Interviews: Does Model+actress=Mattress?

By Alison Willmore on 08/29/2006

Helena Christensen starred in a Christoffer Boe film? At the Independent, she discusses her role in the Danish filmmaker's "Allegro":

"It never really seemed so strange to me that some models moved into acting. Recently, there has been even more of a crossover between movies, music and fashion; it's all become one big blend. When you are in the fashion business, you're inspired by the things around you. For so many years, you're being directed by a photographer, and it's almost like being in a silent movie, constantly acting out emotions with your face, body, expressions - the only thing that separates this from acting is that you don't speak."

"Half Nelson" director Ryan Fleck speaks with Pam Grady at the San Francisco Chronicle.

"The original drafts of the film took place in Oakland. I really wanted to shoot in Oakland because it's a place I haven't seen on film before," Fleck says. "But logistically it was going to be too difficult to shoot it there."

The film's star, Ryan Gosling, talks with Ellen McCarthy in the Washington Post:

He is responding to a question about the way he prepared for his "Half Nelson" role -- moved to Brooklyn, shadowed a middle school teacher, gave himself an education in the civil rights movement he'd be teaching on screen.

And: "I did a lot of crack, you know. A lot. It was cheap, so it was no big deal -- I used my per diem for it," he says with perfect delivery.

"I'm just kidding. I didn't get per diem."

Hee!

Our beloved Catherine Keener was interview by Lynn Hirschberg in the New York Times Style Magazine:

How did you get your start as an actress?

First I worked as a casting intern, and that was very helpful. It showed me how impersonal personal comments are. And yet when, years later, I went up for a movie and the note came back that I wasn’t sexy, it was a turning point for me. There’s no way to fight that criticism. I packed up the car and went to Roswell, New Mexico, with my dog and stayed for three months. Finally I realized that I could say no as easily as they could, and I somehow knew that a good job — the right job — would change everything, especially how they saw me. For me, that was an independent film called “Johnny Suede.”

At Greencine, Joe Swanberg chats with one Andrew "Filmbrain" Grant:

It's my philosophy that the films are going appeal to a wider audience if I make them specifically about us, the people in them, than if I try to make any grand statements about my generation. I think that's where directors get into trouble, by having characters that are supposed to be bigger than who they are. I'm interested in having my characters play close to themselves. I see no reason to generalize, or to try to speak for a bigger demographic.

In a similar vein, I'm uncomfortable writing roles for women or minorities - I don't feel it's my place - and all the actresses in my films write their own material. I refuse to include a token minority simply because my characters are all white. It's not about seclusion, it's just a reflection of the white, hipster neighborhood I live in.

At the Telegraph, David Gritten talks with "maverick" British film producer Jeremy Thomas:

His other professional trademark has been traversing the world in search of film financing. Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, he says, was a turning point for him in this respect: "We shot it on Rarotonga, a Pacific island belonging to New Zealand. The director, Oshima, was Japanese. So it occurred to me I could raise money from New Zealand and Japan to get the film made. Suddenly I felt and smelt what the film business was. Something that had been cloudy to me became absolutely clear."

Agnès Varda is interviewed by Hannah Westley over at the Guardian. On the island of Noirmoutier, where she spent holidays and shot films (among them "Les Créatures"), photos and video projects:

"Jacques [Demy] introduced me to the island in the 1960s," she says. "We married there and bought a holiday home. It was also where I filmed a scene for Jacquot. I asked Jacques if I could film him lying on the beach. By that time he was already very ill but he said yes, as long as I did it alone. I asked him to take a handful of sand and let it slip through his fingers. It was a gesture that was very familiar to him. It's a lovely sensation, letting the sand trickle through your fingers like that, like time slipping past."

And Sigourney Weaver discusses her career and "Infamous" with Stephen Dalton at the London Times:

“I haven’t seen Capote,” Weaver says diplomatically, “but I know our film is very different, more like a sip of champagne than a shot of whisky. It’s a very eloquent script about what it is to be a writer and the cost of that, and what America expects from its writers. It’s one of the most beautifully written scripts I’ve ever read, so I can only hope it’s a rich enough subject to accommodate more than one film.”

+ Helena Christensen: A model opportunity (Independent)
+ 'HALF NELSON' WRESTLES WITH SOCIAL CHANGE (SF Chronicle)
+ Gosling of 'Half Nelson': An Un-Hollywood Star (Washington Post)
+ Being Catherine Keener (NY Times Style Magazine)
+ "More excited than I have ever been": Joe Swanberg (Greencine)
+ Last emperor of maverick cinema (Telegraph)
+ Second reel (Guardian)
+ Sigourney heads for inner space (London Times)