ScreenCrave » interviews

Interview: Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning Become The Runaways

Mali Elfman — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:00:45 +0000

Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning transform themselves into real life rock legends Joan Jett and Cherie Currie in The Runaways. There’s no doubt about it, these two young vixens give themselves completely to the real life story of becoming of rock star by the age of 14-years-old. Both encompassed the look and the feel of these bad-ass chicks, smashing through stereotypes and being pushed to the edge of their sanity. Dressed in almost nothing, both actors leave their innocent selves behind and become real teenage rock stars.

We were able to catch up with the duo at a roundtable for the film and ask them some questions about becoming The Runways below…

Does every successful actor harbor dreams of being a rock star?

Dakota Fanning: I think everybody has that inner part of themselves that wishes they could perform and be on stage. I’ve definitely had that. I think doing this movie and performing Cherry Bomb and doing the performance scenes is the closest I’ll ever get to those dreams.

How did you capture that Japan performance of Cherry Bomb?

DF: I think just watching the Live in Japan videos of Cherie and getting to know her and realizing that especially Cherry Bomb is like a choreographed dance. She did the same thing each and every time and it was a routine and she did it without even thinking about it. So making that performance like that for me was really important.

How did you capture not only the performance but the character of Joan?

Kristen Stewart: Well, luckily they were so open and enthusiastic and ready to tell the story that we had them as a constant resource so we never felt like we were making anything up because with a story like this, it’s so not your normal experience on a movie. Usually you get to sort of on the fly or in rehearsal, create something. This was not that so the fact that they were there and so sort of open and awesome made it a lot easier, but both of them are really hard characters to play actually, because you meet them and they’re so dynamic. They’re just really big personalities. You hope to capture an essence because they become your friend and it’s a huge responsibility.

What are some lessons you took from them that will carry on the rest of your life?

DF: Wow, I think it’s really tough because I feel like when they become your friends, they just keep giving you stuff every day. I talk to Cherie a lot. She just says little things that kind of inspire me and I remember and are important to me. Something that relates to the movie is her sacrifice at the end of the film. She sacrificed everything that she loves and this career because she knows that she’s not going to make it much longer if she continues on this downward spiral and she’s not really equipped for the lifestyle that she’s been leading.
KS: And Joan is.
DF: So that just taught me a lot about what she gave up. I don’t know if I could give it up when faced with that. She just was so courageous in that decision. That was really inspiring to me.

How did you first get involved? Did Joan come to you?

KS: I read a script and just was very pleased that they wanted me to be a part of it. I met Joan after I got the part and it was so scary because it sort of felt like this is the meeting that either fires me or keeps me on. My hair was still long. I was about to do New Moon. I sort of felt like she was going to look at me and go, “What makes you think…?”

When you have people who are so accessible, what’s the advantage of knowing them besides being able to ask them questions? Do you work harder or is it easier?

DF: I think it becomes easier. I think it becomes a lot easier and definitely the way I wanted it to be and I was just really happy that both of them supported the film and liked making the film because I just think that would be really horrible if they didn’t obviously.
KS: Especially, I mean this is just an interesting thing, they’re public figures. So we could have made this movie regardless. They covet this thing and us to a certain degree which sort of is like everything you could ever hope for.

The treatment floated around for 30 years in Hollywood. Is there a sense of destiny when the scripts find you?

KS: For me, it always has to be, and I know Dakota is sort of the same deal. You can’t do something so ridiculous as to play another person in a movie for pretend, unless it speaks to you in a certain way and you feel like it’s worth it. You take something from every character you play. You get to use their lives sort of like – - and in this case, considering – - there’s a million reasons why this movie is cool but there is an indescribable thing that fills you with the thought that you can actually do it. Because there’s a lot of scripts that I read that like oh, it’s my age for a role, but I can’t play that part. I don’t have that in me. I guess it could be considered, I don’t know, kismet. It’s in the stars.

How familiar were you with the music before?

DF: I was familiar with Joan Jett. I didn’t know who the Runaways were and I wasn’t familiar with Cherie, as I think a lot of people our age are not familiar with The Runaways, which is kind of weird now thinking back because they were like the first all girls rock n’ roll band.
KS: Literally, which is a weird thing to think. I didn’t really consider that a whole lot when we were making the movie.

A lot of musical biographies deal with drugs and alcohol and it can be exciting for actors to play. Was it important to you that that wasn’t the total focus of this movie?

DF: Definitely. I think that there’s so much intense subject matter in the movie but it’s just all kind of there. It doesn’t focus on one particular thing and I think that’s what makes it the whole story. Especially for Cherie because she really gets into the whole drug thing and ultimately can’t get out of it and is not equipped to deal with it. So that’s kind of a part of her but it doesn’t define her in a way. I didn’t want it to be like the only thing about Cherie is that this happened to her. It was just another thing that makes up who she is today.

Was there any discovery about life in the valley back then versus now?

DF: Yeah, I mean I’m not from L.A. I’m from Georgia. But yeah, I live there and I go to school there. It’s funny because I was reading Cherie’s book which the script’s kind of based on it. She had a really big car accident at what is now Twains, at Coldwater and Ventura which I see every day. She had like a near death car accident there. I was reading that and I was thinking like, “Okay, I drive by there every day. That is so…” There are so many things, like the rehearsal trailer was on Ventura Blvd. which is we’re pretty much all on Ventura Blvd. at some point. So there are so many things that we probably drive by every single day we don’t know that they’re so historic to this story and this time.

Is this the first R-rated movie you’ve each done?

DF: No, not really.
KS: Not at all actually.

Are there some scenes you warn your parents not to watch? Is it weird?

DF: I mean, one of the first movies I’d ever done was pretty intense subject matter and my parents have kind of gotten used to it by now I guess. They know it’s just acting.
KS: Do you find that it’s gotten easier because I find that it has. Seriously, I was more nervous about it when I was younger and it was like a slow wearing down of like okay, Kristen’s going to do what she’s going to do. She’s just going to do these movies. Not that they were against it, just that projection I took away from them. I sort of didn’t care anymore. I was like, “Are you guys cool with this?”

Joan said the chick better like Suzie Quatro. Do you?

KS: I do now. That’s what’s cool about this movie. I did not know Suzie Quatro. Joan loves music. I know most of her – - she loves the Stones, she loves stuff like that I know but Suzie Quatro’s great.

They released 10 seconds of the Eclipse trailer. What should we be excited for in the full one?

KS: I don’t know, I haven’t seen it.
DF: We were supposed to watch that.
KS: We were supposed to watch that at lunch.

What are you excited for in Eclipse?

DF: I’m in it a few scenes. I filmed only for a little bit but I’m excited for it. I think it’ll be really good.

Check out Fanning as Cherie Currie and Steweart as Joan Jett in theaters this Friday March 19th in The Runaways.

[flashvideo file=/sctrailers/the_runaways_trailer.mp4] streamer=rtmpt://e1f1.simplecdn.net/play type=video /]

Interview: The Real Cherie Currie

Mali Elfman — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:00:21 +0000

As Dakota Fanning gears up for her big break through role in The Runaways this week, lets not forget where the real story came from. David Bowie fan Cherie Currie at at the age of 14 years-old was thrown into the first all female rock band and put on tour for nearly two years straight in the mid-70’s when the more blush and the more cocaine you had on you, the more successful you were. Not long after puberty, Cherie was dressed in lingerie singing about being a “blond bombshell ready to explode” and the results were just that. She burnt out before she was ever even given a chance.

Find out what it was like for the upbeat and wise Cherie to watch Fanning transform herself into a Runaway and what advice she has for upcoming teenagers looking to become rock stars…

What’s it like to see this movie? To see yourself when you were a kid? What was that like for you?

Cherie Currie: Every time I see the movie it’s just another major feeling of just being in awe. It’s really the greatest honor to have a movie about your life and things that you had done. The Runaways was really so unique and so worthy of this. It’s very gratifying and really incredible that I still can’t wrap my head around it.

And it’s so great to have Dakota Fanning, who is such a great young actress, it seems like that’s a tough role to take on. Did you get to speak with her at all? Did you give her any advice stepping into it?

CC: Oh yeah, we spent a lot of time together — she was really ready for this. Dakota has always been ahead of her time, just like we were in The Runaways. Dakota is just brilliant. She was more than ready to take this on. She was fearless; she is fearless. That is what she had to be, and she was my age for The Runaways. Pretty incredible.

It was an interesting experience to see Dakota Fanning show so much of her body at such a young age, but that was exactly what you went through. Now that you’re a grown, mature woman, does that kind of put it in perspective, how young you were when all of this was taking place?

CC: It really hit home for me because I’m a mother of a 19-year-old son. He was actually offered to go on tour when he was 15. I put a stop to that right away because just, no (laughs). It’s pretty surreal and unbelievable that we were actually able to do that. I just cant even imagine what [our parents] went through letting us go venture out into the world without any supervision. It had to have taken an enormous amount love for us to have let that happen. They wanted us to have our dreams, and they suffered, greatly, and worried about us all the time. I don’t know how they did it.

And these costumes, you look back on these photos and it seemed like they were, pretty much, dead on.

CC: They really captured the 70s. What I love about it is that they were fearless. It wasn’t like ‘The Brady Bunch’ or — not putting that show down because I love that show — but just saying it really captures, not only the darkness of the clubs and really what was going on there because everyone, almost everyone, was lying to their parents about where they were going at night. It was extremely well done and the costumes and the makeup was that way.

And was that all true story? Basically all that we saw, can you vouch for that?

CC: Well I won that talent show, so that was false. They did throw food at me, but that was before, when I first started dressing differently and wearing lightning bolts across my face and going to school that way, they didn’t take that very well, but slowly and surely even the kids that were picked on for wearing glasses, people would call a nerd, they did come to school with a lightning bolt on her cheek and David Bowie jacket, it was really neat to see this kids so depressed, come out of their shell and come out of their shell. I felt very good about that.

Did you ever have any regrets looking back of leaving the band, or are you very happy to have left and started your own life that was separate from all of that?

CC: Well I don’t have any regrets. I do wish we would have taken a break and that we could have regrouped, it just never stopped. We were never given a break in two years of heavy touring and we were so young, I was homesick, my dad was ill and it was just a whole lot. I wish we would have had better management or better people taking care of us. We didn’t have that. Made for a good story and what the truth is.

Do you think you guys would would have had a chance under proper management and not been under the tyrant Kim Fowley?

CC: I don’t know because we were so young and were just growing into being young women and there jealousies and turned against each other. We never knew what was true or what wasn’t. And me, being the lead singer, I took a lot of the tension away in the press which was not anything that was ever intended. We were tired, and when you got young girls who were exhausted and what do you say? I don’t know.

People who were talking about Michael Shannon who played your manager Kim, was that an accurate portrayal of him?

CC: Michael did a great job. Kim is so unique, and Michael, I thought, he captured the best parts of him. The darker sides of him. I don’t know if anyone could ever truly understand Kim, even Kim himself, but Michael did a great job.

Do you have any advice for young musicians, and young actors, and young everybody, who are starting at the ages that you started at? To not burn out, or to continue? Any advice for them starting out their careers?

CC: Be fearless and don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t do something. Usually, it’s when you listen to people that you get all screwed up. Just go for it.

Check out Dakota Fanning playing Cherie Currie in The Runaways this Friday March 19th!

Interview: Ewan McGregor Talks About Working for Polanski

Mali Elfman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:31:59 +0000

Roman Polanski’s latest film The Ghost Writer is a subtle thriller that needed just the right cast in order to be pulled off. Cut to: Yet another amazing performance by Ewan McGregor. Within the tangled web of the film there is an ease about McGregor’s performance that allowed him to both lead us through the story as an outsider and become a part of it when needed. Unlike many of the other in your face thrillers out there today, this one needed stillness in order to be pulled. McGregor’s humor came off completely natural and set the tone for the films success.

We were able to join a roundtable and talk to McGregor about working on the film. There’s no question that many of us want to know what’s it’s like working with Polanski, Oscar winner and US-exile. There’s no doubt that the man is a genius and put a lot of his personal experiences in the film, so it’ no wonder he knew exactly what he wanted from his actors and wouldn’t have it any other way…

So, another writer?

Ewan McGregor: Yeah, I know – another writer. I think the thing is that writers like to write about the writing, you know? They like the world to know it’s a really difficult and exciting profession. Don’t you all? So you’re always writing about yourselves in a way. But it’s true I’ve played a few journalists and writers and people that sit at keyboards.

Talk a little bit about what your collaboration was like with Roman Polanski.

McGregor: I only spoke to Roman on the telephone before we started, before I met him in Germany. Because he was in Switzerland at the time and I think I was shooting Men Who Stare At Goats in New Mexico and Puerto Rico, so we didn’t actually get to meet before I turned up to start. I was doing costume fitting when he came in, and he’s an iconic man and a legendary director, so for an actor it was quite nerve-wracking to meet him. I was excited to meet him and he was very ghostly, and he’s kind of like a host before you get on set, because there’s two kind of different men, I think, in there (laughs). But when you’re off set he’s making you coffee and making sure everyone’s alright, and then when you start working, be it on the text or actually on the set, he’s very direct. His direction is not guarded or sugarcoated in any way – he’s really quite brusque, almost, with his direction. But the direction is always very interesting and it’s not a coincidence that he’s considered to be a great filmmaker, because he is a great filmmaker.

So how do you deal with it when the direction can be critical?

McGregor: You just have to listen to him and more often than, no, all of the time, he seems to be right. It’s kind of annoying, but
when you try it, it seems to be like oh yeah, he’s right. But I went through a process with him because we’re quite sensitive, actors, and if it’s not considered to be good or right, and Polanski wouldn’t worry about telling you that it was wrong, then it can hurt your feelings. But I have to say I realized very quickly that he was like that with everybody; he directed the props guy and the painter and the set dresser in exactly the same way. In fact, all of our camera crew were Polish, and they were in between setups or whatever, and he was often hanging out with them and you could hear them telling jokes in Polish. They were his buddies and he was almost the toughest with them, when he was directing where the camera should be or whatever, and so I realized it’s not a personal thing. It’s just absolutely about his manner about how he directs.

Can you talk about the sort of meta-movie aspect of this, which is that this guy obviously understands storytelling convention and yet he falls into all the traps and becomes a part of it…

McGregor: I think the writer in him draws him into it in the first place. What I liked about him as a character very much was his unimpressedness; he seems unimpressed by everything, really – people and certainly politicians, politics. I liked playing that – that was fun to play, but I thought he was a good ghost writer. You know, when I spoke to Robert Harris in Berlin recently, he was talking about the idea that there’s an inherent failure about being a ghost writer in the first place, and that you’re selling your wares without your name on it. you’re writing without putting your name to something, and there’s a kind of failed aspect about him, which I thought was quite interesting, and made sense to me about the ghost as well.
I think at first, Robert had the initial idea of writing a book about a ghost writer, a person whose job it is to ask questions, and what happens when that character feels that his subject, his client, isn’t telling him the truth. I think that was the very kernel, the seed of his idea in the first place, just that, and then he kind of wrote his story around that idea. I think it’s the ghost’s desire to find out what the truth is, to discover why he’s being lied to; that draws him into the plot, if you like. And then as he discovers more and more, it’s more about kind of survival – he feels like his life’s in danger and therefore he can’t help but carry on finding things out in order to survive, I guess. Not very successfully, as we see him at the end of the movie.

At the same time he seems to know what he’s getting into. When Olivia Williams’ character comes into his room, he says it’s a bad idea to sleep with her, but he does it anyway.

McGregor: Yeah, because he’s a single – you know, he’s not a, you know, he’s that kind of guy, I suppose.

Did you develop a back story for the character, or did you take your cues from the script?

McGregor: I read the script first, but there’s not a great deal of information about him in the script or the book. But I think that’s purposefully done on the part of Robert Harris and Polanski when they wrote the script. He’s called “The Ghost” and there’s a ghostly quality to him in that he’s amongst all of these people, but we don’t know very much about him. I didn’t feel like I needed much more than what was on the page in the script, because they wrote him really clearly, I felt. I played him exactly as I read him when I first read the script.

How did you decide on the accent you were going to use?

I mean, the kind of things that I thought about [were] we knew that there’s the ghostwriting side and we know that he’s written some best sellers about kind of cheesy celebrities – a magician and a pop or rock star or something. And then we knew in the book that he also went to Cambridge, which is where Lang, the ex-British Prime Minister went to University. So normally or stereotypically, a British actor would probably play someone that went to Cambridge with a standard English accent, like Olivia’s English accent. It’s beautiful when she speaks it, but when I use it I find it makes me feel posh, and it makes me feel kind of upper-class in a sense, that accent. I liked the idea that The Ghost was already out of his depth because he was writing the memoirs of the ex-British Prime Minister and he was someone who was used to writing memoirs of celebrities and magicians and pop stars. So he’s already kind of out of his depth, and I wanted him to be socially out of his class as well, because we’re obsessed with it in Britain. We can’t seem to get away with it (laughs).
So I mainly thought about that, and there’s a critic who’s on the television and there’s a real highbrow kind of intellectual critic show on BBC 2 in Britain late at night when no one’s watching, and there’s these three guys. There’s this guy who sounds a bit like The Ghost, or The Ghost sounds a bit like him, and he’s an intellectual but he’s got a quite strong London accent, there’s an Irishman, and then there’s a woman, and the three of them are extraordinarily intellectual. I liked that, and this guy’s clearly a very educated man, but he has quite a London-sounding accent, and I used that as an idea for The Ghost.

Would the political nature of the film be a hurdle it has to overcome with audiences, or do you think people like to see politicians held accountable?

McGregor: I think they should be; well, I can’t imagine anybody who thinks that they shouldn’t be accountable. It would be an odd position to hold. But I don’t know that it’s a hurdle. I mean, I don’t read reviews, but I haven’t heard of any criticism for the film’s politics. It’s a fictitious story, [but] it’s very very close to events as they are unfolding right now in Great Britain with our ex-British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and it was definitely written with him in mind, I would say. Robert Harris would probably tell you that it was loosely written roundabout Tony Blair. But I think it’s fairly obvious that it’s making a comment about him, and current events get closer to our storyline in the film as days go by, in quite a spooky way – rendition flights and the British forces having been involved potentially in interrogating or torturing prisoners on behalf of the United States of America, which would be illegal. All of these themes in our film are certainly things that have transpired to maybe have happened in British politics, but I don’t think it would be a hurdle. If the character was called Tony Blair and Pierce was asked to do an impersonation of Tony Blair and it was more of a factual account, then we would be in trouble and so would the film, probably. But it was never our intention to do that; it makes comments about politics and politicians and the fact that
they in our film become accountable in that he’s charged with war crimes and will have to face the panel or the jury.

Talk about working with Pierce Bronsan and how you two developed your on-screen relationship, since it’s key to the film.

McGregor: Yeah, it’s great. Pierce is an actor I’ve always watched, and there’s a handful of actors you wonder if one day you might work with, and Pierce was always one of those. I’ve always enjoyed working with him. My experience as The Ghost was kind of a unique one in that I was there from the beginning to the end, and I was always there – I was always on set. I became kind of like one of the crew, really, and then other actors would come in and out. But for the first week or so, I was mainly on my own; I just did the stuff with The Ghost on his own, and then I think Olivia came out and we did the stuff on the beach.
Then when Pierce arrived, we were up in a place in North Poland and we had really bad weather problems in that we had really good weather and we needed really bad weather. So we were supposed to start doing some stuff on the set in the house, which everyone’s very disappointed to find out isn’t a real house. But because we had bad weather, we had weather cover, which was the scene on the airplane in the private jet, which is really a big, long scene, it’s a seven-page scene, and it’s the end of Pierce’s story. It’s his big moment, his big scene, and there’s a confrontation between The Ghost and the ex-British Prime Minister just before he’s shot in the airport.
So it’s like the end of a story, and Roman phoned up Pierce, who I think had just arrived in Germany, and said, “we’re thinking of maybe starting with that. Is that okay?” I mean, I’ve heard him talk about this, so he said, yes, that’s fine, but then you suddenly find yourself in that little jet set – that’s really fun to say, “jet set,” when it means something – but he’s on the jet set and having to wade through seven pages of dialogue with me and be directed by Polanski for the first time, which was something I’d become very accustomed to.
But I was in the position where I was able to watch everybody else’s reactions to him as they came in – you know, when Olivia arrived or when Tom Wilkinson arrived. Whenever the actors came in, I would be able to watch them as Polanski tore them to shreds (laughs). No, he didn’t tear them to shreds.

Can you talk about the ending and what it means to you? It’s interesting as if he feels compelled and believes the truth will protect him. Can you talk about how he continues to find stuff out for his survival. Why do you think he reveals that he knows what’s going on? ***SPOILERS AHEAD***

McGregor: I think because he’s discovered it and he can’t help but let her know. I think it’s just that kind of gut reaction. I don’t know what his intention is after that – whether he’s going to go off and reveal it. I suppose so. It’s a slightly defiant moment at the end where he goes ‘fuck you’ to her and wants her to know that he knows. I don’t think it matters one way or the other. They were on to him anyway and I think probably that’s why he’s been invited to the book launch which could cast doubt on the actual fact whether Amelia Bly is in fact involved in it as well because he comes as her plus 1. Whether they were bringing him there to do him in or not, I don’t know. But the nice thing is that it wasn’t in the script, nor was it in the book.
At the end of the script, The Ghost leaves the party, the book launch, and walks off into the crowd and she runs out of the door after him and can’t see him. He’s gone because he’s a Ghost and he disappears into the crowd in London, in the London street, and we don’t know what happens to him and we don’t know if he’s going to reveal her.
Polanski, one day on set, you know we’d been shooting for some weeks when he came up to me and he went, “I have an idea for the end” and he described this ending to me and I thought it was amazing. It is an amazing… it’s a beautiful shot. It’s a very clever shot. It’s one shot. I don’t think the camera moves. If it does, it just follows me out the door and then it’s static. It’s a beautiful piece of storytelling. It’s classic filmmaking. It’s classic Polanski. You can imagine other directors having 50 shots in that sequence and he just pans the camera and leaves us to imagine what’s going on off camera, which is great.

Check out our review of the film and see McGregor in The Ghost Writer now!

Interview with Mother Writer/Director Joon-ho Bong

Kara — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:44:47 +0000

Joon-ho Bong is the creative mind behind new dramatic, thriller Mother, starring Hye-ja Kim as an obsessive mother on a mission to clear her mentally handicapped son’s name of a murder. Bong both wrote and directed this murder mystery which that the generic crime, murder mystery and turns it into something completely new and intriguing to watch. We were lucky enough to have a chance to sit down to a roundtable with Bong and discuss the film along with his current project the English remake of the wildly successful Korean film The Host.

Note: Joon-ho Bong had an interpreter, which is why this interview is written in the third person. As a warning, there are a few spoilers in the interview (which are all clearly marked). I suggest that if you plan on seeing the film, you skip over those questions as a certain it will destroy some of the twists that occur.

How did you develop the concept for the film?

Joon-ho Bong: The mother character, Kim-ja, it was for her actually. He really wanted to work with her so that’s how this story evolved from him wanting to work with her. She started acting before he was born, but he remembers seeing her on TV as a sort of mother figure. She played a great mother. He wanted to take a different approach with her and give her a crazy, sort of obsessive mother character. No one really agreed with [him] but whenever he saw her, he saw her as someone who was a bit crazy. He wanted to make this story and luckily she agreed. She wanted to take on this character that was different from what she is used to playing. That is how this story and movie came about.

Can you describe the relationship between the mother and son?

JB: The son was everything to her as a man. He was not only her son, but her father figure, her husband or boyfriend. When he was writing the script, it wasn’t really something he thought of. When Hye-ja Kim mentioned it that was another take on it.

Were you drawn to the crime, murder mystery genre?

JB: He wanted to do a new take on the genre. I love murder mysteries and crime dramas. They are my favorite. One thing that is going to make a mother go crazy is if her son committed murder. That was a natural transition for that story line. There are usually four relationships between the parent and child; father/son, mother/daughter, but usually the most powerful relationship is the mother and son relationship. It is the most animalistic, instinctual relationship. He really wanted to draw from that and create a movie out of that relationship.

Can you tell us about the first day of filming and all the retakes?

JB: The first scene was with the attorney when they are meeting and she is following him. The buffet scene. That was the first scene they shot. It is a very long tracking shot. There was one small kid that was shouting. It was a chaotic scene. It wasn’t that he was trying to test her or tension between them. I explained to her it wasn’t her fault. She thought, “No, the director hates me.” She was quite nervous. She has been acting on T.V. for 40 years, but this is her third film that she has done in almost 10 years. It is understandable that she was nervous because of that.

What was the toughest day on set?

JB: Almost every day [laughs]. The hardest day for him was when the mother goes to the funeral and is slapped by the dead girl’s family members. Capturing that moment and the emotion was probably the hardest and the camera movement and getting the shot with the amount of people [was difficult]. Apparently, she was slapped 14 times in that scene. He found out after that was the first time Hye-ja Kim was ever slapped. He was assumed that she was slapped at least once in her acting career, but she had never done a slapping scene. The angle they shot it at required for them to actually hit her on the face. At the end, she had a red bruise on her cheek. The actors brought on to actually slap Hye-ja Kim were stage actors. For that reason, they brought on someone who was a little more aggressive and could do that kind of scene with her. It is difficult to slap that kind of national figure. Just imagine a young actress slapping Meryl Streep or Judi Dench. He wanted make sure the actress had the chops for it.

How much room did you give actors to improvise? Did you have a clear idea of how you wanted the characters to be played?

JB: With “Memories of Murder” and “The Host”, he worked the actor Kang-ho Song a lot. With him, he [Bong] actually did talk one-on-one of how to go about it. He also did a lot of improvisation. That was what he wanted, but for this film he went in a different route. To show the relationship between the mother and son, there had to be moments that were really tense. He took a lot of control in probing how the actors should act with each other. There were moments where he put in his input more this time around.

***Spoilers ahead: To read spoilers which are written in white, highlight the text below***

Was the son born mentally handicapped?

JB: Actually, people ask that question a lot. Even the for crew members, that read the script before, that was one of the main questions they would ask. There is the possibility of whether he was born slow or that when he was five years old his mother gave him the insecticide. For him, he wants to go with the latter. It makes her a lot more guilty and obsessive over the boy. Even though he wrote the script, he wants to lay that question out for himself too to see where that would take the storyline. He wanted to keep that mystery out there. Even at the end, when the son hands his mother the acupuncture case, he had the question of, “How much does the son know?” and the extent of his ability to understand. The question is always out there.

*End of Spoilers*

Now that your films are coming into the U.S, will you make a special edit for U.S audiences?

JB: For him, there is really only one way to edit a film and that is hard enough. To do a director’s cut or extended version would be so much harder for him. That isn’t something that anyone has asked him to do, but there is only one edit whether it is for a Korean or Western audience. To do any sequel or remakes, it isn’t something that he really wants to get into. There is a remake of The Host here for the U.S. and he is not part of it. A famous British commercial director, Fredrick Bald, is attached for directing. He did some Nike commercials. I have nothing to do with it.

Do you find it easier to get a film made if you attach genre elements to it?

JB: He likes the dark, scary sort of movies. If he sees “Sound of Music,” he actually gets uncomfortable. He prefers something more dark and suspenseful. That is why he more pulled towards [those genres]. Each genre tends to follow certain conventions and for him, he prefers to break that convention. He prefers to work in that direction. In the traditional monster movie genre, the audience has to wait almost an hour to see the figure of the creature. I really hate it. In “The Host,” in 13 or 14 minutes, in broad daylight, the creature shows himself. I enjoy that kind of thing.

Are there some aspects to the film that are uniquely Korean?

JB: The fact that the sons get away from the parents at such a late age, even in their 30’s, is really common in Korea. It is a lot later than in Western society. It is not like adults sleep with their mother in the same bed. Even to Korean audiences, that was a little shocking. Culturally, there is a close bond between a mother and a son. Even in television shows, 70% of the soap opera dramas are based on the mother/son relationship. There is also the situation where the son is ready to get married and then suddenly there is a new female figure that comes into the relationship. It is almost like a love triangle. They try to kill each other [laughs].

Have you been surprised by audience reactions?

JB: Sometimes. Last year, at the New York Film Festival, one Turkish journalist asked me, “Korean people are dancing in the touring bus? We do to!” The only two countries how dance in a bus. There are some quirky elements that are only done in Korea. Especially in “Memories of Murder” and “Mother”, there is the reenactment scene of the murder that they do. That is actually something that is standard in Korea. That is something that people are surprised by over here. There are a couple of scenes that even Korean audiences find shocking and kind of weird. He doesn’t want Western audiences to think that that is what Koreans do.

What are you working on now?

JB: A dark, sci-fi action movie. It is based on a French graphic novel, Le Transperceneige. I cannot say it. I cannot speak French. We have a walking English title, Snow Piercer. It is a train movie. The whole world is covered by ice and snow. Everybody died from the cold, but some survivors remain in a train. They fight against each other. Like, the people in economy class fight against the people in business class [laughs]. I am in the middle of the writing process.

Mother hits theaters on March 12, 2010

Check out the trailer…

Interview: Johnny Depp for Alice in Wonderland

Krystal Clark — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:34:04 +0000

After over 25 years in the entertainment business there’s nothing Johnny Depp hasn’t done. He’s played almost every role under the sun and he continues to stun audiences with his character choices. This weekend, he’ll star in what seems like his umpteenth Tim Burton production entitled, Alice in Wonderland. The actor plays The Mad Hatter, the highly unconventional, and topically crazy confidant of Alice.

When Depp appeared at the Alice in Wonderland press conference, his presence was very calming but in the back of your mind you knew there was a major star in the room. For someone who’s had his kind of career, he manages to come off as humble, sweet, and oddly funny in a way that only Depp can. He discussed his interest in The Mad Hatter as a tragic character, the evolution of his career, and whether or not he’d star in a motion capture film like Avatar. The actor is truly one of a kind and after seeing and hearing to him in person, you can tell his degree of success is a natural progression because he’s more than just a pretty face.

Depp discussed the first time he read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a boy and his interpretation of the story. He was particularly drawn to the characters, and to this day he feels like they stick out more than anything else in the story.

I do remember vaguely, maybe when I was roughly 5 years old, reading versions of Alice in Wonderland, but the thing is the characters. You always know the characters. Everyone knows the characters, and they’re very well-defined characters — which I always thought was so fascinating. Most people who haven’t read the book definitely know the characters and reference them. For me, I went back — ironically, it was only maybe a year prior to Tim calling — and I had re-read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and what I took away from it was all these very strange, little cryptic nuggets that he’d thrown in there, and I was really intrigued by them and became fascinated by them because they were asking questions that couldn’t be answered almost, or were making statements that you couldn’t quite understand, like “I’m investigating things that begin with the letter ‘M.’” That took me through a whole stratosphere of possibilities, and then doing a little research and discovering that the M is mercury. And then, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Those things just became so important to the character. You realize it the more you read the book. If I read the book again today, I’d find a hundred other things that I missed the last time, so it’s constantly changing, the book.

Alice in Wonderland isn’t the first time Depp has taken on literature from back in the day. He also starred in Finding Neverland as J.M. Barrie, the man behind the popular tale of Peter Pan. It seems that the actor has an affinity for material from that time period.

I just adore it. From certainly J.M. Barrie and the wonderful characters he created to Lewis Carroll, but even French literature. When you read Baudelaire, or over in the States, Poe. It’s like Tim said about Lewis Carroll, you open those books, or you open the Flowers of Evil, and you begin to read, and if it were written today, you’d be absolutely stupefied by the work. It’s this incredible period where the work is timeless, ageless. So yes, I love all those guys. It’s my deep passion, you know, those great 19th century writers.

The actor has collaborated with director Tim Burton for two decades and their professional and personal relationship has steadily grown throughout the years. He talked about how the two creators approach a project and the pressure he always puts on himself to get Tim’s roles right.

Each time out of the gate with Tim, the initial thing for me is to obviously come up with a character. But then, there’s a certain amount of pressure where I go, ‘Jesus, will this be the one where I disappoint him?’ You know what I mean? So, I try really hard, especially early on, to come up with something that’s very different, that he hasn’t experienced before and that we haven’t experienced together before, and that will stimulate and inspire him to make choices based on that character. I try not to embarrass him, basically.

Being that they have such a trusting relationship, we were interested in knowing the reaction the actor had when the character of The Mad Hatter was brought to him. Depp’s no stranger to playing eccentric roles on screen,( i.e. Ed Wood, Jack Sparrow), and he attacked this part with the same kind of enthusiasm.

To be honest, he could have said Alice and I would have said yes. [Laughs] I would have done whatever character Tim wanted. But, certainly, the fact that it was the Mad Hatter was a bonus because of the great challenge to try to find this guy and not just be a rubber ball that you heave into an empty room and watch it bounce all over the place, but just to find that part of the character but also a little bit more of the history or gravity to the guy.

The one thing Depp manages to do that’s been rarely seen in any interpretation of the Alice in story is explore the tragedy of The Mad Hatter. He’s essentially insane, sad, and confused about the world around him. The actor constantly plays up that internal conflict throughout the film because of the character’s background.

There’s the whole Hatter’s dilemma, really, which is where the term, “Mad as a Hatter,” came from. The amount of mercury that they used in the glue to make the hats and everything was damaging. So, in terms of the Hatter, looking from that perspective as this guy who is literally physically and emotionally damaged goods and a little obtuse, I took that and decided that, as opposed to just this hyper-nutty guy, he should explore all sides of the personality at an extreme level. So he could go, from one second, being very highfalutin with a lot of levity, and then straight into some kind of dangerous potential rage, and then tragedy. It was interesting trying to map it out, it was really interesting.

Since the majority of the characters on his resume could be classified as “off the wall”, you might wonder how he keeps them all straight. The actor discussed how he keeps himself in check when doing accents and personas for certain parts.

You definitely have to, I mean, at a certain point, especially if you’re dealing with — I’ve played English a number of times, and used an English accent a number of times, so it becomes a little bit of an obstacle course to go, “Oh, that’s teetering into Captain Jackville,” or “This one is teetering over into Chocolat or Wonka.” You’ve got to really pay attention to the places you’ve been. But hopefully, also, that’s part of it. That’s the great challenge. You may get it wrong. There’s a very good possibility that you can fall flat on your face, but again I think that’s a healthy thing for an actor.

In Alice in Wonderland, The Mad Hatter has a signature dance called Futterwacking and it’s very hard to replicate. It’s referred to as his “happy dance,” one that he’ll only unveil once the evil Red Queen has been defeated. Depp talked about the origin of the dance and how it was created onscreen.

The happy dance was something that Tim was really — he had a very curious vision for the happy dance. And then, I can futterwack with the best of them. We had to treat that like a stunt.

This year, there has been so much talk about Avatar and motion captured performances as compared to real live actors. Depp spoke about whether or not he would get involved in that type of film and wear a blue spandex suit for a particular role in the future.

I don’t know. What color is the suit? It’s black? Well it matches my eyes. I suppose. I don’t care. I mean, I’ll put anything on. It doesn’t matter to me, obviously. [Laughs] Look at me.[Laughs] No, I don’t mind.

Out of all the characters and films he’s worked on, the actor divulged which one his own children connect to the most.

It’s funny because they’ve seen it, but they have a difficult time watching it because it’s their dad and they make that connection. Edward Scissorhands is, by far, my kiddies’ favorite. They connect with the character, and also I think they see their dad feeling that isolation and loneliness. He’s a tragic character, so it’s hard for them. They bawl when they see that.

Depp has had a successful acting career that’s spanned over two decades, with his first major role being Glen in A Nightmare on Elm Street (Yeah, that was him). When he started in the business he had no idea that he would still be acting over 20 years later. His success surprises him more than it does anybody else.

My whole experience on the ride since day one has been pretty surreal in this business and defies logic. I’m still completely shocked that I still get jobs and am still around. But I guess, more than anything, it has been kind of a wonderland. I’m been very lucky. I had no idea where anything was going. But you can’t — it’s almost impossible to predict anything like that.
I had no idea. I felt after I had done Crybaby with John Waters and Edward Scissorhands with Tim that they were going to cut me off right then. You know what I mean? I felt, at that point, I was on solid ground and I knew where I was going and where I wanted to go. I was sure that they would nix me out of the gig. But, luckily, I’m still here.

Alice in Wonderland hits theaters on March 5, 2010.

Interview: Tim Burton For Alice in Wonderland

Krystal Clark — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:36:29 +0000

Tim Burton’s successful career spans over two decades and boasts such hits as Beetlejuice, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands. His latest project, Alice in Wonderland is a live action, CGI animated adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In the film, he reunites with frequent collaborators Johnny Depp, who stars as The Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter who plays The Red Queen to expose a new generation to the classic tale.

Alice in Wonderland has been “Burtonized” with its heavy Gothic elements, and its visual detail. Like most films these days, it’s in 3D and utilizes a lot of CGI. When the director appeared at the official press conference for the movie he discussed the controversial reasoning behind why he shot the film in 2D and converted it later. Plus, he let us in on the changes he made to the story that will make his version of the film stick out. He doesn’t heavily alter the material, he just modernizes it in a way that only Tim Burton could.

Like most people, when we found out that Burton was directing a new feature version of Alice in Wonderland we weren’t sure what to make of it. He’s extremely talented, but his ideals and the story didn’t seem to mesh. As a guy born and raised in California, he discussed how the story was exposed to him much later in life.

Well I’m from Burbank, so we never heard about Alice in Wonderland except for the Disney cartoon, Tom Petty video, or Jefferson Airplane. It was interesting because that’s what made me realize the power of it. I got my introduction to it much more from other illustrators and music and culture and writers — the imagery would come up in work. Then when you start to delve into it and realize just how powerful that is, it’s why it sort of remains that way.

He also doesn’t see the story as black and white, one or the other. This isn’t so much a remake as it is an interpretation of the story that he would like and enjoy.

There have been so many versions and for me, I’d never seen a version that I really liked. So I didn’t feel like there was a definitive version to me that we were fighting against. And also, I liked what Linda [Woolverton] did with the script. She almost treated this story like how the Alice material has affected us, at least for me. It’s a story about somebody using this kind of imagery and this kind of world to figure out problems and things in their own life, and what’s fantasy and reality and dreams and reality — how they are not separate things, that they’re one thing. It’s how we use those things to deal with our issues in life.

After he decided to tackle the film and work with Disney, we wanted to know why he went for 3D. There are too many movies to count that are being released in the same format and at this point it’s seen as a marketing gimmick more than anything else, but Burton thinks the story of Alice in Wonderland naturally calls for it.

It just seemed like the world that Lewis Carroll created, just the kind of trippiness, and the size/spatial element — Then I started thinking about the world of Lewis Carroll and thinking not so much about the films and things, but I knew more about it from listening to music and bands and other illustrators and artists that would incorporate that imagery in their work. It just made me realize just how powerful the material was. Like if it were written today, it would be mind-blowing today. So the combination of the medium and the material just seemed really right.

Unlike James Cameron who shot his movie Avatar completely in 3D, Burton filmed in the traditional 2D format and converted it later. He explained his reasoning behind the decision to do it in post production as opposed to during the shoot.

Just because all the techniques we were using, there’s no point shooting in 3D when there’s nothing to shoot. So we were using so many different techniques. We didn’t go motion capture, we had live action, we had animation, we had virtual sets — a little bit of sets. So I looked from when we did the conversion from Nightmare, Ken Ralston and I looked at things that were shot in 3D and shot in 2D conversion and it’s like anything. All of these tools, you can see good 3D, bad 3D, good conversions, bad conversions. We always knew it was 3D, so we did all the proper planning so when we got to that stage — when we got the elements finally together– it was just another piece of the technology. In fact, that was probably more some of the easier technology than the other elements that we were dealing with.

The film is visually stunning and you can see that the director made good use of the technology he had on hand. But it makes you wonder if there was anything Burton wanted to do but couldn’t.

We were just using all the different technology. They’re all out there. People go purely motion capture, purely animation, different forms of animation. Everything’s a new tool. You always have limitations. You can do more. It’s all great, but I never try to focus too much on the technology. The fun of it for us is the artistic thing of it and feeling like making a movie and stuff and not get overly too involved, in love with the technology.

Alice in Wonderland debuts in theaters on Friday, March 5, 2010.

Ewan McGregor Not Interested in Trainspotting Sequel

Mali Elfman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:16:40 +0000

Yesterday during an interview with Ewan McGregor for Roman Polanski’s (whose name has been mysteriously missing from the synopsis, press notes and other promotional pieces – more on that later) The Ghost Writer, he briefly spoke about the rumor about Danny Boyle tackling a Trainspotting sequel. Although it might be fun to get the gang back together in their 40’s to see where they’re at, McGregor said he wasn’t interested for one very good reason….

Danny Boyle talked about doing a Trainspotting sequel with the guys in their 40s. Does that sound good to you?

McGregor: It doesn’t sound great to me because I didn’t hugely love the book. The sequel to Trainspotting, the novel, is a book called Porno and I didn’t think it was as amazing. The novel Trainspotting is quite an amazing book.

Would the sequel to the movie have to be “Porno”?

McGregor: It would be… I think that’s what they’re talking about.

How nice is it to hear that an actor doesn’t want to return to a guaranteed hit because the material isn’t that good?! That someone is finally saying, let’s not do a half-assed sequel just because!

In a world where all that we see are remakes and sequels, it’s nice to know that it’s not all about that, for many people in Hollywood it’s still about creating good work. And if you want to see good work, check out The Ghost Writer, we’ll have Ewan’s full interview popping up soon.

What do you think about McGregor not tackling a sequel?

Interview: Helena Bonham Carter for Alice in Wonderland

Krystal Clark — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:21:03 +0000

Helena Bonham Carter returns to the big screen this weekend with a larger than life performance in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. It’s the latest in a long line of films that the pair have worked together on alongside frequent collaborator Johnny Depp. When the actress attended the press conference for the feature she was laid back and open with the press about her thoughts on her character, the film, and whether or not the movie should be seen by young children.

In the film, Carter stars as the Red Queen, the sole tormentor of Wonderland, who’s been prophesied to fall from power at the hands of Alice. She’s a caricature in ever sense of the word, but Carter has fun with it and makes her enjoyable to watch. She’s aided by several supporting actors most notably Crispin Clover as The Knave of Hearts, but for the most part she’s a one woman show.

Over the span of Helena Bonham Carter’s career she’s been known to tackle a wide range of characters. She’s been the sweet optimistic girl, the careless free-spirit, and the beautiful sex symbol. In Alice she stars as the frightening villain, which makes you wonder if there’s a specific type of role she gravitates towards more than the other.

Because I’m older, I only get villains. It’s about whatever is well written and has somebody behind the camera that knows what they’re doing and is a really good storyteller.

In this case, the story was well known and versed by the general public so she knew exactly what she was getting into. It was the physical stuff, including the makeup and the digital work that surprised the actress. The Red Queen is known for having a big head but they wanted her body to still be petite. They went through several methods to get the ratio between the two just right.

Because they [journalists] go on about my head, but my waist is digitized. He [Burton] told me that right at the beginning. He said, ‘Don’t worry. You’re going to have it obviously. Don’t go for the full pull-in with the corset every morning.’ And so, I didn’t. And then, halfway through, he said, ‘You know, the waist is going to cost too much.’ So then, halfway through, suddenly I went for the pull and then luckily at the end somebody just told me ‘No, we did. We could do the waist.’

If Carter had to deal with that type of back and forth debate with her costume, we can only imagine what happened with her hair and makeup. The Red Queen has a very unique look, which took a couple of hours everyday to put complete.

They had to get rid of my hair line so you put a bald cap on, that takes about two-in-a-half-hours, then they have to paint it, and then they put my beauty make-up on, that took some time, and my huge wig, so yeah. They didn’t blow my head up every morning, they did that on the camera. I had this one camera, there are two cameras in the world that do this and they just blow your head up. That’s all it does. I had this huge camera dedicated to me. He [Burton] likes to deform me. I like it. I always like looking as different as I can.

Alice in Wonderland uses a lot of heavy CGI for the majority of the characters. There’s only a choice few that aren’t altered in a huge way, Anne Hathaway’s White Queen is a prime example. Every actor didn’t always have the opportunity to perform opposite a human being when the camera’s started rolling. Sometimes they had to improvise.

It was all green, but I don’t know, when you’re acting you have to imagine anyways. The unsung heroes of it are these various green people who gave us their lines off and we had real proper actors who were dressed in leotards. They gave us, if like for instance — I’ve only met Michael Sheen in the last 12-hours, I mean I have met him in life before, but he wasn’t there, I just had like a 12-inch drawing of a rabbit. Behind him was a green screen, green actor, that’s what we had to act opposite. I would have appreciated if [Sheen] would have come in his bunny outfit once, but he didn’t.

She also had to star opposite an unconventional version of Matt Lucas who starred as the Tweedles and talked about how Anne Hathaway improvised her own effects.

Matt had to be like always hunched over, on the floor, whenever I had to look at Matt, he was always in deepest conflict because he had to try to make himself smaller. [Hathaway] is the one who does her own special effects because she doesn’t have anything special done to her, she just does her own gliding, but Matt and me, and Crispin [Glover], I don’t know how he did it. He was on crutches, had no eye and somehow managed to remain upright, I don’t know how he did that. And you all have to act opposite tennis balls and bits of tape, but you do that anyway. Actually, tennis balls and bits of tape can be good actors, the minimal.

The movie has a lot of fantastical elements and does center on the basic story of Alice, but we wanted to know if Carter considered it a family film. There are a lot of Gothic themes and darker moments that take place that might scare small children.

Tim always has this theory that it’s us that have the problem, that we impose fears on our kids and the kids are actually quite robust. But it depends on your kid. I don’t know. We were trying to find a nursery school for our son, Bill. Apparently, according to the Montessori method, they can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy until age 6. They had recommended no fairytales so that’s why we didn’t send Bill to Montessori because having Tim Burton and fairytales and his world of ideas. Oh! Okay!

Alice in Wonderland debuts in theaters this Friday, March 5, 2010.

Interview: Anne Hathaway for Alice in Wonderland

Krystal Clark — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:05:32 +0000

Academy Award nominated actress Anne Hathaway will be a far cry from her dramatic role in Rachel Getting Married when she appears in Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland as the White Queen. Hathaway has come a long way since The Princess Diaries by landing roles that constantly challenge her as an actress and this character is no different. She plays one of the good guys in the film, who seeks the aid of Alice to defeat her maniacal sister.

As the White Queen Hathaway is a stark contrast to Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen. She’s fair skinned, fair haired, and free spirited in every sense of the word. As an audience we see the character as the victim of her sister’s wicked ways, but Hathaway doesn’t think she’s that innocent. According to the actress, there’s something else brewing beneath the surface of the White Queen that’s a lot more devious than anything we could ever imagine.

Unlike a lot of people, Anne Hathaway didn’t read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a child but as an adult, so her first impression of the story was far from the norm.

I was really moved by it, she’s a very emotional character and I think a lot of people feel confused at 19 years old. Who they are? Who they think they are? Who they want to be? You struggle with a sense of identity then and other times in your life. I read the book from that perspective as a girl who’s trying to find her identity, which is great because that’s what the movie really focuses on. Which Alice are you? That’s my experience.

Even though she didn’t get on board with the mythology until later, she was familiar with the Jabberwocky character and shared an experience she had as a child that ended up resurfacing on set for the film.

I’m glad you reminded me about Jabberwocky because when I was in 5th grade I had teacher and he made the entire class memorize Jabberwocky and perform it. I made Tim [Burton] during the battle sequence, I made him let me recite the poem and he was like, ‘it’s not going to be in the film,’ I’m like, ‘I know but just for my own sense of completion, please let me do this.’

Hathaway’s version of the White Queen has been described as “a punk-rock vegan pacifist” who was inspired by bands like Blondie. On the surface it sounds like a weird mix of things that have absolutely nothing to do with Wonderland, but Hathaway begs to differ.

The pacifist thing was in the script. My character has taken a vowel of non-violence, but it was [also] in the script that when she talks about that she hits a bug and then it’s like… I thought about. That gave me the idea that she’s taken this vow against her will, that she recognizes that her sister is sick and believes that an ends to a means is cutting people heads off. It’s her default setting. I’m just like, I don’t want her to be in charge, so I guess I have to be in charge.

Hathaway’s inspiration for the character came from a very random, very eclectic mix of pop culture icons.

I like the idea that my character probably left to her devices, might not have wanted to be queen. Then I started to think about who she was when she was in her off queen time. She spends a lot of time in the kitchen, and I kind of imagined her in mosh-pits and not really punching anyone, but butting against people very hard. I like Blondie, so I thought, she’s blond, so that was kind of obvious, but I still wanted her to have a regal thing so there’s a Greta Garbo movie I watched because I still think no one has ever quite moved on film the way she did. Her whole body just looks like it’s breathing and it was a time where acting was very stylized to kind of be very over the top.

In the film, the White Queen is the exact opposite of her sister, and there’s an interesting dynamic between the two. Director Tim Burton didn’t want their portrayals to be cut and dry, good or bad. He wanted there to be moral ambiguity.

That was one the most fun parts about my character, there was this freedom Tim gave me from the first conversation we had. He said, ‘in Wonderland I don’t want anything to be all good or all bad, so I don’t want it to be the Red Queen is the bad one and you’re like the nice benevolent one who’s all good.’ So he said, ‘have fun exploring the relationship between the two of them that come from the same place.’ I thought, how fun, if my character has a sort of hidden psychosis.
She is interested in knives and things like that, and is kind of adorable on the outside and has tried very hard to become this good almost over the top positive creature, but underneath she has a murderous streak that comes out when she’s around weaponry. It wasn’t necessarily that they were opposites, they were just sisters who were different.

The White Queen is one of the few characters in the film that isn’t CGI. Unlike her co-stars Michael Sheen and Matt Lucas, Hathaway’s character appears the old school way using hair and makeup. We wanted to know if she would have preferred being a partially animated character as opposed to being live action.

Honestly, I would do anything. I’m fond of saying that I would have played a mushroom if that’s the way he [Tim] saw me. I would have happily dawned my green Onesie and been up in stilts. I would have just done anything to be in Wonderland, but I don’t know, it’s kind of nice to be a real person, I have no preference. I’m sorry, I don’t.

Alice in Wonderland opens in theaters nationwide on March 5th.

Interview: Mia Wasikowska For Alice in Wonderland

Krystal Clark — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:00:47 +0000

Mia Wasikowska beat out thousands of young actresses to land the title role in Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. The native Australian is a relative new comer to American audiences, which will undoubtedly change after the release of this film. At only 20 years old she’s landed a gig alongside Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter so when we had the opportunity to attend the official press conference for the film we wanted to know what it was that made her THE Alice.

In the film, Alice is no longer the precocious girl we’re using to seeing and hearing about in popular culture. She’s an adult dealing with some serious challenges regarding her future. During this time her family has marriage on the brain and she feels pressured to conform to what they want despite her own reservations. Wasikowska used her own interpretation of that struggle to make her version of the character truly unique.

Alice in Wonderland is based on the Lewis Carroll books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its unofficial sequel Through the Looking Glass. The latter featured a much older Alice who was dealing with the pressure of being a young woman in her old school society. The idea of what she wants to do with her adult life constantly clashes with the plans that her family has for her in the film. Through all the conflict and confusion Wasikowska felt that there was something she could bring to the role because she connected with the character on multiple levels.

I think that Alice, at this time in the story, I think that she’s at this time in her life that a lot of people sort of experience something that she’s going through. It’s this kind of uncomfortable or this discomfort in your skin and with who you are. She just has this awkwardness about her that I think a lot of people really go through in their life. That was something that I kind of understood and ultimately her story is kind of her coming back to who she is as a young girl, which is really assertive, and very sure of what she believes is right and wrong. And so, the story is just kind of her reconnecting with herself.

Wasikowska had to do her homework and re-familiarize herself with the character before shooting the film. She discussed her first experience reading the books as a child and the differences she noticed in the stories as an adult.

I read the books when I was about 8 or 9 and then I read them again before we started filming and saw that as an older person I saw this whole other side to them that I didn’t really catch as a kid. I think it’s amazing ’cause it kind of constantly reveals itself to you in different ways and the humor becomes evident. And I’m sure as a kid I saw something else that I didn’t get as an adult and there were parts that I would have loved as a kid that I probably, you know, missed as an older person.

Tim Burton is a director known for his unique visual style and has had an extremely successful career over the past 20 years. To be cast as the leading lady in one of his productions is an amazing feat for any actress, especially one so young. Wasikowska’s relationship with the director on set was based on trust. She felt comfortable in his creative hands and knew that his vision of Alice would be like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

I’ve loved his films for such a long time so the coolest part was actually seeing [them] from the beginning because you know, I always just see the end, like the final product. So just to see the whole process was really amazing and also Tim’s really trusting as a director so from the minute that you know you’re cast, you just feel a lot of trust and freedom and collaboration as well, which is sort of all you can ask for.

Alice in Wonderland opens in theaters nationwide on March 5th.

Interview: Kristen Stewart, William Hurt, Maria Bello, Eddie Redmayne For The Yellow Handkerchief

Justine Ciarrocchi — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:35:06 +0000

The legendary six-time Oscar winner Arthur Cohn teamed up with British director Udayan Prasad to produce The Yellow Handkerchief, an indie drama hitting theaters nationwide this weekend. The film highlights the lives of three strangers who, through an odd series of events, end up on a road trip through post-Katrina Louisiana in search of a little livin’.

The film was shot two years ago, so it’s easy to assume that the only thing responsible for scoring it’s distribution is the international recognition of co-star Kristen Stewart, who plays Martine, a disaffected teen. Thanks, Twilight! Still, the rest of the cast is pretty stellar with William Hurt, Maria Bello, and Eddie Redmayne whom we had the privilege of sitting down with at a recent press conference.

Kristen, what about the character of Martine resonated with you?

Kristen Stewart: I could relate to her in that she’s a typical girl who really wants to be out there, and smiling, and totally in the middle of whatever’s going on, but has sort of been embarrassed too many times and can’t do it anymore. I feel like she’s sort of isolated herself in terms of…she put herself above everyone else. They’ve let her down too many times. She realizes through this journey [which is such a cool thing to see such a young person go through], to go ‘Oh God, I never looked at you, and now I’m opening my eyes and can see you.’ I liked that.

William is notorious for doing crazy research for his roles. How do you prepare?

KS: I learned that I was a fairly impulsive actress. If I felt something I didn’t need to sit down and go, ‘this is why, this is why, this is why’ – the thing is, the whole rehearsal process, it was just about understanding.

William, some of your most poignant scenes involved little to no dialogue, but they still revealed worlds about your character.

William Hurt: Showing and telling is really not acting. I think telling people what to think and feel is the opposite of what we’re supposed to do. The idea is to live inside your character -we live inside ourselves, we all do. That’s a staple of being human. There’s a difference between telling a story and living a story. The idea is that if you’re really earning your respect from the audience, my character is living through a situation that you would believe. You have to ask yourself, do I really believe that this behavior is appropriate? Do I believe in that? I ask myself on every page and every word – is this true? Is this a true indication of human nature? You won’t identify with me unless I’m as individual as you are.

Eddie, how difficult was it for a Brit to develop a southern twang?

Eddie Redmayne: When I got this job I said to Arthur Cohn, we WILL need a dialect coach. You can generalize anything, you can try and give something that will sell as being of an area – but it’s important that when you’re playing someone, and you respect the character you’re playing, you try to play it as truthfully as you can.

Thus far in your career you’ve primarily acted in period pieces. What was it like to finally appear in a contemporary piece?

ER: For some reason the way you look, speak, something about your personality draws you. I’ve got sort of a bi-polar career. When I got this script I thought they were insane to ask me to audition for it. I thought, I’m SO far from this character, let’s have fun with it.

What was it like to film in Louisiana post-Katrina?

Maria Bello: It was right after Katrina, so many of the neighborhoods were devastated. Most of the people we worked with were affected in some way by Katrina. But the gorgeous thing is that there’s such a resilience, and life force, and culture in New Orleans. The people were incredibly inspiring.

William Hurt: Being in the south is like being in the cauldron of American poetry, jazz, expression – so it’s already there. But then they’d had this tragedy, it was amazing to see their character.

And there you have it – the cast of The Yellow Handkerchief! Check back for our official ScreenCrave review!The Yellow Handkerchief hits theaters on February 26th in limited release.

Uwe Boll Trashes Bay and Fox in Interview on FunnyCrave

Mali Elfman — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:08:52 +0000

I have done a lot of interviews with a variety of people, but never have I sat down with writer, director, producer Uwe Boll and never have I asked some of the questions that FunnyCrave got to ask him including a number of direct jabs at Michael Bay, Megan Fox and basically all of Hollywood put together. Boll is not known for subtly and neither is FunnyCrave. Neither one of them are afraid to throw punches or mock Hollywood and it’s quite obvious when Boll is asked about getting Megan Fox to appear naked and he responds with “She looks like a bitch so why she shouldn’t do it?”

Oh yeah, we’re at that level. Check it out…

FunnyCrave: You had a verbal fight with director Michael Bay a while back and I loved how in Bay’s response he tries to make fun of you because you called him a fucking retard and he took issue with the word “retard” despite having directed Transformers 2 which, by all accounts, was fucking retarded. Is it frustrating that a director like Bay, who the Internet also heaps hate upon and who makes awful, terrible movies like Transformers 2 seems to still have this support system and an endless pit of money to work with, while you get even more criticism but have less industry backing?

Uwe Bowl: Absolutely. I don’t get it how directors of the studio system still get $150 million budgets even if they go nonstop over budget with their movies.

FC: Could you get Megan Fox to appear naked in a movie?

UB: I don’t know. She looks like a bitch so why she shouldn’t do it?

Editor’s Note from FunnCrave – This answer was voted the best answer to an interview questions since anything John Mayer said in his last interview

If Hollywood was Uwe Boll’s Hollywood, what changes would you make?

UB: No more overpaying actors and no more residuals to anybody as long the budgets of the movies are not recouped

And if you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t like this, I’m going to blog about it!” Or if you’ve ever written something negative about Boll, here is what he probably thinks of you…

UB: I learn and learned a lot from critics and I have nothing against a bad review if the review is substantial. I have only something against unfair, jealous nerds writing lies about me or my movies.

I have to say, I think Boll made some good points between the insults and congrats to him on those massive balls he’s got hanging around.

Check out the full Uwe Boll experience on FunnyCrave where he talks about Tara Reid’s “big boobies and more…

ScreenCrave » interviews

Interview: Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning Become The Runaways

Related Posts

Interview: The Real Cherie Currie

Related Posts

Interview: Ewan McGregor Talks About Working for Polanski

Related Posts

Interview with Mother Writer/Director Joon-ho Bong

Related Posts

Interview: Johnny Depp for Alice in Wonderland

Related Posts

Interview: Tim Burton For Alice in Wonderland

Related Posts

Ewan McGregor Not Interested in Trainspotting Sequel

Related Posts

Interview: Helena Bonham Carter for Alice in Wonderland

Related Posts

Interview: Anne Hathaway for Alice in Wonderland

Related Posts

Interview: Mia Wasikowska For Alice in Wonderland

Related Posts

Interview: Kristen Stewart, William Hurt, Maria Bello, Eddie Redmayne For The Yellow Handkerchief

Related Posts

Uwe Boll Trashes Bay and Fox in Interview on FunnyCrave

Related Posts