Max Winkler switched coasts for his feature film debut. Born, raised, and educated in California, he envisioned the ambiance of the East Coast as the perfect setting for the comedy of idealistic love gone wrong that he directed from his own script. The interview reveals a man obsessed with details and with a respect for… Read More »
Richard Linklater Would Like You To Meet BERNIE
Richard Linklater makes films that are as varied as they are piquantly challenging. With BERNIE, based on a true story, he considers a good and universally beloved man who does a bad thing to a spiteful and universally despised woman. When I spoke to him on April 20, 2012, the whole idea of justice and… Read More »
Dylan Kidd and ROGER DODGER
With ROGER DODGER, writer/director Dylan Kidd has taken the war of the sexes in a whole new direction, one that disempowers the male of the species. It’s anti-hero, the cynical and glib Roger, fancies himself a major player in that war. Yet in the course of one awful day which culminates in Roger trying to help… Read More »
Tom Dolby Savors the LAST WEEKEND
It was only right that when I spoke by phone with Tom Dolby about LAST WEEKEND on September 12, 2014, he was on his porch overlooking a lake. LAST WEEKEND, which Dolby co-directed with Tom Williams from his own script, is set on Lake Tahoe during an emotionally tumultuous Labor Day Weekend for the affluent Green family. One of the… Read More »
Charles Shyer Rethinks ALFIE
It takes a lot of moxie to make re-make a classic, and it takes a certain flair to do it successfully. Charles Shyer demonstrated both as the director and co-writer (with Elaine Pope) of the iconic 60s classic about a charismatic cad. Rethinking the story to reflect a 21st century sensibility and casting Jude Law… Read More »
Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris & LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
Johnathan Dayton and Valerie Faris are partners is life (as in married) and in business (as in successful makers of commercials for umpteen years). Maybe it took such a combination to bring LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE to the screen without slighting either the family angle of the story, or the sly visual vocabulary used to portray… Read More »
YOU KILL ME Say Tea Leoni & John Dahl
It’s only right that the interview in support of an offbeat, quirky film should also qualify as both offbeat and quirky. John Dahl and Tea Leoni were in rare form when we talked on June 15, 2007, waxing eloquent on such topics as acting as a virtual tennis match, the invigorating qualities of coffee, and… Read More »
INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS Courtesy of Brenda Blethyn and Cherie Nowlan
The battle of the sexes takes a decidedly different turn in INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS, and so when I talked with its star, Brenda Blethyn, and its director, Cherie Nowlan on June 25, 2007, how men and women react to the film was top of my list of things to ask them. Along the way, Blethyn bragged… Read More »
Sandra Nettlebeck Cooks Up MOSTLY MARTHA
Inevitably, food was going to come up while talking with Sandra Nettlebeck, and when it did, she helped me to understand the different religions, as she put it, of French and Italian cooking when we chatted about MOSTLY MARTHA in 2002. Being in charge, identifying blind spots, and the separating herself from her characters were… Read More »
John C. Reilly Makes Beautiful Music in CYRUS
When I spoke with John C. Reilly about CYRUS on June 22, 2010, the first thing I wanted to ask him about was why the improvisational style used by the Duplass Brothers was so appealing to him. The script is more like an outline, with the actors creating the dialogue on the spot, and the first take usually… Read More »