In Contention

Tag: Interviews

  • INTERVIEW: ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ producer Bonnie Arnold

    Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, Bonnie Arnold was a product of the Watergate generation of journalists, fired up by the state of current political affairs. She sought her undergraduate degree at the University of Georgia and soon took off to grad school at Boston University, where some dabbling in broadcasting was enough to light a fire of passion for the film business.

    “I got an internship at WGBH and started to get a little taste of what was going on and what other jobs might be available,” she says over lunch on the DreamWorks campus (as they call the Google-esque environment, with its health initiatives, yoga classes and mind-settling landscaping) in Glendale, California. That job led her back to a job in Atlanta with a television station and producer David Picker, who was working on the first season of “American Playhouse.” As soon as she set foot on location, Arnold knew this business was for her.

    “The minute I saw what went on behind the scenes of a film production, any menial job on that set was exciting to me,” she says. “Now it seems there are film commissions in every city in every state in the country. At that time there just weren’t. But Atlanta being a major airport, and Burt Reynolds bringing a lot of work there, Georgia’s a big state with mountains and the beach, there were a lot of advantages. I felt like I could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Peter Weir

    Telluride Film Festival

    For director Peter Weir, the pacing of his output has become almost as measured as his brand of cinema. The Australian has built a career around art house grandeur, but his work has slowed to a handful of films per decade, in stark contrast to the frequency of the 1970s and 1980s.

    That could be reflective of a professional desire to take his time from project to project, but another hypothesis could be the fact that the general movie-going audience has shown a reluctance to the product Weir and those like him provide. The industry is changing around him, and for his part, the director appears to be a mighty oak in the storm.

    “I’ve sensed this profound change that’s occurring in the industry that’s not purely locked to the Wall Street crisis,” he says in a modest hotel room here at the Telluride Film Festival, where his film, “The Way Back,” saw its world premiere. “That’s obviously a significant part of it, but what I thought was there is a change in taste amongst a growing audience that really likes sequels and likes their films very, very simple and in the area of pure spectacle. They’re not interested in structural character, and I think the studios and others have reacted to that.”

    However, Weir says he thinks it’s all “a bit of baby out with the bath water because they then more or less said, ‘That’s it, that’s the change.’ Well people and audiences don’t change overnight. And I think there’s a large audience left high and dry, the type of people who appreciate a program like here around the world who are saying, ‘What happened? There’s nothing on.’ Everything does change but I think there’s been an over-reaction on the part of distributors and there’s been a kind of deep conservatism that has come in which has led them back to what we call the genres.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Tom Hooper

    Telluride Film Festival

    For actor Geoffrey Rush and director Tom Hooper, David Seidler’s script “The King’s Speech” came to them by serendipity. Still in stage play format, it arrived at Rush’s Melbourne residence with a note apologizing for a cold call avoiding the traditional agency pipeline. For Hooper, it came to him because his mother happened to be Australian.

    “My mom was invited by some Australian friends to a fringe theater play reading of this unproduced play, having never been to a play reading in her life,” the director says, tucked into a booth with Firth and Rush at Telluride’s Rustico restaurant. “They were like, ‘We need some Aussies in the audience, would you come along?’ She called me up and said, ‘I think I may have just seen your next film.’ She sent it to me and it sat on my desk. Two or three months went by and I read it in one sitting. I rang her up and said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’”

    Rush politely declined the offer to star in a play that was “trying to be ‘Henry V,’” but noted that the central idea of Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue assisting King George V with his stammer could make for quite the film. His copy of the script, by the way, was accompanied by a DVD of the very reading Hooper’s mother attended.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Restrepo’ co-director Sebastian Junger

    It may have a hard time distracting audiences from shinier baubles on the summer-movie tree, but there are few films currently in theaters more invigorating and essential than “Restrepo.”

    An unprecedentedly first-hand war documentary, shot on the fly by a pair of filmmakers embedded in a U.S. Army unit stationed in Afghanistan’s perilous Korengal Valley, it emphatically earns the previously overused adjective “immersive”: as Taliban bullets rattle past the camera lens, the terror and confusion of combat hits harder than it has – or could – in any narrative war film.

    The film, which expands its release considerably today, leads an already impressive charge of American non-fiction cinema in 2010; it won the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and we can expect an outcry if due respect isn’t paid by the Academy’s documentary branch.

    The achievement is all the more impressive for being the debut film of Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, not that either name is an unfamiliar one. Hetherington is an acclaimed British photographer who won the coveted World Press Photo Award in 2007: interestingly, for an image from the same assignment that bore this film. Junger, meanwhile, is something of a superstar journalist, an adventurer best-known for his 1991 book “The Perfect Storm.” That work may have been Hollywood-ized in 2000, but Junger’s own big-screen ambitions were rather more casual.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: Composer symposium, part two

    Michael Giacchino at the 2010 Golden Globe AwardsI think everyone who has seen Pixar’s “Up” was utterly taken by the scene “Married Life,” where emotions ran high and three characters were built between images and music.  As Kris mentioned in this morning’s Oscar Guide, composer Michael Giacchino had the full aural attention of the audience for 10 minutes.

    Speaking to Giacchino, it’s clear he knew it was perhaps the most pivotal moment to get right into a film where music was destined to play a significant role, no matter what. “I remember watching that scene for the first time,” he recalls, “and even watching it without music, it makes you cry. You’re not just looking at what happens on screen, you’re looking at what happens in your life.”

    He found the scene, and indeed, the film itself, to be quite personal. “You end up analyzing yourself,” he says. “It’s an emotional experience and when I’m writing music for any good film, I know I can only do a good job when I’m reflecting what I’m feeling. It’s like a mirror.”

    Giacchino loves being part of what he describes as the “Pixar family” and came aboard the film eight months before it was released. “I’m always at Pixar for something,” he says, adding that he loves doing the music for their short films as well. “Being at Pixar is like being 10 years old and everyone accepts each other for whoever you are.  It’s a wonderful open, honest feeling of being able to say if you don’t like something.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: Composer symposium, part one

    Hans ZimmerWhen you’re a film music composer as prolific as Hans Zimmer, unique soundtrack flavors can be a bit elusive. But with Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes,” Zimmer found them, pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable with action film scores in the process.

    But the work isn’t without its inspirations. There seem to be bits of Danny Elfman married with Ennio Morricone, but Zimmer was actually reaching back much further.

    “Let me just be German about it,” Zimmer says with a laugh. “It was actually the Kurt Weill vibe I was after. But it’s sort of all in the family, I suppose. It’s fun for me if I can actually go and embrace some of that European stuff again.”

    The score is a delightful, jaunty construction that relishes in its own peculiarity. The good thing about director Ritchie, Zimmer says, is that he’s a bold director who welcomed these slightly “quirky” and “crazy” intrusions.

    “There was an enormous amount of thinking about how to do this differently,” Zimmer recalls. “It became apparent quickly that Guy and I had similar tastes in music and, in a funny way, what hadn’t been done in a movie of this scale. It’s all soloists. It’s not really orchestral. Every note you hear has a real performance attached to it. You can’t really hide it. Everything is very opinionated and bold. It’s not the sort of homogeneous sound you get from an orchestra.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Armando Iannucci

    Armando IannucciHe may currently be basking in the glow of a surprise Oscar nomination, but when I call him up at his London home, “In the Loop” writer-director Armando Iannucci is boasting about another achievement entirely.

    “Our family dog just gave birth to three puppies this afternoon,” he audibly beams, our opening pleasantries barely cooled. “They’re cavoodles, a poodle-spaniel hybrid. You know the Hairy Maclary books?” As a matter of fact, I do, though he’s too excited to wait for a response. “They look just like Hairy Maclary. They’re lovely.”

    As I extend my congratulations to the proud mother – on top of those to Iannucci himself – it occurs to me that the topic of hybrid puppies is as appropriate a place as any to start a conversation with this nimble giant of British TV comedy, a man whose writing trades in everyday absurdities and non-sequiturs, whether in the dead-end Norwich media scene (“I’m Alan Partridge”) or the considerably more high-powered world of Downing Street politics (“The Thick of It”).

    It is, of course, the latter – a scabrous satire of the alternately petty and ruthless antics of British government spin doctors – that provides the jumping-off point for Iannucci’s first feature film, “In the Loop.” Linked to the TV series by the presence of Peter Capaldi’s perma-scowling, cyanide-tongued political advisor Malcolm Tucker, the film broadens the canvas by taking on Washington as well as Westminster.

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  • INTERVIEW: Geoffrey Fletcher

    Geoffrey FletcherIn a dimly lit backstage area of Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre, “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher says his Oscar nomination is still setting in. “When I see in print somewhere that I’ve been nominated, it’s still a bit of a shock,” he says.

    And of course it would be. Two years ago Fletcher was standing in line in New York City outside a comic book shop waiting to get Quentin Tarantino’s autograph on his special edition “Reservoir Dogs” DVD. Now he finds himself sharing the circuit with Tarantino, both of them nominees for their work writing two of the most popular films of the Oscar season.

    “Every day throughout the season has been a learning experience, and a wonderful one, because the journey was pretty long,” he says. “But to get here, even though you wonder how it might feel to have a film out, maybe even one that gets some attention, nothing really can prepare you for it. But there’s some good to that, too, because each learning experience helps anyone who’s creative.”

    He still remembers clearly the first time he screened the film in Midtown Manhattan, long before Sundance or buyer interest, and seemingly a whole lifetime before the film awards madness that eventually took hold.

    “I was crazy about this project and I was so close to it that I felt like I was having a child and handing it to others,” he says. “People around me, primarily strangers, were a huge part of the experience. They seemed completely engaged and they reacted very vividly. I could hear them as well, I could see them and hear them reacting. On the way home I felt so alive.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The crafts of ‘Star Trek’

    Eric Bana in Star TrekOne of the year’s biggest blockbusters redefined a franchise and even made it palatable to those unfamiliar with or uninterested in its vibrant history. The film, of course, was “Star Trek,” and as below-the-line craftsmanship goes, it was one of the most impressive efforts of the year.

    Director J.J. Abrams’s mandate was “to renew and refresh, give it back some life,” makeup designer Mindy Hall says. “I had never seen any of the movies, but I grew up watching the series. If we were going to use any reference, it was going to come from that. But I didn’t want my perspective to be too crowded by looking at the archive stuff.”

    With a background in watercolors and ceramics, Hall one day happened upon a documentary on the making of Arthur Penn’s 1970 film “Little Big Man,” which aged Dustin Hoffman nearly 100 hundred years.

    A light bulb went off for the young artist. All she knew was that she wanted to do that, to bring that illusion to life.

    Hall worked in tandem with costume designer Michael Kaplan on the film. A lot of their references were more fashion related, she says. They flipped through European design books and placed a certain emphasis on emulating on the clean and slick look of science-fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s.  “We weren’t trying to do period,” she says. “We were just trying to get the flavor of it.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick

    (from left) Henry Selick and Neil GaimanIntrepid publicists worked diligently last month to float the idea that Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” due to it’s healthy critics awards take, was in a position to upset the presumed frontrunner in the animated feature category: “Up.” Of course, at the time, no one in the media helping that story along bothered to point out that, well, the opinions of the critics don’t matter a whole lot when it comes to how the Academy votes at large.

    Left in the cold a bit during that discussion was “Coraline,” which opened way back in February — a full year ago — and maintained a steady course through the spring, summer and, eventually, the awards season.  In fact, given the evidence presented by the Annie Awards, it’s possible that Henry Selick’s film would have a leg up on “Fantastic Mr. Fox” as the true competition in a field many have already chalked up to the Pixar contender.

    I spoke to Selick earlier in the season and Gaiman quite recently about their work on the project.  Gaiman had Selick in mind from the beginning, dating back to his first viewing of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” 16 years ago, while Selick put a lot of trademark care into fleshing out a tangible world from Gaiman’s words.  The result is one of the finest animated films in a banner year for the medium.

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  • INTERVIEW: Louie Psihoyos

    Louie PsihoyosLouie Psihoyos is a vegetarian.  Go figure.  On the sunny afternoon of the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, we meet at a West Hollywood vegetarian cafe to discuss “The Cove,” the former National Geographic photographer’s first foray into the world of feature filmmaking, and a stand-out piece of activism that seems to galvanize most anyone who’s seen it.

    “A year ago this week we were just hoping people would like it in Sundance,” he says.  “We had eight public screenings there and eight standing ovations.  I certainly wanted the movie to create a wave of activism, because to me, film is the most powerful weapon by far.  You make a bomb, you kill people, you make a movie, you get allies, and that’s what I wanted to do.”

    The film, if you haven’t heard by now, exposes the brutal annual slaughter of dolphins in the small harbor village of Taiji, Japan.  Local fisherman claim it is a tradition when it doesn’t even date back a century, which really gets under Psihoyos’s skin.

    “They’ve been doing it with drive boats since 1933,” Psihoyos says.  “My mother was born in 1925.  She’s older than their ‘tradition.’  Besides, when you know that your tradition is poisoning people — and they were force-feeding poisoned meat to school children — your tradition argument, I’m sorry, it falls apart.”

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The crafts of ‘Bright Star’

    Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish in Bright StarIt’s not every year that my biggest cheer on Oscar nomination morning comes in the technical categories, but such was the case last week when Janet Patterson’s name showed up in the Best Costume Design lineup.

    Patterson’s inclusion (following a senseless Guild snub) is gratifying not merely as recognition for her tangibly textured, richly story-serving threads in “Bright Star,” but as a representation of one of 2009’s most immaculately integrated – and under-rewarded – technical ensembles.

    Jane Campion’s John Keats biopic derives its fresh, fragile romanticism as much from writing and performance as the combined efforts of Patterson, cinematographer Greig Fraser and composer Mark Bradshaw. Their work has prompted countless critics’ punning on Keats’s “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” chestnut, but sometimes the most obvious praise is the most appropriate.

    For Fraser and Bradshaw, “Bright Star” represents their first experience on a Campion feature, having previously collaborated with the New Zealander on a pair of short films, “The Water Diary” and “The Lady Bug.” For Patterson, however, the film extends a collaboration with the filmmaker that dates back to Campion’s 1993 breakthrough “The Piano,” and has yielded previous Oscar nominations for both that film and 1996’s “The Portrait of a Lady.”

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  • INTERVIEW: Quentin Tarantino

    Quentin Tarantino at the Los Angeles premiere of Inglourious BasterdsNearing the end of January on an awards season run for a film that bowed at Cannes is an odd time to be crossing paths with a filmmaker to talk about the goods, but that’s where I found myself with Quentin Tarantino this year.

    Making the publicity rounds in the wake of the DVD and Blu-ray release of his film “Inglourious Basterds” and, of course, keeping exposure high with Oscar nominations eminent, Tarantino is nevertheless as indefatigable as ever.  Last week he popped up on one of Conan O’Brien’s final episodes of “The Tonight Show,” which the filmmaker says was an honor.  “I’ve always had a fun time doing his show,” he says.

    He was coming off a weekend that yielded Critics’ Choice Movie Awards recognition for his film’s ensemble, supporting actor Christoph Waltz and a screenplay honor for the writer/director himself at the time, but in the week since, Waltz and the ensemble were again rewarded, this time by the Screen Actors Guild.

    The film awards circuit is a much different beast than it was 15 years ago when Tarantino exploded onto the scene with “Pulp Fiction,” even if his long time confidant Harvey Weinstein is still at the campaign’s helm.  So it’s a little difficult not to press him for how those differences strike him, now that he’s back in the season’s good graces.

    Interestingly enough, he’s reminded of a similarity first.

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  • INTERVIEW: Anthony Mackie

    Anthony MackieSome performances are so selflessly and expertly integrated into a film’s ensemble that awards voters tend to take them for granted, looking instead to more assertive scene-stealers from sometimes starrier names.

    Nobody better demonstrates that this season than Anthony Mackie, rising star of stage and screen and the secret weapon of awards heavyweight “The Hurt Locker.”

    While Jeremy Renner has deservingly caught the eye of multiple precursor bodies, many of them have curiously failed to notice that much of Renner’s performance exists in a tensely riveting pas de deux with Mackie, whose sternly pragmatic Sgt. Sanborn is not only the yin to the impetuous yang of Renner’s SSgt. James, but a striking study in its own right of internalized male insecurity.

    Together with Brian Geraghty, as a weaker soldier dependent on Sanborn’s stabilizing influence, the three actors, alongside a smart selection of cameo players, perform some of the year’s most delicately attuned ensemble playing. And even if Mackie hasn’t received quite the level of individual attention he deserves, he accepts praise for the film (and a well-earned SAG ensemble nomination) as evidence of a job well done.

    “Look, when you work on a film like this, any idea of ego goes out the window,” the 30 year-old New Orleans native tells me over the phone from New York. “This is a story about brotherhood, so it’s dependent on the synergy of a great ensemble. As actors, we were just concerned with taking care of each other, making sure we had each other’s back. It’s not about being pretty, you know?”

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  • INTERVIEW: Michael Fassbender

    Michael FassbenderMichael Fassbender is unemployed.

    This, at least, is what he tells me at the outset of our conversation, and he sounds entirely relaxed about it. As well he sound be: after 18 months of back-to-back film projects, a catholic range spanning the gruelling physical demands of “Hunger,” the arch larking-about of “Inglourious Basterds,” the kitchen-sink grit of “Fish Tank” and the blockbuster polish of the upcoming “Jonah Hex,” the 32 year-old Irish-German thesp has more than earned himself some downtime.

    Not that Fassbender is entirely sure how to enjoy it. “I don’t really know what to do with myself, to be honest,” he tells me over the phone from Los Angeles, where his next vehicle – “A Single Shot,” a “very quirky” thriller in which he has the lead role – is currently in pre-production.

    “When you’re trying to make it as an actor, all you want to be is busy. After nearly two years of bouncing from one shoot to another, even a little time off is kind of disconcerting. I don’t even really have a home at the moment to spend it in.”

    He laughs, but there is a trace of weariness in his voice, its lolloping West Irish rhythm occasionally colored with harder enunciation that only faintly betrays his half-German parentage. His professional restlessness, however, has made him one of the past year’s most visible young actors.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The crafts of ‘The Hurt Locker’

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt LockerWhen it comes to extravagant Hollywood blockbusters, we’ve become accustomed to the phrase “the money is up on the screen” – delighting in the filmmakers’ own delight in the tools and tricks at their disposal.

    “The Hurt Locker,” however, invites a very different kind of wonder. An independent with a budget of a mere $11 million, it is nonetheless more kinetic action film than many a title coming in at 10 times the price, immersing the audience in the sights, sounds and sensations of Iraq combat. The money is on the screen, sure, but the screen belies the money.

    For this, the already multi-laurelled Kathryn Bigelow shares the credit with a highly resourceful and imaginative team of craftsmen, variously bringing mainstream studio-picture experience and indie-sector knowhow (or both) to the table.

    I talked to cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, editors Chris Innis and Bob Murawski, sound designer Paul Ottosson and special effects supervisor Richard Stutsman about their contributions to this humble spectacular.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The crafts of ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’

    Jude Law in The Imaginarium of Doctor ParnassusTerry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” is the latest entry in the director’s long history of wondrous, fantastical worlds. The film might be best remembered as containing Heath Ledger’s final performance. But Gilliam’s rich imagination is also seen in the work of below-the-line craftspeople who brought his world alive with splendid visuals and a rich color palette.

    Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, production designer Anastasia Masaro, original designer David Warren, costume designer Monique Prud’Homme and composers Jeff and Mychael Danna all had pivotal roles in bringing the work to life on screen. I recently spoke to each them about their contributions to the film.

    Without any doubt, the experience of working with Gilliam had an immense impact on the crew. Jeff Danna describes the helmer as “a dream come true for a composer – he understands, reads and plays music, which very few directors do, but he doesn’t try to take over our job.” Danna says Gilliam is clear about want he wants and will “make noises…all sorts of crazy stuff to describe what he’s looking for musically.”

    Masaro agrees that Gilliam will stop at nothing to get at his vision. “He likes to work in chaos,” she says.  “You can see his ideas from film to film to film and what you have to do is carry your aesthetic but work within his framework.”

    Warren describes Gilliam as being very appreciate of the crafts crew on his films.  “He knows what film will look like in his head,” Warren says.  “He’s obviously very visual. He follows certain details into obscene proportions, such as ‘What’s that spoon going to be made out of?’”

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The crafts of ‘Up in the Air’

    Up in the AirBecause some of director Jason Reitman’s work tends to be stylistically traditional and classic, he says there might be the assumption that he’s not a visual filmmaker. But seven years as a commercial director tends to make you as visual as the next guy. And make no mistake.  He is absolutely specific when it comes to below-the-line elements on his features, and “Up in the Air” was no exception.

    Early on the director established a department-wide below-the-line arc on the film that everyone on the crew worked toward. The idea was that at the beginning of the film, the audience is meant to see the world through the main character, Ryan Bingham’s eyes and by the end of the movie, they would see what the world looks like for real.

    For instance, “at the beginning of the movie, camerawork is wide angle, lots of moving shots,” Reitman says. “Color-wise, everything is muted tones. Production design-wise, everything is giant open atriums, walls of glass, everything is gleaming and spotless. Extras-wise, people are attractive, trim, their clothes are tailored, they’re told to walk in straight lines and not bump into each other. There’s a functionality to everything.”

    By the end of the film, things are being shot with longer lenses, hand-held, with warmer tones.  The costumes are sloppier, extras are sloppier, production design is more lived-in. Even the idea of the film’s general setting — airport terminals — reflects this in some way.

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