tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37695820706730527672024-03-05T01:55:36.222-08:00Girls Can PlayMovie and TV reviews and interviewsElise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.comBlogger836125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-4086803258809355012020-01-22T08:46:00.004-08:002022-11-30T17:05:26.919-08:00Sarah Weddington on winning Roe v. Wade<i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5depavDwrPUB3iu7SlGj-Auz6vDBUbSKWWJgt9_F1xtP1GG6fNz3jvuIIvlzZ83wmHy1Owcx376z1ZAQbn0_7T4a8ahF2mlgFFAn85r5bS1cHSaya2tE3TyFZ2U-0FL9psTPvkS-85uo/s1903/Sarah+Weddington.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1903" data-original-width="1127" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5depavDwrPUB3iu7SlGj-Auz6vDBUbSKWWJgt9_F1xtP1GG6fNz3jvuIIvlzZ83wmHy1Owcx376z1ZAQbn0_7T4a8ahF2mlgFFAn85r5bS1cHSaya2tE3TyFZ2U-0FL9psTPvkS-85uo/s320/Sarah+Weddington.jpg" /></a></div>In 1970, fresh out of University of Texas law school, </i><i>Sarah Weddington</i><i> began work on Roe v. Wade, the case that three years later went to the United State Supreme Court and won women the right to choose abortion. I interviewed her about the case in 1985 for Third Coast magazine, a now-defunct monthly in Austin, Texas—which is why her telling of the story is so Austin-centric. </i><br />
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The abortion case—the kernel of it—really started in Austin. There was a whole series of women here who were involved in problem-pregnancy counseling at the YWCA near campus. I had gone to a garage sale one day, and one of the women said to me, “Do you know what’s happening?” I said, “Well, I’m not sure,” and she said, “We’ve got an awful lot oF women from Austin who are going to Mexico for abortions, and some of them are coming back with <i>real </i>problems. And so, she said: “We really want to expand our counseling, tell people where the good places are, what states there are with clinics they could go to, and about any doctors we know who’ll do procedures, and under what conditions. And if we did that, would we be prosecuted?” And so I began to do the research for <i>Roe v. Wade. </i><br />
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As we got into the case, there were a lot of people here in Austin who were very helpful. There were several members of the faculty of the law school who did moot courts with me, helping me think through what were the questions the Supreme Court might ask and how I would answer them.<br />
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I actually was here in Austin when I heard about the decision. I believe that was also the day LBJ died, so there were two big national stories out of Austin that day. I’d just been elected to the Legislature, was at home getting ready to go over to the session, when a friend called and said “Congratulations!” I said “What?” And she said “You won your case!” She’d heard it on the radio that morning.<br />
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It was almost like when people on game shows win a million dollars—the same sort of spirit of “Can you <i>believe </i>it?” It was the sheer exhilaration of having spent three years of your life on one issue, one case. And then, of course, I started getting all the press calls—which was a real problem, because I didn’t know what the opinion said. So I had to call quickly up to Washington to get someone to go over to the court and read the opinion and call me back to tell me what it said.Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-74906026940186644612019-03-09T11:58:00.000-08:002019-03-12T12:01:20.459-07:00Interview: Jia Zhang-ke on Ash Is Purest White and the Evolution of China<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unshowy yet unshakably self-assured, sincere but with glimpses of a sly sense of humor, and unhesitatingly frank even about touchy topics like the Chinese government’s censorship of his work, Jia Zhang-ke comes off in person just as a fan of his films might expect. Ever since his 1997 feature debut, <i>The Pickpocket</i>, and 2000’s <i>Platform</i>, in which young people struggle to adapt to China’s increasing Westernization, Jia has been creating a kind of unofficial history of his homeland, quietly defying his government’s determination to erase its tracks as it barrels along by doing things like rewiring the economy, rewriting the social contract, and depopulating whole cities and erecting new ones in a matter of months.<br />
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Jia’s films operate in metaphorical deep focus, surfacing the ways that these sweeping societal changes affect individual lives and relationships by zeroing in on sensitively detailed portrayals of two lovers, or of a group or pair of friends, while just as clearly portraying the socioeconomic backdrops to their stories. And often at the center of his films is Zhao Tao, his wife and longtime muse. In Jia’s latest, <i>Ash Is Purest White</i>, Zhao reprises the role she played in 2002’s <i>Unknown Pleasures</i>: Qiao Qiao, a strong-willed woman from Jia’s hometown of Fenyang, this time over a span of 17 years that starts when she’s the young lover of a gangster and ends with her in charge of the gambling den he once ran.<br />
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In a conversation before <i>Ash Is Purest Whit</i>e’s debut at the New York Film Festival, Jia explained what he likes about digital video, how Zhao Tao helped bring her role to life, and how he deals with his government’s suppression of his work.<br />
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<b>The music in your films is always an important part of the story. Can you talk about how you picked the songs for this one, starting with “Y.M.C.A.”?</b><br />
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Since I wanted to set the story starting in 2001, I wanted to find a piece of music that can trigger that particular era very authentically. And back in the day, in 2001, the younger generation, they didn’t have a lot of sources of entertainment. They might have had a disco club and karaoke, and that was about it. Two songs very popular at that time were “Y.M.C.A.” and “Go West” [the Pet Shop Boys song that was a motif in Jia’s Mountains May Depart].<br />
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The reason that we liked “Y.M.C.A.” was not because we understood the lyrics or understood who sang them or who was involved in the production. We had no idea what they were singing about. But we did enjoy the rhythm, the melody, and the beat, which is matching the heartbeat of the young people. It really got you going and brought up the energy of the room.<br />
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Another song that is particularly important in the film—you hear it again and again—is “Drunk for Life” by Sally Yeh, a Cantonese pop singer. This is a song I listened to when I was in junior high. At the time, young people tended to hang out in the video arcade, and this was one of the songs heard there. It was also a theme song for John Woo’s <i>The Killer</i>. That film, in the triad genre, is very similar to the John Woo motif that I want to evoke in this film.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/interview-jia-zhang-ke-on-ash-is-purest-white-censorship-and-the-evolution-of-china/"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-38209077365641975482019-02-13T12:46:00.002-08:002019-02-13T12:47:54.371-08:00Interview: Asghar Farhadi on Everybody Knows<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdasUeOg3LGSo9UNiOlqHBbpS1d-5jjRYpfm_DSILdif9gV_Zp-wC6ZkdyPuLRYe3Z9bgvcbpOMMh8X6S_3MFZzjOpUPmw84_Y692dp6RvzS1wR2hvJf2GL0A9Az_fend70lsX6mNtUCg/s1600/asgharfarhadi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="845" data-original-width="1600" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdasUeOg3LGSo9UNiOlqHBbpS1d-5jjRYpfm_DSILdif9gV_Zp-wC6ZkdyPuLRYe3Z9bgvcbpOMMh8X6S_3MFZzjOpUPmw84_Y692dp6RvzS1wR2hvJf2GL0A9Az_fend70lsX6mNtUCg/s320/asgharfarhadi.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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A beautifully acted ensemble piece, Asghar Farhadi’s <i>Everybody Knows</i> starts with a hyper-realistic introduction to a cozy world—a bath of golden light, goblets of wine, warm hugs, and festive music as Laura’s (Penélope Cruz) large, loving family gathers for a wedding. But the film’s focus on this family’s day-to-day interactions takes a sharp turn when a crisis puts the main characters, including Paco (Javier Bardem), Laura’s old and dear friend, to the test, throwing everything about their lives into question.<br />
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Two years ago, on what turned out to be his last trip to the United States, I <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/interview-asghar-farhadi-on-the-salesman-censorship-and-more/" target="_blank">spoke</a> with Farhadi in person about <i>The Salesman</i>. (The filmmaker, who has a green card, has stayed away since then, in protest of President Donald Trump’s travel ban.) Earlier this week, we spoke over the phone about <i>Everybody Knows</i> and the subject of the universal human instinct to distrust outsiders, the persistence of the past, and the strong similarities between Spanish and Iranian culture that make Farhadi feel at home in Spain.<br />
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<b>There’s a subplot in Everybody Knows about the anti-immigrant prejudice in Spain, which makes people point fingers at foreign grape-pickers the moment something goes wrong. Were you trying to say something about how that kind of poisonous thinking seems to be spreading around the world?</b><br />
My point I’m making is more general. It was this very universal reflex that we have that when there’s something wrong, suspicion is first directed against not just immigrants but the stranger, the outsider. Whereas problems may actually come from people around us—relatives, friends—and that is the case in this film.<br />
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<b>There are a lot of reminders in Everybody Knows, starting with the title, of how hard it is to keep a secret in a small town.</b><br />
Because I wanted to deal with the notion of secrets, and secrets being related to the past of the characters, I had to choose a society in which people are aware of each other’s pasts. If I had put my story in a big city it wouldn’t have made sense. People don’t know where the others come from; they aren’t aware of each other’s background. I wanted it to be in a small community in which people pretend that they don’t know anything about the others, but in reality they know everything. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/interview-asghar-farhadi-on-everybody-knows-and-the-persistence-of-the-past/" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine.</span></a>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-70948360796250933012018-12-22T13:07:00.003-08:002020-07-10T00:24:14.382-07:00Best TV Shows of 2018<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy8NyLWZUndh0q3FCSfQjEtphXOiViiZAw0Zw685_vzDfseu-DsZgiucP3NXAqRfSmHOsWGfEkPHffVOZnT-hCADegdaZfPMeNsHeG92RmMrPpKwWhDBy5RtLYz2E9tckFKCBqaDtgTM4/s1600/the-handmaids-tale.png.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="1300" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy8NyLWZUndh0q3FCSfQjEtphXOiViiZAw0Zw685_vzDfseu-DsZgiucP3NXAqRfSmHOsWGfEkPHffVOZnT-hCADegdaZfPMeNsHeG92RmMrPpKwWhDBy5RtLYz2E9tckFKCBqaDtgTM4/s320/the-handmaids-tale.png.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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For me, contributing to <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Slant Magazine's list of the year's best TV shows</span></a> is as much about the process as the result: It's the motivation I need to catch up on candidates I missed earlier in the year, and to watch end-of-year debuts that sound interesting. There's so much great TV now, on network and cable and streaming services like Amazon and Hulu and Netflix, that it's not humanly possible to see it all, but I've seen probably more than was healthy. Here are my top 10 picks and my honorable mentions.<br />
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<b>Top 10</b><br />
The Handmaid's Tale (<a href="https://girls-can-play.blogspot.com/2017/08/interview-ann-dowd-on-leftovers.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">my interview with Ann Dowd</span></a> about <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i>, among other things)<br />
The Americans<br />
Homeland (<a href="https://girls-can-play.blogspot.com/2014/09/homeland-season-4.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">my review of Season 4</span></a>)<br />
Atlanta<br />
Bojack Horseman<br />
<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Fauda</span></a><br />
Better Call Saul<br />
<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">The Terror</span></a><br />
Killing Eve<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018/P3" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Random Acts of Flyness</span></a></span><br />
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<b>Honorable Mentions</b><br />
Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas, Silicon Valley (<a href="https://girls-can-play.blogspot.com/search?q=Silicon+Valley+recap" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">my recaps of Season 4</span></a>). The End of the F**cking World, Big Mouth, Jane the Virgin, Ozark (<a href="https://girls-can-play.blogspot.com/2017/12/ozark.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">my review of Season 1</span></a>),<a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;"> Pose</span></a>, Claws, Dear White People, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (<a href="https://girls-can-play.blogspot.com/2017/12/daily-show-alum-john-oliver-has.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">my review of Season 4</span></a>), Wild Wild Country, The Good Place (<a href="https://girls-can-play.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-good-place-season-2.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">my review of Season 2</span></a>), Barry, Happy!, The Baroness Von Sketch Show, Salt Fat Acid HeatElise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-61108232840726439972018-12-19T13:19:00.002-08:002021-03-29T18:59:36.000-07:00Interview: Pawel Pawlikowski on Cold War<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMWNnN-25oFhBDpe8IAEWIKgeAYjuOkVNbcVtZfw_wLZ3JZkEi8rKmXncArNSBoapnOfDBrBkhyphenhyphenz-jPXsjWcFTK4GDlUsTc-JJhkG9FIGKOY-At5urUnpx2LpyO-S-3X1vehIwyd1zX2Y/s1600/pawel_pawlikowski.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="585" data-original-width="1225" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMWNnN-25oFhBDpe8IAEWIKgeAYjuOkVNbcVtZfw_wLZ3JZkEi8rKmXncArNSBoapnOfDBrBkhyphenhyphenz-jPXsjWcFTK4GDlUsTc-JJhkG9FIGKOY-At5urUnpx2LpyO-S-3X1vehIwyd1zX2Y/s320/pawel_pawlikowski.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Pawel Pawlikowski’s <i>Cold War</i>, like his Oscar-winning <i>Ida,</i> highlights a traumatic period in Poland’s recent history, and how a brutal political reality warps people’s lives. In the film, Poland’s totalitarian government and the iron curtain that separates the country from the West is hardly the only thing that keeps doomed lovers Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig) apart, but it’s certainly the main one. It also interferes with their ability to do good work. Wiktor is the co-founder a troupe that performs Polish folk music and dances. Zula is the star of the troupe, whose initially artistic performances become steadily more maudlin and nationalistic under the heavy hand of Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc), the communist bureaucrat who runs the company.<br />
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After the film’s premiere at the New York Film Festival, Pawlikowski talked to me about the echoes of modern politics that Polish audiences detect in <i>Cold War</i>, how the film eluded the grasp of the propagandists who maligned <i>Ida</i>, and why he doesn’t stick too closely to his scripts.<br />
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<b>I’ve seen two of your earliest movies, <i>My Summer of Love</i> and your first documentary, about Russian writer and dissident Benedict Yerofeyev. <i>Ida</i> and <i>Cold War</i> felt to me like they’re operating on a whole different, much deeper level. Did they feel different to you too?</b><br />
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It’s age. Age and experience. A mixture of, you know, calming down, maturing, craft. I never went to film school, so I did all my learning on the job. A lot of these early films are just rescue jobs—a good idea, and they generally work, because there’s something about them. I was usually just gripped by a story. Benedict was a writer I really loved, so I had to make a film about him. He was dying, and there was nothing to film. I had to invent a whole film around his book, so I pieced it together any old how, as poetically as possible.<br />
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Regarding <i>My Summer of Love</i>, I had done a few fiction films before that, but the budget was still quite small. Also, I wasn’t quite in control of my methods. There were some shots I worked out that didn’t quite come off. And the two actresses [Natalie Press and Emily Blunt] at some point stopped getting on.<br />
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Now I’m calm. I don’t get flustered and stick to my guns. It has something to do with where you are in life and, in some ways, being impatient with cinema. You often make something just to make the kind of film you’d like to see, and not to use the same weapons that everyone else is using, for emotional rhetoric. Also, time is a big factor. I don’t make films too often. So, every time I make a new one, I’m somewhere else than when I was making one before.<br />
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<b><i>Ida</i> and <i>Cold War</i> are also your only two films that are about Poland. Do you think that had something to do with it?</b><br />
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Yeah. I went back to live in Poland, and there are reasons why I’m there. Not just to make films, but [to find] all these stories that were always there.<div><br /></div><div><strong style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I read that you said the inspiration for <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ida</em>was partly to explore the idea of religion as a spiritual practice rather than a form of identity.</strong></div><div><span face="PT Serif, sans-serif"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div><div><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Both, both. The difference between the two. Is it a thing of identity? Or is it a thing of faith, rather than a sort of tribal marking?</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cold War</em> was partly inspired by your parents. But those two could also be looked at as a kind of diptych about Poland during and after WWII. </strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes, I suppose. But I didn’t have that vision. It was more like trying to tell a story that means something to me and maybe also to others, and that has layers to it. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/ida" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ida</em></a> is about identity, faith, and guilt. Also, it’s about the Poland that I grew up in at a kind of sensuous, sentimental level: poems, songs. And religion was a big deal. But I didn’t realize it would become such a political hot potato. It because very controversial. It was an arthouse film that the kind of people who watch that kind of film went to see and liked. But then when it started winning big awards, it became a public event. So, suddenly the current government, which was then fighting an election campaign, used it as a weapon. They said, “This is a film which blackens our image.” They spoke to people who hadn’t actually seen the film, telling them: “It’s all about Poles killing Jews” and “It’s a conspiracy against our country.” It was a weapon they used to drum up support and create a sense of siege.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We wouldn’t know anything about those kinds of tactics in this country. </strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yeah. [laughs] Well, it worked for them. Suddenly there was this big petition against the film, signed by more people than went to see it. With <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/cold-war" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cold War</em></a>, it sort of slipped out of their control because it became very popular. Unlike <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/ida" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ida</em></a>, it was a huge commercial hit, which was very surprising. So, you can’t explain to them what it was about behind their backs. Also, there’s some echoes of today [in the film], and a lot of people picked up on them. The folk ensemble gets kind of coopted into some kind of ideological weapon, which is kind of what’s happening right now, with the folk ensemble I was basing mine on. Suddenly the government pumps money into that kind of art—not that it’s socialist any more, but nationalist—while cutting subsidies to theaters that aren’t to their liking. Of course, it’s not Stalinism. There’s no censorship as such. But they took over the state TV, and the type of person like Kaczmarek, the impresario, that guy exists now and is very dominant.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And someone like that could now work for the state and control the arts in the same way? </strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Well, no, but he can make a career. I don’t mean anyone specific, but this type now is very prevalent: the guy who can master the right lingo. At the time it was Marxist, but now it’s kind of patriotic. [laughs] You can make a huge career. These patriots are on the make now. They’re taking over the institutions and the businesses—state businesses. It’s terrible. So, when a certain type of audience watches it, of course it feels familiar.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cold War</em>, the love song that becomes a kind of signature piece for Zula gets corrupted in Poland, when the apparatchik in charge of the troupe forces them to turn what starts out as a beautiful folk song into something saccharine and false. But Zula also hates what happens to the song in Paris, where a poet translates the lyrics in a preciously literary way. Are you saying that non-totalitarian societies are just as hard on artistic self-expression as totalitarian ones, just in different ways? </strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">No, no. I wouldn’t be theoretical about it. It’s just, in life, that’s how it happens. There’s the extra problem that the lyrics were written by this ex-lover of Wiktor, and they are pretentious, but it’s more that all social life is a form of coercion, you know? In Stalinist Poland it was really manifest and dangerous, and in French salons it’s oppressive in a different way. But nobody forced them to sing that song in French. People say to me that I would make a lot of money if I made films in English with English-speaking stars, and I think, “Do I succumb to that kind of pressure or do I stick to black-and-white Polish films?” Of course, if you’re an exile, you don’t have an alternative. Then you go with whatever works locally.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What movies did you watch when you were young? </strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When I was a boy I watched a lot of cowboy movies, because they were released in Poland under socialism. So, John Ford films, like <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/the-man-who-shot-liberty-valance" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance</em></a>. And I loved the big historical epics, like <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-fall-of-the-roman-empire" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Fall of the Roman Empire</em></a>. I used to escape from school to see these with friends, because they were running from 10 in the morning, for workers on night shifts. That was escapism into other worlds. And then in my late teens I discovered cinema as an art, but also I discovered poetry and music. I just became aware of art. That was a good time, the moment of American independent cinema. I caught up on neorealism, French New Wave and so on mainly in the ‘70s, after it had come and gone. I saw it was a very free form of filmmaking in the ‘70s, you know. It was a different time. The films were kind of made by amateurs. They weren’t professional filmmakers.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Which is how you see yourself still, no?</strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yeah, yeah. I keep that dilettante quality. [laughs] I’m not sure how to make films. I just find out about it as I think about it and make it.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You’ve said that you work by keeping everything in flux as you shoot, adding new things as you work, taking things out in the editing, which you do as you go, and then repeating the process until you discover the film. Do you encourage your actors to improvise and then decide what to use? </strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s not a type of improvisation. It’s basically using time creatively, trying to shoot more or less chronologically in five-day shooting weeks, so you can rest on the sixth day and write on the seventh, so you have time to go to the cutting room and tweak it a bit. The interaction with actors always inspires something, but it’s not like they come up with stuff, necessarily. Some of them can come up with a good line, and that’s great, but it’s just basically not taking script too literally, too seriously. Some actors are quite good at improvisation if you give them a little more room, and actually their strength is these little moments where something sparks. Meanwhile, other actors are very precise, like the actress [Agata Kulesza] who plays Irena, and who played Ida’s aunt in <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/ida" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ida</em></a>. She likes to stick to the script, and she’s really great.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes, I was glad to see her again. She didn’t have much to do here, but she was so good. </strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Yeah. She disappears early. She has very good disappearances. [laughs]</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So you don’t take your own scripts too seriously?</strong></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Most scripts aren’t very good, and directors that stick to them end up making films that the scripts deserve. I know that story is the important thing. I invent my story, and then I spend quite a lot of time fluffing up the story, finding scenes. Some of them are very good. Others are dysfunctional and I know I’ll have to deal with tehm later. I know that I’m not going to crack it with my laptop, so I leave some space for filmmaking, you know? There are some elements of <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/my-summer-of-love" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My Summer of Love</em></a> and <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/cold-war" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cold War</em></a>and <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/ida" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ida</em></a> that I toyed with for some time until it suddenly became clear what they should be.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: "PT Serif", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.55; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My scripts are like 60 pages, tops. <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/my-summer-of-love" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgb(68, 195, 241) 0px -4px 0px inset; color: black; margin: 0px; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My Summer of Love</em></a> was just 22. To get the money to make a movie, you have to have something that looks like a script. [laughs] I have to explain how they’ll get from here to there, what this or that means. But I know that when I make it I won’t have these explanatory things. We’ll have to find a film that’s made of good units—scenes that work with plasticity, visually, and with dialogue that doesn’t have to carry information, that hints at stuff but has its own grace. I try to treat the film as a kind of documentary. The film has a life of its own, and I’m not bothered that some lines are dropped or scenes have been dropped. I’m trying, as I’m shooting it, to put it together and look at it all the time, so it’s growing as a film.</p>
<br /><i><span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-pawel-pawlikowski-on-the-making-of-cold-war">written for Slant Magazine</a></span></i></div>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-69096708661649371492018-12-12T11:49:00.000-08:002018-12-23T11:51:08.702-08:00Random Acts of Flyness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG7Z6vvpKLatKb2LTd-dS5032xDGfVlDmLFfyRtHKOLuFnjtGDzJNE7L1ir-Fp-1nZP6qllJroLAjC-kp-L6xq_4Pb8WisVmYWwyFz99HY8LNYSiHACbRjTVLjg5ZEQhqfUUH8KM_eiY4/s1600/Random_Acts_of_Flyness2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="768" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG7Z6vvpKLatKb2LTd-dS5032xDGfVlDmLFfyRtHKOLuFnjtGDzJNE7L1ir-Fp-1nZP6qllJroLAjC-kp-L6xq_4Pb8WisVmYWwyFz99HY8LNYSiHACbRjTVLjg5ZEQhqfUUH8KM_eiY4/s320/Random_Acts_of_Flyness2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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In the first episode of his Afrofuturist-ish HBO sketch show, creator, director, and star Terence Nance says <i>Random Acts of Flyness</i> is “about the beauty and ugliness of contemporary American life.” That broad frame allows Nance to download a multiverse of thoughts and ideas, from pointed observations about casual misogyny to a satiric skewering of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m0oMrMUiWQ"><span style="color: blue;">white thoughts</span></a>.” Building on his work in films like <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/an-oversimplification-of-her-beauty"><span style="color: blue;">An Oversimplification of Her Beauty</span></a></i>, Nance invents his own kaleidoscopic audiovisual language. Images switch frequently between realistic and surrealistic live action, obscure archival footage, and various styles of animation. Words blossom in myriad forms: as near-subliminal messages, as text exchanges that break into the action to comment on it, as fast-talking monologues or probing conversations.<br />
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The end result may be dense to the point of impenetrable at times, but <i>Random Acts of Flyness </i>can be gloriously straightforward too. A recurring bit with the characteristically ambiguous title of “Blackface” consists of a parade of beautiful dark-skinned faces, each perfectly lit against a black backdrop and gazing at the camera in lingering close-up. A celebration of black American creativity, intelligence, and beauty, <i>Random Acts of Flyness</i> is an act of creative generosity: an open invitation to wake the fuck up and smell the delicious coffee—but don’t let it burn you.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018/P3"><span style="color: blue;">Written for Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-83784363961047572312018-12-12T11:46:00.000-08:002018-12-22T11:48:03.043-08:00The Terror<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHDc3EItHoVDmKPp5Bv6TNWckn1KANbdneSwKJVk24pEugNe6J9JIg4WQ8sd1OkzLWE7uf3g8TRTFBrQXxjUEzC8PSyTDEN3Tl3MMosAPh40uHffBKac7whLyhakIN3wDCjhDh0gyHq1M/s1600/The_Terror.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHDc3EItHoVDmKPp5Bv6TNWckn1KANbdneSwKJVk24pEugNe6J9JIg4WQ8sd1OkzLWE7uf3g8TRTFBrQXxjUEzC8PSyTDEN3Tl3MMosAPh40uHffBKac7whLyhakIN3wDCjhDh0gyHq1M/s320/The_Terror.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Based on the true story of a failed British expedition to find the Northwest Passage in the mid-19th century, <i>The Terror </i>explores the toxic combination of arrogance and bravery that fuels the exploratory missions launched by great colonial powers. After getting stuck for a year and a half in Artic ice, the men, weakened by lead poisoning and fighting the elements, set off on foot in search of salvation. <i>The Terror </i>brings those awful facts vividly alive—and then goes further, creating a full-blown horror story by introducing a monster called the Tuunbaq, which looks something like a giant polar bear with a human face. The men divide into two factions, battling one another as well as the monster while dying in increasingly baroque ways.<br />
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Scenes like a fire that ravages a camp, trapping dozens of people in flaming tents just as the men are having a rare night of celebration, ramp up the sense of claustrophobic terror, which only gets worse when the mad leader of one of the factions begins to cannibalize his enemies. Throughout it all, the Tuunbaq keeps decimating their ranks while growing increasingly weakened by the bullets they empty into him—and, presumably, the lead he ingests when he eats them. Like other classic movie monsters, the Tuunbaq is an unsettling metaphor for the way humans throw nature itself out of balance when we gain too much power.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018"><span style="color: blue;">Written for Slant Magazine</span></a></i><br />
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<br />Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-37022995993081662792018-12-12T11:44:00.000-08:002018-12-22T11:47:25.149-08:00Fauda<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgayRcDlTz7wJmlKGWiO63nwYpBgvTSAgTMbuLU62QP6UALWxh0s8Zoin-7TRmtmIMyqZjNNgXrdVCskmA9Du-2s0MQXAqcEwexPdLKzUy6H6m4jlCK11J1p51lfIkJHqbRVD8NlPVbsR0/s1600/fauda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="740" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgayRcDlTz7wJmlKGWiO63nwYpBgvTSAgTMbuLU62QP6UALWxh0s8Zoin-7TRmtmIMyqZjNNgXrdVCskmA9Du-2s0MQXAqcEwexPdLKzUy6H6m4jlCK11J1p51lfIkJHqbRVD8NlPVbsR0/s320/fauda.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Unlike <i>Homeland</i>, which is based on another Israeli TV series, <i>Fauda</i> makes no attempt to cover the political debates or social context behind its constant action. Instead, like its main characters, it keeps its head down and its focus tight. The series follows the fictional members of an elite undercover unit of the Israeli army and whichever Palestinian freedom fighter/terrorist that Doron (Lior Raz), a rogue member of the unit, is obsessed with that season, while occasionally checking in with a handful of other Israelis and Palestinians—-family members, lovers, or commanding officers—-who either affect or are affected by the main characters’ actions. Fauda (Arabic for “chaos”) is particularly good at showing how war, especially one with no end in sight, poisons the lives of everyone—-even civilians.<br />
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While most of the women on the perimeter of the action have relatively modest dreams, just hoping to marry the man they love or keep their children safe, they inevitably get sucked into the maelstrom, losing their peace of mind, their loved ones, and sometimes their lives. Their romances sometimes stretch credulity, particularly this season when, despite actress Laëtitia Eïdo’s excellent work, Shirin, a dedicated Palestinian doctor, risks becoming a mere symbol of suffering as Doron and Shirin’s young militant cousin Walid (Shadi Mar’i) treat her like the rope in a macho game of tug of war. But the way killings and atrocities keep piling up on both sides, creating more trauma and more would-be martyrs by the day, feels all too believable.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018"><span style="color: blue;">Written for Slant Magazine</span></a></i><br />
<br />Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-74921349167249406542018-12-12T11:41:00.000-08:002018-12-22T11:47:08.589-08:00Pose<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This soulful soap operatic drama pays tribute to New York City’s ball culture of the 1980s. Painting in broad, dramatic strokes, the script highlights the factors—racism, homophobia, transphobia, AIDS, and the wealth gap—that inspired these men and women to create their own world and faux families, where they could show one another the love and respect that they couldn’t find anywhere else. <br />
<a name='more'></a>Balancing out the show’s earnest speeches and righteous crusades is plenty of sheer, campy joy, much of it provided by the balls that cap off most of the episodes. It’s an endearingly lumpy mix, made even more so by the uneven quality of the acting, but that very lack of polish is a large part of why the series works. Like the original ball scene, with all its homemade fabulosity, <i>Pose</i> aspires to a level of perfection it can’t quite achieve—and wins us over with the sheer heart and humanity of its effort.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-25-best-tv-shows-of-2018"><span style="color: blue;">Written for Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-3392892937365643032018-09-13T11:36:00.000-07:002018-12-22T11:48:23.606-08:00Interview: Nicole Holofcener on The Land of Steady Habits<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In films like <i>Lovely and Amazing</i> and <i>Please Give</i>, writer-director Nicole Holofcener's characters talk and talk, taking the temperature of the relationships that both provide them emotional support and serve as yardsticks to measure their personal growth or stagnation. Holofcener's sly observational humor helps make her dialogue feel like conversations with an old friend—honest, engagingly gossipy, and studded with thought-provoking insights—and ensures that, while bad things may happen to her flawed but well-meaning protagonists, her films never slide into mawkishness.<br />
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Her latest, <i>The Land of Steady Habits</i>, is in many ways a typical Holofcener film. Anders (Ben Mendelsohn) is a middle-aged family man who finds himself living alone, trying to construct a new life and mend a frayed relationship with his adult son (Thomas Mann) after leaving his wife (Edie Falco) and retiring from his lifelong career. The film is also a departure for the director: the first of her six features that isn't based on an original Holofcener script (she adapted the screenplay from Ted Thompson's novel), the first not to center on female characters, and the first that doesn't feature Catherine Keener, Holofcener's fictional alter ego ever since <i>Walking and Talking</i>. I spoke with Holofcener this week about escaping the “chick flick” ghetto, what Mendelsohn has in common with Keener, and her plea for older actors.<br />
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<b>I get the feeling this platinum age of TV has been good for you, since you've been tapped to direct a lot of excellent shows, including <i>One Mississippi</i> and <i>Enlightened</i>. Is that your main bread and butter?</b><br />
Residuals are really great. [laughs] I can say that I've been getting paid more money for my films, which is great. But because I make them so infrequently, I can make a good living directing TV shows that I love—and it's been fun. It's not just a job, as it helps me learn. I'm always learning, meeting new people.<br />
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<b>Have you ever thought about doing a TV series of your own?</b><br />
I tried. I was paid to develop a show and to write a few scripts. But it didn't get made, I believe because there was another show about to be on the air that was pretty similar and was very good. And you know what? I'm a little relieved, because I see what showrunners go through and it's not pretty. I don't know if I want to work that hard every minute of the day.<br />
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<b>I'm wondering if making films is getting easier or harder for you. On the one hand, smart indie relationship films with complicated characters and no guns or chase scenes or big character arcs are getting harder to make. On the other hand, you're really good at making them and you've been doing it for a long time, which should make it easier to get your scripts greenlit.</b><br />
It's all about the cast. I believe my screenplays are appreciated. It's whether I'll be willing to cast who the studio wants me to cast. Sometimes that works out for both of us, but sometimes it doesn't. And that's where Netflix comes in, because they let me cast anyone I wanted. It's getting harder to make movies that are going to play in movie theaters for more than 10 seconds. Movie theaters are going away, which is sad. As long as I can keep making movies, I'm not going to complain about it. I think. [laughs] I mean, so many things are changing that a person of my age is appalled at, right? This is one of them, that we're watching movies on television. And that's what I do too, 99% of the time, so I'm already there. But I hope to continue to make movies that will be theatrically released, if I can. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-nicole-holofcener-on-the-land-of-steady-habits-and-career"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-29134540523188163612018-08-23T17:07:00.000-07:002018-12-22T11:48:31.843-08:00Interview: Andrew Bujalski on Support the Girls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The finely tuned bullshit detector that keeps writer-director Andrew Bujalski's ego in check, nudging him to sprinkle his conversations with self-deprecating demurrals and constant reminders of his own blind spots and vulnerabilities, is part of what makes him such an excellent chronicler of our inner lives and times. The New York Times's A.O. Scott called Bujalski's first feature, <i>Funny Ha Ha</i>, “one of the most influential films of the '00s.” Each of his subsequent films has been very different from the others—and from nearly every film imaginable. His work seems to exist outside genre and screenwriting dogmas, featuring characters who feel like people you'd encounter only in life, and plots so subtle they barely register as such.</div>
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Bujalski's films also share a slyly comic humanism that finds both pathos and humor—often at once—in everything from the most banal of conversation to the profoundest of emotions. His latest, <i>Support the Girls</i>, is about a Hooters-like sports bar called Double Whammies and the women who work there. And at the center of the film is Regina Hall as Lisa, the harried, insanely competent, and warmly caring manager who protects and defends the waitresses whose prominently showcased breasts are the sports bar's main attraction by making sure it lives up to its promise of being “a family place.” I talked to Bujalski about what places like Double Whammies tell us about American culture, finding the essence of the film in the editing room, and filmmaking as a balancing act between order and chaos.<br />
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<b>This is a very female story, from the setting to the way it centers female solidarity to the classically female dilemma that Lisa is grappling with. She has so much responsibility and so little power on the job, and she takes care of everyone else so much better than she takes care of herself, both at work at in her personal life. What is it about those issues that drew you in?</b></div>
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It's hard to account for one's own interests and enthusiasms, obsessions, whatever they are. I was just trying to listen to the characters and be true to who I thought they were. I guess the last two movies that I've made—they have women characters that I love, but there's a lot of male energy in them, so I'm sure some part of me thought it would be great to do something with a lot of female actors and energy. But that was one idea among many.</div>
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I find these places [like Double Whammies] so interesting and so weird, so uniquely American. I couldn't imagine any other culture that would produce a demand for the product they're selling. It was a puzzle I couldn't solve that was interesting enough to me that I wanted to play with it. I couldn't figure out my own feelings about those places. I'm not the target market. That was where a lot of the character of Lisa came from. I couldn't help bringing a kind of outsider perspective to it, and she was basically an outsider too, someone who would never been in this place if she didn't work there. I also had fun with her insisting on seeing the best in it. I'm always attracted to the incurable optimist character. That's a personality type that I seem to come back to a lot. Anyone can imagine the nasty side of that place, but I think there's a lot more to it than that. That's what attracted me to [places like Double Whammies], the idea that they have this kind of kernel of nastiness that they wrap in so much comfort, inviting people in to feel normal and feel like they belong. I needed that character to see that for what it was and work from there.</div>
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<b>You were saying that a place like this could only exist in America. What do you think that tells us about American culture?</b></div>
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There's something about these places that's about simultaneously provoking desire but also controlling it, that weird American combination of puritanism and race-to-the-bottom hedonism. They're both so integral to our culture. It produces this very peculiar place where you're asked to go in and ogle the waitresses, but you're asked to do it kind of covertly as they walk away. I think 99% of what goes on in those places is pretty controlled, pleasant, and polite. It's very different than even a strip club. That's not to say that things don't mostly stay on the rails in strip clubs too, but I think it's a very different fantasy that's being sold. When you go into a strip club as a man, you're being sold the idea that you're a badass and that you're doing something transgressive. These places aren't about being transgressive. It's kind of the opposite. It's like, it's okay if you want to ogle these people. You can bring grandma and you can bring the kids and it's all normal, and you can watch sports and drink beer and eat French fries and all these things go together. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-andrew-bujalski-on-support-the-girls-and-the-culture-it-reflects"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i></div>
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Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-14441841667246805752018-08-13T17:11:00.000-07:002018-08-24T17:13:44.049-07:00Interview: Raúl Castillo on We the Animals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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After moving in 2002 from his native Texas to New York City, where he soon became a member of the prestigious off-Broadway LAByrinth Theater Company, playwright and actor Raúl Castillo spent a decade or so playing supporting roles in film and television. Then came HBO's <i>Looking</i>, in which he starred as the boyfriend of the neurotic lead character played by Jonathan Groff. Castillo's soulful performance as Richie brought the actor a new level of attention. This year, the actor made a notable appearance in Steven Soderberg's <i>Unsane</i>, and last fall he finished work on what he calls “the first Latino superhero film,” <i>El Chicano</i>, in which he has his first lead role.<br />
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This week, you can see Castillo in director Jeremiah Zagar's <i>We the Animals</i>, a Malickian tale of a loving but volatile family told from the point of view of one of three young boys (played by Evan Rosado, Josiah Gabriel, and Isaiah Kristian). Castillo is magnetically tender and explosive as Paps, the young father of the family and the sun around which his wife, Ma (Sheila Vand), and children revolve, even when he's an absent presence.<br />
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I recently spoke with Castillo about working with young nonprofessional actors in <i>We the Animals</i>, finding his character in <i>Looking</i>, and what Groff taught him about being number one on the call sheet.<br />
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<b>I read that you were initially attracted to acting and playwriting because, growing up in South Texas, you didn't see your world reflected in popular culture. That made sense to me, since I lived in Laredo for a couple of years and found out how ignorant I was about Mexican and Mexican-American culture. What did you want to say about that world as a young man?</b><br />
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Before theater I got into punk rock music. I was in bands, playing shows in South Texas when I was 12, 13, 14 years old. There was something about punk rock that you could get on stage, you could be seen for an hour or so and entertain and be recognized. I think theater and film does a similar thing. It sort of forces people to look at you and to see you and to hear your story. I don't know if there's any one particular story I wanted to tell, but if you lived in Laredo you know how, especially at that time, how provincial and marginalized that part of the world was. The border is often not seen in popular culture, other than in stereotypes or tropes.<br />
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Then I started paying attention to the Latino artists out there and they inspired me. People like John Leguizamo and writers like Miguel Piñero, who were trailblazing and were telling stories that reflected a little bit more the world that I came from. Even though they're from New York City, you know?<br />
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<b>Right. Which is very different than MacAllen. So it wasn't so much that there were issues you wanted to write about as it was you wanted to kind of say, hey, we're human beings too, and nobody recognizes that?</b><br />
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Yeah. Exactly.<br />
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<b>We the Animals is about people—especially your character—expressing themselves in primal, often purely physical ways. How did the director talk to the actors about what he wanted?</b><br />
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I think Jeremiah being a documentarian and this being his first narrative film, he wasn't hindered by any preconceptions. You go to school to study theater and you're taught to experiment and play, and then you're out in the industry and there's no time for experimentation and play. It's all, like, you have to get it in the can. And consequently, there's all these films that are just pre-packaged and uninspired. I think Jeremiah wanted the process to be different, because if the process is different then the film's going to be different. We went to upstate New York for six weeks and all lived in houses together, and we rehearsed a lot with the kids. He was committed to having non-actors in most of the roles. Sheila and I are the only quote-unquote professional actors in We the Animals. The kids brought this really raw, natural intensity and they kept Sheila and I honest, I think. Because they weren't acting, you know? They were just being, they were just living and breathing. They understood this story on very visceral levels. He created a safe environment where we could all go to those dark places, go to those raw and wild places, and yet we were keeping each other's best interests in mind. Which you have to do, especially when you're working with young children like that.<br />
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<b>I love the scene where Paps hangs over the edge of a truck while sitting in the bed in back with his kids, so he can watch the road rush by with his head upside-down, and they all follow suit. That sums up Paps as a father: the impulsivity that can put his kids in danger and the charisma and ability to be in the moment that make them want to follow his lead. Was that something you came up with during rehearsal or was it in the script?</b><br />
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I think that was in the script, if I'm not mistaken. A lot of stuff [in the film] was accidental while we were filming. We shot on film, on 16mm, and you feel a lot when you're shooting on film that you gotta get it on your first take, but Jeremiah really let us play and let the camera roll quite a bit. But I think that particular sequence was scripted. We had to be very careful because it was a moving car and young lives hanging out. You gotta be really careful. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-raul-castillo-on-we-the-animals-and-latino-representation"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-6568925261021300502018-07-13T17:27:00.002-07:002018-07-13T17:28:47.137-07:00Interview: Rob Reiner on Shock and Awe and the real source of fake news<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Rob Reiner has acted in, written, produced, and directed almost every genre of film and TV show, but his wheelhouse is humane, sharply observational, and subtly unconventional comedy. He was deeply involved in at least three classic comedies: his own <i>This Is Spinal Tap</i> and <i>The Princess Bride</i> and Norman Lear's <i>All in the Family</i>, in which Reiner played Michael “Meathead” Stivic, the liberal son-in-law of Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker.<br />
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Another side of Reiner, his commitment to social justice and democratic values, is front and center in his latest directorial effort, <i>Shock and Awe</i>. Reiner also stars in the film as real-life Knight Ridder editor John Walcott. <i>Shock and Awe</i> shows how two of Walcott's reporters, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, exposed the lies behind the Bush administration's rush to war with Iraq after 9/11—and how their stories were drowned out by a tsunami of press coverage that unquestioningly amplified the White House's official story. The film is fierce in telling the history of the leadup to war and at capturing the journalists' irreverent patter and the smug prevarications of the Bush administration's cabinet members. I recently talked to Reiner about the real source of fake news, the surprising new urgency that <i>Shock and Awe</i> took on after the 2016 election, and why he wanted to change his name when he was eight years old.<br />
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<b>You've taken on an important subject with this film.</b><br />
The last couple days of shooting were when Donald Trump was elected. It was weird because we were making a movie, basically, to talk about how important it is for a free and independent press to be strong. Like the Tommy Lee Jones character [journalist Joseph L. Galloway] says: “When the government fucks up, the soldiers pay the price.” We wanted to show that, if the press doesn't do their due diligence, you can have dire consequences. We never even thought in terms of what has occurred since, which is the country is potentially in a worse place in terms of whether the democracy even survives. All of a sudden there's a different urgency, a different relevancy to the film.<br />
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<b>Most films about the importance of the press are about reporters who change the world by revealing the truth. There are reporters in your film who unearth the truth, but their stories get drowned out by a megaphone of fake news—and the fake news is generated by our own government.</b><br />
Right. And that's what we have right now. The difference between then and now is the trauma of 9/11. People were frightened, and they didn't want to seem unpatriotic. But now, the real press is being threatened by an administration that's backed up by what's essentially state-run media. And it's not like a small section of the country. We're talking about Fox and Sinclair and Breitbart and Alex Jones reaching about 40 percent of the country that's cemented in this alternate reality, the alternate facts. That's the real fake news. And the people that are working so hard to get to the truth are being called the enemy of the people and the fake news.<br />
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<b>You've been a social activist for pretty much your whole adult life, but you haven't made or appeared in a lot of overtly political movies or TV shows.</b><br />
Well, <i>All in the Family</i> was as political as you can get.<br />
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<b>It was. But if you look at your long list of credits, not many of them are that kind of thing.</b><br />
The only ones are <i>Ghosts of Mississippi</i>, possibly <i>A Few Good Men</i>, and <i>The American President</i> and <i>LBJ</i>.<br />
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<b>Right. So I'm wondering what made you decide to go so explicitly political with this film, when that's not generally the direction you've gone in.</b><br />
The idea for this happened in 2003. I wanted to make a film about how we got into Iraq, because I was of draft age during the Vietnam War and I just couldn't believe that, within my own lifetime, we were going to be going to war again based on lies. I really wanted to make the film because I felt there had been good films about Vietnam, there had been good films about World War II, and there had been a couple of good films about Iraq, but none of them dealt with, to me, the central issue, which was: Why the hell were we there? Kathryn Bigelow's <i>The Hurt Locker</i> was really good, and <i>American Sniper,</i> Clint Eastwood's movie. But they didn't address the central question.<br />
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When [Bush administration officials] started talking about Iraq very shortly after 9/11, I thought, “Oh my god, what are they doing here?” They started saying there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, and I said, “What are you talking about? The guy is an enemy of Bin Laden!” And then they started talking about weapons of mass destruction and aluminum tubes, and it's like, nah, that can't be it. The U.N.'s weapons inspector, Hans Blix, was there, and he was reporting back every couple of weeks and saying, “I didn't find anything.” The only thing they had to go with is that 9/11 had frightened the whole country. It's classic propaganda playbook. You take the public's fear and you say, “This is what's happening and we're going to fix it. We're going to make it right.” That's what authoritarians do all the time. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-rob-reiner-on-shock-and-awe-and-the-pursuit-of-truth"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-64172107068672580192018-07-04T13:44:00.000-07:002018-07-06T13:54:33.798-07:00Interview: Debra Granik on Leave No Trace and tuning into people on the margins<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Debra Granik's social-realist films, which are concerned with people living on the margins of mainstream American culture, are full of engrossing and enlightening details. And like her 2014 documentary <i><a href="https://girls-can-play.blogspot.com/2015/06/stray-dog.html" target="_blank">Stray Dog</a></i>, about a burly Vietnam vet, Ron Hall, who's all about creating nurturing communities, Granik's three narrative features to date focus on individuals leading hardscrabble lives. The first two, <i>Down to the Bone</i> and <i>Winter's Bone</i>, catapulted Vera Farmiga and Jennifer Lawrence to stardom. Her latest, <i>Leave No Trace,</i> which centers around another veteran, Ben Foster's Will, may just do the same for Thomasin McKenzie<br />
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The 17-year-old New Zealand actress plays Tom, the severely traumatized Will's teenage daughter. Both live off the grid outside Portland, Oregon, until authorities arrest Will for squatting illegally in a public park and attempt to re-acclimate him and his daughter to “normal” society.<br />
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Last week, I talked with Granik at her publicist's office in New York. Animated, sincere, and intensely committed to her every word, she spoke of the importance of kindness, why her films tend to launch female actors into stardom, and what she, a liberal Northeastern artist, has learned from her work about how to connect with likely Trump voters in America's heartland.<br />
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<b>We just accept that films like yours will play at festivals and art houses and won't garner big audiences even when they get great reviews, but sometimes I wonder why. Do you think it's because most people don't want to watch stories about people who are living in poverty or on the margins of society?</b><br />
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I think so. One of the things that's hard to argue with, and I think about this all the time, is that the main way we see the word “movies” is as entertainment, right? If one is going for escape or time out or relaxation, to see social realism is—if you're living it, or even if you're from a very different sort of social class and you've just never felt at ease with the way the economic culture is structured, on top of everything else you deal with, it can be hard to go seek that. It's not really entertainment any more.<br />
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Also, we've cranked up and celebrated and gotten really invested in bloodlust, the idea of being jolted by physical violence, and you actually need to keep jacking it up. If a violent scene starts to be four minutes, what happens when it starts to be seven? And then 11? I remember my kid asking, while watching <i>Wonder Woman,</i> why one battle scene was so long. That film was supposed to kind of go against the grain, you know? And I said, “Once they've put that much money into the infrastructure of creating that battle, they have to amortize it.” It has to be there for 11 minutes.<br />
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But a big philosophical question that's racking my brain is: Besides the taste for blood, which we've established, do we have a taste for stories that don't use physical violence as the primary threat? To see how a person withstands setbacks and navigates around difficult obstacles of pay, finance, rent, whatever it is? It's hard to peel back from that hydrocortisone.<br />
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<b>I get the feeling that you're passionately invested in the films you make. Are you partly motivated by telling stories you think are important for other people to hear, or so you just find stories you feel you need to tell?</b><br />
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It's much more the latter. To try to anticipate an audience, what they can and cannot deal with, what might resonate, is the work of the big industry. They calculate. They do testing. They try to do something that gives everyone different things. Our posse [of independent filmmakers] is schooled that you've got to be interested yourself. Not because it's all about you, but because that's the only calibration point you have. There's no way I'm so unique that the questions that are on my mind aren't also on the minds of other people that I inhabit a society with. And the other beat is so heavily done! The beat of the affluent, the opulence, Generation Wealth. That beat is so well done by Kardashian TV, <i>Us</i>, all the ways the big system operates.<br />
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Right now, I'm catching up with a lot of social-realist films, and I'm loving it. I'm asking why, in the '30s and '40s, did people watch the films of William Wellman or <i>I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang</i> or <i>The Best Years of Our Lives</i>? Steinbeck. King Vidor. Why did people tune into the lives of everyday Americans? It's helpful to know that, in a country that makes self-esteem contingent on your material acquisition, there's nobility also in having the fortitude to survive a scrappy life, or a life that isn't given to you off the fat of the land, where you've worked very hard for what you have or just to survive. Nobility outside the glamor that our country privileges.<br />
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<b>That nobility is definitely in your films. So is a faith in generosity, which is part of what makes them feel realistic. There's a kind of cynicism in most blockbuster films that says the only way we can resolve conflict is by killing or fighting each other. But the social workers who force Tom and Will to leave the woods in Leave No Trace genuinely want to help them, not just punish them. In fact, they actually do help Tom, in a roundabout sort of way. And that feels true to the way the world works: Most people try to do the right thing and to help one another, even if they don't always succeed.</b><br />
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Right. And there are endorphins that are released when you help people, so it's not even just a self-satisfied little “I did good.” We actually get a little positive jolt out of that. I worry a lot about the conditions of others. Part of the intensity of being a New Yorker is that you're constantly exposed to all the ways in which life can be tremendously challenging. You see it in the schools, in every realm of daily life. It's a lot. So, when I see something that shows that things can work, that what's good for you can be good for me, when there's amelioration, when there's kindness, those are like my jellybeans that go into my basket. [laughs] I'm seeking those things, for sure. It's the counterbalance to feeling that things are a real struggle, especially when things get very dark on a national level, if you don't want to believe that there's nothing but snark, there's nothing but rage, there's nothing but feeling so alienated. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-debra-granik-on-leave-no-trace-and-tuning-into-everyday-america"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i><br />
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<br />Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-4796176506697030902018-06-07T14:47:00.000-07:002018-06-08T14:48:02.729-07:00Interview: Toni Collette on Hereditary<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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With a strong-featured, hyper-expressive face whose wide-set eyes don't appear to miss a thing and a joie de vivre that she radiates in person as well as on screen, Toni Collette imbues all her characters with a grounded sense of realism as well as layers of emotional nuance. Ever since she captured international attention as the endearingly open-hearted title character in <i>Muriel's Wedding</i>, she's been in constant demand, playing a wide range of parts—from warmly nurturing, realistically harried moms in films like <i>The Sixth Sense</i> and <i>Little Miss Sunshine</i> to <i>The United States of Tara</i>'s title character, a woman with dissociative identity disorder who's fighting to keep herself and her family together while coping with an evolving cast of alter egos.<br />
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Collette has been exceptionally prolific in the past year or so, appearing in 11 films and two TV series since 2017, with three more films currently in post-production, but her tour-de-force performance in <i>Hereditary</i> stands out even in that tsunami of output. Always intense and increasingly desperate, Collette's Annie is our guide into the bloody heart of darkness that's writer-director Ari Aster's debut feature, a psychological horror film about a mother who keeps losing the people she loves in ever more macabre catastrophes.<br />
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I talked with Collette this week at the New York office of A24, <i>Hereditary</i>'s U.S. distributor, about the advantages of aging and how she's learned to protect herself from the afflictions her characters endure.<br />
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<b>You left school when you were 16, right?</b><br />
Sometimes I look back and I think, “How the hell did I make that decision?” My parents were mortified.<br />
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<b>I was wondering about that. Because your parents weren't show-biz people.</b><br />
Not at all. And I was really good at school. I was always at the top of the class, and I found school so satisfying. But then I found this thing that made me feel so alive. I loved it so much, and I couldn't deny it. Even at that age, I was like, “Nope, this is it.” So ballsy! [laughs] I wouldn't make that decision now!<br />
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<b>It seems as if acting still makes you happy.</b><br />
I can't imagine not doing it. I always danced—tap, jazz, and ballet. And then when I was 13, I think, I did a musical at school right after my grandmother died, and it was just the most incredible outlet. It felt so cathartic to be able to access feelings and express them. And then, of course, as you get older you look at life differently and look at people differently and it becomes more psychologically interesting. But throughout it has always been fun.<br />
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<b>And now you're starting to make films happen in addition to acting in other people's work. You formed a production company last year. Is that to direct or to develop things you can act in that other people will direct?</b><br />
Both. Producing and directing. You need to keep growing, you know? I've been [acting] since I was a teenager, and I'm about to turn 46. At times, I find it frustrating that I'm not involved in the process much earlier on. I think it would be more satisfying. I want to have a say in the types of films that I'm making and what they have to say. I've got options on books—lots of things that are being adapted. I've got a couple of original ideas.<br />
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<b>What types of films are you interested in making?</b><br />
Probably the types of films that I'm in now. Mostly, I totally go for things that feel reflective of life. I like stories about real people that are both poignant and comedic. But it's hard to say what type of anything you want to do, because I never know until it hits me.<br />
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<b>You've said that you're drawn to projects that show there's no such thing as normal, or show people finding their voices, living authentically, or being supported by an extended family. I can see how those themes run through your work, but I'm not sure they apply to Hereditary—except maybe the one about there being no normal. Does this feel like a bit of a departure for you?</b><br />
Yeah. I've never really made a film like this. I've done films where there was some emotional heavy lifting to be done, but this starts up here [gestures at shoulder height] and keeps on escalating. Also, I'm usually attracted to some kind of growth and change in a story. There's growth and change in this, but it's not positive. There's a lack of warmth to Annie, and a lack of hope, which I'm generally attracted to. The story just fascinated me. It was this honest look at grief, emotionally so raw, and it turns into something so unexpected. I found the material original and surprising, and who doesn't want that? <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-toni-collette-on-getting-maniacal-for-hereditary"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i><br />
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Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-6436918898258013052018-06-04T19:29:00.001-07:002018-06-04T19:31:12.299-07:00Interview: Jodie Foster on Hotel Artemis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Though she's a two-time Academy Award winner (for <i>The Accused</i> and <i>The Silence of the Lambs</i>), Jodie Foster has always been a bit of an outlier in Hollywood. As a child actor, her precocious self-assurance, intelligence, and self-described “gruff” voice made her something of an anomaly when she played bright young things in family-friendly TV shows like <i>My Three Sons</i> and films like <i>Napoleon and Samantha</i>. Then, in a run of emotionally complex roles in darker fare, most notably as a 13-year-old prostitute with a riveting mixture of childish innocence and world-weariness in Martin Scorsese's <i>Taxi Driver</i>, the actress's knowing gravitas found a worthy showcase.<br />
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That pattern has more or less held throughout Foster's career, as she has alternated between intelligently crafted TV shows and films like Spike Lee's <i>Inside Man</i> and lush melodramas or slick genre movies in which her nuanced, stubbornly realistic performances stood out like an elegant dive into a kiddie pool. Foster is now at the core of an ensemble cast in writer-director Drew Pearce's <i>Hotel Artemis</i>, a dystopian fantasy set in L.A. in a not-too-distant future in which the hotel of the title serves as a secret, members-only hospital reserved for criminals who pay an annual membership fee.<br />
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Last week I spoke with Foster, who plays the nurse who tends to the troublesome group of tenants, about <i>Hotel Artemis</i> and other things, including the time she was attacked by a lion, the memorable afternoon she spent with Toni Morrison, and the alternate lives she kicks herself for not having led.<br />
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<b>You're quoted on IMDb as having said that you're better suited for independent films as a director and producer, and that you think you're best in mainstream films as an actress because your style of acting is too “linear” for indie films. First of all, did you actually say that?</b><br />
I think I did, but I'm always cursing myself for the stupid things that I say in print. I don't think it's wrong, but I do think that indies are different now. The theatrical world and our viewing habits have changed so much that, increasingly, real story and narrative is found on cable and streaming.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>And you've been directing a lot of shows there, like episodes of Netflix's <i>Orange Is the New Black</i> and <i>Black Mirror.</i></b><br />
Yeah. I don't know about you, but I get really excited about the Emmys, and not as excited about the Oscars. This is the golden age of television. So times have changed. But I do think I'm well-suited for things that are grounded. My mind works that way as an actor. When I cast actors, you might cast someone very different for a film with a lot of story that's compelling it forward than you would for an art film or for a super-broad comedy.<br />
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The industry has changed many times since I was three years old, so I'm not as disheartened as a lot of people are, and it doesn't pain me as much to say that our viewing habits have changed. It's possible that, 20 years from now, we're gonna watch everything on a screen as big as our phones. And, you know, I'm an artist, so for me it's really not that big a deal. A phone, a big screen, a TV—what do I care? I just do what I do. Obviously, it's a bigger deal for the people in the business end of the industry.<br />
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<b>As a consumer, I think it's a pretty great time, because there's so much available to see. Not only all that new stuff, but so many more people can now access so many old movies whenever they want to.</b><br />
Yeah, that's for sure. I think it's a great time. But I do miss the communal experience of going to a movie theater. I'm someone who went to four movies a week my whole life, and I don't go to the movies anymore. This ghettoizing of movie theaters, where you pay 50 dollars to sit in a seat and be intravenously fed while you absorb a spectacle—I've accepted it, but it's a little sad, because there's a whole tradition of my family and community kind of coming together. There's only so many places where there's any kind of community, and movie theaters were one of them. It was this kind of democratizing place, where everyone pays five dollars and everybody comes.<br />
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<b>Are there still some movies you'll go to the theater for, or do you wait until you can see them someplace else?</b><br />
Oh yeah, yeah. I'll go to the theater to support a movie's opening weekend because I think it's important to go. Like <i>Isle of Dogs</i>, absolutely. I haven't been able to yet because I've been on crutches, so I haven't been able to drive, but I really want to see that Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary. I know it's going to be on Netflix in a month, but I want to go crosstown and get the ticket and stand in line and go see it in a movie theater.<br />
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<b>Did you go to Black Panther?</b><br />
Of course! Look, I majored in African-American Studies, so it was really great, for me, to see the African references, whether it's art or West African dance. And all those great actors. Yeah, I'm not gonna miss that. And the cast is excellent! They really made a commitment to their characters, as opposed to just arching their eyebrows and going, “We're just going to do one of these superhero movies.” The acting is so committed and so real, and so much fun. I'm so excited now that race is on people's lips. It was a huge part of my life, and even though I was a white person in a black-studies department [at Yale], the issues live in my stomach, and the ideas about it. I get excited and my palms go clammy when I talk about it. It's a really interesting time, because I don't think we've ever been as conscious of race as a culture, and we've never been as messed-up and unconscious. All in the same era.<br />
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<b>I took African-American—or Afro-American, as we called it then—literature classes in college too. It was partly because I loved a lot of the writing, but I also felt like I should know it as an American, since African-American history and culture is an important part of American history and culture.</b><br />
Oh, yeah. When people say to me, “Why [African-American studies]?” I say, one, the literature was good, and I fell in love with it. Reason number two is that I want to be a well-educated person. You wouldn't have asked me that question if I was a classics major, or if I said, “I did my senior thesis on Virginia Woolf and I was especially interested in Bloomsbury.” Right? Why is it that people are so surprised that I fell in love with something that's part of our canon, and that should be part of our canon? Also, I think why it hooked me in was that there was a raw, emotional, internal under-layer to extraordinary narrative. You can probably say that about Aeschylus, but I don't know that I can say that about The Canterbury Tales. That's really what I responded to, and why Skip [Henry Louis Gates, who was her professor at Yale] and I still send texts to each other, like: “Turn on Channel 7!”<br />
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<b>Hotel Artemis is very stylized, and so is some of the acting in it. You're doing your usual thing, which is realistic and emotionally complex, and so are other actors like Sterling K. Brown and Brian Tyree Henry, but others are going for more emotionally opaque, broader strokes.</b><br />
It's like all of these different people are in different movies, and they're all meeting at the commissary. The guy from the 1930s bank robbery movies is meeting up with the action hero from <i>Guardians of the Galaxy</i>. I think that's the strength of the story, and why it works also quite well as an allegory.<br />
Drew Pearce has created this sort of prison, this golden cage of all of these people who are obsessed with their identities. It's like they're obsessed with this identity or this mission that they have because they're running from the ghosts of their lives. I keep thinking of it as a kind of limbo. All these people are actually dead, but they don't know that they're dead. They just keep running around on a hamster wheel saying: “I gotta fix people! I gotta fix people! Damn! I've got important things to do!”<br />
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I'm happy with my performance in the film because I feel like it's a combination of grounded and emotional, and there's that kind of Barbara Stanwyck, wisecracky feeling to it as well. That's really what I was looking for: the opportunity to have more of a transformation, to play a character role but still to inhabit the character with emotion.<br />
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<b>I heard you joke in some other interviews about how it didn't take very long for the makeup team to get you looking that unglamorous.</b><br />
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<b>But seriously, the nurse is different than anyone else I've ever seen you play, and a lot of that difference is rooted in her appearance.</b><br />
That's really the reason I wanted to do the movie, and I had to fight for it. I've been looking for a transformation character for five years. I think the producers were a little scared. They were like: “Wait a minute. You're not going to look bad, are you?” [laughs] It's like: “If you're not the same Jodie Foster everybody's used to seeing, then do we want that?” But it was important. That was the character. She's a 70-year-old woman who hasn't left that room for 25 years and lives on tacos and hasn't had any vitamin D. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-jodie-foster-on-hotel-artemis-directing-vs-acting-and-more"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-14438221498672977902018-04-27T09:56:00.003-07:002018-04-27T10:04:17.626-07:00Interview: Rachel Weisz on Disobedience<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Less remarked on than the Me Too movement, but at least as important to the women of Hollywood, the unspoken rule that sidelined generations of actresses after they had reached 40 or so is unraveling fast. A radiant 48, Rachel Weisz is at the forefront of that change, living the kind of life that had traditionally been possible only for male actors. Still building her family with husband Daniel Craig—the baby she's due to have later this year will be the first for the couple, each of whom has a child from a previous relationship—she's starring in films by auteurs like Yorgos Lanthimos and Paolo Sorrentino.<br />
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Weisz helps make sure those roles keep piling up by developing scripts like the one for Sebastián Lelio's <i>Disobedience</i>. After deciding she wanted to star opposite another woman, she read all the lesbian literature she could find in search of a love story and eventually discovered Naomi Alderman's 2006 novel <i>Disobedience,</i> which she tried to get made for almost a decade.<br />
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At the start of Lelio's film, Weisz's character, Ronit, leaves her bohemian life in New York City for the Orthodox Jewish community in London where she grew up, to attend her rabbi father's funeral. Once there, she encounters Esti (Rachel McAdams), with whom she'd had a passionate affair that scandalized their community. The two women are drawn to each other again, causing both to question the way they're leading their lives. I talked to Weisz earlier this week at a hotel in Tribeca where she was promoting the film, which was about to screen at the Tribeca Film Festival.<br />
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<b>You played a lot of roles in putting this film together, including optioning the novel and helping to develop the script. Did you also find the other actors?</b><br />
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Well, I let Sebastián Lelio lead. He felt Rachel McAdams would be great as Esti, I agreed, and we were very lucky in that she immediately connected with it. She really identified with this character. And I was involved in that I found the novel and took it to a producer, Frida Torresblanco, who knew Sebastián. He was the first person we approached. So it was very kind of blessed and charmed. I was also involved in the development of the script, which I loved doing. Love writers. Sebastián did the first two drafts and then we hired Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who's a great English playwright and screenwriter. And then when the filming began, I became just an actress. I didn't carry on doing anything producorial. I surrendered to this incredible director. We all did. We trusted him, and he made us feel safe, so it's completely his vision and his point of view. I don't claim any authorship in this film.<br />
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<b>To me, the key moment in <i>Disobedience</i> is when Esti says, “It's easier to leave, isn't it?” And then Ronit says no. The film is about the tension between staying in the culture you were born into at the cost of denying a core part of yourself versus heading out into the unknown and losing that sense of community. I liked how the film showed the pros and cons of both choices, and also how fair it was to the religion that was causing the conflict.</b><br />
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Well, Naomi Alderman, who wrote the book, grew up within the community. She abandoned the community, came to live in New York, a bit like Ronit, but she wrote the novel with great love and respect and spoke to the nourishment of spirituality in community. But what you're referring to is really Sebastián. He does the opposite of objectifying people: He subjectifies everyone. You're the first person who's mentioned what Esti and Ronit say, but I completely agree with you. It's about that tension of wanting to belong but wanting to be free. But one needs to be nourished by one's family, the place one is from. If you're always running from it then you're not really free. That's totally Sebastián. He subjectifies Dovid's point of view, Esti's point of view, and Ronit's point of view. Some people might identify a little more with one character than another, but they're all right and they're all wrong, to a point. And that's him. He doesn't give the audience the easy exit of an antagonist. There's no bad guy or bad girl. As Sebastián says, the antagonist is within. I find that beautiful and moving, but it's unusual.<br />
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<b>The way the film often focuses on Ronit's loose hair in contrast to the wigs worn by the Orthodox women works really well as a visual metaphor.</b><br />
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Yeah. Sebastián realized when we were shooting it that it was almost becoming a movie about hair. It was not intentional, but these women and their wigs—it's an unusual custom. It's almost like a sci-fi thing for us, visiting this other planet, because we're more Ronit than Esti. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-rachel-weisz-on-bringing-disobedience-to-life"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i> Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-25524860545592101992018-04-02T08:42:00.001-07:002020-07-10T00:08:03.294-07:00Interview: Andrew Haigh on Lean on Pete and the Appeal of Passive Characters<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjTQR5qG7pDhSOUoDV07v7GDSaeZFBq9nSJP97lsbtdR5G-ZPAyvNelpytYnxbaWcA8WZUqXeBTtSMb1JsoLLsMxYDx37WnOYJUXcHnPySt4n4aWAOSsbFkVyK56h-XvAbGvjwaOewcg/s1600/andrewhaigh.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="1223" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJjTQR5qG7pDhSOUoDV07v7GDSaeZFBq9nSJP97lsbtdR5G-ZPAyvNelpytYnxbaWcA8WZUqXeBTtSMb1JsoLLsMxYDx37WnOYJUXcHnPySt4n4aWAOSsbFkVyK56h-XvAbGvjwaOewcg/s320/andrewhaigh.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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Yorkshire-born writer-director Andrew Haigh specializes in stories about ordinary people experiencing emotional tsunamis that upend their sense of self. His latest, <i>Lean on Pete</i>, is about a lonely 15-year-old, Charley (Charlie Plummer), who sets out on an impulsive road trip after what's left of his already precarious family life evaporates, leaving him alone except for the quarter horse he bonded with while working in a D-level racing circuit. I met with Haigh at the offices of the film's distributor, A24, where we talked about why he prefers passive main characters, the importance of being melancholy, and how <i>Lean on Pete</i> finds a new way of exploring a theme that runs through all of the director's work: our struggle to feel less alone.<br />
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<b>Your work is usually about people finding themselves through relationships with other people, but Charley finds himself by relating to a horse. What was it about this story that compelled you to film it?</b><br />
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I think even [in my films about] people finding themselves through other people, it's about people essentially feeling very alone in the world, and they're desperately trying to find a way to not feel alone. If it's in the case of <i>Weekend</i> or <i>45 Years</i>, it's through relationships, I suppose. But this was dealing with a similar thing, just in a different way. We all exist in a state of aloneness, and we find ways to not be like that, but they can very easily fall apart and we can fall back into aloneness again. <br />
<a name='more'></a>Kate in<i> 45 Years</i>, for example, has had this relationship that felt very strong, and then suddenly it dissolves and she feels alone again. So this was a way to look at that in a context that wasn't necessarily about romantic relationships—and also wasn't even existential. It's not an idea of who you are or an identity that falls apart if your relationship does, for example. This is about what happens, actually, if things fall apart: if your family falls apart, if you don't have any money anymore, if you have no place to live. What is that type of aloneness? And for me it wasn't about a boy and a horse, in any traditional type boy-and-horse movie way. It was just about him desperately needing something to cling onto and have as a friend, I suppose, to talk to and to care for like he would like to be cared for.<br />
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<b>And there are a lot of parallels between the kid and the horse.</b><br />
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Yeah, exactly. I felt like they were almost the same.<br />
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<b>They're both runners, even.</b><br />
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When we cast the horse, I was looking for one that felt like it was like Charley. It was the horse that was at the back of these three horses, that didn't want to look at us, and was a little bit nervous, and took a while to warm up. I don't like to make films about the person that's usually at the front. I think the person that hangs around at the back is usually more interesting.<br />
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<b>There's nothing surrealistic about this film, yet it felt to me a bit like a dream that slowly turns into a nightmare. I think that has to do with how really big things often happen to Charley out of the blue, and he moves through it all in this state of kind of underwater watchfulness that can make him seem passive or helpless even when he's driving the action.</b><br />
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I'm drawn to passive characters, much more so than I am to active ones. It's the same in 45 Years. Kate isn't the active character in that story.<br />
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<b>She wasn't even the main character in the short story. Her husband was.</b><br />
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Right. And in Weekend, the main character is the passive one within that relationship. It's the other character that's forcing everything to happen. I like that. I feel like it makes sense to most of our lives, that you deal with things as they come to you. And you're right about the tone of the film. It's not like it's dreamlike, but there's like a steady flow to it that's not quite like reality but is grounded in reality. Again, I suppose I feel like I walk through my life like that. Events happen, but actually, you stay quite constant as you deal with all of these things. Even when there's emotional peaks and troughs, your understanding of the world is relatively steady. Or mine is, anyway.<br />
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<b>That's probably part of the reason why I like your movies so much. I always feel like about 95% of life is out of our control.</b><br />
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I'd say more like 99%.<br />
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<b>But Hollywood is so much about characters having an arc and being proactive and driving the action. Has featuring characters who are passive made it harder to get your movies made?</b><br />
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I think so. And I think it both probably makes it harder for them to be made and is why so many people don't like them. [laughs] You read all these books about how to write the perfect script when you're starting out, and I always felt like they have good ideas in those books, but none of it speaks to how I think we actually live our lives. I suppose I want to see that on screen. I was thinking recently about Bob Rafaelson's Five Easy Pieces. I think that's my favorite Jack Nicholson performance, and it's probably the most passive. He kind of flows through the film, trying to do things as they come along, and he makes choices, but he's not like this strong, active character.<br />
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<b>In fact, he's pretty frustrated.</b><br />
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Yeah.<br />
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<b>There's a pervasive sense of sadness and loss that suffuses your work, and a word that comes up a lot in the other interviews you've done that I've read is melancholy. That seems to be a big part not just of your movies, but of who you are—maybe even, as you once said, of being British.</b><br />
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I think it is. When I talk to people about the feeling of being a melancholic, over here [in the United States] it seems to be more that you're depressed. Whereas, over there [in the United Kingdom] you can be melancholic—if you're Irish, especially—and it's not really about being depressed.<br />
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<b>So what does melancholy mean to you? Is it more of a poignancy?</b><br />
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Yeah. It's a feeling of having hope, but then the reality of life not being what you'd hoped it would be. And looking back to a period in your life when you thought it would be exciting and better with a sense of nostalgia, even though you know at that time you weren't happy either. It's a really weird feeling. It's a feeling of sadness that pervades, without being depression. <div><i><br /></i></div><div><div><b>That feeling comes out a lot in your endings, including in Lean on Pete. Charley does what he sets out to do, and there’s a great sense of relief and accomplishment about that, but you certainly don’t leave the theater thinking “Happily ever after!”</b></div><div><br /></div><div>“It’s all going to be great!” [laughs] That’s another thing that films do so much. I very strongly believe that all of the things that happen to us in our lives, from the day we’re born, has such a dramatic impact on everything we do, we feel, our relationships, how we feel about all the choices we make. So the idea that there could ever be an ending to your story makes no sense. You’re always going to struggle onward. Charley, at the end [of the film], is not suddenly going to find everything fantastic in his life. Because so much has happened. He’s lost people he’s loved. You can’t get over these things.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>And he’s done stuff he has to come to terms with.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah! That’s the thing. There’s some violence in the film that comes from Charley. It was never, for me, that you should think: “Well done, Charley, well done!” It was more like, “Aagh, why have you done this?” You can sort of understand why he’s done it, but you know he’s going to have to deal with that. We all have to deal with things that we’ve done that we don’t love.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>There’s a strong sense of place in this film, both of the place where Charley starts out and of the places he’s moving through. Is it harder to capture that sense of place when it’s not your own culture?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I think you probably have to make more of an effort, but when you live in an environment you don’t necessarily make an effort to represent it properly either, because you maybe don’t see it as well as you do a new environment. The book is based there, and it’s written by an author who knows that world very well, and I traveled a lot around for about four months before I made the film. </div><div><br /></div><div>I wrote the first draft of the script on the road trip that Charley goes on, in diners and motels, and I met a bunch of trainers and jockeys. I think it’s about going into an environment and finding what feel like the right details to define that world. The people in the homeless shelter are the people that went to that shelter normally, and the people in the background of the racing community are people that work with horses in that type of racing community. Film is fake, so you’re trying in every way to make it feel authentic.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>You adapted 45 Years from a short story by David Constantine and Lean on Pete from a novel by Willy Vlautin. Those two processes must be pretty different, since there’s so much in a novel that won’t fit into a film. Did you like one kind of adaptation better than the other?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>They were quite different. The story that <i>45 Years</i> is based on became dramatically different. In the story, there was no wedding anniversary party; it was all set from his perspective, not hers. So much of the dialogue in the film was not in the story. But <i>Lean on Pete </i>was a novel, so there’s a lot that I couldn’t put in, and stuff I put in the script, early stages, that had to come out. We even shot a little sequence that wasn’t in the film. </div><div><br /></div><div>It’s more of a fine-tuning process, trying to keep in your mind: What is this story really about? It’s not really about racing; it’s not really about horses; it’s just about this kid and what can happen. You try to keep that as the subtle through line of the story, and other things can just fall by the wayside. </div><div><br /></div><div>It takes time. I kept sending Willy each draft as I wrote it. He’s a lovely guy, and he was very open. He knows this is my version of the story. He was quite helpful in saying, “I don’t think you really need this.” Even though it was a sequence I loved in the book, it was like, “No, I think you can get rid of that. Don’t worry about it.” [laughs]</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Your husband is a novelist.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yes. Early novelist, let’s say.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Does he ever give you any input when you’re adapting a piece of fiction?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>We’re very simpatico in terms of the things that we like, so he’s very helpful to talk to about things when I’m pulling my hair out, wondering if I’m giving too much away or keeping too much hidden, or trying to find that balance of objectivity and subjectivity in the story, or all those things that I end up spending a lot of time trying to balance.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Does he read your screenplays and give you suggestions?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah. But he doesn’t watch the film until it’s finished. Some directors have screenings for their friends and they’re, like, “Give me all your ideas!” I show it to nobody. My producer, obviously. And that’s literally it until I have to show it to executive producers and my distributor and others. I feel like it’s hard enough to keep in your head what it is that you’re trying to do, and the more you watch it, that becomes increasingly harder. And everyone else’s opinions, while worthy and valid, are their versions of the film. I know not everyone is going to like this, but the only way I can ever make a film is knowing how I want to tell it, rather than trying to make everyone happy.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>You edited a lot of other people’s films when you were starting out. I’m curious to know what you learned from that.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I think the most important thing for me was realizing that directors are as stressed as everyone else. Growing up, I thought directors should know everything all the time. And then you sit in an editing room with a director and they’ve got their head in their hands: “Oh no, how do I make this scene work?” That was actually really liberating because I could see, okay, it’s not easy—even the best directors struggle to get across what they’re trying to say. That made me feel like I could make my own films.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Could you have made films and TV series like Weekend and Looking without the New Queer Cinema wave that started in the ‘90s?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>No, no, definitely not. Those films that were made before I made <i>Weekend</i>, especially in the early ‘90s. And, actually, in the ‘80s there were some really interesting, quite radical films that were being made.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>My Beautiful Laundrette came out then, didn’t it?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah, exactly. Then I think there was a gap. They stopped making them. You had <i>Brokeback Mountain</i> a little later, but in the aughties, whatever you call it, there wasn’t so much. I remember being frustrated by that, feeling like being gay has changed so much in society that I wanted to make <i>Weekend</i> to deal with how different it was. And now it’s changed all over again.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Do you think we’re approaching the point where we don’t need a “queer cinema” category per se, because queer characters and queerness can just be part of the mainstream, or are we still a long way from that?</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I think we’re a long way from that. And I actually think that’s okay. I think it’s great that there are films now that can get made that have gay characters that can do well and they can win Oscars and do all the things that people want them to do, but I think being queer or gay is also lots of different things, not just about love. It can encompass all kinds of fascinating things that aren’t going to appeal to a wide audience. There are still lots of things that I, as a filmmaker, want to look at, things that are gay or queer experience, that I know are never going to be commercially successful. And I think that’s good. It should also be like that. We need room for art-house or challenging material without the notion that it has to break through to a wider level.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>It also feels like queer cinema is a mostly male movement. Carol came out recently, and there was The L Word on TV, but I can’t think of too many recent examples of shows about women. Well, there have been a few about trans women—maybe more than about cis gay women.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah, there’s probably been more films like that than there are films about gay women made by gay women directors. There are not a huge amount of them. I do hope that people realize that these films deserve to be made even if they don’t have a huge audience. We want to see more of them. We want ones that break through and do well, and we want ones that are smaller.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Do you feel like it’s getting easier or harder to make small films? The barriers to entry are lower so it’s a lot easier to make a film on a low budget, but it seems like it may be harder to make a living at it.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I think it’s harder. I think unless they are the three small films a year that break through, it’s really hard to get people to see them. The younger people aren’t going to cinema to see the smaller, independent, art-house films. I love Kelly Reichardt’s films, and you look at the box office for them and you think why aren’t more people seeing them? It’s like Antonio Campos. Why are more people not going to see his films? They’re American art-house filmmakers, making films of a certain level, but it’s hard to get people to see them. There’s too much content, frankly.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Looking also never really found its audience.</b></div><div><br /></div><div>No, never. It didn’t help that it was on HBO, to be honest with you. I think if it had been on Netflix, it would have been a different thing. HBO’s expensive, and you have to subscribe to it. Almost everybody has Netflix. Well, not almost everybody, but lots of people.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i><span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-andrew-haigh-on-the-making-of-lean-on-pete">Written for Slant Magazine</a></span></i></div>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-78633398038354318572018-03-19T12:55:00.003-07:002018-03-19T12:55:54.780-07:00Interview: Laurent Cantet on The Workshop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOR-_Ktpn-KbVnbsx2aJzCh7xVH2s9QekZmN2dJ-iPwmAlBHfKOPgsoUTM91aMrTKkgJWsGx1GPaD6wWcgSCD2zQFR_icYyh-Snv0xAXKQ6mFLCRYKNyWdKgMk8fBS_J_rNHlrTh7KKVU/s1600/laurentcantet__TheWorkshop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="1223" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOR-_Ktpn-KbVnbsx2aJzCh7xVH2s9QekZmN2dJ-iPwmAlBHfKOPgsoUTM91aMrTKkgJWsGx1GPaD6wWcgSCD2zQFR_icYyh-Snv0xAXKQ6mFLCRYKNyWdKgMk8fBS_J_rNHlrTh7KKVU/s320/laurentcantet__TheWorkshop.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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A latter-day neorealist working in the tradition of Roberto Rossellini and Robert Bresson, writer-director Laurent Cantet mixes professional actors with nonprofessionals to explore forces like class, race, and gender through fictional narratives. His latest, <i>The Workshop</i>, is set in La Ciotat, a seaside town in southern France whose once-thriving shipyard closed a generation ago, after years of struggle between the owners and the workers. The film gets its title from one of its main activities: a multicultural group of young people from the area, including the angry and alienated Antoine (Matthieu Lucci), participate in a novel-writing workshop taught by a Parisian writer named Olivia (Marina Foïs). As the class progresses and we learn more about the nationalistic, anti-immigrant propaganda Antoine is soaking up online, the violence the students are working into their story threatens to spill over into their lives.<br />
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Although he won the 2008 Palme d’Or for <i>The Class</i>, there’s no hint of egotism or self-importance in Cantet, who started our interview by pouring me a cup of coffee. Despite the filmmaker’s frequent frustration at being unable to find the exact word he was searching for in English, he was urgently articulate about his work, which he clearly does as much to educate himself as to encourage his audience to question their own beliefs.<br />
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<b>I love the way your films explore social issues through fictional narratives.</b><br />
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I’m always interested in showing the complexity of our world. What’s always difficult is making a film that deals with reality without being too…<i>dialectique</i>?<br />
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<b>Too didactic?</b><br />
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Yeah, yeah. That’s why fiction is really important in my films, even if it deals with something very real and very social. I think that putting political and social issues first would make people afraid to come and watch the film. And also because I am not militant. I am quite involved in what’s happening in our society, but I [just] ask questions and share it with the audience. I don’t have any answer to give, so it’s important to me that political issues are seen through the way a character feels it and lives the story.<br />
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<b>When you’re developing a film, do you usually start with an issue you want to explore and then come up with the characters and plot?</b><br />
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Not necessarily. I don’t like the idea of using a character to say what I have to say. What interests me is individual stories that can speak of the whole society. That’s why I’m always focusing on a small group, the school that was [at the center of] <i>The Class</i>, here [in <i>The Workshop</i>] just this group of seven young adults, the factory in <i>Human Resources</i>. Looking at this small group—or one individual, in <i>Time Out</i>—<br />
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<b>Though that one was also about the main character’s family to some degree, so you could say it was also a small group.</b><br />
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I like when the components of a story come together [and suddenly] make sense. That’s also why I like to focus on one character, because a character doesn’t always have a straight itinerary. There can be contradictions in the character, which for me is the characteristic of human beings.<br />
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<b>How did you come up with the idea for <i>The Workshop</i>?</b><br />
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I really wanted to look at people in the city of La Ciotat. I started to write this story 20 years ago, when it was very different.<br />
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<b>How so? Were the shipyards still operating then?</b><br />
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Just closed, after 10 years of really strong fighting between the workers and the shipyard. The municipality of La Ciotat organized this kind of workshop in order to help young people connect with their own story. Robin Campillo, my co-writer and friend, edited a small report for TV on this workshop at this moment. I think it was just after <i>Human Resources</i>. I was interested to see the link young people could have with working-class culture, and I felt the workshop was a good device for young people to find out about their relationship with their parents, their relationship with this past. The workers were very proud of being workers, but this pride was disappearing at that moment. So that was the idea for <i>The Workshop</i>.<br />
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Three years ago, just after [the terrorist attack on] Charlie Hebdo, I asked myself how it is to be 20 in such a world. I thought back to this idea of a workshop, and we started to work on that. This time I think I found what I didn’t find 20 years ago, which was a way to make that workshop and real life get mixed through this story between Olivia and Antoine. I think I found the film the day I could say to myself that the fiction that Antoine always asks for in the workshop will bring the fiction to the film. Since they are working on a story about murder, it’s easy for him to express violence, and that was a good way to analyze the border between literary violence and real violence.<br />
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<b>Is the difference you found in this area 20 years later that violence has permeated the culture more? Or is it that there’s a fear and vilification of immigrants, particularly people from Muslim countries, that’s feeding this growing wave of right-wing nationalism?</b><br />
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All of that. All that is new. Twenty years ago it wouldn’t have been an issue, but, especially in the south of France, the extreme right is growing up and a lot of young people are attracted by it. I don’t think they are attracted by the ideas. Just feeling that you exist, you know? What interests me in the film is to look at the seduction process of the extremism on people who don’t have any hope, who get bored by their own life. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-laurent-cantet-on-the-making-of-the-workshop"><span style="color:blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-19248542583562860962018-03-06T16:31:00.005-08:002018-07-06T13:51:42.029-07:00Interview: Andy Goldsworthy on Leaning Into the Wind<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Director Thomas Riedelsheimer, who documented some of English artist Andy Goldsworthy's work with naturally occurring materials in 2001's <i>Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time</i>, explores an even wider range of Goldsworthy's works in <i>Leaning Into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy</i>. Some are as ephemeral as the “rain shadows” that Goldsworthy often makes, lying down as a light rain starts and then getting up, leaving a crime scene-like shape of a body on the sidewalk—which the rain then fills in. Others are as lasting as the monumental project Sleeping Stones that Goldsworthy created by having huge slabs of stone fitted together and then having an oblong depression just wide enough to hold a human body hollowed out in the middle of the block.<br />
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As he pointed out in our interview, Goldsworthy's art crystallizes the intense exploration of the world that artists have always done, taking as its subject something that's usually part of the process. On the phone from his home in Scotland, Goldsworthy spoke easily and generously about <i>Leaning Into the Wind</i> and his work, often laughing or expressing enthusiastic wonder as he talked about the role photography plays in his art, pissing off the security guards at Fox News, and the sculptural nature of farming.<br />
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<b>You often photograph or film your work, and those images are important, since they're the only record of the ephemeral things you create. You seem to think of yourself as an artist who works in other media and takes pictures just to document what you're doing, but doesn't making those photos, which are powerful in their own right, feel like an artistic pursuit in itself?</b><br />
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It does, yes. But the aim isn't to produce the photograph. The aim is to make the work. Sometimes the photograph is an important part of the making of the work. Brancusi said why talk about sculpture when you can photograph it? The photograph becomes a way of examining and understanding what you've done. The work is often about a particular time of day or a particular light. Photography's a very important part of waiting for that moment.<br />
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There are demands from the image that I have to address, like the length of time and the composition. Two days ago, I did a work where I stood in a tree and the tree was casting shadow on the end of a building, so my shadow was on the building. I stand very still, so my shadow's climbing the building as the sun's going down. It was really beautiful, and quite amazing. And then I got down and I realized the battery had run out on the camera. [laughs] That happens a lot, because I'm so keen on making the work that I forget. My daughter sometimes, if I know I'm going to want some video, will come along and look after that side of things a bit. But the amount of times I've been out of focus, or the battery's run out, or the memory stick's run out, you know?<br />
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<b>Since so much of what you do is about capturing the moment when a lot of different elements come together, it almost feels right that your camera is another element in the mix.</b><br />
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It's all part of it. Yeah. [laughs] But I wouldn't want my work to just exist within film or photography. It's important that the work exists physically too. With a lot of the projects that I make, the things that people can go and see, the people are participants. They're not spectators. There are passages to be walked, there are chambers to be stepped into, there are buildings to be stepped into, there are depressions in the stone to lay down in. So they actually address human nature, and actually need people to become active. Without people, they are lesser works.<br />
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<b>You make a lot of things in this film that include room for a human body to fit into—but just barely, like the Sleeping Stones or the split wall people can walk inside of that's so narrow you have to walk sideways at times. Is there something in those pieces about people finding a safe place in the world?</b><br />
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Or even turning that on its end, because some of the spaces that I make are uncomfortable to go into. There's a room that I've put tree trunks inside that get denser as you go further into the room, and people don't want to go in there because you don't know how deep it is, is there anybody else in there, could you get lost in there? Nature, for me, isn't just pastoral and therapeutic. It's those things, but it's deeply disturbing and challenging and threatening and brutal and raw as well as beautiful, and I hope that my work reflects that. I think as I get older, probably, it's becoming more and more so.<br />
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<b>Your rain shadows seem to be about the impact living things have on the world. You could see them as a metaphor for the impact we have on the world when we're alive and the way memories of us fade after we're gone.</b><br />
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Yes, definitely. Just being alive, we can't help but affect the world. Especially in a city. The city is the memory of so many people, the seats that are sat on, the places that are walked over. So the most appropriate place to lay down and leave a shadow is the pavement, that surface that's so written by people's feet. There have been times when I've made a shadow and I've got up and it's carried on raining and the shadow's disappeared, and then it's stopped raining and, because where my body has been is slightly dryer than the rest of the pavement, it comes back again—my shadow rises up out of the ground. That's amazing! There's this memory coming back up out of the ground.<br />
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It's one of those few works that I will do over and over again, because each one is so different and so interesting, so demanding. I learn so much. Like in New York, I did a series of rain shadows on the pavement. Some of the pavement is public, but a lot of it isn't. I found that out because I was on the private side of the pavement once in front of Fox News. [laughs] And I've got a video of the security guards evicting me from their pavement.<br />
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<b>There's an awareness of mortality and the inevitability of change in much of your work. Is that something you're consciously trying to surface or is it just inevitably part of any work that's about reshaping organic materials?</b><br />
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I think it's inevitably part of everything. The changes that can occur over time can be so interesting. When I go out and I work with something, there's obviously the history of the material that I'm working with, the history of the place. There's a moment I'm actually working with it. But to really deal with the whole spectrum of time, I have to engage with the future. And not in a way where I'm wanting to be remembered by posterity, but to launch something into the future, to see what can happen. I can learn as much from the changes that occur after the making as I can during the making. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-sculptor-andy-goldsworthy-on-leaning-into-the-wind"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-4909917143994287422018-02-19T14:54:00.000-08:002018-02-22T14:54:23.376-08:00Interview: Oscar-Nominated Editor Tatiana S. Riegel on I, Tonya<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnI-bpT5c6cIYBmLx7NEC2NqvLkbvz7CmkuBduDx8xca9pwsPNke6QOVcT4z-ZGeS6-BOhIsFESm556fNVMtRHDeOK1TsY_yB_0SzOqtQD3UMaLzvHZH98dWxkb8XTbvN-ZJS1TKDUd_U/s1600/tatiana+S.+Riegel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnI-bpT5c6cIYBmLx7NEC2NqvLkbvz7CmkuBduDx8xca9pwsPNke6QOVcT4z-ZGeS6-BOhIsFESm556fNVMtRHDeOK1TsY_yB_0SzOqtQD3UMaLzvHZH98dWxkb8XTbvN-ZJS1TKDUd_U/s320/tatiana+S.+Riegel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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In her 30 years as a film editor, Tatiana S. Riegel has cut five films for director Craig Gillespie, starting with 2007's <i>Lars and the Real Girl</i>. Her work on Gillespie's latest feature,<i> I, Tonya</i>, has earned her an Oscar nomination for best achievement in film editing. Reigel talked to me by phone from Berlin, where she's working on the early footage of director Fede Alvarez's <i>The Girl in the Spider's Web</i>—starring Claire Foy, Vicky Krieps, Claes Bang, and Lakeith Stanfield—as it's being filmed. In a conversation studded with references to intuition and instinct, Reigel talked about how editing a film is like attending a dinner party, what she learned from her years as an assistant to Quentin Tarantino's longtime editor, Sally Menke, and why it's not easy for women to find a place at the editing console.<br />
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<b>Is your work entirely about figuring out how best to realize the director's vision, or are you also discovering or creating the film yourself to some degree as you edit it?</b><br />
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It's both. Obviously, I've read the script, and I've had some conversations with the director. If it's a director I've worked with a lot, like Craig, that makes it very easy. If it's someone I haven't worked with very much, or at all, it takes a little bit more time to suss that out. But it's a 50-50 combo, trying to figure out what they want and also bringing your own input in terms of story and performance and pacing and stuff like that.<br />
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<b>What makes you and Craig such good partners?</b><br />
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We have a lot of similarities, and differences in the right places. You have to be able to sit in a room with a director for eight, 10, 12 hours a day and still get along at the end of the day, but you also have to have enough differences so there's that real yin-yang and sounding board happening, which enables you to build on each other's work and make it better. We have a similar sense of humor, and we have very similar tastes in films and emotion and the sort of story that moves us and that we find interesting. Our differences are just the innate differences that you have in two people from different places, different times, who are of different sexes—those sorts of different experiences that you bring to it as an individual.<br />
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<b>How have you seen film editing change over the years? Obviously, there's been the switch from film to digital, but I'm also thinking of things like people's attention spans getting shorter and the boom in special effects.</b><br />
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Obviously the biggest difference I've experienced in my career is that change from film to digital. That makes a huge, huge difference in the workflow and the pace and the sort of day-to-day job. It used to be a very physical job. Now it's rather sedentary. Also, the way people watch media is different. People's patience has probably gotten a bit shorter. And people get very used to seeing things in a certain way: quicker cuts, lots of music. I'm not sure that's all for the better, but on certain things, it's definitely appropriate.<br />
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<b>In the early days of film almost all of the editors were women, but they're only about a quarter of the members of the Editors Guild now. When and why do you think film editing became male-dominated?</b><br />
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The short answer to that question would probably be that people realized how important it was. [laughs] The other answer is that pretty much all of the directors, for a really long time—it's getting a little bit better now—were men. It's a very close work situation and ultimately, a lot of times, guys want to hang out with other guys. Buddies, you know. I think it's more comfortable [for them]. But I don't think it's good for the film, necessarily. I like to have a mix in my crew, my assistants—a mix of male and female whenever possible, different backgrounds, different points of view. Because you're trying to put the film out there to as many people as possible, so it's very important to get reactions early on from a great variety of people. That's why my situation with Craig works very well, because sometimes I'll look at a scene and be like, well, no, a woman wouldn't do that, or would do that. And he's approaching it from a different point of view, and we can debate that.<br />
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<b>You like to say that the editor is the only person involved in a film's making who comes in as essentially an audience member. Can you explain what that philosophy means to you and how you find it helpful when you're working?</b><br />
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Yes, I find it extremely helpful. For example, when a scene is shot, I'm the only person [in the cast and crew] who watches it for the very first time exclusively on film—or on the monitor, or however it's being shown. So I get that initial reaction to the performance and to the geography of the situation and to the costumes and what people look like and everything else that everybody else on the set doesn't have. They know the geography of the set because they're physically walking on the set. I'm reacting the way an audience member would. Does something look believable? Does the performance feel believable? I haven't been to all the development meetings, been part of the casting and rewrite process, or done any location scouting. I haven't heard about all of the innumerable compromises that have taken place through the pre-production and production process. That helps me have a really instinctive, intuitive reaction to what I see initially.<br />
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<b>Even though women are in the minority now, there are a lot of famous and sought-after female editors in Hollywood, probably more so than in other important behind-the-camera positions like directing or cinematography. I'm thinking of people like Dede Allen and Thelma Schoonmaker and Sally Menke, who you worked with early in your career. Do you think editing is still one of the easier ways for women to get into film?</b><br />
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I'm not sure there's really any easy way. I think it's wonderful that all categories and job positions are finally starting to open up to women. It's really important. But I really don't know what's the easier way to get in. Only 23% of the Editors Guild is female. It's easier than cinematography, yes, but it's still a pretty competitive, difficult way to get into the business. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-tatiana-s-riegel-on-editing-i-tonya "><span style="color:blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-22589913250365642682018-02-13T09:45:00.000-08:002018-02-15T10:09:56.825-08:00Interview: Lee Unkrich talks Coco and Dia de Muertos<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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His 2018 Oscar nomination for <i>Coco</i>, which is up for best animated feature, is far from Lee Unkrich's first time at the awards rodeo. Unkrich joined Pixar more than two decades ago, as the company was transitioning from making just shorts and TV commercials to features. He co-edited <i>Toy Story</i> and went on, as Pixar employees do, to work in various capacities on many more films, including directing <i>Toy Story 3</i>. In <i>Coco</i>, Unkrich roots the story of a young musician whose family hates music in the visually sumptuous and intellectually rich soil of Mexico during a Día de Muertos holiday, creating the most emotionally resonant Pixar film since Toy Story 3. The film incorporates the gorgeous colors of Mexican treasures like Oaxacan alabrijes, the hillside houses of Guanajuato, and the strings of papel picado that festoon so many of the nation's walls and streets. The film also animates resonant Mexican concepts like the belief that we all die three deaths: the first when our hearts stop beating, the second when we are buried or cremated, and the third when there's nobody left on Earth who remembers us.<br />
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In a phone interview last week, Unkrich talked about how studying the Día de Muertos helped him deal with the death of his father, the challenges of making a film about Mexico when you're “a white guy from Ohio,” and the tension between family ties and individual freedom.<br />
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<b>Coco started out for you as an exploration of Día de Muertos. What initially interested you about the Mexican holiday?</b><br />
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I went to school at the University of California. There's obviously a big Latino community in Los Angeles, and I remember starting to see a lot of the iconography and the folk art having to do with the celebration and being fascinated by it. There was something about the juxtaposition of skeletal imagery and death imagery with bright colors and this feeling of celebration that was so different than anything I had grown up with. So I was interested in that, but I had just kind of filed it away. It wasn't until I finished Toy Story 3 and I was thinking about what to do next that it kind of popped into my mind, the notion of doing something having to do with Día de Muertos.<br />
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I started to do a lot of research and learn more about the holiday. I quickly moved beyond the kind of misconception that a lot of people have that it's some kind of Mexican Halloween and started to learn about the roots and the history of the celebration. Death is of course an element in it, but it's not about death; it's about life, it's about family; it's about remembering one's ancestors and keeping their memories alive and passing them along to the next generation. It seemed to me that we could make a film that would not only celebrate the beauty of Mexican culture, but could also tell a story that would be universally relatable around the world.<br />
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<b>Has making this film changed your own thinking about death?</b><br />
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I don't know that it has, specifically, but I do know that I now do some things that I didn't do before making this film. My family and I now make an ofrenda at home, and I think that that tradition is going to strengthen over time. It's important to us now. My father just passed away in December.<br />
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<b>Oh, I'm sorry.</b><br />
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Luckily, I got to show him Coco just a week before he passed away, and it was really meaningful sharing that experience with him and then knowing that he was going to be joining our offrenda. It's such a lovely notion, to be able to help actively keep people's memories alive and tell their stories. My mom has boxes of old photos and old photo albums from her childhood and the generations before her, and we know who some of the people are in the albums, but we don't know who all of them are, and we certainly don't know who they are as people. I know a few names and maybe one story, but that's kind of it, and that seems like such a shame. That's why this idea of the final death that we explore in Coco seems so powerful to me, this idea that when nobody remembers you any more, you really cease to exist, as if you had never existed in the world before. <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-lee-unkrich-talks-pixars-coco-dia-de-muertos-and-more"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-7078224567060296782018-02-08T13:27:00.000-08:002018-07-06T13:51:35.611-07:00Interview: Rebecca Hall and Dan Stevens talk Permission<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Will (Dan Stevens) and Anna (Rebecca Hall) are a seemingly happy couple on the brink of marriage when a drunken comment makes them question the wisdom of pledging monogamy-ever-after to the only person they've ever had sex with. Determined to see what they've been missing, the two embark on parallel yet steadily diverging experiments in dating other people in <i>Permission</i>. Old friends themselves, Hall and Stevens made the film with Hall's husband, Morgan Spector, and another good friend, writer-director Brian Crano. We talked by phone about the persistent pressure to couple up, why Anna and Will are “a disaster,” and the joy of watching Bill Irwin dance.<br />
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<b>Rebecca, you got married a couple years ago, so it seems like you were going through pretty much the opposite of what your character in Permission is going through when you were preparing to make this film: settling down in a way that you maybe never have before. Was having just gone through your own thought process about all of that part of what attracted you to this role?</b><br />
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Rebecca Hall: I wish it were as perfect as that. [laughs] Yeah, I see what you're saying, but I don't think it ever occurred to me. Also, I married an actor, so there's nothing sort of settled about the lifestyle of two actors. In the two years that we've been married, we've lived in various sorts of places and been on the move pretty constantly. I imagine that even when we start a family and that chapter sort of starts, it will be the same. I'm not sure there are any kind of neat parallels, if I'm being honest with you.<br />
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<b>So what did attract you to the film?</b><br />
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Hall: Well, it's a combination of things. I've known the writer-director, Brian Crano, for a really long time. He's one of my oldest friends. I met him when he was 19 and I was 20. He was doing a rehearsed reading of his play in London. We've been very good friends ever since. We've always collaborated. The first short film he made was an adaptation of a short story that I wrote and acted in. We've always had a discourse about ideas, and I think I was kind of on board with this one from quite early on. We were having a lot of discussions about depicting a relationship that was difficult to question.<br />
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The obvious take on this story is that it's about what it is to be open in a relationship as opposed to monogamous. But I don't really think it is, because there are ethical ways of being non-monogamous, and this couple are useless, I think. They don't communicate; they don't set ground rules; they're a disaster. What it's really about is, what does it take to question whether you are sexually in a good relationship? To have an honest conversation with your partner, or try something else in the hopes that it might open up the possibility of having an honest conversation.<br />
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<i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-rebecca-hall-and-dan-stevens-on-permission-relationships-legion-and-more"><span style="color: blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i><br />
<br />Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-57996749353030241892017-12-17T07:08:00.000-08:002018-07-06T13:51:29.125-07:00Interview: Glenn Close and Max Irons on Crooked House<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As Edith, the head of a dysfunctional household that almost certainly includes a murderer, Glenn Close twinkles with steadfast self-confidence and mischievous perception in Gilles Paquet-Brenner's <i>Crooked House</i>. In contrast, Max Irons plays it straight as the private detective hired to ferret out the killer, giving each member of an ensemble cast of colorful characters a chance to commandeer the spotlight as he conducts interviews and studies family dynamics. I met with Close and Irons (and Close's dog, Pip, who never strayed far from Close's feet) at the Crosby Street Hotel for an occasionally raucous conversation often punctuated by Close's merry laugh and by teasing banter or quick bursts of dialogue between the two actors, who have known each other since Max was an infant. (Max is the son of Jeremy Irons, who won an Oscar for <i>Reversal of Fortune</i>, which also starred Close.) We talked about Close's artistic family, how women have been treated in Hollywood and how that's changing, and how it felt for the old family friends to work together in two films in a row (Björn Runge's <i>The Wife</i> is coming out next year).<br />
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<b>My sister-in-law, who lives in Wilson, Wyoming, has art by your sister.</b><br />
<b>Glenn Close:</b> Tina! That's where Tina lives. Oh, how cool. She's really talented.<br />
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<b>Is everyone in your family artistic?</b><br />
<b>Close:</b> Yes, they are. My other sister is a writer, and my brother is an artist with metal. He has a metal shop. He can make anything happen. I love his brain! He lives in Belgrade, Montana, and he says: “I'm like what the blacksmith used to be.” People come in with parts that they can't find any more and he'll make something to replace what they lost, or he'll invent something. He's gotten people out of big trouble by just inventing things.<br />
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<b>Have you known Max since he was a kid?</b><br />
Close: Yes, I have!<br />
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<b>So what was it like for you two to act together?</b><br />
Close: It was adorable! [laughs]<br />
Irons: She's seen me in my nappies!<br />
Close: Yeah. And he helped give my daughter Annie a bath—Annie's now 29—when we were visiting in Oxfordshire. We had such fun!<br />
Irons: It's very bizarre to be sitting here, actually. <i><span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-glenn-close-and-max-irons-on-crooked-house">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</a></span></i><br />
<br />Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3769582070673052767.post-46000402586191289292017-12-17T07:00:00.000-08:002017-12-27T07:15:20.886-08:00Interview: Bill Pullman on The Ballad of Lefty Brown<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjwwq5ZrBOEW9jjeHGMXWiANUobfiWa3IyCGOMDGzDh5zGzVvqwKVPc5tF8OuF7VUL9jqumYCdAAYhPK39mekyu8zE7f-o4gXltZjbDTKpZ3d5Q1-PCIWwqTrnFGUsAWoQmFBhyphenhyphenzB1suE/s1600/bill-pullman-the-ballad-of-lefty-brown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjwwq5ZrBOEW9jjeHGMXWiANUobfiWa3IyCGOMDGzDh5zGzVvqwKVPc5tF8OuF7VUL9jqumYCdAAYhPK39mekyu8zE7f-o4gXltZjbDTKpZ3d5Q1-PCIWwqTrnFGUsAWoQmFBhyphenhyphenzB1suE/s320/bill-pullman-the-ballad-of-lefty-brown.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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As the star of writer-director Jared Moshe's western <i>The Ballad of Lefty Brown</i>, Bill Pullman plays a sidekick turned leading man after his boss (played by Peter Fonda) is murdered and he sets out to find the killer. Pullman said he based Lefty partly on a friend from Montana who was “a third wheel” to the actor and his then-girlfriend, and now wife, Tamara when they were all in their 20s—although his pal, he added with typically self-deprecating humor, didn't look up to him the way Lefty looks up to his friend and mentor. In an interview at his publicist's Manhattan office, the affable Pullman talked about playing a self-doubting beta male, stood up for Jack Kramer, his character in <i>The Battle of the Sexes</i>, and joked about the awards he doesn't have.<br />
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<b>You've played comic roles and straight roles. Lefty seems to me to be a little of each. How did you think of it when you were playing it?</b><br />
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It was more the perception of characters around him, that he was a fool.<br />
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<b>But he was also a little self-doubting and comically inept, especially at first.</b><br />
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Yeah. Which I think is human. It wasn't really played as comedy.<br />
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<b>You reminded me a little of Andy Devine, mostly because of the way you talked, and a little of Lee Marvin in <i>Cat Ballou</i>.</b><br />
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Ah, yeah! Have you seen <i>Cat Ballou</i>? It's pretty wacky, isn't it? I watched it just because Jared said, “You gotta watch <i>Cat Ballou</i>!”<br />
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<b>Lee Marvin is pretty amazing in it.</b><br />
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Really amazing. He got nominated for an Oscar, didn't he?<br />
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<b>You usually play white male authority figures—including a lot of presidents. Was it kind of fun or liberating to play a beta male for a change?</b><br />
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Yeah. [laughs] It was really nice. I admire people who can do the straight action roles, but I get a little restless. This kind of thing allows for so much more nuance, the ambivalences and his lack of assurance about who he is as a man. Lefty, he's been a kind of taken-care-of guy. He's been a third wheel to [the couple played by Peter] Fonda and Kathy Baker. When we were in our 20s, my girlfriend at the time, who became and still is my wife, we had a third-wheel guy. His name's Tom Morris. When I came to New York, he came with me as an actor. The three of us lived together, and then when I got into movies and I could have an assistant, he would become my assistant—but he never did any assisting. He would sit in the trailer, go to craft services. I said, “Your only job is to watch movies and then when I have breaks I'll come and you tell me what I've missed.” [laughs]<br />
<br />
<b>So you kind of modeled Lefty on him?</b><br />
<br />
Yeah. And then, Tom got a part in <i>While You Were Sleeping</i>. [Director] Jon Turtletaub loved him. He was Man With Sandwich. [laughs] He was in the bed next to my brother, [played by] Peter Gallagher, when he was in a coma, and when I came to visit, he was the guy eating a sandwich. Turtletaub used him a few more times in other movies. But he was never good with urban situations, so he's back in Montana—still a good friend. I'd think of him often with this, because he was a kind of taken-care-of guy, but he was his own man too. But he had a different personality from Lefty, in that he never gave me a lot of compliments. [laughs] He was always like: “You coulda done more of that.” <i><a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-bill-pullman-on-the-ballad-of-lefty-brown-and-battle-of-the-sexes"><span style="color:blue;">Read the rest in Slant Magazine</span></a></i>Elise Nakhnikianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01440060265899485266noreply@blogger.com1