The only room to be found in the shared suite was the cramped bedroom, and so Hartley, Posey, and I stretched out amid my recording equipment on the bed to chat about art, politics, and the effect of eye contact on and off the screen.
Richard Berge & Bonni Cohen Recount THE RAPE OF EUROPA
Richard Berge and Bonni Cohen spent years translating Lynn H. Nicholas’ book of the same name into a documentary. Hence, when I spoke with them on May 14, 2007, they had a wealth of stories to tell about both the subject matter, the Nazi plan to loot Europe of its art treasures and to destroy those… 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 »
Fredi M. Murer on VITUS
Fredi Murer, a courtly gentleman given to performing deft sleight-of-hand for his interviewers, tapped his own childhood when he created VITUS, both the film and the character. Murer himself was not a genius in the classroom, as he tells it, but he did have a creative streak that landed him in all sorts of usual scrapes. When we talked… 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 »
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright are Cool as HOT FUZZ
It was the end of a grueling day for Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright when I talked to them on April 3, 2007. Fatigue notwithstanding, these guys were primed for a chat filled with banter and philosophy as they trekked from the heights of filmmaking in theory and in practice, to the silliness,… Read More »
Jeffrey Blitz and Reece Daniel Thomspon Explain ROCKET SCIENCE
When I spoke to Jeffrey Blitz and Reece Daniel Thompson on May 4, 2007, the buzz about ROCKET SCIENCE had just begun. In town for a screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival, they had just completed a sword-buying trip to Chinatown before our scheduled appointment and worries had set in about how the swords… Read More »
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Matthew Goode and Scott Frank are on THE LOOKOUT
Scott Frank’s script for THE LOOKOUT had been around for a decade or so before he found a way to have it made with him as the director. When I talked to him and co-stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Matthew Goode on March 14, 2007, he seemed to think it was worth the wait. With both… Read More »
Leila Conners Peterson on THE 11TH HOUR
When I talked with Leila Conners Petersen on August 8, 2007, the thing I most wanted to discuss was how her film, THE 11TH HOUR, >wasn’t< a rehashing of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Both deal with humankind’s effect on the environment, but Petersen and her filmmaking partners, Nadia Conners and Leonardo DiCaprio, wanted to do more… Read More »
Andrew Niccol on Creating SIMONE
In S1M0NE, Andrew Niccol (GATTACA, THE TRUMAN SHOW) presents an intriguing and, for SAG members, a somewhat disturbing glimpse of what the future of entertainment might be. In it, a computer-generated actress becomes a pop-culture sensation for a public that doesn’t know that she’s a collection of pixels. What that says about reality and perception is something worth… Read More »