In Contention

Tag: Interviews

  • INTERVIEW: ‘Changeling’ screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski

    J. Michael Straczynski“In the feature film world, we television writers barely exist,” explains J. Michael Straczynski screenwriter of Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie.  “So for this to all happen so fast is really a fairy tale year for me. I am elated with how this has all gone down and changed the course of my life.”

    Straczynski was making a fine living on the small screen, writing episodes of “Murder She Wrote” and “Jake and the Fatman” before moving on to  Showtime’s series “Jeremiah” and “Babylon 5,” two of his most well-known credits.  He had worked as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times and upon discovering the story of Christine Collins, he put it on the back burner for a few years until he found the time to do it right.

    He describes his research and fact-finding like “putting a jigsaw puzzle together” for the simple reason that facts and articles had been lost, and they simply did not have the technology then to store everything he required. Taking a year off writing television, he researched the Collins case and put a script together, which his agent sent off to Imagine Entertainment and Ron Howard.  The script was bought as is and Howard wanted to direct the film, but when his schedule became impossible, “Frost/ Nixon” looming on the horizon, he sent the screenplay to Clint Eastwood.  The grizzled vet read the work on a plane back to the States and committed to direct after the first reading.

    Yes.  This was a FIRST DRAFT that went before the cameras within a year of being sold, something rather unheard of in Hollywood unless you’re Woody Allen.

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  • INTERVIEW: Mickey Rourke

    Mickey Rourke at the Los Angeles premiere of The WrestlerMickey Rourke fucked up his career.  Who am I to say that though?  I don’t get to chastise the guy, pass judgment, even comment really.  It’s a cliche to say it, so why not be specific otherwise: Mickey Rourke had some shit to work out.  Who doesn’t?

    He looks at you with stone eyes that seem to betray the early moments of a blackout.  But after another look, it’s clear that he’s focused.  He’s walking a straight line to spite his former self these days, even if it means lighting up in a non-smoking room to get through the unfamiliar terrain of a major film awards push.  Because fuck it, right?

    His pet chihuahua, Loki, moves slowly about the room, using what senses are still available to her after 17 long years, like some externalized representation of Mickey’s busted professional life.  But she’s still here, isn’t she?  So is Mickey.

    He’s the kind of guy Bob Dylan calls up in the middle of the night with a modest, “Hey, it’s Bob.”  He’s the kind of guy who can tell you he and Bruce Springsteen lost touch for 13 years and mean it.  His fight-ravaged hand cracks after a forceful handshake.  “Everything’s still crackin’.”  With a smile, no less.

    Everything could seem like a name drop but somehow becomes an honest, bard-like story of purpose.  He repeats himself.  Maybe he forgets, maybe he wants to make his point.  Maybe he can’t believe it himself — stories of self-destruction or good fortune — so he has to hear himself say the words again.  Introspection seems to come forth like the memorized therapy over a decade on the couch will give you.  But the necessity of that hard work comes through.  This is just where he is for the moment.

    He’s a steward of the truth and takes his work bringing that truth to bear quite seriously.  He won’t even waste time on a biography because he can’t get into his associations with the Hell’s Angels and John Gotti, so why bother?  It wouldn’t be true.

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  • INTERVIEW: Dennis Hopper

    Dennis HopperThe voice on other end of the line sounds nothing like the many wild and somewhat insane characters Dennis Hopper has portrayed throughout his career, which now spans more than 50 years. This is a man who has walked with James Dean (his mentor), John Wayne (who affectionately labeled him a “pinko”) and Francis Ford Coppola.

    As a director, Hopper was part of the movement that would bring the New American Cinema into play, closing the 1960s with his biker flick “Easy Rider,” and though he won prizes at Cannes and was hailed around the world, he has rarely directed since.

    Hopper portrayed perhaps the single most terrifying character in a film with his seething work as Frank Booth in David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet.’  The same year he was nominated for an Oscar for his work as the town drunk seeking redemption with his son through basketball in “Hoosiers.”  Even Hopper was stunned that the Academy failed to nominate him for Lynch’s film instead.  He remembers roaring, “HOOSIERS?  You’re kiddin’ me, man” when being told of the nomination. “Blue Velvet” was a film the Academy obviously feared, allowing a single nomination to David Lynch for his dreamy, surrealistic direction of the classic.

    Currently Hopper is celebrating the upcoming DVD release and a low-key Oscar campaign for Best Supporting Actor in “Elegy,” a fine little film in which he portrays the poet best friend of Ben Kingsley’s introspective professor — Sir Ben as Hopper calls him.

    “I was a big fan of Isabel’s [Coixet, the film’s director] work”, he explains. “So when my agent called and said I had an offer to be in a film with Sir Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz, I jumped in. It was a very human story, the sort of film I like to see, and being a big fan of Philip Roth helped me along. The film had comedy and tragedy, and most of all characters I think we can all identify with.”

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  • TORONTO: Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn talk ‘Lovely, Still’

    Martin Landau and Ellen BurstynWhen Chris Cooper accepted his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2003, he pointed out that his co-star Meryl Streep had a great deal to do with his victory.  “We made great jazz together,” he said.

    “It’s easier when you like the person,” Martin Landau says, smiling.  “I’ve had to work with actors I could not stand, women I was not attracted to, and that is where the craft comes in.  But with Ellen, we know each other, we work the same way, we were trained in a similar manner and we both found a connection to the material. It was very easy, very enjoyable coming to work each day.”

    The chemistry between Burstyn and Landau in the Nik Fackler’s “Lovely, Still” is quite remarkable as we watch two lonely old souls looking for a connection, someone to love, to be with, to care for. The story veers off in an entirely different direction than the audience expects, however, which only adds to the stunning impact of both their performances and the picture itself.

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  • TORONTO: Ed Harris on ‘Appaloosa,’ acting and film crticism

    Ed HarrisWalking into to interview with any actor/director can be a tad intimidating, even after 20 years of doing it.  They have a tendency to be…difficult.  But 30 minutes into my interview with Ed Harris, he pays me a compliment that could keep wind in my sails for the duration of the fest: “Thank you for your integrity, intelligence and dedication to your job.  This has been a pleasure.”  He smiled as we shook hands and he walked me to the door

    Harris has been an actor I have admired since first seeing him as squeaky clean John Glenn in “The Right Stuff” back in 1983, which he followed with a chilling turn as a mercenary in “Under Fire,” his bright blue eyes windows into hell’s furnace. His career has moved along an interesting trajectory, shifting between supporting roles and leads with ease, often dominating whatever film he takes on with powerhouse acting.

    Oddly enough, he did not receive his first Oscar nomination until 1995 when he gave a sterling performance as Gene Kranz in “Apollo 13,” followed by another brilliant turn in “The Truman Show” as a God-like TV producer. He nurtured his dream project, “Pollock,” through its funding, before taking up the reins as director and grabbing another Oscar nod in front of the camera. And in 2002 he was nominated for a fourth time for his AIDS-afflicted writer in “The Hours,” a critically acclaimed ensemble piece from director Stephen Daldry.

    It is doubtful that “Appaloosa” will see any Oscar attention.  Though it is beautifully shot and the art direction is sublime, the film was something of a letdown, despite strong work from Harris and co-stars Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons.

    “I gave the book to Viggo here at this festival in 2005,” Harris said, “when we were here for ‘A History of Violence.’ There was no one else I really wanted to do the film with, and I certainly never considered anyone else. I just thought he and I would make a strong partnership on screen. We don’t hang out, I mean we’re friends, but we don’t see much of each other. He agreed to do it, and Viggo’s the sort of guy where his word is his bond, so that gave me the start to keep moving on the film. It didn’t really occur to me that the film was a western, what struck me was the relationship between these two men in 1882, that’s what really grabbed me about the film. That it happened to be a western was incidental.”

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  • Is ‘Silhouette City’ this year’s ‘Jesus Camp?’

    Clive James, in his review of “American Movie Critics” for the New York Times Book Review in 2006 wrote, “…it’s the movie itself that tells you it means business. It does that by telling a story. No story, no movie.”

    “Silhouette City,” a new film by Michael Wilson, is a documentary about the rapid rise of religious extremism in America. It’s a haunting account of where the Christian evangelical movement has been and where it’s going, and it is impeccably researched.

    The film begins by covering an obscure Christian survivalist group called The Covent, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord. The CSA created a survival camp near Bull Shoals, Arkansas where they trained, stockpiled weapons and preached an apocalyptic end to the world. “We’re storing food,” one of the young girls in the film says. “We can’t tell you where or how much. We’re preparing.”

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  • Steve Lopez and ‘The Soloist’

    I stopped by Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena yesterday evening to hear Steve Lopez read from his new book “The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and the Redemptive Power of Music,” fully expecting a run-of-the-mill book release PR thing. As it turns out, Lopez is a quick-on-his-heels delight of a public speaker, engaging, never tedious and insightful when it really counts.

    And actually, there was no book reading, since Lopez had “lost his glasses for the third day in a row.” Instead, the LA Times columnist simply recounted, in maybe an hour’s time, his relationship with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless resident of downtown Los Angeles and Skid Row — and a Juliard-trained musician all the same, whose story might be hard to believe, but can be captivating to the most cynical.

    L.A. residents are quite familiar with Lopez’s “Points West” column that runs daily in the Times. One of the few living, breathing journalistic spirits of considerable heft at the paper, it seems, Lopez turns a phrase and transforms the mundane into the captivating with a truly gifted sense of the English language. He has introduced readers to members of an entire scale of notoriety, always with equal aplomb, and his articles about Ayers lit a spark for many Angelenos.

    The articles, of course, have been adapted by screenwriter Susannah Grant into a film to be released later in the fall by DreamWorks. And Lopez’s book release this week is the beginning of a long road for Ayers’ story, one that will bubble to the surface on a much larger scale when the film lands in November. But what I learned listening to Lopez speak yesterday was how much of a concerted effort the book was for forwarding the issue of mental disorder in the United States, ailments that leave the public stigmatized, a dirty secret, of sorts, that the country seems unwilling to deal with in any up-front manner.

    There are those, I’m sure of it, who feel this project seems a grating experience on the horizon of the film awards season. I, too, had my doubts as to something this potentially schmaltz-laden hitting the screens. But my view has shifted somewhat after hearing Lopez tell it. However opportunistic it might seem to the jaded for the film industry to seize upon a story like this, I have to say, I believe a lot of good could come of it in the end. I look forward to Joe Wright’s work even more so with this added context.

    In the film, Lopez will be portrayed by Robert Downey Jr., while Jamie Foxx will portray Ayers. Oscar nominee Catherine Keener also stars.

    I recorded Lopez’s talk, which runs right at an hour. I thought it would be a great way to initiate a new multimedia aspect of In Contention, and so, I offer it to you now. It’s a funny and insightful 60 minutes from one of the industry’s best columnists.

    Have a listen:

    [display_podcast]

  • INTERVIEW: Patrick Marber

    Patrick MarberIn some sense, playwright and screenwriter Patrick Marber could best be described as he endearingly refers to friend Daniel Craig: “He’s just a dude.”

    He sports a shock of black hair with hints of gray, looking still younger than his actual years. He’s fond of his cigarettes and has the same icy blue eyes as fellow Oscar nominees Peter Morgan and Guillermo Arriaga. However, where he seems to break away from that, or any company, for that matter, seems to be in his idiosyncratic nature. He’s warm and open, but clearly there’s more underneath.

    This is a guy concealing his hand.

    A glimpse at Marber’s film work alone will reveal two strikingly different portraits of obsession and dependency. In “Closer,” which he adapted from his own play for filmmaker Mike Nichols in 2004, the sexes wage war in unforgivable, bitingly honest ways. In “Notes on a Scandal,” adapted from the Zoe Heller novel and directed by Richard Eyre, the scathing realities of “Closer” give way to equally painful notions of fantasy, longing and self-delusion. How does a guy with three young children and a healthy professional status allow himself to “go there?”

    To be fair, “Closer” came at a troubling time for the writer. Though he doesn’t subscribe to “writing as therapy,” the drama and characters of that stage hit certainly served such a function for him at a crucial time. And he’ll be the first to admit the work reads better if you happen to be concurrently experiencing the crushing truths it puts on display. That was a decade ago, however, and even today, he can’t seem to feel those same emotions when he revisits the work. To Marber, it’s just material now.

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  • The nominees react

    After a few weeks of frigid, citrus terrorizing temperatures, if you step outside this morning in Los Angeles, it’s a beautiful, cloudless, sunny day. But it’s a little sunnier for those who were greeted with Oscar nominations, whether expected or unexpected. I had the opportunity to talk with a few of the lucky souls who’ve had the pleasure of fielding phone call after phone call this morning. Here’s what they had to say.

    Lots of happiness in the Fox Searchlight camp today, as the little film that could, “Little Miss Sunshine” made its way to four Oscar nominations including Best Picture and, not surprisingly, Best Original Screenplay for Michael Arndt. I called Michael around 7:45 this morning to get his reaction, and he was still the same modest fellow I spoke to face to face over the weekend.

    “I knew that there were a lot of people out there who loved the film,” he told me, “but this is the ultimate validation of the idea that the film industry is democratic. A year ago we were hoping to get a distribution deal and now we have four Oscar nominations.”

    Michael says he went to sleep pretty easily (and who wouldn’t, in his shoes), but that didn’t stop him from waking up at three o’clock and suffering insomnia throughout the rest of the early morning hours. Suffice it to say, he was wide awake when he heard his name called this morning.

    Best Supporting Actor nominee Jackie Earle Haley (“Little Children”) has to be the happiest guy in the business this morning. “I think I’d have to agree with you on that,” he told me, calling from his home in San Antonio. “This is just unbelievably crazy. They need to invent a few more words, because every adjective, this is just a little bit better.”

    The most adorable and giddy Oscar nominee you could expect to talk to, Haley was clearly on cloud nine, even hitting bouts of speechlessness during our conversation. Funnily enough, even in the central time zone, Jackie was asleep when the announcement hit. His wife ran into the bedroom screaming and crying, “You got it!” “We just hugged each other and cried for, like, five minutes,” Haley said.

    One of today’s nominees was actually surprisingly snubbed for his work on “Good Night, and Good Luck.” last year, film editor Stephen Mirrione. Mirrione and Douglas Crise shared one of “Babel”‘s seven nominations this morning.

    “The types of movies I gravitate towards aren’t really mainstream movies,” he told me via telephone shortly after the nominations were announced. “So I’m pleasantly surprised when they become so widely accepted, even if I know the material I’m working with is exceptional. And I owe a lot to wonderful performances.”

    Crise has served as Mirrione’s first assistant editors for ten years. This year he got the bump to co-editor because “Babel” started shooting before Mirrione had finished work on “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Now the longtime collaborators get to share in the spoils of an Oscar nomination together.

    Another nominee who has felt the sting of Oscar’s avoidance is Patrick Marber, nominated today for his adapted screenplay “Notes on a Scandal,” based on the novel by Zoe Heller. In fact, when Marber failed to score a WGA nomination for his work two weeks ago, he says it felt exactly how the circumstance of “Closer” played out in 2004, for which he received BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, but found no such luck with the guild and with the Academy. Suffice it to say, he was pleasantly surprised this morning.

    “Being nominated is a lot more fun than not being nominated,” he told me, calling from London. “You suddenly get lots of phone calls from people you haven’t spoken to in years. And it’s huge for us, for the film, to get four nominations. Judi and I texted each other, and I got a one word email from Zoe: ‘Yay.’ She’s always to the point.”

    Finally, one of the big stories of the morning was Picturehouse’s six nomination haul for Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth.” Hitting the ground running in its inaugural year, Picturehouse had two critically lauded efforts hit screens in “Pan’s” and director Robert Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion.” Picturehouse president Bob Berney concedes that it was a shame not to land at least one mention for Altman’s golden-hued, poignant swansong, but it was bittersweet considering the surprising glut of appreciation thrown the way of “Pan’s Labyrinth.”

    “We decided to come out at the very end, but to do that, you have to know you’ve got a great film,” he told me earlier this morning. “It’s cool to get these broader nominations outside of the foreign film category, because this really is such a group effort. You get a lot of energy from this film and it just takes you back to the joy of movies.”

    Berney conceded that a lesson learned in this introductory year for his studio was the subtlety of positioning your film as an underdog. The strategy paid off in spades this morning, and the president affirms that he and his team are ready to do it all over again next Oscar season.

  • INTERVIEW: Ryan Gosling

    Ryan Gosling is a smooth customer. Lacking pretension so much that one can’t even find a hint of his intending to steer clear of it, the actor recently celebrated his 26th birthday on November 12th. This following a year that has seen his directorial debut come to pre-production light, a coveted spot amongst GQ’s annual “Men of the Year” issue and, oh yeah, one of the most acclaimed performances of 2006.

    The critically hailed star of “The Believer” and “The Notebook,” Gosling finds himself in the thick of the year’s awards race for his riveting portrayal in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Half Nelson.” The film received five Independent Film Spirit award nominations this morning, including Best Male Lead for Gosling.

    Greeting me via telephone from Toronto, where he is nearing the end of principle photography on Craig Gillespe’s “Lars and the Real Girl,” the actor seems to have tripped over his sister’s computer chord and is having some trouble with the usual “hellos.” It’s all for the best, really, because when you have a conversation with Ryan Gosling, the last thing you want to do is bog things down in formalities. Gosling is a real guy, attracted to real ideas and, above all else, real characters.

    “I had read the script and thought it was about people I had met, people I knew or was like in some way,” he says. “When I go to the movies, I want to feel like I’ve met someone. People who do things out of character, who don’t have a clear character arc, those are the people I’m interested in seeing in a film.”

    In “Half Nelson,” Gosling stars as Dan Dunne, a charismatic junior high school history teacher in a drab and dismal Brooklyn neighborhood. Dan’s professional environment is one of enlightenment for his pupils. He captures the spark of their educational hunger and even finds time to coach the girls’ basketball team. But personal demons can haunt even the saintliest of souls, and Dan’s crutch is drug addiction. The allure of the crack pipe frequently pulls him away from the buoyancy he works so hard to construct for his students, dragging him through the realities of crushed idealism.

    In some ways not the most sympathetic of individuals, Dan provided for Gosling a character of tangibility and truthfulness.

    “I think you have to love and hate the characters you play,” he says. “They’re people. It’s not as simple as sympathizing with them.”

    To prepare for the role, Gosling moved to New York for one month before shooting even began, immersing himself in the life of his character. He lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn and spent time shadowing 8th grade teacher David Easton. Speaking matter-of-factly about his methods, Gosling mentions, “There’s a million ways to get there, but it’s a challenge when there’s no real reference for the people you play.”

    What might also be considered a challenge for some actors is sharing the screen with untrained thespians. But Gosling seems to have found a preference of sorts, so much so that he plans on casting his upcoming directorial debut, “The Lord’s Resistance,” with non-actors across the board.

    “I love working with non-actors,” he says. “Actors are so manipulative, and non-actors are not. They push you in ways that the best actors in the world can’t.”

    One such non-actor is Shareeka Epps, receiving equal praise for her portrayal of Drey in the film. One of Dan’s students who happens upon his secret early in the first act, Drey seems weathered and accustomed for her years, but exuberant and youthful all the same – qualities Gosling also found bursting out of his co-star.

    “Shareeka has no reverence, which I really respected,” he explains. “She doesn’t approach any scene with any preciousness. She’s brutally honest and not ashamed of how she feels.”

    Finding himself in the heat of contention for Best Actor consideration at this year’s Oscar ceremony, Gosling is predictably apathetic about the awards process. One almost doesn’t want to approach the subject with him, given the expected response from an actor so obviously concerned with the work above anything else. But this is a business of sound bites, and even the most apprehensive awards hopefuls can give you gold in that regard.

    “It affects me,” he says of the Oscar race, “in the sense that I’m happy that a film that cost $500,000 can get to a point where this many people are aware of it. Awards – I don’t know who that’s up to, but I appreciate that the film is being received the way it is. I had one of the best experiences of my life on this. We never had to hit any marks. We never had to say anything twice or worry about continuity. You never felt like you were in a scene in a movie. A lot of directors never see it that way. Anna and Ryan have a great eye for the way that we are and the lies we tell about who we are, and that’s rare.”

    From here, Gosling will assuredly take it all in stride. The aforementioned “The Lord’s Resistance” is high on his list of priorities. Telling the story of the Lord’s Resistance militia in Uganda, the film looks to be another pointed political entry in the current canon of Africa-centralized cinema. Even still, don’t expect the actor to look too far ahead at the kinds of films he wishes to make, in front of or behind the camera. He holds such judgment to a case-by-case basis.

    “I’ll have to wait until I’m tested,” he says. “Films I love have a certain allowance for accidents. When I was a kid, my favorite films were the ‘Abbot and Costello’ movies. I love Werner Herzog’s films, Terry Malick, John Cassavettes. But I’ve got a lot of things I want to do in my life, and not just acting. There’s no anxiety about not having enough time to do all the movies I want to do or anything, but I have to keep it interesting for myself. I don’t want to make the same movie over and over again.”

  • INTERVIEW: John Cameron Mitchell

    John Cameron Mitchell might be one of the few true artists working in the film medium today. In his much celebrated feature debut “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the actor/director pealed his own creation from the stage and molded it into a cinematic experience that became one of the most accomplished films of 2001. His electric performance as a shafted transsexual (let’s say almost transgender) rock star reached new heights on celluloid, claiming a lion’s share of critical honors, while his efforts behind the camera announced the arrival of a promising new directorial talent.

    Now with “Shortbus,” one of the best films of 2006 and undeniably one of the most thematically potent, Mitchell has found his groove as a speaker to the metaphors of primal and cultural humanity. Glaring through, yet paradoxically past the cardinal sexual characteristics we share as frail co-inhabitants of a wicked world, he has tapped into a method of creativity that reawakens the senses to a commercial medium’s true potential.

    “It’s a film about the question we all have to ask of whether we’re going to be alone,” Mitchell explains with a staggering intellectual delicacy. “And sex is just one of the languages we use to not be alone.”

    Indeed, if unsuspecting viewers make it beyond “Shortbus”’s riveting opening sequence, they will find a central nervous system of artistry that speaks to deeper truths than the most well-intended of artfully-minded cinema. A bona fide explosion of sexual expression that dictates the film’s themes in vivid detail, the scene climaxes with a puzzling moment Mitchell describes with measured confidence and candor.

    “You meet James…who is sucking his own dick. It’s kind of comic but there’s this element of poignancy there, too. Who is someone in their 30s who would try that? Why is he trying to be self-sufficient at this point, to self-fertilize? And then burst into tears? That is my way of introducing the character. Sex can be used as metaphor.”

    Therein lays the workings of Mitchell’s unique genius. It’s the standard assumption that inter-character relationships are meant to reveal and reflect the themes of a given film, but to comment upon the human condition through a character’s relationship with him or herself is another level of artistic thinking altogether. Such a motif abounds in “Shortbus”’s eclectic ensemble.

    Mechanically, the film is a dissection of community, largely the result of collaboration and improvisation from amateur thespians. It looks at individual and group reality through the lens of sex, detailing an array of characters Mitchell is quick to admit ultimately represented various facets of his own personality.

    “There’s a part of me that’s like a stalker,” he admits. “There’s a part of me that’s like a non-orgasmic woman who can’t connect. And I’ve had a part of me that feels like I’ll never be with anyone. But everyone sort of brought their own stuff to it and I just directed it.”

    He continues: “We started working on it in 2003, which was when we had our website with our mission statement and our audition to send tapes. It was open call. We avoided agents. [We were looking for] people who could work in an improvisational way, who were smart, who were funny, who were charismatic in some way, a diversity of sexuality and gender.”

    The result was a meaningful interface of creative input, one the director found quite different from the experience of his first major creation.

    “‘Hedwig’ was kind of developed gig by gig,” he explains, “sort of a solo show with a composer. ‘Shortbus’ was through improv, borrowing a page from Mike Leigh and John Cassavettes. I’d love to work with a very tightly-honed script and very virtuosic actors next time. I’d like to do an opera some day. I’d love to write a novel, make an album. I like to work in a lot of different ways and I love to keep it diverse.”

    Set in the culturally booming setting of New York City, “Shortbus” also makes light of our society’s post-9/11 consciousness. One line that sticks out is “You’re taking a picture of yourself at Ground Zero. Do you smile?” It’s a delicate stick and move that actually speaks modestly to what Mitchell describes as President Bush’s favorite weapon: fear. And wrapped up in the natural reaction to what has been considered by many to be an emotionally oppressive regime, Mitchell identifies another pitfall altogether.

    “Cynicism seems to be the currency of the day,” he begins, “especially in such a weird, ‘Bush-whacked’ country. It’s like the only comfort some intelligent people have is cynicism, and certainly humor, but kind of a fatalistic humor where you’re powerless and you think nothing’s going to change, which is just as dangerous. I think there are incredible cultural critics today who point out the absurdity brilliantly – ‘The Daily Show,’ Steven Colbert – but the odd thing is there are not a lot of people presenting alternatives. Though our film has a very small audience and doesn’t provide solutions to problems, it provides perhaps a way of thinking that makes sense, which isn’t based on fear, and which is based on this understanding that we all ‘get it in the end,’ in many ways, and we’re all in the same boat.”

    Through a delicate assembly of organic ensemble interaction, Mitchell makes his points of love and acceptance, emotional necessity and the power of discourse at every step of the way. From his vantage point, there is hope in community, however one chooses to define it.

    “All of these characters are heroes, in a way,” he declares, “because they’re trying to connect. Those who don’t try, those who hide away behind their technology are ultimately not people I’d want to share a drink with. It’s like all this technology that is meant to connect us seems to separate us and just create another shield. The advantage of growing up a sexual minority is you can see there’s surface and then there’s what really is there. You understand metaphor at a younger age because you had to hide something. So art naturally is a refuge for sexual minorities, and all minorities, really, because you’re an outsider and you see it from the outside point of view: satire. Oscar Wilde, Dave Chappelle, all these people have an outsider’s point of view, which is the artist’s point of view.”

    There is a murmur of concern in the already growing positive critical assessment of “Shortbus” that the film will struggle to find an audience. Leaving alone the effort a true independent film has to make to stay above water in this era of faux indie excursions fronted by “dependent” arms of major studios, the sheer sexual intensity of the film will keep many at arms length sight unseen. Mitchell seems to understand his film’s place, however, with somewhat minimal concern for his film’s ultimate fate in the vast marketplace.

    “I try to have low expectations,” he offers. “There are some people who didn’t like ‘Hedwig.’ Some people won’t like this. Some people won’t like it because of the sex, and some won’t like it because it’s soft-hearted. It’s pretty warm and fuzzy compared to most films. But from my point of view it’s an awareness of gender and sexuality being things that unite and divide us and the humor that comes from that. It’s ultimately a boring thing, your sexuality – inherently neutral and kind of dull. It’s what you do with it that’s interesting.”

  • INTERVIEW: Three 6 Mafia

    Three 6 MafiaWhen hip-hop artist Eminem was nominated in 2002 for the Best Original Song Oscar for his track “Lose Yourself” from Curtis Hanson’s 8 Mile, he did not attend the ceremony and therefore the song was not performed per tradition. Musician and co-nominee Luis Resto was on hand to accept the award.

    Three years later, the door is open for Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia to become the first hip-hop artists ever to perform at an Oscar ceremony.

    Jordan “Juicy J” Houston takes charge in an interview setting, speaking with a rapid fire delivery that gets his point across with the right balance of professional sincerity and conversational candor. His fellow nominee Paul “DJ Paul” Beauregard casually adds to the discussion here and there, remaining quiet the majority of the time. Nominated along with Cedric “Crunchy Black” Coleman for their song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from the Hustle & Flow soundtrack, the group seems genuinely moved by the attention.

    “That’s so big,” Houston says. “Right now I think I’m dreaming. And it’s going to be a clean show, you know. No one’s got anything to worry about.”

    Swept up in a media frenzy following the nod to the film’s organic track, Houston and his collaborators can’t seem to go a waking moment without further exposure and regard for the accomplishment.

    “It’s a blessing, man. We’ve been getting a lot of congratulations from our hometown. It seems like we’ve been on the news every day. As a matter of fact, I was on the news just yesterday giving an interview. It’s crazy, man.”

    Craig Brewer’s sophomore effort also received a nomination for Best Actor for the film’s breakout star, Terrence Howard. The film debuted at Sundance over a year ago and has generated genuine love and respect, both for the performances (nominated en masse by the Screen Actors Guild in the Best Ensemble category), and for the music so integral to the viewing experience.

    The nominated song’s key moment in the film comes during an in-studio collaborative session that sees actors Howard, Taraji P. Henson, Anthony Anderson and DJ Qualls putting the track together piece by piece. Houston and Beauregard had plenty of experience working with established musicians, but this proved to be slightly unfamiliar territory.

    “We’ve dealt with all types of artists,” Houston affirms. “Working with artists like Ludacris and then working with the actors, Terrence and Taraji, it was a little different. Terrence is a musician. He plays guitar and he knows music, and Taraji is a singer, so they picked it up fast.”

    He continues, “They told us what the film was going to be about – a pimp struggling to be a rapper – and then we went and wrote the song. I wasn’t there when they filmed the scene, but Craig took it like it was a missing piece in a puzzle and fit it right in. He’s a brilliant director.”

    If you haven’t had the pleasure as of yet, Hustle & Flow tells the story of a Memphis pimp, DJay (Howard), who dreams of reaching higher and making something more of himself. Witnessing the quick success of hometown hero Skinny Black (Ludacris) in the hip-hop arena, DJay discovers he has a voice and he wants it to be heard as well. The question is how accurate is the film to a true hip-hop artist’s experience?

    “It’s real accurate,” Beauregard chimes in immediately. “It’s very real.” Houston backs him up, adding “That’s pretty much how every rapper got started. And that concept goes farther, into filmmaking, or doing what you do, everything’s a struggle. I’ve been through every single thing in that movie, trying to get your demo out there, get someone to play it…I’m not going to say I’ve been a pimp or anything, but the rest of it, yeah.”

    Working on the film gave Houston the chance to talk with one of his personal icons, Isaac Hayes, who plays the role of dive owner Arnel.

    “My influences are Al Green, B.B. King, you know, all the Memphis musicians. But Isaac Hayes has always been my favorite. I’d seen him before around town, you know, at the car wash. I was in the scene in the bar, I played Ludacris’s brother, and me and Isaac got a chance to talk. That was big.”

    The most colorful scenario one could imagine involving Three 6 Mafia this year would have to be the annual nominees’ luncheon, which saw the group in the same room as Hollywood’s elite. It was a surreal experience for Houston and the rest of the group to say the least.

    “I was thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’ You know, you’re used to sitting in the studio with a bunch of guys drinking beer and smelling like something they shouldn’t be smelling like, and then you pull a switcheroo and you’re in Hollywood in a room with Steven Spielberg and Reese Witherspoon. And she’s sexy, man.”

    I had to include that last bit, as it goes to show the genuine awe the Memphis group finds themselves in while still maintaining their personal sense of reality. Fish out of water? Perhaps. But still surrounded by fellow artists nonetheless.

    The Hustle & Flow experience has been a welcome one and an exciting one for Three 6 Mafia. As is typical in the city of dreams, further doors have been opening upon the success of the film. Houston isn’t too keen on talking specifically, but the ball seems to be rolling regardless.

    “Right now we have some stuff on the table. We’ve had some meetings at Paramount and Revolution Studios. I hope you’ll be hearing our songs in some future films.”

    In the meantime, Houston, Beauregard and Coleman are off to the Kodak Theater. They’ll be performing “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp” along with actress Taraji P. Henson (Howard opted out of performing at the ceremony, but looks forward to Three 6 Mafia’s performance all the same). Many think they have a genuine shot at taking the gold, as very few songs are such a hot button topic of discussion around town. But winning the award seems to be the furthest thing from Houston and Beauregard’s mind.

    “We really haven’t made an acceptance speech. We’re real superstitious. We’re not really thinking about winning, we’re just having fun. But if we win, we’ll know who we’ll thank when we get up there.”

    The Oscar ceremony is this Sunday, March 5, and one thing is certain. Three 6 Mafia’s mark will be left when the show draws to a close, win, lose or draw. Hip-hop will have arrived at the Kodak Theater in the form of Memphis crunk.

  • INTERVIEW: Gong Li

    Chinese actress Gong Li is poised to explode onto the landscape of the American movie scene.

    An international star and a staple of contemporary Asian cinema for nearly twenty years, Gong has offered awards-caliber work with performances in Kaige Chen’s Farewell My Concubine and former beau Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern and Shanghai Triad, as well as this year’s 2046 from revered auteur Wong Kar-Wai. Her second English language endeavor comes this December in the form of Columbia’s Memoirs of a Geisha from director Rob Marshall.

    One of the last big secrets of the season is just how well this film, from the Academy Award-nominated Chicago helmer, may or may not have turned out. Marshall initiated much hullabaloo last year in the form of his perceived controversial casting decisions, and that fallout has continued through to the film’s upcoming release.

    For the lead role of Nitta Sayuri, a Japanese geisha circa 1929, the director thumbed Bejing-born wunderkind Ziyi Zhang. This triggered a swell of resentment from many in the international film-going community, shocked at the notion of casting a Chinese woman in the position of a Japanese character, let alone a character so historically resonant where the country’s heritage is concerned. But then Marhsall also sought out Malaysian native Michelle Yeoh for the role of Mameha, Sayuri’s mentor, and, of course, China-bred Gong Li in the showy role of villainess Hatsumomo.

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  • INTERVIEW: Viggo Mortensen

    “I think Americans are good people, but I don’t think they’re better or worse than anybody else in the world. I am particularly proud of the fact that, in spite of the pathetic performance of our government in relation to what happened, how it could have been prepared for and reaction after the fact to the hurricane, and now there’s another one today, and tomorrow coming in hard – it didn’t matter what the government did or didn’t do or how they wanted to hide or make excuses. People took care of business, and continue to. I think people are essentially resilient and people surprise us – the good they can do, the compassion they can display. Humans are unique in that sense compared to other animals, just like in this story. They can reason and say ‘no, that’s not the right way. It may be difficult, but I want to struggle against being that way.’ They can also reach out to help people that they don’t even know for no particular reason other than it’s the right thing to do. And you can see that happening right now. That always give you hope for the future.”

    -Viggo Mortensen, Beverly Hills, Septmber 22, 2005

    Actor Viggo Mortensen has an eclectic sense of artistry.

    He is keen on storytelling, not only through his work as a thespian, but also through his efforts in literature and even photography. Maria Bello describes him as being a man whom you cannot separate from his art, and speaking directly with the actor, one detects an unabashed sense of cultural acuity – an attunement with the world of self-expression.

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  • Waxing politique

    Interviewing Viggo Mortensen last Thursday at the Four Seasons brought with it the inevitable political discussion, prompted by my referencing statements the actor had made calling for the impeachment of President Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The following is his political stance and word for word dissection of the administration. Though not pertaining to A History of Violence or film in the slightest, I feel it an important statement that deserves its own coverage. And I agree with every syllable:

    “What I don’t want is just for Bush to be impeached, because the last person I want in charge of the world is Cheney. He’s a total pirate. And this doesn’t have to do with left wing, right wing, it doesn’t have to do with democrat, republican, it’s about honesty. I know that politicians – that’s the way the business is, politics – most of them, at some point or another, act in a two-faced way, by necessity it seems, and that governments generally lie. But what Bush and his backers have done is so far beyond, in terms of lying consistently, over and over again. They’ve taken it to a whole other level, and at the risk of sounding crude, I guess I would ask you this. How can you justify having impeachment proceedings that are costly and extremely distracting to a president that is trying to run the country and deal with things like terrorism? How can you compare having impeachment proceedings against someone for lying about a private sexual encounter or encounters, with a guy who is taking the United States to hell in a hell basket? It’s just unbelievable.

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  • INTERVIEW: Maria Bello

    Actress Maria Bello tells it how it is.

    She seemingly refuses to censor herself, and in an interview setting she is perfectly comfortable allowing her thought process to be put on display. She’s headstrong, contemplative and overwhelmingly sensitive to the natural process of learning, be it through life, through career, through love or through family. She’s one of the few who seems to approach acting from within rather than from without, and as such, she was the perfect candidate for the demanding and crucial role of Edie Stall in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence.

    An actress with roots in television, including a modest stint on NBC’s “ER”, Bello has made rather defining marks in her cinematic output thus far. She typically finds herself portraying ladies mesmerized by their leading men.

    In Permanent Midnight, she played the whimsical groupie (of sorts) to Ben Stiller’s former junkie screenwriter. In Auto Focus she found face-time opposite Greg Kinnear’s sex-addicted Bob Crane. In The Cooler she bounced off of the passive and reactive William H. Macy as a call girl searching for a pulse in lighted but lifeless Las Vegas. And this year, she offers her best work to date, opposite Viggo Mortensen, portraying equal parts of fear, loathing and intrigue as the wife of a man caught between a clouded past and a hopeful future.

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  • INTERVIEW: David Cronenberg

    Filmmaker David Cronenberg has made a career out of disturbing imagery. From James Woods shoving a videotape through his stomach in 1983’s Videodrome to James Spader getting off with a crippled Holly Hunter in 1996’s Crash; Jeff Goldblum spewing acid in 1986’s The Fly to the construction of a weapon made of human bones in eXistenZ, Cronenberg has found a knack for concocting horrifying cinematic incarnations.

    His latest film, A History of Violence, opened in limited release last weekend. The film is, by and large, his most subtle effort to date. By that same token, it is also the most disturbing work of his career.

    One would never expect such fantastic imaginings to come from the brain of this modest, quiet and unassuming individual. Mr. Cronenberg sits with Zen-like contentment when both surrounded by a roundtable of harping journalists, as well as in private, having just received news of a rave review from The New York Times. He is a man who seems very comfortable in his own skin, peering out at the world he envisions through piercing blue eyes, under furry mantle-like gray eyebrows. He seems quite capable of amusing himself through his work as an artist.

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