Tim Curry at the Los Angeles celebration of the 40th Anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Photo by Cynthia Marie H.

Tim Curry 

Celebrates Forty Years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

by Michelle Kacavas

“I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.”

And so it began, in the beautiful Los Angeles City Hall Council Room, with a speech by District 5 Councilman Paul Koretz. He started by calling up the Nuart Theatre Shadowcast Company, Sins Of The Flesh, to do the “Time Warp”, introducing the council and all present to the world of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

One of the council members noted, “Oh, we have a naked golden boy here.”

The Los Angeles celebration of the 40th Anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Photo by Cynthia Marie H.

Councilman Koretz, in a Rocky Horror tie, continued on with a heartfelt speech about the U.S. premiere of the movie being shown at the Festival Theatre in Westwood on September 26, 1975. He went on by elaborating on how the small film grew and grew, with audience participation and word of mouth, and that it is “without peer, the longest running film release in history.”

Of special note, Councilman Koretz also mentioned that “the film has also been helpful and began the bisexual rights movement, the acceptance of fabulous drag queens and has provided an essential community for people who otherwise may feel themselves on the fringe of society.”

Before he introduced the producer of the movie, Lou Adler, he officially declared October 30, 2015, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show Day.”

The Los Angeles celebration of the 40th Anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Photo by Cynthia Marie H.

Adler began with saying he grew up in Boyle Heights and “if someone had told me I was going to City Hall this morning I would have been more scared than excited.”  He said he never would have expected to be celebrating the movie 40 years later. He attributes the entire success of the movie to Tim Curry, saying “to those of us who were disappointed that in 1975 he (Tim) didn’t get the Academy Award, he is the reason that this started and has never ended.”

Tim Curry (who suffered a major stroke in 2012 and is still recovering) was given a microphone and said, “Thank you, councilpersons.  This is a great honor.  What a beautiful building this, this is…. So close to my favorite American holiday, Halloween.”  There was a long pause and Marcia Hurwitz, his longtime agent, asked if he had anything more to say, and Curry said, “I don’t think so, just thank you.  Thank you, thank you.”

Tim Curry at the Los Angeles celebration of the 40th Anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Photo by Cynthia Marie H.

Up next was Sal Piro, The Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club founder and President since 1977.  Piro was part of the original New York Waverly Theatre audience where all of the audience participation started.  He spoke about the fans who have kept this movie alive “week after week, year after year…. We didn’t need social media back in 1975. We were our own social media. We were the people who loved the movie so much that we spread the word, and we came, we saw and we conquered.”

After much applause and a wrap up by Councilman Koretz, we adjourned to a meeting room where we got to take pictures and briefly interview Curry, Adler, Piro and the Shadowcast.

Curry was asked what his favorite moment of the movie was and he joked, “When the check cleared.”

Tim Curry at the Los Angeles celebration of the 40th Anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Photo by Cynthia Marie H.

Curry looked for Hurwitz time and time again, and she would occasionally blow kisses at him, which made him smile. Hurwitz told me that her relationship with Curry was wonderful. She had been with him for many years and she was his “person.”

Curry was asked what he thought the difference was between the play and the movie and he said, “The film is, dare I say it, it is a tiny bit more subtle.”

About the movie’s timelessness, Curry said,  “I think it’s partly that it was beautifully lit, and beautifully shot.  It happened very quickly.  We shot it all in eight weeks.  It was very exciting for me because it was my first movie.”

He was also asked what city took the movie to heart the most. “Budapest,” he said.  “I’m serious.  I made a film in Budapest, and the crew came up one by one, practically knelt at my feet…. Film is strictly controlled by the government in Hungary, so they were very excited by Rocky film.”

Tim Curry and Sins O’The Flesh at the Los Angeles celebration of the 40th Anniversary of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Photo by Cynthia Marie H.

Liz Stockton, the Sins of the Flesh’s Dr. Frank N. Furter, told me she has now has “been doing this for 25 years, so I’ve met him before, but this was an honor.”

Everyone then went to the Festival Theatre, where a plaque was presented, stating “At this site on September 26, 1975 The Rocky Horror Picture Show made its U.S. premiere,” with the words “Don’t Dream it…Be it!” written across the bottom.

Much the same speeches were made by Councilman Koretz, Piro and Adler, but I did ask Councilman Koretz how The Rocky Horror Picture Show Day came to be.  He said he had known Lou Adler many years because he owns the Roxy which is in his district, and they got together and had this idea, so the councilman made it happen.

I got to get to ask Curry what his least favorite part of filming the movie was.  He said “The pool. It was cold. It took an hour.” His most favorite scene was the floor show. And what a floor show it is, even after 40 years!

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 3, 2015.

Photos ©2015 Cynthia Marie H.  All rights reserved.

Steve Jobs

STEVE JOBS (2015)

Starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Katherine Waterston, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sarah Snook, Katherine Waterston, Perla Haney-Jardine, Ripley Sobo, Makenzie Moss, John Ortiz, Vanessa Ross and Adam Shapiro.

Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.

Directed by Danny Boyle.

Distributed by Universal Pictures.  122 minutes.  Rated R.

You’d think that Steve Jobs had a fascinating life.  After all, the man changed the world, became a multi-billionaire, was the face for creating some of the most important technological advances of all time, was a well-known eligible bachelor, ran one of the biggest corporations in the world and died at a tragically young age.

This is the third film on Jobs’ life that has been released in the past year.  First off was the misbegotten docudrama Jobs (Ashton Kutcher as Jobs? Really?).  Next out of the gate was master documentarian Alex Gibney’s Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.

The latest film, Steve Jobs, which was written by Oscar-winning scribe Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and directed by fellow Oscar winner Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), is far and away the better of the two fictional dramatizations of Jobs’ life.  (I haven’t seen the documentary, but as good as it may have been I doubt it was as impressive of a piece of sheer filmmaking as this one as well.)

In many ways Steve Jobs is a masterpiece.  It is evocatively written.  The acting is spectacular.  The cinematography is arresting.  It has huge, majestic visuals and intimate, quiet moments of self-doubt and pity.  Actor Michael Fassbender does an incredible impersonation of Jobs, even to the point of looking surprisingly much like the executive in the later scenes.

However, no matter how good Steve Jobs is – and it is a terrific film in most ways – it highlights the very basic problem with making a film about Steve Jobs.  His life simply wasn’t all that interesting.  He did not create most of the technologies for which he was known.  (These were mostly done by Apple scientists, particularly his less flashy, more wonkish partner Steve Wozniak.)  Jobs was the salesman, the huckster, the idea man who got them out to the world.

Which in itself is a huge talent and a skill, but not necessarily the most cinematic skill in the world.  In fact, for as well-made as Steve Jobs is, it mostly shows that for a man that was at the forefront of so much of recent history, Steve Job’s life was actually kind of dull.  And, frankly, he was more than a bit of an asshole.

Of course, similar things could be said about Sorkin’s similar 2011 bio-pic of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network, and while that film was terrific and all of those things, it was also just a bit more accessible to an audience.

Steve Jobs actually has a very regimented structure, not letting much of the man into his own biography.

The film focuses on three product launches at different points in Jobs’ career.  Each product launch is beset by ramped up versions of the same subjects.

A last minute technical glitch threatens to ruin the launch, causing the scientists to scramble to fix things.  Jobs threatens and cajoles his scientists – particularly Wozniak (a spot-on Seth Rogan) and Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) – to get things up and running or it will be their jobs.

Jobs’ long-suffering assistant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) tries to calm her over-caffeinated perfectionist boss and to keep everything running smoothly for the launch.

Jobs butts heads with his immediate superior up the food chain at Apple (and eventually his predecessor), John Sculley (played by Jeff Daniels).

And Jobs tries to come to some kind of relationship with his out-of-wedlock daughter (played at different ages by Perla Haney-Jardine, Ripley Sobo and Makenzie Moss) – who he spends much of the film denying paternity for – even though it is very strained.  Just a thought, but that may be because A) he denies he is her father, B) he is passive-aggressively dismissive his ex/her mother and C) he punishes her for getting bad graves by reneging on a promise to pay her tuition.

It’s all very fast paced, written with the familiar zingy, smart Sorkin dialogue, it is flashy, shiny and insanely well-made.  And yet, in the end, the audience can’t help but feel that they spent two hours of their life watching nothing much happen.

That nothing much happened with exceptional artistic thrust and focus, but in the long run it sort of feels like a shiny, fancy trinket that we are impressed by, but had no real need for.

Sort of like an Apple Watch.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 5, 2015.

Before We Go

BEFORE WE GO (2015)

Starring Chris Evans, Alice Eve, Emma Fitzpatrick, John Cullum, Mark Kassen, Elijah Morelan, Daniel Spink, Alan Cox, Maria Breyman, Paul Monte Jr., Beth Katehis, Kevin Carolan, Turhan Caylak, Fenton Lawless, Gerald Bunsen and Scott Evans.

Screenplay by Ron Bass & Jen Smolka and Chris Shafer & Paul Vicknair.

Directed by Chris Evans.

Distributed by Radius-TWC/Anchor Bay Home Video.  96 minutes.  Rated PG-13.

With his leading man looks and tendency to play iconic characters in big-budget films such as Captain America (the Captain America and Avengers movies), The Human Torch (The Fantastic Four movies), and the ideal boy next door (What’s Your Number? and The Nanny Diaries), it’s easy to forget how quirky and risky some of Chris Evans’ roles have been.

From his hardened futuristic killer in Snowpiercer, to the endangered space explorer in Sunshine, to his psycho mobster in The Iceman to the action movie star and evil ex he played in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, you never knew what direction the young actor would take.  Hell, his career even survived being the male lead in the critically and popularly despised parody Not Just Another Teen Movie, which if nothing else must have taught him a thing or two about resilience.

Evans has made a bit of a specialty of handsome guys who are significantly deeper and more nuanced than you would have at first guessed.  Therefore, it’s kind of nice that is debut film as a director would be a bittersweet, dialogue-heavy romantic comedy in which the lead characters are almost guaranteed not to end up together.

Before We Go is rather reminiscent to another similarly titled film – Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise – and that is very high praise indeed.  And while no one will ever say that Before We Go is the artistic equivalent of Linklater’s film, the fact that it’s even in the same ballpark is a really impressive achievement.

Before We Go shares the same very basic premise as Before Sunrise.  Two strangers at crossroads in their lives meet by chance and spend the night walking around a big city (Vienna in Sunset, Manhattan in this film), talking about hopes and dreams, experiencing the city, sharing secrets and getting to know each other much better, even though they know that the real world waits and they will probably never see each other after the next morning.

Granted, Before We Go is rather more gimmicky with the plot device.  We deal with robberies, fights, former lovers, infidelities, black-market handbags, unsanctioned musical performances, and many other complications that seem more in line with The Out-of-Towners than Before Sunset, but still it somehow all works.  Besides, it’s not all that bad a thing to remind people of The Out-of-Towners either; at least the terrific Jack Lennon/Sandy Dennis original, it would not be so good to remind people of the Steve Martin/Goldie Hawn remake.

However, unlike Before Sunrise, neither of the two lead characters is truly unencumbered for a potential new romance.

Evans plays Nick Vaughan, a jazz trumpeter who is in New York for his dream audition.  The problem is, Hannah (Emma Fitzpatrick), the woman who got away for him, one who he still obsesses about six years after their breakup, is also in town at a party with mutual friends.  And, she is there with a man.  Therefore Nick has been busking at Grand Central Station for hours, trying to avoid going to the party and seeing her.

While closing up his trumpet as the train station is closing down for the night, he spies Brooke Dalton (Alice Eve), and attractive woman who is rushing to catch the last train to Boston, which she barely misses.  She has had her purse snatched at a local bar, so she has no money or ID.  She broke her phone trying to catch the train.  Now she has no way to get home before her husband, for whom she had left a very bitter note which may blow up her marriage.

Nick decides to help the woman get home, but of course his cell phone battery is dead and his credit cards are all maxed out.  So the two people walk around the city, trying to find her purse or some money in order to get her back home before her husband finds the note.  And though both of them are in love with other people, they start feeling a bit of a mutual attraction as every plan they try to hatch to get her home fails miserably.

Sometimes these gimmicks seem to be completely at the whim of the storyline – when Evans’ character has his credit cards declined early on, making it impossible to just send her home in a cab or bus – he explains that the funny thing is that he had working credit cards that morning.  However, the story never bothers to explain what he had done in that day – which seemed to consist of standing around playing trumpet at Grand Central Station for several hours, hiding from the possibility of running into his friend and his former lover – that would have maxed out all of his credit cards in a matter of less than a day.

In a certain amount of ways it is formulaic and a little cheesy.  At the same time, I have to admit it kind of got to me.  Before We Go is not a perfect film by any means, but it is a surprisingly enjoyable one.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 5, 2015.

Cameron Dallas and Nash Grier with our Maggie Mitchell at the New York press day for “The Outfield.” Photo by Caitlyn Lange.

Nash Grier & Cameron Dallas

Talk the Outfield Movie

by Maggie Mitchell & Deborah Wagner

When three high school baseball stars who have been best friends since childhood head into their senior year, they have to navigate some pretty difficult situations in the new film The Outfield. Life-changing decisions about family, friendships, career goals and college choices arise and challenge the teens. Together though, these three buddies – played by Nash Grier, Cameron Dallas and Joey Bragg – find a couple of constants. Through thick and thin, the trio needs to follow their dreams. Thankfully, they can always lean on each other.

After screening the film last week, we checked in with two of the film’s über-popular stars – Nash Grier and Cameron Dallas. They talked about the experience of making the movie with a friend, what fans can expect, whether they have ever faced similar personal challenges and much more. Set for release on iTunes on November 10, 2015 by Fullscreen Films, The Outfield promises to be a huge success, due greatly to the popularity of these two social media stars. Their fan base is beyond excited for the movie’s pending release.

Best known as new media superstars, Grier is just seventeen and Dallas is now twenty one. They have nearly 22 million followers combined across social media, which is not a feat which is easily reached. Both boys’ careers exploded by making six-second videos on Vine (Grier is actually known as “the King of Vine”), as well as other social media feeds.

After achieving extreme internet fame, both Grier and Dallas joined Magcon (Meet and Greet Convention), a social-media tour that was bringing some of the biggest names in the field to the hometowns of fans across the country. After leaving Magcon, they moved in together in LA to concentrate on their acting careers. Though not still living together, they’re still friends working towards the same acting goals.

The Outfield is Grier’s first acting gig and the second for Dallas. The two plan on working hard to make sure it’s not their last. If their fans have anything to say about it, we’re sure it won’t be.

Cameron Dallas at the New York press day for “The Outfield.” Photo by Caitlyn Lange.

How are you guys today?

Cameron Dallas: We are good.

Nash, I’ve talked to you brother before, but not you.

Nash Grier: The little one?

Yes, Hayes!

Nash Grier: That’s interesting. He’s a character.

He’s so sweet!

Nash Grier: Really?

Cameron Dallas: He’s a Hayes!

Yes!

Nash Grier: Okay…

Cameron Dallas: He’s definitely a Hayes!

How excited are you guys for your fans to finally see the movie?

Cameron Dallas: We’re pumped. It’s been a while.

Nash Grier: It’s been too long.

Cameron Dallas: The anticipation has been building up. It’s about to explode!

Nash Grier: Yeah, I think it’s eight days. I’m just waiting for everyone to see it.

Nash Grier at the New York press day for “The Outfield.” Photo by Caitlyn Lange.

The movie is based on playing baseball. Did you already know how to play, or did you have to practice and learn?

Nash Grier: We definitely practiced, but I have played baseball for years, growing up as a kid. It was just getting back in that groove, and finding my persona as a player. We went to the batting cages, and did workouts on fields and stuff.

Cameron Dallas: I played baseball for one year.

How’d that go?

Cameron Dallas: It was good. We got second place out of the league. I actually did play the outfield, too. As far as preparing, we went to the batting cages, and had someone teach us the proper way to throw a ball from the outfield.

Nash Grier: The fundamentals.

Make sure it looked good…

Nash Grier: It has to look as real as possible.

Is acting something that you both want to pursue in your life?

Cameron Dallas: 100%.

Nash Grier: Of course. I just fell in love with storytelling in a general basis. That is what we had been doing, but on a smaller level on the internet. A movie, especially this one, opens up to really tell anything. With the new spots and characters. You can put comedy and drama into one thing. That is one thing that I am very passionate about.

Cameron Dallas: The big goal is to do [low-budget made-for-video] movies like this, then move into ones that are in the theaters. Also, staying true to social media, and putting good content on there.

Nash Grier: It’s cool now, because we still get movies like this, indie films and small budget opportunities. Then we can still go do these huge productions and be the fifth or sixth guy. That is what the coolest is right now. Our doors are open.

Nash, your character Jack has a struggle where he has to decide between art and baseball. Have you ever been through a similar situation?

Nash Grier: Yes. I went through a struggle where I had to choose between sports and my existing life. Then deciding whether or not I wanted to start a career. That was a weird decision. Definitely not one day “I’m going to do this.” It happened over like a year. I used that whole experience to channel my character. Yeah, I had to decide: Well do I want to stop going to high school, stop playing sports?

Cameron Dallas: I remember that, too. It was such a weird transition for you. I’m glad you chose what you chose. You followed what you wanted to do, instead of what other people were telling you to do.

Nash Grier: I went where the passion was.

Cameron Dallas and Nash Grier with our Maggie Mitchell at the New York press day for “The Outfield.” Photo by Caitlyn Lange.

What was it like working with your close friends on set?

Cameron Dallas: Obviously, you can tell it was a lot of fun for us. I don’t know if it was that fun for everyone else.

Nash Grier: The sets were like controlled chaos. That’s all a set is. How many times can you film a scene but get it perfect? We’ll do it 20 times before we finish it, but every time it will be rushed because we are on a time crunch.

The movie is based on parents pressuring you into doing things. Do you think kids still feel pressured to do specific things because of their parents?

Nash Grier: Ah, yes. This is something that resonates with me a lot, because I’m out here doing something that none of my family has ever done before. Not even [just] my family, I feel like no one has done what we are doing. We are really pioneering “yeah you can start a career from the internet.” Just do it until people consider you a real entertainer. We were two of the first kids to ever do that. Kids have to understand that you can really do anything that you put your mind to. My older brother, for example, he plays football at the University of Florida. His whole life, since he was five, he was told he was going to be a quarterback. That’s what he was bred for. If he wasn’t in that situation, where would he be? I think parents, kids, schools and surroundings all determine what they’re doing. Their classes and everything determine what they are going to be. I just don’t think that anyone should limit themselves. A lot of people have the same job, or dress the same. It should be so different. Everyone is so unique in their head, but they don’t show that and they don’t always do that. So that’s what I think everyone should work on most.

Cameron Dallas: I definitely think so. (laughs)

If you can think back to filming what was your favorite scene to film?

Cameron Dallas: A lot of the favorite scenes were the last three days, when we filmed out on the field. Those were pretty sick, because we actually got to hit, and we played a game. We scrimmaged a team. They let us hit balls and stuff. I almost hit one out of the park. I split the ball in two places. It was pretty impressive. I actually impressed myself. I was like “What! I did not just hit that!”

Nash Grier: All the scenes were very different to film. We were either really happy in our normal lives, or I was crying because my mom just died. It really just depended on the scene we were working on, whether it was with my parents, or my friends, or my girlfriend. They are all very different scenes. I had fun doing the whole thing.

Cameron Dallas: There was one take that got to me. When my dad is sitting down at the table, and he asks me if I want to go to college. Deep down, Frankie wants to go. He feels like he’s stuck in Peoria. He wants to go to college, but he knows that his parents can’t afford it. He says no, knowing that his dad knows he wants to go. If he leaves, it will take one person away from bringing in income for the family. It’s kind of like “eh.” It’s a good scene.

Cameron Dallas, Joey Bragg and Nash Grier in “The Outfield.”

What was a normal set day like? Was it the same, or was it different everyday?

Nash Grier: Yo, mine was the worst, because I had school to do. Every five hours that I filmed, I had to do like two and a half hours of school. I’d go from a super-intense scene where I was super in character. If there was 15 minutes to spare, they would take me to school. I’d go back and forth from school to shooting. It was so distracting, and annoying. So after that film I was like: ok if I’m going to film, I’m finishing school. So I finished school. I’m done. I can focus on the film.

Cameron Dallas: Remember that house that we filmed at for the funeral scene? He was doing school in the back house or something like that. We opened the door, and I threw Frisbee plates at you. His teacher flipped out. I hid in the closet. I told Joey to hide with me. Joey didn’t trust me, so he didn’t hide. He ended up getting caught. The teacher freaked out on him, and I was just hiding in the closet laughing! He was like “I didn’t even do it!” And she was just like “GET OUT!”

Nash Grier: It wasn’t even like I was in school. It was just one on one. You didn’t have any freedom at all. It was your teacher and you. She’s behind you. Her only job is to make sure you get your school work done. You’re sitting there for hours on end. It’s just so awful.

What can your fans expect from the movie?

Nash Grier: Don’t expect anything. Don’t expect a single thing. That is what I would say going into it. Don’t watch it for him and me. Watch it for Frankie and Jack [their characters]. I know you guys have seen a lot of our videos and stuff, and that’s awesome. Try not to see us as the same people in the movie. We tried super hard to not be the same people in the movie.

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 5, 2015.

Photos 1-4 ©2015 Caitlyn Lange. All rights reserved.

Photos 5 ©2015. Courtesy of Fullscreen Films. All rights reserved.

Desmin Borges stars in YOU’RE THE WORST.

Desmin Borges

He’s the Best

by Jay S. Jacobs

In just under two seasons now, You’re the Worst on FXX (the first season ran on FX) has become one of the most intriguing comedies on TV – if not the most challenging series.

The first season was about millennial dating mores and the changing values in romance.  It started when Jimmy (Chris Geere), a self-absorbed but obscure British novelist, hooked up with Gretchen (Aya Cash), a jaded music publicist, at a wedding.  Of course, they weren’t there to celebrate.  He wanted to tell off the bride, who was an ex who ended things badly.  She was looking to steal a food processor.

Somehow, though, their one-night-stand turned into something of a relationship, despite the fact that both of them abhorred the very idea of romantic love.  They tried to traverse these new waters with advice from their best friends – her friend Lindsay (Kether Donohue), a nymphomaniac party girl stuck in a loveless marriage, and his roommate Edgar (Desmin Borges), an Iraq veteran and former pot dealer who was trying stay clean from a past heroin habit.

I was able to catch up with the entire cast of You’re the Worst on a location set last summer.  At that point, the show had not yet premiered and I’d only seen two episodes, though the cast was in the midst of filming a party scene for the season finale.  While the series showed great promise as a jaded anti-romantic comedy, no one probably would have guessed the emotional depths the series would come to explore.

Desmin Borges stars in YOU’RE THE WORST.

As good as the first season was, the second season has been something of a revelation.  Show runner Stephen Falk has taken his supremely smart and interesting characters and given the new nuances.  Not willing to skim along on the surfaces, the second season has been something of a dark night of the soul for the main characters, but despite some rocky going in their personal lives, the show remains as funny as ever.

“We’re super excited,” Desmin Borges told me when I recently caught up with him again to talk about the second season.  “It’s going splendidly, we think.”

The second season has been able to dig much deeper into the four relationships.  Lindsay is lost and depressed because her husband Paul left her.  Edgar falls unrequitedly for Lindsay and finally starts to come to terms with his Iraq experience through improv comedy, and even find a new love in a neurotic improv comedienne named Dorothy.  Jimmy’s literary career is sputtering and he is trying to deal with his Gretchen moving in with him, particularly after Gretchen starts showing signs of clinical depression.

In fact, in the recent episode, “LCD Soundsystem,” a stunning example of the changes afoot, the episode almost entirely revolved around two completely new characters, a neighbor couple who Gretchen became obsessed with.  Gretchen was in less than half of the show.  Jimmy was barely in it.  The rest of the show’s characters did not appear at all.  Yet the episode may have caused a seismic shift in all of the series characters’ relationships with each other.

As the second season is winding down to the last few episodes, I sat back down with Borges to catch up on the changes with the characters and the show.

Desmin Borges stars in YOU’RE THE WORST.

For the most part, Edgar is the only really giving, thoughtful person in the group.  Do you ever wish you could be as bad as the other characters?

Oh, yeah!  Of course.  I always throw in little pieces here and there to Stephen and the writers.  Like have Edgar break bad, maybe.  Maybe have something where we actually find this scene with him shooting up, although I don’t think that’s the direction people want me to go with the character.  But I’d love to.  I think at some point, if we’re lucky enough to keep this bad boy going, we’re going to have to see Edgar drop.  That’s just the nature of mental conditions, PTSD.  It’s like a rollercoaster.  Right now he’s on a really great upward trajectory, but at some point, statistically speaking, there’s going to be something that rocks his world and brings him back down and he’s going to have to climb again.  It will be interesting to see if we ever get to the point where I get to explore that.

On the other hand, do you feel that there is something heroic in Edgar that he can remain basically human when surrounded by such self-absorbed characters?

Yeah.  Maybe that’s the key to the success.  You surround yourself with people who are inevitably selfish and damaged, maybe even more so than you at the root, which causes you to continually be thankful that your side is brighter, off this day or this week.

Colette Wolfe and Desmin Borges star in YOU’RE THE WORST.

Edgar has sort of found himself this season through improv comedy, though honestly he’s not very good at it.  Why do you think that appeals to Edgar?

I think he thinks it is something that he’s actually good at.  I mean, he’s not going to be Will Ferrell or Cheri Oteri breaking out over there with the group, but I feel like it’s something that gives him a lot of confidence within himself.  It has opened up his world to new friendships.  His overall journey for this season is to be as – and I’m putting quotes up here – “normal as possible.”  Whatever that means to anybody.  Last year we dealt a lot with him being labeled as a former vet with PTSD and a pot dealer, riddled with abusing heroin and constantly watching Rachael Ray.  This season, we’re actually moving on to him really trying to transition into civilian life.  Into a formal place in life, so he can interact with other people.  I think he’s really enjoying it.  And the improv comedy definitely opens up doors those for him.  It gives him confidence.

The most recent episode aired, the second Sunday Funday episode, they showed Edgar relapsing a little bit with PTSD not under his control.  Obviously that is a serious subject for a comedy, but do you think that will be explored more as the series continues?

Oh yeah.  That mental condition lasts.  It doesn’t really ever completely leave anybody, no matter how well that they are doing.  Specifically within those circumstances, I mean we were acting in that haunted house and sometimes I was scared out of my mind.  You can just imagine someone who is riddled with it, for the lights and the music to be going as it is.  People popping out of anywhere to grab you and clinically do fake harm to you or whatever.  I can imagine that that issue would arise.  I’m guessing we’ll see more of it.  But thankfully enough, Dorothy was so receptive and understanding, which is one of the reasons why he falls so hard for her, so quickly.  She’s just really such a good person.  Actually interested in him, and his life, and his past experiences.  I don’t think it was the best place to divulge that sort of personal information to her, but I’m glad that she was as receptive as she was in that situation.  Then Edgar actually got to have sex for the first time in three years, which is a hell of a milestone within itself, right?

Chris Geere, Kether Donohue, Colette Wolfe, Desmin Borges and Aya Cash star in YOU’RE THE WORST.

I have to admit I’ve never seen a no-holds-barred haunted house quite like the one on your show.  Is that a thing now, or did Stephen and the writers come up with it?

Oh, no, no, that’s a thing.  The craziest one apparently is this one in San Diego.  It’s a minimum of three hours.  There is no safe word.  I’ve gone through one similar when I was in Texas, when I was a little younger, where you do sign a waiver saying that you won’t sue them if you get hurt or you get too scared and you pee on yourself, or something like that.  I think it’s basically like, unless if you have to be rushed to the hospital and you’re dying, they are not responsible for anything else other than that.  So, it’s cool that it came off as well as it did.  Our art department and our director, they did such a damned good job with that.  Those seven minutes in that haunted house, I was there and I remember all those things, and it’s still scary to me.  I can only imagine what it’s like for the viewers who weren’t actually there shooting.

YOU’RE THE WORST — “There Is Not Currently A Problem” — Episode 207 (Airs Wednesday, October 21, 10:30 pm e/p Pictured: (l-r) Todd Robert Anderson as Vernon, Collette Wolfe as Dorothy, Desmin Borges as Edgar, Aya Cash as Gretchen. CR: Byron Cohen/FX

With his own problems, Edgar also picked up on Gretchen’s depression very quickly and I think he sees it more seriously than Jimmy, who almost looks at it as mostly an inconvenience.  Do we get more information on the source of Gretchen’s problem, and will she work towards getting better as the season goes on?

That’s a main storyline for Jimmy and Gretchen specifically, and the crew as a whole, for the rest of the season.  Clinical depression isn’t really something that half-hour comedies, romantic comedies, anti-romantic comedies, really touch on.  It’s a very realistic issue that you deal with in all sorts of different ways, whether you’re in a relationship or you are a friend of someone who is a relationship.  The answer is yes, for the rest of this season we will continue to tell that story and monitor that storyline.  Edgar, of course, will be as sympathetic as he can be, because he probably is the only one who truly understands personally what’s going on.  Although Lindsay’s character in that scene in episode seven, we saw a whole different side of Lindsay and Gretchen’s relationship.  How close they are, with the scene that happened on the bed before she came out and apologized and told everyone that she was clinically depressed.

Speaking of performances, the show sort of showed Edgar falling for Lindsay in the final episode when she sang “This Woman’s Work.” That continued into this season, but he was totally friend-zoned by her, in fact, she treated him more like a girlfriend than anything else.

Yeah.  (laughs)

Kether Donohue and Desmin Borges star in YOU’RE THE WORST.

Lindsay is obviously kind of a hot mess this season, missing Paul even though she never really loved him, overeating, not sure how to take care of herself.  Do you think Edgar wanted to save her, or was he really in love?

I think he was really falling for her.  If you remember back to season one, that meta episode when we realize we’re sidekicks.  We realize that within our friendships with Jimmy and Gretchen that they never actually ask us anything about ourselves or listen to anything that we really have to say.  Edgar and Lindsay found a really good friendship and had really great chemistry together.  It’s like that old saying… I don’t even know if this is an old saying, but I’ve heard so many people saying, “I want to marry someone who is my best friend.”  Somebody that you were friends with, that you built a foundation with.  That you can do buddy-buddy things with, but also be super intimate with.  Start a family and start a life with.  Edgar in his mind thought that he was actually falling into what was an appropriate groove.  Then, of course, she just didn’t want Edgar in that way.  Although, now, she’s super jealous that he has somebody else.

So just looking at it from the outside, do you think that Edgar will try to end up with Dorothy or Lindsay?  Dorothy is the sweet, perfect girl who would probably be better for him, but Lindsay is the one who he could never get, and that has a strong pull.

Yeah.  I think that is ultimately a tug of war that we’re going to watch continue to develop as time goes on.  You said it best, Dorothy is obviously the smarter, more mature choice in the relationship scenario, but we are creatures that always want what we can’t have.  You tell me I can’t eat that candy bar, you better be damned sure that I’m going to do everything in my power to eat that candy bar.  (laughs)  I think that’s something we’ll see him continue to grapple with as the season progresses.

Aya Cash, Chris Geere, Kether Donohue and Desmin Borges star in YOU’RE THE WORST.

Have you ever had a situation like that, where you were interested in a girl and she just never got it or tried to keep you on the line as a fall back, and then when you became unavailable suddenly she was back?

Oh yes, very much so.  Two specific instances, when I was in college.  One of them happened to be one of my best lady friends.  I thought everything was kind of falling into place.  We had been friends for a couple of years.  Then I started to develop feelings and she really didn’t.  Then I started seeing someone else and she developed feelings.  Then I broke that off and then I came to her and she didn’t want me anymore.  She wanted somebody else.  Which is unfortunate, but it’s also indicative of naïveté and the lack of maturity.  I feel like that happens a lot more in younger relationships than it does once people get into their groove.  Into their mid-30s.  But with Edgar, he hadn’t had sex in three years.  Probably hasn’t had a real girlfriend since maybe he was getting out of high school, right before he went to Iraq.  So emotionally he’s still like an 18 to 20 year old kid.  We’re witnessing the relationship aspect, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s something that he goes back and explores quite a bit.

The one episode in which Jimmy and Gretchen woke up and panicked when you were not there, if only because they didn’t know how to make breakfast for themselves, was interesting.  Do you think that they could survive without Edgar?

It would be difficult for them.  They would go through all the food and all the alcohol in the house first.  They might figure out that GrubHub works – how to work GrubHub or Seamless.com.  But they might die from starvation.  Statistically, I’d give it like 76% that they would die from starvation.  (laughs)

Desmin Borges stars in YOU’RE THE WORST.

What would you do on your ideal Sunday Funday?

Right now it’s football season, so my ideal Sunday Funday is I usually have something in the kitchen that I have cooked, marinated for a night, whether it’s some crazy hot chili wings or some marinated skirt steak.  I wake up in the morning and get some Bloody Marys going.  I get some food going on the grill.  Then I watch the first round of games with some friends.  Then usually after the first round of games and eating and having some Bloody Marys, I fall asleep on the couch.  Then I wake up to either watch the night game or if I’m too tired, I sleep all the way to Monday morning.  That to me is a hell of a Sunday Funday.  (laughs)

How is it that you think that You’re the Worst can touch on such serious issues and yet still stay funny?

That’s just the brilliance of the writing.  Stephen and FX and John Landgraf [CEO of FX Networks], believing in Stephen and giving us a playground to continue to explore those things.  I feel like every time I hear Stephen talking about notes that he’s getting from the network, it’s about: Let this sit longer.  Make this a little bit more awkward.  Go deeper with this situation.  Let that scene hang for a little bit.  It’s nice to have the network, FX’s vote of confidence in you.  The thing is, with Edgar, PTSD is not a funny issue.  With Gretchen, clinical depression is not a funny issue.  But these people and the way they deal with them and the way that their friends react to them in a very selfish manner makes this sort of humorous.  We’re commenting basically on the fact that the people around them are the ones who are disrespectful to the nature of what the beast is.  Whereas, the people in them are really trying to work as hard as they can to fight through them and to come out on top.  As the actors who are dealing with them, we take it very seriously.  We allow the supporting cast to be the butt of the joke and to fill in the fun for us.

Aya Cash, Desmin Borges , Colette Wolfe and Todd Robert Anderson star in YOU’RE THE WORST.

Last season when I interviewed the four of you, I asked who was the worst and everyone but you said it was Lindsay.  You said Jimmy was probably the worst.  Another season on, have you changed your mind on who is the worst?

I think Becca [Lindsay’s sister, played by Janet Varney] is the worst now.  I know she hasn’t been in it lately as much.  Her husband, Vern, I think Vern is the best.  Him and Paul [Lindsay’s ex-husband] and Shitstain and Honey Nutz [the sidekicks of Gretchen’s rapper client], they are growing on me so fast.  Every time those guys are on screen, I feel such a joyous surge that goes through my body.  But every time Becca is on screen, man she is just inherently vicious all the time.  It doesn’t matter to who it is.  I understand she’s pregnant right now and sometimes there’s hormone imbalances happening and that, but I’d have to say I think ultimately Becca is the worst.  I think Jimmy is still following right behind her, though.

Any word on a season three yet?

No word officially that I know of.  I know that we all feel fairly confident that it will happen, based on what we’ve done and the response that we’ve received from the networks and from our fans.  We know that we would love for there to be a season three, because we want to keep on telling this story.  But there has been no official word from FX, so I’m waiting, just like you are.

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 5, 2015.

Photos ©2015 Courtesy of FXX. All rights reserved.

(L-R) CATE BLANCHETT and ROONEY MARA star in CAROL

Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, Phyllis Nagy & Todd Haynes

Look Back at the Lost World of 60 Years Ago with Carol

by Jay S. Jacobs

“There was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol.”

That is a pretty arresting and passionate description of the power and obsession of love. It is made all the more intriguing because novelist Patricia Highsmith wrote it in her novel The Price of Salt in 1952 – using the alias Claire Morgan due to societal taboos – one of the early serious literary looks at a lesbian relationship.

Highsmith was a well-regarded mystery novelist even at the time. Her first novel Strangers on a Train had just been made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. Her body of work kept intriguing readers and filmmakers alike, spawning such classic books as The Talented Mr. Ripley, Cry of the Owl, The Two Faces of January and Ripley’s Game. However it has been speculated that The Price of Salt was Highsmith’s most autobiographical novel.

The novel is also the latest film adaptation of Highsmith’s work, having been turned into the Oscar-buzz worthy Carol starring Cate Blanchett (who had also been in the movie of Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley) and Rooney Mara as the central couple in the relationship which was forbidden by their society. Kyle Chandler and Jake Lacy play the perplexed men in their lives, and Sarah Paulson is Carol’s best friend and confidant. The screenplay was written by Phyllis Nagy, who had known Highsmith before her death in 1995. Director Todd Haynes had previously worked on similarly nostalgic titles like Far From Heaven and Mildred Pierce.

Blanchett plays the title character, a married mother whose marriage has withered since she has realized that she is attracted to other women. She meets younger shop girl Therese (Mara) while buying a toy, and this leads to a slow-burning friendship-turned-courtship where the women try to repress their growing passion, until they can no longer. Carol’s angry husband Harge (Chandler) uses their relationship as leverage to get custody of their daughter Rindy, while Therese’s confused boyfriend Richard (Lacy) can’t seem to figure out why she is resisting his marriage offers. On the periphery is Abby (Paulson), Carol’s ex-lover and best friend who is placed in an awkward position where she has to help the new love of a woman for whom she still has feelings.

A few days before the film was about to be released, we participated at a press conference at the famous Marriott Essex House on Central Park South in which the stars, writer and director discussed their feelings about Carol.

ROONEY MARA and CATE BLANCHETT star in CAROL

Todd, I wanted to ask you about the emotion of the film. From the opening shot of a street grate to a final smile, how did you approach the film and bring it visually to the screen?

Todd Haynes: I really was taking it on as if for the first time looking at the love story, something that I felt I hadn’t really ever accomplished directly in my other films. That really began in reading The Price of Salt, Patricia Highsmith’s beautiful novel and the gorgeous adaptation of Phyllis’ script that first came to me with Cate attached. So, it was quite a bundle of incentives when it first landed with me in 2013. But love stories are unlike war, which is about conquering the object. Love stories are about conquering the subject. It’s always the subject who’s in a state of vulnerability and peril at some level.

Through much of Carol, that is the character of Therese, who occupies a much less powerful position in the world than Carol, is younger, is more open. Experiencing this woman with the freshness that is different from Carol’s life and experience. What I loved about the story was how what happened to the two women really moves them through a series of events which change them both. Ultimately by the end of the film, they’ve shifted sides. Carol is the one who comes to Therese with her heart on her sleeve at the end of the film, so all of that made a lot of smaller elements – of looking, and who is being looked at, and who is doing the looking, and all of those questions – something that was very conducive to the cinematic language.

Cate, a lot of the character of Carol revolves around her vulnerability. What were some of the keys for you as you approached the character?

Cate Blanchett: I think it was questions that she hadn’t been asked and she hadn’t asked herself. Carol’s a deeply private person, whose sexuality in relationship to herself is not unsettled or ambiguous, but she lives in a quiet hell because she’s not able to fully express herself. I guess it was the way she was brought up. She has not been in a loveless marriage. People keep describing it as a loveless marriage. I guess that the complicated thing for Carol – and being confronted by Therese at the time in her life that it is – is that she’s got an enormous amount to lose.

She’s found an unhappy balance… if you can find an unhappy balance with Kyle Chandler; that would be very difficult (laughs)… with Harge because of her love for her daughter. She’s risking a lot. There was a beautiful line that Phyllis wrote describing Therese as being flung out of space. I also think Carol’s describing that situation of being in uncharted territory, free-floating, as you do when you fall in love with anyone for the first time. You feel like you’ve never been here before. You’re being confronted with questions, confronted with sides of yourself. It suggests a territory you’ve never been to before.

ROONEY MARA stars in CAROL

Rooney, Therese is often shown in frames; boxes, windows, even her camera lens. Like she has to break out. Was there anything you did to map out her journey?

Rooney Mara: Todd and I talked a lot about that. We had a few weeks of rehearsal in Cincinnati with everyone. That was pretty much what we were doing in rehearsal – not just mapping out Therese’s journey, but mapping out the entire script. Films obviously don’t film in order, so you have to do that with every element of the script.

Phyllis, you knew Patricia Highsmith at the end of her life. What was it like to translate the story’s 1952 world without looking at it through a modern sensibility?

Phyllis Nagy: That was one of the things that I was intent on doing – to not overlay a contemporary psychology onto any of the characters. When you overlay any kind of a psychology and overview, an ethos, you’re judging those characters immediately. It seemed very important for all the nuances of the relationships among the central quartet that you don’t do that. It’s very easy for me to forget about.

The first draft was many years ago, but when I started working with Todd on this it was a pleasure to forget that we were living right now. (laughs) We didn’t have to deal with any of the methods of communication that people might’ve had, or the attitudes or judgments of now. We all have to be very, very aware of what we’re doing. This is about instinct, not calculation, although the circumstances of their lives required some calculation.

Kyle, Harge is complicated, feeling he has been cheated of the life he expected. How did you humanize him with the anger that he shows?

Kyle Chandler: Good direction. (laughs) No, just listening to what you just said, one of the really interesting aspects about playing this character is he is what he is on the screen. But, the way you just spoke about how he has put it together, you (referring to Haynes) left everything open for Harge to actually do as he will and to find those spaces. That was interesting. As I was playing it, at some point, I realized that it could be a stereotypical character very easily. Portray what you would imagine of a guy from the 50’s under these circumstances. What happened was, at some point, the worst possible moment in a man’s life, or a woman: They’re in love is when they realize they’re not in love anymore.

This character never realized he wasn’t in love anymore. He was always in love, and he was intensely in love. He also had this little child – not just his wife, not just his child, but his family unit was so important to him and so important, to say nothing of his social status and what he was. He refused to give that up. What you said about the character allowed me as a character to stay in that and never lose love or respect, but still be very confused. What’s going on? Which goes back to that one direction [Haynes] gave me: When I’m walking in the room and I look across and I go “Who are you?!” basically. Todd gave me a specific direction there. It really turned me. I was like: Oh, yeah! Okay. Anyway, for me this whole thing was so much fun. It was really refreshing, because of what the material is and just the way it was presented. Then seeing it is wonderful.

SARAH PAULSON stars in CAROL

Sarah, Abby’s friendship with Carol is so moving, because they were exes, but Abby was helping with the new girlfriend. What were you looking at as their relationship?

Sarah Paulson: I really just tried to think about friendship. And selflessness. And unwavering loyalty. I think Abby still has feelings for Carol. It’s a challenging thing. I wonder what I personally would do if somebody I loved and still had feelings for, if I was called upon to come in and rescue the person that she currently loves. I don’t know. It was, to me, a testament to her friendship and her love, and I think the desire to be around Carol and Carol’s orbit no matter what. Abby’s sense of society – I don’t mean literal society, but her community, her friendships – they were probably quite narrow at that time. So, to lose something like that, the consequences of that would be too enormous. I just thought about things like that.

Jake, if Harge is one type of guy, Richard is another. As you were working on the character, were you finding the levels of subtlety? It feels like Richard understands something about Therese, but he can’t seem to figure out why she is dragging her feet to marry him.

Jake Lacy: It was definitely in the script. That subtlety was not thanks to me, for sure. Todd spoke with me when we first met about the idea that for Richard the world is there to take. He’s young. He’s in New York. He’s first generation American. He’s smart. He’s handsome. He has a job. He’s got a girl. The world is his for the taking, and yet, it slips away from him, without knowing it. Thank God that it does, because otherwise he’s 15 years or ten years earlier than Carol and Harge and that world, if he and Therese created a life that then wasn’t a life anymore.

I don’t know if I can speak to the subtlety, I think that maybe that you were experiencing that more than my attempt to create something. I do think, to me, for Richard it’s the idea of a dream that then falls apart, where someone is not willing to be a part of that dream. Trying to wrangle them in when they are not meant to be there.

CATE BLANCHETT stars in CAROL

Even though this is some 50 years ago, it is a period film. With regard to the physicality, I loved specifically how you moved. The body language of that time versus today is quite different, even the way a cigarette is held or you place a coffee cup. How did you achieve that?

Cate Blanchett: For me personally, it felt less about the period and more about what Todd was referring to before as about “the gaze.” If the cigarette was held in a certain way and perceived by the camera in a certain way, it was because it was viewed through the prism of someone’s desire, rather than the prism of the period. One of the most revelatory things that Todd showed all of us, that I found really useful was a film called Lovers and Lollipops. In fact, it completely subverted everything I’d seen of the 50s represented before. It was so fresh and immediate. I felt like everything was happening right then and there in front of me. It was people in clothes, not in costumes, existing and behaving with one another as we do now.

When you experience a love story, whether it is back in the 1400s in China, or it’s in 1952 in New York, it feels as if it is this timeless connection. So the period is an important impediment in all the dramas, details to be drawn with, but it became secondary. Although the girdles… (laughs)  Those things were hard. There was a scene where Rooney was playing the piano. I’d found this position on the floor. I thought I have to be graceful, so I had to rehearse a lot so I would be able to get up in one movement, which was difficult.

You also looked at a lot of 50s photography, right, like Ruth Orkin?

Todd Haynes: We did. Ruth Orkin is one of the color photographers we looked at, who was photographing New York City in color at the time. Ruth Orkin was the partner of Morris Engel. These are all New York-based artists and photojournalists. They did psycho-dramas, not documentaries. The Little Fugitive is the best known of their films, their collaborations. They would use unknown actors, put them in real locations and use real light. The Little Fugitive is the story of a little kid who runs away to Coney Island during the day.

Lovers and Lollipops they made a few years later. It was set in locations more relevant to our film, but it had a woman at the center of the story. It was the story of a single mother trying to ingratiate her daughter to a new boyfriend. She was just a woman. She was not a wealthy woman like Carol. But she was a woman with this tremendous poise and this gait and this manner of speech. It was an example of this femininity that we just do not see anymore. You might glimpse it in your grandmother, but it is something that is not produced anymore culturally. Yet it’s not something you would see by actresses from Hollywood films from the period. It gave an insight to something quite specific and sort of lost. That was very useful to Cate and Rooney.

(L-R) ROONEY MARA and CATE BLANCHETT star in CAROL.

The love story did not necessarily feel homosexual, it just felt like any relationship.

Cate Blanchett: It’s normal.

Was that something you were trying for?

Rooney Mara: To me there is no difference, so it is kind of a difficult question to answer. One of the great things about the film is that it’s not a political film. It’s not a film with an agenda. We’re not preaching to the audience. So people are allowed to just watch it for what it is. It’s a love story between two humans.

You mentioned that Carol is risking so much, her marriage and her child. Was that in the text of the novel?

Phyllis Nagy: It’s interesting that you mention her marriage, because I think her marriage is over. She’s not risking her marriage. That is in Patricia Highsmith’s novel. She is risking the ability to have her child with her in the moment after this divorce happens. I don’t think she ever risks… in her heart she is not giving up her child. She is allowing her child to grow up, for the moment, in the environment that’s best for her. Carol is being a good mother in allowing the child to be with Harge. Carol must be who she is. She is not yet who she is. In order to be good for her child and not screw her up later on, she’s got to do this. It’s actually quite selfless. I don’t think it has to do with being with Therese. I think those two things are separate.

Todd Haynes: I would add that she is also serving an authority over the situation, in a veiled threat to Harge. Basically saying: I want to see Rindy on my terms. If not this may come to court and this may get ugly. One could only imagine how ugly this could get for someone like Harge and his family if this really did get played out in the courts. She ends up actually holding the reins in her hands about how and when she gets to see her daughter. That had not been the case up until that point in the story.

Phyllis Nagy: Highsmith allows us a great freedom in the novel with the character of Carol, whose own narrative was relayed almost exclusively through Therese’s eyes. You get these shards, these mosaic pieces of Carol’s life. Now Carol’s doing this. Now I hear she is having a custody battle. It gave us great freedom, because there is no big moment with Carol and Harge like that in the book, to actually explore some of these things and the power dynamic, so that it’s less about will I lose my child? I personally don’t think she’s ever in danger of losing Rindy in a real sense.

Cate Blanchett: But it is interesting, because what your question points to is the fact that if a mother makes a choice based on her survival she risks losing the audience’s sympathy. If it was a gay man, somehow I don’t think the question of sympathy would arise. When anyone plays a mother onscreen there’s always a sense that there’s a right way to parent. That you lose your identity and you become a mother first and foremost. What I loved about Todd is that he didn’t ever talk about sympathy. Personally as an actor, I find the idea of playing for an audience’s sympathy a kind of repulsive endeavor. (chuckles) It’s like saying: Like me, like me!

It’s a terrible, terrible  position, a tragic position that Carol has been placed in. And Harge has been placed in, frankly. When she says in the lawyer’s office, “We’re not ugly people, Harge,” I think that’s when the threat goes out of it. That is the truth. You are not like this at your heart, if you take away all the trappings of society. I’m not like this. I think that’s the issue. One thing about working with Todd is we never discussed the sympathy. (dramatically) The S word!

Is this a classic case of the heart wants what the heart wants?

Cate Blanchett: I don’t know.

Kyle Chandler: Yes. (They all laugh.)

Rooney Mara: Yeah.

Cate Blanchett: No. (Everyone laughs again.)

CAROL

Well, when Kyle is looking in the room at Abby, it’s interesting, there is a world going on that he is not privy to, he’s not allowed into, and he’s confused by it. So his heart may want something else, but there is this whole other situation that these other two hearts have going on that he just does not understand. He’s not able to unlock it. Is that a fair assessment of that scene?

Todd Haynes: Yes, clearly. You see the two satellites, the key power brokers on either side of Carol’s life, coming in direct conflict of each other in that scene. It’s the only scene that neither Carol or Therese witness in the film, but they are there as an extra kind of force. It is an essential scene. It’s a showdown. About people who love Carol in different ways, disavowing the other person’s side. But they are strong people, too.

The interesting thing about Kyle’s character, Harge, is that we are introduced to Harge at an uncustomary period in his life as a character. One presumes that Harge has always pretty much taken Carol for granted most of their life. But when the film begins, he’s already reevaluated her value in his life. The way he’s inviting her out and wanting to spend time with her and share time with her seems to be a new project, a new regimen.

Smoking plays a big part in this world, almost an addiction. Was that intended?

Todd Haynes: Smoking is the perfect conductor of desire, because it’s a way in which you seek desire and you never fulfill it. I know this from being an ex-smoker. It’s a practiced cycle where you seek being satisfied, you crave that moment, but you’re always chasing an original moment that you’ll never get back to in that cigarette. Of course it’s played a key symbolic role in the history of Hollywood’s golden age cinema, the history of films about women, and the ways that anxieties and desires are displaced into other practices. I don’t see it as much more than that in itself.

Kyle Chandler: That was a great description. (Everyone laughs)

Another signifier of Hollywood’s golden age was how it was shot – in 16mm (film). Could you talk about that process?

Todd Haynes: Ed Lachman, the director of photography, and I had worked in super 16 on our previous project, Mildred Pierce, which was going ultimately to be broadcast on HDTV on HBO. We wanted to really downgrade the sophistication of lenses and stocks today, where the grain element continually goes away. If you shot on film, you shot on 35mm sometimes, and it blows up to HD. We loved it. We had a really great time on that project.

The research for Carol kept revealing the city in a very early stage. It was the transition out of the war years. The early 1950s were something quite different from the Eisenhower war years that we mostly attribute to that shiny, glossy decade. I was quite interested and curious about how different this world looked than the world perhaps of my film Far From Heaven. We wanted to bring some of that sootiness, some of that monochromatic color palette to the look of the film. The 16mm was one of the ways that we did that. We also found a beautiful city that had architectural integrity, and was really preserved in its past in many blocks and many of the interiors that we found. We found that in Cincinnati, Ohio. We just loved what Cincinnati brought to the film.

ROONEY MARA stars in CAROL.

Obviously the two women were in very different life stages, Carol being more established and having a child and being married…

Cate Blanchett: Older.

Older. She is helping Therese find herself. But because they are women, do you think the age difference is of lesser importance than it would be with a man, who may be considered a little predatory?

Rooney Mara: I don’t know if it would ever feel predatory. It’s not like I’m 17 years old. Therese is younger than Carol. They are at different stages in their lives, but I don’t think that she is so young. The story never felt predatory to me. I don’t think it ever really would have, man or woman.

Cate Blanchett: The interesting thing is the obsession. Actually, perhaps more so in the book. There’s this obsessive pursuit that Therese has of Carol. Because of Carol’s sense of consequence and the difference of their ages and experiences, and also their different socio-economic backgrounds, there is a sense of we have to quiet the horses here and not go too quickly with this, because I know this is not necessarily going to end well. That’s delicious stuff to play with, because that’s what loads up all those silences. Every word is, not only chosen by the beautiful screenplay, but by the women. Can I say this? This might have two meanings. I’m not sure that was taken the right way. Did I hear what I think you were saying behind what you just said? It’s wonderful stuff to play with this, because there is so much stuff between them and keeping them apart.

Todd Haynes: There are also things that a modern audience has to keep reminding themselves were different at this time. An older woman could invite a younger woman to lunch and it was absolutely totally appropriate, where she would have never invited the head of the department to lunch. Or they could check into a hotel together as two women, but if they were heterosexual unmarried women, the couple checking into a hotel, at this time that wouldn’t have been a scandal. There are ways in which the mores and the codes of the time are also things that were learning and reading against their actions and justice.

(L-R) KYLE CHANDLER and CATE BLANCHETT star in CAROL

Cate, you had done another Patricia Highsmith film with The Talented Mr. Ripley. Did you learn about The Price of Salt back then? Did your perception of the story change having portrayed Carol?

Cate Blanchett: Yes, it’s a different thing entirely reading a novel and then reading it again when you are coming to play a character in that book. I read anything I could of hers at the time that I was making Ripley. It was actually, much to my shame, the first time I had encountered her work. I was also interested in all of the filmic incarnations of her work as well, and went back and revisited it. There are some wonderful observations in parts of internal monologue. One internal monologue that Therese has and wonderful observations about Carol that are in the novel that were really, really useful to read that I just read at the time, the first time I read the book as a reader. Today to make that stuff manifest was really exciting.

Did Patricia want the book to be made into a film? Did she see your original script when you knew her years ago, and if so what did she think about it?

Phyllis Nagy: Well, she was dead by the time it came to me, so we didn’t have that conversation. (laughs) I’ll have it with her later tonight. (chuckles) She didn’t like many of the film adaptations of her work.

Cate Blanchett: Didn’t she?

Phyllis Nagy: Oh, no, she couldn’t stand them! Especially Strangers on a Train.

Cate Blanchett: (shocked) Oh! What does she know? (Everyone laughs.)

Phyllis Nagy: From her perspective, the guys trade murders in that book, and the film, of course they don’t. It was one of the first arguments we had, when I said: Oooh, I love Strangers on a Train. She said, “Hmmm… really?” With disgust! But she liked aspects of the films. Robert Walker she loved. She thought Alain Delon was extremely attractive, of course. I hope that she would find this entire enterprise extremely attractive. I think she would. We are all of us not betraying the intent and the tone of her work, which really is the only thing that you can do – to be reverent to a source material. Everything else is up for grabs.

KYLE CHANDLER stars in CAROL

Todd, could you comment on Kyle’s performance and the qualities in him as an actor that caused you to cast him in this role?

Kyle Chandler: (mock scared) What did I do? (Everyone laughs.) I loved Strangers on a Train.

Sarah Paulson: I can set off the alarm any time you want.

Todd Haynes: What can I say? I just so lucked out. I’ve been watching Kyle’s work, and have been amazed by it, as I’m sure most of you have, in Friday Night Lights and films he has been in. Casting a man to play opposite Cate Blanchett is not an obvious task. A lot of actors today are just grown-up boys, wearing baseball caps still. You need to have a real grown up opposite Cate.

Cate Blanchett: (sexily) You need to find an animal. (Everyone laughs.)

Todd Haynes: We found an animal in Kyle. No, but it’s true. You get what I mean. Just the way he enters that era with such a believability. I saw him in the clothes the first time and it was like: Oh! I think you said you had an early dramatic TV show set in the 50s?

Kyle Chandler: Homefront. The 40s.

Todd Haynes: Homefront. The 40s. But it just suited him so well. It was just so utterly believable. But this started with the writing, the way Harge is handled as a character, and Richard. Highsmith was quite hard on these men in the book, so Phyllis brought a very different complexity and ambiguity to the characters. You felt you understood that they were in a place without any examples around them for what they were going through. They were struggling and not being their very best. They were lashing out at times and being defensive, but they were human. I think just Kyle brings that completely to the film.

Kyle and Cate, did you have a favorite scene you did together?

Cate Blanchett: The dancing scene.

Kyle Chandler: I pained her feet in the dancing scene.

Cate Blanchett: Yeah, you know we had dancing classes together, which was interesting.

Kyle Chandler: You’ve never done any film where you looked so frightened as when dancing with me. My favorite scene was the one where I fell down 18 times. That was fun.

Richard is much more angry in the book as the book goes on. We see less of that in the film. Why did you decide on that?

Phyllis Nagy: I suppose my intention was just… I’m not a psychopath, I can’t really enter into the heads of imaginary characters, but insofar as one can, that’s what I try to do. I am those people. How would I feel? How would I behave on a basic level? Certainly I empathize, I suppose, with these men. And with the other young man in the film, who is also after Therese, at least momentarily. It becomes easy once you do that. You just have people behave in a way that you imagine they would. If I were Harge, I’d be pissed off, too. Similarly with Richard, he’s given no clue really, and perhaps he’s not so great at picking up on them, but still Therese is quite reticent and quite internal. It’s hard to please someone like that. That’s really all it is, I think.

Cate Blanchett: I think you do reach a greater point of understanding about the men’s dilemma in the screenplay than you do in the novel, because it is from Therese’s perspective. Honestly with Harge, all Therese has seen from afar is the damage she perceives as being done to Carol by Harge. What’s stopping her is this constant pulling on her from behind by Richard. There is this constant annoyance with those two men. That is part of her youth, but also part of her thwarted desire.

What is clear now is that what Todd did with the filmmaking is you don’t start off with that perspective. The first argument that Therese witnesses Harge and Carol having is seen through doors, a bit like watching your parents argue. There comes a point where there is a greater understanding of the two men’s positions.

Richard also made you feel something almost brotherly with Therese in the film, he seems more like a brother or a best friend than a boyfriend, at least to her.

Jake Lacy: For Richard, I think he feels that this is a great love. It’s probably his first, so maybe there’s more down the road for him which will shed light as to what this really was. But for him then, it feels like this is the one that is getting away. I think for all these characters, for Richard in particular, there’s a complete lack of vocabulary, a complete loss for how to describe this or experience it. He’s searching for someone to put a label on what this problem is, and even Therese is unable to define it for him as she’s going through it.

That speaks to Richard, and to the time that they’re living in. There’s an element in this discussion where we are walking and Therese asks if I know people like that [gay] and Richard says he does, but it’s usually something in their past, like a psychiatric condition that someone would be homosexual. That is the most definition he has for what’s going on. Rather than being aggressive about it, he’s just at a complete loss as to how to make heads or tails of this situation.

Do you feel that the nakedness of the erotic desire is affected by the privilege of Carol’s background?

Todd Haynes: I guess I don’t particularly isolate the privilege of desire with Carol, who has the class privilege. I think the intense state of desire that we understand Carol through, that we keep filtering Carol through, is of course being cast by Therese’s desire for her. In a way, that is the machine that is moving the narrative forward through a good part of the film, Therese’s desire. With Carol, there are moments that you wonder how she feels about Therese. There are moments where it feels like a detour from her life. It feels like a sidebar. An outlier to the issues that she has to confront. That she probably at times probably wonders or really feels embarrassed about: Am I really spending all this time with this girl who is just taking form in front of me?

I think that all gets reevaluated later in the film. It’s most articulated in that scene towards the end of the movie, where they are both kind of stripped down and you see a side of Carol we haven’t seen before. I find that even though Rooney is literally the one being explored physically, or sexually revealed more in that sex scene, it feels like that is something that Therese is conducting as much as Carol.

There is a sense, too, that Therese has opportunities that Carol never had. Different stages of life and different places.

Todd Haynes: Yeah. That line that Carol gives, that people have brought up to me and was even a point of question when we were making the film, when Carol looks at Therese’s body and says “I never looked like that.” A kind of expression of intimacy that is hard to find the parallel to among gay men, and certainly not heterosexual couples. It’s something pretty unique to what two women might be able to say to each other. Even though you look at Cate and go, yeah, right! (Everyone laughs.)

Cate Blanchett: I never did look like that.

What can you take with you from this film to inspire you in your next projects?

Kyle Chandler: The last scene in the film. The last scene in the film. The strength and the power and the conviction and the heroism of Cate’s character in all the moments that happen in that room. In allowing the other character to look at this woman as someone that is not his wife anymore alone, but someone that he has respect for and looks up to, created a whole new type of love, if you will, for the characters to go on, as they do into the 60s and the 70s and everything. It still gives me chills. They worked up to that. It’s a really beautiful, strengthful – oh, strengthful, I’m from Texas, sorry. It was very powerful. It’s an reflection of what that is today. The confluence of what is happening in the present. It’s that love. That was really powerful.

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 20, 2015.

Photos ©2015 Courtesy of The Weinstein Company. All rights reserved.

Burnt

BURNT (2015)

Starring Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Omar Sy, Daniel Bruhl, Riccardo Scamarcio, Sam Keeley, Alicia Vikander, Matthew Rhys, Uma Thurman, Emma Thompson, Lily James, Sarah Greene, Henry Goodman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Lexie Benbow-Hart, Bo Bene, Elisa Lasowski and Julian Firth.

Screenplay by Steven Knight.

Directed by John Wells.

Distributed by The Weinstein Company.  100 minutes.  Rated R.

The rock-star deification of chefs has been an interesting, somewhat surprising development over the past few decades.  Suddenly it is hugely desirable to find a man who can put together dishes with very small portions, but ones that look lovely, lightly grilled and covered with a black truffle Balsamic glaze on a bed of whole grain risotto.

People binge-watch the Food Network and Hell’s Kitchen, drooling over both the recipes and the chefs’ bad behavior.  Selfish and abrasive seem to be job requirements.  The chefs with inflated senses of narcissistic self-importance worthy of a brain surgeon have become some of the “love-to-hate” favorites of a new world numbed by reality television and Donald Trump.

Adam Jones, the falling chef in the charming but somewhat underdone dramatic comedy Burnt, can check off all of the boxes of a rock-star chef’s most important traits.  Fired in disgrace from his last job?  Check.  Thoughtless, impatient and often cruel to his workers?  Check.  Obsessed with his own menu, to the detriment of anything else in his life?  Check.  A large series of wrecked relationships (work, friendship and romantic) smoldering in his wake?  Check.  Secretly extremely neurotic?  Check.  Recovering from a substance abuse problem?  Check.  Snarky to the extreme?  Check.  Determined to have one last chance to be the shining star of culinary arts?  Check.  Willing and able to do anything, including murder, just to get a three-star review in The Michelin Guide.  Check.

Bradley Cooper had played essentially this same role several years ago – in a much more blatantly comic manner – when he played a fictionalized version of celeb chef Anthony Bourdain in FOX’s short-lived and underrated comedy Kitchen Confidential.

However, his natural charm and charisma saves the character of Jones from becoming a massively unlikable jerk – though the script occasionally conspired against his character reclamation.  We meet Jones when he is at a low ebb, having been fired from his last job in Paris, having lost his staff and being looked at as a has-been in the gourmet world.  In the meantime, his old partner has opened one of the hottest restaurants in London.  Jones has cleaned himself up from his drug and alcohol usage, given up his womanizing ways and is trying to live life on the straight and narrow with just one goal in sight: To open the next it restaurant.

His opportunity comes through Tony (Daniel Bruhl), the rich son of a restaurateur who had lost a mint in Adam’s last venture, however Jones takes advantage of the fact that Tony is in love with him (despite the fact that Jones is not gay) and will do pretty much anything he wants.  However, Tony insists that Jones behave or he will pull the plug and put together his old kitchen staff, adding a new sous chef Helene (Sienna Miller), a young single mother who despises Jones’ self-absorbed charm from the beginning, but eventually comes to respect the artist in his soul.

Burnt has some fine moments and some lovely acting, and the final scene is wonderfully understated and subtle.  It’s all filmed beautifully, and the food looks smashing, but eventually how much you like Burnt will come down to how much you are invested in whether a selfish man can find his personal salvation though a three-star review.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 29, 2015.

Creed

CREED (2015)

Starring Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad, Andre Ward, Anthony Bellew, Ritchie Coster, Jacob “Stitch” Duran, Graham McTavish, Malik Bazille, Ricardo “Padman” McGill, Gabriel Rosado, Wood Harris, Buddy Osborn, Rupal Pujara, Brian Anthony Wilson, Alex Henderson, Jim Lampley, Michael Buffer, Michael Wilbon, Tony Kornheiser and the voice of Liev Schreiber.

Screenplay by Ryan Coogler and Aaron Covington.

Directed by Ryan Coogler.

Distributed by Warner Bros.  133 minutes.  Rated PG-13.

About nine years ago, Sylvester Stallone did a massive mea culpa tour as he was releasing what he promised was the “final” Rocky film, Rocky Balboa.  Balboa repeatedly apologized for allowing his original film – which was rightfully a classic and won the 1977 Best Picture Oscar against such stiff competition as Taxi Driver, All the President’s Men and Network – devolve into the cartoonish depths of Rocky IV and Rocky V.

Stallone swore that Rocky Balboa would be his way of giving Rocky a proper swan song, and that film worked well in that role.  Thirty years after Philadelphia club fighter Rocky Balboa forced the world champ Apollo Creed to scream, “Ain’t gonna be no rematch,” there had been all too many rematches, which had done little but beat on the reputation of the original classic.  (They also made a decent amount of money and kept Stallone working decades after his career would have otherwise sputtered out.)

However, as Stallone had promised, Rocky Balboa put things right, making the best film in the series in years, definitely since Rocky III, arguably since the first film.  It was a fine, nostalgic farewell to an iconic character.  It was also an ideal place to leave the series behind, with a swell of renewed respect and affection.  At the time, in my review of Rocky Balboa, I said, “I just pray that Stallone stays true to his word and resists the urge to make Rocky VII.”

I didn’t expect that to be the case, though.  In fact, I had no doubt that Stallone, whose entire career is pretty much down to squeezing every last drop of blood he could get out of Rocky, Rambo and now The Expendables, would eventually figure out how to drag his most famous creation out of mothballs yet again.

At least Stallone has finally come to terms with the inevitability of age and is not going to make Rocky fight anymore.  Instead, in this Rocky: The Next Generation take on the classic story, the good-hearted palooka Rocky Balboa finally has been transitioned to the Mickey role of older-broken-down fighter turned manager and trainer.

Still, I didn’t have high hopes for yet another trip down this well-trod road.  Therefore, I am happy to report that Creed is actually a terrific reboot of the series, a film which understands the power of the original film and brings it forward into a new millennium.

This movie takes a fresh, intriguing look at a very old story (does anyone watch boxing anymore?) and finds surprising depths in what you’d assume were pretty drained waters.

And, honestly, it only helps that Stallone did not write the screenplay this time out.

Stallone is just a gun-for-hire here, working as an actor only and this frees him up to give his best performance in years.  He is also not the main character, Rocky has been demoted to a supporting role and the fact that Stallone doesn’t have to carry the film on his shoulders is also a positive.

Particularly since the new lead character, Adonis Creed – the illegitimate son of Rocky’s former rival Apollo Creed – is played by Michael B. Jordan, who shows that his amazing central performance in Fruitvale Station was no fluke.

Creed does not only take the star of that terrific film, it also inherits writer and director Ryan Coogler, who has figured out a terrific way to bring this old franchise up to the present.  Creed is not just a nostalgic film – though there are elements of nostalgia to it – but it feels wonderfully current.  And, for better or worse, it sets up a whole new series of films that can keep this franchise going for another 20 or so years.

I just hope that by the time we get to Creed III or IV, we’re not back on the mat, down for the count yet again.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 25, 2015.

Sylvester Stallone, Mayor Michael Nutter, Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Ryan Coogler and Irwin Winkler at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

Sylvester Stallone, Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Ryan Coogler and Irwin Winkler

Taking on a Whole New Creed

by Jay S. Jacobs

It feels like a perfect symmetry that Creed, the new reboot of the iconic Rocky series, is premiering on November 25, 2015.  After all, that is forty years to the day from the date of the opening scenes in the original classic Rocky, in which Rocky Balboa wins a tough club fight against Spider Rico.  Soon after, Rocky had his awkward first date with his soon-to-be true love Adrian, explaining to her “Yeah, to you it’s Thanksgiving; to me it’s Thursday.”

This particular Thanksgiving weekend will be vitally important to the creators of Creed, though.  They will find out if the world is waiting for a new generation of films about an underdog fighter with more heart than technique who pushes himself to the limit in order to become the world champion.

The early signs are good.  A steady buzz has grown about the film, and the early reviews have been terrific.  There is nowhere that the excitement is greater than in Rocky‘s native Philadelphia, the setting for the series since the start.  Stallone grew up in Philly (though he was actually born in Brooklyn), so the films have long been not only a celebration of strength, courage and the will to succeed, but also a love note to Stallone’s hometown.  And, to paraphrase a not-totally successful old Chamber of Commerce tourism ad campaign, the city loves him back.

Philadelphia is showing their love by naming not one, but two days Creed day in the city.  They gave the cast and crew Liberty Bell trophies, the key to the city and a whole bunch of memorabilia of the City of Brotherly Love.  The second of these Creed days is the opening day of the movie, however, the first one recently passed when Creed stars Sylvester Stallone, Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson and writer/director Ryan Coogler returned to the city to have a press conference announcing the release of the film.

Sylvester Stallone, Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson and Ryan Coogler at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

Not surprisingly, the press conference was held at the top of the Art Museum steps, the site of Rocky’s iconic run in the first film (which has been reused, in one way or another, in every other film in the series.)  This was just one way that this press conference was unique for Hollywood film junkets.  Local fans were allowed to watch the reporters asking questions from behind a barricade.  The conference was introduced by former Philadelphia Eagle Vince Papale – no stranger himself to Hollywood filmmaking, because his life story was turned into the film Invincible in 2006 with Mark Wahlberg.

Papale did his best to whip the crowd (and the reporters) up, gushing, “Welcome to the Art Museum.  How great is this?  Are you pumped or what?  Wait until you see Creed, because when you see Creed, you’re going to be even more pumped.  It is awesome!  A great movie.”

Not that the fans needed to be reminded of the awesomeness, however they enthusiastically listened to Papale.

“My name is Vince Papale, I used to play a little football here in town.” Papale said modestly, because all the locals knew exactly who he was.  “For those of you who have never been in Philadelphia, welcome to Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.  And of course the Art Museum that was made famous by Rocky.  Can you believe that it was four decades ago that Rocky was running up these Art Museum steps?  What he ran for: he ran for the dream, and he ran for hope and he put that run on for all of us that wanted a shot at the big time.  He got it, did great and look what happened.  Now we have Creed, and when you see that and there’s so many great crossovers that will relate to you in so many ways.”

Then Papale vacated the podium to the outgoing two-term Mayor of Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter, who would introduce the stars and the film.

Michael B. Jordan and Mayor Michael Nutter at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

“I had the great pleasure and honor of actually seeing the movie last night at a screening,” Mayor Nutter said.  “I’ve seen all seven Rocky movies.  This one should win an Academy Award,  just like the first Rocky movie won an Academy Award for Best Picture.  This is a great film, ladies and gentlemen.  It shows Philly proud.  It takes on a lot of issues and challenges.  You’ll see it.  The first movie, in 1976, on a million dollar budget, shot in twenty-eight days.  It put Philadelphia, literally on the map.  There are so many people across the country and around the world who know about Philadelphia [from the film].  They know the theme music.  We use it all the time in our city for all kinds of activities.  The Philadelphia Eagles do as well.”

Nutter continued to serenade the Rocky series, even talking about the famous Rocky statue that was less than a football field’s length away from where everyone stood.

“Rocky the series and the theme really is the story of Philadelphia,” Nutter told the crowd.  “Tough times, tough challenges, never giving up, and always coming back.  The statue is here.  People take pictures.  It moved around from time to time.  It was just considered a movie prop at one point in time.  Then finally, the art commission decided that it would be permanently here at the Art Museum.  Where else would it be?  The Rocky statue.”

Nutter also discussed another recent statue, which celebrates yet another iconic Philadelphia boxer who had died a few years before.

Mayor Michael Nutter, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson and Michael B. Jordan at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

“As I shared with…,” Nutter started and then paused.  “We don’t know each other well, but I hear he actually enjoys being called Sly, so I’ll take advantage. Irwin Winkler said I could call him that.  As I shared with Sly and Michael, many of you know now that there is now a statue for Joe Frasier in Philadelphia.  A real person who did real things here in our city.  That’s down in the sports stadium complex.  We remember Joe Frasier.”

Frasier was a 70s boxer, who about the time of the original Rocky was trading the heavyweight championship belt back and forth with Muhammad Ali.  Stallone and Winkler were well aware of Frasier’s impact in the sport.  Frasier actually had a cameo as himself in the original film, trash talking and teasing Apollo Creed that he wanted to be his next opponent.

Sylvester Stallone and Tessa Thompson at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

“I want to encourage all Philadelphians and everyone around the country and around the world, you want to see this movie,” the mayor enthused.  “It is a great movie.  You know the basic fundamentals.  There again are so, so many issues and challenges that they take on….  Rocky Balboa has been named the seventh greatest movie hero by the American Film Institute and ranked number thirty five on Empire Magazine’s compilation of the 100 Greatest Movie characters.  In 2011, Sylvester Stallone was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for his work on bringing Rocky to the screen and for the inspiration he gave to boxing fans across the globe.  The story of Rocky.  The iconic symbol of what can be accomplished if you work for it and try your best.  Continue with the release of Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky V, Rocky Balboa and now the highly anticipated and soon to be released – Creed.

“Creed brings the message of Rocky to a next generation, starring Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Johnson Creed, the fictional son to Rocky’s former opponent and friend Apollo Creed,” Mayor Nutter wound up.  “Rocky pays his world champion success forward by becoming a mentor to this young, at-risk fighter….  We congratulate the stars, the cast, the writers, directors and the producers of Creed for including a promising new generation in a timeless story.  Inspired by the uplifting legacy of Rocky, we are encouraged to overcome all challenges to achieve the most in possible dreams.”

The cast and crew came up to the podium.  “Thank you, Mayor,” Stallone said.  “Thank you for everything.”

Michael B. Jordan at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

Star Michael B. Jordan and writer/director Ryan Coogler returned the love as well, giving the mayor a massive stash of Creed swag.

Coogler said, “Thank you for all of your support.  And the Film Office for supporting us and letting us come in to this great city and make another movie like this.  We couldn’t have done it without your help.  We obviously couldn’t have made this movie anywhere else, so we just wanted to say thanks and give you a little token of our appreciation.:

“We definitely wanted to give you some cool gear,” Jordan concurred.  “This is a bomber jacket, you know what I’m saying, to help you live out those young days.  So, you going to go ahead and put that on?  On behalf of Creed, there you go.”

Legendary producer Irwin Winkler, the man behind not just the Rocky series but classic films like Raging Bull, They Shoot Horses Don’t They, Goodfellas, Double Trouble, The Right Stuff and many more, looked out over the city skyline from the podium.

“My late partner Bob Chartoff and I came with Sly to Philadelphia some forty years ago,” Winkler recalled.  “I must say, this city is so different from what it was forty years ago.  It is so beautiful, so culturally rich.”  Then he turned to the mayor.  “Thank you, thank you so much for making this city even greater than it ever was.”

Tessa Thompson, Michael B. Jordan and Irwin Winkler at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

Stallone also shared his love for the city.  “It seems like I’ve been here a long time,” he said.  “When I started these films, I think my voice was squeaky.  That shows you how long I’ve been around.  I started skipping rocks in the Schuylkill River over there when I was 12 years old, so all you kids in the audience there, if you don’t think you can make it up these steps of life, which is represented here by this museum, don’t you believe that.  If I can do it, you can do it.  It’s just a matter of believing it and being reasonable with yourself and pushing yourself to the maximum of your abilities.

“That’s what this film is about,” Stallone continued.  “It’s about grabbing hold of an ideal, putting aside your fears, lowering your head and driving forward.  And taking the ones that you love along with you, because without that support, without that family, without that person holding your hand in the dark, it’s terrifying.  So here’s to Creed.  Here’s to the Rocky family.  Most of all here’s to the people of Philadelphia, who I love dearly.  Keep punching.”

Tessa Thompson at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

Actress and singer Tessa Thompson, who plays Creed’s love interest in the film, had never been to Philadelphia before she got the role.  However, she too pledged her devotion to the city that became her home for the filming.

“I love Rocky, of course, but my favorite character I think in this movie is the city of Philadelphia,” Thompson said.  “I just had such an amazing time being here.  All I did is hang out, basically.  Ryan was like, ‘Just get here as soon as possible, please.’  Because there is no better way to learn how to be a Philly jawn than just spend a lot of time in some Philly jawn.  So that’s what I did.  I just spent about two months just hanging out.  I went to hair salons.  I just went everywhere.  He insisted I eat Philly cheesesteaks.  I did that.  I ate a lot of those.  I just had such a tremendous time hanging out in this city.  It’s a really unique, special place.  I feel really honored to get to play a woman that is born and bred here.”

Stallone insisted it was an honor that she had earned, both as an actress and as a singer.  He even started an impromptu duet of the first couple of lines of the Motown classic “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” with her, though he gave this up quickly enough.

“We could actually do a little live entertainment,” Stallone laughed.  “No, she’ll just demolish me, anyway.  She’s shy, but she’s incredible in the film.  Believe me, her artistry will speak loudly for her.”

Tessa Thompson and Michael B. Jordan at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

Jordan, who turned so many heads starring in the indie hit Fruitvale Station, which was also written and directed by Coogler, had a challenge himself.  Reinventing himself as a boxer was a test for him, but one that he was excited to take on.  Jordan worked hard to look so legit as a boxer.  He trained with fighters like Andre Ward, Gabe Rosado, Tony Ballew and Rob Sale, picking up the tricks of the sweet science.  It was hard work, but it paid off.  Jordan looks like the real thing in Creed.

“Honestly, Ryan and I knew about this project a few years ago, so I secretly was just getting in shape,” Jordan explained.  “Changing my diet.  Not boxing hardcore, but just going through the motions of it at first.  But, I want to say like ten or eleven months out, I really took the time….  I just wanted them to treat me like a boxer.  I wanted to be method.  I got up and did the road work.  I changed my diet completely, which honestly is the main thing.  Once you’re consistent with your diet change, your body will definitely follow.”

“Well, you did eat some Philly cheesesteaks,” Thompson teased him.  “Once a week.”

“Cheat days!  Cheat days!” Jordan insisted.

“I wasn’t the only one there eating Philly cheesesteaks,” Thompson continued.  “You were there, too.”

“Yes.  Yes.  Thank you so much,” Jordan said to her.  Then he got back on track of what he was saying.  “So, yeah, [getting into shape was] a combination of all that.”

Still, he admitted that some parts of his role were a little intimidating.

“The more challenging scenes for me were probably the fight scenes,” Jordan admitted.  “The boxing choreography.  When you’re mentally tired, you’re mentally fatigued, it’s very easy to make subtle mistakes.  When you make mistakes in the boxing ring, that can be the difference between [being] knocked out or finishing the fight.”  He laughed.   “So I think that was probably the more difficult scenes for me, all the boxing scenes.”

Did he get hurt during the filming?

“Yeah, I took a few real punches, for sure,” Jordan continued.  “Thank Sly for that one.”

“He deserved it,” Stallone joked.

“Yeah, he enjoyed that one,” Jordan smiled.  “But ice baths are the key to recovery.”

“I’ll just add to that that Mike did all his own stunts in the movie,” Coogler interjected.  “Nobody else ever wore his shorts.  He was in there every time.”

Sylvester Stallone at the Philadelphia press conference for “Creed” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo copyright 2015 Deborah Wagner.

Stallone, on the other hand, is long used to wearing the shorts.  He’s played the role over a canvas of seven films and almost 40 years.  Yet he had to admit that even after all this time, he still finds out little things about Rocky Balboa that surprise him.

“Usually it comes through other people’s eyes,” Stallone said.  “For example, when Ryan came up with this concept, I wasn’t thinking along those lines.  But I said: That really does open up a whole avenue to deal with a subject that many, many people have dealt with.  That have family issues that is something that is out of your control.  It’s not in the boxing ring anymore.  So yes, the idea is that I think as long as you are open to other people’s suggestions, there is more to go.  Really, there is more to go.  I would like to follow this character until eventually he’s an angel.”  He laughed.

So now that the robe has been passed (figuratively) to Adonis Creed, should we expect a Creed saga?

“Oh, absolutely, yeah,” Stallone said.  “Without a doubt.  Rocky’s story has been pretty much documented.  This movie is called Creed.  Following this young man’s journey through all the trials and tribulations that lay ahead.  So, yes, the idea is you’ll see more color in the movie.  For sure.  Technicolor.  It’s a new day!  And we will be back.”

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 25, 2015.

Photos ©2015 Deborah Wagner. All rights reserved.

Ant-Man

ANT-MAN (2015)

Starring Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Anthony Mackie, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Wood Harris, David Dastmalchian, Abby Ryder Fortson, Martin Donovan, Hayley Atwell, John Slattery, Garrett Morris, Gregg Turkington, Jean Louisa Kelly, Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan and Stan Lee.

Screenplay by Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish and Adam McKay & Paul Rudd.

Directed by Peyton Reed.

Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.  117 minutes.  Rated PG-13.

The Marvel Comics film universe is huge, but it has been expanding so quickly that eventually it was inevitable that they would run out of the A-list heroes.  Most of the classic names are already out there, for better or worse – Spiderman, Thor, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The X-Men – leaving the studio to ponder how to keep the movies going organically.

That is probably why in the past year Marvel has been delving into some of their more quirky niche characters.  First came Guardians of the Galaxy, a comic book team which had completely slipped under the radar of all but the most fanatical of fan-boys.  Now comes Ant-Man, a character who is less obscure than the Guardians, but still is far from most people’s go-to superhero.

However Ant-Man’s main super-power is one that people have been imagining for generations – the ability to shrink to the size of an ant.  This basic idea has been toyed with many times in Hollywood, such as The Incredible Shrinking Man, Fantastic Voyage, and the Honey I Shrunk The Kids! movies.

His other power – the ability to mentally control armies of hundreds and thousands of ants – is a little more ridiculous looking cinematically, but overall Ant-Man is one of the better recent Marvel projects, certainly better than the overrated Guardians.  And it’s nice that for a change a Marvel movie does not climax with a giant flying ship crashing to the Earth.

In fact, in most ways Ant-Man is more down to Earth than the other Marvel films, a more modest story and thrills, and the film is likeably slapdash due to this… uhhh… smaller scale.

Also unlike most Marvel superheroes, who tend to be lovable misfit teenagers, brooding misfit scientists, wisecracking misfit tycoons and athletes, honorable misfit soldiers, or whatever, Ant-Man starts his origin story on the other side as an actual criminal.  (Though, of course, a lovable misfit one.)  As the film starts, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is getting out of San Quentin for a three year stint for cat burglary.

He falls in with his old gang, the incredibly good-natured Luis (a scene-stealing Michael Peña) and co-horts (Tip “T.I.” Harris and David Dastmalchian).  They expect for Scott to slip right back into his criminal ways, but Scott is determined to stay on the straight and narrow for his adorable moppet of a daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson), who his ex-wife (Judy Greer) is dragging her feet on letting him see.  To add insult to injury, his ex is now living with a cop (Bobby Cannavale) who helped to put him away in the first place.

Scott quickly realizes that it’s tough out there for a gangsta, even getting shot down for minimum wage jobs because of his record.  So at his lowest point, he agrees to do one last big job, breaking into the safe of Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the founder of a multi-national scientific conglomerate.  However, when he finally gets in to the huge old safe, all that is in there is a mysterious old costume, which he takes so that it won’t be a complete waste.

What Scott didn’t know was that the whole crime was a set-up.  Dr. Pym wanted to take the suit, which he had created 50 years earlier and had the power to shrink the wearer to the size of an ant, while giving him super power and super speed, just like ants themselves have, in comparison to their size.  Dr. Pym had been Ant-Man years earlier, but eventually realized that the suit was too dangerous to get in the wrong hands, so he never shared its secrets.  Now his former protégée, who ended up stealing his company, was on his way to unlocking the secrets, so Dr. Pym needed someone to make sure that did not happen.

His daughter (Evangeline Lilly in a bob cut) wanted to take over wearing the suit, but Dr. Pym insisted on teaching Scott, leading to the normal trial and error period as he learned how to use his newfound powers.  This leads to some fun and interesting special effects sequences, like a fight on top of a train which turns out to be a Thomas the Tank Engine toy, as well as some wonderfully amusing cutbacks where these wild fights are shown from the perspective of our own size.

It leads to the most purely fun and easily accessible Marvel film since the first Iron Man.  It’s nice to know that the creators of Marvel world realize that not everything has to be end of the world heroics.  Sometimes it’s fun for the heroes to just relax and have a little adventure.

Dave Strohler

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 27, 2015.

James McAvoy, Paul McGuigan and Daniel Radcliffe at the NY press day for VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN. Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

James McAvoy, Daniel Radcliffe & Paul McGuigan 

Reveal Their Inner Monsters In Victor Frankenstein

by Brad Balfour

In an attempt to reboot another franchise, 20th Century Fox has pulled a genre bender on the Frankenstein tale – that of a creature created not by God, but by a man’s use of science and insane passion. Thanks to the late British actor Boris Karloff’s classic portrayal of the creature, we have an image of a tragic person cocooned within a monstrous body.

Still, what do we really know about his creator, Victor Frankenstein? As directed by vet actioneer Paul McGuigan, a new feature, Victor Frankenstein, tries to answer that question while alternating between being a bromance, a detective story and a tragedy.

Title character/protagonist of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the human Frankenstein was a scientist who crossed the study of chemistry with that of decaying beings. He gains insight into creation and gives life to a creature which is often referred to as Frankenstein’s monster, and incorrectly, as “Frankenstein.”

While many subsequent film adaptations (notably the 1931 Frankenstein movie, its sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, and Hammer’s productions starring Peter Cushing) Frankenstein has been portrayed as the prototypical “mad scientist.” In the original novel he’s a tragic figure, not unlike the character played by British film star James McAvoy in this about to be released reboot.

Told from the perspective of troubled assistant Igor (played by Daniel Radcliffe), the helper’s dark origins as a hunchbacked circus clown and virtual slave to its ringmaster are first explained in Victor Frankenstein, though not by Victor Frankenstein. In order to manage his ordeal, he teaches himself the medical knowledge of the day and provides the circus with a crude paramedic. When young medical student Frankenstein comes to the circus searching for animal parts, the two establish a quick rapport. This results in Igor’s escape to the medical experimenter’s clandestine quarters. Their friendship transforms Igor from hunchback to protégé.

Daniel Radcliffe at the NY press day for VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN. Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

Through Igor’s eyes, the audience witnesses Frankenstein’s emergence as the man introduced in Mary Shelley’s classic novel – one obsessed with creating life – who further develops into the demonic cinematic icon fixed in the collective pop consciousness.

Eventually, their experiments draw attention from wrathful authorities and a deceitful benefactor; Dr. Frankenstein and Igor become fugitives as they achieve their goal to use science to create life from death. Intoxicated by his obsession, Frankenstein strives at all cost in a remote castle laboratory to bring his creation to life. By this point, Igor has realized his mentor’s folly and seeks to prevent this being from happening.

Both Radcliffe and McAvoy have been genre audience favorites for years now, giving life to other historical icons from the printed page – the 26 year old Brit Radcliffe became Harry Potter and the 36 year-old Scotsman McAvoy developed The X-Men’s lead mutant Charles Xavier as a young man. Both draw on substantial acting chops, not just by defining these iconic figures but in handling substantial thespian chores in such films as The Last King of Scotland and Atonement (for McAvoy), and tough Broadway roles such as The Cripple of Inishmaan (for Radcliffe).

Director/producer McGuigan is also no stranger to transforming genre films with twists upon twists; just review his catalogue which includes such films as Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Push (2009) and Wicker Park (2004). Add to the creative team quirky writer Max Landis, who lends his own unique take, previously purveyed in the 2012 sci-fi thriller Chronicle and 2015 slacker spy caper American Ultra.

In applying all their talents, they’ve made a film together that will either win ardent fans or parse them away because it toys so much with the clichés that audiences have been familiar with. To tell us all about this, the trio of McGuigan, Radcliffe and McAvoy joined a gaggle of journalists at the Crosby Hotel – transforming us all into mad scientists.

James McAvoy at the NY press day for VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN. Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

How different were your roles from the preconceptions we have about Victor and Igor?

James McAvoy: I think Victor has always been maniacally obsessed, way back to Mary Shelley’s original [onward]. What I felt we really went for is that in a true sense and we tried to investigate that in a real Post-Freudian world and not just go, “Well he’s a bit energetic and a bit obsessed.” Halfway through the book he goes on vacation and comes back completely healthy and sane and goes, “Oh what, the monster’s alive? Thank goodness, I’m really healthy. I can go kill it.”

Whereas we tried to stay in a post-Freudian world, which is why he’s so maniacal, so hyper and bi-polar. It’s not just because it is who he is. It’s not just because he’s a mad scientist. Find the reason for that and then run with it for the whole movie. Don’t let him off the hook halfway through the movie, so that that when he has to go off and do the bad thing at the end – which is kill his own creation. We’re suddenly on his side because he’s now a good guy. We try and keep him discomfiting; we try and keep him that quixotic, mercurial character all the way through.

Daniel Radcliffe: The thing that I liked so much about the script was that it took a lot of different preconceptions about Frankenstein, ideas people have about the story – or think they know – and twisted them and played around with them and had real fun with that. Part of that was obviously giving Igor a back story and some real depth – more than we’ve seen in terms of that character before – and finding out why he would have this incredible loyalty to Victor. Despite how bad he’s treated a lot of the time, why that never waivers at all.

It was to have him be this little creature living an abject, horrible life at the beginning of the film. Then he’s saved from that, and brought into this world where he’s empowered in terms of he’s got a say and a purpose in life. For me, that was very key into how you can suddenly understand his insane devotion to this man even when it’s being tested.

And he’s lost his hunchback.

Daniel Radcliffe: That was one of the things I liked in the script. James touched on this earlier, you have to find ways of honoring all those clichés at the beginning of the film like we do. Then you can have some real fun subverting the other ideas that people have about them.

Paul McGuigan at the NY press day for VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN. Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

Paul McGuigan: Max’s script starts off in a very interesting place because we don’t actually get to the point that people are familiar with until to very late on in the film. It was interesting to give Victor Frankenstein back his name a little bit, because when you’re told of Frankenstein, you think of the monster. It was nice to actually play with that a bit. Of course at some point in the film, he does become a monster, so there was an interesting throughline. In the beginning of reading the script, you go, “That’s interesting, I never thought about that.”

But it’s not just a monster movie, it’s a relationship film, about two men who have a commonality in their passion for science and anatomy. That was interesting to visualize at the beginning of the film, so people understand we’re at the commonality that is between them and then it just became about this relationship.

James McAvoy: It’s a book of two halves. The first half is about a scientist’s obsession. The second half is much more a Pinocchio story. An existential development of a monster going, “I want to be a real boy.” We still get that Pinocchio story, but we get it through Daniel’s character. The film is about people, human beings, people that actually exist and about scientists.

Max has said the reason he was inspired to write this was [because of] the advent of Facebook. People at the forefront of technological capability [are] using that to implement a massive change in the way we live our lives. That’s why he was inspired to write [this] Frankenstein. It’s about two guys with the keys to the kingdom or the fire of the Gods in their hands, doing stuff that could be terrible or could change the world for the better – you never know – and how they’re always vilified. Then in five years, we’re doing stem cell research anyway. It’s about those people rather than just the monster – but it’s still got cool monster shit in this one.

You both have played and defined now iconic characters such as Harry Potter and Professor X. What did you learn in defining icons here?

James McAvoy: Trying to marry up what Max wrote. He’s writing something that is not just an adaptation of the book. It’s not just a remake of an adaptation of previous films, cartoons, comic books, Halloween costumes. It’s a combination of the entire zeitgeist-driven collective consciousness perception that we have of what the word “Frankenstein” means. That’s why there’s an Igor in it when he was never in the book. That’s why other stuff happens.

For me it was about trying to marry up the entertainment value – this has to be an entertainment in the same way that Mary Shelley’s book was – and it has to be slightly dicey at times and controversial [as well]. That’s harder to do these days. People are not as disturbed easily. They’re not. We’re not as disturbed by a movie that shows two guys trying to become God as much as when she wrote that book, when it would have been a massive public outcry and revolutionary. Apart from [that, there was] the fact it was a fucking woman writing the book, that was another level of “What?”

That was the stuff that was controversial back then. It’s going to be hard for us now to be controversial. But we still want to make people [are] a little bit shocked sometimes. A little bit grossed out. Make it a piece of entertainment, a solid piece of fun at the theater at the same time as making it about somebody who is so driven by… What? It doesn’t really allude to it in the book so we had to try and find what that was.

In our case what we found, and what Max wrote, was of loss and grief. He’s got this massive hole inside him that no matter how much he tries to fill it in, it doesn’t get any smaller. It just gets bigger and bigger. His ego compensates and he becomes a God in his own head. He’s very close to achieving the qualifying factor for becoming a God. The prime requisite for becoming a God is creating life. He’s nearly there, so he feels pretty massive and God-like. Those were some of the things that really formed it all in my head, trying to marry up the manic energy that was needed for the entertainment value of the film along with a lot of truth that fueled it more than just “Hey, we’re having fun!”

Paul McGuigan: If you take these two guys as actors and think about it as a filmmaker, you go, “What does James bring to this? What does Daniel bring?” If you look at it as the analogy of a person or a human, then you would say James is the heartbeat and Daniel is the soul of the film. That was interesting, a certain dynamic happened straight away from day one of filming where you have two very smart men who got that completely. For a filmmaker who is watching and observing as you do, you can see that energy and compassion. They both flip over at one point. You could swap them around because of the journey we go through in the movie itself.

Daniel Radcliffe at the NY press day for VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN. Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

Daniel Radcliffe: The thing I loved about the script when I read it was that it was this big, bold, unapologetically entertaining cinematic action-adventure movie [which] also had at the heart of it this great and really interesting relationship story between these two guys that’s quite a toxic relationship in some ways. They’re both essential to each other, but I get damaged by him at times. There was a sweetness to Igor as it was written. There is no side to him. There’s no edge. What you see is what you get. There’s an honesty to how grateful he is to have been taken into this world that I found very appealing. I was trying to make that as real as possible, I suppose.

Did your working relationship mirror in any way the dynamic between Victor and Igor?

Daniel Radcliffe: Thankfully it didn’t mirror the relationship between the characters at all, in the sense that it was quite an abusive relationship. I think we’re fairly similar in terms of our work ethic and the fact that we take the job seriously. We’re focused but also, we’re not saving lives – it is about having fun. We’re lucky that we get to work in an industry where we can have a lot of fun while doing our jobs. It was great but thankfully, I was not indebted to James forever and he was [not] abusing me and hitting me. No, it wasn’t like that.

James McAvoy: For me the roles were reversed in one big way. Daniel is the most professional actor I’ve ever worked with in my life. I’m quite a professional actor and I pride myself in being very professional but to be like, “Wow, I’m learning from him.” That was kind of nuts.

Daniel Radcliffe: That’s weird…

James McAvoy: Just because you’re ten years younger than me, if not more, but actually you’re way more experienced than I am and hugely professional. Way more professional than some people I’ve worked with who have been in the business for 40 years. It’s nuts. It’s to be admired. We love each other!

Daniel Radcliffe: I’m dying over here.

Paul McGuigan: It makes me want to throw up. I’d work with James and Daniel in a heartbeat because seeing the amount of effort. They talk about being professional, but it goes beyond that. If you want to be smart, you just get the people that you know that are your favorite actors that you like to work with.

Daniel Radcliffe: I had heard lots of wonderful, lovely things about James and they all transpired to be true. Everybody had said the same thing to me, because I’ve got a lot of friends who I say to, “I’m working with this person, I’m working with that person,” Across the board when I said I was working with James, they said, “Oh you’re really going to enjoy that.” People thought of us as being kind of similar, and I do think we have a fairly similar work ethic. It wasn’t so much being surprised as discovering all the pleasant things I’d heard were true which is nice!

James McAvoy: On my first day on set, they came to my trailer door and said, “James, we need you on set.” I thought, “I’m ready, Well done me, I’m straight out of my trailer and not keeping anyone waiting.” I was quietly proud of myself. Then I’m walking to set and I heard Daniel literally running to set. I thought, “Is he going to do that every day? Because otherwise I’m going to lose weight by competitively trying to get there before him.” Daniel’s enthusiasm for what it is we do sounds like it should be taken for granted but it’s actually not always the case.

There are a lot of people who have a very self-harming, dysfunctional relationship with acting. It’s not good for them. They don’t like it. It makes them feel horrible. They want to hurt themselves and hate everybody for making them do it. Yet they’re really successful and have been doing it for a long time. Whereas what’s really cool about Daniel is [that he’s like], “This is our job. We’re good at it, really enjoy doing it. Yes, some days are harder than others and some days aren’t fun. But that’s life.” I just love that attitude because there’s no level of front to get through before you get to “shall we do some nice work and enjoy ourselves?”

How was it working with the bio-mashed-up creation called Gordon (the first creature Victor reanimates) in its digital and physical incarnations – it’s even weirder than the Monster?

James McAvoy: Gordon was great. We’ve discovered on the press tour that actually not everyone thinks Gordon is very cute! Because you spend so much time around him, you get a little de-sensitized! It’s like when you hear about people who work with the Muppets. You don’t talk to the animators, you just talk to the Muppets after awhile. It was similar with Gordon for me. I would go up and do something to him. Then the guys operating him would see that I was doing something and would make him respond, at which point you completely forget there are three guys in a box operating this and you start interacting with it. It was one of my favorite animatronics creature effects ever. Tia, a stunt girl in a grey suit who I got to do a lot of my fighting with, played Gordon. She was awesome too.

Paul McGuigan: I got to be Frankenstein doing Gordon! He was just called Gordon in the script. I thought what is Gordon? So I went to London Zoo and thought, “I’ll have a bit of you, I’ll have a bit of that. I’ll have a bit of this” and take it all back to these amazing animatronics people. Until the point when Gordon starts running, it becomes the CG version, but until that point it’s animatronics and old school, which I like. Also these guys were doing their own stunts. [Daniel] was hanging off a staircase with a stunt girl attached to him and James did all his own stuff as well. Gordon became a metaphor for how the film was. It’s there in front of you and we made it with different parts of animals. It’s part hyena, part monkey, with a dog’s leg there as well.

James McAvoy: There’s a deer’s leg there as well – Bambi’s leg!

Daniel Radcliffe: And there’s a cheetah there.

Paul McGuigan: It only has four legs!

James McAvoy: Holy shit, you put a horse’s what in there!!??

Paul McGuigan: That’s why he’s running so fast.

James McAvoy: That’s why he beat me in the fight because I was intimidated by his girth! When we got the script – you know the film Flash Gordon? Brian Blessed, for me there’s an iconic line where he says, “Gordon’s alive! Gordon’s alive!” I thought I’d get to do that in this film. I think I did do it and it got cut. That’s my homage to Brian Blessed up the swanny!

Daniel Radcliffe: That’s a real shame!

The film is about friendship and loyalty. What is your friendship like with you having matching haircuts and all?

James McAvoy: It’s a fashion thing.

Paul McGuigan: It’s a boy band. Unfortunately I’m the guy behind them, I’m the drummer.

James McAvoy: He’s the guy that writes all the songs.

C’mon, why the short hair? What’s the deal with the matching buzzcuts?

James McAvoy: I thought he was getting way too much attention with his short hair so I thought, “Fuck it!”

Daniel Radcliffe: We’re both super right-wing now…

James McAvoy: It’s the new cool thing.

Daniel Radcliffe: They’re both for roles. I’ve just been playing an FBI guy who goes undercover with a bunch of Nazi white supremacists. That’s why I have this.

James McAvoy: I’m not doing that but I just started filming a new gig in Philly and that’s the haircut for that part.

How did the hunchback depletion scene get developed – the one where Victor establishes that Igor hump is actually an abscess?

James McAvoy: You mean pus in your mouth!

Daniel Radcliffe: It developed a lot…

James McAvoy: To the horror of our producers!

Paul McGuigan: James comes on set and asks for something that looks like pus that he can put in his mouth and everyone was like, “Really?” It was his first day on set because we’d done a week of shooting before he was available to us. He came on set and looked at Dan like he looks in the film, when he looks at him and goes, “Okay, you’re ready?” I thought, “Oh My God, he’s going to kill him!” James is very physical, Dan is as well, so it was an interesting day. That scene to me sums up the movie to me in a sense – the physicality, smart dialogue, the interaction between the two and the transformation.

Daniel Radcliffe: And the grossness.

James McAvoy: When I read the first scene at the circus which is a bit of a cheesy, action scene. That was there and that helped set the tone but for me; all the other scenes between Daniel and I seemed really physical. On paper, I don’t know whether it was what Max intended or whether we brought that. I feel we brought it a bit. I feel the film needed energy and pace and you can do that with editing, music and “Crash, Bang, Wallop!” But I felt we needed to provide that physical energy. The siphoning off the hump was in the script, but the actual idea of siphoning off what the hump contained in terms of the way people sometimes do with gasoline. Did I mention it to you in New York? I was like, “I want to do this. I’ve got this idea.” You were like, “Cool.”

We got there the day before we shot to have a quick rehearsal. I said to the prop guys we need some rubber hosing. “What’s he talking about?” We got the rubber hosing and we did it and everybody kept thinking, “This just is not going to work.” Arguably a lot of the audience might think, “Whoa that didn’t work for me” but we managed to get it to work. I’m really proud of myself.

And that line?

James McAvoy: That was me. It was made up. There’s a lot of made-up shit in every movie and you don’t necessarily talk about it or anything like that. For every one line that you make up that gets into a movie, there are 15 that get cast aside because they are terribly over-egging the pudding. Sometimes you need to add those things in – even if they are wrong – to learn what is right about what’s already in the script.

Paul McGuigan: It’s always a good day for me when you make all the old Fox producers very nervous. They were great by the way, but one took me aside and said, “Is he going to do that all the time?” I was like, “Yep, that’s the way we’re going to do it.” He’s quite literally humping him at one point. They were like, “Okay, this is an interesting dynamic.”

Daniel Radcliffe: It was great. It was so funny. I just remember the paling faces of producers when I walked off set. There were a couple of people looking… [terrified]. A making-of featurette of a South Park episode had a line where Trey Parker said, “We always know we’re doing really well when our producer looks terrified. That’s a good rule of thumb.”

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 25, 2015.

Photos ©2015 Brad Balfour. All rights reserved.

On November 14 2015, PopEntertainment’s Roula, Sami and Ali attended the Nickelodeon Halo Awards red (orange) carpet in New York City! Hosted by Nick Cannon, it is a great event highlighting teens who give back to their community. Catch the awards on television November 29th, 2015! Photos courtesy of Getty images and Roula Khaldi of Popentertainment.com. Video Edited by Sami Speiss of Popentertainment.com.

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Youth

YOUTH (2015)

Starring Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Jane Fonda, Mark Kozelek, Robert Seethaler, Alex MacQueen, Luna Mijovic, Tom Lipinski, Chloe Pirrie, Alex Beckett, Nate Dern, Mark Gessner, Paloma Faith, Ed Stoppard, Sonia Gessner, Madalina Ghenea, Sumi Jo and Dorji Wangchuk.

Screenplay by Paolo Sorrentino.

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino.

Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.  118 minutes.  Rated R.

Sometimes there is a point where you have to ask yourself as a film viewer: Can a movie be just too self-consciously artistic?

Youth is a stunningly shot and acted film, with gorgeous scenery, arresting symbolism, some smart writing, an incredible cast and directed with élan and verve, and yet sitting through the movie feels like doing hard time in the whimsy factory.

Youth is only the second English language film by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino.  The other was This Must Be the Place with Sean Penn, which was a similarly uneven mix of the sublime and the banal.  Sorrentino is obviously strongly influenced by Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, and he shares some of these artists’ intense imagination, as well as some of their most self-indulgent aspects.  Maybe this stuff would play better in Italian with subtitles, but in this usage it tends to feel unbearably self-satisfied and pretentious.

Somewhat ironically, Youth is the story of two elderly men.  Then again, not all that ironically, because those two men obsessively cling to their memories of being young and idealize the younger people who surround them in an Swiss resort that is both a vacation destination and a health facility.

Michael Caine plays Fred Ballinger, a world-famous retired classical music composer and conductor, who is still missing his late wife, the famous mezzo-soprano who was the voice of his finest works.  He is being courted for a comeback concert, but Ballinger is having trouble with the idea of any other singer performing the works that he wrote for his wife.  It feels like an infidelity to him.

He is also dealing with a more specific infidelity, his estranged, bitter daughter (Rachel Weisz) is staying with Ballinger because she is bereft that her husband has left her for a cheesy pop singer (Paloma Faith playing a fictionalized version of herself).  Ballinger is also feeling his age creeping up on him, realizing that his time is coming sooner rather than later.

Ballinger’s best friend is aging film director Mick Boyle, played by Harvey Keitel.  (And it is quite nice to see Keitel getting a substantial role again.)  Boyle is at the resort working with a bunch of young actors, trying hard to come up with the inspiration that will drive his latest film.

However, the whole project depends upon Boyle’s muse, an aging actress played by Jane Fonda, who he had discovered as a young ingénue, and with whom he’d made almost 20 films.  However, the actress has grown jaded, bitter and hurtful, flying in just to turn him down as cruelly as she possibly can.  (Fonda, who normally is surprisingly youthful for a woman of over 70, is made up to be a callow, aged, angry, mean hag.  It’s a terrific job of acting wasted on an exasperatingly unlikeable character.)

They are all surrounded by a whole rogues gallery of supposedly lovable eccentrics: dancing masseuses, skinny-dipping goddesses, silent couples, bemused actors, romantically-challenged rock climbers, a slumming rock star, visiting luminaries and a silent monk who may or may not fly.  The scenery, particularly the mountains, but also the fabulously garish resort, is stunning.  However, there is only so far that you can go with fanciful visuals, oddball plot twists, against the grain editing, strangely-paced dialogue (The New York Times pointed out, rightly so, that the dialogue feels like it was awkwardly translated into English from another language) and scenes that end on weirdly off-kilter moments.  Eventually, the audience is completely exhausted.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about Youth is that you feel like you’re growing old just sitting and watching it.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 4, 2015.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION (2015)

Starring Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris, Alec Baldwin, Jens Hulten, Simon McBurney, Zhang Jingchu and Tom Hollander.

Screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie.

Distributed by Paramount Pictures.  131 minutes.  Rated R.

The Mission: Impossible series is in something of an odd position as far as franchises go.  Even though we can expect a new chapter of the story every five or so years – Rogue Nation is the fifth film in the series – none of the movies have really done all that well since Mission: Impossible II in 2000.  Each of the films is done by a different director in a different visual and stylistic tone.

For example, Brian DePalma’s 1996 original was a terse, slow-moving, rather humorless spy caper.  By comparison, John Woo’s 2000 sequel was wild, frenetic and violent, full of the director’s trademark wild camera moves.  JJ Abrams took the reigns for the third take, creating a Bourne-flavored special effects-driven blockbuster.  Brad Bird gave the films a bit of a wilder, more whimsical feel and featured some of the most outlandishly unlikely stunts in a series full of outlandishly unlikely stunts.

Now Christopher McQuarrie has taken on a more comic vibe, making the series something of a parody of itself.  That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing – action movies so complex and wide-reaching can only benefit from a sense of fun – but occasionally in makes Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation a little bit hard to take at all seriously as a life and death situation with serious international ramifications.

And Tom Cruise’s character of Ethan Hunt, if he ever had any real human frailties or self-doubts, is now just a generic superspy hero, a video game avatar fighting off hordes of spooks and moles.  (In fairness, you could probably also say the same about the last film before this, Ghost Protocol.)

Yes, it is fun to watch.  There are some spectacularly staged stunts, interesting plot twists, gorgeous settings, gorgeous women and Simon Pegg’s character is still a hoot, even when he’s disguised as bush.  However, while it’s certainly exciting enough, much of Rogue Nation has a bit of a been-there, done-that feel.

Then again, I suppose people don’t go to Mission: Impossible looking for deep, dark, hidden shadings.

In this story, Hunt has to go deep undercover when he is framed by a group of bad guys called The Syndicate for the theft of lethal nerve gas which threatens the whole free world.  Alec Baldwin chews scenery with gusto as the CIA director who insists on disbanding the IMF (Impossible Missions Force).  Without his team, Hunt fakes his own death to go rogue and travel the world, making dangerous attempts to retrieve the gas and save the world and his force.

The bad guys are suitable evil, the femme fatales are stunning as well as deadly and Hunt has never found a wall that he is not willing to scale.  With the clandestine help of his team (Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames), Hunt criss-crosses the globe trying to vanquish the evil-doers, particularly Solomon Lane (Sean Harris).  Hunt also enters into a love-hate tug of war with a comely-but-deadly British double agent (Rebecca Ferguson).

Like I said, you’ve seen it all before, but it is extremely well made.  Whether the world needed another Mission: Impossible film is of course arguable, but at least this one is done with brisk craft and a lighter mood.

Of course, since the Mission: Impossible movies seem to be the only Tom Cruise movies that anyone watches anymore – with the possible exception of Jack Reacher – it seems inevitable that the series will continue on indefinitely, even though the last three chapters have been considered slight box office disappointments.  (Of course, that is all relative, they each made $125-160 million dollars in ticket sales, but that is graded on the curve of the films’ huge filmmaking budgets.)  In fact, McQuarrie has been signed on for a sixth M:I movie, making him the first director to helm two of the films.  As long as they are relatively profitable and keep Cruise gainfully employed, you can expect that Ethan Hunt will choose to accept his assignments for as long as he can.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 15, 2015.

Bruce Dern, Michal Madsen, Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Quentin Tarantino, Walton Goggins and Demian Bichir at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

Quentin Tarantino, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Bruce Dern, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen

Holed Up With The Hateful Eight

by Jay S. Jacobs

It’s always a spectacular when a new Quentin Tarantino film rides into theaters. The writer and director has been well-known for his hyper-intelligent dialogue and rampant violence since the 1992 release of his debut film Reservoir Dogs. Since then, the former video store clerk and self-proclaimed film geek has put together an acclaimed and eclectic body of work which includes Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. As a screenwriter only, he also did True Romance, From Dusk Till Dawn and Natural Born Killers.

Hot on the heels of Django Unchained (well, three years later, but that is a normal turnaround time for a Tarantino film), the director has decided to do his second straight old-school western film. However, The Hateful Eight is very different in content and style than the colorful and flashily-violent Django. Instead, Hateful is almost like an old parlor mystery transferred to the rugged old west.

The great majority of the action takes place in a single saloon, where a bounty hunter (played by Kurt Russell) and his captured prey (Jennifer Jason Leigh) encounter a group of strangers (including Walton Goggins, Bruce Dern, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen and Samuel L. Jackson), all of whom have mysterious backgrounds and agendas. It leads to an intense standoff between characters, with bloody consequences.

Tarantino, who is a huge proponent of film over digital technology, also has decided to film The Hateful Eight in 70mm. This has lead to a limited release “road show,” an old-fashioned movie-going experience in which the film will play in classic old movie houses around the country (which are still equipped to show film), complete with an opening overture, additional scenes and an intermission.

A couple of weeks before The Hateful Eight starts its limited 70mm release in theaters (spreading wide a week later), the writer/director and most of the staff held a press conference to discuss the film at the legendary Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. As we sat in the crowded conference room, we weren’t surprised to find the avuncular filmmaker taking the lead, but everyone had interesting things to say about the movie and working with Tarantino.

Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demian Bichir, Kurt Russell, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Madsen and Walton Goggins at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Jay S. Jacobs.

Quentin Tarantino: Thanks for coming out everybody! That traffic was hell. Everyone’s been telling me about bricks raining down on New Yorkers over the last couple of days.

Bruce Dern: I quite like the rain actually, it never rains in California.

Tell us about the road show.

Quentin Tarantino: The road show opens on December 25th. It’ll go for two weeks. We’ll lose some of the screens after second week, but we’ll keep some of them. Be exclusive for one week starting December 25th and we open wide on the 31st, but we’ll keep the 70mm projection going on. The Weinsteins (ed. note: Harvey and Bob, the owners of the studio releasing the film) have just done an amazing thing. Just to put it in perspective, Warner Brothers threw their entire weight behind Christopher Nolan when he did Interstellar. Nevertheless they only played in about 11 venues in the course of his 70mm run. We are playing in 44 markets in 100 theaters with our road show.

Not only that, they literally are some of the biggest, nicest movie palaces still left. Like The Music Box in Chicago, The Hollywood Theater in Portland… I’m spacing right now… the Fox Theater in Detroit, the Cinerama Dome for two weeks in Los Angeles. It’s just really wonderful. All the places that have 70mm capabilities, we utilize them. Other places we just moved the screens in and created it.

I remember talking about it when we first had a discussion. It was like: Look, we should be like Neil Diamond coming into town. Or we should be like Book of Mormon. We go into big venues. Maybe they don’t even show movies anymore, but we’ll set up our big screen and we’ll set up our projectors and we’ll let it rip. It has been a Herculean effort and they pulled it off. We are screening in a hundred theaters between US and Canada, I’m very, very proud. The advanced tickets go on sale today.

There you go, you get your money’s worth. It is a hell of a night or afternoon at the movies. So talk to me a little about…

Quentin Tarantino: One thing I want to show actually before we move off of that. We’re trying to do this like the old-school road shows. When we think of movies like Lawrence of Arabia or Ryan’s Daughter, we’ve all probably seen the regular release version. The road shows had an overture. They had an intermission. They were a little longer. Ours is about seven minutes longer, just for the road show version. You also get – and we just got them hot off the presses today – this really cool program. (Holds up a program.) They all come with their own little pin up, ready for your locker, with the different Hateful Eight people on it. You get that. I even think we are giving out t-shirts that you get for your ticket, “I saw The Hateful Eight in 70mm.” It’s pretty cool. We’re hoping it’s going to be a really good party.

Quentin Tarantino at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

I’m curious in terms of content, going back to the beginning we’ve seen Western influences in your films. Clearly Django operated in that genre. This continues that among other genres kind of mixed in there, but it’s fair to say your sort of in a Western phase right now. Was this born out of your experience on Django? Did that experience form this one? Do you see them as linked?

Quentin Tarantino: Yeah, almost like these two characters, there is a chain that connects Django to this one. I guess I am in a bit of a Western period right now. Part of the idea was the fact that normally I’d been doing a movie in a genre that I know what I want to do, but I don’t know how to do it. Like, say, shooting the big martial arts scenes in Kill Bill. You learn how to do it. I learn on the job. I figure it out. I’m proud of it, but then I don’t do another martial arts movie. Same thing with the car chase in Death Proof. In this one I learned how to do a western and I realized I wasn’t done with the genre. I wasn’t done with what I felt I had to say.

One of the things I had to say in this regards was a dealing with race in America, which actually a lot of westerns had avoided for such a long time. I think I had more to say. There was also something else about Django, too. You’re dealing with such a big subject, as far as slavery in America. As fun as Django was, it was this downer sword of Damocles hanging over the whole thing that you always had to deal with. You had to deal with it in a responsible way. There was actually an aspect of The Hateful Eight, even though I deal with similar issues, I could just let it rip. Just do my western without having this History with a capital H hanging over the whole piece.

Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

For Kurt and Jennifer, your characters are linked, sometimes physically by chain, for extended periods of time. Can you talk about the pros and cons, the challenges of that kind of working relationship?

Kurt Russell: At first, when Jennifer and I started to rehearse, we didn’t really think there would be much of a problem with the chain. We didn’t think it would represent anything, either. Nothing could’ve turned out to be further from the truth. Everything that we did was formed by how that chain was dealt with. So we had to learn to get the Fred and Ginger that held them together. (ed. note: dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were famous for moving around each other rhythmically as one.)

So for me there was John Ruth and for Jennifer there was Domergue. Together we were going to be this team. If you’ve been chained together for like a week and a half, 24/7, you get to know a lot about that person. The Stockholm syndrome is going to set up pretty fast. And it did. The fact is that over a five month period of time, the Stockholm syndrome between Jennifer and I set up and it informed everything that we did.

I can’t recall a character quite like Daisy that I’ve seen in a film, at least not for some time. Is it all on the page or are the influences that Quentin mentioned or that you found helpful for your approach at this character?

Jennifer Jason Leigh: So much of it obviously is on the page, because you are dealing with such a great script and such a great character. With Daisy there is a lot that is mercurial and we had to find. We wanted to find it together. So much of Daisy is informed by John Ruth, because she is always reacting with him because of what he’s done. The chain. The hits. What mileage she can get from that. She thinks she’s a lot smarter than John Ruth… and actually she is. She feels like she’s playing him in a lot of the movie. What’s so great about doing a Tarantino movie, and what’s so great for all of us actors, is that we are always being surprised by everything. There’s a moment where it all shifts where John Ruth isn’t just a putz, a fool that she is just so much smarter than. He’s suddenly very smart and very dark when he goes and gathers all the guns from everyone. Then she has to re-judge him, just like everyone else in the movie.

Everyone in the movie is terrible and hateful. Everyone in the movie you also care for. They have their weaknesses, the good part of them in a certain way. I just remember the day we shot that scene, because Daisy’s having a blast. I mean, yeah, she’s going to the gallows, but she knows she’s not going to the gallows. She’s going to figure it out. But in that moment it’s not so clear anymore. That was so exciting as an actress, to not know that was coming. To read it on the page and yet when I felt it happen in the room, I swear my blood went cold. It was just a phenomenal experience.

Kurt Russell: I just want to say one other thing. We haven’t said this, but it was an unspoken thing. This will be the first time she’s heard me say this. Because of who John Ruth was, everything when that clapper goes bang and it’s action: That chain was mine. I own it. Because of that, I felt that as soon as “cut,” that chain was hers. We had to have a balance. I’ll tell you something, I really appreciated what she was going through. When you turned that chain over to the other person it wasn’t easy.

Jennifer Jason Leigh: I’m not as good a dance partner as you are. You’re a much better leader. I’m better at following.

Michael Madsen at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

Among the actors here, a lot of your characters are equal parts charming, ruthless and despicable. Do you all consider yourselves the hero in a weird way of this story?

Michael Madsen: I read a biography of James Cagney. He said that if you play somebody who’s very noble, you should probably try to find a mean streak in that person, or something dark that they’re carrying around. If you play somebody who’s very evil, you should probably try to find something good in that person somewhere. There’s always a duality to what you do. The best thing about making a picture for Quentin is that he lets your character have [that] duality, if you’re capable of doing it. He’s the only person I know who can do that.

Michael and Tim, you both worked on Quentin’s first film Reservoir Dogs. For you Tim, I’m curious did this experience feel like apples and oranges or did it feel like pretty much what you remembered from that first experience?

Tim Roth: The man is the same. Yeah, I was around at the very beginning. Then I had this huge break from working with him. So I did get to see in a highly impactful way how his world has changed, how the set has changed. For example, there was always a policy about music playing between set ups. That serves the atmosphere that exists on this set. I had seen that. He’s accrued so much more knowledge of cinema, and how to tell his stories. So I saw a big difference. That was very exciting.

Quentin Tarantino: Yeah well, in particular in the case of Reservoir Dogs, along with the PA’s, I was the least experienced person on the set. Tim and Michael had both made a lot of movies by that time. I was just getting through the process.

Demian Bichir at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

Demián, you have worked with some heavyweights. How is working with Quentin compared to any other filmmaker you’ve worked with?

Demián Bichir: The first thing you’re curious about is how everything’s going to work out. Not only because you have this huge director’s name in front of you, but with this amazing group of actors. I remember the first time we had this table reading. You always want to be able to one day say a Tarantino line in a film, right? So I was very, very happy and excited about it. Then to listen to every single line in the mouths and bodies of all these fantastic actors, that was beautiful.

I remember that first reading that we had at this hotel back in Los Angeles, going back home and telling my girl: Everyone is so damn fucking nice. Because a small fish can be lost in a big ocean unless they embrace you, unless they treat you well. The first thing that made me very happy when I actually met Quentin was to find a warm man. A very generous, loving man. The whole thing has been a confirmation of what I thought always, the biggest artists are nicest.

For you Mr. Dern, you’ve worked with [Alfred] Hitchcock, you’ve worked with [Elia] Kazan. You’ve worked with the finest filmmakers in the history of the media. What are the connections that you see between Mr. Tarantino and those?

Bruce Dern: I have been very lucky in my career. But this guy, he does a couple things the others I’ve worked with didn’t do. He has the greatest attention to detail I’ve ever seen. Burt Lancaster once told me it’s [Luchino] Visconti. [Tarantino will] take a seat by Visconti, trust me.

The other thing he does is he gives you an opportunity as an actor – and everybody behind the camera as well – a chance to get better. The material is so good, so original, so unique if you will, that the big part of it is that you’re so excited that he chose you and not Ned Beatty or Jimmy Caan. (Everyone laughs.) You’re excited to go to work everyday. I had that with Mr. Hitchcock for a few days. I felt it everyday with Quentin. You’re excited to go to work everyday, because he just might do something that’s never been done.

Walton Goggins at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Jay S. Jacobs.

Walton, in Quentin Tarantino’s set, would you ever suggest an alternate line?

Walton Goggins: There’s no improv in this press conference. He wrote everything that I’m about to say. (Everybody laughs.) No, why? Why would you mess with perfection? We can say that, because it is. It’s every actor’s dream to get an opportunity to say a Quentin Tarantino monologue, or a line of dialogue. There is no need to change, even  add an “and,” or a “the,” or a comma. It really is perfect, the way that it comes out of his imagination.

There is a group calling for a boycott of this movie. They don’t want the members of the police unions across the country to see it. Do you think it’ll hurt your launch? Is there anything you can say to put their mind at rest?

Quentin Tarantino: Well, I’ve dealt with it in quite a few different venues. I don’t think I just need to keep reiterating that aspect of it. Look, I hope that doesn’t happen. I really do. Just because some union mouthpieces are calling for a boycott doesn’t mean all the different officers on the street are going to necessarily follow suit. I have to say it’s kind of a drag, because the statements I’ve made I believe are very true. I intend to go maybe further with that as time goes on. Nevertheless, I think you can actually decry police brutality and still understand that there is good work that the police do. I think I’ve made that pretty clear.

I also do know that there’s a whole lot of police out there who are real big fans of my work. I just hope that they’re not going to take Patrick Lynch’s word for what I said. What I said is what I said. You can actually look it up and read it. I’ve actually clarified my comments since then. Not walking back at all, just a little bit more clarification. I still stand by what I say. I think there’s a lot of good cops out there and they should agree with what I said, if they’re coming from the right place. So I guess we’ll just see.

You said you were not done with westerns yet. Will your next film also be a western?

Quentin Tarantino: We’ll see. Actually, the third western could be a TV thing. I’ve owned the rights for a while. I get them and I lose them and I get them and I lose them. There’s something about the piece that demands that I make it. There’s an Elmore Leonard book called Forty Lashes Less One. I actually think if you want to call yourself a western director today, you need to do at least three westerns. I mean back in the 50s it would be like 12, but in today’s it’s three. I mean if you really want to put your western’s on the shelf with people like Budd Boetticher, Anthony Mann and [Sam] Peckinpah and stuff.

I would really like to do Forty Lashes Less One as a mini series. Like hour episodes. I’d write it all and I’d direct it all, but maybe it’s four or five hours, something like that. If you’ve ever read the book, it would fit right along the lines of Hateful Eight and Django. It deals with race. It all takes place in Yuma Territorial Prison. It’s a really good book and I’ve always wanted to tell the story. So, we’ll see. I’m hoping I’ll do that eventually.

Even though it was for TV, would you shoot on film?

Quentin Tarantino: Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ll never shoot on digital.

Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Quentin Tarantino, Walton Goggins and Demian Bichir at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Jay S. Jacobs.

Tim, did you see any similarities between God of Hell and your character?

Tim Roth: I think just the duplicitous nature of the character. There’s a similarity of that. That’s interesting. I haven’t thought of that [film] in a while.

Where did you come up with the idea of doing a closed country house murder mystery as a western?

Quentin Tarantino: I just thought it would be a good idea for the story. I thought it would be very interesting. One, the story just kind of lent itself to it at a certain point. Also, frankly, it was just I like mysteries. They haven’t done mysteries in a long time and I think they’re just very entertaining. I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, at least in the first draft of the script. As I was going, I just dealt with everything as it went. I’m writing the stagecoach part and that’s just that. Then we get to Minnie’s Haberdashery and there’s four people waiting. I didn’t even know who those four people were. I wanted to be as in the dark about them as the audience would be – and as the characters in the stagecoach would be – and just have the reveal themselves to me little by little by little.

Then by introducing that mystery aspect, I just thought that would be a lot of fun. Like I said, I think that especially when you haven’t seen a mystery done at the movies in a long time it could be a really entertaining experience. I remember after I gave Sam Jackson the first draft of the script, I go to him and go: So what’s your favorite part of it? He goes, “Well, I like when I start figuring shit out and I turn into Hercule Negro.” (ed. note: That was a play on the name of Agatha Christie’s detective character Hercule Poirot.) That’s what we called that character through the whole shooting. (laughs)

Since this has been such a love fest, can you talk about how you developed the animus among you actors? What did you do to up the tension and anger and nastiness?

Quentin Tarantino: It’s just in part and parcel to the material. This was the case of Reservoir Dogs, too. There’s a similarity to this and Reservoir Dogs, to some degree. I don’t think I even understood the dramatic structure and one of the reasons why Reservoir Dogs worked so well when I wrote it and did it. After hearing people talk about it, I kind of figured it out. Since then I’ve worked on that same principle. Like, in particular, the basement scene of Inglourious Basterds. Now it’s something I do. I believe that suspense can be like a rubber band. You just keep stretching that rubber band. Using the basement scene as an example, that best scene could be a five minute scene, or a six minute scene or a seven minute scene and that would be good. If I can stretch that rubber band to 25 minutes and it still holds, it doesn’t snap, well then it should be better.

I’m taking that very idea to its conclusion by making a movie this long. If that rubber band doesn’t stretch, maybe it’s kind of a boring movie. Part of what’s going on, part of that rubber band is the threat of violence. That is just hanging over the movie and hanging over the characters. Violence doesn’t even need to happen, but you’re prepared for it to happen. You don’t know where it’s going to come. You know it’s going to be horrible whenever it does. But exactly when and how and who, you’re not so sure. Frankly, if I don’t pull that off and if these guys don’t pull that off, then maybe the movie’s not so good. Maybe it’s going to be dull. So I’m betting we’re pulling that off.

Kurt Russell, Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

Kurt Russell: John Ruth carries that ball. He’s the only one that carries that ball. The rest of them are pretending to be who they’re pretending to be, whoever that is. I think the most extreme example of it actor-to-actor is in all honesty when I am going to walk over and talk to Michael Madsen. He’s Mr. Blonde (ed note: Madsen’s character from Reservoir Dogs) and I’m Snake Plissken (ed note: Russell’s character from Escape From New York). There’s going to be some fucking problems. Michael is a fantastic energy. He’s a force as a human being. I’m more of just an actor. I’m not Snake Plissken. Not anymore. But I didn’t want to let Mike down or let Quentin down. You’re going to carry that with everybody.

That was challenging for me. That wasn’t easy, with my personality, to go over and just be so bombastic and seriously confident. It was my first experience in a long, long time to relish working with actors that all I had to do was talk to them. Listen, I’m just going to be my guy. I don’t have to do anything for them, don’t have to pull for them as an actor. You guys know what I’m talking about? When you start pulling for another actor, like: Come on, man, come on, bring it. You’re like: oh, come on! You could just go hold your own and go do your thing. That was exciting as hell. That was awesome to do that with every character and every actor in this. These guys are great.

Quentin Tarantino: That was one of those things. We did a three-day rehearsal before we did that script reading. I wrote John Ruth for Kurt. I wrote Joe Gage for Mike. The first time they got to that scene and we read that scene, it was just like: Oh, woah! Snake Plissken is challenging Mr. Blonde. Holy shit!

Bruce Dern at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

Bruce Dern: There’s one thing I want to say. The man obviously has a magnet. What the magnet does to actors is you’re so drawn to him. My main reason why is his reverence for what went before. His respect for the industry is just mind boggling and he means it. If you dare question him, he will put you in your place and tell you facts about stuff you never even knew was made. That was a delight for me. There’s that kind of thing you don’t get very often.

Kurt Russell: To speak as well just really quickly, Quentin also visually takes you through an experience as an actor. The sequence of shots that comes out of his imagination, it allows for this strange kind of adjustment. It’s like this improvisation physically with the written word that you just don’t anticipate. You don’t want to have the right answers. It could go anywhere. One experience for me in particular was the dining room table. We’re sitting at the dining room table and have this rather innocuous conversation with Chris Mannix (ed note: Goggin’s character) and Domargue. We’re just back and forth. Then with Tim, with Oswaldo.

Then something happens in the movie and he comes back. He sits down at the table. But what Quentin had me do was just so fucking cool. There was a bowl here. I come back. I pick up the bowl. I just take it without any explanation, no commentary and sit down at the end. Before anything comes out of my mouth, the way that you told that story, you know he’s about to stir the pot. It’s about to go here. Literally three sentences in to Major Warren, Sam knows exactly where it’s going. I had no idea he was going to do that. It just happened for everybody at the table except for him. That was just Quentin you know.

How difficult and/or easy was it, or how important was it for you to get Ennio Morricone to score this film?

Quentin Tarantino: It was a dream. It was a dream. We had made overtures towards working with each other the last couple of movies, in particular Inglourious Basterds and Django. They never quite worked out per se, because of the timing and schedules. Also that’s not really how I’ve ever done it before. So maybe I’ve always had a little trepidation to do it that way, even though I would explore it. But it just didn’t happen. With this movie, I just had a little voice. I had a little voice in my ear that said this movie deserves its own score. I take nothing away from the other movies that I’ve done using other scores. I think that those are right for them. I didn’t hear that voice then and whoever uses it best gets it, as far as I’m concerned. But in this one I just had this little voice. This material deserves its own theme, its own piece of music that is its own personality.

He was very interested and so I took the first step. The first step was actually just translating the script into Italian and sending it to him. We sent it to him and he read it, and his wife read it, and his son read it. They all liked it. His wife really liked it. I think that went a long way. Then we got together. I went down to meet him in Rome and went to his lovely, beautiful apartment, maybe the greatest apartment I’ve ever seen in my life. We were there talking about it and I go: So what is it you see, or hear? He goes, “Well I have this idea for a theme and it’s…” He didn’t hum it or make his sounds and stuff, he goes, “I just see this like driving, driving forward. It’s like the stagecoach moving through the snow, moving through the snow, moving forward moving forward. But it also is ominous sounding and suggests the violence that will come.”

At first, because he didn’t think he had time, he was only going to write one [song]. Just the theme and that was it. I ended up seeing him the very next day at the Donatello Awards, and he goes, “I’m going to write you more. I’m going to write more.” So literally seven minutes of music became 12 minutes of music, became 22 minutes of music, became 32 minutes of music. I think he sat down and just got inspired. The way it worked though – and again he’s cool this way, because he wants to keep it the way you’re used to. He actually didn’t see the movie until in London just the last couple of days, so he didn’t so he didn’t score to scenes or anything. He just scored to this script.

He wrote a couple of pieces of music that he thought could be really good for the material itself, but not scene specific. About three suites like that, and then some other music that he thought I could use for emotions. He gave it to me based just on the script and let me take it and put it into the movie the way I’ve always done before. It ended up being a very, very lovely encounter. Now I’m looking forward to having him do the score before I even shoot the movie, so we can actually really get down to it. It’s become a lovely, lovely relationship. I kind of cherish it actually. Not kind of cherish it, I do cherish it.

Quentin Tarantino at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Brad Balfour.

You mentioned a live read earlier. You had this experience getting an audience’s response to the script before it committing it to film. Did you alter anything based on that?

Quentin Tarantino: We altered a lot, because it was only the first draft. One of the things about the movie is I wanted to do three different drafts of the film. This live read was just from the first draft. Which was different from what I normally do. Normally, I write these big, long, unwieldy novels. There’s the beginning and the middle. The middle’s always great because now you’ve committed to writing so much. You know more about the characters than you ever could before you start writing. Then there’s the end. By that point, the characters have just taken it, so they always dictate the ending, to me.

I’m doing genre movies, so I have an idea where I’m going at the end. Like at the end of Kill Bill, I thought it was very possible she would kill Bill. (everyone laughs) But how, why, exactly how you feel about it: that was very open to question. That’s one of the reasons that I like genres, because I can explore a lot of different things, but still have a road that I’m travelling, to some degree or another. This one I wanted to do differently. I wanted to spend time with the material. More time than I normally spend – i.e. from the beginning, middle and end.

I wanted to even go through the process of telling the story three different times. Just to give you an example, in the first draft, the Lincoln letter – which is a motif that plays out through the film – was only dealt with once. It was in the stagecoach. I knew I wanted to do more with it, but I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have any obligation to do it in the first draft. I could find it on my own. Then in the second draft, it appeared at that dinner table scene. In the third draft, it appears later. the way you see it in the movie.

Just to give you another example, Daisy’s end in the third draft is what is in the movie. [It] was where I thought I wanted to go in the first draft, but something stopped me from going there with her in the first draft. I almost felt I didn’t have the right to do that to her yet, because I didn’t know her well enough. Not by just the first draft. I wrote the whole second draft from Daisy’s perspective. Just emotionally, not in a tricky pros way, just in an emotional way, so I could really get to know her. I wanted to be on Daisy’s side for an entire draft of the story, so I could really feel I knew her. Then after I felt I knew her, I could do what I needed to do to her in the third draft. (laughs)

Some critics are calling The Hateful Eight a horror film. Do you agree with that?

Quentin Tarantino: It was really interesting. Me, Tim, Walt and Kurt just got back from the press and the premieres in London and France, and Mad Movies, which is sort of like the French Fangoria, they’re not the first people to it bring up: “Hey is this your first horror film?” A couple people had brought it up. There are definitely horrible moments in it to be sure, but it was surprising how it was a theme in France. I mean every interviewer came in, (uses French accent) “It’s a western, but horrific.” They really kept hitting on this horror film aspect.

That actually does to some degree or another play into it. I don’t think this is that influenced by that many other westerns, but one movie it’s definitely influenced by is John Carpenter’s version of The Thing, which also had Kurt Russell and also had a score by Ennio Morricone. Now that actually makes sense, because this movie is very influenced by Reservoir Dogs and that was influenced by The Thing. I mean there’s obviously trappings of the characters trapped in one room. There’s a lot of paranoia going around. Nobody can trust anybody. There’s a horrible blizzard going on outside.

But the biggest influence when it came to that was the effect that The Thing had on me the very first time I saw it in a movie theater, on opening night. I think that was actually the first time I could break [a movie] down in a more critical way. The effect of a film – i.e. the paranoia was so strong between those characters. It was trapped in such an enclosed space. The paranoia just started bouncing off the walls, until it had nowhere else to go but through the fourth wall and into the audience. That was the effect I was going for with The Hateful Eight, to have that kind of feeling.

Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Jay S. Jacobs.

In the music, the overture suggests an Italian horror film.

Quentin Tarantino: Oh absolutely. That’s for damn sure. I didn’t expect Ennio to give me a western score. I think a movie with Terence Hill called A Genius in 1973 or ’74 was his last official western score. He always said he didn’t want to do westerns anymore. So even though this was a western, I wasn’t expecting a score similar to like Two Mules for Sister Sara or anything like that. I was figuring it was going to be dark.

That’s the way he described it, but he gave me a horror film score and sometimes even a giallo score. (ed note: Giallo is a 1960s & 70s Italian horror subgenre.) There’s even elements of a giallo score in this. Giallos are usually mysteries. There’s even a black glove killer in my movie. It’s one of those things where you see the killer with the black glove. It’s like, okay, I can’t wait for them to show more of the characters so I can see who wears a black glove. Then, oh shit, everybody’s wearing black gloves.

Jennifer, in terms of building up violence and tensions, you mentioned a little bit before about playing a character who had several dimensions to it. Daisy wasn’t 100% rotten. Where did you find your sympathy with her? Was it just that she dealt with rough, hateful men her whole life?

Jennifer Jason Leigh: No, actually…. You’ve all seen the movie, so I guess I can give stuff away…

Quentin Tarantino: No, no, no, not so much, because they’re going to write about it if you tell them. (laughs)

Jennifer Jason Leigh: I’ll just say that Daisy has very strong loyalties. I think she has a very good heart. I think she has a big heart and a good heart. I do feel that about her, I mean as crazy and wicked evil [as she may be]… (Everyone else laughs, disagreeing.)

Quentin Tarantino: I really do not agree. That’s her job to feel that way…

Michael Madsen: Sure…

Quentin Tarantino: Well but in that same vein, I will point [something] out and I’ll say it so you guys can print it and I don’t ruin any of my surprises. I’ll talk a bit in code, but if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll get the code.

There’s these killers in the movie that do some horrible murders and you see it. You absolutely see these murders. It’s one of the more horrific parts of the film. At the same time, they’re the only people that do anything for anybody else in the whole movie. They do it for her. As far as they’re concerned, if they have to kill every son of a bitch in Wyoming, that’s what Wyoming gets for trying to hang her. So there is that dichotomy in every character and every situation that happens. There also is on the other hand. You might think the other hand is bullshit and not worth it, but there is another hand.

I thought Daisy was more like a tarantula getting ready to strike.

Quentin Tarantino: Where I was coming from when I actually wrote her, things evolve as she goes on, but to me she was like a Manson girl out west. My starting off point was Susan Atkins.

Did you have The Magnificent Seven in mind?

Quentin Tarantino: Not really. The thing about The Magnificent Seven, I’m thinking a team working together. This is just that in title, not execution.

Have you thought about doing horror? I thought Death Proof was something of a horror film.

Quentin Tarantino: I don’t know. Death Proof is my little deconstruction on the slasher film genre, so absolutely. But I don’t think I have the right temperament to do something like say, The Exorcist. That’s all about one tone of dread that carries through. I just like breaking them up a little bit. If I were to do a horror film, it would be something like that, but I don’t think I have the right kind temperament. I like going up and down and up and down. I think that may take away from the horror.

What genre would you like to try next that you haven’t done yet?

Quentin Tarantino: It could be fun to do like a 30s gangster movie, like a Bonnie & Clyde or Dillinger. The guys with Tommy guns and stuff. That’s something I haven’t done. That would be cool.

Just quickly about the 70mm. The format is glorious and you can see immediately how it changes the views from the outside. What challenges were there maximizing the inside shooting in the smaller set?

Quentin Tarantino: To me it helps everything out, especially when you’re in the situation where you always want to keep track where the other characters are. I guess that’s kind of setting up that chess board to one degree or another. With somebody like [cinematographer] Bob Richardson, who lights it fairly well, I love the compositions. I thought that part wasn’t hard at all. The only difficulty was I had gotten used to using a zoom and we couldn’t get a zoom for it. But that’s actually kind of cool, because maybe I’ve been relying on it a little too much. You definitely can’t use a steady camera with it, so we used a crane like it was a steady camera. (chuckles)

Where does your inspiration from all of this come from?

Quentin Tarantino: It was actually kind of funny because both Bruce Dern and Kurt Russell were in a lot these. I’ve watched a lot of episodic western shows from the 60s, like The Virginian, High Chaparral and Bonanza and stuff. I found myself watching the episodes that had really cool guest stars in it, like James Coburn, or Robert Culp, or Vic Morrow (ed note: Morrow was Jennifer Jason Leigh’s father). People like that. I noticed that when you watch those episodes, if Robert Culp was a guest star, the story was about him. If he was on The Virginian, the story was about him, not Doug McClure. Doug McClure knew him and was helping him, but the same thing kept happening. Claude Akins, all of them.

When it was a special guest star, they were always strangers. They came into town. You never really knew who they were. Some past about them was revealed at some point in time, and how true or not true it was, you had to watch the whole episode to find out. Oftentimes you never knew if they were a bad guy or a good guy until the end of the episode. You didn’t know if Doug McClure was going to end up being a friend or end up killing him. A little part of me thought, those are really interesting characters, what if I took eight characters like that and trapped them in a room? But no Michael Landon, no Little Joe, no Doug McClure, no Trampas. No good guy, no hero, no moral center that the audience could move towards. Just let those characters hash it out. That actually was the starting point. That’s what got me to sit down and put pen to paper.

It’s so challenging to shoot winter, why did you decide to set it then?

Quentin Tarantino: Well, I haven’t spent that much time in the snow in general. The snow western is its own little subgenre unto itself, with André De Toth’s Day of the Outlaw or Sergio Corbucci’s Il grande silenzio. They’re very bleak and pitiless movies. Also, with the idea of shooting 70mm, the mountains, the blizzard, the snow and especially that stagecoach moving through it would give it a big visual look. Even when you’re inside, the outside is always going on. To me, the blizzard is like a monster in a monster movie. It’s always outside. It’s raging, truly raging. It’s angry and it’s waiting to devour the characters if ever they leave.

Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Quentin Tarantino, Walton Goggins and Demian Bichir at the New York Press Conference for “The Hateful Eight.” Photo copyright 2015 Jay S. Jacobs.

This is the sixth film you’ve done with Sam Jackson. As a director what’s your opinion on how he has evolved as an actor from when you started working with him? Also, if you were casting this movie 15 years ago, would his character have been quite as large? How would that dynamic be different, if you think it would be different?

Quentin Tarantino: That’s actually interesting, because I think when Sam came out of his mother’s womb the doctor said, “Mrs. Jackson, you just gave birth to a two-pound baby actor.” I don’t know if Sam has gotten to become a better actor as time went on, because I think he was always really great. But his stature has risen and his persona has become bigger and bigger and bigger. I love him because nobody says my dialogue quite like the way Sam Jackson does. The dialogue is not poetry, but it’s poetic, it’s not song, but it’s musical – and he sings it. He gets that across in it. It’s not stand up comedy, but it has a comedic rhythm and he nails that fairly well.

Also, both me and Sam are huge Lee Van Cleef fans, so there definitely is this tip of the bat wings to Lee Van Cleef in his characterization. Even the way we did the look. It’s interesting you ask that – I don’t know about 15 years ago. I thought, especially using that Virginian idea that I was talking about, I speculated if I was doing this movie in 1969, who would I cast as some of the different characters? I could see some of them. I couldn’t figure out exactly 100%. I could see Claude Akins as John Ruth. He’d be a great John Ruth. I could see Bruce Dern as Chris Mannix. I could also see Bruce Dern as Jody to tell you the truth. Vic Morrow as Jody, I think he would be terrific. I could see Robert Culp as Joe Gage. And frankly if I was casting in 1969, I would probably cast Bill Cosby as Major Warren. (laughs)

About the contemporary cowboy songs, and newer musicians scoring westerns – I’m thinking Bob Dylan in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Leonard Cohen with McCabe and Mrs. Miller. What was your thought process with the Jack White song and selecting the contemporary songs?

Quentin Tarantino: Well something about that song. I had another song in mind all through the shooting, but this was literally a song that somebody gave me on a mix tape back at the time that I was doing Kill Bill. All of a sudden it just hit me. I started playing it and I really liked it. It’s done with the kind of instruments that doesn’t make it anachronistic, so it didn’t break you out. It’s not like putting in Metallica. It fits in. But I also like that fact that it actually played like an interior monologue of Daisy. It makes that sequence Daisy’s sequence.

Is there some “Pirate Jenny” in there from A Threepenny Opera?

Quentin Tarantino: Oh, I hadn’t thought about that before, but I will take any Brechtian reference you want.

Is it literally Daisy’s theme?

Quentin Tarantino: No, but if you listen to the lyrics in association to where Daisy is thinking at that point in time about somebody coming to rescue her, basically it’s the Domergue clan talking to her. “Don’t worry honey, it’s rough, it’s tough, but we’re comin’ to get you baby, we’re comin’ to get ya.”

Can I quickly ask you about old screenplays that you’ve maybe not quite released? I remember when you wrote Inglourious Basterds, you started way before it came out. And you wrote this really, really, really long thing that became different. Would you ever release the original version that you wrote back in the 90s?

Quentin Tarantino: Yeah, well we published Inglourious Basterds. The thing is though, the huge stuff that I took out would make its own movie. It followed a bunch of black troops that were court-martialed. They were going to be hung. They were in France and they were going to be hung in London. They escaped and their whole thing was trying to get to Switzerland. They ended up getting caught in an adventure. They meet the Basterds and everything. I ended up taking all that out. So I could still do that. They were called The Killer Crows. I’m not done with it. That’s the closest thing that I have a big piece of material that hasn’t been done before. I would still need to end it and relook at the whole thing again, but that could happen.

Did the film turn out ultimately how you envisioned when you started months or years prior to shooting?

Quentin Tarantino: Yeah, the answer is absolutely, but also the movie needs to become the movie. You need to make it. When I’m thinking about it in my room, even when I’m writing for Kurt Russell, then there’s actually working with them. They all pull it together. You want the movie to have its own personality as it goes and I’m very happy that it did that.

Do you enjoy the post production process? How does it compare to the production part for you?

Quentin Tarantino: To me, it’s always a situation where the writing process is fantastic. I love that. That’s my favorite part, when I’m doing that. Then just as I’m getting tired of it, sick of it, I’m done with it. I don’t really like pre-production because I want to get into it right away, but then I start shooting and that’s fantastic. And just as I’m getting sick of it, usually, we’re wrapping it up. Same thing with editing. Now that’s my favorite process as I’m doing it. Then just as I’m getting sick of it, we’re done. I like the sound mix. I like the color timing. But those three – writing, shooting and editing – those are my favorites.

Harvey Weinstein said that this is your most political movie to date, do you agree?

Quentin Tarantino: I do think it is my most political movie to date. I don’t know if that was what I was thinking about as I sat down with a bunch of pieces of paper and just started putting the pen to it. But it became that. I remember when it really came to me was when Warren and Chris Mannix have their “political discussion,” to put a name to it, in the stagecoach. When I finished writing that, I was like: Oh wow, this is kind of relevant to today. This is almost a blue state/red state western kind of deal.

I thought that was actually kind of neat, because one of the things about westerns is they really, really reflect the decade in which they were made. If you look at the westerns that were the most popular in the 50s, they really reflected an Eisenhower ideal and this perceived sense of American exceptionalism and prosperity. Of us thinking we won the World War II by ourselves and then the whole rise of the suburbs and the supermarkets and all that. So that was that, but then if you look at the westerns of the late 60s through the 70s, that was a very cynical time in America. It was a very jaundiced time and the westerns reflected that.

In the movies of the 50s we lifted up characters like Wyatt Earp, Jesse James and Billy the Kid. Then in the 70s we tore them down and showed them for what they were. That almost vindicated our own cynical views of America. That just tells you what the 70s were like. They deal with Vietnam. They deal with campus unrest. They deal with Watergate. Bruce Dern did a movie called Posse, directed by Kirk Douglas, that is a Watergate western in every way shape and form.

So that blue state/red state thing, I thought, oh wow! It made me think that maybe I’m doing a good job, because I’m connected to the zeitgeist. Nevertheless, after the script was over and we started shooting, the events that had been happening in the last year and a half that we’d been watching on TV just made everything seem more relevant to what we were doing to a degree that maybe we didn’t realize when we started.

I just want to ask you about Fred Raskin and the editing.

Quentin Tarantino: Oh, Fred is great. He’s my new man. It was one of the tragedies of my life to lose [longtime editor] Sally [Menke] the way I did. (ed note: she died from excessive heat after getting lost while hiking in 2010.) [Fred] was an assistant on Kill Bill. I didn’t want to start working with somebody I didn’t know before. We worked on Django and we got together great. Then I worked with him on this and it was just a joy. It was a joy and a dream. One of the things about him that I just love is he gets my material – i.e. he laughs and smiles at the same lines again and again and again, no matter how many times we hear it. I’m always laughing and smiling, so you could work for four months with the guy and he laughs at the same jokes every single time it plays and smiles at the same jokes every time it plays. You can’t ask for any more than that in an editor.

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 24, 2015.

Photos ©2015 Jay S. Jacobs and Brad Balfour.  All rights reserved.

Sleeping With Other People

SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE (2015)

Starring Alison Brie, Jason Sudeikis, Amanda Peet, Adam Scott, Adam Brody, Katherine Waterston, Jason Mantzoukas, Andrea Savage, Jordan Carlos, Margarita Levieva, Remy Nozik and Natasha Lyonne.

Screenplay by Leslye Headland.

Directed by Leslye Headland.

Distributed by IFC Films.  95 minutes.  Rated R.

Romantic comedies have been going through a bit of a dry streak for the last… oh, decade or so… so you always want for one to hit that sweet spot.  Sleeping With Other People has a smart, hip and likable cast, including an adorable couple of leads – Jason Sudeikis of Saturday Night Live and Alison Brie of Community – as well as some spectacular Manhattan settings.  It has smart people with cool jobs talking about substantive things (well, at least sometimes).  Sleeping With Other People even goes back to one of the all-time greats for inspiration – it’s When Harry Met Sally with text messaging – though sadly, it is not even close to as good as that classic.

You know the basic storyline even as it is playing out.  Jake (Sudeikis) and Lainey (Brie) meet cute in a college flashback (though both Brie and particularly Sudeikis look way too old to be in college), losing their virginity to each other and then promptly losing touch.

Thirteen years later, both are living in Manhattan and run into each other at a sex addicts support group.  However, neither is really a sex addict, they are just serially afraid of commitments.  Jake has been bedding a series of women through the years, sabotaging their relationships when things become too serious.  Lainey has been involved in a long-standing adulterous relationship with an old college crush (his standing her up back in the flashback led to Jake and Lainey’s one night of ecstacy) who is engaged to marry another woman.

Both recognize that they on bad courses in life and need some serious changes.  Therefore they decide that because their sexual relationships always end up hurting them and others, they will try to be just friends.  But can men and women really have a relationship without sex and love getting in the way?

Sleeping With Other People even steals one of When Harry Met Sally‘s lines on the subject – “Men and women can’t be just friends” – though it is a woman who says the line this time around.  I guess that’s sort of progress.

Of course everyone in each of their lives recognizes that they are actually the perfect couple, but they refuse to pull the trigger, fearing that sex will just complicate things and eventually wreck their relationship.  So they tell each other about their dates, have a safe word for when the other is doing something to make them sexually aroused, and go to friends’ kids parties when high.

Sudeikis and particularly Brie are extremely likable presences, and do inspire the audience to root for Jake and Lainey to end up together, even when they are being idiots.

In fairness to writer/director Leslye Headland (Bridesmaids), she appears to be sincerely trying to play with romantic comedy clichés, taking post-modern winks at the formula.  Unfortunately, despite this slight distance, she still ends up falling into many of those very same storytelling clichés.  Doing it with ironic detachment does not change the fact that is has been done.

However, for all its occasional silliness and over-reliance on formula, this is a rather likable film.

Sleeping With Other People is far from a great movie, but it’s actually surprisingly a decent bit better than most rom-coms that come down the pike.  I’m not sure whether that is a statement about the quality of Sleeping With Other People or if it is a statement about the quality of other romantic comedies, but I’ll take it.  If you’re looking for a pretty good rom-com, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Sleeping With Other People.

Dave Strohler

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 27, 2015.

The Big Short

THE BIG SHORT (2015)

Starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Adepero Oduye, Karen Gillan, Max Greenfield, Billy Magnussen, Melissa Leo, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Byron Mann, Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Richard Thaler and Selena Gomez.

Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay.

Directed by Adam McKay.

Distributed by Paramount Pictures.  130 minutes.  Rated R.

Forget about vampires, ghosts, mad slashers and other assorted bogeymen.  The Big Short is by far the scariest film you are going to see this year.  And it’s all the more scary because it’s a true story.  One that affects every single person in the United States, and for that matter on the Earth.  Also, honestly, it’s a story that the great majority of people don’t really understand.

The Big Short is being sold as a comedy, and in some ways it is extremely funny.  Also, in some ways it does overdo some of the cartoonish aspects of its characters.  But don’t fool yourself, just because this film is written and directed by Adam McKay – who is best known for making dumb movies with Will Ferrell like Anchorman and Talladega Nights – that doesn’t mean that The Big Short has no teeth.  The Big Short would stand tall in the company of some of the great celluloid social satires – like Dr. Strangelove, Trading Places, The Wolf of Wall Street, Thank You For Smoking or In the Loop – if not for the fact that… again, this is a true story.  (Of course, The Wolf of Wall Street and Thank You For Smoking were based on true stories, too.)

Based on Michael Lewis’ book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, this movie is about the 2008 financial crisis which had the world economy teetering on the brink of global collapse, a fate that we have not nearly escaped though it appears for now we have all dodged a bullet.

Of course, it goes without saying that all of the financial details which led to the collapse are highly complex – often intentionally complex – not the kind of thing that an average matinee patron is likely to know.  McKay uses a few techniques to give simple thumbnail explanations of concepts like “synthetic collateralized debt obligation” and “credit-default swaps,” either with voiceover explanations, definitions printed briefly on screen or having celebrities (Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez) give brief detailed layman explanations of the concept.

So right off the bat, McKay has set himself up with an extraordinarily difficult task – to make an enjoyable comedy drama on an arcane subject most people don’t get and frankly are extremely confused by even when someone does explain it.  Due to this immediate narrative problem, McKay has a tendency to play up some of the eccentricities of his characters to make the film more palatable to an audience.

There are many characters here, but the main ones are as follow:

Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a socially inept, one-eyed numbers savant who listens to Mastodon while working out the fact that a huge amount of banks using bad mortgages for credit will inevitably lead to a housing bubble – and he has a way to exploit it for his own wealth.

Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a greasy banker who hears about Burry’s discover and realizes that he is correct, so he starts fishing for traders to buying bonds which will essentially bet against the mortgages, and which become valuable only if they widely fail.

In his search, he stumbles upon (literally, they meet on a wrong-number call) Mark Baum (Steve Carell), a bond trader with anger-control issues who is sickened by the graft in his industry, but not so much so that he doesn’t eventually realize this can lead to him making a killing, as well as sticking a finger in the eye of big banking.

In the meantime two young traders Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) also stumble onto the scheme, and use a new-agey disgruntled former banker Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to get them entree to the halls of power.

(Note: Both Gosling and Carell’s characters are fictional, though Carell’s was supposedly based upon trader Steve Eisman.)

We all know what happened, essentially, though The Big Short makes clear the wanton recklessness and lack of conscience that led to the huge banking collapse.  It also points out again the simple if mostly unexamined truth – most of the people who were responsible for the calamity escaped with golden parachutes and no legal ramifications while the taxpayers paid to bail out their recklessness.

As one of the characters said towards the end: When the economy goes south and no one knows why, they “blame immigrants and poor people.”  Cue Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for their cameos in the sequel.

While some of this stuff is politically polarizing – is it a coincidence that the only really bad review I can find that the film got was in the ultra-conservative New York Post?– I would like to think that we can all agree that what these bankers did was shameful, corrupt and illegal.  Well, all of us except for the crooks who did the stealing.

Which brings to mind probably the biggest flaw with The Big Short.  The film expects us to like the characters in the film.  Mostly we do, even.  However, while they are preferable to the corrupt bankers who set the whole disaster in motion, for the most part they were completely content to get rich exploiting the financial loophole that the greedy banks had created.  Only two of them (Steve Carell and Brad Pitt’s characters) seemed to give a damn that while they were getting rich, millions of people were losing their jobs and their homes due to the very same rotten financial regulations that they were exploiting for profit.

Still, The Big Short is an important film.  We must not forget, because we are on the razor’s edge of it all coming around again.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: January 9, 2016.

CHICAGO MED — “Bound” Episode 106 — Pictured: Colin Donnell as Dr. Connor Rhodes — (Photo by: Elizabeth Sisson/NBC)

Joe Minoso and Colin Donnel

Meet Up in Sweet Home Chicago

by Landyn Gerace

Fans of all three Chicago series on NBC were more than pleased when the three hit shows, Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, and Chicago Med came together for a two-night crossover event.

Chicago Med’s Colin Donnel, who plays Dr. Connor Rhodes and Chicago Fire’s Joe Minoso, who plays Joe Cruz, came together to talk about the crossover and what it was like working with each other as well as the cast and crew from the other two series.

“To pull together three casts of three extraordinarily busy shows into one unifying story is just amazing to me…. It meant a little bit more work for everybody, I think especially behind the scenes.” Donnel said.

“Ultimately I think it’s so worth it to give the fans such a unique experience of being able to unify three separate shows that are within one universe,” he added. “It’s totally unprecedented in television, especially right now. It’s amazing to be a part of that.”

Joe Minoso in “Chicago Fire.”

Minoso has been a part of the Chicago family since 2012, but for Donnel the Med series is a tad bit new to him and the rest of the cast as it first aired in November of 2015.

“I was thrilled that I was being invited to be a part of such a cool series and being a part of a Dick Wolf universe and I was a little familiar with the shows,” said Donnel.

“Right after this all happened, my wife and I went back to the very beginning of Chicago Fire, season one episode one and we got hooked…. We were so thrilled and every single episode got me so excited to be a part of something that was so unique and so fun,” he added.

Being a series regular from the start, Minoso agreed that what the three cast have been involved in has been a whirlwind.

“You just hope that it goes beyond 13 episodes, then beyond season one…. To know that we are now in the midst of a third show and personally I’ve become such a fan of Chicago Med. They have really great things going on. I think I can speak for Colin when I say it’s been like such an awesome experience just watching this family grow.”

Colin Donnel in the Chicago crossover episode.

Viewers of the show as well as Minoso and Donnel could all say fans get a good glimpse of each characters’ personal lives outside of their careers and maybe that is what’s so appealing for the series.

“Every single character across all of these Chicago shows has a story that we get to peek into. The writers do a great job of shining a light on all of these characters,” said Donnel. “That’s what makes it so appealing to an audience is because you fall in love with each of them as you go along.”

Joe Minoso explained how the positive chemistry between the cast of screen is portrayed through the characters on screen as well.

“I don’t know how we’ve been so lucky as we have in terms of all of the cast members that keep coming in…,” Minoso said. “You hear horror stories when you’re a young actor about working with a bunch of divas and we have not come across that really. Everyone that keeps coming into the shows are just such a lovely people to work with.”

He went on to add “They’re true professionals. They’re ready to just do their work and enjoy one another.”

Luckily for Colin Donnel, he had only heard great things of the cast and crew and had no worries coming in as a new cast member to the Chicago series.

“It sounded too good to be true how wonderful of a group it was, but that’s exactly what I walked into,” Donnel said. “The crossover was my first opportunity to step on another set aside from Chicago Med. I have to say Joe was actually one of the first people who came up to me when I came on the set. It was such a wonderful welcome to the family.”

Joe Minoso in the Chicago crossover episode.

Minoso also touched on how important it is for the characters to have “real moments.” He said after spending time with a lot of these people you start to realize they do a lot of things to distract themselves from their serious jobs.

As far as the crossover goes, it was something both actors were greatly looking forward to from the beginning.

“I think Dick Wolf has really been reaching for kind of a new look at how you produce television and this has been something that has been on his mind from the very beginning…. It’s actually a real honor for me to see it unfold,” Minoso said.

“They did such an exceptional job in putting this whole thing together.”

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: January 18, 2016.

Photos ©2016.  Courtesy of NBC/Universal.  All rights reserved.

Rob Lowe in You, Me and the Apocalypse

Rob Lowe and Iain Hollands

Rob, Iain and the Apocalypse

by Jay S. Jacobs

What if the end of the world was coming, and it was the best thing to ever happen to you?

That is the premise of British scribe Iain Hollands’ new television series You, Me and the Apocalypse, the story of a motley crew of humans dealing with the announcement of a huge comet due to strike the Earth in 34 days time.

The series (a co-production of the BBC and NBC-TV) takes place all around the world and has an international cast which includes Jenna Fischer (The Office), Megan Mullally (Will & Grace), Mathew Baynton (Yonderland), Gaia Scodellaro (Watch Them Fall), Joel Fry (Game of Thrones), Diana Rigg (The Avengers) and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation).

Perhaps the biggest stray from type is having Rob Lowe – handsome star of everything from St. Elmo’s Fire to The West Wing to Wayne’s World to Parks and Recreation – playing a chain-smoking, trash-talking priest.  Lowe, who is also currently starring in the title role of the FOX sitcom The Grinder, plays Father Jude, a troubled man of the cloth in the midst of a crisis of faith who is tasked with the burden of being a “Devil’s advocate” – searching the globe for miracles confirming the coming of the Anti-Christ, as well as keeping his eye out for the second coming of the Lord.

A week before You, Me and the Apocalypse had its US premiere, we were one of small group of media outlets who were invited to talk with Lowe and Hollands about their new show.

You, Me & The Apocalypse

My first reaction is would our leaders be this honest with us if the world were coming to an end? This is an advertisement for not telling us what’s going on. If this were actually happening, what should we do? Maybe being in the dark is a little bit better. Look at how these poor people end up.

Rob Lowe: Iain probably can give the real answer, since he wrote it. But I always thought they absolutely kept people in the dark in the world of the show. Probably for a long time, they knew it was coming. Now when it got to 30 days out, they were like, “You know what? At some point we have to let them know.” I bet you they knew the world was ending for a lot longer than 30 days. But if this any indication, I think ignorance is probably bliss.

Iain Hollands: I agree with Rob. And on a personal note, I would far rather not know than know.

With 30 days left, what would be on your bucket list?

Rob Lowe: I spent a good amount of time thinking about that during the show. There may be a couple of things that you’d consider: I’ve never been to the rain forests, or whatever. [But] When really faced with it, I would want to do exactly what I’m doing, which would be work hard, be with my family and live the life I’m living. It actually makes me feel really good and satisfied about my life. I’m blessed. It’s all good, because I don’t feel like there’s a lot of stuff out there that I would feel like I missed out on if it was all coming to an end.

How did this project come about for you?

Rob Lowe: It was sent to me. The minute I read the first Father Jude scene, I knew I was in. There aren’t many scripts that grab you like this. Iain did such a great job in terms of tone – of it being very, very dramatic and very, very irreverent and witty, all at the same time. The character of Father Jude in particular for me was a standout. Certainly nothing like anything I’d ever played before.

Rob Lowe in You, Me and the Apocalypse

You’ve been acting for years, but this is the first time that I can remember that you played a priest. Obviously, Father Jude is very flawed and has his doubts about things. But as an actor, did you have to find a different headspace to play that character? Did you talk to any priests or anything to get ready for the role?

Rob Lowe: Well, it was a great excuse to do something that I’ve been putting off forever, which was really, really, really spend some time reading the bible cover to cover. I’ve read bits and pieces of it over the course of my life, but I’ve never really sat down and taken it all in, in a scholarly way. That was great, a great opportunity to do that. In terms of playing a priest, for me, it was like: there are certain archetypes that an actor should play before they move on. Cop, check. Cowboy, check. President, check. Priest, check. I’m working my way down the list now.

It’s very rare that an actor gets the chance to have major roles in two big series at the same time. How do you juggle the time between this series and The Grinder? And what’s it like to have both of those going at the same time?

Rob Lowe: It is really exciting. Two completely different characters in two completely different types of shows on two networks at the same time, is really an actor’s dream. I would travel back and forth. I’d do three weeks in Europe on You, Me and the Apocalypse and then I would fly back here and work on The Grinder. To be doing them both at the same time was a challenge, but also really fun. Then we finished Apocalypse in a time where I could then really do the meat of The Grinder, which I’m still doing today. I’m actually on the set. I’m on the set dressed as a Mexican busboy as we speak. (laughs) Don’t ask why The Grinder would be a Mexican busboy. You will find out.

Iain Hollands, creator of You, Me and the Apocalypse

Iain, you created such an incredible batch of colorful characters. Is there one in particular that you really enjoy writing for? And how do you balance them all?

Iain Hollands: Yes, it’s a show with a lot of characters. We spend an awful lot of time trying to structure it in a way which allows everyone to have some fun with their character. I don’t think I have one in particular. It depends on what mood you’re in. Like if you’re in a foul mood, it’s fun to write Leanne (Megan Mullally’s white supremacist jailbird character). If you’re in a pessimistic mood, it’s often to better to write some of the British characters. So I don’t have one in particular. Writing Father Jude was certainly a lot of fun because… on the surface, yes, okay, he swears and he smokes and everything. But what was really interesting was there’s real depth to him. You scratch the surface and he’s a man that really cares, and who has the real courage to take on hypocrisy. Okay, he does it in a really irreverent way, but I love writing somebody that really cared about their faith that much.

Thanks for writing an apocalyptic series that doesn’t have zombies.

Iain Hollands: (laughs) Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, you know that’s series two. No. I’m joking. I’m joking.

Rob, when I saw your character, I thought of Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds.

Rob Lowe: Yes. Sort of… right. Yes, of course. Yes. That’s right. It’s been a while since we had that type of a priest on TV. I’m glad to bring it back.

Iain, is it easy to write for both British and American audiences?

Iain Hollands: Yes. I mean, I don’t think you consciously set out to do that. The only thing you can really do is write something that you would enjoy watching. The fact is now that we watch so much TV over here from America, it’s such a great period, there’s so many great shows around. You kind of pick it up almost by osmosis. So, from that point of view, it wasn’t difficult. It’s like when you’re sitting down and reading through the scripts with American actors. You can tell where you’ve gone wrong with the words they wouldn’t use, or intonation that they wouldn’t do. But generally speaking, I think that British and American audiences have more similarities then they have differences.

Iain, with the show being 30 days until the comet collides with earth, if you get more than one season, how is that timeline going to work? That seems like such a limited amount of time to work with to do with a show like this.

Iain Hollands: I’m trying to think how to answer that without giving anything away. There’s definitely a possibility for it to return. There’s a plan for that to happen. But it’s difficult for me to answer your question without a massive spoiler alert. So just say that the end of the final episode isn’t necessarily the end.

Rob Lowe in You, Me and the Apocalypse

As far as being the devil’s advocate, what kind of scenarios are we going to see you play?

Rob Lowe: Well, as the world unravels, the church teaches that would be not only the time for the savior to return, but also the time for the antichrist to return, if it is indeed the end of the world. When we realize it is the end of the world, you need the devil’s advocate to sort out and find the antichrist, the real one, or the real savior. So he’s a busy man. I think up until the show opens with the announcement of the media, the job of devil’s advocate was probably not as exciting as it sounds. But the minute the apocalypse is on us, all bets are off.

I loved watching you on Parks and Rec playing Chris Traeger, the nicest guy in the world. What’s it been like going from playing a character like that to a devil advocating, foul-mouthed priest?

Rob Lowe: Great is the answer. (Iain laughs) If I could design my career – which we all try to and sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t – it would be going from one extreme to the other with each role. So, this was the perfect tonic for me right after playing Chris, who’s such a beloved character. People love [him] and I loved playing him. But I was definitely ready to exercise my more… what’s the word I’m looking for?… misanthropic muscles.

Megan [Mullally] is on the show as well, who was on Parks and Rec. What do you think of her make-up? She looks completely different.

Rob Lowe: I didn’t recognize her, and I’ve known Megan since 1984. She’s a chameleon. She’s an amazing actress. I think that’s no surprise. Everybody knows what a stunning actress she is. When she was on Will & Grace, people thought that’s who she was. Literally, they thought that was. Then when she was on Parks and Rec as Tammy, she just inhabits those characters. This is no different. I think even Megan Mullally fans when they see her in this at first probably won’t even realize it’s her.

Iain Hollands: Yes. I have to say she was amazing. She was so brave. She was the one that wanted to push it further and further and further. When you first offer a part like that to an actress, you’re always kind of worried that they’re going to want to look amazing. She was the one [who] was like, “No. No. No, I want the teeth. I want the hair. I want the full works.” That was a really bold step for her to make.

Rhonda, Jenna Fischer’s character, with her being in prison, has a Orange is the New Black feel to it. Can you talk a little bit about her character?

Iain Hollands: Jenna Fischer plays Rhonda, who has been wrongly accused of a crime and [is] in prison. She’s a mild-mannered librarian, completely unable to deal with life in prison. Then, weirdly luckily for her, the apocalypse is coming. There’s a huge prison break, in which she manages to get away, which is fantastic news. But unfortunately, she’s lumbered with Leanne, Megan Mullally’s character, who’s the kind of person that she would in normal life cross the road to avoid. Their story is the story of two women desperately trying to get across America to be with their families before the end of the world.

What was it like to get Rob involved?

Iain Hollands: It was absolutely amazing. It was on our wish list. Rob took a real gamble on this, because it’s a bunch of British people that he didn’t know from Adam. He had to come over to Europe to make it. Having him say yes to that, I thought was a really bold move for him.

Rob Lowe and Gaia Scodellaro in You, Me and the Apocalypse

Rob, people think of lots of things when they think of you. Your older roles. West Wing on Netflix. The Grinder. Your name triggers a lot of memories of TV shows and movies. But you’re also a father. You’ve also done charity work. If the end of the world is coming, Rob Lowe, who do you want to be remembered as?

Rob Lowe: Wow. Great question. Thanks. I would like to be thought of as a father first. My two sons are amazing young men. I’m very proud of them. One of them is on The Grinder now as a reoccurring actor, as he’s getting a 4.0 at Stanford. My other is graduating Duke and going to law school. They’re great human beings. That’s way more important than anything I’ve ever done in my career. Then I just think that, as you allude to, different people have different connections to me. Some are recent. Some go back 30 years. It would be an incredible legacy to be one of those people that has been in a relationship with an audience their entire life time.

Beyond the bucket list idea mentioned earlier, what would the two of you do if the end of the world was coming in the next 30 days?

Rob Lowe: Iain, why don’t you take this one? I want to hear what you want to do over there.

Iain Hollands: I’d probably have to make a My Name Is Earl-style list of all the many people that I’ve irritated and done wrong by over the years and start working my way through. I don’t know how far I’d get. But you know I’d hope to make it down to the end of page one, maybe.

Rob Lowe: Yes. For me, it’s funny. I wouldn’t want to quit my job if the end of the world was coming. I understand: Why do it? No one’s going to be around to see it. But, it’s interesting. I’m not sure I would change much about my life, other than I would make sure that I would get my kids out of school and make them come home so we could all be together. But, you know, I would keep on trucking.

You, Me and the Apocalypse

Iain, when did this idea come to you?

Iain Hollands: I first pitched it about five years ago. I wanted to write a show about the apocalypse, but where the apocalypse was weirdly the best thing that could have ever happened to all these characters. When you first meet them, they’re all trapped in some ways by their everyday worries. Then weirdly, the knowledge that the world’s ending allows them to free themselves from the things that have been holding them back. Just concentrate on what really matters. That was my starting point. It took a long time. It’s a British show, so to start it off, we had to get a British network on board first. Then NBC came onboard later. It took quite a while to get everything together.

Do you know any of the characters personally that you wrote about?

Iain Hollands: I haven’t based any of the characters on anyone particularly. I think the character of Jamie is probably the closest to me, in a very British way. He dithers quite a lot. He’s not as proactive as Americans tend to be. Tend to be you know very heroic and know what to do. Whereas, I would just have no idea whatsoever in that situation what the best thing to do would be. So, yes, he’s probably the nearest to me.

If you could just bring out one message to all of your fans and all of the viewers of the show, what message would that be?

Rob Lowe: Well, let’s see. I would describe the show to the fans as a boundary-pushing comedy drama. It presents the end of the world in a way that you’ve never seen before, through extraordinary drawn, interesting characters, with plot twists that you will absolutely never see coming.

Rob Lowe in You, Me and the Apocalypse

Rob, you mentioned earlier in this conversation you had read the bible pretty much in its entirety, which you had not done before. What did you get from it that you didn’t know or understand before?

Rob Lowe: Well, honestly, every time I do any reading, I’m kind of struck with the same thing, really. Other than if you’re looking for guidance, then obviously you get different things from it depending on what you’re looking to have answered. Overall, I’m just always struck with the language. It’s so beautiful. I’m also struck with things like how many common phrases we have in our everyday casual vernacular that come from the bible. You’re like, “Oh, that’s where that comes from?” I’m not breaking any new ground when I say it’s such a work of depth and inspiration and beauty that I’m amazed each time I open it.

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: January 27, 2016.

Photos ©2016.  Courtesy of NBC/Universal.  All rights reserved

Nickelodeon’s 29th Annual Kids’ Choice Awards

2016 Kids Choice Awards – On your marks…  Get set…  Vote! 

Voting kicks off today, February 2nd, 2016 for this years Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards!  Superstar nominees in 22 different categories include favs like Adele, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lawrence, Taylor Swift, Chris Pratt, The Weeknd, Anna Kendrick, Jennifer Lopez, Selena Gomez and Chris Hemsworth and many more!

This years KCA awards will be hosted by country star and The Voice mentor, Blake Shelton and will air on Saturday, March 12, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT)

So, go vote on Nick.com or the Nick App and have your voices heard.  Make sure you support your favs in music, film, television, literature and video games!  Check out the nominees below:

TELEVISON:

Favorite TV Show

Austin & Ally

Girl Meets World

Henry Danger

Jessie

Lab Rats: Bionic Island

The Thundermans

Favorite Family TV Show

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Modern Family

Once Upon a Time

The Big Bang Theory

The Flash

The Muppets

Favorite Male TV Star – Kids’ Show

Aidan Gallagher – Nicky Harper, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn

Casey Simpson – Ricky Harper, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn

Jace Norman – Henry Hart, Henry Danger

Jack Griffo – Max Thunderman, The Thundermans

Ross Lynch – Austin Moon, Austin & Ally

Tyrel Jackson Williams – Leo Dooley, Lab Rats: Bionic Island

Favorite Male TV Star – Family Show

Anthony Anderson – Andre ‘Dre’ Johnson, Black-ish

Ben McKenzie – James Gordon, Gotham

Grant Gustin – Barry Allen, The Flash

Jim Parsons – Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory

Johnny Galecki – Leonard Hofstadter, The Big Bang Theory

Rico Rodriguez – Manny Delgado, Modern Family

Favorite Female TV Star – Kids’ Show

Debby Ryan – Jessie Prescott, Jessie

Dove Cameron – Liv Rooney, Liv and Maddie

Kira Kosarin – Phoebe Thunderman, The Thundermans

Laura Marano – Ally Dawson, Austin & Ally

Lizzy Greene – Dawn Harper, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn

Zendaya – K.C. Cooper, K.C. Undercover

Favorite Female TV Star – Family Show

Chloe Bennet – Daisy “Skye” Johnson, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Jennifer Morrison – Emma Swan, Once Upon a Time

Kaley Cuoco – Penny Hofstadter, The Big Bang Theory

Ming-Na Wen – Melinda May, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Sarah Hyland – Haley Dunphy, Modern Family

Sofia Vergara – Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, Modern Family

Favorite Talent Competition Show

America’s Got Talent

American Idol

Dance Moms

Dancing with the Stars

The Voice

Favorite Cooking Show*

Cake Boss

Cake Wars

Chopped Junior

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives

Hell’s Kitchen

MasterChef Junior

Favorite Cartoon

ALVINNN!!! and The Chipmunks

Gravity Falls

Ninjago

Phineas & Ferb

SpongeBob SquarePants

Steven Universe

Teen Titans Go!

The Amazing World of Gumball

FILM:

Favorite Movie

Ant-Man

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Cinderella

Daddy’s Home

Jurassic World

Pitch Perfect 2

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2

Favorite Movie Actor

Chris Evans – Steve Rogers/Captain America, Avengers: Age of Ultron

Chris Hemsworth – Thor, Avengers: Age of Ultron

Chris Pratt – Owen, Jurassic World

John Boyega – Finn, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Robert Downey Jr. – Tony Stark/Iron Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron

Will Ferrell – Brad Whitaker, Daddy’s Home

Favorite Movie Actress

Anna Kendrick – Beca, Pitch Perfect 2

Daisy Ridley – Rey, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Jennifer Lawrence – Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2

Lily James – Cinderella, Cinderella

Rebel Wilson – Fat Amy, Pitch Perfect 2

Scarlett Johansson – Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Avengers: Age of Ultron

Favorite Animated Movie

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip

Home

Hotel Transylvania 2

Inside Out

Minions

The Peanuts Movie

Favorite Voice From an Animated Movie

Amy Poehler – Joy, Inside Out

Jennifer Lopez – Lucy, Home

Jim Parsons – Oh, Home

Justin Long – Alvin, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip

Sandra Bullock – Scarlet Overkill, Minions

Selena Gomez- Mavis, Hotel Transylvania 2

MUSIC:

Favorite Music Group

Fall Out Boy

Fifth Harmony

Imagine Dragons

Maroon 5

One Direction

Pentatonix

Favorite Male Singer

Blake Shelton

Drake

Ed Sheeran

Justin Bieber

Nick Jonas

The Weeknd

Favorite Female Singer

Adele

Ariana Grande

Meghan Trainor

Nicki Minaj

Selena Gomez

Taylor Swift

Favorite Song Of The Year

Bad Blood (feat. Kendrick Lamar) – Taylor Swift

Can’t Feel My Face – The Weeknd

Hello – Adele

Hotline Bling – Drake

Thinking Out Loud – Ed Sheeran

What Do You Mean? – Justin Bieber

Favorite New Artist

Alessia Cara

DNCE

OMI

Shawn Mendes

Silento

WALK THE MOON

Favorite Collaboration*

Bad Blood – Taylor Swift feat. Kendrick Lamar

Downtown – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee and Grandmaster Caz

Good For You – Selena Gomez feat. A$AP Rocky

Like I’m Gonna Lose You – Meghan Trainor feat. John Legend

See You Again – Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth

Where Are Ü Now – Skrillex, Justin Bieber & Diplo

OTHER CATEGORIES:

Favorite Book

Diary of a Minecraft Zombie

Diary of a Wimpy Kid series

Harry Potter series

Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need To Know

The Hunger Games series

The Maze Runner series

Favorite Video Game

Disney Infinity 3.0

Just Dance 2016

Minecraft: Story Mode

Skylander SuperChargers

SpongeBob HeroPants

Super Mario Maker