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  • Mo’Nique, PUSH Interview, Sundance 2009

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    Under discussion:

    Push: Based on a Novel By Sapphire  (2009)

    Lee Daniels’ Push has proven to be one of the most divisive high profile movies at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Splitting audiences is nothing to new Daniels, whose Shadowboxer remains generally maligned, but Push at least plays well to a good number of people. A heavily stylized account of troubled, overweight Harlem teen Precious (newcomer Gabourey Sidibe), who has been impregnated by her mother’s boyfriend, the movie barrels forward with a frenetic pace.

    While some people think Push is too obvious or jarring — I don’t — one performer unarguably reaches her full emotional potential: Mo’Nique, boldly playing against type as Mary, Precious’s crazed single mom. The true villain of the movie, she’s also its tragic centerpiece. The usually, delightfully raunchy comedian turns in a forceful, haunting performance that prompted one audience member, after the premiere on Friday, to ask her what she plans to wear when she wins an Oscar. “Nothing,” she replied. A few days later, over coffee on Main Street, we asked Mo’Nique to elaborate on her dynamic accomplishment.

    It looked like the cast was having a really emotional moment together during the Q&A.

    I think when we all saw it in its entirety, it was, “Look at what we did.” It’s very honest and I think to get that honest, it brings up emotions, because you start asking yourself questions. You don’t realize until you’re in it, until you see the credits. It’s like, Wow! It takes your breath away.

    In your stand-up, you’re usually energized, upbeat and optimistic. Here, you play this incredibly damaged woman. What accounts for the change of pace?

    Mr. Daniels. When he called me up, he said — and I’m going to quote him — “Mo’Nique, this could **** up your career.” I said, “Sign me up.” Oftentimes, I think that people want to put us in a box. You can only do this, or you can only do that. But when you are an entertainer, it’s like, baby, whatever you bring, let’s entertain it. Let’s do it.

    So you were waiting for an offer to **** up your career.

    I wasn’t necessarily waiting for someone to ask, but it’s Lee Daniels. When I did Shadowboxer with him, it was such a different role. He’s kept his word to me. The first time I met him, he said, “I have something for you. It’s going to be totally different; something that people can’t imagine seeing you do.” He kept his word.

    Was it difficult to do something so different from your stand-up work?

    It’s different, because I’m normally laughing and having a great time. It’s a joyful situation. So, yes, it’s different, but it was appreciated because Mary is so honest. That’s what I really dug about it. I remember when we first got the script and my husband looked at that. He said, “This is what people get Oscars for.” We laughed. Now here we are.

    You deliver a fairly intense monologue at the end of the movie that really ties it together. Do you see Mary as a sympathetic character?

    Yes, I think that all of us know Mary. I had to put her shoes on. If I were that person, I would want forgiveness. You do feel sorry for her because you begin to understand she’s mentally ill. She ain’t just being a bitch. She’s sick, and the society that we’re in, they threw her away. Nobody asked any questions, nobody got involved. That illness doesn’t just start. People know for years. We wanted to bring that world and put it right in your face. To say, they exist; they’re your neighbor. It might be your mother; it might be your sister. It might be you. What we were trying to do is not make it an action-and-cut Hollywood movie. I think Mr. Daniels did a great job.

    What guidance did he provide?

    He said, “I need you to be a monster,” and that was it: “Be a monster. I need people to hate that character.” Then he asked me before we started filming, “Do you think that everybody gets redemption?” I said, “No, especially if you don’t ask for forgiveness and mean it.” The moment he said action, the monster she was.

    You brought to the table what you understood about the character.

    Well, I was molested. The person who molested me was a monster. So I had to go to that person, because I know what it was like for me. [Daniels] said action, and be that monster.

    There has been talk that the movie is a tough sell. How do you see it working in the marketplace?

    It’s honest. You can’t be afraid, and you have to go and work at being fearless. If you go into it saying, well, if I don’t believe it, then you won’t believe it. As long as I believe it, you will believe it. This is a universal film. Do you know what I mean?

    That’s what I wrote in my review.

    It’s all over the world - molestation and abuse, mental and verbal. It’s all over. It’s not just black. It’s not just white. It’s every color, every walk. It’s everywhere. I haven’t met any Martians, but I promise if we have some, it is going on with them, too.

    If the movie comes out sometime soon, would you go on the road for it?

    Yes, because I believe that everyone needs to see it. Do you know how many people suffer from molestation and mental abuse? They never tell their story, and they stay imprisoned for the rest of their life.

    There are still only a certain number of mainstream movies released each year with predominantly black casts.

    It is totally up to us to change that. When you say, “It’s a black movie,” what makes it a black movie? Because we are all black people? When have you ever said, “It’s a white movie”? It’s just a movie. The moment we stop making that separation, it becomes a movie and the people just happen to be black, but it is so universal.

    Are you looking to do more dramatic work?

    I’m looking to keep playing. Whatever that playtime is, that’s what it is. I am excited; I own the rights to Hattie McDaniel. I’m excited about that. I think that’s a story that has to be told, because of all of the doors she opened and kicked down so that I could walk through.

    Will you play McDaniel?

    Yes. I will be honored, because of the greatness of who that woman was, all that she did, and all the fights she had to have to make it so. One black in the city of a few, how could you not honor her?

    How did you feel about George Clooney mentioning McDaniel in his Oscar acceptance speech for Syriana as proof of Hollywood’s progressiveness?

    When George Clooney says it, it’s validated. Why is that? He was quite honest, and I appreciate him as a human being for putting out that honesty. But when he says it, why is it that it become validated? I appreciate the fact that he recognized brilliance. I appreciate that, but we’ve been saying it for years. We’ve been saying it out loud for years. The moment he says it, it is validated. The media does that. The industry does that.

    Will you ever stop doing stand-up comedy?

    I will never stop stand-up. That is my baby; that is my love. You are your own director and writer. You are everything, right in the moment. There is no, “Cut, let’s do a retake.” It is right [clap] there.

    Even if you win an Oscar?

    I will probably go and do stand-up that night.


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
    Posted Thursday, January 22, 2009 6:01 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments  

  • I Love You Phillip Morris Press Conference Highlights, Sundance 2009

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    I Love You Phillip Morris is based on the true story about a Texas policeman named Steve Russell, and the relationship he falls into with fellow inmate Phillip Morris. Its Sundance premiere attracted a lot of attention because of the on-screen relationship between Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor who play Steve and Phillip, respectively.

    Producers Andrew Lazar and Luc Besson, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Renqua, and stars Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor spoke at a press conference at Sundance, and discussed how Besson and Carrey met on the set of Ace Ventura, why the criminal who inspired the story will never see it, and the evolution of gay relationships on screen.


    Talk about taking this film out into Hollywood. I mean with Jim Carerey, Jim was attached fairly early I think, weren’t you?

    Jim Carrey: Yeah, right away. Yeah.

    You eventually got the financing from France, from Luc’s company. Is that deliberate or did you take it to companies in Hollywood?

    Andrew Lazar: Well, we always thought it was a… While we think it’s a movie that has a lot of crossover appeal and appeals to a broad audience, we wanted the freedom to make it our way. So once we got Jim and Ewan we were really methodical about who we were going to have finance the movie.

    Jim and Luc have a prior relationship, a personal relationship and it just seemed like the right fit. Europa makes a lot of movies, but it’s also due to the fact that Luc is European and I think gets the sense of humor. So that really appealed to us.

    Jim: The day I first met Luc was on the set of Ace Ventura when we were doing the very first scene in the movie where I walk down Miami beach banging the box against the buildings and things like that. And I ended up in this film being financed by Luc and shooting on the very same strip of beach. It was kind of interesting.

    What were you doing on the set of Ace Ventura, Luc?

    Luc: I was swimming. On the beach.

    That’s kind of random. And Jim…this character is an extraordinary character obviously.

    Jim: Yeah. I loved the fact that I couldn’t figure out whether I loved him or hated him. I couldn’t figure it out from one page to the next. It wasn’t a hate thing, it was like a just a kind of a polarization thing happening.

    From one page to the next I was attracted to this character and then I was disturbed by how he was behaving. So I was thinking what a wonderful challenge to try to make this character acceptable to the audience. To make them feel for this character.

    It doesn’t feel like a conventional gay movie. It feels like a story about a con artist who happens to be gay.

    Jim: Yeah, I don’t think it’s a gay movie. I think it’s a movie about humanity. It’s a movie about - for me and from my perspective, the perspective of my character - it really is about the lengths we go to for acceptance and love.

    You know, if you feel like you haven’t been accepted in life, you’ve in fact been rejected; you tend to be a little more extreme in your approach. You know? And I think this character is that. He’s relentless about love and that’s what attracted me.

    Did you meet Steven? What’s he like? Is he like Jim Carrey?

    John Renqua: No, not at all. He’s a very unassuming guy. He’s a very sort of plain looking guy and you can imagine that it would have been easy for him just to walk out of prison. He’s very soft spoken, but there’s a lot of intelligence underneath his sort of exterior, calm exterior.

    And he’s still in lockdown?

    John: 23 and half hours a day.

    Jim: The wonderful thing though was that Steven McVicker did a lot of interviewing him for me to hear his voice. To kind of get his thoughts. One of the really most touching parts of the thing is seeing this character who is - his personality is so based in being accepted and feeling like he’s kind of cool in the world - talking about how they’re making this movie about his life. And also saying that he’ll never get to see it.

    He’s not allowed to see it ever?

    Jim: He won’t be allowed to see it, no. Apparently.

    Ewan, you met Phillip Morris though I think, didn’t you?

    Ewan McGregor: Yeah, I did. I spent a couple of days with him, well, a day and a half with him in Arkansas. In Little Rock, where he lives. It was an interesting opportunity to meet the person you’re going to play. It doesn’t often happen. I’ve played people who have existed and I played one guy who was still alive when I played Nick Leeson, but he was in prison at the time, so I couldn’t meet him.

    This time I was able to sit with the person I was about to play and it was very, it was very interesting. You know, it’s not a case of trying to ask lots of questions and answers about particulars in the story. Because, the particulars of our story are in our script. Although it’s all based on true stories, it likes wavers here and there.

    It was much more about just seeing what he was like and how he behaved. And what he chose to give away about himself and what he didn’t. You know?

    Can I ask the three actors also, going to your agent or your manager or them coming to you with this project; is there still a stigma about playing gay characters? I mean, Jim Carrey, you’re one of the few people who opens movies in the world. Ewan, Rodrigo you’re very famous people…

    Ewan: Very. Very, very famous.

    Ewan: I don’t think… Well, listen… I think it’s…

    Did you have those conversations?

    Ewan: No. I mean, when you’re an actor you’re always looking for interesting stories and interesting people to play. And the fact that these characters are gay is what makes them; it’s what makes it interesting. The fact that it’s two men in love or two men in love and then two men in love.

    And then the story also with Jim and his wife at the beginning is really… And that she remains… There’s a love story there. All through the film she’s still there. It’s what makes it. It’s what you’re looking for. You know, just interesting characters, be it because they’re gay or what their situation is or whatever. It’s what you should be looking for, I think.

    Jim: I think if I were to be honest, there were a few people in my world that were like, “You sure you want to do this?” And that still exists. I said absolutely because sexual proclivity aside it is a story about human beings that’s so compelling and so interesting and so different that it is just about humanity.

    There’s nothing but that for me about the story, it was really about that. And it was really about, you know, you love who you love and love is love and that’s it. That’s the bottom line. And if I were to be really honest, there is a homophobic voice that rises up inside me and goes, gee, this is kind of scary, first of all what will people think and second of all, will I like it? Will I like kissing Ewan? And how will that affect me and Jenny?

    [laughter].

    And those are the honest kind of thoughts that go through your head and then you do your thing.

    What did you notice about the gay community’s response to the film, because none of you are gay?

    Glenn Ficarra: We were always really sensitive and Jack or what Jim said, it was always just about people. It was never supposed to be a gay movie. And we thought it was novel that it was a film kind that kind of addressed homosexuality without homosexuality being treated as an affliction. It seems like almost every movie.

    John: It is not a movie about being gay, it is a love story and that is what was exciting about it. It is like any genre, you have thrillers and action movies and comedies and it is ultimately a love story.

    Jim: What if Phillip Morris had been black, then what would the movie have been about? It is relative. Love is love; that is what it is about. It is about getting love and acceptance and approval.

    Ewan: It was important to me that none of the humor came out of the fact that there were two men. I was conscious of thinking that when I was reading it and at no point did I feel that it was, otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted to do it, but the joke wasn’t that it was a love story about two men. It is the situation and the lengths that Jim’s character Steve would go to be with Phillip or the ease at which he went on at it, there was that, it was humor, other than that it wouldn’t have been right.

    Are Phillip and Steve still in touch?

    Ewan: Yes, they write to each other a lot and they write to each other in code. All his letters are checked, so they got a code name, they have got a code name for my name and they got a code name for Jim.

    Jim: Is it a gay code?

    [laughter].

    Ewan: That would be a gay code. A code name for Jim and they are able to just… for Phillip to let him to know what’s happening with the movie and I think they are quite excited.

    John: But Phillip is still single and he hasn’t moved on.

    Jim: Well that was an interesting thing too yeah. You talk to him and he’d say, no, no, I would never be together, but every once in a while you would see that kind of what if Steven gets out…yeah and he goes hmmm. I don’t know. The door is still open a crack there.

    Will Steven never get out?

    Andrew: Probably sooner than you think.

    Ewan: He is paying off his 45-year sentence at the moment and he hasn’t begun to start working off his life sentence. I don’t know. They are not very happy with him, you know, the Texas Penal Federation or whatever they are called.

    When you guys first kissed, there was an audible gasp amongst the audience. But if one of you had a knife and stabbed somebody, there may have been a different reaction. It is audiences have becomes desensitized to that type of behavior.

    So, I was just wondering for you guys, what is your philosophy on that, I mean what do you think, because when people do go see the movie, there is just some stigma, like Jim, your fans, are just going to internalize homophobia that maybe people have they don’t want to talk about. How do you think — because you want audience to react, as actors you want people to feel something when they see your performance?

    Jim: You know they are all waiting for that.

    Ewan: I don’t think — up until last night, I mean the scene where we are dancing and kissing in the prison cell and Clevance being beaten up next door, this shot might have been terribly romantic and lovely. I know I start watching myself and Jim, I just felt this is really lovely, I don’t know.

    Jim: It is evolution you know, it is evolution. Who would have thought we would have an African-American President, it is evolution, it is evolving. And I am sure a lot of people in the gay community, it is evolving a little too slowly, but it is evolving and…

    It was an audience taboo for a long time. It is the uncomfortability factor.

    Jim: Sure, I mean in television, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore slept in separate beds, I mean you know it is evolution; generally it is about 10 years behind real life.

    Jim, as a fellow comedian turned American, you just mentioned we have the first African-American President, how you will be observing the inauguration. And in relation with this film, how do you suppose or hope that that will change the climate for civil rights?

    Jim: I hope to be the only celebrity not on that stage during the inauguration, that is what I am gunning for, I am hoping that will happen, but I still could be pressured into it. I am excited about what is happening, I am excited about just the acceptance and opening minds and you know, I don’t know, I am sorry, what was the second part of your question?

    In relation with this movie that we are talking about, you just said 10 years behind, how do you hope as Barack Obama taking power and that leading a change of civil rights, how do we hope for that and in relation to gay rights too, how do you suppose that will change?

    Jim: I think the change is within you and that is why he is happening, that is why all of it is happening is because the change is occurring within each individual. And I think there is definitely something about stating your case publicly and fighting for certain causes, but really acceptance is about loving yourself.

    Somebody yelled out a question last night, what are you doing for the gay community? That was a tough one, because here is a movie that is really about tolerance and love and that is something and really, I just see it as an internal job and I think people are changing internally.

    So, when we all learn to love each other or love ourselves, we will love each other, that are the bottom-line. Anything you see in someone is you, screaming at you, you know. It is kind of like the spiritual love of universe I think. It is like just a bunch of mirrors out there and if something bothers me about this guy in the front row, it is me you know.

    Do you think a mainstream studio would be reluctant to touch this movie because…?

    Ewan: In terms of buying it?

    Buying it, yeah. Or making it?

    Jim: No.

    [laughter].

    Andrew Lazar: It is a romantic comedy, what’s wrong with a romantic comedy?

    What makes this an independent film?

    Andrew Lazar: This man [Luc Besson], financing it, makes it an independent film.

    [laughter].

    We had a great partner in Luc because he didn’t put any artistic restrictions on us and that is something you wouldn’t get in this video system and we were really lucky to have him.

    Jim: In the studios, generally they’re trying to shoot — it’s like a scattergun. They’re trying to hit as many people as possible. And oftentimes, real stories about real people and sensitive issues don’t appeal to a four-quadrant audience. They’re a little bit more sensitive and need to be treated that way. So, this is the place you can take risks.

    This is your first independent movie, isn’t it, I think?

    Jim: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah.

    Luc Besson, what was your involvement?

    Luc: The script was good, first. Really, you laugh and you cry. And you’re not bothered by any gay thing, because it’s on paper, so you just see the love story on paper. And then, Jim, when you talk to him, you can tell he’s going to give everything. You can tell that he wants the film and he’s involved, which instantly was a very important point.

    I love the work of the two directors, the producer. Then they talk about Ewan, and I love Ewan, too, so it sounds perfect. So we just go.

    Will you be doing more independent-film production or financing?

    Luc: Yeah. A couple of years ago, I produced this film called The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which is a story about the US and Mexico. So a French guy has to produce that, which is strange. So I would love the American studios to produce some French film that we have, that we don’t want to produce.

    [laughter]

    Luc: It will be a real help.

    [laughter]

    Jim: That’s why we had Pepe Le Pew.

    [laughter]

    Luc: Just a little detail. I know we are talking about the US territory, but a film will be seen by a little 18-year-old boy in New York and then a 35-year-old woman in Korea. The thing is to make the film we all want, and then you will never know how the film will sleep everywhere. You never know. It will change the life of a couple of people all around the world. We don’t know where. It’s fine. The thing is to do it and to give it, and then so we see.

    A similar question for Andrew. You read a treatment and three chapters of an unfinished novel, and then you put up your own money to buy the rights or adapting it. So what caused you to be so passionate about this project? What attracted you to it, to even put up your own money?

    Andrew: Well, I mean, I loved that character, Steven Russell. I loved not just the cons, everything that’s in the movie. The guys didn’t dramatize the most unusual events in the film, all the escapes. Those he actually did. I love that John just said he had to add 15 percent of the mundane stuff.

    But, I fell in love with the love story. I love the idea of a guy being so in love with somebody that he would go to any lengths to be with him. And I think that that’s the universal nature of the movie, because we’ve all been lovesick, and I think that anybody, whether you’re gay or straight, can identify with that. That’s why I put up my own money.

    Jim and Ewan, you were saying how you had the moment of fear, because you were wondering what effects would it have. What did happen, in fact? Was it just like we saw in movies so many times, a kiss is just a kiss, like we were saying? Or did it, in fact, have a bit of an impact, exploding feelings that you might have not known before?

    [laughter]

    Ewan: I’ve played gay characters before, so I’ve kissed men in the past. All of us, I think, on our first day of filming, with your wife and with both of us, on the first day of all our filming, we had scenes where we kissed and held each other. It was kind of just getting on with it right from the word go. But it was never really…

    It was strangely unusual. I’ve found that before as well, that it’s not terribly much of a big deal, because your character’s situation is that Philip’s in love with Steve. I’m playing a man who’s in love with Jim. So, as an actor, you’re in there. So, to be kissing the person you love, there’s nothing strange or unusual about that.

    Jim: It was never an issue. It never even occurred to us.

    Ewan: It was just prickly.

    [laughter]

    Jim: Yeah. I’ve got to tell you, personally, I have a lot of gay people in my life, in my surroundings, and everyone was so excited. And it was like freedom for a lot of them because, even with them, there was, I’m sure, a feeling like some of them work for me, and a feeling like they had to be a certain way and present themselves in a certain conservative manner, or whatever, around me. And when I started talking to them about this film and pumping them for information… Well, that was an odd choice of words.

    Ewan: [laughing] Pumping them for information.

    Jim: They got so excited.

    Ewan: [laughs]

    Jim: I mean, it was such freedom, and there was freedom all around me. It was like someone had let them loose and to be themselves. And our relationships are much closer after that. And it was very liberating for a lot of people, I found, that work with me.

    Did you actually film in the prison?

    Ewan: Yeah.

    Jim: Angola.

    You have the luxury at the end of the shooting day to walk away, but is there a different thing that kind of goes through you when you know you have bars around you? Can you walk through a little bit of what you felt like to actually be in prison?

    Ewan: I’d never been in a prison before, and I had a kind of idea from movies and whatever stories of what it might be like. But it’s quite shocking, the intensity of what it feels like there. It’s really quite profound.

    And from the moment I arrived in the morning, through bars and barbed wire, and then working with all of our extras in the prison sequences, our inmates in Angola. We worked in a couple of prisons, but mainly in Angola, where more than 85% of the men that are in there are in there forever and will never get out. And they all know that.

    As a result, the guys we were, there’s like lock down for the dangerous prisoners, but a lot of the prisoners there live in dormitories in a more kind of open way and are quite calm. They were really - it took us a couple of days to realize they were real prisoners. There were extras running through them and playing scenes, but it was all right.

    Jim: Yeah. At one point, I asked the warden, “So who are we talking about here? We’ve got like 100 people in this room that we’re in the center of. What are these guys, drug infractions or something?” He goes, “Rapists, murderers.”

    Ewan: That’s about it.

    Jim: But I guess we were kind of fun. We were something to do, I guess, for them.

    Did they talk to you? Were they interested?

    Jim: Oh, yeah. I would find myself, between takes, surrounded by 20 guys, just talking and laughing. Again, the one great thing about doing this and being in the position that I am in, there’s something that happens to even the most hardened person that you walk by.

    I don’t know what I did, but somehow, I can see the most hardened person face turn into a kid and go, “Hey, man,” or whatever, and they’re like their best selves or something around me. So it’s kind of nice. It was a great atmosphere. It really was.

    But, it did make you, when you start thinking about, OK, we’re in here with all the creature comforts and stuff, and air conditioning hoses and things like that, there’s no air conditioning in here and New Orleans is hot. And you start thinking about when we leave, what these guys have to do to survive in here, it is amazing. It is amazing. I was sad that we missed the rodeo. They have a great rodeo apparently.

    Glenn and John, there’s that wonderful moment when we first find out that Steven is gay. How much did you think about that moment and the humor of it and introducing the audience to that with humor?

    Glenn: Well, very early on in the process of writing this, we became enamored with the idea of conning the audience. Steven is a con man and let’s have him narrate the film and con the audience along the way, and reveal hidden truths.

    And so, the big one was the fact that he was gay. So when we wrote that, that’s when we said, “We really want to direct this movie.” And any time we started to get a little downtrodden and feeling a little exhausted, we would read that transition and we’d go, “This is why we’re here,” because we wanted to shock and surprise people.

    Also we hoped that it would inoculate the audience. If there was anybody in the audience who was having an “ick” factor, which is unfortunately a reality that would sort of go, “OK. This is what you’re in for.”

    [laughter]

    Were there any scenes where you guys had to discuss it, all of you, do we really want to put this in? Do we really want to shoot this? I’m not sure. Was there some issue with any of the scenes?

    Glenn: I think the only discussions we had were about tone because there was a shifting tone to it.

    Jim: Well, I’ll tell you. I fell for the guy who did the transitional scene with me because that was his first acting job, and that was quite something.

    John: He is a very brave and very talented actor.

    Rodrigo: I can say that one of my professional highlights was the first time I had lunch with Jim and his representation, and they were talking about that transitional scene and did Jim really need to do that scene. And Jim said, “That’s why I’m doing the movie.”

    {Laughter]

    When we saw Catch Me if You Can, one of the big pickups that the film makers had was will the audience believe the naivety of the time?

    And it was interesting, especially with Jim, what the character was going through, there’s a great punch line at the end about being Texas. But the naivety, did it surprise you what this guy was able to get away with? Because it seems like how did these people around not know who this guy was.

    Jim: Doesn’t surprise me at all, because I think people kind of half-heartedly do their jobs all the time. They just let things slide. Whatever. They don’t pay attention to the detail, and that’s what someone like Steven prays upon.

    I mean, he knows that you’re not going to check the fine print and all of those types of things because you’ve done this so many times, that you just go, “Whatever.” And I think people like that count on those types of slips.

    I think it happens all the time. I think we saw it during 9/11, didn’t we? You know, there was a lot of information before that all went down and people just went, “Yeah, OK. Whatever. I’m going to get a coffee. Anybody want a Starbucks?”

    Do you guys see the characters as very superficial in a deep way?

    [laughter]

    Jim: Is that a trick question?

    Ewan: That’s what I thought.

    Jim: It was supposed to be deep in a superficial way.

    Ewan: I’m not sure if it was deep in a superficial way or superficial in a deep way?

    I mean like connecting them beyond the trips to Key West and the beautiful houses and the shiny things.

    Ewan: Did they what? I’m sorry. What was the question?

    What connected your two characters? What was the love for them beyond, “Let’s go to Key West? Let’s have nice houses and cool cars?” What was the deep connection?

    Ewan: That they were in love with each other. That they loved his hair. More than anything else. That is well documented. [laughter]

    Jim: I thought my character… It was super important for my character, being who he is and the insecurities that he has, for Phillip to feel as if he couldn’t live without me; that he was lost without me, that he was a hopeless person, and I am going to take care of him.

    There are a lot of relationships like that, where it is important for one partner to make the other partner believe in their own instability. So all of those things, they were really fun for him, but they were also, “I am taking care of you.”

    Ewan: I think there was a line…I think it was cut. I have a line at one point where I say, “Is something going on? And if there is, stop it now.” And Phillip says he doesn’t care about the house, the money, and the jet skis. He just wants them to be together. I think that is right. It was about their love for each other and not their… I think they had a good time though. I think they liked to live it up.

    Jim: And ultimately, isn’t that the… We are all in relationships where we don’t know why we are in them. It just seemed like, “This is the one I should dance with. Let’s have as much fun as we can possibly have.”

    Is Steve Russell a good guy? Is he just misguided or is he actually…?

    Jim: We are all good guys. Everybody is a good guy. Your worst enemy is a good guy.

    How do you feel about him being jailed? Do you think he deserves what he got?

    Jim: I am kind of fatalistic about life. I believe that people are where they are supposed to be. Honestly, when I heard him speaking, I felt like if he would put that energy that he puts into trying to one up people, figure people out, or get around things into imagining the doors opening, the doors would open, because he is powerful. We are all powerful in that way.

    I think he belongs in jail because he broke the law, but I think he got a raw deal as far as the sentencing went. It just so happened that the DA was the sister-in-law of the boss of the company he ripped off. So they made sure he went away for a long time.

    He is available to handle your finances…

    [laughter]


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
    Posted Thursday, January 22, 2009 6:01 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments  

  • Greg Mottola Interview, Adventureland, Sundance 2009

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    Adventureland

    Director Greg Mottola has had a Sundance-in-reverse journey since his 1996 film The Daytrippers premiered at Slamdance that year, and he then moved into the world of television directing, worked on Judd Apatow’s Freaks and Geeks followup series Undeclared, directed Superbad, one of the biggest comedies in recent years, and now is finally at Sundance with his movie Adventureland.

    Adventureland was inspired by Mottola’s own experience working at a theme park in the 1980s after college, and it’s a bittersweet look at young romance. Check out our interview with Mottola after the break.

    Nice to see you again. Your plans all ready? Excited for the Steven Soderbergh Mystery Night? Everyone seems to be sure it’ll be his Girlfriend Experience movie.

    I’ve known Steven Soderbergh since 1987 and I saw him last night and he wouldn’t even tell me.

    Really? That’s hardcore.

    It’s hardcore. He’s a tough customer.

    Geez. Those bald filmmakers, man…

    Fucking bald filmmakers with dark glasses. Pretentious. [laughter]

    So, Adventureland. Tell me when you first got hit with this concept, when you wanted to make a movie about this?

    I was working on the TV show Undeclared and there were so many young people in the cast and on the writing staff, it made me very nostalgic for being young, because I was one of the older people there.

    I though, you know, I’d like to write a movie about first love. Thinking back to the first relationship where it wasn’t just infatuation or horniness, it was an actual relationship and you saw the person and loved them in spite or because of their flaws.

    I was a very naive young man at one point, and had lots of romantic illusions. I remember back to like the first girlfriend. I saw that person for who they were and it was a real change in how relationships were for me. I think I was just getting a little sentimental and nostalgic, hanging around with young people. But I thought it would be kind of fun to do that in a way that was naturalistic and kind of bittersweet.

    And then one night we were sharing stories of “what’s the worst job you ever had,” and I started talking about working in an amusement park. A really embarrassing job. And one of the writers from Undeclared said, “You should write about that. Those are funny stories and you know that world.”

    And being a lover of Fellini and anything that’s circus-y but also shabby and disgusting and awful that also kind of shifts to something beautiful and romantic too now and then, I thought, yeah, that is kind of great world to set it in. A suburban, crappy amusement park.

    It just appealed to me. I guess I just like those sort of pathetic attempts at fun that those places represent. Like William Eggleston photographs or something of people’s holiday decorations. Because I always feel the sadness underneath it all.

    And so I started to write the script, and then I finally got to a place where I liked it. I wrote it for a while and put it down, wrote it for a while and put it down. I got to a place I liked and I brought it to Ted Hope and Anne Carey. I knew Ted socially.

    At that time my directing career was essentially inert. It was dead. And they said, “This will be hard to set up, because it’s kind of a character thing and it would probably be perceived as hard to market because it’s a period piece, but young people would be the audience.” And we were about to embark to maybe make it for $3 million or $4 million.

    And then I literally got a call from Judd Apatow saying, “Do you remember that script Superbad?” I’d gone to a reading of it the year before and really liked it and had said, “I’d love to direct it if you guys would consider me.” Because Judd is super-loyal and great that way, he said, “Do you want to do Superbad?”

    That happened, I put the [Adventureland] script down. And then during post on Superbad we started sending it out again. And everyone said the same thing. They said, “Hey, I heard Superbad is great, but this script, it’s set in the ’80s and we don’t know how to market it. Can you make it a contemporary movie? Can you make it more like Superbad?” Superbad finally came out and they wanted it to be Superbad 2.

    There was a moment when I thought, well, maybe I shouldn’t make this film. I’ll turn into this, like, young-adult filmmaker and everyone will be disappointed that it’s not Superbad 2 and I’m not as funny as Seth Rogen. But I didn’t write the movie to try to be as funny as Seth Rogen. It’s apples and oranges to me.

    I wanted, for better or worse, to make this little movie looking back 20 years ago. And I’m just grateful to have this shot.

    And you didn’t give in, you didn’t change the period. You didn’t change the time.

    I was stubborn. I did say that I wasn’t going to make it if they made me change it too much. Because that was part of the fun of writing it. And once I started to write and realized that I didn’t have to put in cell phones and texting and Internet, it was really liberating.

    Was that also the era that you worked in the - the same time frame you worked at an amusement park yourself?

    Yeah, slightly different. I worked in 1985. I was not a graduate of college yet, but I was in college, which was embarrassing to work a minimum wage job. There were other college students; it wasn’t all teenagers. But it was a mix. I was pretentious and full of myself; I thought it was beneath me.

    My summer wasn’t as eventful as I made the movie, but I certainly got some perspective out of it. And then I sort of put in other things that happened late in college and whatever and brought them into the story.

    What was the casting process like? Because it would have been, I think, easy to just dip back into the whole Apatow pool that you guys kind of work from a lot. I mean, you have Bill Hader back. But, you kind of went with Kristin Stewart and some other people that were outside of that influence. What was the whole thought process behind the casting?

    I think probably Miramax would have been thrilled if I had cast it with even more people from Superbad or from Judd’s world. But I was very sensitive to the fact that I didn’t want it to feel like a complete repeat of what I’d just done. Pretty much everyone on the cast are the first people I thought of, that I wanted the most.

    Jesse, I really had loved in Roger Dodger and The Squid and the Whale. My only hesitation was that I thought Squid and the Whale was such a perfect movie that I was intimidated to be compared to it, because the character has some similarities. But then I thought, you know what, he’s still my favorite guy for the part. And when I met him and talked about the script I just couldn’t stop imagining him doing it.

    And Kristin, even though she’s a little bit younger than the character I wrote, she’s one of the - I’d known her work - and she was one of the first people I thought of because, like Jesse, there aren’t too many people in her age group who have some of the qualities I really needed. Who have the degree of complication and that weird mix of being very self-possessed and very adult in some ways, but also being very vulnerable and naked in their emotions.

    And I knew she was the kind of actress who wasn’t afraid to do unlikeable things on camera, and to be a character that some people might - that might test their sympathy. I didn’t want this to be a movie that had good guys and bad guys. I wanted everybody to be flawed.

    Indie films tend to be darker, or it’s a coming-of-age story, or it’s a romance that goes awry. Comedy isn’t typically as indie as we’d like it to be. What do you think about the current state of indie films, not just in regards to comedy, but American independent film right now and in regards to comedy? Do you think it’s going in any particular direction right now? Is it kind of foundering?

    In one way I think indie film, a lot of people are trying to get a bead on where it’s going at all. [laughs] Because indie divisions of studios are shutting down. The recession and Wall Street, a whole bunch of sources of indie financing have gone away. They’re done. It’s scary for people who love that kind of movie making, and I’m one of them. I’m don’t know that I could have made Adventureland, even with the success of Superbad. I don’t think I could have made it this year. I think they would have said, “That’s too risky.”

    So it’s hard to know. The only movie I’ve had time to see since I’ve been here is Paper Heart. I think those guys did an amazing job of changing the paradigm for themselves. They really went in and they found a way to make this beautiful, very contemporary — I think there’s a young audience that’s just going to go nuts over that movie, and rightfully so.

    Michael Cera is offered everything on the planet. I know he is. And he decided to do that, and turned down a lot of big paychecks. And I think that’s fantastic. I’m going to have to think about, the next time I read a script I want to do, after a studio film how am I going to do it?

    I mean, I’m writing one now that’s like a New York character comedy and it’s pretty dark and not very commercial. Or not commercial enough that I can expect anyone to give me even $10 million to do it. And I’m going to have to think about how I’m going to get that made. Maybe I’m going to have to do what Soderberg does every fourth movie and get some really good video camera, go borrow the red camera from somebody.

    So do you think if you would have paused at all after Superbad before going to production on this it may not have happened the way it did?

    Superbad allowed it happen, because I think before that it would have been really, really impossible. We were hoping we could really make it super-small, but the fact of the period film and the amusement park was really hard on the amount of money we had, and I can’t imagine making it for anything less than we had.

    So given the state of indie film divisions and the economy, I think it would have been rough. But it’s also cyclical. I’m not so pessimistic. The desire for those kind of movies is not going to go away. It’s how we see them and how they get made is going to change a lot.


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
    Posted Thursday, January 22, 2009 4:00 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments  

  • Spout keeps the Slamdance conversation going

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    As I said more than once during Spout’s sponsored day at the Slamdance Film Festival, I just dig getting a bunch of people in a room and talking about what works and what doesn’t, regardless of the topic. I don’t care if you’re discussing lawn care solutions, social media marketing or, as was the case at Slamdance, alternative marketing and distribution methods for filmmakers, the back and forth of ideas and examples gets my blood pumping.

    The day started off with a get-to-know-you brunch with some of the filmmakers and others who were attending the festival. This was a great opportunity to have some good food and good conversation and get to meet some people in a one-on-one (more or less) setting.

    Later on the day was the main event - a panel discussion on how to cut through the media clutter with your marketing and then find a distribution option that’s best for a particular movie and its target audience. Joining me on the panel were:

    –Heidi Van Leer (Slamdance TV)
    –Danae Ringlemann (IndieGoGo)
    –Andrew Mer (SnagFilms)
    –Chris Holland (FilmFestivalSecrets / B-Side )
    –Jay Schwartz (IndieShares )
    –Matt Dentler (Cinetic Rights Management )

    The hour long conversation that ensued was full of the good ideas and remarkable insights you would expect from such an assembled group. The room was amazing, full of good questions that spurred a lot of debate and discussion. That room was also pretty well packed and only became more so as the hour went on.

    I’d be hard-pressed to pull one key take-away from the discussion. But I do remember one comment that I made, something emphasized by Matt and others, that while it seemed like the companies assembled on the panel all were doing the same thing that was not strictly the case. We’re all taking different approaches toward the same goal (getting worthwhile movies seen by an audience) but have our own strengths and so all compliment each other more than anything else.

    The experience at Slamdance was fun, educational and just generally enjoyable and I hope it was the same for those in attendance. All of us at Spout were thrilled with how it turned out and excited to support a festival that is truly by the filmmakers and for the filmmakers.

    –Chris Thilk, Director of Marketing


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
    Posted Thursday, January 22, 2009 2:01 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments  

  • ART & COPY Director Doug Pray Interview, Sundance 2009

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    Art & Copy

    Doug Pray has directed documentaries ranging from Hype!, about the exploitation of the grunge music scene in Seattle, to Infamy in 2005, about graffiti culture, to last year’s Surfwise, about the surfing Paskowitz family and their eccentric patriarch. Pray’s Sundance premiere Art & Copy is a scattershot look at some of the pillars of advertising including George Lois, Lee Clow, Dan Wieden, Mary Wells, David Kennedy, and the big campaigns they’ve worked on, such as Apple’s 1984, the Got Milk campaign, Nike’s “Just Do It,” and more. We talked to Pray about his planned move into narrative filmmaking, making an ad for ads, and “growing flowers in hell.”

    So you’ve been pretty busy with this and with Surfwise. When did you finish that movie?

    It premiered in 2007 in Toronto. But it really came out in May of last summer. It came out in theaters at the end of May. And then it came out on DVD on July 29th.

    And it was part of the whole HDNet movies thing? Didn’t they include it in that?

    It was an HDNet film. And they knew it was an independent film, but they eventually signed on and they funded it. It was the first time I’d ever had a movie that was funded by a company full-on. Like, “Here’s the funding. Make the movie.” And knowing that we had a possibility for distribution through Magnolia Pictures, that was great.

    So, yeah. I’ve been really busy. This is the first time in six years that I don’t have any film on my slate.

    Is it scary, or more of a relief?

    No, it’s great. I’m actually going to do a dramatic feature film. I’m going to take a year and try to find a script. Because I just have always wanted to, I want to try. And if it just doesn’t work, great, I’ll go back into docs. I love doing docs. I’ll always do docs all my life, but this is a good time to try to do a feature. So that’s what I’m doing.

    Have you done anything narrative ever, like a short of anything?

    Sure. I went to UCLA Film School and I never took any doc classes at all. It was all about actors and trying to write. And I do some commercials, and in some of those formats I’m directing actors. So, yeah. I’ve been around, I guess, so that’s not foreign to me at all.

    But it sure is different. I love documentaries. I love the process of making docs because they’re so … I don’t know. You can kind of achieve it at the end. Not at the beginning. What I hate about features is it’s all in the script. If the scripts sucks - you can never get a good movie out of a bad script.

    You can get a great documentary out of a bad start. Because you can shift, then you go, “Oh, my god, this is becoming something new.” I love that. It just takes time.

    Did that happen with Art & Copy? I know at the press event that you were kind of saying that it changed focus as you were making it. It started out kind of being a tribute and then it became more about these guys and their personalities.

    I think it was mostly just - I kind of knew going in that I didn’t want to make a tribute film. Which really is what it sort of started out to be. It was really simple. The One Club said, “Hey, let’s make a movie about these hall of famers.” And I knew it would be interesting, because you don’t get a chance in life too much to sort of meet major industry captains. In advertising, they’re the gods.

    So I was just like, “That’s got to be an interesting film, somehow.” So I signed on. And it took such a long time to kind of get my head around it. I was really busy with other movies and funding was difficult. It was just a lot of issues. It took a long time. It took like three years. It was really just a collection of interviews and the some B-roll, you know, rockets and stuff like that.

    So what changed was that I didn’t expect it to become really human, in a way. That sounds kind of altruistic. That sounds a cliche almost. But it was like I thought maybe it would be more like, “Let’s go behind the scenes on a campaign and kind of figure out how they make it,” and it really didn’t go that way at all.

    I mean there are some stories, but it just became more about who are these people who have actually affected our culture, and what’s going on in their minds. That just became the most interesting thing to me.

    So the One Club, what is their organization?

    They’re a nonprofit organization. It’s like any industry has a kind of a - I don’t know what to call them, really. They’re a nonprofit organization that simply awards and celebrates excellence in advertising. And their kind of fundamental purpose is to make ads better. And so what they do is give out awards in excellence. I guess it’s like what Sundance does for filmmaking. And that’s their goal. So in a funny way…

    So I haven’t understood this film until this week, and then finally - like I did a couple of interviews a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I really didn’t.

    I saw this thing yesterday in the - and it was like, god, I didn’t know how to frame this movie or what to expect from the audience or anything. I was a little bit afraid of it because it’s about advertising and comes with such a fully-loaded topic, for anybody. It’s just like, “Advertising, god, are you just trashing it?”

    But when Dan Wieden the other night at the premier said something about, “If young people saw this film, maybe advertising could be improved,” it sort of all came home to me. It was like, OK, maybe I did - that was what they set out to do in the campaign and that’s what I tried to do.

    Like make an ad for the advertising world.

    If you look at advertising as part of our environment, then 95% of it is kind of pollution, and can we clean up that environment. It sounds kind of funny to say it that way. But the film is inspiring, and does make people kind of think, “My god, why can’t it be better?”

    We all of this money and resources in the economy going into communicating to us and giving us messages, and the people in my film - whether people like it or not - they at least feel strongly that they are trying to somehow give a positive message. That’s the wrong word. But they’re saying something.

    They definitely don’t feel like they are just guys out to make a buck, or maybe that wasn’t shown.

    Right. Like if you told them, “Oh, you’re really into manipulation.” They’d say, “That’s really not our goal.” I mean, it is. It’s like, “We want to sell product for the client.” But their whole thing is, if they can work in that industry and still make a message and still be artists and still be revolutionary, even if it’s in their own mind, that’s their goal.

    But that’s only these guys. I felt sort of funny, like very privileged to be in their presence even. Somebody accused me the other day of, like, I kind of just got sold on them and I’m like, “Oh, everything they say is great.” But some of that’s true. They’re really smart, really intelligent people.

    This is one of those documentaries where you felt like, wow, you could have made six or seven documentaries from this. Because you could have just made a documentary about George Lois, for instance.

    I wanted to at one point. I actually proposed that about halfway through. I said, “You know, why don’t we just do this about George?”

    His Esquire covers were fantastic.

    Yeah, it’s pretty unbelievable. What’s so interesting about advertising is that — it’s like if you told a painter, “OK, go paint a painting. But by the way, it has to make people do this.” It’s art that has to make people do something.

    It’s difficult.

    And my film is not about what it’s making them do, or the associated commerce downstream. It’s all about the advertising. I find it really interesting. You have to do research to do something like that in the movie. He’s like, “Look, I make art. I try to move people, I try to make them laugh or cry.” It’s the same exact thing an artist does. It’s just that, yeah, it’s all being paid for by a giant corporation that wants to move a ton of beer. And so in most people’s minds, that completely removes it from it having any integrity.

    And I understand that. I felt that way most of my life. But then you start looking at art — like real “art,” quote unquote — and then you start going, well, what’s funding that? What corporation is actually funding NPR and PBS? Which corporation is it?

    And how is that being paid? Who’s sponsoring Sundance? And every single party we go to? It’s sort of like you start realizing, well, when you get funding for an independent film, which I have, where’s that money coming from?

    That’s a good point.

    I don’t have any rich uncles, but if you go to a rich uncle, where’s that money coming from? I’m not trying to take away the obvious commerce part of it, but it’s just interesting. I look at art really differently now, because of these guys.

    What about advertising? Do you look at that differently after making this?

    Oh, I definitely do. It makes me more pissed off just at bad ads, going, “This is so stupid.” I do advertising myself. Four or five years ago, I started doing some commercials. I sort of had this big moment where I realized all my heroes, like Errol Morris, they did ads. I couldn’t imagine that they would do that.

    Anyway, I started. I have really mixed feelings about the whole thing. But I love doing ads. They’re a great challenge, really dynamic and super. You get paid, which for a documentarian is kind of a shock.

    When you talked to these guys, and when you were going through the histories of these companies, did you get a sense that there were ads that they didn’t want to talk about, or things that they weren’t proud of that they had done, or ads that they were like, “We wish we could have done better on that”?

    I think they all were like anybody. They would have massive frustrations: campaigns that have died, clients that really got impossible to work with. But when you go into that stuff too much, I was more looking for the things that were cultural touchstones. So that was more of my choice. I went in knowing well, this guy did “Got Milk?” It’s a pretty cool campaign. Let me talk to him about that. “Got Milk?” if anything, I don’t think they think that was their best work.

    It was more just like trying to figure out different personalities, like how Hal Riney’s personality and his upbringing and childhood really feeds into his work. So for him, the Reagan thing was just perfect. He changed the landscape of politics arguably.

    Anyway, so I just kind of knew the ones — like “Just do it!” I knew I wanted to do that. I guess the whole movie, in a funny way — it doesn’t focus on bad ads, and it doesn’t even focus on the bad ads by these guys. It focuses on: how did they move a nation and why?

    Doug: And where did that come from, and can we try to break that down? And something like Hilfiger — like Tommy Hilfiger — that’s a fascinating story to me, because it shows two or three things that are really interesting. One is it’s very much George Lois’s Bronx, fighting, schoolyard, in-your-face, “punch the status quo” personality.

    It’s a classic example of the personality making ads, because it’s like he was saying, “**** you!” to Calvin Klein and all those guys.

    Right.

    It’s just intensely - it was great for George Lois. The second thing is it’s one example where an ad actually brought up a quality — I don’t know anything about Tommy Hilfiger’s clothing. I’ve never worn it, and I don’t have any opinions on it. But when Tommy Hilfiger said, “God, that ad freaked me out so much that I decided I had to just go crazy making the product.”

    You kind of go, that’s funny. The ad led the product. It actually improved, arguably, the product. It’s kind of interesting.

    I wanted to ask the guys about that in that panel. When they talked about the Braniff ad and how they got Braniff to paint their planes different colors and everything, I wondered if advertising had led other products like that before, or if they had convinced them, “If you make this change, we can make a great ad for you.”

    It’s the best ones. The best ones are the ones where they’re working with the top head of the whole company. Saturn was an example of that. I didn’t even tell this story. It’d probably be on the DVD, because Hal Riney, he went to that company, he named the colors, he named the car.

    He named it the Saturn?

    Yeah. They wanted to give it names, like the Saturn whatever, like Sundance, those crazy car names, and he said, “Well, why don’t we just call it a sedan?” And that’s very Hal Riney-like. Let’s just be really, really simple.

    And they were like, “Well, what color should we call it? Should it be like starburst horizon? Is that good?” Hal said, “How about red?” You know, Saturn sedan, color red. And he did everything. He designed the concept. Everything we think about Saturn is from the mind of Hal Riney. It’s just a car. It’s no different from any other car Detroit was making.

    Everything about it, the whole homespun, folksy, you kind of see, “Oh yeah, that’s an American brand.” It’s all just totally Hal Riney came up with all that. That’s interesting to me. That’s because he can work with them at that level.

    So what the guys were railing against, all of them, that there’s a section in the movie where they’re just bitching about MBAs and committees and testing, and it’s because they can’t get anything good through. And it’s very frustrating. So I thought that was kind of telling.

    You look at like Mary Wells. She’s did the whole Braniff thing, design and everything. You know, Nike is another story like that. Phil Knight, Dan said this the other night, he said something like, “Just spell it N-I-K-E. Make sure the spelling is right.” So they went off and just created all these intensely great commercials.

    You’ve really get a sense for that in the movie with the whole Apple ad, because when they saw that the board of directors did not want to run it, the two Steves decided to fund it themselves.

    That’s another example of the perfect ad.

    I wonder how many times it relied on the ballsiness of the corporation as well as the ad agency. Sometimes these corporations have to really go take a leap of faith and go, “OK. We’re going to spend a ton of money on this, so all right.”

    Like the Hilfiger thing. What if that had blown up in his face and he was derided for that, and people were like, “How dare you compare yourself?” But it went the other direction.

    Well, it’s funny. You look through the books, like George Lois books and the campaigns, and it’s like, “I don’t remember this campaign at all.” I think they’ve all been associated with things they did not promote.

    This era of advertising, even as far back as the Braniff ad, some of those were created in the era of when the jingle was king. You had to create your own little ditty. Did you ever think about including it? I know at the beginning, there’s sort of the montage and you can hear the Alka Seltzer ads and everything. Did you ever think about including any of those? That was it?

    That was the best I could do. I just couldn’t fit them in at all. There’s so many jingles I wanted to get in there. I wanted to get other designers. I wanted to do so much more, and instead, it just - all my films are like this.

    You were hindered by the time constraints?

    You end up with a certain thing. That’s what it is. We didn’t touch on Internet advertising. We didn’t touch on it. And there’s other modern advertisers, like these guys out of Florida. Crispin Porter is who everybody regards as like the shit. They are the kings of advertising today because they’re doing all the really great stuff.

    And there’s a lot of pretty good advertising being made today by people not in the movie. That just reflects the One Club and who’s in the Hall of Fame, and maybe someday they’ll be in that too.

    Like, we don’t even mention David Ogilvy, one of the major pioneers. And again, all this movie reflects, aside from One Club, is the creative revolution of the ’60s and a handful of people who were totally inspired by it. Because everyone in the movie was definitely inspired by that.

    They all had their, “Wow, I looked at what Birnbock was doing, and I said ‘I’ve got to do that too.’” All of them. I have that quote from pretty much every single one of them.

    Another thing is that all of these guys are not in touch with the daily campaigns. They’re just the heads of these huge - like there’s 700 employees at Wieden+Kennedy. And Lee Clow’s like the head of 300 offices worldwide. He doesn’t even travel.

    Really?

    I was like, “Do you have to go around the world all the time and be the boss?” And he’s like, “No. It’s just not worth it. It takes forever. I’d rather hang out on the beach.”

    As they approached you about this and you started putting it together, what was the hardest thing to wrap your head around?

    Just the fact that it was about advertising. It was on the simplest level that I felt like I was somehow selling out. Because I really pride myself on the films I’ve made. I’ve really been about underground culture, and I consider myself somebody to likes to think about all sides of an issue.

    But also, there’s a part of my personality that really respects people who work within the system, and I also have a mistrust for instant radicals, like people who are just like, “I hate everything, therefore I’m brilliant.”

    And maybe it’s just because I’m older. When you age, you really do start changing your perceptions of life. But there really is a part of me that respects people who say, “I’m going to stay in the dead center of the system.” As Kirk Souder, my executive producer, he’s has this concept of, grow flowers in hell.

    Instead of just saying, “Well, screw this,” because I think it’s unrealistic. Maybe you heard me say this the other day, it’s really - but that was the hardest thing to get my head around. It was just the fact that it was about advertising. Because I knew what people would think, because I’ve felt that way my whole life, first of all, until I started ads, but also, I just knew.

    A really good friend of mine made this incredible movie called The Ad and the Ego. It’d be a great double-feature with this. He’s so awesome. Because it does go there. It completely goes into manipulation and how sexual images and things just make you do this and how they give women a feeling of being inadequate and all that stuff.

    And it really would be just a brilliant double-feature. Mine is about the power of advertising and the inspiration of it, and this is about the power of advertising and how dangerous it can be.

    Yeah, the insidiousness side of it.

    And of course, it was an underground film that never got distributed. It came out 15 years ago.

    So, anyway, that was the hardest thing. So I was trying to wrap my head around it. And Kirk Souder, the executive producer, kept saying to me — because I would say, “Well, it’s just a bunch of rich, old guys. Where’s the edge?” And I really have to hand it to him, because he kept saying, “Just keep getting in their minds, and you’ll understand where they’re coming from,” and that’s when it started being alive, because I realized they’re all coming from a similar source.

    George Lois absolutely considers himself a revolutionary, and he considers all the ads he did as being the same, to some degree. And I think that Dan Wieden is absolutely a deeply moral, very political, very liberal, left-leaning guy, and probably a multi-millionaire as well. It’s interesting. It’s a really interesting bunch of guys to talk with.

    You know what’s interesting? I actually thought at first that it was going be a 60-minute thing, and I was more comfortable with that. I was like, “OK, well, it’s not going to be one of my, whatever, independent documentary features. It’s not going to be a part of my little growing library.”

    I was very comfortable with that. Then the producers — and I thank them for this now — they just completely kept hammering. They said, “No, no, no. We want to target Sundance. We really want this to be a feature-length film, a Doug Pray film.” That’s what producers are supposed to be. They kept me on it. They just kept saying, “No, let’s just make it bigger and better. Let’s settle down.” They were very patient with me.

    That was another thing I was noticing about this film was that it was sort of back to a style that I was trying to get away from, the style of “Let’s meet seven to 12 people, and get to know them.” Kind of. [laughs]

    When I did Surfwise,  it was so liberating to do one movie about one family, and one story, and emotional art. You could laugh and cry, because you cared about them. That’s why I want to do a narrative now, because I want to do that again. I want to do, start to finish, one story that you care about.

    But it’s fine. It’s not like I’m putting down a carbon copy. I felt like, “Oh, God, I’m getting back to this episodic thing.” It’s hard to do. It’s hard to keep up. “Big Rig” is a very hard movie for some people, because it’s very episodic. You meet a character, and then they go away. And then you meet another character, and then they go away.

    So would this a narrative film be your next, or would you do a documentary again before that?

    I don’t want to do a documentary next. I’m intentionally not entertaining documentaries.

    Would you write it or would you find something?

    I might write it, but I’m also reading everything I can. I’m very, very, very picky. I don’t like anything. Like every time I go, “Why would I make a movie like this? Why not just make another documentary?”


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
    Posted Thursday, January 22, 2009 2:01 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments  

  • WORLD’S GREATEST DAD director Bobcat Goldthwaite, Sundance Interview

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    Under discussion:

    Sleeping Dogs Lie  (2006)

    World's Greatest Dad  (2009)

    In the director’s statement slipped into the press notes for his Robin Williams-starring Sundance entry World’s Greatest Dad, Bobcat Goldthwaite says it took him 25 years in show business to figure out that what he really wants to do is direct movies, and doing so makes him feel like he’s “getting away with murdr.” That’s a fair description of what he pulls off in Dad, in which a frustrated novelist/high school teacher (Williams) exploits the death of a loved one to plump up his own popularity. Though far more polished than Goldthwaite’s 2006 Sundance competition film Sleeping Dogs Lie (also known as Stay), Dad rides the same line between obscene satire and almost mushy sincerity. I talked to Goldthwaite about self-Googling, why he has no desire for his stand-up fans to see his movies, and why he’s not going on Celebrity Fit Club any time soon.

    I was a really big fan of Stay/Sleeping Dogs Lie.

    Well, I actually know that. I would like to pretend I was more secure and didn’t Google my own name, but you - you were very supportive. [laughter] It meant a lot to me. And you’re also a funny writer. That’s my girlfriend over there, she’s the costume designer and we’re kind of a team. I started reading your stuff out loud to her, because it made me laugh. Not just to hear you say flattering things about my movies.

    Wow, thank you very much. Anyway, I noticed a sort of interesting theme between that film and the new one, which is that they both kind of send the message that lying makes your life a lot better.

    I thought it was the other way. I wanted this to be, like, the flipside.

    Right, ultimately he turns away from lying.

    Right. And actually, [the main character of Sleeping Dogs Lie] embraces it. No, that was kind of the idea. I thought of the end of this one first and I wanted it to be - the last one was kind of about unconditional love from other people. This one was about … [pause]. This is so pretentious. Often when I’m doing interviews, if I heard them I’d have to come over and punch myself in the throat. But it is a really unpopular thing, I think, [to talk about] a man learning to take care of himself. And this is the part that’s gross for me to say: “to love himself.”

    Because to me, Lance, he has to earn my caring about him. Because the only people that are kind of nice in this movie, to me, is Andrew, the little boy.

    When you say that you sometimes say things in interviews that are so pretentious that you’d punch you if you heard it - there was a thing in your director’s statement about how it took you your whole career to figure out you wanted to make movies. And then there this line in the movie about how movies are “for art fags and losers.” Did you feel some resistance earlier in your life about making independent films, or about being a director? You also said something when you were introducing the move about how you’re not an “auteur.”

    Here’s the thing. I spent all this time in the system being miserable and being really beat up. Not realizing that this is my second life. When I turned away, I was so happy. My goal is to keep on making movies, and really I know that if I do them like I did Stay which was with a crew from Craigslist and was shot in two weeks, I have no problem with that. I really don’t care. And not like I used to say, “I don’t care, man!” [raises both middle fingers in the air]. I really don’t care. I just want to keep making movies. Sometimes they connect and sometimes they don’t, you know? I don’t mean that. I certainly wish I could connect with a bigger audience. But I’m not going to worry about that because I’m happy right now.

    You also said something about how sometimes you just want to say, “**** it,” and write a Kate Hudson movie.

    [laughter] I’ll say this. I’m probably the only director here who in three weeks is going to be playing an Indian casino in Iowa. Which is true. It’s true. And I go out on the road and I don’t like doing stand-up comedy. And what’s funny is I can say that to you in this interview, that I hate stand-up comedy. And the people who come out to see me, they’ll never see that quote. Because those people come - it’s like I’m Foreigner, going out on the road. There’s still going to be an audience to see Frampton.

    Are you saying you’re a nostalgia act?

    Oh, totally. Totally. These people don’t come - the last time actually I went on stage, I had to make some money to pay the rent, and I was on the road. I figured it out, and I’d been on the road and only three times did someone bring up that movie. And the rest were like, “Remember that movie with the homeless dude?”

    Do you think if you starred in the films there would be of more of a connect with that audience? Or do you not even want that connection?

    I don’t want to star in my movies. Because I don’t. I don’t. I don’t want to. It took me this long to get out of it. I truly don’t like acting. I’m in this one, and I wanted Guillermo from the “Jimmy Kimmel Show.” I don’t know if you ever watch the show, but he’s the parking lot attendant. And he had become my friend, and he had to work that day. Which is truly why I’m in the movie.

    My daughter and I were laughing about how bad my acting voice was. I almost had Tom Kenny loop my voice, not have it match, because I thought it would be really funny. But then I thought it would take you out of the movie.

    One thing I really like about both of these last two movies is something that seems to stem from your personality: there’s a split between being obscene and satirically funny, and then being really sincere. And that seems so perfect for Robin Williams, too.

    Yeah. Well, thanks. I am sincere. It’s so funny, like - I mean, that’s probably why I had that persona all those years, because it was a place to hide and not have to reveal who I was. But these movies are way more about who I am than anything I’ve done or anything…It wasn’t until I’d finished it recently that I realized, “Oh, I get it. Lance turns his back.” It’s like no one believes you that you don’t want to be in front of the camera. If I want to be on “Celebrity Fit Club” it’s one phone call, you know what I mean?

    Right.

    I could still be out in the public eye. And I remember at that point during my stand-up, when I set the “Tonight Show” on fire, the director - obviously something happened. I don’t want to become an armchair shrink, but I was trying to get out, you know? But that made me more bookable.

    When you do something like that you just create attention around yourself. And then attention feeds on attention.

    Yeah. I really do like being behind the camera. The whole set ends up being like everybody’s family. And all these guys, I’ve worked with them and they show up. Like Tom Kenny and Jill Talley, they show up briefly. I just like working with friends.

    The actors did a lot of ad-libbing?

    It’s really funny, because Robin got really defensive when people asked him if he was ad-libbing. And he says, “No. It was all in the script.” I go, “No, but that’s a compliment, they just thought you were being natural.”

    I’m not a writer who goes, “Ah, these are my precious words.” I like that you do it and you keep working on it and you do some where it’s staged, really, and some where it’s straight as a heart attack. And then I’ve got all these choices when I go back to edit. I don’t like directors who almost embarrass the actors. That’s a real thing.

    Just to get the kind of performance they want?

    Yeah. **** them, it’s just a movie. We should all be in the same thing. Some days though - I don’t know if you know Tom Kenny, but he one of my best friends since I was 15. He’s Spongebob. We grew up together. And I never felt funny because I always just watched him. He’s really, really awesome. That’s why I like directing him. I’m back to watching Tom Kenny. It really was like the Marx Brothers [on set]. Screaming and running around this PBS TV stage. And I’m pulling out what’s left of my hair. “Come on, guys, really, we’ve got o finish.” And they’re all like, “Whoo-oo-oo.” And I was like that too. And it just feeds it, and it’s good.

    Does the finished film end up looking really different from what you had in mind before you started?

    Robin is such a great actor that he exceeded my expectations. And Daryl. And I have to say Alexie, she could be in these scenes with Robin and to not disappear is really impressive for the both of them.

    There was a guy in the Q&A who thanked you for making movies that make him squirm. He said that that’s what Sundance should be about. But it really isn’t. There are so few independent films or really any films that take risks and are comfortable with making the audience uncomfortable. Why do you think that is?

    I had the luxury of being recognized and all that crap. I know that it’s bullshit, and I think a lot of these young filmmakers are hoping to make it. And I know that people, when they’re trying to sell a movie, that’s just more pressure. Because I don’t want anyone to take a hit because they believe in me. I want the movie to recoup.

    But this is the destination. I just want to shake them all and go, “I didn’t even have a distributor and they let me in, and gave me a good crowd to see a movie.”

    Another thing that you said in your director’s statement was that you whole goal is to have an audience see the film, that’s why you make the films. There’s been a lot of talk this week about new distribution models, movies skipping theatrical distribution to go on video-on-demand and all these other things. But aren’t there are certain types of films that need to be seen in a theater with an audience, like the kinds of comedies you make?

    Yeah. That’s how it’s made. People second-guess whether something works [when watching it alone] versus watching it with a crowd. That’s the nature of comedy. I do hope people - do I want to say I hope people see it? Because that’s not true. [laughs] I hope the right people see it.

    Who are the right people?

    I don’t give a shit if people who went to see that goddamn Kevin James movie see this movie. [laughter] I don’t give a **** if they see my movie.

    So if the right people aren’t the people who go see a Kevin James movie, and they’re not the people who go see you do stand-up, who are they?

    I don’t know. I might just be me and a couple of my friends. [laughter] **** “American Idol.” **** ‘em all.

    They just gave me the wrap-it-up signal, so I’ll just ask you one more question…

    Do the voice. [laughs]

    [laughs] No, I’m not going to go there. What else are you working on? What’s coming up?

    There’s another script in the so-called the “Boo-Hoo Trilogy, ” in the same tone of these two, although there’s not the same characters. Although my daughter’s really funny. I go, “It’s a little bit based on us, but not really” - she goes, “**** off, that’s my life!” But I’m super lazy. This movie was like me remembering horrible things some people said, and I put it in the screenplay. [laughs]

    That’s basically your process, is just remembering your pain?

    Just like hearing someone saying something and it be so cringe-worthy that I go, “Ahh.”


    Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
    Posted Thursday, January 22, 2009 1:01 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments  

 


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