Movie Interviews

David Twohy Looks Back at the Making of ‘Riddick’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, filmmaker David Twohy has left a strong impression on moviegoers everywhere. He got his start as a screenwriter on “Warlock,” “The Fugitive” and “Waterworld,” and he eventually proved himself to be an effective director with the underrated “The Arrival” which starred Charlie Sheen as an astronomer who discovers evidence of intelligent alien life, and the equally underrated submarine supernatural horror film “Below.”

But the movie Twohy is still best known for is “Pitch Black” which had him joining forces with “The Fast & The Furious” star Vin Diesel who played the dangerous criminal, Riddick. Its budget was only $23 million, but Twohy and Diesel created a movie that was intensely exciting and which made the most of its modest budget. So strong was the cult following for “Pitch Black” that the two later made “The Chronicles of Riddick” which had a budget of over $100 million. While the sequel was not a commercial success, fans were still craving another Riddick movie and kept pushing at Twohy and Diesel to bring this anti-hero back to the silver screen.

Fans got their wish when “Riddick,” the third movie in the “Pitch Black” franchise, opened in theaters on September 3, 2013. After dealing with a big budget and a Hollywood studio, Twohy and Diesel ended up raising the money independently to make this particular sequel a reality and maintain full creative control over it. It follows Riddick as he is left for dead on a desolate planet and ends up being sought out by bounty hunters who are prepared to bring his head back in a box. But soon they are stalked by vicious alien predators, and they are forced to join forces with Riddick in order to survive the long dark night.

I was lucky enough to attend the “Riddick” press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, California just before this sequel was released back in 2013. Twohy talked about the challenges of making this particular movie as well as what it was like working with Diesel who had just received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Question: How did the final film compare to what you originally envisioned, and were there any big challenges you faced in terms of the look of the film?

David Twohy: Did the finished product end up like we had imagined it? Yeah, it does because really, as a responsible filmmaker, I have to imagine the whole movie. After I script the movie, I have to storyboard it out, I have to budget it, and I have to understand if I can afford all those visual effects or not. So more than anybody, it looks like the movie I had imagined, sometimes better, sometimes not quite as good depending on how we execute the visual effects. But yeah, I’m not surprised by it because it’s what I do and it’s what I set out to make. Sometimes Vin, who is not privy to everything that’s in my head and all the work that I’ve done with the concept artist (and he likes it that way), is surprised, but I don’t have the luxury of being surprised. I can’t be surprised by anything in the filmmaking process if I’m doing my job right. So, it’s very much the movie we set out to make, and we set out to make something that would fit into the budget that we had ($38 million). I think you all know that this was an independent movie this time out instead of a studio movie. So, knowing that we would have limited resources, Vin and I sat down in his kitchen and we came up with a story that would fit that budget. It couldn’t be as grand as the last movie, and it had to be more contained. It feels more like “Pitch Black” to some people. It probably is more like that at least in its tone and scope (we limited it to one world), but it’s very much the movie we set out to make, and there were not that many surprises for me along the way.

Question: It was interesting to see that Dahl (played by Katee Sackhoff) was not a love interest in this movie. Usually, the girl ends up being the love interest of someone, but instead she was this independent woman who can hold her own. Can you talk about casting Katee and why you chose to make her this independent woman who can take care of yourself?

David Twohy: I remember Ridley Scott telling me this story about the original “Alien;” Ripley was scripted to be a man, and he decided to make her a female thinking that these parts should be gender-neutral. I’ve always remembered that, and the women in my movies do stand up on their own two feet and are not pieces to anybody, and I like that. In terms of Katee, she was the first person to read for the role of about a hundred actresses, and that I remembered her throughout the whole process speaks highly of her. So finally, I said, “Who was that girl who came in the first day, she had blonde hair and she kind of killed it? Who is she?” They said, “Oh that’s Katee Sackhoff from ‘Battlestar Galactica.'” Well, I didn’t really follow “Battlestar Galactica,” so I didn’t even know her from that, so I’m not casting or for that. I just thought she was the best available actress so we cast her like that, and I’m so glad we did because she was a joy to have on the set. And clearly, like the character, she holds her own amongst the men and swears worse than any of them. Her off-screen lines are just as good.

Question: What made you bring this franchise back to R-rated territory after the PG-13 “Chronicles of Riddick,” and is there going to be another “Riddick” anime, game or ride?

David Twohy: (laughs) A Riddick ride? Well, actually we are doing some D-Box seats in theaters, the motion platform seats. I just experienced them for the first time and it’s the closest thing to a Riddick ride as you’ll get. It’s watching the movie, but it’s motion based. I don’t know what that in between thing will be, but we embrace them, and I would like to do more. We published the motion graphic novel as well which helped with the back story of how Riddick went from King of the Necromongers to a man alone on a planet. We embrace those things, and it would be great to get another game off the ground, but those things are very hard to launch. They are costly and they need a lot of lead time, so it’s hard to sync those games to the release of a movie. But we would like to do another one and we are talking about it. The R-rated movie was important to us because, as a filmmaker, I have the flexibility I need to do what I want. With PG-13 I feel like I’m pulling my punches either in the script or working with my actors on the set and coming up with stupid analogues for the word “fuck.” I’m getting tired of that. It gets to the point where people aren’t talking like people talk anymore. Just because I don’t want to pull my punches anymore, I felt this was important to me. It also plants a flag in the ground for our fans as well and lets them know we are true to the character and the nature of the series. The reason for PG-13 last time is obvious. It was because we were a big studio movie funded by a big studio, and to minimize their risk they wanted to branch out to what they think is the widest possible audience and they think that’s PG-13. There is actually a sound reason for that, but Vin and I feel more comfortable back in the R-rated universe.

Question: In “Riddick” you deal with the Necromongers briefly and just move on from there. Do you plan on going back to that story thread if this movie is successful enough to merit a sequel?

David Twohy: Yes. If it is successful and if we have a flexibility to go wherever want for the next movie, and Vin and I are talking about two more movies and probably just that (it would be good to do a closed ended franchise rather than a franchise that just keeps spitting them out just to spit them out), we would like to get back to the Necromongers. I am currently cutting the director’s cut DVD right now which includes more of an epilogue which has Riddick returning to the Necromonger empire and actually setting things right there in terms of the guy who abandoned him on this planet and left him for dead, and his search for Vaako (played by Karl Urban) who he thinks has the answer to where his home world lies. The next few weeks will be telling for us, and we want to pay off the fans who have stuck with us all this time. They have never stopped talking about this movie to us, and it was them who made us open our eyes and say it will be honestly irresponsible to leave it like it was and not make another movie.

Question: How did you and Vin get back to the savagery of the “Pitch Black” with this one and made it look like “Conan the Barbarian” as opposed to “Conan the Destroyer?”

David Twohy: That was important too, and it was also part of the character who thinks at the story’s outset that maybe he feels that he is gotten a little slow, a little soft, who has dulled his own edge as King of the Necromongers and wonders what happened to him. Did he commit the greatest crime of all? Did he get civilized? So, the exploration of him trying to get back to basics to find his edge again, to get back to the lean thing he was, it’s a good evolution for Riddick and it’s also sort of a parallel to what the franchise has undergone

Question: What do you like most about collaborating with Vin Diesel?

David Twohy: That he doesn’t shut up (laughs). He’s a guy who aims high and pushes me to aim high. He’s a guy who dreams and thinks that anything is possible, and me I’m more of a practical guy. I try to be a responsible filmmaker, living with the constraints of what I’m given to make a movie with, but Vin doesn’t think like that. Vin thinks like anything is possible and he thinks big. Sometimes that’s almost a folly but other times it can be inspiring and it can open up my ideas to other ways of doing things. What’s great about it is that he’s a guy who has all the confidence in the world and always has ever since I cast him as just a guy, an actor, in “Pitch Black.” But he had an unshakable confidence in himself even back then, and he just seems to see the future or will it into being (laughs) so that he can say “hey I was right all along!” He’s great like that and he’s inspiring like that. Just about the time you think that Vin Diesel is a guy with big muscles and a big head and your kind of willing to dismiss him as that, you realize that this is a guy with a big heart too. He dreams no small dreams, and that’s good and that rubs off on everybody else he works with.

Question: Can you talk about crafting Riddick’s voiceover in the movie?

David Twohy: Here’s how I craft it, I sit in front of my computer screen and I write it. Then I’ll rewrite it, I’ll tweak it, I’ll rewrite it and then I’ll show it to Vin and he’ll say I’m digging this or I’m digging that. When he gets in front of a microphone, he’ll say 90% of it, but every once in a while, he’ll just stick in a line. I later find out it’s because it’s too similar to something else he said in another movie. We just work it out and then I’ll spitball three alternatives and when something pops up that he likes we’ll just lay it down. We’ve built a good level of trust with each other lately. As opposed to the voiceover in “Blade Runner” where it was just filling in stuff that you needed to know about the world and it wasn’t character-based, the one in “Riddick” is character-based and it comes with Riddick’s voice and how he sees the world. It takes a while to get it right.

Question: Riddick’s relationship with the puppy is one of the best things about this movie…

David Twohy: By the way, every woman who has interviewed me today talked about the damn puppy (laughs). I cut a trailer of this movie that was all about Riddick and his relationship with the dogs and I gave it to Universal and said, “Hey maybe we want to broaden our audience a little bit and make sure we get the women in here, you know?” Then they go, “It’s a little soft for a Riddick movie Dave.” God, I wish the marketing people were listening to this! I’ve been trying to tell Universal, I’ve been trying…

Question: Since the puppy was created with CGI effects and has a lot of interactive scenes with the actors, what did they have to work with on the set?

David Twohy: All the actors have plenty of reference whether its concept art which they can paper their trailers with or I’ll show them on the morning of the shoot. The puppy has stand ins. For the puppy, I got a 12-pound silicone puppy that looks like the real puppy. It’s furred, it’s got glass eyes and everybody wants to hold it, and it just feels right. The puppy made it into the movie in a couple shots. Plus, Vin has big dogs too, so more often than not he’s telling me how to greet the dog and how to pet it (I’m a cat guy, Vin’s a dog guy). So, he says, “No you don’t pet it like a cat. If you want to say hello to your big dog, you slap it on the shoulder.” So that’s what we do in the movie.

Question: What were the differences, both positive and negative, that you found making this movie independently versus working on a studio movie?

David Twohy: Mostly positive. We shot it in 48 days which was pretty streamline. During postproduction I showed it to an audience of 50 or 60 people and didn’t score it, didn’t test it. I just wanted to know what confused them so I could go back and clear up the confusions. I showed one or two cuts to Vin and then I locked the picture. That is as atypical as it gets in the professional filmmaking world because a lot those movies you saw this summer were focus grouped, tested, scored, recut, reshot, recut, tested, scored, and after a while there is a factory-made feel to those movies. So hopefully something this simple, streamline and filmmaking pure results in something that’s at least different and maybe better just in the handcrafted sense of it.

Question: So, would you say you had more fun with less money in some ways?

David Twohy: Yeah, we did, and I’m sure most independent filmmakers will tell you that. The downside is that we staggered to the starting line. We were up, we were down, we were up, and we were down. It all comes down to, is the paperwork closed? Is the bond closed? You have to close the bond to get the bank loan. It’s a lot of stuff I don’t know much about, and I wish it didn’t affect my life but it does. We started and we were shut down, kicked out of our studios, the doors locked. We had to come back three months later and pay our bills and start over. So those are the vicissitudes of independent filmmaking.

“Riddick” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD and Digital.

As this interview was conducted in the past, it may contain outdated information.

Click here to check out my exclusive interview with David Twohy which I did for We Got This Covered.

Exclusive Interview with ‘Sweet Dreams’ Writer and Director Lije Sarki

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

There are many movies out there about addiction issues and the rehabilitation which comes about when some finally can take no more pain and punishment. Those which come to mind include “Clean & Sober,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,“ “I Smile Back” and “The Way Back” to name a few. Now we have “Sweet Dreams” which stars “Jackass” alumnus Johnny Knoxville as Morris, a man who has finally hit rock bottom when it comes to drugs and alcohol, and we watch as he enters a sober living facility named Sweet Dreams where he meets others struggling with the same demons. While there, he gets recruited to coach the rehab center’s softball team which he is at first reluctant to do, but it gives his life a direction and purpose he was previously lacking.

“Sweet Dreams” was written and directed by Lije Sarki whose previous films include “Concrete Kids” and “Alphonso Bow,” and he was one of the producers of the indie hit “The Peanut Butter Falcon.” Like the characters here, he has also struggled with addiction issues but has since found his way past them and very much enjoys his sober lifestyle. With this film, he wanted to present the sober living, anonymous meetings and 12-step programs in a different way. Whereas most movies of this sort tend to be dark and depressing, he wanted “Sweet Dreams” to be more uplifting and to show how recovery can be fun and a joyous thing even after you have hit rock bottom. What results is a motion picture with a lot of heart, and you can see this in the writing and the performances, particularly Knoxville’s.

I got to speak with Lije recently about “Sweet Dreams,” and we talked about how the challenges he had in shooting this film (he only had 20 days), and of how he made this one stand out from so many other movies like it.

“Sweet Dreams” is now playing in theaters and is available to own and rent on digital platforms. Please check out the interview below as well as the trailer.

Exclusive Video Interview with ‘Sweet Dreams’ Stars Bobby Lee and GaTa

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“Sweet Dreams” is one of those movies coming out underneath the radar, and it deserves more attention than it is currently getting. Johnny Knoxville stars as Morris, a music video director who, as the movie opens, has hit rock bottom and wakes up in a park almost completely nude and with a bloody face. Next day, he enrolls at Sweet Dreams, a recovery center which cannot be mistaken for Promises or the Betty Ford Center, where he meets up with a group of misfits struggling to maintain their sobriety. In the process, Morris becomes the coach of the center’s softball team, and he gets another chance at life as well as the opportunity to be the dad his daughter deserves.

I got to talk with two of the stars of “Sweet Dreams,” Bobby Lee and Davionte Ganter, better known professionally as GaTa. Both play fellow patients who quickly bond with Morris and share their pasts and philosophies on life to him. Bobby is a stand-up comedian, actor and podcaster who was a cast member of “MADtv” and co-hosts the podcasts “Bad Friends” and “TigerBelly.” GaTa is an actor and rapper best known for playing a fictional version of himself on the FXX series “Dave.”

I was especially interested in talking to Lee and GaTa about their own experiences with drug addiction and mental health issues and how they informed their roles as Cruise and Jake in this film. Lee was introduced to drugs when he was just 12 years old, and it took him several trips through drug rehab before he got sober. GaTa has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and he has become a big mental health advocate.

I really want to thank them for being so open about their struggles as it proves how “Sweet Dreams” has such a big heart, and that, for these two, doing this movie felt like an extension of the things they work hard for in life. Anyone with addiction issues may very well benefit from watching this movie.

“Sweet Dreams” opens in theaters on April 12, and will be available on digital platforms on April 16. Check out the interview below.

Melissa McCarthy on Playing a Con Artist in ‘Identity Thief’

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WRITER’S NOTE: This article was originally written in 2013.

Ever since she first found recognition for her character of Sookie St. James on “Gilmore Girls,” Melissa McCarthy has left an indelible impression on us all. After watching her breakthrough role as the abrasive and shamelessly raunchy Megan in “Bridesmaids,” a role which earned her a deserved Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, there was no forgetting who she was. McCarthy wasn’t just funny in the role, she also made Megan a complex character with wants and needs we could easily relate to, and this made her performance all the more wonderfully memorable.

Now she gets the opportunity to put her comedic skills to solid use again in “Identity Thief” as Diana, a con artist who steals the identity of Sandy Bigelow Patterson (played by Jason Bateman) for her own benefit. This actually marks McCarthy’s first lead role in a motion picture, and it came as the result of Bateman loving her performance in “Bridesmaids.” The role of Diana was originally written as a man, but Bateman had the character’s gender changed to a woman just so he could get her cast in the movie.

Now the role of a con artist is a challenging one to make the least bit sympathetic, but McCarthy proved to be up to the challenge. She got her start at The Groundlings which is an improvisational and sketch comedy troupe located in Los Angeles, but while this character would have made for a hilarious five-minute sketch, McCarthy realized she had to do things differently in a feature length motion picture. She made this clear in her interview with Amy Longsdorf of Delaware Online.

“I wanted to make sure Diana wasn’t just a one-dimensional, mustache-twirling villain because I thought that while that’s kind of interesting for a scene, I don’t know how to play that for a whole movie,” McCarthy told Longsdorf. “I love the thought of someone doing criminal acts but not doing them to be menacing. She does them because she’s lonely and doesn’t have anyone. She kind of steals identities so she can go out to a store and pretend to have these lives. She can pretend to have a husband and a family, pretend to be engaged.”

Whether it is film or television she is doing, McCarthy is a comic force of nature and she appears fearless in what she will do to get a laugh. This was especially the case when she hosted an episode of “Saturday Night Live” and came close to swallowing a whole bottle of ranch salad dressing. I was lucky enough to attend the “Identity Thief” press conference which I covered for the website We Got This Covered, and I asked her if there ever is a limit to how far she will go for a laugh, or if she is willing to do anything to get one.

“For me, I think as long as it makes sense for the character,” McCarthy said. “I like to see if you can, on the worst day or the most extreme circumstance, I like to see how far you can push it. But to me it’s not funny anymore if it doesn’t make sense. And I don’t like to do anything that’s mean-spirited just because I don’t find it funny. I’d rather be the jackass than make fun of somebody else because that just seems too cheap and easy. So those are my only limits.”

The one thing, however, that McCarthy was more fearless about than getting laughs was doing her own stunts. It turns out that she tried to do as many of them as possible on the set of “Identity Thief,” and Bateman was stunned at just how far she was willing to go. She even volunteered to do the stunt where Diana gets hit by a car, and it does look very painful when you watch it onscreen. McCarthy ended up admitting to Kevin P. Sullivan of MTV News that she and Bateman did a lot of hand-to-hand combat in order to make their fight scenes look more believable.

“We hurt each other the most, for real, and the most exhausting,” McCarthy said. “You’re just covered in bruises and muscles are ripped.”

Many also wonder where McCarthy comes up with the inspirations for each character she portrays. It is said most actors base their characters on people they grew up with or whom they remember from their hometowns. McCarthy herself was raised on a farm in Plainfield, Illinois, and during the press conference she realized that her upbringing still plays a big part in the roles she chooses.

“In terms of the characters I think are really fun to play, a lot of times it’s someone in my head saying I know that woman,” McCarthy said. “There are women like that in my hometown and there’s one like that the Midwest. I guess I do kind of always go back to that them and draw from there because I really love them. I find them great and interesting and quirky and eccentric. I think everything that any actor does, I would assume, is shaped by how and where they grew up. I steal a lot from a lot of Midwestern women that I weirdly watch, that’s what I should say.”

We are going to be seeing a lot more of Melissa McCarthy in the near future as her star continues to rise in Hollywood. In addition to her television show, “Mike & Molly,” she has a number of starring roles in movies coming up like “The Heat” with Sandra Bullock. No matter what that thoughtless snob Rex Reed may think of her, McCarthy is a superb comedic actress who has many unforgettably hilarious performances left to give the world.

SOURCES:

Amy Longsdorf, “Melissa McCarthy morphs into ‘Identity Thief,'” Delaware Online, February 9, 2013.

Ben Kenber, “Interview with Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy on Identity Thief,” We Got This Covered, February 8, 2013.

Kevin P. Sullivan, “Melissa McCarthy’s ‘Identity Thief’ Fight Bloodied Up Jason Bateman… Kinda,” MTV News, February 8, 2013.

Richard Gere on Making Us Root for the Bad Guy in ‘Arbitrage’

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Photography By Myles Aronowitz

WRITER’S NOTE: This article was originally written in 2012.

Don’t get me wrong, Richard Gere has played many likable characters in movies like “Pretty Woman” and “An Officer and a Gentleman,” but it’s when he plays despicable ones that he truly excels as an actor. The latest example of this is his brilliant performance as Robert Miller in “Arbitrage,” the movie which marks the directorial debut of writer Nicholas Jarecki. Robert is a hedge fund magnate who is desperately trying to cover up his instances of fraud, cheats on his wife, and willfully deceives his children. On paper this character is a jerk, but the beauty of Gere’s performance is how he keeps us rooting for him regardless of this fact.

So, how does Gere manage to make such an unlikable person so fascinating and relatable on screen? Audie Cornish of NPR’s “All Things Considered” asked him this question as she couldn’t get past the fact that Robert Miller is a “monster” and yet still wanted him to get away with what he did.

“Isn’t that funny? I mean, that’s one of the uniform things and kind of mystifying things,” Gere said. “And the comments I’ve gotten back, even from very close friends, that they’re very angry with me, that they care about this guy and want him to get out of trouble, although they’re well aware the guy is a jerk, as you say, and makes some very bad decisions in his life and has a kind of a mindset that you go, huh?”

“But look, that’s my job, is to make characters human, to make them knowable on some level,” Gere continued. “I think it had root in when you spend time with even supposed monsters, there’s a human being there. And in storytelling, you’ve got to find that human being.”

This humanity certainly shows up in the scene between Robert and his daughter, Brooke (played by Brit Marling), where he has to break her heart by telling her the truth of his fraudulent activities. What he is doing to her is terrible, and yet you still feel for him as he tries to explain how his business really works. Regardless of all the bad things Robert has done, there’s no doubt as to just how much he loves his family.

“That was a scene we (Gere and Marling) worked on a lot, and in the end, it came out of an improvisation actually, that she’s not my partner, that she works for me,” Gere said. “And I found myself almost in an animal growl saying everyone works for me. And I think that was the truest moment with this character, that that’s his mentality – horrifying but true. I mean, he’s naked in that moment.”

Another great scene in “Arbitrage” has Robert to do the right thing only to see him look for another way out. Being the reckless gambler that Robert is, he always seems to find another angle which can keep him up and running for yet another day. Gere remarked about how his sister, who is a psychiatrist, found this moment in the film especially fascinating.

“That mentality of I’m always going to find a way out, always find a way out. I think it’s that kind of a gambler’s thing,” Gere said. “Well, I’m down to my last penny, but I’m going to turn that penny into two pennies, and I’m going to get out of this. It’s a really interesting kind of person that never truly gives in. Now, if you’d imagine they were in the service of something extraordinary on the planet, what they could achieve, I guess the hope for me is, is that the people who are so effective in the world and can do this stuff, which is just ultimately pretty silly, just the accumulation of wealth, if they were putting their minds and their talents and their skill towards being of service and responsible on this planet, man, this will be a garden.”

Whether or not he is playing good or bad guys, Richard Gere always comes across in his performances as someone we want to support. Regardless of whether he plays a self-serving defense attorney in “Primal Fear” or “Chicago” or portraying an infinitely corrupt cop in “Internal Affairs,” there is something about this actor which is always alluring. Just don’t expect him to explain what it is because even he’s not sure:

“I don’t know. I don’t know what that is. I suppose it’s some peculiar thing I’m able to do. I don’t know. It’s certainly nothing I work at or particularly aware of in the process.”

Perhaps it’s best he does not find out because we want to see him giving more great performances like this one in the near future.

SOURCE:

Audie Cornish, “Richard Gere on Playing a Jerk You Want to Root For,” All Things Considered, NPR, September 14, 2012.

Kelly Reilly on Portraying the Ravages of Addiction in ‘Flight’

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WRITER’S NOTE: This article was written back in 2012.

Robert Zemeckis’ “Flight” ended up surprising us all by being a riveting character driven film as opposed to your average Hollywood action movie. It is filled with a number of great performances from very talented actors, and one of the most notable is Kelly Reilly’s as former photographer Nicole Maggen. When we first meet Nicole, she is in the throes of a nasty heroin addiction that almost claims her life. While in the hospital, she meets airline pilot William “Whip” Whitaker (Denzel Washington) who is going through his own substance abuse issues and becomes a kindred spirit of sorts as they both look for ways to escape their demons.

For Reilly, “Flight” marks the first American movie she has appeared in. Before this, she was best known for playing Mary Watson in the “Sherlock Holmes” movies, and she starred opposite Michael Fassbender in the unnerving horror film “Eden Lake.” When it came to playing Nicole in “Flight,” she explained to Christopher Rosen of the Huffington Post how she goes about preparing for a role.

“If it’s there in the script it makes your life a lot easier,” Reilly said. “You’re not searching for something. You’re not trying to figure out how to make this character believable or real. You’re not trying to skirt around bad writing. This character, to me, just jumped out. I already felt a kinship to her; I wanted to play her. I knew that this sort of addiction that got hold of her so tightly was a symptom of this woman’s heartbreak. I knew there was somebody underneath worth fighting for. There are all these stereotypes of heroin addicts being junkies or dropouts or people who we shouldn’t care about. I just thought that can’t be true. They’re somebody’s son or daughter; they’re human beings. They’re just lost. That is something John Gatins got in his script. I really wanted to play that rather than the stereotype of the heroin addict.”

When it came to playing a heroin addict, Reilly explained to Rosen the amount of research she did to better understand her character. She spent a lot of time on Google learning about those addicted to this particular drug, but that only gave her so much information. But while I was at “Flight’s” press conference at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, Reilly went more into depth about who gave her the answers she needed to know the most.

“I did consult a wonderful guy called Mitch in Atlanta who helped me understand the inner life of a heroin addict as much as one can without experiencing it, and he really did open up his story to me,” Reilly said. “There was a technical side of it as well as he taught me how to inject heroin without really injecting heroin. I wanted to honor the truth of somebody in that situation, and I think that was the most difficult part without ever having experienced that.”

But despite “Flight” gaining strong critical praise for its direction and performances, Reilly doesn’t see herself being nominated for an Academy Award. When it comes to the Oscars, they tend to honor the showiest performances above all others. Reilly’s performance as Nicole is powerful largely because it is an understated one which does not draw too much attention to itself. She explained this in more detail to Rosen.

“I know there is a lot of buzz around Denzel and the film. A few people have kind of suggested that it could be a possibility for me. I don’t see it myself,” Reilly said. “That’s just not me being humble or anything. I genuinely don’t imagine that to be the case. Mine is more of a quiet performance and I don’t think it’s an award winner. I still feel incredibly flattered to have people even suggest that. As much as it was never a dream of mine — a dream of mine would be to be on stage in New York — it would still be a mind-blowing thing to happen especially for something you feel proud of.”

Michael Caine once said that in the theater you play a character, but in television and film you are the character. Some of the greatest performances I see from actors in movies come from those who inhabit their characters more than play them, and Kelly Reilly’s performance in “Flight” is no exception. While we all love the showiest of performances, it is those subtle ones which deserve the most credit. My hope is that the Oscars will prove Reilly wrong and give her the credit she deserves for her work here. It’s one of the best portrayals of an addict I have seen ever since Michael Keaton played one in “Clean and Sober.”

SOURCES:

Christopher Rosen, “Kelly Reilly, ‘Flight’ Star, On Why She Probably Won’t Win an Oscar,” The Huffington Post, November 26, 2012.

Ben Kenber, “Interview with The Cast and Crew of Flight,” We Got This Covered, October 30, 2012.

‘Remote Area Medical’ Exclusive Interview with Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

“Remote Area Medical” focuses on the non-profit medical provider of the same name, better known as RAM, when they opened a three-day clinic held at the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, and we watch as hundreds wait by their cars in the hopes of getting the kind of health care they never have any easy access to. While there has been an endless debate in the United States about how to handle health care, this documentary chooses to focus on people instead of policy. We get a close up look at how this clinic starts off with a 3:30 a.m. ticket distribution which determines who will get seen for routine check-ups, and the patients tell us about themselves through stories which prove to be both vivid and heartbreaking. In addition, we also get to meet those who volunteer their time at the clinic like the organization’s founder, Stan Brock, a doctor who happens to drive a refurbished 18-wheeler truck, and a denture maker who also works as a jeweler. From start to finish, “Remote Area Medical” puts a human face on what it means to not have access to health care, and it makes for one of the most unforgettable documentaries of 2014.

I got the opportunity to speak with its directors, Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman, while they were in Los Angeles back in 2014. They are married to each other and actually volunteered at a RAM clinic back in Pikesville, Kentucky in 2011 where they were overwhelmed by stories they heard of patients in need and volunteer doctors working overtime to provide care. Reichert and Zaman also directed the documentaries “Gerrymandering” and “This Time Next Year.” They discussed what stunned them most as volunteers at RAM, what they learned about people who live in the Appalachian community, and they talked more about the conversations they had with Stan Brock.

Please check out the exclusive interview down below, and I have also included a trailer for “Remote Area Medical” as well for you to check out. This documentary is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.

To learn more about Remote Area Medical (RAM), please feel free to visit their website at ramusa.org.

Bernardo Ruiz and Oscar Hagelsieb Talk About ‘Kingdom of Shadows’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This interview took place back in 2015.

The U.S.-Mexico drug war is one many of us watch from a distance, but the documentary “Kingdom of Shadows” forces you to look at the war more closely than usual as it puts a human face on the damage left in its path. Director Bernardo Ruiz observes the ongoing conflict through the perspectives of three individuals: activist nun Sister Consuelo Morales who prods government officials to take action against the drug cartels who have kidnapped many people, Texas rancher and former drug smuggler Don Henry Ford Jr. who offers a descriptive context for the evolution of drug trafficking, and undercover agent turned Homeland Security officer Oscar Hagelsieb who offers a unique perspective on America’s role in the drug war. The majority of what we see takes place in Monterrey, a devastated and violence scarred town in Mexico that Oscar felt less safe to be in than when he was a soldier in the Middle East.

Watching “Kingdom of Shadows” is deeply moving and unsettling as we see how vicious the war on drugs has become, and it makes the intense thriller “Sicario” feel all the more real and unnerving in retrospect. Bernardo takes a real close look at the cost of this war from both the U.S. and Mexico sides, and he gives us an unflinching look at the human rights crisis it has generated and which only recently made international headlines.

I was among a group of reporters who got to sit in on an interview with Bernardo Ruiz and Oscar Hagelsieb while they were in Los Angeles to promote “Kingdom of Shadows.” Bernardo also directed the documentary “Reportero” which chronicled a veteran reporter and his colleagues at a weekly newspaper challenging drug cartels and corrupt local officials during an unprecedented wave of violence against journalists in Mexico. Oscar’s life began in a drug infested neighborhood where he was raised by undocumented parents, and despite having been an undercover officer for several years, he explained why he was more than willing to show his face in this documentary.

Bernardo talked about the kind of resistance and challenges he faced in making “Kingdom of Shadows,” and he explained why he introduced Oscar the way he did. Oscar was asked how he manages not to take his work home with him, and he explained why the legalization of marijuana will cause the drug war to become even more violent.

Please check out the interview below, and you can also check out the trailer as well. “Kingdom of Shadows” is now available to own and rent on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital.

Exclusive Interview with Salome Breziner about ‘Helicopter Mom’

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Back in 2014, I got to speak with filmmaker Salome Breziner about her film “Helicopter Mom.” It stars “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” creator Nia Vardalos as Maggie, a completely overbearing single mother who is about to see her only son, Lloyd (Jason Dolley), finish up high school and then move on to college. Maggie feels ever so close to Lloyd, and she quickly proves to be much too close to him. While Lloyd does love his mom, he cannot help but be constantly annoyed at her being more of a best friend to him than a parent as she is almost completely unable to leave him alone for a second.

Maggie’s relationship with Lloyd then enters another plateau when she discovers that gays can get scholarships for college. Constantly worries about she will pay for Lloyd’s college tuition, Maggie decides to tell the whole world that her son is a homosexual in the hopes of securing a scholarship. The problem is, Lloyd is not really gay or, at least, doesn’t think he is. In fact, he finds himself very confused about his sexuality to where life is not about to give him an easy answer to who he really is.

What results is a motion picture which deals with the confusion teenagers typically experience about life and themselves during their formative years, and it promotes a message of acceptance for people of all kinds. Deep down, we are only so different from one another.

Breziner previously directed the 2013 independent comedy “The Secret Lives of Dorks,” and her other directorial efforts include “Fast Sofa,” “An Occasional Hell,” “Tollbooth” and “Lift.” During my interview, she talked about how she went about director the comedic powerhouse that is Nia Vardalos, her own experience as a single mother, the luck she had in being able to shoot the film in Los Angeles and Venice Beach, and of how she got to cast Mark Boone Junior in a role which allows him to go completely against type.

Please check out my exclusive interview below, and be sure to also check out the movie’s trailer.

Anthony Hopkins on Playing the ‘Psycho’ Director in ‘Hitchcock’

Posted on by The Ultimate Rabbit

WRITER’S NOTE: This article was originally written back in 2012.

Sir Anthony Hopkins has played real-life people in movies such as President Richard Nixon in “Nixon” and John Quincy Adams in “Amistad,” but he was initially hesitant about playing the brilliant filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock in “Hitchcock.” The master of suspense has been imitated so many times over the years to where it seems impossible to portray the man without it feeling like it is a joke. Hopkins, however, was won ever by the film’s director, Sacha Gervasi, who told him, “You’re not Alfred Hitchcock, you’re Anthony Hopkins playing him.” From there, Hopkins knew he would be portraying Hitchcock without ever having to do a mere impersonation of him.

Hopkins actually had the unique privilege of meeting Mr. Hitchcock while he was alive. It’s always great fun to hear from actors who have met the highly esteemed filmmaker as the majority of us have only seen him from a distance. We all wondered what Hitchcock was really like as his films generally delved into the pitch-black darkness of humanity, and that had many assuming he was a somewhat disturbed human being himself. Hopkins described the experience of meeting Hitchcock to Fox News.

“I met Hitchcock in Hollywood in 1979. He had just been awarded his knighthood and I was with my agent, and his agent in fact, George Chasen,” Hopkins said. “This was many years ago. I saw Hitchcock sitting in the restaurant and I said to my agent, ‘I’d love to meet him.’ He said ‘I’ll introduce you.’ So, we walked out of the restaurant after we finished our meal, and Hitchcock was sitting there drinking a large brandy. And George said ‘Congratulations Sir Alfred,’ and he said, ‘Thank you very much George. How are you?’ and George said, ‘This is my client Anthony Hopkins,’ and (Hitchcock) said ‘Charmed, I’m sure, very good luck to you.'”

For Hopkins, a key importance for him was getting the look of the famous filmmaker right. The fact is he is far slimmer than Hitchcock was, and Hitchcock famously known for being overweight. It was up to Academy Award-winning makeup artist Howard Berger to transform Hopkins into Hitchcock. In a conversation with Andrea Mandell of USA Today, Berger talked about doing six makeup tests with Hopkins before filming on “Hitchcock” began, and they experimented with all sorts of prosthetics to get the look right.

“I think the biggest challenge was finding the right combination of Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Hopkins,” said Berger. “We knew from the get-go; we didn’t want to completely cover and disguise Tony. As Hopkins became more comfortable with the character, slowly we started to strip things away.”

Berger went on to describe the end result of his work as being a portrait of Hitchcock on Hopkins. The makeup process took two hours each day to complete, and this included applying a prosthetic jowl and neck pieces to Hopkins. In addition, Hopkins took to wearing a bodysuit and brown contact lenses, and he also shaved “a patch of hair at the back of his head to replicate the director’s hair pattern.” With the makeup done, it freed Hopkins to concentrate on the inner life of his role as opposed to the physical aspects of it. In the end, this is what actors need to focus on the most when playing any role.

But the one thing you will not find Hopkins doing during shooting is staying in character when the cameras are not rolling. Right now, the movie “Lincoln” is in theaters, and it stars Daniel Day Lewis as President Lincoln. Stories from that set have described Lewis as staying in character throughout the shoot to where other actors kept referring to him as Mr. Lincoln. In talking with Philip Sherwell of The Telegraph, however, Hopkins made it very clear how this method of acting is completely unnecessary for him.

“I think that’s a lot of crap,” Hopkins said. “I just don’t understand that. If actors want to do that, fine. If they want to be miserable, that’s up to them. I’m not interested. It’s a job. Who the hell wants to be with some miserable grump because he wants to get his performance right, so you have to call him this or call him that? It’s so boring. I’ve been with actors like that and… they’re unpleasant to work with and I don’t think they’re always that good either.”

With all the great performances he has given throughout his illustrious career in “Silence of The Lambs,” “Remains of the Day” and “Titus,” Anthony Hopkins doesn’t need to stay in character a whole day in order to give audiences a confident performance. His role as Alfred Hitchcock in “Hitchcock” is just the latest example of the kind of work we can always expect from an actor of his caliber. Hopkins never takes the easy way out with a role, and he understands it is the inner life of a character that the actor needs to work on. As for how he looks on the outside, that is someone else’s concern.

SOURCES:

“‘Hitchcock’ star Anthony Hopkins: To get a compliment from legendary director was ‘like being given a billion dollars,'” Fox News, November 21, 2012.

Andrea Mandell, “Anthony Hopkins’ scary transformation into Hitchcock,” USA Today, November 23, 2012.

Philip Sherwell, “‘Don’t call me ‘Mr. Hitchcock’: Anthony Hopkins does not want the Daniel Day-Lewis treatment,” The Telegraph, November 24, 2012.