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October 2010
My AFF highlights (the top six)
Following the amazing eight-day whirlwind of panels, films and parties that is the Austin Film Festival, I look back on a few of my favorite things.
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Interview: Dax Shepard, ‘Brother’s Justice’ auteur
Although he’s had what would have to be considered a successful career over the past decade, Dax Shepard has not been able to see his authentic comedic voice find an outlet. He’s either played in broad comedies (“Employee of the Month”) or served another man’s vision (“Idiocracy”).
So he decided to grab friends and collaborators Nate Tuck and David Palmer and create “Brother’s Justice,” a thoroughly entertaining mockumentary that screened at the Austin Film Festival last weekend.
The premise of the meta experiment is that Shepard has become disillusioned with doing comedies, so he has decided to break into the world of action movies, specifically martial arts, with the making of his next film. After talking Tuck into co-producing, Shepard sets out to find a director, actors and financial backing.
In his efforts to get the film made, Shepard is repeatedly rebuffed by befuddled friends (strong straight-man performances from John Favreau and Ashton Kucher and ridiculous turns from David Koechner and Bradley Cooper), pummeled by a marital arts instructor and dismissed as arrogant and delusional as he abuses Tuck’s friendship.
“It’s very counterintuitive that you’d enjoy watching your protagonist get beaten up thoroughly,” Shepard said last weekend in Austin. “Not intentionally, but we achieved this weird thing where you are rooting against the protagonist yet you care about him. It’s very weird. I kept saying while we were shooting, ‘Man, I am riding the line of being very unlikable because I’m such an ego maniac in the movie.’ But I thought as long as I lose every confrontation … I think the underdog aspect will actually override your disdain for my character.”
Indeed, Shepard makes great use of his improv training to play a pitch-perfect high status boob who doesn’t understand why his friends doubt his ability to re-position himself as an action superstar. Most probably don’t remember the incidents in 2006, but the crafty and committed Shepard even made appearances on the Teen Choice Awards and “Last Call With Carson Daly” in character, the footage from which appears in the movie.
Along for much of the ride is Shepard’s good friend, the hilariously manic Tom Arnold, who is willing to help the tall blonde get his movie made in exchange for getting to play Shepard’s older brother, age discrepancy be damned.
While the movie (possibly by accident) pokes a bit of fun at Hollywood, Shepard insists that his wacky little gem is not born out of spite. He simply wanted to see his absurd sensibility writ large.
“I’m not bitter at all,” Shepard said about his relationship with the industry. “Things have not gone the way I’ve wanted them to go. But, tough (expletive deleted); they just didn’t go the way Dax Shepard wants them to go. I sympathize with everyone in the film business. It is so hard. There’s so much magic involved (in getting a film made) … it’s 60 percent of why a movie works or doesn’t work and people are trying to crack that code and it’s uncrackable. I feel bad for everyone involved, there’s tons of money being spent; it’s high risk. I sympathize with studios. I get it. I know why you hire Adam Sandler for x-amount of money, because you’re gonna get x-amount no matter what happens. It doesn’t make me angry. That’s just how it is. I’m the one that’s been a recipient of all this … I’m the one who was on eight episodes of a cable show and they let me be a lead in a movie. If I had been acting in movies for 10 years, I would have hated me.”
Shepard expressed at Saturday night’s screening how much he absolutely loves Austin, calling it the greatest city in the country. Here are a couple more side notes on his relationship with Austin and Texas:
On Austinite Mike Judge: “He’s one of the people I became closest with that I stayed in touch with, and I just think he’s a genius and he has a voice and he stays true to it.”
On Texans Owen Wilson: “He’s my favorite comedic actor.”
On Austin via his Twitter feed: “Austin, you did it again. I feel like I’m flying home from spring break, heart broken that we don’t live in the same town.”
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AFF highlight: Script reading of Maggie Carey’s ‘The Hand Job’
With no visual distractions to entertain the audience, the experience focused on Carey’s vulnerable, endearing, precise and hilarious dialogue.
The University of Texas alumnus introduced the panel of 15 actors — a combination of local and national talent — who sat in director’s chairs as they read the screenplay for the movie with the title that Carey said she refuses to say in front of her mother.
In the lead role was Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation”) as Brandy Clark, a Type-A valedictorian who is determined to gain a measure of sexual experience and confidence before heading off to college. The singularly driven valedictorian goes so far as to make a to-do list charting her sexual progress and turns to a host of boys to use as practice dummies - from the dreamy Rusty (Michael Stahl) to her nervous and fawning nerdy friend Cameron (Daryl Sabara).
Plaza (who, along with Carey’s husband, “Saturday Night Live’s” Bill Hader, are the only actors actually attached to the production) played the character with her trademark deadpan exasperation coupled with a sweet sincerity. As her perpetually buzzed, underachieving boss at the local pool, Hader was desperate, hilarious and brilliant, and Colin Hanks seemed to channel Norm MacDonald at times with his great turn as Brandy’s conservative father.
In a Q&A session following the movie, Carey said she had re-written the largely biographical script after being told by some people that the first draft depicted Brandy as overly sexualized. I think those objections, while possibly valid, come from the fact that people are not used to seeing raw, funny stories like this from a female perspective. Two lines from Brandy in the most recent draft almost feel like a response to the discomfort some may have felt from the earlier versions.
“No one took advantage of me,” Brandy says in the screenplay. “Maybe I’m just a normal, horny teenager who’s curious about sex.”
After seeing countless movies about the adolescent male experience with sexual stumbling and insecurities, it is refreshing to see more females, such as Carey and “Tiny Furniture” director Lena Dunham, getting a chance to tell their compelling and amusing stories.
With several studios having passed on the script — which made Franklin Leonard’s Black List of the best unproduced screenplays - Carey says the plan is to produce the movie independently on a small budget, with shooting to take place next summer. She said producer Jennifer Todd is attached to the project that I believe will be a major indie hit when finally released.
About Todd, Jessica Alba — who read the part of Brandy’s older sister and whose beauty seems almost genetically engineered — said, “She’ll make sure you keep your creative integrity” even if the movie gets picked up by a studio.
The beauty of attending a script reading is being able to savor the language and descriptions of action and exposition that are never seen on the big screen. For instance, at one point the script refers to Rusty as “one part grunge, two parts smokin’ hot babe” with a “sensible ponytail.” Sure, you could see that in the character on screen in the finished movie, but actually hearing the thought process that goes into the physical representation is a rare treat.
Some of the most intimate moments of the reading came when Hader gave knowing looks to his wife — who was sitting in the front row of the audience — as certain jokes went over huge with the audience. Writing is a painstaking craft that requires a delicate touch and can often leave writers fretting over a single phrase for hours. Hader, who Carey said was a constant sounding board for her work, said after the reading that his wife was the hardest working person he knew. So it was revealing and touching to see him double over with laughter following a well-written line that killed, as he gave a knowing and affirming glance to his wife.
(Since a script reading truly is about the language, my only quibble from the screenplay set in 1993 was the appearance of the word “totes.” I don’t think people were using that truncation back in ’93. Then again, it’s been 17 years. Yikes.)
Photo: Austin Film Festival/Jack Plunkett
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Interivew: Edward Burns, director of ‘Nice Guy Johnny’
The film’s success led to a minor explosion in indie film, a short-lived expansion that has since collapsed.
With the challenges of raising money becoming increasingly more difficult, Burns and his longtime producer Aaron Lubin decided to return to the guerrilla filmmaking style of ‘McMullen.’ And fifteen years after he helped start a boom in indie filmmaking, Burns is now proving to be an early adopter in the way movies are being distributed.
Taking a page from his “Brothers McMullen” playbook, Burns decided to make his most recent movie, “Nice Guy Johnny,” on a budget of only $25,000, while using mostly unknown actors, a three-man crew and shooting in less than two weeks.
“We decided why not kinda try and do the same thing now and not have to deal with all the headaches that go along with dealing with famous actors and financiers,” Burns said last week at the Austin Film Festival.
“Nice Guy Johnny” tells the story of a 25 year-old man living in the San Francisco Bay Area and working as a sports radio talk show host. Pressured by his fiancé to take a ‘real job’ that can afford the two of them financial security, Johnny returns home to New York City to interview for a stultifying corporate job. But a weekend with his carefree, rapscallion Uncle Terry (Burns) challenges his ideas about his road to happiness and his idea of success.
The story has deep personal significance for Burns, who at one point struggled with the idea of making more money by directing a big-budget studio romantic comedy.
“The story was born two years ago. My agent came to me and said would you consider doing an open directing assignment,” Burns said. “My dream has always been to be the Long Island Woody Allen - the guy making his little movies … And then there’s an opportunity that presents itself where there’s a lot more money … The script was good, but for me it woulda been a compromise. It would have been giving up the thing that I’m truly passionate about … Very few guys who go there come back.”
Frustrated with the standard indie platform release, where often a small movie with a tiny marketing budget has no chance of making it to a large audience and will sit for months before making it to DVD or cable, Burns decided to take a new approach to getting his movie to his fans. Building off of the iTunes release he did for his 2007 “Purple Violets,” Burns and Lubin developed a multi-tiered release that will have the movie available through iTunes, Video on Demand on cable and DVD all at the same time.
“We watched what (Steven) Sodergergh did with “Girlfriend Experience” and “Bubble,” and I thought, ‘If it’s good enough for Soderbergh to go VOD before theatrical, it’s good enough for me,’” Burns said. “People who like my movies aren’t necessarily the big art house folks, so maybe if we get the movie directly to them, there’s more money to make. And at the end of the day, it’s still a business, so the movies need to make money so I can get the money for the next one. The great thing is I no longer sell my movie to a distribution company … I own the movie, so we license it. So, in success, we finally get to participate.”
While some may be skeptical of the coming paradigm shift and how to leverage it, Burns believes the timing is perfect to directly deliver fresh film content to people. The New Yorker says the proliferation of great original programming on cable networks such as HBO, Showtime, FX and AMC, proves there is an audience for the kind of filmmaking he wants to do.
“The audience that is interested in the smaller, smarter storytelling, they’re already at home sitting on their couch looking to their television to supply them with that kind of story telling,” Burns said. “Why should we ask them to get out of the house and go to the theater? We have the audience. They like this stuff. Let’s just put it right in front of them where they’re used to watching it.”
Burns believes the shift in consumer habits and the myriad distribution channels are gamechangers that will continue to offer him the best chance to keep fulfilling his vision.
“The fact that we no longer have to go to the folks who finance films and we no longer have to deal with trying to chase down movie stars, it’s so liberating,” Burns said. “You just make the movies you wanna make.”
Photo from ASSOCIATED PRESS.
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Panel Wrap: Writing for Documentaries
Judging by the talented panelists, crowd of filmmakers and admirers of the craft in attendance at the panel Saturday, the state of documentary filmmaking is strong.
Although the title of the panel suggested a focus on writing, the discussion started out talking about general ideas and techniques of the craft before finally makings its way to the actual writing process. Which is not to say the panel missed its mark — filmmakers Paul Stekler (“George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire”), PJ Raval (“Trinidad”), Barry Blaustein (“Beyond the Mat”) and Henry Corra (“Same Sex America”) were all engaging, thoughtful and articulate in discussing their craft and individual films.
In discussing documentary subjects, Stekler boiled his philosophy down to a simple rule: “Find someone who wants to tell their story and are great on camera.” While Stekler said that the director is obviously important, the “most important person in the room” is the cinematographer, who can float around the the action without drawing attention to himself.
Fellow Austinite Raval touched on the importance of garnering a subject’s trust, with a sentiment shared by his fellow panelists.
“When you work in documentary filmmaking, first and foremost it is about trust,” Raval said.
With regard to the trust issue, Blaustein (a former head writer on “SNL” and the man behind several of Eddie Murphy’s screenplays) said that he spent two years without a camera in hand on the road with professional wrestling subjects gaining their trust and getting a feel for their world.
Raval said regardless of the personal and sometimes intimate nature of his subjects, that at their heart, all documentaries reveal a universality to which people can relate. And, as Blaustein said, “Everyone you meet has a story to tell.”
In terms of getting close to their subjects, Corra said, “It may sound corny or romantic .. but you really do kind of fall in love with your characters.”
It was nice to hear the filmmakers confess to wanting to make sure they did not manipulate the truth or exploit their characters.
“We can make any of you guys look any way we want,” Stekler said of the editing process. “The trick is making (subjects) look like they really are.”
While Stekler admitted that documentaries are really made in the editing room, there is writing involved. And while that writing can give you a structure going into a film, a good documentarian must be ready to go wherever the film takes him.
Best thing I can say about the panel: Following it, I now want to go watch every documentary each of these men has made.
Funny anecdote of the panel: Corra said that while making “Same Sex America,” a child started singing “Tomorrow” from “Annie” at a poignant and important moment in the film which could not be cut. The impromptu singing jag ended up costing the filmmaker $30,000. On another music-related note, apparently singing “Happy Birthday” on film will run you $2,500. So be careful out there, kids.
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Panel wrap: The Art of Storytelling with the 2010 Awardees
As you might expect, the ballroom at the Stephen F. Austin was absolutely packed for the panel with the three distinguished AFF awardees — David Simon (“The Wire”); David Peoples (“Unforgiven”) and Robert Rodriguez (“El Mariachi”).
Considering the resumes of the men on the panel and the grand title, the discussion could probably go a thousand directions and last for hours. Sunday morning’s talk started off on discussing violence and its appeal and then bounced around. Below are a few bulleted highlights:
Rodriguez on violence in his films:
“I never get in trouble … my movies don’t take themselves too seriously.”
Peoples on the idea of black-and-white characterizations:
“Martin Scorsese solved a problem for me (in “Taxi Driver) … He wasn’t writing about good guys and bad guys, he was writing about the animal inside all of us … I just always feel we’re animals.”
Simon continuing on the theme of simplistic depiction of good and bad:
“The Wire,” he said was “a rebellion against the idea that you’re gonna lock up the bad guy and fix the town … The drug war has nothing to do with the morality.”
Rodriguez on his films:
“They’re all fantasies. None of them are realistic … it’s moviemaking from the ID.”
Rodriguez on his sly move of making a “futuristic” version of Mexico:
The multi-hyphenate said that with only $7,000 and the idea of Mexico being undefined in many people’s heads, he simply included in the press notes he actually wrote that the movie took place in a futuristic Mexico town, even though it looked like present day Mexico. Press, he said, then took the idea directly from the notes and included it in stories and reviews, saving him the trouble and expense of actually creating a futuristic look.
Peoples on the vagaries of the industry and success as a screenwriter:
“When you write a script, you just hope someone’s gonna ‘get it.’ … You’ve got no chance without a director who can stand up and know they’re doing.”
Rodriguez on the writing process:
The filmmaker, who said “there is hardly anything worse than writing,” discussed writing first thing in the morning from the comfort of his bed while he was still in a quasi-dreamy state, which allowed him to possibly tap into his subconscious. He also said that the only way to learn how to write is to write, and “you have to write bad until it turns good.”
Simon on the creative process with his team:
“In the healthiest institutions, arguments are encouraged … I believe in protecting the writing, but at some point you have to trust the collective to build the house.”
Simon on his dream project:
The creator of “Treme” said that he wants badly to work on a story about the Haymarket affair in 1886 Chicago. He really wants to focus on the importance (and increasingly lack thereof) of labor and how it has defined America, but nobody will touch it.
Simon on the myth of people liking diversity:
He said some people claim to want diversity, but said it is really lip service. “As long as they can shut up and think what I think, then diversity is great,” he said.
Simon on the pain of the process:
“I hate writing.”
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Panel wrap: The Black List
Friday afternoon, Leonard was joined by four writers who have had scripts land on the coveted list. As Leonard said, it turns out he wasn’t the only one who was having a problem discovering great work, a collective problem that led to the list being so heavily sought out by development folks in the industry. Over the years, as the popularity and success rate (in 2006 and 2007 40% of the Oscars handed out in the top categories went to Black List screenplays) has increased, so has the number of participants. Last year’s list had the participation of 330 people.
One of the panel participants was Austinite Kyle Killen, creator of the recently (and unfortunately) canceled “Lone Star,” who landed on the list in 2008 with his script for “The Beaver.” Killen said the list gave him instant legitimacy.
“Getting on it means you’re instantly taken seriously,” said Killen.
Not only does the list offer industry insiders a concentrated list of talent, it also provides them some cover in that if they want to buy one of the scripts or sign a deal with one of the writers, they can point to the list as a fact that other people had shared their opinion.
When Matthew Cook’s agent told him he had landed on The Black List, the Hollywood neophyte who had gotten the script for his “By Way of Helena” noticed by Mike Simpson following a hunting trip responded, “That doesn’t sound good … what the hell is that?”
He soon found out. He also realized that with great honor comes great responsibility and admits that following his appearance on the list he felt increased pressure to produce solid work. But Cook admitted that while landing on the list is a career jumper with almost unmatched power, writers should avoid trying to write specifically to land on the list, as such calculating will destroy a unique voice.
Not everyone who lands on the list comes through a script that’s been passed around or through a chance encounter with an industry executive. Malcolm Spellman and Tim Talbott ended up being selected for the list after their script for “Balls Out” became an internet sensation. The two writers created an admittedly antiquated website and posted the screenplay for the subversive comedy. To date it has been downloaded almost 100,000 times. Their success, according to Leonard, is one indicator of the fact that over the coming decade people will be getting their work into the hands of industry decision makers through more and more varied outlets.
While some cynical folks may think of the list as a bragging contest between development folks, Leonard seems unconcerned. He simply wants to continue to help great writers get their voices heard.
“I have a deep and abiding love for storytellers,” Leonard said.
Photo of Franklin Leonard by Jack Plunkett/AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL
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Panel wrap: A conversation with Jonn Lee Hancock
Although he admitted he was worried his anecdote about his first taste of the business after leaving a legal career in Houston may have been redundant from years past, it was still informative and entertaining. The writer-director explained how he (somewhat benignly) stalked fellow Baylor grad Kevin Reynolds (“Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”) in Hollywood, who gave Hancock his first reality check. Following six months of phone calls, Hancock had lunch with Reynolds who told the would-be screenwriter that he was “not without talent,” but the director did not fall over praising Hancock. He challenged Hancock to continue writing by offering him the feigned advice to return home and practice law. If Hancock took the advice, Reynolds said it would be apparent the young lawyer was not cut out to be a writer. Hancock kept writing.
What he realized in retrospect what that most writers’ first scripts tend to be autobiographical and are generally not very good — Hancock’s was about a young lawyer conflicted about whether to follow a creative career path. Hancock stressed to the crowd that “it’s important to write what moves you.”
The director of “The Rookie” said that “writing is the fastest track” to getting into the business, although he said once you are in, there is no guarantee you can keep getting work. He compared his career as a “contract worker” to that of a house painter, always looking for another house to paint. In terms of mapping a career, Hancock said that “having a game plan is importantbut not as important as the fire in your soul.”
Hancock called the experience of working “A Perfect World”— his first major writing gig — as “an amazing film school for me … kind of a magical time …” Reflecting back, he says the fact that he’s made it now almost 20 years is a “kind of a miracle.”
The homegrown star spent a good half hour discussing his greatest commercial success — “The Blind Side.” Although it’s hard to imagine that a movie that made over $250 million at American box offices alone having trouble getting off the ground, Hancock described the painful process of getting the film made. After attaching Julia Roberts to the script just a few days after it had started circulating around the industry, he gained Fox’s interest. Then he lost Roberts, who was just coming off filming “Duplicity,” her first film in awhile, and then he had to wrestle the project back from a now-lukewarm Fox after Alcon Entertainment expressed interest.
Beyond the nuts and bolts of getting the film made, the most interesting part of the conversation was Hancock discussing the sensitive issues of race surrounding the film and his adherence to the truth of Michael Lewis’s book and the Tuohy family’s real story.
The director said he always considered the movie an “unconventional mother-son” adult drama, which he acknowledged tend to not get made much these days. He said he had to fight the desire for the industry to classify anything as a sports movie just because it has elements of sports in it.
Hancock admitted that he may have exaggerated Michael Oher’s lack of football talent, but that he did so for dramatic purposes, so there would be a contrast between where the young man started as a player and where he ended. It was interesting to hear Hancock relate that Oher’s optimistic appraisal of his own talent in 10th grade was less connected to reality than the film’s depiction.
The director also said he knew from Lewis’s experience that the race issue would rankle some people’s belief systems and make them uncomfortable, but that he was not going to shy away from the possibility of promulgating the white hero myth just because some people may find the story unbelievable or wrongly stereotypical.
Engaging, self-effacing and charming, Hancock’s 75 minutes Friday were a testament to believing in the stories you want to tell as a writer, refusing to indulge in self-pity and the resolve it takes to make it in such a youth-oriented, flavor-of-the-minute chasing business.
Success in the industry is not about getting a studio to say ‘yes,’ it’s about making it impossible for them to say ‘no.’
(A word about the Driskill Victorian Balcony room — and I know I probably say this every year — but as cozy as it is to be able to sit on the floor and listen to a distinguished screenwriter, it is pretty uncomfortable. I understand logistics may prevent a load of chairs from being easily delivered into the “Malkovich Room” (it is on some mysterious half-floor of the hotel), but I continue to hold out hope that something can be done to alleviate the stress on our rear ends and hips.)
Photo: John Lee Hancock on the set of “The Blind Side.”
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Interview: Edward Norton of “Stone”
Just a week before shooting his new movie, “Stone,” two-time Academy Award nominee Edward Norton didn’t have a grasp on the physicality of the title character, he said during last month’s Fantastic Fest.
Then he visited a prison in Jackson, Mich., and had a breakthrough. Norton engaged in a revealing conversation with the man who started the Crips gang in Detroit. After hearing an explanation of the film’s script and themes, the former gang leader said he knew a fellow inmate who would be the perfect inspiration for the actor.
“They brought this other guy in, and he came into the room and he started talking, and I was done. He had the cornrows, and he had that sandpaper-and-glass, kind of shattered voice, and he was fascinating,” Norton said. “He was like a doppelgänger for Stone in the script in my view. He really was a guy who, from his early, early days had been marginalized into the drug culture by a boyfriend of his mother’s who was a dealer. And yet, by being institutionalized for a long, long time, he had cobbled together a sense of how to build himself into a spiritual person, because he really wanted to get out. (Director) John (Curran) and I walked out together and he was like, ‘Done. If you can get anything like half of that into it, we’re great.’ So these guys were enormously helpful. I channeled that guy pretty much.”
So much for being stumped.
In “Stone,” Norton plays a convicted arsonist who is set to face yet another in a string of fruitless parole hearings. Sitting between him and his freedom is stoic correctional officer Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro), who is just weeks from retirement from a life served as judge and jury of other men’s lives.
Though the script suffers at times from heavy-handed treatment of philosophical and religious themes, the movie is a raw pleasure for moviegoers who are offered the rare pleasure of getting to see two heavyweights trade feints and jabs.
Despite external appearances of a life of order and justice, a flashback at the beginning of the movie paints De Niro’s Mabry as a deeply tortured soul whose darkness is slowly revealed.
“I think the film is about Jack. I think it’s about a person who is a stone — who has all the props and surfaces of a real life but has no emotion and has no spiritual life. And it’s killing him,” Norton said of De Niro’s character. “The denial of his emptiness catches up with him where he can’t sit in a chair and judge other people; he can’t fob it off onto others. And you see Stone thrown up against the rock of him. That’s why I so admire Bob’s performance in it, because he holds for such a long time. The forming of the cracks in him is so nuanced, and when he busts, you get this sensation of decades of repressed emptiness coming out. I felt like he was really getting at things relevant to the place he is in life. … It’s so rare actors who have that level of discipline that he does, to not make everything telegraphed, to let it boil that slow. To me, the thing with him is the sense of this deep, inner turning going on. And it’s what makes so many of (his) characters great to me.”
Norton wasn’t the only person on the set who admired the man who has been devastating audiences for more than 40 years. Filming inside the claustrophobic confines of a functioning prison meant the actors and crew were within close proximity of inmates, who let their presence and appreciation for De Niro be known.
“At one point, Bob’s out on the phone … and I was like, ‘What is that guy saying?’” Norton said of an inmate yelling at his co-star from across the yard. “And I realized he was doing that line from ‘Raging Bull,’ ‘I’ve got no choice!’ … and ‘Don’t overcook it. It defeats the purpose.’ “
With two of the best actors of their respective generations mesmerizingly chewing so much scenery, it would seem the role of having to step in between them as the third piece of a twisted love triangle would be daunting.
In an inspired bit of casting, Milla Jovovich (best known for her recurring role in the “Resident Evil” franchise) plays Stone’s wife, Lucetta, who attempts to seduce Jack in an effort to hasten Stone’s release from prison. While De Niro and Norton deliver spectacular performances, Jovovich’s nuanced portrayal turns out be the movie’s revelation.
“I thought she was just tremendous,” Norton said. “(Director) John (Curran) put that thing in that you start as a stone, you become an insect, you have to go through being an animal, all the way up to being human. His whole thing was that these …characters are all at points along this thing. And his whole thing about Lucetta was that she is an animal … not that she’s an ‘animal,’ but that she’s not yet to the place of super-consciousness. She doesn’t have existential anxiety. She doesn’t have problems the way we have problems. And I think that Milla pulled off this remarkable thing in that she is a manipulator, she is manipulating, and yet she’s not … And I think it’s very, very hard to pull off paradox in a character, and she was dangerous but also very innocent, very guileless. … I love it when you see someone beautiful but there’s a weirdness to it.”
As has become a bit of a trademark for him, Norton wrestles with the idea of opposites as Stone — a character who feels like the least likely candidate for a spiritual transformation — evolves and transcends his imprisoned world. The inspiration for his latest complex character is not the only thing Norton took away from his time behind bars.
“I mean, what would ever take me inside a Michigan prison for two weeks to talk to guys?” Norton said. “Just a couple of weeks of talking to people who are incarcerated about how their mother was a prostitute… and how they came up through the system and what it was like. … It cultivates an expanded view and perspective on your own life. It’s an amazing opportunity.”
Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
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Profile: Eric Hueber, director of ‘Rainbows End’
He had a school bus. He had a bunch of chickens and a cast of real-life characters he knew. So he decided to make a road-trip movie about going west.
“I’m not feeding them lines, because they cannot act,” Hueber says. “And why would you want to feed these guys lines anyway? You just want to be there to capture it. And it seemed the easiest format and structure for me to put all these people together and for us to all have a clear objective and a goal. These were all just friends of mine, and they all had these quirky ambitions.”
Thus was born the idea for tonight’s Austin Film Festival entry “Rainbows End,” an experimental narrative that’s part “Muppet Movie” and part surrealist documentary.
As a child growing up in East Texas, Hueber was inspired to become a filmmaker by the videos on MTV. But the idea of actually making movies for a living seemed impractical and unattainable until he entered film school at Stephen F. Austin University.
Unlike some schools that teach film theory in hopes of weeding through large swaths of students, Hueber says, Stephen F. Austin was a hands-on, vocational education.
“They handed you a camera and said, ‘Just go make a damn film,’” Hueber says.
In his first year of film school, Hueber met his future business partner and “Rainbows End” producer and co-writer, Andy Cope. After receiving their undergraduate degrees, Hueber and Cope started the production firm Alonestar Films.
Necessity played a role with the duo’s first unofficial client. Living in a warehouse and taking showers with an outdoor hose that would freeze in winter, Hueber approached Supergym in Nacogdoches and offered to exchange production of a commercial for a gym membership, which would allow the nascent filmmaker the chance to literally come in from the cold.
Alonestar slowly built a roster of paying local clients for whom they produced advertising and marketing materials. That afforded them the resources, time and equipment to focus on projects such as “Rainbows End.”
In 2004, Hueber — with a $5,000 Texas Filmmaker Production Fund grant from the Austin Film Society — loaded up his 1977 school bus and sputtered off to California.
He took along a collection of eccentric characters : the soulful, tender, baton-twirling Audrey Dean; cockfighter Brian “Birdman” Birdwell; one-man band and high school valedictorian Peter Guzzino; and country music and outer-space aficionado Country Willie and his band the Cosmic Debris. With two cameras and two roosters, the group spent three weeks on the road in a haphazard search for their individual dreams.
After returning, Hueber spent six months commuting back and forth to Austin to work as an editing assistant on Terrence Malick’s “The New World.” Exhausted from the weekly travel and the months of assisting on Malick’s film, Hueber says, he was dismayed when he revisited the 100-plus hours of footage he had shot on the trip out West.
“I looked at my own footage and was just discouraged with the project. I had limited resources when I shot it. I shot it with two cameramen who had sound attached to their cameras,” Hueber says. “It was just shot under less-than-ideal circumstances. When we set out to make the film, we all had these individual ambitions in this collective journey, and none of us really accomplished anything noteworthy in the film. So I felt we had a complete anticlimax of a film.”
Hueber moved to Austin in 2005 and continued to work with his clients at Alonestar. Eventually, Hueber returned to the oddball road trip footage, and with fresh eyes and the aid of Cope’s vision, realized he had actually captured something special.
“My frustrations with it were over levels of control I felt I didn’t have … Then I realized, ‘I have some great footage here. I’m sitting on a pot of gold. I just have to let it speak its own tale.’ And once I figured that out, Andy came in and helped me nuance that. I think it took me maturing a little bit, kind of getting beat down in life and having some more failures for me to look back on it and think, ‘Hell, we did it. We tried. We went for it.’”
The lessons learned by Hueber mirror the unspoken mantra of the ragtag bunch of dreamers in “Rainbows End.”
“I believe in the creative process. You can’t determine the outcome ,” Hueber says. ” You just have to believe in yourself enough to just go for it.”
“Rainbows End” makes its world premiere at the Austin Convention Center Saturday at 5:15 p.m. It screens again Wednesday night at 10 at the Texas Spirit Theater.
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Arthouse is taking the party to the roof
Not since the Long Center opened have I heard so much excited rumbling about an arts-related project in Austin. And with good reason. By all accounts, the newly remodeled new home to contemporary art is stunning and it’s been said by many that the 5,500-square-foot rooftop lounge area will be one of the most amazing spaces in town.
Always free to the public, Arthouse will also add to a burgeoning downtown night life by offering extended hours, as noted by Statesman arts writer Jeanne Claire van Ryzin in her post here.
The new space will be open until 9 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, but as van Ryzin points out, one of the cool features for new members is the fact that the upstairs lounge will be open only to members until 11 p.m. on Wednesdays. That should make for one hell of a hang for those heading downtown mid-week, as members will be able to snack and drink (BYOB-style).
To introduce people to the new building and hopefully lure them into membership with their sweet rooftop space, Arthouse is throwing a big ol’ rooftop party with an open bar, catered food and beats that will echo the building-lined corridors of the city. The grand reopening party that is part fundraiser and part hell-raiser will feature the high energy dance music of Brooklyn-based band and art/performance collective MEN.
Tickets to Friday’s party that starts at 10 p.m. and (allegedly) runs till midnight — though stopping so early on such a big night would seem a bit foolish — are $125, with proceeds going to help run this free public art space.
If you can’t make it to the party Friday night, the public reopening of Arthouse is Sunday from noon to 8 p.m. and will feature innovative inaugural exhibitions, live music, art workshops, and more.
Photos: A look at the new Arthouse
For much more about the new Arthouse, check out these stories from the Statesman’s Jean Claire van Ryzin:
- Arthouse raises the cultural ante on Congress
- Blueprints for reopening Arthouse constructs an engaging array of exhibit pieces
Photo by Michael Moran/ Courtesy of Arthouse.
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Interview: Steve-O from ‘Jackass 3D’
In 1994, broke and marginally employed, the college dropout was lured to the Texas capital by some high-risk work as a medical guinea pig. Fitting for a man who would eventually become famous for absorbing all manner of abuse as one of the stars of the “Jackass” franchise, the latest of which opens in theaters nationwide today .
Slowly waking after a midday nap at a luxury hotel during last month’s Fantastic Fest, Steve-O speaks with a cracked voice and slightly detached amusement.
“They were looking to test this drug for pigs and cows on people,” Steve-O says. “At first it was a $1,500 medical study, and that was just so much money. The goal was for them to keep giving us this drug until someone’s resting heart rate was over 150 beats a minute. They didn’t reach their goals in the 10 days, so they offered us $500 more to stay two more days and give us even more of this drug. It was a super dangerous medical study. And just a wild time. We were sleeping on a rooftop.”
That trip to Austin would foreshadow a career spent torturing himself for the entertainment of others. But the self-inflicted harm done on camera paled in comparison to the abuse in his personal life.
Drugs and alcohol slowly ravaged the daredevil, to the point that his friend and co-star Johnny Knoxville eventually had to stage an intervention in 2008.
Now, sober for two and a half years, Steve-O is back on the big screen in “Jackass 3D,” still taking the kind of risks that make you want to cover your eyes and hold on to your stomach.
He is thoughtful, if a bit groggy from the aforementioned nap and a night spent posing for photos with adoring fans, as he discusses his mistakes and his motivations for returning to the franchise that made him a cult superstar.
“It’s not easier doing it all sober,” Steve-O says. “It was important to me to prove to myself and everyone that sobriety hasn’t made me lame and boring. So, while it wasn’t any easier, it was more important to me. I was more apprehensive yet also more eager.”
Though it would be a stretch to tag any of his “Jackass” cohorts as choir boys, Steve-O acknowledges that he had been a nightmare to deal with for a long time and was eager to work with his friends as an “improved version” of himself.
The repair work he’s done seemingly extends to all aspects of his life. The former circus clown who gained notoriety for swallowing and regurgitating a goldfish now adheres to a vegan diet.
“Being vegan has benefited every area of my life, for sure,” Steve-O says. “It’s healthier for me. It’s healthier for my body. Emotionally, spiritually, physically … across the board, it’s something I really benefit from.”
It momentarily feels like we’ve entered Bizarro World, where a man known for stapling his genitals to his leg can ruminate thoughtfully about the decline of our society. Then, in almost the same breath, he acknowledges how our culture’s fascination with the freak show pays his bills.
“I’d be homeless if that wasn’t the case,” he says.
Though his destructive days of drugs and booze are behind him, the one addiction Steve-O seems unwilling to eradicate is the attention he has recklessly courted his entire life.
“I’ve always been a real hound for attention, and that hasn’t changed,” Steve-O says. “When ‘Jackass’ first came out, I was at this night club in Panama City, Florida. I was sitting at the bar next to a professional wrestler from the WWF or whatever, and I said, ‘Man, one more picture, one more autograph, I’m gonna freak out, I can’t take it anymore, I’ve had enough.’ And this professional wrestler shook his head and he said, ‘Dude, stop and imagine a time when nobody ever wants another autograph or a picture.’ And that got through to me. So that’s kind of my attitude. That’s all I’ve ever wanted was all the attention, so it’s kind of lame to (complain) about something you’ve always wanted.”
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Interview: Karl Urban from ‘Red’
Karl Urban. His name sounds familiar. But you can’t seem to picture his face.
Is he the country singer? Maybe a political consultant? The wheels continue to turn. Nothing.
You might not be able to call up Urban’s visage in your mental Rolodex on command, but you’ve seen him before. Chances are you’ve seen him quite a few times.
Over the past decade, Urban has appeared in more than a dozen films — including two installments of “The Lord of the Rings” saga — and helped reboot the “Star Trek” franchise with his turn as Dr. Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy. In 2012, the ruggedly handsome New Zealand native will transition from rising talent to full-fledged movie star when he takes on the titular role in “Judge Dredd.”
In the new star-packed “Red,” which opens today, Urban plays William Cooper, a cold, analytic CIA agent whose mission is to terminate a character played by Bruce Willis. We sat down with the actor when he was in town for last month’s Fantastic Fest.
The M.O.: What drew you to the character of William Cooper?
Karl Urban: He has a duality to him. He’s a CIA hit man. He has a particularly brutal job, which he balances out with a family — he has a wife and a couple of kids. To me that was immediately very, very interesting. Further to that, I like the fact that my character starts off at one place in this film … and through the course of the film I sort of come to understand what’s really going on and get given the opportunity to do the right thing.
This movie has no shortage of stars, but I wonder how you felt having likely grown up watching Bruce Willis on screen like we all did, what it was like to do an action film with one of the quintessential ’80s action stars …
It’s one of those situations where you find yourself at a point in your career where you’re getting to collaborate with the very people whose work you have admired and respected for years. And certainly that was the case with this wonderful cast. I loved Bruce’s work in many films, from “Die Hard” to “Pulp Fiction” to “Sin City,” and I think he’s very underrated in many ways. If you were to try and categorize him as just an action hero or an action star, you’d be selling him well short, because he’s much more versatile than that. It’s a wonderful experience. Going into a situation like this where you’re getting to work with these iconic people, you never really know if they’re going to be able to live up to your expectations … and right across the board, my expectations were exceeded by the fact they’re all very wonderful, down-to-earth people.
I am always amazed at how foreign actors — specifically from the U.K. or Australia or New Zealand — manage such solid American accents.
It’s probably just a product of watching too much American television when I was a kid. But, seriously, dialect is an element in film — like learning to ride a horse or shoot guns or do reverse 180s in Mercedes G-wagons — those are specific skills that you have to learn for a movie. And to do so you have to dedicate time and energy, and this was no exception. I always enjoy it.
And I guess you could actually use that (accent) in the real world as opposed to some of those other more action-specific skills you’ve learned …
I’ve got an obscene skill set I can never use in real life … unless I become a bank robber or something.
Did you do much research on your character or the CIA going into the shoot?
I was fortunate enough to spend a morning with Bob Baer, who’s a former CIA officer. I read all of his books. And that was a really fascinating process, just to get a clear understanding on the global geopolitical situation and the raw fundamentals of what the CIA is today and what they were when he was in the Company. And that’s actually well-represented in the film. Bruce and Morgan (Freeman) and (John) Malkovich and Helen (Mirren), they’re all part of the old school, and part of their way of doing things was really by utilizing human intelligence, recruiting agents, getting people to turn, getting them to talk; that’s how they gathered their information. Nowadays, apparently, they rely a lot more on technology and satellites and tracing cell phones, running data haunts on people.
In a way, your character is a bit of an outsider to this other group of former agents. I wonder if in your career you’ve felt any correlation with that idea in the sense that you’ve come from New Zealand.
There’s no 101 course that you can take that’s going to educate you to the way the Hollywood infrastructure works. And to me it’s quite a foreign environment, and I only now feel like I’m starting to understand what it is and how it works. Certainly there is a cultural divide that has to be breached. Now I feel more like I’ve transcended my nationality, and the challenge for me now in New Zealand is not be perceived to lose my cultural identity, which is very important. So I’m constantly looking out for good projects, good movies or theater to do in New Zealand, and I want to continue to contribute to the New Zealand film industry and make good films there — and not films that are derivative genre pictures but films that are really grounded in the New Zealand culture that an international audience can only get from watching a New Zealand film. I think the best types of the films coming out of my country are those types of films. If my presence in a New Zealand film is going to get that film a wider exposure, it could only be a good thing.
Speaking of wider exposure, you’ll have the leading role in the upcoming ‘Judge Dredd.’ While ‘Red’ was based on a comic book, it doesn’t have the following ‘Dredd’ has. Do you have any anxiety about nerd backlash?
I have no anxiety about it whatsoever, purely because I am one of those nerds. I grew up reading “Dredd.” I’ve read the script and it’s really great — Alex Garland has done a fantastic job — and the producers are very, very honorable in terms of making sure that everything that goes down is in accordance with the original vision that John Wagner conceived in 1977. I’m very excited about going into this.
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Interview: Ryan Reynolds and Rodrigo Cortés of ‘Buried’
Why on Earth, then, would Ryan Reynolds choose to fly to Spain to be buried in a coffin for a physically and psychologically exacting role in a movie with a budget the size of the catering allowance for his upcoming “Green Lantern”?
Though the script for the taut psychological thriller “Buried” had been widely respected in Hollywood, it bounced around ceaselessly for years, with everybody seeming to think that the movie — which features one on-screen actor and takes place entirely in the confines of a wooden box — was simply unshootable.
But where other filmmakers saw red flags, Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés saw incredible opportunity. The director with one feature film to his credit had a vision for what he believed to be a large-scale drama, and, impressed with Reynolds’ timing and range from his performance in the little-seen film “The Nines,” immediately envisioned the rom-com heartthrob star as his leading man.
I recently sat down with Cortés and Reynolds during Fantastic Fest to discuss the horror movie about an American contractor who finds himself struggling to save his life in a frantic race against time.
The movie opens in Austin on Friday.
The MO: Did it take much convincing from Rodrigo Cortés to get you to sign on for a movie that takes place inside a box?
Reynolds: Rodrigo sent me a director’s statement, which you get once in a while from a director but very rarely. It was incredibly passionate. I had read the script a while ago, and it was one of the most terrifying and riveting pieces of writing I’d ever read. It felt like it was a novel — like this was just a story, it was not something that was actually technically possible. He convinced me otherwise in his letter. He flew all the way over from Spain and we had lunch, and that lunch lasted no longer than 40 minutes and we ended up shaking hands and saying, ‘Let’s do it.’ Two months later, we were shooting.
Rodrigo, obviously you had a vision from the beginning, but did you ever question whether you’d be able to pull it off technically?
Cortés: From the very first moment, I saw that there was a big film there. And that’s the way I consider it. So, in the beginning, when they told me I should shoot the surface and cut out and show the other characters … I thought, “Are you kidding? This is very big. There is something really Hitchcockian here.” And I didn’t even want to do (Alfred Hitchcock’s) “Lifeboat” in a box, I wanted to do “North by Northwest” in a box. So I decided not to limit myself. If you think too much about the location, you’re going to focus on the restrictions and the things you cannot do. If you intend to be inside a box for 94 minutes, you better have no limits. So, I planned everything as if it happened in New York City and I have everything around and I could do whatever. And then and only then I found a way to make it possible, so we designed and built seven different coffins to make everything possible.
Reynolds: It’s like he’d lived with this script for a decade. That to me is the mark of somebody who’s got somethin’ else blowin’ through them than the typical director. Because he’d had it for only a few months. And I tested him a little when I got there. I’d ask him questions and he’d just fire off an answer. And then I just shut up and said, “I’m just going to do my job; I think you’re fine doing yours.”
Cortés: The first day, I wanted to show him storyboards or whatever, and he told me, “No, just do your work; I trust you.” He didn’t want to see anything; he just said, “If you don’t like anything, just tell me it sucks. Don’t try to be careful with me; I will give you my last drop of blood.”
Reynolds: And he said, I’ll take your last drop of blood and raise you some organs.
Cortés: And it’s remarkable because I’m nobody, and he’s Ryan Reynolds and came to Spain.
Was there any hesitation at all for you, Ryan, to play against the rom-com and comic book types for which you’re so well known and go and do a smaller film?
Reynolds: I never saw this as small. It seemed like the biggest thing I’d ever done. The movie is huge not in spite of the small space we’re working in but because of it. That was the hook for me. I just wanted to see if I could pull this thing off. I thought it was such an impossible challenge. I felt like we were taking an expedition up K-2 wearing flip-flops and Jams. I thought if we don’t make it the way it’s supposed to be made, then we’d all just get a pat on the back and walk away. I didn’t think I’d be sitting here talking to you. I didn’t think we’d be opening at the Toronto Film Festival. I certainly didn’t think mainstream audiences would be reacting the way they are to the movie. But two days into shooting this thing, that feeling I had about whether it would work or not all went away because I saw what this guy was doing. And it was replaced by excitement. That excitement, of course, was suspended until I was able to get out of the damn coffin and go home, because I felt horrible while I was shooting it.
Has your relationship with tight spaces or sand changed at all?
Reynolds: I’m a little more reticent to apply an exfoliant these days. I greatly underestimated the physical and emotional toll this thing would take, but when you watch the movie, I think those are the spoils of war. You walk out a little different than when you walked in, and that’s part of the job. And thank God we’re making movies where that kind of thing happens, that it’s not just some kind of cushy experience. The visceral nature of the film is because it was a visceral shooting process, as well.
Did it re-energize your feelings about filmmaking?
Reynolds: For me it did. You look for something like these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities now a little bit more than I was before.
Cortés: That’s the reason I did it. I did it because it was impossible. When you have a chance to step on the place that nobody has stepped before … how many times in your life does that happen? When I saw the opportunity of doing something that literally had never been done, I was happy as a kid.
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Austin Satellite Rally to Restore Sanity
A plucky group of Austinites will be simultaneously throwing their own mild-mannered rally at the State Capitol. The idea for the rally was born out of the organizers’ frustrations with not being able to attend the rally hosted by Jon Stewart.
The event will feature a giant simulcast of the D.C. event, speakers and live music. As they said in an emailed statement, “every political, personal or professional stripe is welcome” to “listen to some Austin music, meet some candidates and generally take it down a notch.”
In less than three weeks, the Facebook event page created by the organizers has already received over 2700 RSVPs.
For more information and to RSVP for the event, visit the group’s Facebook page.
Austin Satellite Rally to Restore Sanity
Texas State Capitol, South Steps
Saturday, October 30
11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
On a related note, last night on “The Daily Show,” Stewart responded to Rick Sanchez’s incendiary remarks. As a show of decency, “The Daily Show” (unfortunately) scaled back their mocking of Sanchez because he had already been fired.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Hurty Sanchez | ||||
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