Category: interviews

I interviewed Ed Burns the other day about his new movie, The Groomsmen, which follows a group of childhood friends through the emotionally fraught run-up to one posse member’s wedding.
And while you’re poking around on The Groomsmen, check out Apple’s own making of promo. Apple definitely recommends setting up a Final Cut Pro post studio in your guesthouse in the Hamptons.
Ed Burns Gives Some Good Phone About The Groomsmen [daddytypes.com]
Ed Burns: Risky Business [apple.com]
The Groomsmen website has release dates; the movie’s playing in NYC, NYC Metro, and LA right now and going national Aug. 5th [thegroomsmen.com]

Here’s a radio interview with critic Joel Siegel, who’s apparently trying to pad his reactionary conservative resume by loudly walking out of a press screening of Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2. The interview is with Smith, although Siegel doesn’t seem aware of that fact for quite a while.
Smith v Siegel [tmz.com]

And let me put it this way: when you’re talking about the films of James Mangold and you see the words “star,” “stud,” and “special” together that can only mean two possibilities: Joaquin Phoenix or Sylvester Stallone.
And if either of them are a no-show Tuesday, I’m sure moderator Anna Deveare Smith’ll be able to channel them as only she knows how.
In one of my other lives, I’m the co-chair of this benefit for MoMA’s Film and Media department, A Work In Progress, which this year honors Walk The Line director James Mangold.
The gig is this coming Tuesday, May 23rd, from 7-11pm, at MoMA and if past years’ have been any indication, the event will be awesome (and will run slightly over schedule).
Check out the invite here, and then buy a beneficently priced ticket or two here. [$400 to see the celebrity ear hair, $225 to see the celebrity bald spots, and $150 to eat the celebrity hors d’oeuvres.]

A Work in Progress: An Evening with James Mangold [ersvp.com]
Previously: And the AWIP goes to: Marc Forster, Alexander Payne, Sofia Coppola, David O. Russell

Because I happen to know that she prefers the US spelling, “autarchically,” I believe this interview with Sofia Coppola is translated from the French:

SC/…I had been interested also by this period myself, the XVIIIth century in France, for quite a while, the atmosphere at Versailles, a place that functionned autarkically. I liked the idea of reconstituting that period, of doing a costume drama: to do that became then some sort of challenge for me.
JML/ Did you first try to do that film before shooting Lost in Translation?
SC/ I was working on MA’s screenplay much before LIT. In fact LIT was at first nothing but a distraction from MA, a means for me to get away from a project that I knew was going to be rather Pharaonic. After LIT I decided to concentrate myself entirely to MA, it then became a sort of obsession for me. I really put myself to work on the screenplay of MA on the very day that followed the end of LIT’s shooting.

“Title: In Marie-Antoinette’s Head” [ohnotheydidnt via greencine]

After you sit back and digest the delicious hilarity that Mr. Hankey’s creators will be appearing as “part of The Stanley Kubrick Masterclass series,” peruse the NFT description of the event:

In London for this ‘Skillset Masterclass’, Parker and Stone will explore the art of creating political satire, getting inspiration from Bruckheimer to Thunderbirds, the merits of puppet versus cell animation, the idea of absolute creative freedom and how far is too far.

Since they offered to talk about absolute creative freedom, ask them about working with constraints and in collaborative environments, since their flabbiest, least funny, least nailed down, most disappointing achievements–Team America World Police, Orgazmo, BASEketball–were the ones where they were given carte blanche?
Also, which one of them grew up Mormon?
The Skillset Masterclass with Matt Stone & Trey Parker [bfi-org.uk via kultureflash]

Nice. If this guy worked for anyplace but The Onion AV Club, he’d have left this interview shaking like a leaf wondering how he’s gonna get his story done.

JL: My favorite moments are when you see someone lash out at the puppet, and then we have the guts, after he hits us, to move closer. There’s so many times that someone hits us and we just run away like babies. There’s a guy who pulled a knife on us, and we kept going toward him.
VC: We ran away, and then from a distance, we said, “Okay, now let’s learn to love each other. What will it take? We’ll take baby steps.”
JL: And he’s holding the knife out.
VC: And then we took little steps closer, and within five steps, he started to go for us, and we took off.
JL: That guy was saying to himself, “I just don’t want to go back to jail.” And that was our protective bubble.

Wonder Showzen season 2 is on these days. [avclub.com via waxy]

I like interviews with creatives as a way to learn more about their process and to understand better how a work came to be. Interviewing someone can be a chance to learn from someone I admire how he sees the world and how he goes about bringing his ideas to fruition.
When I interviewed Sofia Coppola and she told me she’d never seen Caddyshack, I was stunned, but I didn’t make a big deal about it at the time; she was nice and I didn’t want to embarass her. [I hope you’ve seen it by now, Sofia. I’ll ask you about it again.]
Of course, from the interviewee’s standpoint, they have to do a million of these things, and they often just want the work to stand on its own. Then, too, there’s the invasive cult sycophancy aspect of divulging every nook and cranny of your soul.
Anyway, it all comes to mind as I read the slightly-too-meta account by Douglas Coupland–who hates interviews and interviewing–of traveling to Rome to interview Morrissey–who hates interviews and being interviewed.
Papal attraction [guardian/observer via tmn]

Wow, a fascinating, long interview with the Dardenne Brothers that was presented at the National Film Theatre in London last weekend. They really were a mess when they started out.
Geoff Andrew interviews Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne [guardian via kultureflash]

I find Soderbergh’s DVD commentary tracks are consistently entertaining and enlightening. And now that it turns out he has Mark Romanek on with him for the director’s commentary of Bubble, I think the question of which format–theater, ppv, or DVD–is best for me has been settled.
Josh Oakhurst has transcribed some of the two directors’ conversation on his blog; check it out. [joshoakhurst.com via robotwisdom]

Steven Soderbergh is on Fresh Air Weekend today, talking about the production and release of Bubble.
Check out PublicRadioFan.com to find a live stream of the show on some public radio station or another. [publicradiofan.com]
Later, check out the Fresh Air archives at npr.org. [npr.org]

Doesn’t seeing this Nordic Brady Bunch Variety Hour-presents-Grease music video make you dream of what might have been, if only those machers in the Finnish film industry had stayed put, instead of moving en masse to Bombay?

“I Wanna Love You Tender” [he.fi, via coudal]

Forget Louis Malle, my evening trying to catch up with with peripatetic curator Hans Ulrich Obrist for a few minutes at Art Basel Miami Beach last weekend felt like it was directed by Fellini. Or Scorsese [think After Hours]. Or John Hughes [Sixteen Candles] for that matter. It was hi-larious chaos all the way through, but somehow it worked.

As our chat got pushed back and back, HUO ended up pulling together a “very small dinner in honor of Alain Robbe-Grillet.” We were to meet at The Shore Club at 8, where HUO had “a room with a terrace for drinks.” Which turned out to be a conference room/office with a tiny outdoor space over the valet parking. It was stocked for an offsite, with rows of tiny Cokes and eclairs, but no cocktails. Or as the dapper Robbe-Grillet–who has more than earned the right to play the curmudgeon–put it, “Il a promis un verre sur la terrace, mais il y a ni de verre, ni de terrace. C’est qu’un balcon!” [Still, it would be a handy space to have on a trip. HUO is a tireless explorer of institutional collaboration; if I consumed infrastructure so voraciously, I would be, too.]

Anyway, No drinks, no terrace, no problem, because HUO’s colleague picked up the phone and ordered a mojito for Monsieur. Then fifteen minutes of smalltalk later, she called to check on the order. So often, these giant art fairs, with their overlapping VIP events, leave you wondering if you’ve chosen the wrong one and are missing something hotter. I knew I was in the best spot in Miami when she called again a few minutes later, and pleaded with the hapless bartender, “Uno mojito, por l’amor de Dios! U-NO Mo-ji-to!”

Like clowns exiting a car, a stream of waiters brought successive, differently concocted mojitos, until we had six, enough for us non-drinkers, too. Then a cart with antipasto and a bathtubful of wine on ice rolled in, which we all nibbled faux-casually in full self-preservation mode, since, except for Mr. Robbe-Grillet, whose eminence gave him the confidence that he would be taken care of, the less famous/faithful among us were not at all sure this wasn’t the only food we’d see that night. Turns out the original restaurant was too noisy, so a quieter venue–for 8 people, at 9pm, on Saturday night, in Miami Beach, during Art Basel–was being sought.

Soon enough Tim Griffin showed up, a restaurant was apparently set, and we piled into the Art|Basel|Miami Beach|BMWs and ended up at The Forge, which sounded like an S&M club and looked like Robin Leach had done over Disney’s Haunted Mansion. It was, naturally, packed with Tony Montanas, and we threaded our way back, back, back through the din–to the chilled silence of a private table in the wine cellar. Nebuchadnezzars of whatever in individual back-lit niches filled the walls [the normal wine cellar was elsewhere]. Sure was quiet. And freezing. We retired to a private courtyard to let the room warm up, which, of course, it never did, so after first trying to set up a table outside, and after I dopily offered to drape my napkin on Robbe-Grillet’s shoulders to stay warm, we went out and joined the haut polloi.

The place was deafening. Though we were able to hear the offer of “surf-and-turf” [at $100+, you’d hope they could come up wit’ a classier name] and the birthday antics of the table next to us, we couldn’t hear across our own table. Thus, most conversation was shouted into the ears of the people on either side of us, or was relayed like a game of telephone to M. R-G. Apparently, they stop playing this game in France at age 5 or so, because R-G [can I call him R-G? I think now I can.] spent an unsettling amount of time with his hands over his ears. Unsettling for me, anyway. I mean, who wants to see anyone–much less one of the greatest writer/filmmakers of the last hundred years–do that when you’re talking to him?

It turned out, though, that several of the table’s stories overlapped: a screening of Last Year At Marienbad on an Icelandic glacier that ended with an emergency airlift; red meat; Patty Hearst and Stockholm Syndrome; Claude Lelouch. Although the owner and staff deserves full credit for their backbending hospitality, the steaks–”Wine Spectator says this is the best steak in the country”–were entirely forgettable. I confess, I ate alone at Outback the night before [come on, I’d just gotten into town, and it was right in front of the containers!], and my steak was easily twice as good, and a quarter the cost.

But whoever the angels in accounting were that night, we can only thank them from afar, because we all bolted for the door in order to make Doug Aitken’s party by 11:30.

Near the end, we were divvying up the rights to the story: Tim Griffin was getting a thinly fictionalized version for his novel; while Robbe-Grillet himself may use it–or at least the curator-as-energizer-bunny/hero version of it–in a film, since he’s apparently showing no signs of slowing down soon; Stefano Boeri may run it in his magazine. I claimed blog rights, which set off a whole new discussion of blogs, the art world, and boingboing. Turns out HUO knows Cory. I guess by definition, two guys who know everyone in the world would know each other, too.

Caryn James acknowledges that talking about Terrence Malick’s career involves a lot of speculation–before she proceeds to speculate on his “20 year absence” from filmmaking:

Logic and cheap psychology suggest that fear of success or fear of failure might be involved. He may never duplicate the artistry and acclaim of his early films, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the prospect of competing with himself caused creative paralysis in a filmmaker who likes every blade of grass to be shot perfectly.

Whatever. With the man’s next movie, The New World, supposedly set to debut this Christmas, you can’t help but write about him. I can totally appreciate that.
The Enigmatic Malick Is Back [nyt via iht]

Stuart, our man in Los Angeles, files this report from a KCRW-sponsored screening of N.Y. Doll last weekend where director Greg Whiteley and his producers Ed Cunningham and Seth Lewis Gordon, discussed making the film:

Greg had known Arthur had been in a band as another church member had told him, but the film really started when Arthur told Greg that he had an email that his band was reforming. The first piece filmed was the recovery of the bass guitar from the pawn shop as he had to practice.
The producer also talked interestingly about the way that Arthur’s voice changes through the filming from rather stumbling speech patterns early to the rather stirring and dramatic prayer at the end.
The Morrissey part was filmed and edited in after the Sundance festival so it has a changed tone now. [And it’s pretty clear that all the celebrity interviews were grabbed in one shot at the Meltdown Festival. In the production notes, Whiteley talks about never having permission to do anything, just going as far as their “Killer has a posse” stance would take them.]
It is also never quite clear, and Greg said this as well, whether
Arthur was expected to be part of the reunion, as he found out almost by mistake. Obviously his fan club had an email for him, and Greg said that Sylvain probably met Arthur about once a year on his annual tours, so he knew he was available/alive.
They do briefly mention [Kane & Johansen] last being together shouting at each other in a trailer park in Florida but nothing more than that. I get the feeling there is a great “New York Dolls” documentary waiting to be made. The Ramones doc was ultimately depressing after seeing these people just beaten down trying to get a big enough audience for their music. [Yeah, does anything good ever come from Florida trailer parks? And the Dolls seemed to drop with predictably Spinal-Tappian frequency, too; not so feel-good.]
I thought Johansen’s entrance to the practice area with another video
behind him a day late in the middle of a song rather stagey but Kane seemed genuinely pleased to see him. Also what was the idea
behind only having less than 7 days rehearsal before flying and doing the gig? that almost seemed set up for failure.
Most of the stage footage is from a second show where he is
wearing the spotted shirt with the “diamante tie”; very few shots from
the first show, with the white shirt.
Johansen recorded 2 Mormon psalms, and Greg hoped they would both be on the dvd release.

The DVD is in my prayers. Bless you, Brother Stuart.
Previously: NY Doll – The greg.org review