Emma Enters the Adult World

2013 Tribeca Film Festival

 

Emma Enters the Adult World

 

from brinkzine.com (4/30/13) 

 

Emma Roberts

Photo: Perri Nemiroff

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

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

 John Cusack and Emma Roberts

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

 

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

Evan Peters and Emma Roberts

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

Emma Roberts and DP photo: Perri Nemiroff

Three Stars Speaking About Nair's Eye-Opener

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Playing in Theaters

Three Stars Speaking About Nair's Eye-Opener

from brinkzine.com (4/25/13)

 Liev Schreiber and Riz Ahmed

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

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

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

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

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

Sutherland and Ahmed

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

Redford is Good Company

 

 

The Company You Keep is Playing in Theaters

 

Redford is Good Company

 

from brinkzine.com (4/4/13)

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Julie Christie and Robert Redford

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

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

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

Photo: DP

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!