Jason Reitman is smart, puckish, and thoroughly delighted with his first feature film, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. He should be. The adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s skewering of politics and political correctness is a perfect reflection of its writer/director. There is something to offend just about everyone in THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, even foodies, and that’s… Read More »
Gavin Hood Tells the Story of TSOTSI
Gavin Hood felt that there was more than just an Oscar ™ riding on the success of TSOTSI, based on the novel by Athol Fugard and South Africa’s official entry for the 2005 Best Foreign Film Academy Award ™. It’s one of the many things we talked about when I interviewed him on February 10, 2006. … Read More »
Paul Weitz Lives AMERICAN DREAMZ
Paul Weitz has gone from teen farce with AMERICAN PIE to sophisticated and thoughtful slices of social commentary with ABOUT A BOY and IN GOOD COMPANY. With AMERICAN DREAMZ, though, he’s created a tidy synthesis, combining inspired silliness with a satire that cuts to the bone of American culture. When I talked to him on… Read More »
Chris Paine & Dean Devlin Ask WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?
I didn’t know where to begin when I spoke with Chris Paine, writer and director, and Dean Devlin, producer, of WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? on April 21, 2006. The film had raised a host of issues that had somehow been overlooked by the mainstream press, and what it had been that made them want to make… Read More »
Armistead Maupin & Patrick Stettner Pay Attention to THE NIGHT LISTENER
The story on which Armistead Maupin based his novel and now film THE NIGHT LISTENER proves the old axiom that truth is stranger than fiction. When I spoke to him and to the director of the film, Patrick Stettner, on July 26, 2006, I was curious what conclusions they had drawn about the human capacity to… 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 »
Neil Burger Unveils THE ILLUSIONIST
When I spoke with Neil Burger on July 31, 2006, it was impossible to not start with his previous film, INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSASSIN. Both that film and THE ILLUSIONIST deal with what is real and what is a clever bit of misdirection. His newest film, though, boasts not just a fiendishly clever plot, but also… Read More »
Guillermo del Toro Penetrates PAN’S LABYRINTH
Maybe it was the season, but Guillermo del Toro seemed positively jolly when I spoke to him on December 15, 2006. PAN’S LABYRINTH was earning well-deserved Oscar(tm) buzz, and had won the San Francisco Film Critic’s Circle award for Best Foreign Language Film just four days before. The obvious place for me to start, having… Read More »
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Observes THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Das Leben der Anderen)
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck had always been fascinated by the Stasi, the East German secret police who took spying on the public to an almost absurd extreme. During his meticulous research about them for THE LIVES OF OTHERS, he became something of an expert on their procedures, consulting not only scholarly experts, but also by including on his… Read More »
Mark Polish Writes The Declaration of Independent Filmmaking: An Insider’s Guide to Making Movies Outside of Hollywood
Along with his brother, Michael, Mark Polish has turned out intriguing films that explore off-kilter universes, from conjoined twins (played by the brothers themselves) in TWIN FALLS IDAHO, to a rapturous limbo of reality and fantasy in NORTH FORK. Hoping to both warn and to inspire other filmmakers, they have co-authored, with Jonathan Sheldon, The… Read More »
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