resolution, a Revolutionary Chiller

(from brinkzine.com 1/23/13)

Group photo by Danny Peary (L-R): Aaron Moorehead, Peter Cilella, Vinny Curran, Justin Benson

Resolution, an eerie, funny, highly original horror film, was one of the surprises of last year's Tribeca Film Festival. I want to alert everyone that you can see it beginning today on cable VOD, iTunes, Amazon Watch Instantly, VUDU, and more, and it will open in select theaters beginning January 25th. It's definitely worth a look. Below is a Q&A that directors Aaron Moorehead and Justin Benson, and stars Peter Cilella and Vinny Curran did with the audience after a Tribeca screening, followed by my one-on-four interview. Cilella plays a young man who goes to rescue his rambunctuous friend, played by Curran, who is freaking out on drugs and paranoia in a cabin in the wilds. There are many strange things and people, some quite dangerous, in the woods--and maybe even something supernatural. That's all you need to know other than the acting is terrific, the dialogue--and there is a lot of chatter--is sharp and witty, and it's a thinking-man's chiller. The following is verbatim.
Audience Q&AQ: How did this idea come to you? How did you turn tt into this great film?
Justin Benson: The real answer is super long so I'll just pick a few pieces of it. First off, Aaron, myself and Vinny and Pete discovered that we worked real well together on a low-budget beer commercial. Simultaneously, my dad told me that he wanted to build a fifth cabin on a property he already had four cabins on. According to the San Diego planning department, you can only do that if it's a film set. True story. The other thing was that I'm a huge fan of horror films, especially The Evil Dead and Cabin Fever and films like that. The thing is that I'd never known anyone from San Diego who had gone to the woods with a couple of hot girls for the weekend. The only reason I've ever known anyone to go to the woods in San Diego is to avoid paying their taxes, smoke crack, and shoot guns. So I thought of Vinny!
Vinny Curran: Me? What? I've got nothing to say yet! Does anyone have any questions to ask me specificallyabout my process or what I like to do to prepare? Anything, anyone? Not one question for me! Hey, it's all right. [Laughter]. The honest answer: I've never smoked crack. What I did smoke in the film was rock salt and tobacco; it's what we used for the crack.
JB: I have one dollar in my pocket. If you can answer the following question, this dollar will be yours. How many times did the actor Vinny Curran say fuck in the actual film?
I believe it's 412 times.
Q: The dialogue was amazing. How did you guys come up with that? Did you actually write it down and then perform it?
Aaron Moorehead: I wrote it! It was written but we did about three months of rehearsal before principal photography, so we shaped it a lot in rehearsals as well--that's probably why it sounds so good.
JB: When he was writing the script, he actually called me up while he was doing it, and he was like, "There's this guy next door and he lives in a small apartment with very thin walls and he's doing loads of crack. He is the greatest inspiration I've ever had.
Q: How many days did you guys shoot, and was it with a RED ONE or RED MX?
AM: We shot for at least 17 days was it 18? Something like that. It was shot on the RED MX.
Q: How many pages a day was that?

  Vinny Curran and Peter Cilella

AM: We initially scheduled it out. Justin and I looked over the schedule and it was a very ambitious, seven pages a day or something like that. We quickly learned that we were shooting somewhere close to 12 pages a day, and had continually added full scenes to the day we were shooting, so it was the polar opposite--it was the exact opposite of everything you hear about indie filmmaking, where you're running about three weeks behind. We were actually way ahead. Honestly, as a testament to these two actors, we rehearsed for three months beforehand, they had their lines cold, and we didn't do any rehearsals until the three weeks leading up to the shoot, so they'dstill be familiar. When we got up on set, they studied their lines every single night, like very good actors do.
Q: Where did you stay while filming?
VC: We stayed at a sixth-grade camp! It was awesome! He rented a sixth-grade camp, offseason, and so we all lived in a sixth-grade camp. Bunk beds. There was a kitchen we all shared, and there were all these board games. So we would actually sit by the campfire together and go over our lines. It was the highlight of the whole experience for me.
Q: Do you have other projects planned?
JB: We do have a project, actually, in the works, I just read the script a few weeks ago that's just lovely. Its very much like Resolution in tone, in the fact that it's kind of a genre-bender, too, and it's really, really funny I think its even funnier. It's way bloodier, there's torture in it... and we are seeking financing [Laughter].
Q: Did you ever give any consideration to going with a happy ending?
JB: Who said it is not a happy ending? That exact ending was the first thing that I wrote. I liked the idea of the audience feeling like they've been sitting in a monster's lap for 93 minutes, and discovering that at the end. I'm not going to commit to saying the end signals absolute doom--and if every single one of you comes to the next showing, then I will reveal what happened after we cut to black!
Q: Did you ever actually study any Native American folklore? Where did you get your concept from?
JB: No, I didnt at all. I think I pulled some really shallow ideas out of an intro to an anthropology book, and then expounded upon those.
Q: Is this your first film?
JB: It's definitely not our first filmwe made a ton of commercials and music videos, all that stuff. As far as inspirations, I think Aaron and I had both bonded because of our love for the Preacher books. We're really inspired by those as far as they're way genre-bonding. We love the Coen brothers, we love Korean revenge movies. I love every single horror movie. And I love Bruce Campbell.
One on FourDanny Peary: I was thinking at the beginning of the movie that this is like Kevin Smith directing a horror movie. It's almost like the characters from Clerks a little bit, at the beginning. Silent Bob. So you said Evil Dead. Evil Dead II or Evil Dead I? More than any other horror film when writing this, were you thinking this fits with it?
JB: When I was writing it, 100% honestly, I was trying to write the best horror movie I possible could, and some of the horror movies that inspired me were The Orphanage, and Session 9 but when Aaron and I were actually making the movie, we never discussed genre, one time. We approached every scene to make it as scary as possible, or as funny as possible, and then just making the drama as effective as possible.
DP: You introduced the film tonight by telling the audience that they were allowed to laugh. Did they laugh in the right places?
AS: Yeah, yeah. They laughed in places that I didn't think they were going to laugh in. I didn't think the Tasering was going to get a laugh!
DP: Where did you film this?
JB: This was in East County, San Diego. In a little town that was the definition of a one-horse town--one grocery store and they have the gas, one diner, and they're the people that fed the crew. And 27 llamas.
DP: That was a creepy thing. The word I think of with your film is unsettling. Is that what you were aiming for, without thinking of that word particularly?
JB: Absolutely, I think you nailed it.
DP: There are very few night tor darkly-lit scenes, except when they go into the cave, which is all intentional on your part. There's a lot of talk, which is great for you.
VC: I hope it is. Our objective was definitely to build tension, but in a way that's less conventional than having a jump-scare moment every six or seven pages. Our objective was to build tension and make it unsettling without using conventional script rules.
JB: So many movies can fail without any levity whatsoever. Give the audience a break and a reason to cheer a little bit before going back into it all.

DP: You just said conventionally you need a certain amount of scares per page, but what about laughs in a film like this? How many laughs can you have? Tone would be the big challenge in your whole film.
JB: We did tone moment to moment, as opposed to a general feel for the whole film.
AM: The tone questions interesting, because usually we'd go for perfect takes, right of the bat, and we had to go edit it. We had to choose between 3 or 4 magical, perfect takes. And that was where we really shaped the tone of the movie, because a lot of times we'd have a take that'd be hilarious, a great take, but you'd use all your intuition when you looked at it, and say that was a little bit too broad or the tone was wrong. That was really how we shaped the tone, by choosing takes.
JB: Also, if you think about the actual plot and subject matter of the film, it's two guys in a cabin. Are you thinking they're not just going to tell gay jokes to each other for a week?
DP: Your characters knew each other since high school at least, probably even longer. They don't have to be in a horror movie--they could have been in an intervention movie with Deliverance-type people running around. Peter, your character Michael talks to his wife a lot, and he always lies, basically. Is that the history of the relationship between the two guys, that Michael's always covering for Chris?
PC: I think those phone scenes are important in that they] show that the pattern Michael and Chris have had since high school is unchanged. I always find it interesting in films to watch characters that are trying to change and then they just can't do it. I think there's something very real about that.
VC: And girls never understand a buddy relationship--they think Chris is an asshole. Why don't you stop hanging out with him? It's just a male kind of bond that bros have that girls dont understand.
DP: Michael likes Crhis better than Chris likes himself
PC: For whatever reason, Michael still cares about his friend.
DP: You cast really well. I noticed that nobody smiles outside of Michael and Chris in the area around the cabin. What's the purpose of the ancillary characters, including the guy with the briefcase who pays them a visit?
AM: The idea was to play around with horror types, and so ultimately they were used as red herrings. But they also did influence the big idea of the film, which is that they've all been effected by the same thing that Chris has been effected by, which is purposelly vague. They all see what the character Byron sees, in their own weird ways.
DP: And the girl in the window? That's a scare. It's creepy. A chilly goes up your spine.
AM: We've screened it for an audience twice now, and there are always some really great nervous laughs during that scene. Its almost like a nervous laugh when you're watching the footage from the Milgram experiment. In earlier versions of the script there were fewer horror conventions, so we added more.
DP: What you created is a house where there are all kinds of outside threats. Every single group that they meet is creepy.
JB: The idea wasn't to put one gun on the wall, it was to put a whole armory, you know.

DP: But as it turns out, they have to worry about all these but in addition there's something else.You never mentioned Blair Witch Project. Was that an influence? For me, it had the same tone as your film.
JB: That's interesting, because we actually never talked about that. But we never talked about using any other film as a tonal influence. We tried to make something I mean we're big film nerds, so no matter what we make were going to have our influences seeping in there somewhere although there was never any intentional reference.
DP: The Blair Witch part I was thinking of was just the bickering between the people.
VC: I never really thought about it, although these dudes were bickering You put these two characters in a room and they're going to fight like cats and dogs.
DP: What was the vibe on the set?
VC: I couldnt imagine it being cooler. We were all in it together, I cant speak for the entire cast and crew, but it was a labor of love. I felt like everybody was invested in it, everybody believed in the project and I think it fed into the camaraderie. We had a small crew, too, and we had craft services provided by Justin's parents, so there was a very family atmosphere. We had a lot of fun at night. We would all play board games together. Rummy Cube! We had a lot of Playstations. And there was a pretty awesome fire-pit, and we got drunk a lot.
JB: Aaron and I did the post-production in our cabin, and we would edit scenes at night, and then these guys would come by our cabin, and we would discuss the next day and sometimes look at our scenes from that day.
DP: I read in the production notes that you were editing scenes the very day you shot them, which is pretty unusual. Did you do that with commercials, so that was your style?
AM: It wasnt lack of time, but we moved fast.
DP: Where did you find the two actors? Did you guys audition?
PC: Justin was my aunt's assistant a few years ago. She's a producer. So she introduced us. I actually came in to audition for one of his short films, and he did not cast me in it. But we did a short film, a couple of commercials, and Vinny had been in every single of them
PC: We really liked working together, and it worked. Justin and I were having drinks one night and he said you know I really want to do a feature with you and Vinny. A contained thriller shot in the middle of nowhere. Two months later we had a script, and it was really good. We continued going back and forth.
DP: When reading the script, when did you know there was something special about it?
VC: I knew before I'd even seen it!
AM: Mine was ten pages in, to when Michael Tasered and handcuffed Chris. That was one of those where I had a physiological reaction to it, I couldnt wait to film it.
VC: Thats cool!
DP: And for you, when did you say. Chris is a great character?
VC: When he called me on the phone to say," I wrote a script that I want you and Pete to do," I was like, "Fuck yeah, I am in! I dont care what it is! I am in!"
DP: But what if they'd cast you in Peter's part and you in his part?
VC: Better movie! Thank about it-- we were both out of character in the movie, but it worked. I don't think like they think, I think I can do anything, I'm an actor, and they mold me like silly putty, pour me into what I was. Are the words making sense that Im saying?
DP: And in the editing process, what did you have to change?

JB: It was shortening it by killing your babies kind of stuff, it wasnt like a gigantic "Oh my god, how are we going to fix this monster?! We'd cut the scene together and be like, that's great, let's trim it down. There's not a whole lot on the cutting room floor.
DP: You see million of horror movies, and youre jaded and all that. Whats the one thing that really got you, if it really happened to you you'd get scared?
JB: Creepiest in the script, really the scariest thing to me...? I wont give away the antagonist and the big reveal, but I will say that I find our monster, our antagonist very interesting, because it doesn't seem to fit into any religious tradition, for example. If it's a demon, a demon requires that you believe, but if you don't have any religious affiliation, the very premise is not that scary.
DP: Evil is just as strong as good, and that's the theme of horror moviesI shoot. Those scenes were hard to get and one of the main reasons we cut that scene that night was because we werent sure if we had enough coverage.
AM: Especially because we've done it so many times now, there isn't always that fear of Oh my gosh are we going to succeed? We always have that fear, but with this one and our next project, theres no question of - is it going to nail it. I think its going to nail it at least for us. We have that process.
DP: The ending isnt an ending with finality there's no resolution, but it seems to be another time where Peter says, "Okay, lets do something else. Is that intentional?" That's what his character is to me, someone who says, "Okay, let's do this now."
AM: That's his general sense of optimism and not giving up; that's a big part of the last line in the movie. Try it another way.

Super Doc on Iran at the Right Time

The Iran Job is Playing in Theaters

Super Doc on Iran at the Right Time

(from brinkzine.com 10/12/12)

Till Schauder and Kevin Sheppard,

photo by DP

I'll make the wild prediction that Argo will be the biggest-grossing Iran-set movie this weekend. But that film might whet your appetite for The Iran Job, a more intimate, sympathetic, and up-to-date documentary--set in Shiraz--about the people of that country that is also opening in New York today, at the IFC Center. Directed and photographed by Till Schauder (who has made award-winning films in his native Germany and America, where he now lives), it tells the unusual story of American professional basketball player and Jacksonville U. star Kevin Sheppard, who travels from his home in the US Virgin Islands to Iran to play point guard for the new A.S. Sharaz, in southwestern Iran. He experiences culture shock--in a good way--as he becomes close not only to his teammates but also to three special, brave women, Elaheh, Hilda, and Laleh, and much happens on the political landscape. Schauder says in the press notes, "This film is a story of people coming together to learn from each other. It shares our shared humanity and it points toward what unites us, rather than what separates us." It's a major message at a time when our political candidates debate about who is tougher toward Iran and "when" Schauder says, "we muse about going to war with people we often know too little about." I recently had this conversation with the engaging Schauder and Sheppard in anticipation of their film's timley release.
Danny Peary: Till, I read that you met Kevin via Skype when you were searching for a basketball player to follow.
Till Schauder: I did in-person auditions with some players and I literally shot footage with them. I had them come here, or I went to where they were. They were all okay, but I really needed somebody special. My wife Sara Nodjoumi, who co-produced with me, told me, "I don't care about basketball, so you've got to find somebody who's going to entertain me--and by "me" she meant everybody who doesn't care about basketball. So it had to be a basketball player who had something more to offer. I had gone on one research trip and made some connections with coaches and scouts in Iran and put them and Sara in touch because she speaks Farsi. When an American player got signed, they would let her know. Unfortunately, because of the quick way contracts work there, there was almost no way for me to prepare. Kevin got a call on Monday and on Wednesday they expected him to be there. That's how quick that goes. So that's why we had to meet on Skype rather than in person. But you can tell a lot on Skype, and with him, I could see his curiosity and that he is someone who doesn't try to please anybody and doesnt try to censor himself. He never tried to say anything to please me because he thought it was what the filmmaker wanted to hear. I loved that quality. He would joke about Iranians and about Americans. That was very important.
DP: Kevin, did you know about the Iranian Super League before they offered you a contract?
Kevin Sheppard: No. It was really ironic because when my agent called me, he was like, Do you want to go to Iran? I thought he was punking me or something--"Are you serious? Do they even have basketball?" I had this perception of the country as it was portrayed in the media, that there was mass destruction and Bin Laden types over there. It never crossed my mind that they played basketball until I did a little research.
DP: Had somebody scouted you?
KS: Yeah, I had played in Europe, South America, Israel, and China. They could follow my progress. I had a pretty good track record. Before you go over, they have to offer you a certain amount of money. My agent relayed the message to me and I thought about it for a couple of days before saying yes.
DP: Is there any specific reason they wanted a point guard rather than a big man?
KS: I think I actually changed the process. Most foreign teams can bring in only two foreigners, and normally they bring in two big guys. A lot of the time, the big guys are less skillful, but the little guys come a dime a dozen. I actually broke that mold when A.S. Shiraz brought in a point guard to be the leader of the team. I think once owners saw my effectiveness as a leader on and off the court, a lot more point guards started coming over. We started a new trend.
DP: Did guys you met there want to be point guards or did they all want to be forwards?
KS: A lot of the guys really wanted to be point guards. But someone who doesnt play basketball doesn't understand that the point guard has to be the extension of the coach. He also must be someone who leads by example. And he's gotta be able to sacrifice his game to help a lesser players reach their potential. For example, I knew I was a better shooter than a lot of my teammates but I gave up a lot of shots because I had to give them an opportunity to get involved in the game. If another player is going to play harder for me and is going to play better for the team, I have to sacrifice my shot to give him a shot. A point guard has to know all of these things.
DP: Did your Iranian coach understand that too?
KS: Well, I dont know if he understood that or not because we didn't understand each other. I had played college ball and in so many different countries and played all these different styles, so I could tell what kind of play and feel the coach wanted. He was right up my alley. All he needed to do was just show me the play and give me the options--one, two, or three--and my instincts would take over and I'd take the best option. I did it very effectively, so he just let me take the lead.
DP: Till, you include documentary footage of what was going on politically in Iran while Kevin was playing ball there. It makes the film more political. Was it always your intention to do that?
TS: I wanted the film to be mostly action-based, meaning no talking heads, no sit-down interviews. Everything had to come out of Kevin and the people that he meets. My background is in feature films, so it's always about the character--all drama comes from the characters. However, I was also documenting a period in history--the Green Movement, the presidential election in the US and the presidential election in Iran--and it was clear that events were going to happen, and I needed to document them, to at least give the audience a frame of reference. I used as little documentary footage as possible, but enough to give people a sense of time and where they are.
DP: Kevin, did you know that was going to be in the film when you were making it, that he was going to be make it into a more political film than it would be if he just followed you around?
KS: I didn't know anything, I'd never done a documentary film before, I hadn't watched many documentaries before, so I didnt know what to expect. He basically just told me, "Be natural, I'm just going to follow you around. Not just on the basketball court, but everywhere you go." So it wasn't anything that was planned or rehearsed or scripted. Nobody knew that these things were going to happen. I didn't know.
DP: Till, you sort of vanish in this film. Kevin calls attention to you only a couple of times. But when you turned off the camera, what conversations would you two have during this period?
TS: I would always try to leave the camera on. Always. Even when we were just casually talking.
KS (laughing): I'd be coming out the bathroom and he's standing there with the camera. It was pretty annoying!
TS: You never know what comes, and those casual conversations can be the most interesting and enlightening. I would always learn something new about him, so as I was making the film, he kind of revealed himself, like an onion. There's this layer, that layer and another layer and so forth. We talked about almost everything. You name it. At some point we talked about our families and we realized that we both have four siblings, we both are in the middle, we both had fathers that didn't necessarily approve of what we were doing. Weird similarities that made me really comfortable with him, beyond the fact that he was being very gracious for letting me into his life. We talked about everything: politics, women, sports. We talked about football because it was football season. We would talk about basketball, which was fun for me because I used to play. That was actually great because it got my mind off the more serious parts of this movie. We talked about soccer.
KS: When Germany was playing, get out of his way!
TS: This is not untrue.
DP: The film is a lot about your enlightenment, Kevin, how while being there you saw this world that you never saw before.
KS: All that was natural. When he first told me about the film, I thought, this is going to be pretty boring, just watching basketball all day--especially my team play basketball.
My team was not really the most talented team, as you could tell. One of the things that I learned overseas is they put all the best players on three or four top teams, and the rest of the teams are so mediocre they just fight it out.
DP: If you hadn't had that mindset that your team was going to win the title--which was an impossibility--would you have even made the playoffs?
KS: That's a great question. Thinking back, I didn't even think we were going to make it to the playoffs, really. I didn't tell anyone that, I just had to see how I could motivate those guys to go beyond what they were thinking. A lot of the time when we would play those top teams, we would lose, but we would play well. Against one of the best teams, we lost by only two points. I was so mad and disappointed, but these guys on my team were jumping around happy, because they couldn't believe they played so good against this super-team. I was like, "Man, this culture is crazy!" I'd rather lose by fifty, knowing I got my butt kicked, than lose by one or two. That tells me I had an opportunity to win and didn't. That struggle itself was something.

DP: But the thing is they werent going backwards.
KS: Definitely, they were improving. And I saw the improvement, because they let me in, into their lifestyle and how they live. Which is pretty weird, because as overseas players, we could get fired at any time and be sent home--it's not guaranteed like in the NBA. So if you don't produce you could be gone on the next plane.. So the job is so not secure. All the overseas players know this, so they stick together. And the locals on the team stay together, because the locals are going to always have a job. But I was mingling with these guys, and then I started getting caught up emotionally with them, and it really opened me up because it made me understand why they do some of the things they do on the court. A lot of the time their personal lives were getting triggered by and intermingled with their court performances. I'm coming from America, I'm coming from Jacksonville University, a structured society. I go to practice at three oclock, practice starts at three, I'm getting ready, I'm swearing, three oclock hits, boom, practice starts. But in Iran, the players are coming to practice with their shoes in their hands at 3:15, and the coach is reading at 3:45; it was just total chaos. I'm like, what is going on here? It was mind-boggling to me that this was a professional team. This is crazy! But then I started seeing how they live. Everything for them is so nonchalant. Dont worry, were just going to get it down. Insha'Allah, God willing we're going to do it. And that goes for everything. Insha'Allah can turn into one day, into two weeks, into one month. I'll never forget Insha'Allah. Tomorrow, God willing. Everything is tomorrow.
DP: In the movie, there's a line by you explaining why you agreed to play in Iran--"God said to go to the unfamiliar." Soon you were in a strange world
KS: I'm actually spiritual. I don't like to associate myself so much with religion because I know that a lot of the time religion is among the causes for the biggest problems we are having in the world. Whether it's Muslim or Christianity, when you do go back and read the text itself, you see it's the same God that all of us are praying to. The one thing He asks us to do is love. So if love is supposed to be the antidote to everything, we should love each other no matter who we are. So I took the opportunity to go from the familiar, my normal surroundings in the Virgin Islands, and go to the other, where everybody thinks they have weapons of mass destruction and terrorists. Maybe they do, I don't know. But at least I wanted 

to find it out for myself.

  Kevin meets Iranians who love Americans.

DP: What did you find out about the Iranian people?
KS: They are so genuinely nice. They won't let you pay for nothing, even when you try to sneak it in. They cursed me out when I paid and made me take my money back. They go at every level to make you feel welcome. And thats something that I'll never forget, because these are the things I never hear, growing up in America and the Virgin Islands.
DP: The great thing about this movie is that it shows you, intimately, the very people some people in America want to bomb. Till, can you talk a little about that, and how your film is about people coming together to learn from each other?

TS: What you just said is true, about how we must make sure we know who were getting into a military conflict with. Our executive producer, Abigail Disney, who I cant praise enough, just wrote a blog that will be on the Huffington Post. She used an LA Times quote about the film where they call it a "remarkably apolitical political film." The whole blog is about the personal versus the political and how you can't disconnect the two, so when we in America look at these satellite pictures and just see these dots and say, "Okay, that's Baghdad, if they dont do what we want them to do well bomb them," it is all extremely abstract. Its simple then to go and do something because you really have no concept of what it actually does to real people. This may sound like a very obvious thing, but to a lot of people it just is not. With Iran for example, the overwhelming perception in America is that we need to fear these people. They are the biggest part of the Axis of Evil or whatever is left of it. It's always about fear and is based on a lot of missing information or misinformation. I always like to point out that Iranians have a very high opinion of Americans as people. The polls there, when they ask about the favorability of Americans, are incredibly high, 60%, 70% in favor. You would never get that in any other country in the region, including Israel. That needs to be told. People in America need to know this. Why are we wanting to go to war with people who have such a good opinion of us? That's not to say that there's not an issue with the regime. But it's very dangerous to lump the regime, or the government, with the people. You just cannot do that.
DP: A'' Obama has to say is, "The people there are very much like us, they like us, and they're against the regime too. So we dont want to bomb them." That's enough. But we don't hear that.
KS: No, we don't.
TS: There's something else that's important. There is often the perception that Iranians are nice but since they have a government that is the problem, we need to go help them and make their country like ours, because that's how everybody wants to live. That's just not the case. One of my favorite lines in the film is when one of the three young women Kevin befriends says, "I want to see the changes here in the country, I don't want to go anywhere and enjoy their democracy. I want to have it in my county." Iranians love their country and their culture. They don't want to live in America, or Germany or whatever. They want to live in their own country, where they have their people, their culture, their food, their music, all the rest of it; they just want to do in circumstances that are agreeable to them. That's important, because some elements of American political circles, they have this idea that we are the saviors and bringing them something that's not always wanted by those people. Also, I think it's crucial that they figure out their own mess. They can't rely on somebody else to do it for them. It doesn't work, there are very few exceptions where that has worked, with Germany, ironically being one of them.
DP: Because of Abigail Disney's involvement, were you planning on having a woman's point of view? You were fortunate enough to meet these three very interesting, candid young women--Elaheh, Hilda, and Laleh, the most political--who even sneak into Kevin's apartment at great risk to have conversations.
TS: You cant plan on that, and I didn't plan on it, but I have to point out once again that the producer of this film is a woman, my wife Sara. She was born here but her parents are Iranian. She, of course, influenced a lot of about this production, including the point of view that we're taking and the elements that we're focused on. It's really hard to make a documentary, and I asked her, "Are you cool with us doing this because this is going to take a few years?" As I said, if it was just going to be about basketball, she would have said, "No way. It's not interesting unless you can make it about more than that and use basketball to really get into the social fabric of the country." It's a really good opportunity to do that, with other characters rather than just the basketball player, and we were so blessed when these three women entered the film, because that gave us an opportunity to tell the story of the Iranian people through the eyes of women. I love that we made what could potentially be a jock film, about a guy playing a man's sport, and yet what the audience takes away from this film, overwhelmingly, is the story of these three women. Once I met them, I realized I had to find a way for them to like me enough to let me work with them, because it was clear that they would be great assets to the film.

DP: They certainly don't fit our stereotypes of completely suppressed Muslim women. They even wear jeans underneath their burqas, when theyre watching the basketball games.
TS: For the record, they're not burqa wearers--that's in Saudi Arabia. They wear hijabs. I'll never forget this one guy, at a big film festival, saying, "We've already seen all these women with their burqas." He was saying that the film was "a base-level introduction to Islamic society." But if you call it a base-level introduction, you should at least know the difference between a burqa and a hijab. I'm not saying this to knock you, but that is why a film like this is so important, because people always assume that they know the people --"they're Muslim, there's a little bit about Shiites, the other funny sect there, Sunnis, etc."--but you can't really know them until you meet them. That's why a story like this, where Kevin allows an audience to be with the Iranian people on an everyday--sometimes mundane, sometimes very substantial--basis, can be useful and benefit people.
DP: Kevin, were you open from the beginning to the women enlightening you? Or did it take a while for you to say, "Hey, they are more than just attractive women, they have a lot to say that I can learn from?" You seem very receptive.
KS: Obviously I had to put them through a testing phase, because I didn't know much about their culture. I'm a very curious guy, so I tried to figure out what these women were like. Because even I had prejudices with these women. Like what you guys are talking about in regard to what they wore? I didnt know what that was. We used to say they wear ninja suits--and stuff like that. I'd say that if I was living over there I'd have twelve wives. Because those were the kinds of stories we heard. So I had my own built-in prejudices, but then I said, I'm going to try to figure out a little more about these women. And the more I talked to them, the more I realized that these women were even smarter than my teammates. There was only one guy on my team who spoke English; these three women spoke English and French. All of them had very high degrees, even in chemical engineering. It was amazing that they had degrees and this intelligence, but they cant excel at the highest level there. If these women were in America, the sky's the limit.
TS: Wha'ts interesting is that more than fifty percent of college graduates in Iran are now women. That is actually a product of the Islamic Revolution. That's not to say that the Islamic Revolution was good in any way, but it definitely had some aspects that benefitted large parts of the society. However, there is also, of course, a weird contradiction with that. They give women that opportunity but then when they get that degree, they can't go any further. In regard to your asking Kevin if he was willing to let the three women open his mind--I think it's so evident that they achieved it, whether he was willing or not. Just that fact that when he came back home, he related differently to his girlfriend, who is now his wife.
DP: Kevin, did your learning from these women affect your relationship with your girlfriend so much that when you came back you finally proposed?
KS: Well, I had all that in mind before I met the women, really. Even though there was a struggle between the Iranian people and their government, you could see a second struggle between the women and the government. The women were fighting two wars, basically. It touched me more, being African American, because I heard stories about the Civil War in America, and I saw the movies about what African Americans had to fight in America, so I saw there was a parallel between their lives and mine. Just sixty years ago, my forefathers had to fight for our right to have equal opportunity. A struggle within a struggle. It really connected me.
DP: Did they connect to you because they understood the African American background?
KS: Definitely. One the reasons we got so close was that we kept explaining situations we had to each other; that's how we learned even more from each other. I wasn't just listening to their problems and telling them how to fix them, I was telling them my problems, too. We were just bouncing ideas back and forth, and the conversation became easy. These women didn't have the opportunity to speak to Iranian men in this way, I think it brought them the type of stimulation, not sexual but intelligent stimulation, that they were missing.
DP: I'm not sure if Till intended to show that there was something flirtatious between you and Elaheh, but at very least you had a strong connection. Did you expect her to eventually leave her parents and pursue acting in Tehran?
KS: I felt she was pretty enough, she was very intelligent--her English was very good--but they're so respectful to the father figure over there. They seek approval of the fathers and I didn't think he'd give it to her. So I knew she was not going.
TS: I want to add to what Kevin said about how his being African American bonded him with the women. They share the experience of being second-class citizens with Kevin's forefathers. It was so ironic to me to see that Kevin was connecting to these women at the same time the first African American president was elected after running in the Democratic primary against the first woman, Hillary Clinton, who had a legitimate shot at getting elected. That was an interesting mirror image of these people bonding.

DP: Kevin, you weren't as excited as the Iranians were about Obama being elected. You had a wait-and-see attitude.
KS: I was excited. Till came in when the celebration was going on. I started sitting down, thinking, everybody's going to love you now. I just put myself in the athletic mode, because Im an athlete. In the professional sports world, you should know that it's not what you did yesterday, it's what you're going to do for me from now on. When things start going bad, you're going to see the people come after you. So I said that going to happen to Obama, too, because even though you're cheering right now, that economy is not looking promising. You're going to be throwing stones.
DP: When you returned to play ball in Iran the next two years, had the people's attitude toward Obama changed because the US-Iranian relationship hadn't changed under Obama?
KS: I think they're still optimistic. It's not as heightened as it was when he became president and there was celebrating in the streets in Iran--even the doctor I used to go to was celebrating. That was really exciting to see, because it showed that Obama really broke a lot of barriers, worldwide.Elaheh

TS: You asked about the flirtatious moment between Kevin and Elaheh in the film, that everybody always asks about. I thought it was a really great to have cultural flirtation going on, and that was represented so well by Kevin and all of the three ladies, particularly Elaheh. When I make feature films, I always think of how I'm going to orchestrate my characters. You have the hero, the nemesis, the seduction and all of these things. In many ways, Kevin's journey is like a hero's journey, including having temptation for a guy who's away from his wife and around beautiful women for a couple of months. The fact that he didn't take advantage of that attention but used it more as an opportunity to grow, I thought was part of his growth. You don't always necessarily know what's happening with you as you grow. As personal growth happens you're not aware of it. But you can look back and see you grew.
KS (laughing): Till's just lucky because he got a lot of information the producer wouldn't have dreamed of writing. Everything just happened with perfect timing for the film. One of the biggest things is that I told him I didn't want my personal life in the film. I like to keep my personal life away from basketball; that's like my safe haven. He kept pinching me every month, saying, "I have to put this in." He'd show me and I'd say, "Alright, you can do that." So he got it all.
DP: Kevin, at the end of the movie we learn that you and your wife have had a baby girl and they you are the founder and president of Choices Basketball Associations, a non-profit youth league in US Virgin Islands. But I noticed that you still play.
KS: I'm retired now, I coach. I do play with the national team, but I only in the summer league when they need help. We won the gold medal in 2011.
DP: I read that you scored 28 points in one game against the Bahamas!
KS: I still got it!
For more info:
www.theiranjob.com
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/554272471/the-iran-job-bring-it-to-a-theater-near-you?ref=email