FRED Entertainment

By Christopher Stipp

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I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

I was waiting patiently to speak to Mike Leigh.

It was an unexpectedly cool outside of the Hotel Valley Ho, the higher end resort-style lodgings actually looking more like a motel with all the rooms on the outside, and I was going over the questions I had after seeing the film days before.

I’m naturally more apt to not go the “What was it like working…” route with any performer or person involved with the production of a film during an interview but I was prepped that Mike Leigh is a tougher interview to some people just because you really do have to dig a little deeper than the morning show retardedness that plagues so many programs that get the opportunity to talk to great people and then squander it on things like, “Did you enjoy making the movie?”

As I reflected on what I was going to ask, the door opened and Colin Boyd walked out. He said that Mike was excellent, a great interview. However, he paused for a moment and whispered that Mike corrected him on some questions. “Be careful,” he said. It wasn’t ominous or something that caused me to rethink my questions but it did rattle me a bit. I’ve never been in the position to have someone be actively picking apart my questions in their head, make it known out loud, so I tried desperately to speak in specifics as best I could and avoid anything that could be constructed as lazy. And, as I saw the diminutive man with a thick beard, suspenders and an amiable greeting as he welcomed me into the room where we were to conduct the interview, all alone which was a different experience, he closed the door and went after it.

Yes, it gets a little awkward at times, and I left those unadulterated moments in there, but Mike seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t mind telling you how it is…and how it’s going to be. You’ve got to respect that kind of assertiveness.

CS: I think the film spoke to a few different levels, the most superficial being the positiveness of life. When you were fleshing this out, over the months of figuring out what you wanted to say, was it always the same story or during those months did you find something you weren’t expecting?

LEIGH: Well, it’s all about finding things you’re not expecting. For me, the journey of making this film is the journey of discovery as to what it is. I started with a very strong feeling, a sense of the spirit of the thing, but the journey ““ the months I spent, which is what I think you’re talking about, preparing the thing are merely arriving at the premise of the film, but it’s shooting of the film that I make it up and define it as I go along.

It’s a constant, endless harvest of feast of surprises, of discoveries, of revelations. That is what creating a piece of art is all about. So, if the question, which sort of is I suspect, has something to do with starting with a fixed notion and how much it grows or deviates from that, that really not appropriate because all you have is something nebulous and fluid and you move toward coming into existence and that, the act in itself, is where all the surprises are and decisions are made and you decide what it is ““ abstract, really is what I’m talking about.

There you have it in a nutshell. I couldn’t elaborate. Picasso once said that if you know what you’re going to do before you do it, what’s the point of doing it?

So, let’s move on.

CS: Yes, absolutely.

LEIGH: Let’s get more specific.

(Laughs)

CS: Let’s talk about Sally Hawkins.

LEIGH: You can’t get more specific than that.

CS: No, I cannot. I thought she was wonderfully effervescent on the screen. I want to speak more about her character itself, about Poppy. When you looked at it and as you were developing her… By the end, which I wasn’t expecting, I was completely amazed.

LEIGH: I’m glad you were, but of course you were. You couldn’t know. But then you know it shouldn’t be possible to talk about any movie where you expect anything. Unfortunately with all too many movies you get what you expect.

CS: Exactly. But there are some movies where you know exactly where things are going and sometimes rewards you for being that predictable.

LEIGH: That’s true.

CS: Can a woman like Poppy exist in our culture?

LEIGH: Absolutely. Absolutely. Plenty of them around, and men too, of course. It’s about, I mean, you have to mean this is a cynical world and of course it is. Look, apart from anything else Poppy is a teacher and a good teacher and you know there are millions of good teachers out there and teaching kids in that positive kind of way is an act of optimism. You are nourishing the future. Those kids are the grandparents of the 22nd century. See what I mean?

CS: Absolutely, I do.

LEIGH: So, it’s a gloomy, cynical world and we are destroying it, etc. etc. etc. but there are people out there getting on with it while we may be gloomy. And Poppy is such… That is what the film is about. So, yeah.

The truth of the matter is, apart from anything else, if I didn’t think, if I genuinely didn’t think that people like that weren’t feasible, then I wouldn’t make the film, because I made a film about life as we live it, life as it is and life with it’s real potential.

CS: And this is a move about teachers and I think Karina Fernandez deserves a lot of credit. She’s a nice punctuation to what the film is saying.

LEIGH: She’s wonderful. She’s someone I didn’t know. I got her in just to see what would happen. She’s never done flamenco at all.

CS: You’re kidding.

LEIGH: She’s not Spanish. She’s English but her father is Spanish. Sally and I were talking ““ I bring people in gradually ““ I contract them to join us but then not sure what I’m going to do with them and I said to Sally one day, we were talking about Poppy, working on Poppy, and I said maybe she needs to have another leisure. And she said I was thinking about salsa or tango. And because I like Flamenco I said “How about Flamenco?” and she said, “Yeah.”

So I sent Karina off to Flamenco lessons every day for weeks. She’s an actress not a hoofer. So we created this character and sent her off to Seville for a few days. But all the characters…we create all these characters in 3 dimensional complete with their whole back stories and life histories and all that. That’s what motivates and makes it all live. Sometimes it’s great to be able to tap into a fascinating…Wanting to channel that emotion about the man who has cheated on her.

(Laughs)

So I said, “Let’s pull it out.” Whereas in other cases, like the wonderful performance by Stanley Towsend who is the homeless guy, there’s a whole life there and you just get maybe a sense of it, what he’s doing is too discombobulated you get a sense there is a man and a woman he’s talking about there. So, she is wonderful isn’t she, Karina?

CS: Oh yes, I would never have known”¦

LEIGH: Of course you wouldn’t and I expect you haven’t seen the last of her.

CS: The homeless man scene ““ I’m glad you brought that up. I think this movie has a lot to do ““ you have multiple characters and they all are in their own orbits and we see what happens when you bring these orbits together. Could you talk about”¦

LEIGH: What that scene is about?

CS: Yes, please.

LEIGH: Of course. It’s about Poppy. It’s about openness and the ability to connect, complete ability not to be judgmental, and not to act on preconceptions, and her bravery ““ she didn’t think about being in danger. Some people say it’s naivete. No, it’s not naivete. She not concerned with that. She’s inquiring ““ “What is this?” It happens at a moment when she’s feeling more reflective perhaps. And she really connects with this guy, whoever he is, she doesn’t know. And the next scene when she goes back to the apartment when Zoe says, “Where have you been?” She doesn’t say because some things are private. It’s about something she shared with this guy. She’ll never see him again but perhaps would betray. When we were planning that scene I said to the production designer and the cinematographer, “It needs to be somewhere.”

We don’t know where we really are, and subliminally the audience needs to be pulled out of their comfort zone.

CS: I was a little frightened for her.

LEIGH: It’s about Poppy dealing with stuff. Being open. Warm. All that stuff.

CS: The whole film, she doesn’t allow anyone to alter the trajectory that she’s on.

LEIGH: I don’t know whether that’s”¦.I know what you mean you say that.

She certainly doesn’t allow anyone to get her down but I think to suggest anyone to alter her trajectory would suggest a kind of inflexibility. You can see for example the final and traumatic thing that happened with Scott again being caring and sympathetic but also firm and tough and also dealing with a kid. which she is very inexperienced in doing. I very seldom in my films have actions where someone just walks about ““ that’s not what I do, but there, toward the end when Scott drives off, you see him walking around just reflective for a while. And you know what that is. And she’s affected by it.

You can see it in the next scene but it’s only in the end, in the grander scheme of her life, the time she took a free driver’s lesson from this nutcase will pale in significance, of course it will but still, she’s affected by him in the sense that she’s obsessed because she cares. I think any sensitive person must feel someone else’s pain basically. And when Zoe says “Don’t you think we should call the police?” and she says “No, that’s not going to help him” that’s a caring, un-judgmental position she takes.

CS: She does and I see that when she sees the boys go after one another. She’s concerned and takes the steps to”¦.

LEIGH: I think it’s an important detail that they are not going after one another ““ one is attacking and the rest are victims.

CS: Yes. And she does what needs to happen in order to take care of that. I want to be sure we stay on point. The overarching theme ““ there is a lot of teachers in this film, there’s a lot about learning, those who are in charge of teaching others to do some thing. In your estimation, what is the value of teaching in general?

LEIGH: That’s too vague a question. It’s important, isn’t it?

CS: Well, Scott doesn’t care.

LEIGH: No, no, no. You said what is the value of teaching in general, and the answer is it’s important. If you want to talk specifically about Scott, that’s a different thing. What is your question actually?

CS: In relation to Scott as it pertains to Poppy.

LEIGH: What’s the question?

CS: What’s the value? Are there two different ideologies of how to teach someone?

LEIGH: Oh, I see what you mean. Obviously Scott subscribes to an old fashioned ideology that you learn by rote. But the bottom line is that Poppy is a natural, very good teacher. The flamenco teacher and hasn’t learned the number one rule of keeping your personal shit outside the classroom. Scott has no teaching ability whatsoever. He talks about it but he’s a very nervous, neurotic, isolated, frustrated and bitter individual basically.

CS: And Poppy, with her relationships with her sisters who all obviously have some issue with one another, she doesn’t ever criticize her sisters for whatever faults they have. Scott and the other sister makes mention that Poppy lives in her own world.

LEIGH: But, that is their perception. I’m not going to accuse you of saying this but one of the most stupid things against the film is because they say that then ipso facto is the case. But it is not the case. She is plainly all the things that Helen from her own insecurities is plainly isn’t and the same thing with Scott. I mean Scott says to her, “You want to be loved.” Actually, he says to her, “You had no intention to learn how to drive, you set out to reel me in.” Both her sister and Scott are talking from positions of their own insecurities and their own isolation and not seeing her for what she really is which is an open, generous, understanding, fulfilled person. So, any notion that Poppy is compensating for anything is rubbish basically.

CS: She’s gotten along just fine without any…

LEIGH: Because she’s intelligent and open and focused and you know, motivated, and committed, and serious, and caring and all those things and has a great sense of humor and has a great sense of fun.

CS: What do people see in her, you just mentioned insecurities. She’s almost a mirror to some other people to show them how they are to themselves. And I’m speaking here of Scott and I’m going to use Scott and the social worker who eventually comes together with Poppy and that relationship seems genuinely healthy and he loves her.

LEIGH: Because he is as centered and comfortable with who he is open to the world as she is and they are quite a good match I would say.

CS: Absolutely.

LEIGH: You would get the impression that they are good in the sack as well.

(Laughs)

CS: In your own estimation, the characters of, and again I’m going back to Scott because he seems so diametrically opposed to Poppy, what happens in life that Poppy retains that sense of wonder and hope and optimism that we all have as children and somehow”¦

LEIGH: This guy has never been loved. You can tell he’s had a terrible family life. There are clues. But with all due respect he’s not as bright as Poppy, he’s not as sharp and he’s isolated. People have said you know he’s like the homeless guy. No, he’s not. The homeless guy has obviously had emotional experiences. When, this homeless guy breaks out into a piece of Sinatra, he’s got romance in his soul. You can see. He’s just damaged. But this guy Scott, he’s impotent, arid, paranoid, fascist, a sad case. Nobody has ever given him a coddle. He’s desperate for it. If a woman came along, we dealt with it in the back story, he just doesn’t know how to deal with it. So, classically, he’s the kind of guy who is in the teacher kind of role from his insecurity because dominating people is the only way he can be in power. He’s the classic case. Because you get reports of the other guy giving him a hard time.

CS: Right. It wasn’t so much the student as the teacher. Now, I only have time for just one more question and want to ask about when you created this movie and went through the process of making it and putting it out there, how are you finding people responding to it? Not so much a like it or love it but, again, this is a piece of art because you put it out there and whether or not people like it or not is irrelevant, what are you getting back from people from what they are getting from the film after they have seen it?

LEIGH: A multiplicity of things. The good news is ““ OK, there are critics and there are people. Today, for example, we got a lot of rave reviews. But actually I’ve been going to a lot of screenings doing Q&A’s. To enumerate what is too much of a chore except to say there is a wide range of reactions within an overall positive reaction. Occasionally there are people say they wanted to throttle, they say they couldn’t stand her”¦

(Laughs)

I don’t get that.

CS: I don’t get that either.

LEIGH: If you don’t fall in love with her then I don’t know what you do, basically. It’s just a character ““ somebody said to me, to be stuck on a desert island with her would be great ““ yes, please. Let me know when. I’m looking forward to it.

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

You can see how much I enjoyed this film.

Watching SEX DRIVE in a crowded theater I was pleased that I was able to laugh along with what was happening on the screen without feeling sorry for the producers of the film. With abhorations like DATE MOVIE, EPIC MOVIE, MEET THE SPARTANS or any number of forgettable films that seek to be outrageous SEX DRIVE just wants to be funny. And it succeeds, in part, because of the man who helmed the co-writing and directorial duties, Sean Anders. It’s a name that not many people are familiar with but people should. Anders has crafted a movie that balances, like the scales of justice, genuineness and abject depravtity in a way that hasn’t been seen for some time.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: I really liked this movie. I think I went from casually enjoying the trailers to, after I saw the film, to appreciating what you managed to do. As an aside, I think the older I get the more cynical I get about comedies. None of them speak to me anymore. American Pie? I thought it was just OK. This one I genuinely found myself laughing and having a good time sitting in a theater with other people.

SEAN ANDERS: Oh good.

CS: It was all over the board, in a good way. It wasn’t obnoxiously crude and, during those moments, it was done in a way that was fresh. How did you come in to all of this? Because I read the production notes, and it seemed like there were a lot of people pitching about what they wanted to do in order to make this movie.

ANDERS: It started out as a book and the book was sent to us. We read the book and immediately liked the sort of throw back teen comedy appeal of the premise. Kid meets the girl on-line, and of course that’s not throw back, but the idea of the kid who feels a little bit of a romantic outsider getting an opportunity.

We didn’t really go out to Hollywood with the intention of making a teen comedy. That’s not what we set out to do. We didn’t set out to do any particular thing except comedy in general. When that came up, it was all of a sudden really exciting. We grew up with those movies. Those were the movies that my friends and I, people that I have been friends with since high school, still speak to each other in quotes from 16 CANDLES. So the idea to have a crack at being a part of that world was really exciting to us. But unfortunately the book itself was not really the kind of thing that we do. I think it was focused a little younger and just wasn’t the kind of road movie we wanted to make. So we went back and said, basically to say no to it, to say we read it, we really liked these characters and the premise but the story that’s in the book, we don’t really want to screw up your book but it’s not what we do. And they said, “What would you do?” And we said, “Well, we would do something more like this.” And they said, “We love that, why don’t you do that?”

And really from that moment on there was a lot of creative freedom of “What do you guys want to do?”, “OK, let’s try that.” So then what happened is not printable because it’s just a convoluted boring story but what happened was the movie was already set up at another studio. We went and pitched the idea for it and the deal kind of fell apart and the producers asked us if we would be willing to go pitch it around town to other studios. So we did. We took it around town, we pitched it and it didn’t appear that it was going to sell. Everyone told us the same thing. They said, “It’s very, very funny but there are no big stars we can put in this.” So, that was sort of the end of it.

So then John and I went on to make a pilot for Fox and while we were making that pilot, which was so crazy and so much work, we got the call from Summit Pictures that they wanted us to write the script. We were so swamped and so freaked out working on this pilot that we almost said no. And instead of saying no, we really came out to Hollywood to do was not be writers but writers/directors/producers. So we told our agent that tell them we’d write it if we could be directors and producers.

That’ll make “˜em go away.

They called back and said, “Yeah, OK.”

(Laughs)

But they called back and said, “Let’s have a meeting and talk about it.” I think the thing that won me the job ““ there were two things that won me the job – in that meeting and one is that they asked me what my philosophy, my approach to comedy was and I said it was all the in the casting. Put funny people in a funny script and you’ll get a funny movie. And then the other thing I said that resonate with Erik Feig was I think in general, comedies are over-lit. And he was like, “Yeah.” So that’s where we started. On the same page. Comedies are over-lit and anybody who would read that would say, duh. But that’s always been a pet peeve of mine. So, they said, “OK. You can direct this if we greenlight it.” So we finished the pilot. Went off and wrote the first draft and they greenlighted it off the first draft. It was great.

Because once they got the first draft and said they wanted to make this movie and hired a line producer, then we were shittin’ bricks because I was worried our pilot might get picked up. It’s very unlikely that any pilot is going to get picked up But we were like, “Please don’t let this pilot get picked up.” We were finished with the pilot at that point and we were so glad when we heard it wasn’t going to get picked up. Again, what we came out to Hollywood to do was to write and direct movies. I loved that pilot and would love to do some television down the line but that was job one. So we got the opportunity to do it that way. Sorry that was the really long version.

CS: You are probably sick of telling variations of that “¦

ANDERS: Again, I don’t know how useful that is because it would take forever to write all that but it was this weird sort of thing that didn’t look like it was going to happen but then when it did, it was first draft, line producers, scouting locations, casting. I m that thing ““ from the day that we turned in the first draft ““ a year from then we were already showing the movie to test audiences.

CS: Really?

ANDERS: Yeah, that’s how quick this thing got done.

CS: You said that it’s all about casting and there are no big stars in this. However, they were all excellent choices. You’ve got Josh Zuckerman, Clark Duke and Amanda Crew, who I thought was a brilliantly cast because she doesn’t look like one of those vapid women we see in many comedies ““ I’m thinking specifically of AMERICAN PIE as all these kids look like they are straight off the runway but this one seems a little more natural, if I can say it that way.

ANDERS: And I think that makes her so much more gorgeous.

CS: Yes.

ANDERS: Because she looks real and looks like that girl in high school that you would just be terrified to talk to, even though you know she would be very nice to you because she’s a real nice girl but she’s just beautiful and has this sort of inner glow to her.

She’s actually one of my favorite stories because the studio had been pushing for more of a named actress for that part. The studio was always very good to us and at the end of the day they would always err on the side of making a good film, and they did in that case too but we were auditioning a lot of girls in LA and they would come in the room and we thought we had 4 or 5 very good choices for Felicia. Then we get this video from Canada and any actor will tell you it’s almost impossible to get a job on video because when the actor comes in the room you give them a little direction and kind of help them to let them know what you’re looking for and they adjust and we say, “OK, that’s good.” But when you see a video, you see what it is and then you’re done with it. So we see this video and we are gathered around this QuickTime of this video of Amanda Crew that was sent in from Canada and we all said, “That’s her. That’s Felicia.”

And it became me going to the studio saying this is the girl ““ this is Felicia. And they were like, “Take it easy. Let’s see what else we got.” But of course they are thrilled it worked out that way because they love her and she’s great in the movie. She and I talked about what her job was in the movie and I told her you’re job is to make us fall in love with you. As an audience if we fall in love with you and we get why Ian is in love with you, we’re there with you.

I think that’s it. What really separates this from the pack and why I’m a convert after seeing this movie Monday night and I need to see this movie again she felt like the kind of person that this could really occur among all the zany shit that happens around them ““ it just felt natural.

[Sean asks whether I would be around to see an additional screening with Clark Duke and Amanda Crew in attendance. I ask about the marketing plan for the film and how high profile the film seems to be for a relatively unknown comedy]

ANDERS: Well, what happened was the movie turned out so well that the studio wanted to have word of mouth screenings all over the country because they know this movie is a hard sell.

The problem with selling the movie is that it doesn’t have the big cast members in it and we knew that any rated R teen comedy coming out a year after SUPERBAD was going to get, “Oh, they are trying to be SUPERBAD.” Of course, this was written before that. So we knew that the movie would have to speak for itself. So they have been having these word of mouth screenings all over the country because whenever we get people in front of the movie they tend to like it and hopefully will walk out and talk about it. So anyway, we were doing this one and I lived here for about 8 years so this is sort of my second hometown. I know a guy from Harkins [a local theater chain in Arizona] real well because he helped us with NBT, the first movie we made, and getting that going. So he asked me if I would come out and do some Q&A and I thought that would be fun. They set up this party for it and everything and we were talking yesterday he said that maybe we should get some cast out for this. So I said I would call them and see if they’re around and talked to Amanda and Josh and they said they weren’t doing anything so they said, “Yeah.” It’s totally a last minute thing that they are coming out.

CS: And I have to mention before we go any further ““ Seth Green who I think absolutely steals”¦.

ANDERS: How about him, huh?

CS: You obviously approached him to do it but the performance he gave ““ that dry, sarcastic, sharp manner ““ it just works very well.

ANDERS: We had written the character to be this dry, sarcastic, but hopefully loveable Amish guy. And a guy who just really enjoys being around non-Amish people and then when the name of Seth Green came up, it was absolutely perfect. He’s just great with sarcasm, he’s really funny, and he’s just great on so many levels. But even then, none of us knew how great he was going to be until he got there. We just knew it was going to be so funny. That scene with the buggy with Clark where he says the line about butt fucking that was in the script but every time we shot it ““ everything we shot we just let it keep rolling and let people go past the scene and try different things and every time Clark and Seth got to that line they would just rip on butt fucking for the longest time. We cut some of that together for the extended DVD. It’s hilarious. It’s so over the top, disgusting and funny and really sharp, sharp stuff.

CS: His delivery is just wicked.

ANDERS: Well, the thing is about Seth Green is he is so funny all the time. He could be just sitting there and he’s not one of those guys who’s bouncing off the walls and trying to be the center of attention trying to be endearing to everyone, he’s just fucking funny. The way he turns a phrase, he gets his point across. He’s just funny. He’s always on. It’s a little bit intimidating.

CS: That part at the end when he talks to Fall Out Boy in front of the bus, was that all him? Did you know that line about [redacted for not wanting to spoil it] was coming at the end?

ANDERS: No. We had follow up boy for such a short time. We wanted to do a bit like that but just didn’t have time. That’s why it’s jump cut the way it is. It was basically, “OK, we have an hour before we have to go inside, let’s set up a camera and put Seth and Fall Out Boy in front of the camera and just roll and see what Seth does to f with those guys. And they were great sports and he was really funny and we shot like 20 minutes of stuff and cut it down to a minute for that little extra piece.

CS: It was a nice sort of kick at the end. How did that all come about when you are doing all these gags? It’s a thin line between obnoxious ““ in my advanced age, I’m 33 ““ I’m no foggie but when I see it ““ I get it, it’s supposed to be funny but you can have humor that just tries way too hard. But a massive majorirty of the gags here work very well and I don’t have any reason why they do ““ from your standpoint”¦

ANDERS: Well, I think, and you work for Kevin Smith, and I think you know what he’s so good at, of the many things he’s so good at, you can have a character say really raunchy ““ my friends and I, all of our conversations are raunchy, even when we are being serious. So you can have characters that behave that way and talk that way as long as the characters have heart and care about each other and they have real flaws and issues ““ as long as they have that sort of warmth it feels kind of real, where you were aspiring to on this ““ it gives people license to just relax and laugh.

And, one of the things that blew me away on the movie that I never would have predicted in a million years and almost the thing I’m proudest of the whole thing is ““ you do the test screenings for the test audiences and for a movie like this the studio cares far and away men 25 and under and then men 25 and older because this a movie that is going to be driven by guys and then the quadrant of girls 25 and under so females 25 and under but the women 25 and older, they don’t give a shit about. They know they are not going to go see it. Nobody’s mom is going to see SEX DRIVE. Nobody cares. So we go and we do our test screening and we get our numbers back and our number on women 25 and older were 98%.

That’s insane.

I’m sure those are numbers ““ like NIGHTS IN RODANTHE probably didn’t get 98%. For women 25 and older. It’s crazy. It almost seems like there has to be a mistake. And my mom saw the movie.

(Laughs)

And loved it ““ I don’t know ““ even though we are showing old man’s balls, I don’t know. All those things and despite that we can have a scene where we have a girl that almost shits on somebody.

(Laughs)

Or maybe does, depending on how you watch that scene, and that we still have women coming away loving the movie is such a huge compliment to us. We didn’t go into the movie trying to alienate any group.but you just know that when you walk a certain line people are going to be turned off by it.

CS: Why do you think women are responding so well to it?

ANDERS: Dude, I don’t know. I think the romance in the movie really works ““ that’s a part of it ““ but I don’t know. It’s mind boggling to me.

CS: I do have to ask about Andy and Randy.

ANDERS: If the movie does well enough to warrant a sequel, I already told the studio I will only do it if it’s a movie about Andy and Randy.

(Laughs)

Because I would love to do a whole movie about Andy and Randy.

CS: How did these characters materialize themselves?  If the book isn’t like this at all and it’s openly exaggerated…When you were coming up with the ideas to incorporate Brian Posehn and Seth Green to fill out these characters, how did their names come up as probables?

ANDERS: I don’t know. The way John and I write is we just sit around and bullshit all day and we’ll be talking about a certain topic and say, oh, this one time a friend of mine went to a carnival and then oh, there was this guy, this or that, and then it becomes an idea or a character. When we look back on all the characters we almost wrote and thought it was funny and look back and say thank god we didn’t try and put that in the movie. I don’t know man. I don’t know where that stuff comes from. You just sit around and talk about the idea and the characters until something funny comes up. And then there’s the arduous process of writing that first draft where you just write a whole bunch of unfunny shit and try to get to the end. And then go back through and try and find out why that stuff is not as funny was it needs to be and keep working on it. But I think a big moment in the movie was the moment when we wrote the line, “You love me, you love me too. OK.” Because we wanted to have that at the end because we knew it was going to be cheesy romantic we had written all this schlocky shit that was nauseating in the beginning. And then we just said “Fuck it. We don’t need big speeches. Let’s just simplify it and just let Ian be a man and step up and admit that he loves this girl” and when that line came up at that point in the script it was like I think we have a movie here. Because despite all the wacky raunchy stuff and at that moment writing that scene I really felt good. So, it’s weird. I’m new at this and I’m so proud of the movie. I realize it is what it is and is just one of those things that all I can do is hope that people like it as much as we do and they have a good time with it and hopefully 20 years from now that people would still be quoting it the way my friends and I quote 16 CANDLES and WERID SCIENCE and those great movies we grew up with.

CS: And the last question ““ I will make it brief ““ It’s no secret that you don’t have a whole lot on your resume behind you. You’ve managed to go from independent moviemaker to studio filmmaker ““ what’s the biggest lesson you learned in that transition?

ANDERS: I think the biggest lesson ““ man, there were so many, it was a lesson a minute all the way through that stuff. But, I think the one I’m going to apply the most is to just really try to enjoy it and have a good time and that seems to translate to a higher quality and that’s what we tried really hard to do all the way through it just not to get caught up in all the stress of the process but of course we did, and the next one even more so we will be able to because we know now that’s a formula that really works ““ to try and create an environment that’s really fun and laid back and have a good time and take that good time and put it on the screen and that’s something we learned from the Farrelly Brothers. They always sound like they are having a good time.

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

One of the most delightful interviews I was able to do when I was at the San Diego Comic-Con this past July, Zachary Levi and Joshua Gomez were able to riff long enough for this video to show why CHUCK is one of the best comedies on network television. Forget your sitcoms and ensemble programs too because CHUCK developed its legions of fans out there (and if you question its popularity just let me know whose face was on the WB bags everyone was carrying around on that Friday at the Comic-Con) because of its idiosyncrasies and dedication to just good writing. Zach and Josh are but two players in a true group of talented actors who know what the material is and simply have fun with it.

Season 2 sees guest stars from John Larroquette, Nicole Ritchie, Tony Hale and Jordana Brewster, among others, and this season is all about regaining the momentum that was surreptitiously lost when writers all across the country went on strike. Although, that momentum seemed none too lost as I sat in on the CHUCK panel during Comic-Con and saw the legions of the faithful ready to keep this show atop the ratings heap.

This interview represents the 4th time I’ve talked to Zach, more times than I’ve ever talked to anyone during my tenure with this site, and it really is for good reason. Zach has been nothing short of professionally wonderful in every sense of the word. I remember talking to him in support of BIG MOMMA’S HOUSE 2 (Oy vey…the horror…) and coming away with the sense that his was a career who was going some place more prominent than the role he was saddled with. Fast forward a few years, and a whole lot of success, and he is still the same wise ass that really resonates with me in ways that I know this is just an interview that defines where he is at this time. I know we’re going to meet again.

As for Josh? This guy was always talked about in “Oh, you just HAVE to talk to him!” kinds of ways. He was hyped up to the point that I believed there was just no way it could live up to the back-and-forth kind of mind meld that people were telling me they had with one another. It was all true and as I watch this interview again (watch for the Navy Seal who interjects. The joy of live interviewing!) I can’t help but laugh at the casualness the two of them have about a show that has a lot of money riding on it but I also laugh at how funny they are with each other.

PART 1
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PART 2
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PART 3
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By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

It was the late 1980’s and I was living in suburban Illinois. As a budding uber nerd I liked to consume my media in various forms; be that in the shape of reading Science or Discover magazine, watching the television stylings of the revamped Smothers Brothers program on CBS or even booking time to spend on my middle school’s Apple IIe there was always something different about what intrigued me. To this day I can’t remember what I loved about INNERSPACE but I do know that it led me to love two things: Sam Cooke records and Dennis Quaid.

I don’t think I ever really thought that much about the films I liked (this was around the same era where I found Jean Claude Van Damme and would hold his ballerina ass up as the second coming of ass kicking Christ) but INNERSPACE was just one of those films directed by Joe Dante that was representative of films which didn’t really want to change cinematic history unlike every auteur who nowadays wants to remake film in their own image. A lot of movies around that time weren’t necessarily pushing boundaries but they were damn entertaining and a joy to watch. INNERSPACE was a watershed moment in my youth as I loved the film for reasons that, by any debatable standards, were paper thin but that’s not the point. The point here, though, is that when you have these kinds of movies that you reflect on later in life with a halcyon-like nostalgia it’s a bit mind blowing when you find yourself sitting literally next to that person talking about movies in general. That little governor in the back of your brain that keeps yourself from geeking out on someone in situations like this really gets a workout but I can tell you that as I walked in the room where me and other journalists got to talk to him there was a little something sweet and kind about shaking the hands of the guy who was in one of the greatest films for the 13 year-old who lives inside me.

The guy wasn’t going to be having any talk of GI JOE (Goddammit…) but he did riff on all things civil rights and where he’s been since being an astronaut 25 years ago in THE RIGHT STUFF (which I still haven’t seen…along with D.O.A.). We were there to talk about THE EXPRESS and the film opens today in theaters everywhere. The movie, for those who don’t know, is based on the true story of college football hero Ernie Davis (Rob Brown), the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy. It was definitely a step above most inspirational sports films where I have to feel shitty about being a white guy as I watch bumpkins of the Southern variety remind me why I’m happy the North won the Civil War and definitely one that I would recommend to my parents.

Thankfully, and quite literally, the story about Quaid’s past with Meg Ryan and his reported philandering broke about an hour after I talked with him. Since then, the media have done more to promote this story than with anything involving his movie. Thankfully, no one was the wiser and this interview is private & personal life free. And, to add in the fact that one of my queries led him to say the word “whore” makes the 13 year-old inside of me laugh a little bit, high fiving the other juvenile sensibilities that live on in my noggin…

QUESTION: How did you get involved with this project?

DENNIS QUAID: There was a script that got my attention but when I [found out] John Davis was involved it really elevated it more. What John Davis does do, which is one of my criteria to do a sports movie, is make it more than a football movie. It has to be something universal that people can relate to and identify with I think. John Davis knows how to do that.

And I think THE EXPRESS ““ although it’s a football film and it deals with racial issues of that time – it’s also about living your life gracefully and facing the challenges of your life which Ernie Davis certainly embodied.

QUESTION: I have a friend who knew the coach that you played and said you nailed it right on. How did you prepare for this film?

DQ: That’s nice. I saw some film of him and I don’t really look like him but I feel some responsibility when I play a real person to capture their spirit and to play them honestly and not idealistically. But my main resource was Jim Brown. He’s a friend of mine already and we did ANY GIVEN SUNDAY together and play a lot of golf together. He’s a very straight talker and he told me about his relationship with Ben which is contentious at times but he had a deep respect for the man. He told me how it really was and told me about his times there and the atmosphere in Syracuse and Ernie Davis who he was very close with.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: This movie deals with segregation, racism. We have the Confederate flag flying prominently in the film. Did Jim Brown ever intonate, or even in your investigation for this role, of how we got to where we were to where we are today? It’s just common place for black men to be on the field nowadays.

DQ: Really, it’s not that long ago.

CS: No.

DQ: What I really liked about the movie is that although it deals with racism and segregation as it existed back then it really does speak to where we are today and still where we have to go I think. And it was just one little barrier at a time the way it is progressing and people like your age ““ how old are you?

CS: 33.

DQ: Yeah, people like you see the film and for the most part are in shock to see how it really used to be. I grew up in Houston and I remember separate restrooms and drinking fountains and Black people sat in the balcony in theaters and that’s just the way it was.

It was unspoken but were the rules of society.

The way it existed.

My generation really started to question that and the civil rights movement did a lot to change that when Martin Luther King came along. That’s just the way it was ““ it was status quo. Schwartzwalder really represented that status quo where in today’s standards would be considered racist but that’s how white people, certainly more in the south, that was the rules of society back then. Ernie really kind of changed Ben on a personal level.

QUESTION: You dealt with issues from back then before ““ did you notice anything similar ““ not necessarily the story but when you go back were there any similarities between this and that?

DQ: Well, yes, in the sense that there were a lot of issues that just didn’t get talked about or people were entrenched in their point of views that change was not ““ it was slow in coming.

QUESTION: Was there any uneasiness on the set with other actors when dealing with issues like that?

DQ: No. Not really. We had a very open discussion. First off, what we wanted to do was not be politically correct. We wanted to be open and honest about it. That way we could make a film that had some impact instead of just sugar everything over. With Ben we didn’t want to do a 21st century version of him back in the 50’s when ““ we would make him more complicated ““ he had issues himself about race and color.

QUESTION: It definitely did have an impact at our screening. There were a lot of kids in the audience that were brought in from school groups and I heard them walking out ““ a lot of them were 6 or 7 and had no idea that this existed back then and I could hear them saying, I had no idea people treated people that way.

DQ: That’s what we’ve been getting from the screenings too. It’s more than a football movie.

QUESTION: How familiar were you with Ernie Davis’ story before?

DQ: I really didn’t know Ernie Davis. I knew the name but I didn’t know the story. When I read a script it’s the only time I get to be an audience member and get that experience and it had a profound impact on me. It hit me in the heart and in the gut. In the place where you really don’t have words. And he came along before the civil rights movement started to bubble up and I think that’s one of the reasons his story was lost for a time. Had he lived he would have had a significant impact on the 60’s civil rights movement. Certainly Jim Brown did.

QUESTION: Will General Hawk [in G.I. JOE] be anything like Ben Schwartzwalder?

DQ: No. General Hawk is a little bit more light hearted. He is a combination of General Patton and Hugh Hefner. Super models are his aid in camp.

QUESTION: In real life are you more like General Hawk or Ben Schwartzwalder?

DQ: I am like neither of them but that was a lot of fun to do. I can tell you knowing is half the battle.

(Laughs)

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Looking over your resume you are not one of those guys who does 4 or 5 movies, as much as you can, every year…

DQ: I’m not???

(Laughs)

CS: No. We just don’t see you in the theater every nine days. We were talking about Sam Jackson prior to talking to you and it got me thinking about how he seems to be in many films throughout the year. Any rhyme or reason that you appear to be picky and that somehow you seem to be saying, “This year I’ll only want to make two or three films”?

DQ: Actually, I have been working like Sam Jackson. There’s just a lag time with them coming out. Just you wait, You are going to be like, “Oh my, that guy is such a whore…”

(Laughs)

We have to see him again. I did THE EXPRESS, G.I. JOE and a movie called PANDORUM and I have another film I shot called LEGION, and they are all very different films. The only reason I have been working like that is because it’s just a fruitful time for me. The scripts have been really great and very different movies and I’m enjoying working now more than in my 20’s. I had fire in my belly about it.

QUESTION: One of the things in this movie that caught my eye is the football seemed authentic at the time. It’s tough to go back and create that. How long did it take to create those sequences?

DQ: That was filmed throughout the shooting. Allan Graf was in charge of shooting all the football scenes. He did ANY GIVEN SUNDAY and also did “Friday Night Lights” and he’s been around. I’ve known him for about 30 years. He paid a lot of attention to being sure he got the era right and really had to re-teach the players to block with your shoulder ““ not with your helmet and get that real old school technique that was taught back then.

QUESTION: Looks real though.

DQ: Yes, it does.

QUESTION: Do you have any plans to get into directing and writing?

DQ: Yes. I’ve written a movie that I would like to direct but not worth talking about it until after I make it and then we’ll be back here and talking about that.

(Laughs)

You’ll say, “Are you ever going to stop working? You’re in everything!”

(Laughs)

QUESTION: I watched THE RIGHT STUFF this weekend ““ the 25th anniversary coming up. Do you ever go back and watch the old stuff and think, “Even today I couldn’t improve on some of those things”?

DQ: THE RIGHT STUFF is a very special movie for me. It really was like being a kid because I did want to be an astronaut and Gordon Cooper was my favorite astronaut and I grew up in Houston ““ space city ““ and I got my pilot’s license for that film and Gordo Cooper lived three miles from me in LA and I went flying with Chuck Yeager ““ he was on the set the entire time and that was great. That is one movie that when I channel surf and it’s there I kinda watch some of it.

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

Nerds worth their 8 sided die know who Simon Pegg is.

From SPACED to SHAUN OF THE DEAD to HOT FUZZ to everything else the man has stick his pinkie in Simon brings his own unique humor to every project he’s involved in and HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE is no different. However, you mention the name Robert Weide and you would be likely to see the kind of expression reserved for a dog who has just been shown a card trick. Robert, director of HOW TO LOSE, is the director behind CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM and has even won a little Emmy gold because of his work.

When I had the chance to talk to these guys couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Even though it was a roundtable I wasn’t about to let that small quibble get in the way of me and my Spaced geek obsession. It was an odd thing, though, when I asked Robert a question about how hard it is to hold on to your vision as a director and producer of material. His answer both intrigued me and made me realize what must be happening on a daily basis in that goofy town.

Now, for those that don’t know the story of the film is as follows:

In this hilariously funny fish-out-of-water tale, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People tracks the outrageous escapades of Sidney Young (Simon Pegg), a smalltime, bumbling, British celebrity journalist who is hired by an upscale magazine in New York City. In spectacular fashion Sidney enters high society and burns bridges with bosses, peers and superstars. The film is based on Toby Young’s memoir of the same name and also stars Kirsten Dunst, Danny Huston, Gillian Anderson, Megan Gox, Max Minghella and Jeff Bridges. Directed by Robert Weide, the film will be released by MGM Distribution Co. on October 3, 2008. After disrupting one black-tie event by allowing a wild pig to run rampant, Sidney catches the attention of Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), editor of Sharp, and accepts a job with the magazine in New York City. Clayton warns Sidney that he’d better impress and charm everyone he can, if he wants to succeed. Instead, Sidney instantly insults and annoys fellow writer Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst). He dares to target the star clients of power publicist Eleanor Johnson (Gillian Anderson). He upsets his direct boss Lawrence Maddox (Danny Huston) and tries to make amends by hiring a stripper to dance for Lawrence during a staff meeting. Sidney, of course, doesn’t stop there, finding creative ways to annoy nearly everyone. His saving graces: a rising, sexy starlet (Megan Fox) develops an odd affection for him, and in time, Alison whose friendship with him might be the only thing saving Sidney from torpedoing his career.

Both Robert Weide and Simon Pegg stopped by Phoenix a few weeks ago to talk about the film which comes out today.

QUESTION: How’s Arizona been treating you?

PEGG: Hotly. It’s been overwhelming for a pasty British man to walk into this incredible heat. It’s amazing. The first thing we saw last night was possibly the most spectacular light show I’ve ever seen in my life in that storm. We were having dinner at Mastro’s and eating possibly one of the best steaks I’ve ever had in my life and the whole place is being illuminated by this strobe light.

And there was this rumbling thunder.

QUESTION: But you were here a few years ago Shaun of the Dead. Different time of year, though.

PEGG: It was still hot. I remember ““ not quite like this ““ Nick stopped by and we stayed up at Camelback and I was really looking forward to coming back here. This is the only place on the whole tour I’m staying two nights and I’m quite happy to be here.

WEIDE: When I was packing yesterday my wife and I were talking about it’s great because it’s going to be one weather, two days, just one pair of shoes. I talked to her last night and said it was a monsoon last night and my clothes are soaking wet.

QUESTION: So, you said this is the last stop of tour so you’ve probably fielded every question there is?

PEGG: Pretty much. You can have a free cookie if you ask me a question I have not been asked before. Bob’s just joined me here. I started out in Boston and went to Toronto then Chicago and Dallas then here, so yea, it’s been pretty intense but I think it’s good to go places rather just stay in a hotel in LA and expect everybody to come to you. I think it’s important when you provide something it’s good to go out and pound the beat.

QUESTION: How much time do you split ““ are you here in the States a fair amount of the year now, or just for press?

PEGG: Just for press work. I’ve been out a lot this year ““ been back and forth for various reasons, but generally speaking I’m in London. I don’t have any plans to move here because you can just commute these days. The film industry is far more global than it was and films get made all over the world. You buy a house in LA and then suddenly you find yourself doing 5 months in the Isle of Man. So it’s kind of pointless. And, all my stuff’s there. My light sabers are there.

(Laughs)
CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Can you talk about the movie itself? It talks about the idea about how Americans revere celebrity vs how you in Britain revere yours. You really want to write a hit piece and here we like to coddle our celebrities. Did you find any parallels or do Britians like their celebrities are certain way?

PEGG: I think it’s a generalization in some respects. I think that particular syndication that Sidney goes to work for behaves like that but I think there are publications in America that want to undermine their celebrities the same as in Britian. There’s a culture of disdain for celebrities in the UK but similarly there are magazines like Hello and OK that worship them unconditionally. But for the purpose of this movie, Sidney’s background is in one of snipe and take crack at celebrities and Clayton’s magazine, Sharps, is very much one of those that is greasing the wheels of celebrity and stoking the flames. I think it’s a very timely piece in a way. The movie itself is based on a book that was set in 1995. There was a memoir from 1995 and I think Peter Straughan is fictionalizing that and bringing it up to date and creating a fictional group of characters around the central character, who is called Sydney instead of Toby, and they do something of a satire of the nature of celebrity worship now which is at a completely ridiculous height. The snake of popular culture is most definitely eating itself. It’s a bizarre, frightening time.

QUESTION: What about your own celebrity? Going back to when you were here years ago you could go anywhere you wanted to go in this country. People would never recognize you but that is not the case now.

PEGG: The interesting thing about it is, I’m still pretty “cultie”. I was in Dallas yesterday and everywhere I went people would say, hey Shaun of the Dead, but just knew it was a movie I had done but didn’t say hey there’s that guy who I don’t know what he did but I know him, which I think is where things get slightly precarious when people start to resent the fact that they know you. And that’s where the sense of delusion starts to come. That’s when people start to think you are famous for what?

WEIDE: There’s a group of people now that are famous for just being famous. It’s not about work or anything they have achieved. They are celebrities because they are celebrities and this is how behind the times I am, I think it was three years ago maybe a little less when I turned to my wife and I said who exactly is Paris Hilton? Meaning, I had seen her picture everywhere and I saw her name everywhere but is she a singer, and actress? My wife tried to explain to me.

QUESTION: She’s all of that now.

PEGG: Yea, now she’s all of that but quotation marks perhaps.

But then I said is she famous just for being famous? And she said yes, but then said oh there was that sex video. Oh, then she’s a porn actress. She said, no not exactly but”¦

QUESTION: That’s her best talent.

PEGG: Clearly. I think they have been around for a long time to some degree, but more at the ridiculous end of celebrity culture as it is now is produce people that they are famous for something and are famous for being famous and they work at it, like Paris Hilton, Victoria Beckham. They work at it because they know that people do want to know about them. Who’s laughing really? They are making shit loads of money from just doing very little because people just want to know about them. We’re idiots for buying those magazines. Who cares what Paris Hilton’s vagina looks like? Idiots like men.

So there is an argument that you can have a crack at those people who are exploiting their celebrity or you can say well if we stop consuming what they do, then they go away so stop complaining about them.

QUESTION: But this movie makes an illusion to when Sophie walks through the pool that’s something Jane Mansfield did in the late 50’s to get herself famous.

PEGG: Yea.

WEIDE: And there’s that telling moment too ““ I heard people after screenings discuss whether that was an intentional ploy and I think the clue is Gillian’s dialogue as she’s coming out of the elevator when she’s on the phone with somebody saying bring the car around front and then she says never mind what I said before, I want it in front now. Meaning that it was sort of understood that she had walked through the pool, paparazzi would come after her and instead of sneaking out the back now she’s supposed to go through the front where she knows the photographers will be waiting and sure enough, as Sydney says, she’s everywhere. I have read those stories of celebrities eating in various places where they get seemingly ambushed by the paparazzi as they step out of a restaurant and it’s understood later that in fact they weren’t ambushed, it was the publicist that told the paparazzi where they would be.

PEGG: It’s interesting. When you look at a celebrity like Elizabeth Hurley, the genesis of her fame was the Versace dress she wore to the Four Weddings premiere. She went with the star of that film and completely upstaged him and the film that wore a dress that was held together with safety pins and now she’s the face of Estee Lauder and has kind of an acting career. But that’s all it takes really. That’s a stunt that’s on par with what Sofie does in the movie. Sofie knows what she’s doing. As Danny Houston’s character says, she’s going to go far. It’s just when you take it on in real life you are taking on a beast. If you want to swim in those waters, you have to know it’s absolutely packed with sharks.

WEIDE: I think fame is sort of like a Frankenstein monster. It’s something people think they want to create and then when it happens they have something quite uncontrollable. And there’s the one level if you eat at the Ivy in LA you know you are going to get snapped when you come out and perhaps that is fair game, I don’t know but there is that level of the true ambush for the people with the long lenses in the building across from you getting you while you’re eating or getting undressed, sunbathing or being with someone you shouldn’t be with, I think is the next level. I’ve seen pictures of Kirsten just coming out of her mother’s house in Hollywood walking to her car. She’s visiting her mom and there’s someone waiting across the street and I remember seeing pictures that she dropped her keys and this guy was in her way and a series of pictures of her picking up her keys and getting in her car and it was so unfair and people say if you want to be famous and want to be in movies, you are asking for it and I don’t know that you are asking for it. I don’t think they are. I think there is a certain level where people do deserve their privacy even their careers put them in the public eye.

QUESTION: You got to work with Toby Young?

PEGG: We hung out a little bit. I didn’t want to play him as him because not many people know who he is and Toby’s got a way that would be distracting on the big screen after a bit, and also, it’s Sydney ““ it’s a fictionalized version of him so I was able to have a few dinners with him and hang out and get under his skin a little bit a decide that that’s not the way I was going to play it. But Toby has mellowed. There was a time he was just very tenacious and just lead pipe cruel and thought that was the way to go and as a result continuing messing up.

QUESTION: The improvisations you get to do ““ did you have to stick to the script?

PEGG: We didn’t do much did we?

WEIDE: You would occasionally come up with something on the spot. There’s the business where you are on the phone ordering the credit card and basically each take you made up a new line. The one we went with was the Queen ““ yes, I know the Queen, she’s in my break dance posse.

PEGG: Oh yea.

WEIDE: And on each take he adlibbed some different line about that he knew the Queen and met at the Cub Scouts “¦

PEGG: Oh yea.

WEIDE: That was a treat in the editing room.

QUESTION: The scene when you call the landlady Mrs. Lebowski?

PEGG: Yea. No, actually that was in the script.

WEIDE: In the screenings that I’ve been at, one of the biggest laughs of the movie, if you have all seen the film be careful how you write this, is basically the scene where he is called on the carpet in Clayton’s office and waiting for him to come out and remember he is [redacted] (Ed. Note: Yeah, that was a funny part, actually.) and when we did that take, Simon said to me, because there is really no line there, that the idea the secretary would just be staring at him and said be prepared I have a line I’m going to say, and I won’t give away the line and you said that and the whole group just laughed during the take and it’s the biggest laugh.

CS: You mentioned doing Spaced there was a parallel when you talked about how the reception of how that television show brought you a lot of success over here and now you have this great career but you said there is a difference between these sorts of sharks in the water and American movie making culture vs. the kind of experience you had in the UK.

PEGG: No, I meant the sharks in the water thing is entirely to do with the celebrity culture. I think the movie machine here and in the UK are similar. We collaborate a lot because we have big studios in the UK, Bond movies, Potter movies, Star Wars movies are made there, Raiders and our crews ““ I’ve done movies in LA and half the crew has been British and I think the machine is a little ““ when you get into the studio system in America, I don’t know if this is where you are going, then it gets kind of ““ the producers are more like what you might expect. In the UK we only have one production company that can fund a movie entirely, which is working title. Everything else, like our film, had to be made by a conglomerate.

CS: Yes, lots of fingers in that.

PEGG: Yea. But I think I meant the shark infested thing is if you are going to get involved in being a celebrity and get caught going to those places to get people interested in your private life, then you are taking on a monster you know. Were you going to say the British are different?

CS: Not so much that, but the idea when you make a production over a year, somehow it turns into a beast ““ a lots of fingers in the pie ““ a lot of people saying, I want you to cut this out, cut that out ““ there’s certainly enough satire to go around. A lot of people have a lot to say about that final cut before it’s released to the public…

WEIDE: I think that’s inherent project to project. Not sure that’s just American anymore than it is British. Your situation with the Edgar Wright directed films you have a producer who is really part of your team, who is kind of helps protect you guys from any forces who might come in and try to”¦

And also a production company that lets us do whatever we want. I think the more money that’s involved, the more risk, the more people panic and want to stick their finger in the proverbial pie.

QUESTION: But then you have, but not to bring up Star Trek, but you can’t discuss in detail but JJ has a lot more control than a lot.

PEGG: I think you get people like JJ who they just trust and say I know you know what you’re doing because he’s proved himself with MI3 and they know ““ and because he’s done a particular kind of movie, he’s the absolutely perfect guy to do Star Trek. None of the other producers are going to question what’s he doing because they know if it fucks up the fans are going to be unhappy and JJ is a fan and he understands it. So in that situation it’s like, you do it. You just get on with it an do that. That’s why he’s given that autonomy. Also, he’s JJ ““ he has that manic enthusiasm you couldn’t possibly question.

QUESTION: Then you also hear the stories about on Gangs of New York the notorious fights between Martin Scorsese and Harvey Weinstein ““ that’s Scorsese when somebody told him what to cut.

PEGG: But that is also Harvey Weinstein.

(Laughs)

Have you seen Tropic Thunder?

PEGG: We are seeing that tonight actually.

WEIDE: In my little neck of the world, that was the greatest thing about Curb Your Enthusiasm, which everyone says well, that’s HBO and it wasn’t HBO so much it was Larry David not needing to do a TV series because he could stay home and count his hundreds of millions but it was the guy who created Seinfeld so he never had anybody telling him what to do because A) Larry would just say hey, get your own show and walk and once you create Seinfeld there aren’t many people who could take a position that they know more about comedy. I talked to other friends of mine who were executive producing or created series for network television and I told them the way we work with no creative interference, no notes whatsoever they would just start to drool because in the world of broadcast network television here in the states everybody has something to say right through writing, casting, production through editing and really never leave you alone. And if the show starts to falter at all instead of saying OK, we’re going to stand back, they just get more and more involved and it becomes pretty suffocating.

CS: That’s a brilliant comment. At what point in your career can say, “You know what, I’m not interested in having any of that…” If someone tries to make you capitulate early on I can see how that can easily happen but is it hard coming up through the ranks, sticking to your artistic vision? At what point do you muster that courage and say, “I have to stand firm.” At what point does that happen for you?

WEIDE: It’s interesting ““ my background having started through documentaries from the get-go I never really had anybody tell me what to do because documentaries aren’t supposed to be money makers anyway and my first things were for PBS and so when I started I didn’t have anyone tell me what to do and then I did a film 10 years ago that was a low budget enough film where I was left alone, Curb I was left alone, and oddly enough this film was my first experience of kind of having to listen to other opinions and people suggesting this and that and it was odd for me because you would think I had a lot of that and this point in my career, and I’m not a kid anymore, I’m going to be 30 soon”¦

(Laughs)

It was odd to hear people, and in some cases who really had no comedy credentials say I think this would be funnier, and you know you have to be a team player and listen to everybody’s notes and let them know they are being heard and ultimately have the backbone, conviction and the confidence to know what you are doing to weed out the bad notes and keep the good ones.

PEGG: One thing I always found when collaborating anyway, I write with Jim Wright and write with Edgar and Nick and when we work with Working Title that’s a close knit group there and sometimes something you are absolutely sure is right you’ll get or hear something from someone and say hang on I’ll reevaluate that and you realize that I think there was a note when we were making Hot Fuzz from one of our producers at Working Title to drop the female character because the romance in the film was about Danny and Angel and the bad girl and we realized the female character we’ve written was kind of token and it was an absolutely right on note. So, sometimes you might think as a sort of precious writer you say, you don’t know a thing, but come out with a very, very good point and taken on board. It’s just a fine balance when you are in a room and something you think belongs to you to actually have the courage to let it go and stand up for it I think.

WEIDE: The sort of typical network situation for television, I had an experience where a network bought a pilot script from me, absolutely wanted to make the pilot but I developed it for a specific actress and they knew it going in and they met her and liked her a lot and said go ahead but when push got to shove they got a little nervous about this unknown actress having a pilot let alone a series and asked me if I could cast the part and I said no, I wrote it for her. I’d rather do something else and finally the word came down from the head of the network that he would order the pilot that day if I was willing to cast the part and I said no and walked away and my agent said you realize what you are potentially walking away from and I said, yea I’m walking away from a situation with a network where they are going to try and tell me what to do every step of the way and make me crazy. The only real leverage you have in a situation like that is the willingness to walk away and if, and I’m not a typical TV producer, most of those guys they just want to get on the air, they want to get their pilot made and want to get a series on the air. I was sort of ambivalent about the whole thing anyway so it made it very easy to walk away ““ nothing heroic about it I just didn’t want to set that precedent and everybody thought it was the craziest thing to do but for me it was the easiest.

QUESTION: The last time you were here in Phoenix for Shaun of the Dead you talked about what would be Hot Fuzz ““ do you have any ideas that you are working on right now?

PEGG: Yea, Nick and I just finished something we will go into production with next year hopefully and will be shooting in New Mexico and Edgar and me will eventually get back into the office when we are done with our prospective other projects and come up with a third film which we are calling Blood and Ice Cream. I really want to get on with that. We finished Hot Fuzz and other things came up and we agreed to go do other things and then come back together and those things obviously take up time.

QUESTION: Can you share what that would be about? What about the working title?

PEGG: I don’t think it will be called that but when we spoke about Hot Fuzz on the Shaun of the Dead tour in Phoenix last that was like a year before we even started writing Hot Fuzz so people were like, Hot Fuzz, OK, where is it?

QUESTION: You didn’t even have a script?

PEGG: Yea, we had the idea and had the concept.

QUESTION: So that forced you to have to write it because people were writing about it?

PEGG: Exactly.

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

Meeting Clark Gregg was an absolutely normal experience.

There was no hovering publicist, no throng of people who are just seemingly “there” when you do an interview like this at a swanky hotel which was where I was at and there wasn’t a thing about Clark that would suggest that in front of me stood a man who made a movie about a sex addict whose best friend is a chronic masturbator.

I was just glad I was the first guy he got to talk to.

Clad in his jeans, a nondescript shirt of no fashionable importance, rocking a tarnished platinum wedding ring and a watch that looked like it could have belonged to the guy who delivered a couple of pitchers of water to the room we sat in. The guy was just smiling, proud of his little movie that could, and we simply had a laid-back, casual conversation about a flick that has some heady themes.

Clark exuded a lot of that comedic vibe that he sports in shows like THE NEW ADVENTURES OF OLD CHRISTINE and as we had the place to ourselves, cut off from the usual claptrap and hubbub of observers and minders, what follows is simply the best example of two guys talking about a common theme, with the exception he’s worth a lot more money, posses wheelbarrows of fame and while he would be able to tarry away to his posh room after we were done I still had to go back to my 9 to 5 job. The experience couldn’t have been more pleasurable.

CHOKE OPENS TODAY AT THEATERS EVERYWHERE

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: First of all, it was a good movie.

CLARK GREGG: Thank you.

CS: I think in order to start things off right I have to find out something first ““ I can see why this film wants to be made if you read the book but how hard was it with the topic that it deals with to actually get made?

GREGG: You know most of it ““ I don’t know how I circumvented all that but I thought this is going to be impossible to get made but I was so focused on successfully make an adaptation and then once I got the adaptation working, which took a couple of years off and on between when I was doing other stuff. In the back of my mind I thought, “Come on, it’s a conservative era these days ““ and here’s yet a sex addicted colonial theme park movie.”

(Laughs)

And then I thought it might be a long shot and I loved it and I already put years in and I thought “What the hell…” I got to take a shot. We went about it in a way that we just sort of side-stepped all that. We got actors that we really liked. Sam Rockwell, Angelica Houston who got us a small amount of money but a substantial amount of money that got it done as long as we forwent all luxuries and then, we had a movie. So I guess we were lucky because we found financier producers ““ in ATO Pictures.

Because we went to them with Sam Rockwell already attached, and a script that they liked, they knew they were signing on for the package. We weren’t inviting people in for development. I did that with a friend and a partner and partner in the project for many years so luckily people signed up who were with the vision. I think that’s probably where the miracle is, that people were willing to put up some money to risk making this. And then I think the second scary part was taking it to Sundance at a time when they sat us down in a condo the day before our movie premiered ““ last of all the competition films – and said, “None of them has been bought. Nothing has been bought. One documentary may be being bought even as we speak but 32 movies had been shown and nothing has been bought so just have a good party.” Well of all the movies that will be bought I doubt the sex addicted colonial theme park movie is going to be for sale but then it turned out to be the first narrative sale and I guess we just got lucky that there are some off-kilter people out there, fortunately some of them finance small movies, some of them apparently work at Fox Searchlight.

(Laugh)

CS: How’s it been coming off the festival circuit? What’s the process? You made the movie, obviously working in Hollywood for as long as you have, you have such good experience with the production side of being an actor. Being a filmmaker now…what’s that process like now since the film has been bought and released? Has there been anything ““ now that it’s been bought by someone – or any second thoughts when you had to turn over your baby?

GREGG: That’s a good question.

When a company like Fox Searchlight shows up at the after party and says they want to buy the movie which is just everybody’s dream to have happen at Sundance and some good friends of mine, many who made very good movies, didn’t have so we just feel lucky to have had that meeting.

When they kind of ““ we feel each other out and every one feels OK – they adjourn to another condo and they negotiate stuff until ““ I was so exhausted from the relief of showing the movie to Chuck Palahniuk who liked it, that I was ready to go home. I basically went to semi-sleep and I would get these phone calls that are exactly what you are talking about. They bought the movie as is, which means they weren’t entitled to change anything but I had finished it on the tiny budget that we had to make it and that means you have less time to mix and edit and the sound stuff is really hugely important, which is one of the things I learned.

By the end of that process and watching it with huge audiences at Sundance I really felt like there was some things that I wasn’t 100% happy with from the basic things like the lines ““ the dialogue wasn’t clear enough and it would get a better laugh to ways that I felt like what I intended the ending to mean wasn’t focused enough so I took what I felt was a risk because all artists are a little bit suspicious of studios even the kind of cool artsy ones like Fox Searchlight but their track record is so magnificent that I went to them and I said, “Look, I see things that can make this movie better. I don’t feel like I need to reshoot and I suspect you wouldn’t let me but there some kind of things that we can change with the way the score and the soundtrack are used and kind of re-cutting a couple of things. It’s small stuff but I think it would add up. And, I guess with your track record I would feel lucky if you guys chimed in.” I didn’t want to be like, “No one knows what’s good but me, ” although all directors including me are tempted to feel that way.

I wanted to hear what they had to say.

The seemed smart, everything they said was smart so it felt scary to walk into the office and say that and I may have been imagining it but they may have been a little surprised that I did and it ended up being a real cool thing. I got to go back and work with an editor and kind of do a lot of little things that would have bugged me for the rest of my life seeing them but also do the little things that I think make the movie now superior to the one we did at Sundance. And they had some really cool ideas.

CS: Really? Did they suggest something you never would have thought to do?

GREGG: Well, as is often the case you live with something, certainly it’s a novel and it’s been rattling around in your head. You think things resonate because you read the book and basically know the book by heart but it doesn’t really resonate for someone who is just watching the story for the first time. So a lot of what they had to offer was the ways they were experience in the movie. When I talked about what I felt about the last fifth of the movie might work, they responded to that. If that’s what you’re intending I feel like this moment isn’t as clear to us as it seems to be to you and so if you have really smart people giving you those kinds of ideas and feedback that’s really valuable. And it was never like, here’s some ideas that will help appeal it to a broader audience and they were never things like, “Here’s how we can bump this down to a PG.” I think everyone knew that was never going to happen.

CS: Right. There’s no way. Not a chance. You mentioned that it was a tough sell for some people, expecially when I was watching it. What was your idea going into this film with a character that is so hard to like? He shows glimmers of it in the beginning when he visits his mom and you’re thinking “Here’s a dirt bag but he’s got a great heart” but how did you keep that level, that there’s something icky about him but there is also something wonderfully sensitive about him.

GREGG: Wow. I don’t want to give myself away but I always felt a lot of compassion for that character. I always felt like there’s a lot of stigma attached to sexual compulsion and he’s also working as a con artist, he’s got a lot of other things that don’t really recommend him but I feel like Chuck in his book had a certain kind of compassion and I feel like it’s easy for us to stand in judgment of people especially people that are on the extremes of our compulsion but I feel in a society where we all love to consume ““ whether it’s food or cars or alcohol, you name it, whenever something doesn’t feel right I feel like people are using sex to the detriment of intimacy to satisfy those unhappy feelings in a lot more homes than one might be aware of. At least I trusted that more people would relate to him than one might think. And certainly people who we talked to about financing the movie why is anyone going to relate to this guy. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but I think a lot of people will. I went to some sex addict meetings. It not like you go in there and see creepy unshaven guys in trench coats, it’s just the most normal people in the world.

CS: So was that the idea when it took you so long, off an on ““ a year, two years, to get it actually written? What did you want to distill most of all from this book to a feature length film?

GREGG: The problem was that I started out not wanting to distill anything. I liked the dialogue. There was so much funny stuff and so much moving stuff and half the things that the narrator says I didn’t want to lose because it was so damn funny but you can’t make a 5 hour movie but even if you could it wouldn’t be focused. At a certain point the movie has a different kind of focus because it’s a different medium than a book so I had to try and find what’s a story in this book that would make a good movie and that took a long time, took some distance ““ write it, leave it alone for a little bit ““ come back to it ““ try and retry. There’s a line that says, he’s just freeing the figures from the rock and I think that’s right. You are freeing the movie from the book. And the only way to do that is to chip away some really beautiful pieces of granite.

CS: Exactly. And I was reminded…and I wasn’t going to bring Harry Potter into sex addiction but…

GREGG: That’s the next one. You haven’t seen it yet.

(Laughs)

Don’t do any spoilers.

CS: When kids had that book read to them, long before the movie was made, the teachers would ask “Do you want to see the pictures in the novel?” and the kids said no because they already had an idea in their head of what it was.

GREGG: Exactly. When you read a book you kind of watch a movie of sorts in your head. Certainly it’s a scary thing to adapt something because everybody watched a movie and the odds that my scenes are just going to be what they saw or my Victor is going to be exactly what they saw are very slim and they are going to have to let go. And on the other hand I something that equals or surpasses the movie they watched in their head, which on our budget was really never going to happen.

(Laughs)

CS: But you have a wonderful guy in Sam who showed range that he can go from ““ he is Victor. At the end of the day”¦

GREGG: The thing is every time you see Sam do anything you say he is that guy and he’s actually none of them. That’s what makes him so amazing. He sort of connected to this and it felt like a really good fit. The first time I went over to his apartment and read a bunch of scenes with him I just breathed a sigh of relief that might have knocked down a wall. I just knew that the very largest part of my job was done. The others might be manageable. I knew he just connected with this guy.

CS: And at the end of the day, when you started piecing things together and you were on the set and you were the guy who had to be there from the moment everyone got there until even after everyone went home, what was that education like about seeing the other side? I know you’ve made some reference to it in another interview where you compare it to being a passenger on a plane and having someone say, “Fly it.” Two different things.

GREGG: Yeah. Two different things.

It was a really interesting combination of going well I spent a good chunk of the last 15 years of my life on movie sets and TV sets and writing and I had so many moments where I thought I learned a lot more than I thought I did or before that I was acting and directing theatre and plays are story telling where you tell the whole story and I found that those ““ I had a lot of days and moments where I went I learned so much more kind of in the school of on the job training doing this stuff for years than I thought I did. A lot of times I thought I couldn’t have been more equipped than I thought but then you have those days where you think, “I don’t know anything about this. How could I have been so close to these cameras all the time and asking questions all the time and not understand this part of it or that part of it?” But you know, I was lucky and smart enough to hire really good people on the job where I knew my education was lacking so I hired people who were not just really good at their jobs but who I tested were willing to answer questions.

I wasn’t going to be content with, “Shoot it as you want, man!” I really wanted to be involved as much as I could ““ “This is what I want to do, what do you recommend?” Kind of having that dialogue having only a few hours to get the scene, that’s tricky.

CS: Now, the relationship with Sam and his buddy, Denny, why does Denny ““ it seems like a very abusive relationship ““ Almost like Victor is against Denny in a way – and Denny has his own problems but I was instantly connected to him.

GREGG: Chuck said he was one of his favorite characters.

CS: Why do you think Denny likes to be around Victor ““ I couldn’t understand why he takes Victor’s shit.

GREGG: To me, Victor always felt like one of those anti-heroes from the 70’s. He’s a cross between Bud Cort from Harold and Maude and Nicholson in The Last Detail. I think it’s about the nature of friendship, what is it that kind of pulls someone. I always thought that Victor had this charisma but also, that it could speak to Denny. He’s living at home, he’s a chronic masturbator who has been kicked out of art school, he’s met Victor at the sex addict meetings, he’s a chronic masturbator ““ that’s certainly a spear of some loneliness.

(Laughs)

Trust me.

(Laughs)

And here’s this guy who, as twisted as it is, he’s actually disappearing from the meeting into the closets and bathrooms with various female paroles or what have you. That has a certain allure. When they met especially Victor represented a superb mentor if one wanted to break out of the chronic masturbator thing. And I think what’s beautiful about the story is that the story captures that friendship in the moment where this guy who has been a follower and a lonely loser is actually developing some of his own ideas and what I like about it is he grows right past Victor. And some of the recover stuff that Victor’s been making fun of, Denny is embracing and is actually paying off.

CS: He keeps reminding him, his fourth step.

GREGG: Yeah, you got to do what you have to do, but in a compassionate way. That’s the other reason I think that Denny has a friendship with him despite whatever abuse Victor may heap on him is Denny’s got a little bit of Buddha going on and he understands that that is just a form of Victor acting out his anger or his sadness. He doesn’t take it personally too much. I think we can all take a page from Denny’s book and I don’t think it’s one of the books that he chronically masturbates.

(Laughs)

CS: Your character in the movie – you decided to play the douche of the film. How did that come about?

GREGG: Well, I don’t know how familiar you are of my oeuvre of work.

CS: That you constantly play these guys?

GREGG: Well, it’s mixed up really. I play quasi-benevolent people or quasi-douche bags. But I certainly, within the realm of what I get hired for, are jackasses like Lord High Charlie and I was determined to cast somebody else. I had a list of great actors who I was going to con into doing it but I definitely dragged my feet because if you do play any of those guys to play anybody who’s name is Lord High Charlie seems like a hard opportunity to pass up. So when I put this cast together I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to act with those guys. If I would have known what an idiot I would feel like standing there in a puffy shirt trying to direct the movie and calling action while I was doing it I would probably not have done it.

(Laughs)

I also felt like I was on such an “I can do anything” ego trip that it just felt like the perfect thing to include for the narcissism express.

(Laughs)

CS: Well the thing ranges ““ the humor that we get from that is outrageous, and the humor ranges from dark to very superficial – but when you had this finished piece in the editing bay, you looked at all your footage, what was the first thing you said ““ “I need to start cutting…” ““ where did you start the process of editing this thing down?

GREGG: My first thought was “Thank God for my DP, Tim Orr” because I know that a lot of times we only have an hour and a half to shoot that people usually would take a day or two on. And I was mostly terrified that I would get in there and literally the story piece just wouldn’t be there and they were almost always there as if we had a day and a half and when they weren’t somehow the material was there to find a different way. So I mostly felt guilty, mostly felt grateful about that. And, I don’t know. You usually look at a rough cut, I’ve seen other people’s rough cuts and you just kind of go, “Oh Jesus, what a mess. This is never going to work. It’s the end of my career.”

And I guess it’s just a stillborn career.

(Laughs)

But it was really clear that there was some terrific acting. It was really clear that there was some funny moments and I chose it because I wanted it to range from excruciatingly painful stuff to silly. And I liked that about the book, that it had that kind of breadth. So I had the pieces there, more or less and that it was up to me to blow it”¦.or not.

CS: And my last question I have is now that it’s done and you’ve seen where it’s gone how do you look back, obviously it was quite a favorable experience you’ve had, what do you think the educational experience has been for you looking back on it?

GREGG: Honestly, it borders on miraculous. It was so difficult and so felt like my little delusions that I carried around my computer and noodled that for years and people would say, “Oh, you’re still working on that? Oh, that’s sad.” And to have it get made with those actors and have it come together and have some people not want to represent it for press purposes at Sundance and feel like we were taking this disastrous home movie up there and have it get picked up by a great company and really championed it, it’s just amazing and I don’t want to lapse into Tuesday’s with Morrie but you know it’s amazing how if you kind of find something that hits that bell chiming you if you stick with it long enough, I’m sure a lot of times it can end up being a nightmare that costs you years and does nothing, but in this case it has been an awful good experience and I hope people like it.

God I hope people like it.

CS: Well, I did. Thank you so much for your time.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

You have to see this film. You just have to.

One of the things I keep coming back to is that Steve in this movie is a lot like Charles Bovary in “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert. They’re cuckolded, emotionally beaten yet the two of them share that sense of ignorance that makes them endure. Steve Coogan’s turn as a teacher who is inspired more by the thought of succeeding than the actual succeeding itself makes for a few moments where you’re just pulling for the guy who needs to taste a little bit of triumph. However, it wouldn’t be a comedy if he actually did so it is his continual downward spiral of bad decision after bad decision that makes this not only funny but poignant in that you wonder if he will ever rise above the odds that seem inexorably against him.

And that’s what makes this movie so vital for people to see themselves. It’s a movie filled with diametric opposites that add to the film’s greater comment on the movies we’ve all seen where the inspirational teacher is the one who brings order to chaos. It’s Steve who brings chaos and he’s wickedly sharp about where to draw the line between believability and complete farce. Dana Marschz is a consummate positive thinker who genuinely believes in the world around him and it’s a story filled with the dark truth about how smart and resourceful students really are, teachers always seem to be the primary fount of inspiration in these films, and how he gets caught up in his own psychological issues to put on the one movie musical where you will honestly be humming the soundtrack on the way out.

I know a lot has been made of Steve Coogan’s “almost there”-ness here in the States, his brilliance seemingly ignored by everyone with a modicum of influence, but it’s going to be how consistently be funny that will allow people to feel this man’s power as a comic performer who deserves a lot more than he’s been given. Thankfully, HAMLET 2 is all Steve’s to helm and he does so with the kind of orchestration that should have him in more prominent projects. Aside from all that, the man does have a nice ass.

I met up with Steve the morning after the HAMLET 2 screening at the San Diego Comic-Con and he was thankfully introspective about the work he conducted on the film.

HAMLET 2 opens today.

STEVE COOGAN: I heard the reaction was really good.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Yes. loved the movie. I didn’t know what to expect but that’s not what I was expecting.

COOGAN: Oh good. Great.

CS: It seems like it’s a chance for you to do what you have done in England for so long. What was your reaction when you got the script and saw what you would be able to do with Dana?

COOGAN: Well, being on the sidelines of the movie industry here, scripts come my way, I’m pretty low down, but I’m on that list”¦

[Laughs]

So scripts come my way and sometimes they are formulatic and they don’t have any heart or backbone or have no attitude ““ they are hacky. And this one came along and it had a real ““ felt like someone had written it from the gut themselves. The voice of the writing was authentic and it made me laugh in a way ““ and I read a lot of scripts and I write comedy so I think I’m a pretty tough audience ““ it made me laugh in a real fresh way.

It also wasn’t just cynical ““ it was smart and edgy but there’s a little bit of love in there too. I’ve always been a fan of Pam’s writing and I love South Park and Teen America and read other scripts she’s written and I met up with her and was very keen to get the script off the ground. The studios passed on it because they couldn’t see how it could work or who would be right for the part so it was a privately financed movie. That was the only way to get it going because it’s not easy to pitch the movie in one light. It’s hard to describe. People would say, ” What’s it like, an inspiration teacher movie? But there’s laughing. It’s called HAMLET 2. Is it serious? Is it like Hamlet?” And I would say, “Not really, no.” So it’s a tough one. The only thing that makes the movie work is for people to go and see it and tell other people about it. That’s the only way it’s going to work.

CS: Right. And it’s absolutely something that lends itself ““ it’s got Pam’s sensibility, it’s got that cynical edge – but you’re right and I think one of the things that ““ leading all the way to that final moment when the kids actually put on Hamlet 2 it’s one movie. But, honestly, it was that one moment when Dana ““ the triumphant moment when he says he forgives his own father that it becomes something else entirely but was always there. I think that had one of the most genuine moments I had ever seen in a comedy. Did that come though on the page, that one part that brings everything back?

COOGAN: Yeah. It was salvation but not in a ““ it’s very difficult to do those things in both a comical to make you laugh but also touch you a little and you can’t do it all the time but there are moments when you can do it and it’s hard but, yes, it did come through on the page and I felt like I wanted to do that character.

I had a take on it.

And Andy, Pam and I talked regularly and hung out and talked about all this stuff ““ about our attitude to what’s funny and we just felt very in sync ““ not the cliché of doing things and following your gut instinct. What was great about this is that it was not run by committee ““ it was privately financed ““ no one saying change this, change that and because of that, the film is an authentic voice and not the result of marketing consultants establishing or instilling what’s going to make the movie work. So, it’s just got a feeling of genuine authenticity.

And still has edge, and takes risk, and sail close to the wind.

CS: One of the things about Dana is that he seems ““ and that’s other thing about this movie too is that Dana could be almost be a foppish kind of man but the way you played him you root for him ““ you feel kind of bad for him ““ he’s given up alcohol so you obviously have that back story there ““ you feel genuinely for this man who seems to be trying and trying and nothing is working in his life. How did you want to get that across? When you got the script and this Dana is failing ““ a failed actor, can’t even do high school drama right, when you saw it how did you”¦

COOGAN: What you see is someone who believes in himself ““ someone who is passionate someone – who’s a bit of an ass but not selfish, not cynical, he really believes in something and in that kind of postmodern world it’s very fashionable to blame everything else but he has this, in some ways, a little bit of naivete but another way”¦belief. He has moments of self-doubt but he believes in art, believes in trying to make people’s lives better.

Well, you can imagine, you can’t see it in the film, you see the head teacher but ““ you imagine that the head teacher is kind of cynical, obviously living in a world where they are just servicing these kind of students, not really inspiring them and he’s trying to inspire them so, however bad his judgment is, and it’s true of his character and true of the movie, there is kind of a ““ he has some sort of a vision, however, skewed or distorted it is. At least he has some idea and some passion and in a way, my theory was ““ I said to Andy, “How will you make the script that people believe that this play from this guy who is a bit of a buffoon? How are they going to believe that this play will become successful?” And he said it’s not really the concept of the play, it’s the fact that it’s done with passion by people who are passion about it – students who are inspired to give the best performances – that itself is just life enhancing. People can be charmed by the sheer chutzpa of something and it just enhances your life having seen it a tiny bit. I think that’s true of the movie and the play within the movie. You can believe that it goes on to become a success.

CS: I absolutely agree. I think the Gay Men’s Choir of Tucson ““ that was a brilliant musical choice when they were actually singing, Someone Saved My Life Tonight. It was utterly brilliant.

COOGAN: When I watched it the first time I thought something you don’t feel when you are making because it all has to be pieced together…This was something ““ you kind of have to stay with the movie because first you really have to find your feet and once it starts motoring, then you are with it and it does build. When I watched it I felt like I really feel for this guy and this strange bizarre mutant play. It touched me. I thought it worked.

CS: The musical numbers ““ when you saw what you would be doing – the very titles of the songs…

COOGAN: Again, I was a little nervous some of these songs like Raped in the Face“¦.

[Laughs]

Rock Me Sexy Jesus…you have to ““ when you do comedy that is risqué there is a danger that comedy can just be ““ “Look at me, look at me, trying to be offensive.” Almost like adolescent type of comedy. “Get a load of me!” That can be ““ sometimes people who are starting out in comedy or who have the type of comedy that has the potential to be offensive but manages to get the balance right the mistake they make is, “Oh yeah, it’s about pissing people off.” No, it’s not. But when I read it I thought”¦that concerned me but I know enough that to do good comedy ““ comedy that is ambitious you have to be slightly scared by it. When you look at it crazily, like I do, you have to have a little bit of fear because if you’re not worried about it, then chances are you are not really being bold. You have to feel slightly scared. Which I was. But I also knew that if you go forward and run across the hot coals concentrating, as it were, and focusing, then you can come out on a level that is less offensive. So, what should be offensive ends up not being offensive.

CS: And to that point, one of the things that has made you so recognizable outside of America is your British comedy. Is there really a subtle difference between the comedies between American and British? Especially with Dana as you did this ““ are there sensibilities that you have to be aware of that American audiences respond to?

COOGAN: Yes, I think so, yeah. I think ““ only subtle ones. I think in the sense that American audiences want to be reassured or given elevation emotionally in the comedies they watch and the characters they like. British are more predicated to losers and failures. We like failures. The British are often more cynical audiences. They tend to shy away from sentiment because they see it as a weakness or morkish or unrealistic or a rose-tinted view. That’s my observation. America is such a huge, huge, the USA is a huge nation ““ so many different tastes there is room for all kinds of comedy. Just by facts of numbers the amount of people in America, the niche taste, the people that want that can be sustained because there are enough people to make economic sense. Programs like Curb Your Enthusiasm can sustain itself.

But I think just the shear facts of numbers it’s very disparate. You just can’t make generalizations. It’s easy to make a generalization about British comedy because it’s smaller. The taste seems to be a bit more uniform. Over here, people would say “American comedy is not as good as our comedy” but I would say, “Hold on a second.” There is Larry Sanders of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld”¦consistently good quality ““ even Friends ““ consistently good quality stuff that manages to be both broad ““ I look at South Park, Family Guy”¦they are knocking it out of the park.

So, like I say the Americans are more professional about it. There is more structure and is more of a business. But that business can produce some really exciting comedy. In Britain, there are a few maverick people who find their voice, find a way for their comedy to come through.

CS: Who are some of the leading edge guys in Britain?

COOGAN: Simon Pegg who is here in town is a good friend of mine. Simon supported me when I did my last live tour; he was my support act. He filled in on stage while I was getting changed.

CS: Really?

COOGAN: Yeah. If you Google “Steve Coogan Live” you might find some stuff that Simon and I did together.

And then he went bang. But Simon is someone I worked a lot with about 10 years ago and we share ““ he’s someone who can make me laugh ““ those are the kind of people who can just make you laugh a lot. Sometimes when you meet someone you respect creatively, there’s kind of a competitive edge but what it means is it’s the nicest kind of competition because you both are trying to see who can make the other one laugh the most.

And you can do things ““ you can indulge in the kind of taboo comedy that you couldn’t really do publicly because you are doing it in a way that you both understand the sophistication and know exactly where the other person is coming from because you know the mechanics. Anyway, he’s a person that is really great. And, there’s Sasha Baron Cohen ““ all these guys I’ve known for a few years. Although I came along a little before they did in the UK. I’m playing catch up with them now.

CS: And I know we only have a couple minutes left but the last question I really have ““ when people see the movie, especially the way when you read the script, how does Dana change from the beginning where he starts to the end ““ how does he come out through the other side?

COOGAN: I don’t think he really does change a lot to be honest with you. I think everyone else changes. It’s everyone else ““ he doesn’t become enlightened or change his attitude ““ he stays pretty much true and pure to what he believes in the first place. It was the doubters who fell in line with him. I think he’s just vindicated. Maybe he’s lost some of his neurosis because he finally gets approval. But what’s nice is that however much people knock him or set him back he doesn’t change. He stays true to who he is. Not a lot I guess.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

True story. I took a girl on a date to see THREESOME. Now, for those among you who would give me the benefit of the doubt and think this was an honest mistake if I didn’t know what I was getting into should actually not give me said doubt. I had seen the movie the week prior and thought it was actually a funny, warm, careful examination of self-discovery at a time when it seems like so many of the jokes people make that start “When I was in college…” actually come from. I still value a lot of what the movie was about and what it ultimately had to say. Besides that, the soundtrack was just manna from heaven in the form of a compact disc; where else could you hear U2 mixed in with some Bryan Ferry, New Order, Apache Indian (a sweet track) and one of the greatest songs ever put to CD, The The’s “This Was The Day”? Yeah, I guess the REALITY BITES soundtrack was pretty damn close but Andrew’s film, however, had a little something extra to day about the lives of young people who were caught in that time in their lives when it wasn’t about a career as it was just finding a path that led to where you wanted to go.

Needless to say, and I wish I were kidding, after seeing the movie I think the girl pegged me for a perv. Que sera, sera.

On the other side of that spectrum you have Pam Brady. Extracting what part she had in making SOUTH PARK: BIGGER LONGER & UNCUT, along with TEAM AMERICA and many other co-writer credits she has, so sharp is a moot point. Pam, to her credit, knows how to take a subject that needs to be dressed down, stripped, tar and feathered and sent on its way with the kind of pop sensibility others simply can’t manage to do on their own. The reason why South Park has lasted as long as it has is because everyone involved in producing the show know how to make a show that is at once a piece of entertainment and a sly switchblade of social commentary that manages to stay just beneath the veneer of a jolly cartoon show.

HAMLET 2 marries together the best elements of Andrew Fleming’s directorial skills and Pam’s ability to take a situation an imbue it with a subversive element that is not always readily obvious. From the heart that Steve Coogan gives to the hapless teacher who means so well but is completely, throughly ill-equipped to do anything but mess his own life up to the kids who don’t necessarily fit the archetype of rising above their lot in life the film is simply a wonderful commentary on horrible teacher/student pictures and what it really means to finally face the one thing that has held one man back for so long. Besides, where else can you see Jesus re-enact the KARATE KID crane kick while dancing to a song that you absolutely, positively won’t be able to get out of your head.
HAMLET 2 opens this Friday, August 22nd.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: I saw it last night and loved it. Loved the movie. I think it already was a good movie, but I was just telling Steve [Coogan] that what I thought really brought the movie together was The Gay Men’s Chorus of Tucson singing “Someone Saved My Life Tonight.” I think that was a pivotal point where everything is brought together. When you two were scripting it out, blocking it out, how did you get to that point? Did you have an idea to begin with and how did it eventually had get to that moment?

ANDREW FLEMING: That song, is the one. The play wasn’t really fleshed out. That song was always in the script from the very first draft

PAM BRADY: Yeah.

CS: Really?

BRADY: But it’s way more emotional. You already knew it was going to be emotional but it seems like a joke. It seems like it would be funny for these guys to sing this. It kinda hits home.

CS: I was laughing but I got those little hairs on my arms standing up as I realized how important that scene was.

FLEMING: It’s a great song. And the words are like a poem about “¦..being near suicide from being in a bad relationship and breaking out of it by somebody leaving and that it can save somebody’s life. It wasn’t a joke but I don’t know why that song is so good.

I always love that thing about music ““ you can do all the legwork but you need the right piece of music to make you feel the right thing at the right time, at the right moment. Music is important. It really is.

CS: In scripting out Dana, he seems like a guy who would be almost easy to make stereotyped ““ failed actor, failed teacher ““ what was important to you when you wrote it out to not make him a hackneyed kind of character?

BRADY: We always love delusional characters because we truly love them. I don’t think there was ever any kind of superior feeling. I feel like everyone can kind of get in touch with that part of themselves that feels like they are just not going to make it and feel like a failure but put themselves up and motor through it. So I think the most important part was to never judge him as a character. We always truly pull for him. Know what I mean?

CS: Yes, exactly.

BRADY: We are trying to tell a story about someone we actually love as a character and then look at what happens to this guy.

FLEMING: And then putting on this play, everybody has something they are trying to do and they feel like everybody is against them. Obstacles are thrown in the way and you are just trying to pull through and it’s just chaos. And that play becomes ““ I remember feeling like that making the movie. Like, “You idiot”¦.Get everybody on board!”

[Laughs]

BRADY: Yes, and I think everybody has the feeling where you sort of want to be cool and you sort of know ““ like you. You know how you want this interview to go and how you want it to come across but it probably isn’t but we sort of know how to play it a little bit ““ I think that feeling is a universal feeling. I don’t think it’s just me or Andy.

FLEMING: But it was a reaction to “Let’s do a movie about a teacher ““ What are other teacher movies?” and we were going down this list ““ there actually are some very good ones like BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, TO SIR WITH LOVE. Those are good but it gets worse from there. Some of them are fine movies but there was always like the sense of self-satisfaction or superiority ““ the teacher is there to teach and it’s like that’s really not how it works. The teacher is this person in the room and they are a human beings and they are not inherently superior to their students.

There was always this sanctimony to those characters.

BRADY: Yeah. And also that great white hope kind of feeling that we’re going to go into the inner-city school and jack up some kids against the locker to get through to them.

FLEMING: And teach those ethnics a thing or two.

BRADY: That’s why we wanted to make sure that Octavio [Joseph Julian Soria] was going to be brown because he was so incredibly high achieving. It’s insulting how it’s presented in movies.

FLEMING: And the kids are always “types.” And you just peg them and that’s all who they are. And we just wanted to come up with a fresh batch of who those kids are. We actually did a pilot, but it didn’t get picked up, and it was set in high school and we were shooting in Ventura and all of our characters ““ these cute skinny white kids in faux thrift store gear ““ it was actually all from Barney’s. Really adorable.

BRADY: Very bright colors.

FLEMING: And they were all done up. A cute bunch of kids but the real kids of the school where we were shooting were all wearing blue and black and all had this kind of attitude. It was like, “Why are we making a movie about them?” They are more interesting and is the reality. Let’s get something going about those kids.

CS: So it’s set in Tucson ““ I’m from Phoenix.

FLEMING: Phoenix is a big city ““ a big interesting city. Tucson is not.

CS: The idea of place ““ that this is where dreams go to die.

[Laughs]
BRADY: Does sound rougher when you say it.

CS: Just speaking from experience. These kids they seem a little bit different ““ like you said ““ high achieving. “We’re going to put it on the big play, things are going to go well…” and so speaking about Steve it was that fine line of keeping the “Hey, look at me…I’m putting on a play about Jesus in Hamlet 2!” It’s a thin line of being subversive but not being obnoxious about it. Was that a problem? Was it effortless to know where that line was or was it back and forth?

FLEMING: I think we were trying to go for obnoxious.

[Laughs]

No everything’s a fine line. I think for us it’s between silliness and sadness or lightness and darkness or something reassuring and heartwarming and something disturbing. Being in the netherworld between those two things is always of interest to us.

BRADY: And part of the songs too like RAPED IN THE FACE ““ it’s like, “What is the worst thing he could sing right now to this group?” And it’s not deliberately set out to be shocking but we sort of wanted to see how far we could push it. If we were in high school and we saw our teacher was getting in touch with his inner self and wrote a song about being raped in the face that would be pretty shocking. But it all works and it only works because the way he plays it and Andy directed it you feel it’s real. You feel like this guy exists. If he was a joke, it wouldn’t matter.

FLEMING: It comes from something he said. Some inner feeling he had and it’s an honest image. It’s coming from something he really feels.

It’s an inappropriate bunch of words to use around minors, of course, but it’s real.

CS: You’re right. In some ways you are pulling for Dana and he’s such a miserable man ““ one after another, failed this, failed that, but on the other hand he’s someone you genuinely try to root for, he’s trying to quit drinking and he genuinely cares about trying to make a difference. He ends up just getting shafted every which way. So where did you guys say ““ “We got this guy, we want to make him a loveable loser” – but at the end how do you want people to see Dana ““ after the play is done ““ how did you want the audience to look at him ““ like, “Ah, he’s been vindicated”?

FLEMING: No, I mean he’s had some kind of affirmation and it’s actually very important to us in that last scene he’s still a bit of a boob and he’s still peeing in the sink.

[Laughs]

And he’s not really paying attention to what people are saying about protestors and the meaning of being on Broadway and the message. He’s still a bit of an ass but he’s a little happier than he was.

BRADY: And the fact that that the play becomes about his very destructive relationship with his father and it’s sort of like that he faced that straight on in the only way he knows how and it’s raw and the feelings are raw it’s almost that that’s what the movie is about ““ if you can face it down, then you can overcome it.

Even if you have no talent.

CS: It is so cathartic at the end when they were singing that song ““ what pulls it all together is that he’s confronted it. It was like, “I was laughing just moments ago and here’s this great moment that just shines right through.” Honestly, I didn’t get it until that moment happens and then I get it. Hamlet ““ the father, the ghost.

BRADY: He was haunted by his father.

CS: So, what came first, Hamlet or Jesus?

BRADY: That’s a good question.

FLEMING: I think there was always some talk about Jesus and Jesus being hot”¦.

[Laughs]

CS: It’s the truth. Those abs!

FLEMING: Jesus has been sexualized throughout the millennium.

BRADY: Yeah. I was raised Catholic and he’s up on that cross and it’s no accident that he’s cut, like a swimmer.

CS: Describe the collaborative process when you guys came together. Day one when you started to write it out ““ what was that like ““ back and forth? Pam, did you have the idea?

BRADY: Oh yeah, it was all me.

[Laughs]

FLEMING: We were already working together so we just said “Let’s write a script” and went through it step by step and it was a shared madness.

BRADY: It’s true. I was actually cleaning out Andy’s gutters doing some odd job and he said, “Hey, do you want to come in here?”

But we started with the character first. It all started with the character. We wanted to find the guy that you would feel the most sorry for.

FLEMING: Which is good. In the past we told stories and started with structure and then found the character but we built everything around who this guy is, which made it go better and easier and took our time, which is really good. We didn’t have any deadline ““ kept going back to it because we enjoyed it.

CS: You obviously did because you got someone to independently finance it. You’ve worked with major studios ““ Paramount, what have you ““ What made you think you were going to take this one privately and do something else with it?

FLEMING: I think we were feeling adrift and we did set it up briefly at New Line. It was mostly to give us a sense of self worth.

BRADY: I know. That’s true.

FLEMING: We could have begged.

BRADY: Just option it for six months.

FLEMING: Which they did and nothing happened and I think we were very lucky we didn’t make it there because we would have gotten caught in a maelstrom.

BRADY: We did it for fun. That’s part of the story ““ that we enjoyed it and I think when we work together (we did two pilots together) it’s so much fun except that you keep getting these questions all the time like, ” Why would he do that?” And sometimes with comedy I don’t know. You can’t go to meetings and just defend everything.

FLEMING: We instinctively, for no logical reason, just realized later that that was a good idea after the fact. We only made HAMLET 2 because it made us laugh.

BRADY: And with a 2 to make it look like LETHAL WEAPON. That’s the worst idea.

FLEMING: And we had to go like, ” Wait, what happens in Hamlet?” We actually didn’t do the homework we should have.

BRADY: I actually watched the Mel Gibson version of it.

FLEMING: But it turned out to be the perfect play to use. It wasn’t even until the last minute we thought, “Let’s take all these characters and undue the tragedy?” ““ That evolved much later.

BRADY: But it’s normally towards the end of the process that you realize what you are writing about. What you are trying to say. And the idea that culturally we are taught that everything can be worked through with therapy.

FLEMING: The Oprah of it all.

BRADY: But in a way that actually ended up being true with us.

FLEMING: That’s what I love about that.

BRADY: Making fun of it.

FLEMING: It really is frustrating watching Hamlet. It’s like, “Why doesn’t he just get his shit together and work though his stuff?”

BRADY: Hamlet 1 wouldn’t be a hit today I don’t think. I don’t think the audiences are up for that.

CS: Although if he was the Dark Knight ““ if it was Batman – it probably could work.

BRADY: Maybe Christian Bale can play him.

FLEMING: Christian Bale can play anything.

[Pam Laughs]

BRADY: I was going to say something rude but I didn’t. Laughs. I held back because it’s Sunday. The Lord’s day.

FLEMING: Be nice. We’re being recorded.

CS: Looking back on it, you have the finished product – you’ve now seen it with audiences – how do you two look at what you’ve done and what you put on the screen? What kind of distance do you have ““ you know, is it thrilling from a personal standpoint in that “We’ve done something that we love and this is what we have to show for it”?

FLEMING: Basically it’s our way of saying, “Screw you world.”

BRADY: How funny. I thought you would say it’s a love letter to the world.

[Laughs]

BRADY: It’s both. Take that.

FLEMING: It’s fun. It’s a lot of work to make a movie and at the end of it when people are laughing and telling you that they like it it feels good. There is no denying that.

BRADY: It fills up all the empty places.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

What’s in a place?

Many times it’s just a perfunctory element tossed in just for s and giggles but in MY BOYS, the television series on TBS, being a part of Chicago’s environment seems integral to making the story of a female sports columnist and the men in her life who define her life as a working woman. While I wouldn’t suppose that Chicago is one of the only defining elements of this series MY BOYS is a step above many of the weaker sitcoms in that the cast is exceptionally adept at, ironically enough, not being sitcom punchlines. There are real elements such as the lead, PJ (Jordana Spiro). She’s not window dressing, she’s not just a pretty face in a crowd of other actresses but rather, if I could make a comparison, she’s like Maura Tierney’s character in NEWSRADIO. PJ’s smart and has enough wherewithal that you would hope many other women would posses.

And then there’s Kyle Howard. The guy does not know the meaning of the words “sit on your hands.” As an actor in the Hollywood system for more than a decade, and only being 30, the man has made the transition from young actor to mature actor without the series of burnouts, bouts in rehab or paparazzi run-ins that seems to define what it means to be young in a town that wants to chew ’em up and spit ’em out. He’s incredibly grounded in his approach to his job as an actor and, as you read what he has to say about working as one, he’s got an outlook that, frankly, I don’t know if I would be able to posses; I would be given to feelings of constant paranoia and despair, moving from acting job to the next, but that’s why I keep my paranoia and despair locked in me as a writer.

Apart from also being funny, he’s got a great technical eye for what has made this series a winner for TBS and why he feels so safe in the hands of Betsy Thomas. He also deserves credit for being a Cubs fan, that instantly gets him a free pass for anything he does ever again from me, but deserves the most credit for being honest about the series and where he sees himself going.

MY BOYS airs on TBS, Thursdays, 9:30/8:30 Central

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: One of the first things I wanted to start off with is this ““ I didn’t realize until I looked into it is that this is actually TBS’s really first foray into original programming.

KYLE HOWARD: Yes, it was. The year that we did our pilot it was us and Ten Items or Less which is their sort of improv sketch show that they have. But the two of those were, as far as I know, their first run at that and are both still going at this point. That’s pretty exciting.

CS: But it must have been interesting from a taking-a-job sort of standpoint that here comes this opportunity where the water has been untested for TBS ““ But from a practical standpoint do you share studio space with anybody or did they build a whole new studio just to accommodate what your production?

HOWARD: No. We just, Sony, the studio behind the show, rents space from Paramount mainly because they have a back lot there that we try to sell the whole Chicago thing so it wasn’t anything to build a studio for us or anything like that. But it was sort of new territory for them.

CS: And for the show itself, it’s ostensibly set in Chicago and do you do exteriors here in Chicago?

HOWARD: Yes, we have in the past. We didn’t this season actually but the previous two episodes we came out there and did our finale of our first run ““ the Wrigley Field episode that was just so fun. We spent the whole day there and running around the field and playing catch in the outfield and it was amazing.

CS: Really?

HOWARD: Then we came in there again at the end of our second chunk of episodes and we did pieces from maybe three or four different episodes ““ we shot at the Sears Tower and the Art Institute, Oak Street Beach and just sort of sprinkled in there throughout and it really helps to just authenticate things a little bit. The majority of stuff is at her [PJ’s] apartment or at the bar or at our regular weekly sets but just to have that stuff in there here and there really legitimizes that whole Chicago thing that we are tying to sell and I think people in Chicago appreciate that too. They appreciate all the references that we make to restaurants and cross streets and whatever. I think they appreciates seeing the city from time to time too.

CS: Was it the writers ““ or the guys who came up with it or women who came up with it, was it their idea or were they from Chicago or any reason why, ultimately, they wanted to focus on Chicago?

HOWARD: Yes, Betsy Thomas who created it, went to school there. She went to Northwestern and a bunch of the other writers on our staff went there as well. It’s really cool ““ our whole writing staff ““ a whole bunch of them are Betsy’s old friends from back in the day ““ part of this sort of group we are portraying ““ in fact the Brendan character in the show is directly based on one of our writers Brendan Smith who has been a friend of Betsy’s forever. I think they even shared an apartment for a short time. PJ’s character is based on Betsy’s life so all of that stuff is really cool too. Just knowing that a lot of the stuff we do is coming out of real experiences they’ve had or that they had way back in the day or whatever so we end us just sitting around and hearing a lot of those stories which is kind of cool but Betsy’s ““ the short answer is yes, she’s from Detroit but then went to college to Chicago for school and met a bunch of those guys there and that’s where that came from.

CS: And for you being on the series represents steady work. Is this the longest string, so far, of one constant job? Looking over your resume I see a lot of one episode performances”¦

[Laughs]

HOWARD: Yes, I think I just passed my record of how many episodes I’ve done on one show ““ in fact there was a kind of funny story ““ when we did this pilot I met everybody, met Jordana and I apologized to all of them in advance and just explained to them that I’ve done a lot of pilots and a lot of them have been picked up but not very many of them have run very long and I just said I think I’m kinda cursed and if this goes down I take full responsibility and they are all like “No, no, don’t worry about it…We’re going to break the streak” and so far we have. It’s not like we’ve been on the air for years and years but we’ve been doing it since we’ve done the pilot which has been two years now and I think we’ve done 30 ““ 31 episodes or something like that. So, that’s great for me given my track record. I’m definitely doing alright.

CS: Seriously, for just your mental health that must be nice.

HOWARD: Yes, totally. That’s every actors thing is a little bit of stability goes a long way and the fact is we never really have it ““ just like right now we finished work last week and the show is on now all summer but we don’t know if we’re picked up again and won’t know until September so once again we’re sitting around sort of wondering if we have a job or not. It’s just sort of one of those things you have to accept and I’ve been doing this since I was a kid and I’m pretty used to the routine of it all so I try not to get too worked up over it. If I had my choice of course I really like this particular job and really like the people and I would be happy to keep doing it for a while.

CS: Fourteen years by my adding you’ve been doing this ““ and I have to wonder as a working actor, people obviously probably would see you on screen and think that he’s making millions because I see him on television ““ what’s it like for you, knowing what I do about professional working actors who need jobs just to pay for the rent? I would imagine you have some kind of perspective based on the 14 years you’ve spent in this business.

HOWARD: Well, it’s weird, when I started out, I wasn’t a little kid, I was 16 years old, but I still lived at home and stuff was taken care of. My parents prepared me and I had a place to stay and I had food on the table. When I started doing it, it was just more or less a hobby for me. Know what I mean?

CS: Right.

HOWARD: And then, at a certain point without me even realizing it because I just kept doing it steadily until I was an adult at a certain point I realized it had become my career and become my livelihood and I think that’s a nice way to transition into it because I never felt a lot of pressure to survive and to work and to get a job. Every actor has a little bit of that thing like “Oh wow, it would be nice to get this job” or that job or be nice to get some work by the end of the year or whatever it is but I guess I’ve just always sort of trained myself to have a more relaxed sort of feel about it, and like I said, transitioning into it from being a kid it was just already what I did ““ that made it easier.

I kind of believe that the more stress or desperation that you put on something the sort of opposite effect it can have so I just do my best to kind of think, it’s been fine up until now and it will continue to be fine. If this keeps going, great, and if it doesn’t then I have to find the next thing.

CS: That seems so realistic in a town that is filled with desperation ““ people scrambling to find the next thing to do. A project like this ““ it’s a great show ““ it must be nice to throttle that back a little and say “You know what, it’s been a good two years…” and being ravenous about it.

HOWARD: Absolutely. It’s been a treat for me to not have to do the whole pilot season thing the last two years. That’s always just sort of a game in and of itself. It’s nice to just see my friends, reading pilots and going to pilots ““ even if we’re not working on the show at the time I just know it’s coming back and it’s nice to sit back and skip that for a couple years.

CS: And on the subject of MY BOYS ““ it centers around PJ and it’s been described as SEX IN THE CITY with dudes ““ what initially attracted you to the series?

HOWARD: The thing that initially attracted me was Betsy because I had done a show with her a few years prior to this. Another comedy she created for the WB, RUN OF THE HOUSE, and it was also sort of loosely based on her family life and I had a blast doing that and I thought then that she was a great writer and a great boss. She’s such a nice personality to have around at work everyday. She always has a real clear idea of what she wants and she’s just goes about everything in such a nice and friendly and productive sort of way and that trickles down throughout the rest of the crew that works on the show and on the cast.

So anyway, I had a great experience with her on that and then I heard that she had a new pilot but I hadn’t read it yet. My manager sent it to me. They were going to bring me in for this Bobby role and I read it and I thought it was great ““ it was funny, it was real but wasn’t totally convinced that I was the Bobby character because I read him as the sort of leading man ““ love interest type of hunky guy that you read in almost every pilot that you read and I’m just wasn’t convinced that I was that guy. I’m usually ““ I tend to like more character-y kind of guy ““ the kooky best friend or quirky love interest ““ you know what I mean? And I had this conversation with Betsy and she said “Yeah, I had the same thought but we’re not making a soap opera here ““ we’re not making one of those shows with beautiful people playing those formulatic roles ““ we’re going to do something real here and something relatable and something sweet” so I came in and ended up reading with Jordan and we had great chemistry together and met with the studio and the network and ended up getting it and at the end of the day I was thrilled. I was convinced that I was right for it and could do it. Then I was very excited about it.

CS: One of the things about the program, the way I see it is that it’s different. First of all it’s a very fresh way to approach something like this where you see a lot of ““ for better or worse ““ on primetime network shows, sitcoms that are just that – pretty people. THE HILLS, LAGUNA BEACH, if you are not a 10 they are not interested. It’s interesting to hear that the writing here was all about creating something that was not necessarily about models and more about characters themselves so what’s it been like over the two years to see where you signed on the dotted line saying “Yes, I’m going to start doing this” and then to see how your character has progressed over the two years?

HOWARD: I really can’t complain about any of that. Like I said, in the past my sort of normal thing is a little more character-y…a little more goofy than Bobby is on this show and every once in a while I feel like I’m sort of the straight guy of the group because a bunch of the other guys on the show are very broad and very big and hilarious and I crack up at work all day watching them and I crack up seeing them on the show and occasionally I’m like, “Give me more jokes ““ I want the jokes.” But really, I can’t complain. I’ve had a lot of fun with the character. I’ve had so much fun getting to know everybody else. It kind of like the luck of the draw situations when you go to cast a show. None of us ever met one another except I met Jordana when we read together at one of our auditions but other than that I hadn’t met anyone until our first table read. So, who’s to say that these people you are throwing in a room together are going to click and have chemistry on screen ““ which we all do ““ and on top of that, who’s to say that we’re going to click as people and become friends and generally like to be around each other ““ which we do. So with all of that, I feel super lucky.

CS: In your years of doing pilots and being on television and being part of a series, do you ever find that the network tries to get too involved with the way ““ like you said, everyone has this natural chemistry with one another ““ has there ever been a time when there were too many fingers in the pot trying to force things just simply for ratings or what might look good on television?

HOWARD: Sure. I think that’s a danger on almost every television show out there. There are so many people involved ““ so many writers, so many producers, and so many people at the network who essentially have the final say on everything. That was one of the things that I had talked to Betsy about before we did the pilot because I have never done the cable thing before and I expressed a sort of concern to her “What’s with TBS? They’ve never done original programming before. What do I expect from that? What am I getting into?” ““ that whole thing. And she said “Kyle, look, I have the same questions” because she hadn’t done a cable show before either and she said, “All I can tell you is up to this point it’s been such a treat dealing with them as a network for that very reason.” From the beginning I think I felt so much less pressure from them and so much less of them trying to sort of distort this show she had brought them and she felt they were really giving her a chance to make the show that she wrote. That said, there is always notes from the network and there is always going to be and there’s always several people with several different opinions and that’s just sort of the politics with any show.

But I do think we are lucky at TBS to have a way-scaled down version of that ““ if you would compare it to situations at some of the bigger networks.

CS: Looking at it now, you’ve said the difference between basic cable and network and looking at your resume over the 14 years, is it really a big difference when you walk into work in the morning? Does it feel any different than network vs. cable? TBS vs. NBC or ABC, or anything like that?

HOWARD: To me it really doesn’t. As actors we don’t really deal with the network very much. There are always a couple people from the network at our table reads and we see them at parties and press things but for the most part, it’s really the writers that deal with that and have that sort of constant influence so, no, it’s not something I’m normally aware of that presence there as an actor just because we are not directly influenced by them as the producers and writers.

CS: If I had just one more question to ask it would be, I’m awfully impressed looking over and seeing how much work you have done in the past ““ it’s more than a lot of people could say for themselves when you see many other actors trying to make a go for it as a living. Where do you see where you’ve been the last 14 and where do you hope things go in the next few for your career?

HOWARD: I feel super lucky to have stayed this busy as I’ve had and, yes, my first goal would be to continue that. I just like to work and obviously on things that I’m proud of and that I like the people on and whatever and I’ve also been very lucky with that and have had very few bad experiences. I just like to be busy and I like to act so my main goal is to just to continue with that. For the last couple years I’ve started writing some and I’ve started directing a little bit and both of those things are things that I sort of want to explore more and pursue more in the future but I don’t have a real pressure on either of those things. As boring as it sounds, I just want to stay steady and keep going as it’s been.

CS: One more side note: I know what the answer will be but I’m going to ask it anyway ““ I saw that you are not a huge sports fan but being from Chicago and seeing how this interview is taking place in Chicago right now, is it true that you are a Cubs fan because everyone knows, White Sox fans are dirty and smelly and not very well educated.

[Laughs]

HOWARD: I’m totally a Cubs fan. I grew up in a family full of Cubs fans. My mom is from Chicago. My dad went to school in Chicago. Ever since I was a little kid, me and my sister were both diehard Cubs fans. I think she still has the card to the club and everything. We still go back there occasionally, me my mom and my sister went back last fall and went to a game and I’m not your typical sports guy and watch football and that type of stuff but I do love the Cubs ““ that’s been really fun for me and my family to have that tie in with the show ““ they love all the references. It also would be really cool if the Cubs did something amazing this year and we got to write that into the show as well. I think that would be really exciting.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

I love KUFFS.

No, it’s not an ironic statement done out of some hipster love of Leon Rippy, although that’s a good enough reason, nor does it have anything to do with Christian Slater but taken as a whole KUFFS was a movie that was pretty good, pretty funny and had enough self-awareness that it was a film I still enjoy whenever it’s on.

And that brings us to Ross Partridge.

Seeing that he had a part in KUFFS was a good enough reason to give a shout-out to the guy (I would just as soon knight anyone involved in that production as worthy of my praise) and the fact he mentioned he hadn’t heard anyone bring that movie up in an interview as we talked about what we were really there to chat about, BAGHEAD, filled me with a little glee.

It’s not so much that Ross has obviously achieved the kind of success most actors never will, he’s been in the business for over 15 years, and is in one of the most talked about movies of the summer that doesn’t have anything to do with a gravely spoken hero of the night. BAGHEAD, Jay and Mark Duplass’ feature follow-up to the wonderfully produced THE PUFFY CHAIR, deals in a realm of comedy and horror that seamlessly blends the two in a wicked mix of thrills and laughs. After seeing this film you can’t help but wonder where Ross has been hiding amongst the soft bellied actors who wouldn’t have the wherewithal to deliver as convincing of a performance as Ross does. He understood what the part needed in order to make you think, first of all, this could happen and, secondly, how to bob and weave in between moments that have you laughing at one moment and abject horror the next. There’s a certain subtleness that Ross delivers in a movie where there are only four main people on the screen.

He took some time to talk about the film…and then about KUFFS.

BAGHEAD is now playing in limited release

ROSS PARTRIDGE: So, are you ready to do this?

CHRISTOPER STIPP: Absolutely, are you ready?

PARTRIDGE: Yeah. I’m actually in a pair of shorts walking in the ocean now so I couldn’t be more ready.

[Laughs]

It sounds more glamorous than it is. I’m actually dealing with something in my apartment because my toilet just broke. It’s not that glamorous, I assure you.

[Laughs]

CS: First question out of the gate, how pleased are you with the reception that BAGHEAD has received in the press?

PARTRIDGE: Man, I’m completely thrilled. It’s funny because you never really know who is going to enjoy it. We were up in Nantucket Film Festival a couple weeks ago and I swear the median age of the audience was probably 65 and I kept thinking to myself “I don’t know what about the description of this movie would make you want to come out and see this” but I have a feeling it has something to do with where people are at and they just want to have a good time and all the people just seem to love it ““ even at that age. It’s been pretty remarkable how people have taken to it.

CS: One of the nice things about the film was that the trailer does it so well that what I do on my side, in addition to doing interviews and pieces what have you, I also review movie trailers…

PARTRIDGE: Are you kidding me?

CS: I have not seen the movie. I’m in a podunk, backwater called Arizona and I haven’t seen it. It’s on it’s way, probably, by burro.

[Laughs]

CS: Seriously, we get things weeks after ““ first, it’s New York, LA and then at the bottom of that list, I think, is Arizona.

PARTRIDGE: Doing interviews with people sometimes people haven’t seen it – I did a Q&A with Leonard Maltin up in Nantucket ““ he hadn’t seen the movie either and it was just kind of funny to do a Q&A with him.

CS: And you’re like, “Has anybody seen the film??”

[Laughs]

PARTRIDGE: Exactly.

CS: But the trailer sets it up so well that I jumped at this opportunity because not only have I been reading the press on it but the film itself seems like it does a lot with very little and that’s exactly what I want to have you talk about. When you read the script for this ““ you essentially have only four players in this production ““ how did you take it when you read the script ““ what were your thoughts about it?

PARTRIDGE: When I first read the script I was probably 20 pages in and I was like, “Are you kidding? There’s no way they are going to sucker me into this.” Meaning, how can we pull the wool over the audience’s eyes at something so obvious as some guy running around with a bag over his eyes and make it work. And then by page 40 I was like, “Fuck, they got me. I’m completely in.” It’s so obvious that it becomes not obvious and it becomes something that you think would become something else. That was my initial reaction but then it got me.

CS: What about the film? How does it marry together a horror film and something that seems like the human drama of four people ““ it’s about relationships from what I can glean ““ the relationship of these four people together ““ how does it mix the two so well? Usually with horror you have some really one dimensional stupid teenage pot smoking kids and…

PARTRIDGE: I think just as far as the construct of the movie itself goes I give most of the credit to Mark and Jay and it’s their type of film making. Their other film, THE PUFFY CHAIR, was a road movie but it was a relationship movie and it’s basically they set up a structure, a combination of things but really it’s a character driven drama with a mix of subtleties, with real conflict and the contradiction of characters no matter what the situation is.

That’s what becomes really interesting.

It is a hard thing to accomplish doing a horror movie that is really a comedy mostly all the way through and becomes almost a humanistic kind of drama at the end. It keeps people guessing ““ you are laughing all the way through and then all of a sudden it takes this turn and your start to scream because you’re scared and then you are laughing because you are screaming and you don’t really know what to do with yourself. It’s very interactive.

CS: How did you take a look at that when you read the script? You are thinking to yourself that there is no way people are going to buy into this and then you see”¦

PARTRIDGE: It wasn’t that I didn’t think people would buy into it ““ I thought that if they did it is going to be really a remarkable thing. It’s just a hard thing to conquer. And, as I read it I too was skeptical but then found myself completely immersed and completely had by it and thought if I’m reading it and it’s working then we can make it happen.

CS: What was important for you when you read the script and you had your own interpretation of what this character would be like? The brothers themselves, did they offer any sort of insight how they wanted you to play it?

PARTRIDGE: Absolutely. I came in, as all actors do, you prepare certain things and you kind of build a character. And, my character is an actor and there are certain strong elements of myself that I bring to the film for my character ““ I bring in more character type of idea and Jay and Mark were very quick to strip that down and make them as real and honest as possible. So I think it was Mark and Jay’s keen understanding of ““ trying to create characters ““ them as writers they create and directors with an audience in mind, characters that they feel that they know or feel they would like at the end of the day. Most all their characters are people that you really like. For an audience, it makes it more palatable to go along on a ride like this.

CS: The odd thing is that I’ve seen THE PUFFY CHAIR which is a brilliant little film and to see them take one strong leap into another direction and mix drama, comedy and horror together ““ were the brothers at all wondering how they were going to make this a scary funny film when they got down to actually making it?

PARTRIDGE: There are always those moments where I think Jay and Mark are incredible ambitious and incredibly talented. When you watch PUFFY CHAIR ““ this is those guys and this is what they do. They put you in a situation and it’s the complexity that gives it almost a documentary feel.

CS: And a bit about the earlier notion, the idea of improvisation, especially on a movie where the name of the game is horror…do you think as the brothers were doing it was there anything that they said to the effect of “You don’t look scared enough!” or “You’re acting like you’re not really scared…” ““ Was it sort of”¦.

PARTRIDGE: Certainly. They are extremely generous filmmakers. They actually dive into the instincts of the actors as much as the actors themselves. They are just very generous and are keen on people’s instincts so. The line in the sand is what becomes too intense and falls short of keeping the humor alive and I think for the most part we were always opting to keep the audience in the palms of our hands with as much humor as possible and try even in the most precarious situations, albeit a man stalking you in the woods there is conflict of character and the characters’ intentions that end up being funny because there is such a situation that no one has ever experienced so everyone is experiencing it for the first time.

CS: And then having to marry that with the actual human drama and your character and everyone you are trying to relate to, was it odd for you to try and balance three different ““ the scary, the funny and the dramatic?

PARTRIDGE: No. There’s nothing I could say that was difficult about making this movie. The balancing of our intention ““ like I said we work in a way there were times when I was doing a scene and it was going in the wrong direction ““ my character breaks down in the beginning and I’ve done this shit, and I’m not doing anything with my life and I’m fooling myself to think that I’ll ever make it or be anything in the movie and it became very mellow dramatic and just wasn’t working. And, I came back and Mark and Jay they tend to take little walks on the set ““ that’s the luxury of producing the movie yourself to take the time in between to figure out what’s working and what’s not working and they came back to me and said, “OK, the same scene but you are not thinking about your own life, you are thinking about buying a hybrid car.”

[Laughs]

So they are always creating new ways to get the same results but playing with our intentions. Not rehearsed. We never rehearsed anything.

CS: Was there any sort of fear that the ““ and I won’t draw the comparison – but I’ll just sort of illustrate it as I try to ask the question is that you know M. Night Shyamalan’s big reveal at the end that the guy was dead all along. Did you ever, or the filmmakers, think along the way that “Maybe we are trying to become too gimmicky” or that “This is looking like one of these things where the last part is that ‘He woke up'”. Do you know what I mean?

PARTRIDGE: Oh absolutely. Look, all along we were concerned with the reveal at the end if people were going to feel ““ the big concern was that we know that people know we have this big reveal at the end but just as long as we are responsible about making the journey up to that point making it worthwhile for the audience, then we feel that we will be OK. I think that was always in the back of our minds. We are kind of playing with the audience, having fun with the audience but as long as they are having a good time too I think they’ll forgive us. And that’s working out very well, doing it that way. Since you haven’t seen it yet, I won’t spoil the ending.

CS: I appreciate that.

PARTRIDGE: People are like, “What the f”¦” and then it’s not about the ending really, it’s about the characters and how they relate to one another ““ that’s the most important thing. The presence of the Baghead is the backdrop of the relationships and dynamics of the characters and how that’s been resolved ““ the audience was rooting for that even more interested in that under the umbrella of this guy chasing around the woods with a bag over his head.

[Laughs]

CS: How is it for you anyway on a project like this? I think if the budget were more I don’t think a movie like this could be made because it seems that this is a film that rewards attentive viewing. If someone took this script and gave it to a Sony or Warner Bros. they might be a little gun shy because they are trying to mix genres and they like products that are easy to sell and easy to market ““ this bridges a lot different genres as it were.

PARTRIDGE: Yes, I understand. It’s kind of one of those things where everyone wants it cut and dried and fitting into a certain mold and then someone comes along and does something that doesn’t fit into that mold and no one pays any attention to it and then that becomes the mold. This is certainly not an easy movie to market. I understand people’s concerns and reservations in this business about how to market this movie, but in the end I think it’s a movie that is so unique, it’s worth taking the adventure of figuring out how to market it because that in itself becomes part of the uniqueness of the profits of what this movie could be. You come back to the old adage that sometimes studios don’t give the audience enough credit.

CS: What are your thoughts as a working actor as a viable way for you to make a living? In trying to do a little research before I talked to you I was surprised when it looks like you started off in a movie which is one of my favorites of all time: KUFFS.

PARTRIDGE: Get out of here!

CS: I love that movie and I’m damn well embarrassed almost to admit it.

PARTRIDGE: Oh my god. That’s hysterical. I never thought anyone would ever talk to me about KUFFS ever.

CS: I love it. It is ““ and I won’t even call it a guilty pleasure ““ I just enjoy ““ like you said you sell the audience short ““ for what it was you’ve got Leon Rippy, you’ve got Christian Slater…

PARTRIDGE: You got Bruce Boxleitner.

CS: Yes…

PARTRIDGE: You got Ashley Judd ““ it was her first job too by the way.

CS: Oh really? I didn’t know that.

PARTRIDGE: Yeah, she played a pregnant woman somewhere. I remember them auditioning her and her walking into the room at the time I was probably 25 and thought, “This girl is spectacular.”

CS: Really.

PARTRIDGE: And then she went on and became huge.

CS: Exactly. And I enjoy that film immensely. And it looks like you did some stuff until ’93 and then there’s a 3 year gap. Little things here and there ““ what have you been doing to fill the time?

PARTRIDGE: It’s been hit and miss for me. It hasn’t been an easy ““ I’m still struggling right now. But I took some time off from acting and did a little traveling. I wrote a screenplay that I was working on for a couple years. I ended up writing and directing a feature film back in 2000 for the Toronto Film Festival called INTERSTATE 94 staring Kevin Dillon and then I started a film website with a friend of mine with Kevin Spacey’s production company. Then I was working with those guys and produced a couple documentaries and I was working the producer end of the business so I kind of jumped in and out of the business and that’s kind of how I met Mark and Jay. I was at the Nantucket Film Festival producing a screen play for one of the screen plays that was on our website and met them when they were doing THE PUFFY CHAIR and then got completely blown away by what they were doing and how resourceful they are and we became friends and one thing led to another and we started to collaborate on ideas and they had this script and they said, “You know what, we want you to do this.” So, we ended up doing it. I’ve been kind of in and out and in all different aspects ““ just chugging away at it.

It’s a tough business, man.

CS: Absolutely. It’s a testament to honest to God dedication in sticking with it.

PARTRIDGE: I think when you start out in this business you have an idea of how you would like your career to go and you try to find yourself doing”“ I do a lot of theater – I have a theater company here in New York and we produced a couple shows in the last couple years so I always try to get back and do more theater but obviously that doesn’t pay anything so you try to do a movie and put money on the boards. But it’s definitely a long road and you can’t quit when you have something you want to say and roles that you haven’t really been able to accomplish. At this point, BAGHEAD has been the reward of many years ““ Mark and Jay are two of the most talented people I’ve ever met in this business. I just got back ““ I co-produced a project called The DO-DECA-PENTATHLON which they are editing right now and hope to get to Sundance next year.

CS: And good luck with that. I like talking to people who actually have to make a living doing this and not just reaping the reward of a fanciful career. You are absolutely an inspiration.

PARTRIDGE: Thank you, man. And if you met Jay and Mark ““ these guys are the realist guys you’ll ever come across. Their talented and so unaffected and just love what they do. They love movies and at the end of the day to be around guys who love it and hope to do it they way we want to do it ““ they love making movies their way.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

Sometimes it’s hard to peg what will catch my interest.

Sometimes I don’t respond well to whatever the flavor of the hour is, I don’t like generic press releases telling me what’s the latest and greatest and I generally despise being pitched from someone who doesn’t know me. That’s why when I was asked to talk to the star of ABC Family’s THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER I was intrigued but not necessarily on board. I’ve been fanatical about my love for AMERICAN TEEN, my appreciation for the television series HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL and, as I stare down the raising of two young women I have a certain vested interest in keeping my finger on the pulse of the American teenager. To boot, the series co-stars Molly Ringwald and has the most peculiar tag on it which says “Viewer Discretion Advised.”

Say no more, I was down for the 15 minute interview.

Now, talking with Shailene Woodley, a woman nearly half my age (Man, am I getting old…), I got to know something that I’ve never been able to tackle before: the life of the budding actress. I’ve learned that the closer you get to those who are finding their way and finding their footing in this business the more interesting the conversation. Shailene has that kind of eagerness and excitability that many times gets snuffed out by the time many other actors reach that sort of cranky, jaded stage. One can hope that this woman can retain that same sense of wonder at appreciating those she’s been able to work with and who will see every job as a chance to actually learn something.

She was fun to talk to about what it is that this series hopes, and wants, to be and it’s also a series which could use a few supportive fans who can see what she expresses below. From sex, to pregnancy to the process of filtering what it does mean to be a teen in America today, Shailene talks eloquently on it all.

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER is on every Tuesday night 8/7c on ABC Family.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Fill me in on what the series revolves around.

SHAILENE WOODLEY: It revolves around teenage conflict with sex. It is very controversial in the fact that it talks about things that television has never talked about before as far as in teenage language. It explores these tough decisions to have sex or not have sex and the consequences in the end for that. I think it has so many good morals and standards for teenagers to live by and for their parents to realize what they’re teenagers are doing because a lot of times parents don’t realize what teenagers are doing when they are not in the home. I think it’s going to be very good for parents and teenagers alike to learn from and also to enjoy.

CS: And which network is this on?

WOODLEY: ABC Family.

CS: And that’s what I have in my notes but there’s one of the sticking points. I can only imagine with a network like this there is a fine line between family entertainment and whether it’s appropriate for everyone to watch. Was there any hesitation on the studio’s behalf to not make this a “Viewer Discretion Advised” kind of program?

WOODLEY: I know that ABC Family is expanding their horizons just in the fact that they are launching, not launching, that’s not the right word but more intricate adult like themes into their network and our show definitely mentions a lot of things that ABC Family has never mentioned before but I think it’s good because it mentions it in a way that is good for families. It doesn’t try to urge you to go one way or another or think one thing and not the other it’s very positive. Of course it’s a TV show drama so it’s going to suck a lot of teenagers in who love drama but it does have a lot of good messages and ABC Family is very respectful of that.

CS: Was there any hesitation on your part? Did you read the script first and say this was a flat out good series or was there things about this series which might have caused some second thoughts?

WOODLEY: Absolutely not. I read the script and fell in love with it. Brenda Hampton wrote it. She was with 7th Heaven which ran for 11 years and she is so good at what she does. She asks about what teenagers go through everyday. Everyday in America teenagers deal with divorce and deal with the pressure to have sex in high school or not have sex. The storyline in the script evolves around decisions. And it’s really important for teenagers to understand that what they do now will effect them in the long run. Not that they will regret it ““ it has nothing to do with regret. It just has to do with decisions made in the present.

CS: Molly Ringwald. She plays your mother…

WOODLEY: Yes. She plays my mom.

CS: Man, that makes me feel old. I remember 16 CANDLES, BREAKFAST CLUB and scads of others. She’s playing a mom.

WOODLEY: I know. She’s amazing. She’s so beautiful and so down to earth and such a great actress ““ I learn from her all the time. I am so, so fortunate to be able to work with her.

CS: When a series starts they usually have a premise where they want there characters to go. Is there a long term vision? I assume that you are in high school. Is it one year, two years and then you’re off to college?

WOODLEY: We are all Freshmen in high school except for 2 leads that are sophomores. Brenda Hampton did 7th Heaven for 11 years so I think in the long run she has ideas for 10 years from now. It’s hard to assume and hard to think that far into the future because we don’t know if the show is going to be picked up. We don’t want to jinx it or get our hopes up. Whatever. We try to just live in the now.

CS: As you go through the script process and the characters in the series, do you look at it and say, “I’m kind of this age, I wouldn’t talk like this. ” Is it real in your own reality?

WOODLEY: A lot of things are real for me and a lot of things are real for a high school. There are so many characters and each character has a different conflict. This one girl Adrianne who’s mom is never home ““ she’s home once every two weeks. So Adrianne resorts to getting attention from guys. And there’s another character, Grace, who is very religiously stuck to her religion, Christianity, and believes in abstinence. So every character right now in the script is being defined as to who they are. It’s very relatable to a normal high school – very relatable.

CS: The message ““ you’ve talked about the writing pedigree, 7th Heaven a really solid show that ran for many years and had a lot of good things to say, is this going to be the same way, always sort of a message based drama?

WOODLEY: It definitely has lots of messages but I don’t think that when a teenager watches the show they’ll come out of it saying I got that message. They are more hidden messages. It’s more like if you’re going to have sex, you’re going to get pregnant. That’s the way it goes. Brenda Hampton is able to take real life situations and put them into the show. I think a lot of the real neat things about the show ““ like my character, her parents are going through a divorce. All the millions of teenagers out there who’s parents are going through a divorce or have gone through a divorce can look at my character and say oh, this is the way she handled it. It’s gives them something to compare and contrast with and I think everybody needs that.

CS: Just the touchy subject of young kids and promiscuity ““ young kids having sex ““ is a touchy notion to a lot of people in this country today ““ did Brenda ever say, “This might be a lightning rod…We’re in an election season…They might point out that this is exactly what’s wrong with America?” That sort of thing?

WOODLEY: Who is to say it’s wrong or right first of all? You know what I mean?

CS: True.

WOODLEY: I think it’s all opinions but definitely a lot of controversy. I think it’s good for mothers and fathers to watch the show because they actually can see exactly what they’re teenagers are thinking and what they’re teenagers do when they are not necessarily looking. And I think there a lot of parents out there who are clueless. They judge before they know what the actual situation is. And I think this show will help that. And, teenagers as well. They judge their parents without knowing the full situation. So, there’s definitely a lot of controversy but Brenda writes it in a way that doesn’t provoke arguments. Does that make sense? It’s controversial but not provoking arguments.

CS: Looking at your resume and what you’ve done since ’99 ““ with the exception of the OC around 6 episodes ““ I shouldn’t say it’s hard ““ you would probably welcome the notion of being front and center by now ““ But being the lead, is this something that feels comfortable to you, being such a pivotal character in a series?

WOODLEY: I did a movie 3 years ago and I was in actually every scene in that movie and that role was bigger than this role. It’s definitely weird being a lead in a TV show ““ I’m not acting it’s my hobby and I do it because I love it. It’s so trippy and it’s humbling in a way to be in that position to inspire others and all that kind of stuff but then again it’s kind of weird. I’m doing phone interviews! I’m not used to that.

CS: On that same idea, is it odd growing up in Hollywood? You’ve done this since you were 8 ““ so now all these years later, is there such a thing as a child star turning into an adult? Is there like that problem area that some people can’t get over that hump or deal with things when they are so young?

WOODLEY: I’ve grown up in this industry knowing it’s a hobby. I’ve gone to public school my whole entire life. I’ve gotten straight A’s and stayed the person my parents know I am and I don’t have very many friends at all in the industry because I don’t really like to take part in “young Hollywood” I guess. Just because there are so many kids that really do get wrapped up in that but then again there are a lot of teenagers who are really down to earth and want a future in something other than acting as well and that is really neat to experience both sides of that. But, I definitely think that growing up in Hollywood has matured me faster than if I hadn’t because it shows me you definitely have to figure out who you are and stick with it. And that can be very difficult to do but I’ve found it very easy. I have such amazing parents and amazing family and friends that I really have a base that keep me going ““ keep me Shailene.

CS: This whole series is based on the American teenager. Has Brenda asked you about whether teens are really doing this or that or is she consulting with teens themselves to find out what is really going on?

WOODLEY: I’m not sure if she’s consulting with other teens but she definitely asks me and other people in the cast where would teenagers get in a fight or “Where would this happen if you were in high school?” or “Where would this happen if you were in high school?” or “How would you react to this situation?” and she definitely takes your input and it’s really neat because you feel like you are adding something to the show to make it more authentic and make it more like everyday life.

CS: And, I’m sure you hope the series keeps going and you can keep doing it for as longs as you can ““ Is it important but intrinsically when you take a script is it because you really want to do it or because right now you can’t be as choosy as you’d like and sometimes these things happen because you have to?

WOODLEY: It’s always because I want to all the time. I never do anything I don’t want to do and there are some many scripts out there and so amazing roles and so many roles that I don’t necessarily I wouldn’t want to do. It’s all about keeping your integrity and saying yes and no without hurting another’s feelings.

CS: And based on that, when I’ve talked to working actors in their 30’s they tell me that this is what they do to help provide for their families. How do you see your life in the next 5 years as you progress into adulthood to try to stay out of those things where push comes to shove you have to do something because you have to pay the rent this month?

WOODLEY: I want to go to college and I want to get a degree in psychology and interior design because I want to always have options. Acting is my passion, I find myself in it and I love it do death but I’m kind of a person that wants to try it all. And if that ever happened to me in my 30’s I would want to be a psychologist or “¦. I’m all about being about options and doing what you love and not sticking to one thing because of the money. Money isn’t happiness ““ happiness is doing what you love and then get your money from that.

CS: Where does that come from? You’ve probably worked on so many projects and seen the glitz and what people aspire to be and never make it at all. How do you keep it in check at such a young age?

WOODLEY: A lot has to do with my family. My parents are amazing people. My dad is a principal of an elementary school and my mom is a counselor at a middle school so education is something I have grown up to respect and enjoy. I have such amazing friends who are so down to earth. Everyone I surround myself with is very positive and very into nature and the environment and I guess just being able to be myself and go on a hike realize that we are just walking this earth with the same everything except the only thing that separates everyone is our mentality and if you can keep your mentality in line then everything just falls into place. It’s all about being positive and staying down to earth. Because really, what makes one person better than the other? Know what I mean?

CS: If I have one more question for you, when this series premiers, and people start talking about it, what’s the one thing you hope people talk about?

WOODLEY: I hope it pulls teenagers in to watch it. Anything that has the word sex in it or anything like that teenagers are going to watch it .and I hope they will be able to enjoy the drama and enjoy the laughs but also enjoy the messages that go along with it without thinking that we’re trying to preach.

By Christopher Stipp

Archives? Right Here…

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

I grew up on programming like this.

From the premise itself to the actual execution of it there’s a sense of appreciation for those of us who like to be talked to and not talked at that which at least saves this program being like so many other clones which dabble in pulp comic book wackiness. Even though THE MIDDLEMAN deals in a kind of sci-fi and comedy usually reserved for summertime blockbusters the writing is exceptionally good and that’s because it’s coming from one of Lost’s writers’ own, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, graphic novel. That said, I am blown away at how sharp it is.

You would expect that a show that is on ABC Family would be as milquetoast as it comes but the true delineation from what you would think it would be comes when you see how much thought has gone into creating a viewing experience that at once titillates a kid’s need for eye candy with an adults desperate need, that is, if we must watch everything our kids watch in order to be good stewards to the youths, to feel engaged as well. From fighting bad guys with big guns and enough wit to carry through an entire program admirably, it doesn’t hurt to be noticed by Variety for all the work as well.

Matt Kesslar is the star of this program and he is, without question, a real honest actor when it comes to knowing the difference between those actors who eschew television work and those who see opportunity in any project that is handled with enough care and thoughtfulness as this has. You’ve just got to root for a guy who is slugging it out in order to make a name for himself, professionally, and who is honestly just excited to be a working actor.

Not only can you catch THE MIDDLEMAN on ABC Family every Monday at 10/9c but you can also catch Matt and Javier at Comic-Con on Thursday, July 24th. To wit:

2:00-3:00 The Middleman – Creator and executive producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost) and The Middleman Matt Keeslar ( actors Dune) and Natalie Morales (CSI: Miami) discuss the bizarre world of The Middleman. Based on the graphic novels by Javier Grillo-Marxuach, The Middleman follows the surreal life of twenty-something Wendy Watson as she gets recruited by a top secret agency to fight comic book-esque criminals under the guidance of her straight-laced boss, The Middleman. Room 5AB

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: Thank you for making time for me. I appreciate it.

MATT KESSLAR: No worries.

CS: I’m kind of unsure, exactly, and I usually don’t usually ask the question “What’s the show about?” but since I haven’t been able to see the show itself and can really only read a little show description, can you tell me: What’s the show’s about?

KESSLAR: There’s actually a free download on iTunes now but The Middleman is a tongue-in-cheek look at comic book superheroes. That’s the genre we’re working in. Specifically, it’s about a girl, Wendy Watson who is played by Natalie Morales who is fresh out of art school and looking for a job and gets inducted into this secret crime fighting organization that is headed by a mysterious middleman character. And this crime fighting organization has been around forever and has been fighting evil ““ sort of like the X-Files characters. Paranormal characters, so there is a relationship of big brother/younger sister relationship between Wendy Watson and the Middleman, the character that I play. We’re a crime fighting duo.

CS: When you first initially received a script, listening to the premise, was there any hesitation on your part of was this going to be done well or more of a Sci-Fi Channel movie of the week, Mansquito kind of project?

KEESLAR: I didn’t know anything of the premise, I just got the script. So I didn’t know anything about the comic books or the writer or anything. I just got the script and came from ABC Family which in and of itself made me raise my eyebrows ““ is this a family show, what’s it going to be about but the level of ABC Family’s scripts and the work they have been doing has been progressively better and better and I did a television movie for them this summer which was very well written, so I read it bearing that in mind and I really thought it was a great script. It was very smart, very witty, but at the same time it’s a little silly, something that can be enjoyed on many different levels ““ little kids watching monsters type level and then also the adult allegiance to sci-fi series and references to a lot of different pop culture references ““ so it can be enjoyed on many different levels. I was very excited about the script and the moment I read it I thought my character, Middleman, was sort of a mysterious character. He’s just an interesting guy ““ very ultra clean living former Navy Seal crew-cut type of guy but also has some odd quirks about him. In particular the way that he speaks. He’s obviously very intelligent ““ just an interesting character to portray.

CS: You mentioned ABC Family. There seems to be a shift toward family entertainment type things that kids and adults can enjoy. Certainly, Pixar is one example of the kind of company who is a vanguard in making things for kids but not making it completely devoid for something for adults. Is that something that is important to you?

KEESLAR: It doesn’t really matter to me. Let me put it this way: I think good art appeals on many different levels of a person appreciating it. There are some movies, novels, art work, paintings, etc. that appeal only to adults and that’s mainly because they are adult themes that kids don’t have the experience of yet. However I think there are a lot of things that can appeal to children like classical music for example that can appeal to anyone. And I think that that’s one of the watermarks of a good piece of art that it can appeal to a broad section because it appeals to humanity, not just to a particular demographic. It’s not my goal to make a family-friendly television show but it just happens that a good piece of work appeals to many.

CS: You brought up the idea of super powers to super human these sorts of things, is the shooting schedule heavier because of the effects that are needed in the show or is there a reliance on practical effects in order to save on money?

KEESLAR: Well, there are effect shots in every show. Obviously we don’t have the budget of I AM LEGEND or something like that that we can make amazing effects. We are a television show on basic cable network and we wouldn’t be able to just pull off those kind of effects. But the nature of the project, because it is a tongue-in-cheek project ““ it’s a lot like the old Dr. Who and even Star Trek for example – those effects were pretty basic but got the point across of what we were trying to show what we’re going for. We have some special effects but if that’s the reason you are tuning in, it’s not the reason. The show is more about the wit of the characters and the relationships of the characters and as I said before the kind of tongue-in-cheek plot lines that are at once parodying to other sci-fi television shows, novels and movies.

CS: Right. And Javier comes from a pretty rich pedigree writing for television. Is there a lot of input from you ““ are you able to go back and forth ““ or are the scripts just being pumped out, one after another, in spite of your thoughts?

KEESLAR: So far there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity for a lot of back and forth although occasionally I’ll have an idea of a way I think will help the story be told better but at this point, Javier has ownership of this character ““ this project. When you start a show, the actor is coming in at the 11th hour, after the director has been hired, after the set has been built and the costumes are made, then they hire the actors.

So, really, when you start a show the actors know the least about the project but as the show progresses and different writers are brought in and different directors are brought in the actors are able to be with the character for a long time, eventually the actors know more about the character than anyone. So since we are just in the beginning of the process, it’s all about Javier and Javier’s vision which is totally fine with me. He has a brilliant, encyclopedic knowledge of sci-fi and pop culture so he’s setting up everything for us right now and eventually we will have more understanding of the characters and the plot lines.

CS: As you go forward, it only lists two episodes so far, is this slated for any number right now of episodes of the season?

KEESLAR: Thirteen episodes, so it’s twelve episodes plus the pilot are scheduled to air on ABC Family on Monday nights at 8:00 PM ““ that’s the slot it has right now. Greek is going on hiatus. They have an option to buy the back nine although ABC Family doesn’t typically do a 22 episode season with any of their shows so it will be the first time if they did decide to do 22 episodes. It would be the first time they have ever done that. Certainly for me I think the main thing is to put in 13 great episodes and see what happens from that. If that is something ABC Family is into and we have established an audience for, great. If not, then we have a really great back set of DVD’s.

CS: How do you feel about this thing starting in the summer as opposed to starting in the fall ““ is it one, less pressure or is it two, well it’s the summer or is it a misnomer ““ can a show find an audience despite when it debuts?

KEESLAR: I don’t know. This is my first television series so I’m not sure about that whole thing. Not sure when shows finds audiences or if they do. I think we have a bit less pressure because we are on a small cable network rather than being on a prime time television network. And, I don’t know whether or not Monday night is a good night or not. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t know much about anything.

(Laughs)

We’re shooting in the summer in a wool Eisenhower jacket which is what I wear throughout the series ““ it can be a little warm.

CS: Does the set feel like a comic book in a way or, like you said, does it feel like a Dr. Who in a modern environment?

KEESLAR: It definitely does have a comic book look and feel to it. There’s a super-villain in each episode. So, it’s everything from a mind controlled gorilla to a Peruvian flying pike that turns people into trout craving zombies. There’s an episode we are doing that a haunted tuba from the Titanic that played when people drowned in the icy waters of the Atlantic to anyone who hears it. Every plot line has some bizarre supernatural element and it’s certainly shot like a comic book. Lots of wide angles ““ not exactly like Batman and Robin ““ POW and stuff like that but definitely elements of a cartoon. For kids to enjoy as well as adults to enjoy. It has elements for both.

CS: As I was looking over your resume it is certainly filled to the brim with a lot of television work. Are people who are actors set on television work saying that this is where I want to make my stand or do you hope this translates into some film work?

KEESLAR: I don’t really care that much anymore. When I was starting off”¦.starting off in any profession you want to shoot for the stars. I wanted to be a big movie star or movie actor in any case. That was 17 years ago and now I’m married and have a kid and all I want is a job I’m happy to do and have enough money to feed my family. It really doesn’t matter that much anymore. I am perfectly happy doing this television show and if it went on for 6 years I would be ecstatic. If I had an opportunity to do a movie, I certainly wouldn’t turn it down. I think that there are great things about both. The nice thing about his project is that it shoots in LA which is where I live and I get to come home and see my family at the end of the day.

CS: That must certainly play into your decisions as you get into projects. Do you find yourself just shrugging your shoulders and say “What will be will be”?

KEESLAR: I think so. I think, it’s kind of hard to say, that I’ve come so close so many times to just having to go back to college and take up another profession because I ran out of money or didn’t take this job because it wasn’t right for me. I couldn’t even book an audition for three years. No matter how many I tried for I couldn’t book a single one. I’ve come so close so many time to just chucking it all and go back to school and trying a different profession. But I am more than happy to do whatever I need to do. I am excited about having a job and getting the opportunity to do what I do which is acting. And it’s an added bonus having this project to work on ““ Middleman.

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

I used to watch Days of Our Lives in college.

I don’t know how it happened or why I didn’t question my masculinity when I did find myself wondering whether Billie and Bo would ever end up together, whether Stefano could be done away with completely and why Diedre Hall ignited my Cougar Complex in such a randy way.

The fact is, though, that soap operas fill a niche within television and some of these serials have been launching pads for many A-list stars. Enough derision has been tossed in the way of many a reality show but programs like Days or General Hospital are largely devoid of criticism in many critics’ circles.

The pleasure was all mine when I talked to Brandon Barash, actor on General Hospital, the longest running serial on ABC and which also celebrates its 45th year as it churns through 2008. The series also nabbed its record making 10th Daytime Emmy for best Best Drama and snagged a lead actor award for Anthony Geary. What’s more about Brandon, and why I agreed to do the interview, is that his is a story of what it’s like to be a literal working actor. The amount, the sheer volume of learning his lines, performing incessantly, keeping his character focused and consistent, being present for every aspect of what he needs to do, is the very thing those who aspire to be an actor should listen to and take to heart.

He comes across as someone just thankful to be working in an industry where there are more willing bodies than there are parts to give. I won’t steal any of Brandon’s thunder but this is a story that’s worth reading and appreciating from the standpoint that there is more to life in LA for an actor than just those who have only a few pages’ of lines to remember; that’s just a day’s work for him.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: I’ve been going over your resume and you have a lot of episodes of General Hospital under your belt.

BRANDON BARASH: It’s been a busy couple months.

CS: How long does that represent?

BARASH: 80 some odd episodes.

I think 80 some odd episodes was up to a week or so ago and it’s funny you mentioned that because the other day I realized that it’s got to be close to 100 episodes which is just wacky. In the last 6 months, I’ve taped 100 episodes of this TV show.

CS: One of the reasons I wanted to do this was that I really wanted to get a good feel for the pace you work under”“ it just has to be maddening.

BARASH: Oh yeah. It’s very intense. Actually, before I called you I was sitting here running my script for tomorrow which is some I think 10 scenes and some 20 pages of solid dialogue and that starts tomorrow. I’m lucky enough to have the day off today but yesterday and the day before that and the day before that it’s the same everyday. You do anywhere from 2 to 10 scenes a day which is 4 ““ 20 some odd pages and you have to do your homework the night before and show up game day ready to play.

CS: How is that for you as an actor? Day one, when you were given the script, did you have any idea that it would be as intense a schedule that you could get used to?

BARASH: Well, I met with the writers before hand and thankfully, they warned me. They said we are going to start you out slowly but then we’re just going to run you into the ground. So I told them to bring it and they definitely brought it and it’s good. I’ve used the term so many times but it’s really actor’s boot camp. You get paid to do it and that’s the best thing. I get up everyday, I get to go play, I get to hone my craft and if I have an off day one day I can show up the next day and do a better job.

CS: It’s got to be liberating from a craft standpoint to, like you said, be able to refine or do other things, because there is always tomorrow.

BARASH: Actually, it’s so liberating ““ takes the pressure off of everything. Every good athlete has a bad game. Babe Ruth didn’t hit a home run every game, Kobe Bryant doesn’t lead by 30 points and win every game ““ it’s a bout showing up, trusting yourself and if you have a bad day, you get to do it again the next. It’s not so much you have a bad day, but you have another crack at it.

CS: For schedule sake, what’s the average day to shoot an hour long episode, what kind of production schedule are you looking at?

BARASH: Production schedule for the entire day can go anywhere from 10 to 14 sometimes 16 ““ 18 hour days.

CS: Wow.

BARASH: It’s a really rigorous schedule and we go at a grueling pace but I feel really lucky to be on the acting side of it because we have our makeup artists, our lighting grips and everybody–they are there the whole day, they don’t get to leave. We get to just show up, do our thing and go home but the flip side of that is we go home and spend several hours working on our stuff for the next day. So it’s pretty grueling.

CS: Talk to me about the actual soap ““ General Hospital has been a staple in American culture. I was in college, hooked on Days of Our Lives for reasons unknown, I don’t know why, but once you get into one of these things you can’t help but keep returning and returning again. Sometimes the plot lines are absurd, but what initially drew you to the idea of getting yourself hooked up or connected with a soap opera?

BARASH: I never thought I would be and, of course, there are all these untrue stigmas that go along with soap operas and soap acting, but what drew me to this one in particular…I have auditioned a couple times beforehand…but what drew me to this was my manager called me one day and told me, “We have the most perfect part for you. This young, brooding, intense but good underneath kind of guy.” And, “Are you interested?” I said, “Absolutely!” So I went in and met with them and literally not even an hour after I left the office I found out I got it and I couldn’t have been happier. I always felt that playing a part like this that has so many layers and so much going on ““ the surface of this guy, Johnny is really the tip of the iceberg. It’s really an honor to play him.

CS: And explain your character a little bit and how you fit into the grand plot line.

BARASH: Well, you have Johnny, who is the lead character of the show. He’s the Port Charles Mob Boss and I’m the son of the Manhattan Mob Boss but I’m kind of like the interim Mob Boss at the same time because my father is in the hospital injured and incapacitated. So that’s how I fit in. And of course I (Johnny) have a history with Luke and Laura’s daughter, Lulu. We have an off and on relationship since I’ve been on the show.

CS: You talked about that soap stigma ““ I’m curious what void to soap operas fill in the grand landscape of television because they’ve been around for decades. What draws people ““ from what you’ve heard and now you are hip-deep in it, why are people so hungry for these things?

BARASH: Well it’s definitely interesting. Our show has been around for 45 years so they definitely got quite a following and I honestly don’t know what the big draw is. I wish I could tap into the psyche of our two and a half million fans or how many we have, what draws them in everyday but I think the biggest thing is when people connect with a show or a character they see a trace of themselves or they see who they want to be or who they’ve always fantasized about being with and I think that’s a lot of the big draw is we have a lot of great people on our show who are extremely talented and they bring to life these characters that ““ it’s definitely intriguing to fans to be a fly on the wall everyday.

CS: And being a part of this, does it ever prohibit you from your other work like film?

BARASH: Yes, there are some contractual restrictions but I am allowed to do movies, which is great and I am allowed to do ABC TV shows but I’m not allowed to take off too long to do those but they do allow me one a year. I can do a movie once a year.

CS: Has your film work been limited just to TEN INCH HERO?

(Laughs)

BARASH: No. I did that…that was a tiny, tiny part ““ I did that and I did a film formerly called INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY which is now known as DARK MIND staring Chris Masterson and Lyndsy Fonseca ““ I actually played her boyfriend and I also did a pretty terrible film called CRASH LANDING.

CS: What made it so terrible?

BARASH: I’m not afraid to say this because he was just a monster ““ the director was incredibly abusive to the crew and the cast and I’m not one to make waves but I’m not afraid to say it from the moment we all showed up on set he was yelling every obscenity in the book and he was just abusive and it was an awful experience.

CS: What happens with that? How do you deal with that? You get a job and at the end of the day the people I’ve talked to, actors what have you, they say it’s fun work but it’s a job. How do you deal with someone that you literally have to put on a good face for someone who is trying to whip you?

BARASH: At the end of the day, like you said, it is a job and you have to be able to separate yourself from it. Millions of people go to work everyday and have bosses they can’t stand and they just have to put their pride aside and focus on just doing the job and as long as you can do that, you are in good hands.

CS: And the directors on General Hospital, how does, in your opinion, the actual technical stuff of directing, people say blocking and what have you, is it done by just a core group of people, directors on set?

BARASH: We basically have about 4-5 directors that rotate. They are the anthisis of the person I just described to work with. They come to work with great ideas, they arrive on time, prepared and at the same time they are not stubborn and set in their ways and they definitely take suggestions from the actors. We’ll talk before a scene, what do you see for this scene? Do you have any input? It’s really nice because their job is to direct us and tell us what to do and where to go but at the same time we are allowed to give input. It’s really nice. It’s a group effort.

CS: You said before that if you have input you give input, but do you have these things down to a science or is there a lot of room to really play with the format?

BARASH: Well, I think it’s a little bit of both. It’s definitely down to a science and if there wasn’t a format then there would just be mayhem everyday. But, at the same time you have to have the perfect marriage of the science and then also mixing it up. You have to mix it up or else the fans are going to lose interest. And, as an actor if I’m not going to work every day and creating life behind this character it gets stale, it gets boring and it shows on the screen.

CS: How do you do that from week to week – trying to make the character your own? Do the writers share with you? Usually when you go in to make a movie, you have a beginning, a middle and an end. But with a soap opera”¦.

BARASH: Absolutely. We don’t know that but the writers do a great job in writing the characters but at the end of the day I think it’s up the actor to lift those words off the page and lift the character off the page and lift the character into a real living being and I think its up to us as actors to really read the text and not just the lines. To be able to read what’s going on behind the lines can bring these characters to life. The analogy I like to use is the words…it’s just the tip of the iceberg. You see this little piece of ice floating on top of the water but what you don’t see is this mass underneath the water that’s holding up the whole thing. And that’s kind of like the character. What we say and what we say as people in everyday life is just the tip of the iceberg when in fact there’s a lot of stuff going on underneath.

CS: Do you ever get anything back from the writers and say now this is getting a little obnoxious? Some of these plot lines can get a little insane.

BARASH: I can’t. I’ve been lucky enough and am very happy with my story line. I’m not doing anything too absurd. I’m not possessed by the devil yet.

(Laughs)

I’ve seen on some other soaps that things can get a bit absurd but I think the big part of what draws the fans in is the silly circumstances these characters find themselves in. Like I said I’ve been very lucky in that the story line has been a lot of fun to bring to life.

CS: And the brand ““ the General Hospital brand has been around for a long, long time.

BARASH: It has. I just got back today ““ we celebrated our 45th anniversary or birthday, whatever you want to call it, on set and because we are filming that episode today. Like you said, General Hospital has been a staple in American culture this last half century which is just crazy to imagine that I’ve been a part of it. It’s awesome.

CS: I’ve noticed a lot of “A” list actors who got their start from soap operas. Is it like what you alluded to earlier that this is an actor’s boot camp, that it really does something to an actors or actress to take this seriously.

BARASH: Absolutely. It’s definitely that. You show up to work one day and you have 20 pages you have to eek out. You’ve got to give it your all. Pour your heart and soul into it. Then you have to go home and learn 25 pages for the next day and it’s very easy for us to fall into habits and just get by. But it’s another thing to really be hungry and make those strong choices and make your character stand out and really read between the lines and find that life underneath the water that I was talking about earlier. And I think that if you have that hunger to become a better artist and to constantly be honing your craft then absolutely – that’s what makes great actors because they teach you to work under the gun, make your choices and commit.

CS: How picky can you be with other roles that you find ““ has this opened some doors for you? Are people asking for you to come read a script or try out for their film based on what you’ve done on HOSPITAL?

BARASH: Absolutely. It’s opened all sorts of doors and I can be very picky with what I do now. I have to be incredibly selective because I can only do one movie a year so I’m going to be sure that that movie is going to serve me in my career in the best way possible. It’s a nice position to be in to turn things down.

CS: Of course.

BARASH: We should all be so lucky.

(Laughs)

CS: Looking back ““ taking stock of today and where you want to go tomorrow what is it that you hopes your next steps are beyond what you are doing today?

BARASH: Looking back before today, before I finished college I made myself a 30 year goal. That 30 year goal (I guess I will be 52) but my 30 year goal is to be able to write, direct star in my own films and I’d love to score some of those films and then if I want go onto Broadway and do a play for a few months. That’s the kind of career I want to have and live without regret and I know that if I keep working hard and take a step in that direction every day, I will achieve that.

I’m envisioning that that’s what I want to do with my life, that’s what I want to be and at the same time not getting overwhelmed with that big goal and breaking it down into basically little sections and not looking at the big picture. Basically, today is a new day what do I need to do today to get to my goal. That’s what it is about for me.

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

I’m awesome. I wrote a book. It’s got little to do with movies. Download and read “Thank You, Goodnight” right HERE for free.

To talk to Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys and not talk about the Beastie Boys was a lot less difficult than I thought it would be.

Sure, the guy has been a planetoid in my pop culture universe ever since “Fight for Your Right (To Party)” and I have put enough money into the hit machine that they’ve kept going for years to warrant a little shout-out to the music but this was all about Adam’s film GUNNIN’ FOR THAT #1 SPOT and I was respectful of that. Although, to be completely honest, and nerdy, about it, it was a thrill to be talking to the man.

The movie, opening today, deals with some of the best of the best of high school basketballers being invited to play in an “Elite 24″ tournament in Harlem, New York as Adam captures the energy and back stories of some of those asked to come out and play.

Adam’s love of music, basketball and the documentary style that made AWESOME; I FUCKIN’ SHOT THAT! all blend here for a cohesive narrative of eight of those players as the ins and outs of being so young and being courted by forces greater than the guys playing the game is an unintended rapturous commentary on the stale and fetid rigidity of NBA style of playing when you see how quick a game can be played when players are allowed to just be players.

Adam takes a back seat to what is happening on the screen and he allows his editing and presentation to genuinely reflect the lives of these eight players who love the game of basketball and see that this is their way of life and what they want to do. Forget about the odds, these men want to play basketball. As Adam mentions, even a casual fan of basketball will get something out this movie that even the most learned and steeped fan of the game can appreciate. When it comes to narratives this movie has a lot to say and the pace, the feeling and the style of this film reminds you that this isn’t your father’s HOOP DREAMS.

CHRISTOPHER STIPP: I grew up in Chicago so I have been a big, big Bulls fan my entire life and when I heard that you got involved in this documentary film, it really got me going.

ADAM YAUCH: Cool. Did you grow up in the Jordan-era?

CS: Yes, I did. Got to see them in the old Chicago Stadium.

YAUCH: That’s amazing.

CS: Yea, it’s amazing to me now to think about all those guys on the court and think about how they came up, and certainly being in Chicago I watched HOOP DREAMS and watching that gives me the perfect way to start out with you ““ have you seen the film and was that they way you wanted it to be told?

YAUCH: Yes, I have seen HOOP DREAMS and I actually loved that film but this is a pretty different approach because it’s centered around this All Star game and really focusing on the top high school players in the country and it’s a different approach than that. I don’t know but I do like that movie.

CS: These are high school kids, so when you are doing the film when you got all the footage that you wanted and you wanted to sort of capture the moment what was it like when you got back to the editing bay to take your film and go, “Now where’s the narrative?”

YAUCH: Well, there were some ideas going into it. Basically my game plan going into it was to focus on specific players so you would get to know the players before you see the game so you are more emotionally vested watching the game because you know them and you are watching them compete against each other and I had some ideas before hand about not just getting an understanding of the world of high school basketball, it’s what the pressures are like for high school players or what their rankings or different aspects of it so first thing at the beginning of editing was to just cut these different segments for a profile of the players and all these different segments come together in the first quarter, second quarter and then the steps after that was to get it all to move, to find the right order off all these pieces and refine them and get them to flow and pace out nice as a film. Actually, it’s a long process.

CS: I would imagine there was a lot of background filming on these different athletes and you had smaller narratives within that too. As a person just looking at all these guys who are trying to compete to hopefully move on ““ they’ve got the college barrier and the college barrier to the NBA barrier, when you were filming this getting to know some of these individual guys were any of them emotionally vulnerable in telling you something to the effect of, “I know the odds are really not in my favor but this is exactly what I want to do”?

YAUCH: No, none of them really say that. I mean on some level they are aware that the odds are stacked against them but I think these kind of guys that are the best in the country have the kind of drive that I think ““ I don’t know I’m sure they know that the odds are stacked against them ““ the way that they push themselves is intense ““ the way they use that competitive drive to make things happen is pretty wild to see.

CS: Did you notice at least in the smaller profiles that these guys have balance in their life? Do they realize that basketball is just a game or are coaches and outside influences are pushing these guys harder than maybe they should be?

YAUCH: I didn’t get that impression that their coaches are pushing them too hard. I got the impression that these guys, at least from my limited experience with them, that they really enjoy the game and want to be pushed and want to succeed in the league and they know what it’s going to take to make that happen.

CS: Are they just enjoying what they do?

YAUCH: I’m sure there are times when the pressure feels crazy to them and probably upsetting but I don’t know. I got the impression that for most of them they enjoy playing basketball.

CS: What was it like at Rucker Park to have all these alpha males ““ the best of the best ““ coming together and clashing ““ what is it like to see that sort of concentrated talent on the court?

YAUCH: It’s cool. It’s definitely cool to see the different styles of their games and the different ways that they blend or come up against each other. People like Brandon that loves to pass the ball you almost get the impression that he’d rather make an assist and score and guys like Beasley that just talks trash all the time to everybody on the court ““ it’s definitely interesting to see their different games and see how they make shit happen. While they all have the crazy competitive drive, it comes out in different ways.

CS: Right. And I read an essay by Chuck Klosterman who interviewed Steve Nash ““ Chuck intimated that Steve was more like a communist and that he’s really out there to help his teammates be better and that works for him because he makes everybody that’s on the court better and that’s his sort of strategy.

YAUCH: Got that impression with Ray Allen too.

CS: Do these guys, they have been doing it for so long, I think the influence for these guys to be the guy with the ball, the one to score the ball, I would imagine that it would take something for these guys to say, “I gotta help these other guys.”

YAUCH: Yeah. Definitely different personalities and it’s interesting to see in a game like this at the Rucker ““ an All Star Game ““ it really is all about individuality and kind of showing off a bit ““ your own skills more than about the team ““ like a pick up game. But it was interesting to see ““ a lot of them were like they were there at the Rucker and needed to show people what they can do.

CS: How was it for you as a filmmaker? You didn’t have the luxury in your film ““ the concert film you had a bunch of fans to make the film ““ it was just you trying to make it happen.

YAUCH: I was ““ I did have 8 cameras rolling so that it was really captured and positioned in places where I thought I could capture most of what was going on ““ being able to try different things ““ keeping certain cameras wide and keeping certain cameras tight and I think I had it pretty well covered.

CS: And obviously your presence wasn’t a big deal. Is the Rucker game something more of a private thing or were they welcoming to you to come in and capture the moment?

YAUCH: They were very cool about it. Greg Marius, who loves the Rucker, was very helpful.

CS: Did you come away with a different understanding ““ knowing about the Rucker before, did you have a new appreciation for basketball now that you didn’t have before you started it?

YAUCH: Yes. I was very fond of the game anyway but it gave me new insight into understanding the world of high school basketball and the path that these guys take at a much younger age and understanding that process a little more. It was interesting watching the NBA finals this year and the league that these guys are in thinking about them going through this process thinking about them when they were a junior in high school. Definitely interesting to think about the trajectory these guys are on at a very young age.

CS: Yes, they have college and they have to compete there ““ the best against the best and even the NBA it’s ““ just competitive sports ““ could have been football, could have been baseball but these kids are so young all it would take is just one knee injury to knock them out completely.

YAUCH: Yes, that’s certainly a scary thing ““ a strange aspect of the whole thing.

CS: I’ve seen you in other interviews that you’ve said you were a fair weather fan of the Knicks and that you don’t really like to watch the NBA on TV, so why did something like this really grab you to say “I want to make a film about it”?

YAUCH: I don’t know. I do love basketball ““ it’s an amazing game but I get a little bored with the structure of NBA games because of all the foul shots, time outs and the way they force commercials in every minute but I enjoy going to games and watching games ““ even strong players in the park just playing. I just thought it would be interesting ““ an interesting subject to look at the world of high school basketball.

CS: Do these guys look up to the Kobe Bryant’s and the big athletes?

YAUCH: They definitely do. When Ben Gordon and Jason Kidd were there these guys were psyched to be there.

CS: What do you think ““ there’s been a lot to do from Commissioner Stern’s idea that these guys should be in suits and ties to make these guys more presentable and then you have a lot of the smack talk, it’s corporate sponsorship for these pro athletes, is there a maturation process where it becomes like you said this rigid style of play where it’s about foul shots and what have you ““ do any these guys think they have to change their game in they expect to be in the NBA?

YAUCH: A lot of these kids grow up just playing in gyms and in leagues and playing for coaches and already on this path ““ the kids are kind of going in that direction for them it was fun to play ““ come to Harlem it was amazing for them. I don’t know. That’s why I like street ball ““ kids showing off.

CS: Something fluid about it.

YAUCH: There’s something fluid about seeing the anarchy of street ball.

(Laughs)

CS: The only thing I can compare it to, because you don’t see it on television, is the And1 tour that goes around. It might get bagged on a little bit but there’s something electric to see these guys doing things with the ball and their bodies that make it seem a little more alive and I’m at a loss for words to try and explain why that is the case.

YAUCH: I know what you mean. Sometimes the And1 stuff can get a little goofy but it’s cool to see that anarchy, that kind of freedom.

CS: Now, with the film being done, did you get everything you wanted to get out of this?

YAUCH: Yes. Even though a lot of these guys grew up playing in leagues, in gyms, they are aware of that style of play. You really see it in like ““ they were really psyched to come to the Rucker and play.

CS: How did these kids get selected to come to the Rucker?

YAUCH: There was a committee that selected them to come to the Elite 24 game.

CS: This game seems so underground, this is the first I’ve heard of it, not that means anything, but did these kids know about it?

YAUCH: About the Rucker?

CS: Yes.

YAUCH: They definitely know about it. This was the first annual Elite 24 game, but these kids knew about it and were psyched. There is so much history it’s like the basketball mecca. The street ball mecca. To come and play meant a lot to these kids.

CS: Did you get to be on the court and play one-on-one with any of these guys?

YAUCH: Yeah, I was shooting around with them at the Rucker.

CS: How’s your game?

YAUCH: My game’s alright but I’m not making myself eligible for the draft this year.

(Laughs)

But I had fun playing.

CS: Did you – being in front of it ““ was it just a sight to be in front of these guys just being themselves? I can’t imagine what a full street ball game like this would be ““ I’ve just never been around that kind of raw talent.

Yeah. There was definitely something cool about looking at these guys ““ how good they are. They are just unbelievable players and you have to keep reminding yourself that these are high school students. You look at Lance Stephenson standing there and he’s like 6’5″, built like an NBA player and you have to just remind yourself that he’s 15 years old. The way they move and play they look like they are already in the NBA.

CS: Guys like LeBron James got picked up when he was quite young. Do these guys think they can bypass the college system and go right into the NBA like LeBron did?

YAUCH: I’m sure a lot of them would love to but they made it a RULE not too long ago you have to go to one year of college to be eligible for the NBA. So, they all have to do that but now a few of these guys are old enough and have done one year of college and made themselves eligible so Jerryd Bayless, Kevin Love, Michael Beasley, Donte Greene, these guys have made themselves eligible NBA draft happening on June 26th. Most of them will be in the top ten lottery pick.

CS: I know I only have a minute left but I did want to ask, you’ve finished your film, it’s showing, it’s bowing this week. What do you hope, when people watch this, people will get out of watching your film?

YAUCH: My hope from the beginning going into it was this film would be interesting to people who were obsessed with basketball and knew everything there was to know and that it would be interesting to people who don’t even like sports. That it would be interesting to look at this culture, this world, this lifestyle”¦and from what I can tell the people’s reaction I’m hearing is that it does work on both those levels.