[We] talked about Harold and Maude as a tone. Fisher King, I brought that up. And then Alfie and Five Easy Pieces and a few others…We wanted something realistic but funny…moving and emotionally deep. 
Groucho Reviews
Latest Interviews
-
Sam Rockwell—Choke—9/26/08
[We] talked about Harold and Maude as a tone. Fisher King, I brought that up. And then Alfie and Five Easy Pieces and a few others…We wanted something realistic but funny…moving and emotionally deep. -
Alan Ball—Towelhead, True Blood—8/29/08
Sexuality is really a way that people’s souls get expressed...I know that we have a tendency as Americans to sort of not go there, but I’m kind of interested in going there because I think it tells you a lot about someone’s psyche... -
Steve Coogan—Hamlet 2, Tropic Thunder—7/28/08
He’s very effusive and emotionally open in a way that’s not very masculine. And certainly not British...someone who sort of waves his arms around a lot and clutches his bosom. It’s like he actually thinks his life is a movie. -
George Lucas—Star Wars: The Clone Wars—8/4/08
Well, the mythological arc of the saga doesn't really continue in these other things...which means we're not encumbered by this mythological uber-story of the psychological underpinnings of why somebody turns to be a bad person. -
Kevin Costner—Swing Vote, JFK—7/18/08
They can't run over us if we really want to stand up. So as long as we have our vote, we have some hope. -
Melissa Leo & Courtney Hunt—Frozen River—7/18/06
Leo: 'I think living with a gambling addict...whether she had this skill [for lying] before she was married to him all those years ago or not, she certainly developed it over the years and, in fact, we've taught her son to be a pretty handy liar too.' -
Guy Maddin—My Winnipeg, Brand Upon the Brain!—5/2/08
I lost my virginity to Lorne Greene narrating Lorne Greene's Nature Wildlife Theatre. I think he was talking about how bugs gnaw each other's heads off while screwing. And here I was, not losing my head at all. -
David Duchovny & Gillian Anderson—The X-Files: I Want to Believe—2/23/08
Duchovny: 'There is a journey to be had. So you either have to start on top or on the bottom for a journey to happen. You can't start at the middle...' -
Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz—The X-Files: I Want to Believe—2/23/08
Carter: 'There's a beef recall. Mulder's a cross-dresser. Aah, I'm not going to tell you, only because you really don't want to know...' -
Matthew Goode—Brideshead Revisited, Watchmen—7/11/08
There’s so many levels to Charles throughout that it’s just—I mean, I would have been an idiot not to have wanted to have taken the role on. -
Masi Oka & Nate Torrence—Get Smart, Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control—6/25/07
It's splitting Q into two parts. Bruce and Lloyd make up one gadget guy, in reality. They're just two different parts of one person... -
James McAvoy—Wanted, Atonement—2/23/08 & 11/28/07
All the actors stayed in one house together, with some of the key crew members and Joe, the director...I decided not to--partly because I'd been to drama school, and I couldn't be bothered with it...I've lived in a madhouse. -
Andrew Stanton—Wall-E—6/16/08
The big myth—I’ve been asked this for fifteen years. And we’ll give it the same answer fifteen years from now. We never think of who our audience is. We always just made the movies we want to see. -
Chris O'Donnell—Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, Batman Forever—6/13/08
I’ve never been much of a car guy myself. And I’ve been known to crash a few. I think I crashed the Batmobile when we were filming...the cars, the costumes, the set dressing—that really helps us, as actors, to get into character. -
Steve Carell—Get Smart—02/23/08
Probably the riskiest thing I did was being pulled behind a moving SUV down train tracks. Um, that was a little scary. -
Anne Hathaway—Get Smart—02/23/08
I watched anything I could get my hands on that Lily Tomlin was in. I'd watch a lot of Meryl Streep movies. Women who have spectacular timing. -
Peter Segal—Get Smart—02/23/08
I thought it would be interesting to see how he becomes Max. How they met. I know there was one story of how they met, obviously, in the pilot, in 1965, but I thought, 'Okay, what if we take a little license there and come up with our own...' -
Garth Jennings & Nick Goldsmith—Son of Rambow, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—04/09/08
Being allowed to grow up feeling you're not being watched, not being tracked and able to do stupid things and screw up, being able to make mistakes, I think, was the key. Being allowed to screw up is wonderful... -
Jon Favreau—Iron Man—02/23/08
People might give us a chance who wouldn't normally come to a Marvel-type film. -
Kimberly Peirce—Stop-Loss—03/12/08
These men are developing--I mean the idea that men say, 'I love this guy'--they always say that. 'He's my brother.' 'I will die for him.' 'It was incredibly intimate. It was the most profound relationship of my life.' -
David Schwimmer—Run, Fatboy, Run—03/12/08
What caught me off guard I think was not making the connection between how much money we had and what it would translate to. When you say we have a big movie, we have a big budget script and a small-budget, um, budget. -
John Cho—Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Star Trek—02/23/08 & 03/15/08
We seem to be at the limit. I mean, maybe we'd have to switch drugs. Go harder. I don't know...I think we have to go to heaven. 'Harold and Kumar go to Heaven.' -
Rachael Taylor—Shutter—and James Kyson Lee—Shutter, Heroes—02/23/08
[Taylor:] Often you can use a director who doesn't speak English just as a mirror for your own instincts. Even though he couldn't tell me exactly what was wrong, it was really my job to...do what I thought was best... -
Steven Strait & Camilla Belle, and Roland Emmerich—10,000 BC—02/23/08
[Emmerich:] It's a little bit like a time travel...these hunter-gatherer people meet the first farmers meet the high culture. -
Jon Poll—Charlie Bartlett—02/14/08
Besides editing everyone's favorite David Letterman film (Cabin Boy...see it with someone you love), Jon Poll is known for his fruitful collaboration with Jay Roach (the Meet the... and Austin Powers films). Poll also contributed to the editing of Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and executive produced The 40 Year Old V... -
Ira Sachs—Married Life—02/14/08
After his debut feature The Delta, writer-director Ira Sachs took the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival for his sophomore feature Forty Shades of Blue, starring Rip Torn and Dina Korzun. His latest, Married Life, stars Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan, and Rachel McAdams. Despite his suffering from bronchitis, Sachs... -
Olivia Hussey—Romeo and Juliet—01/10/08
Olivia Hussey: 'Once I started crying I couldn't stop...And when I stood up, everyone was just standing there in sheer--just silence. Franco said, "Cut"...and he put his arms around me and said, "You're gonna love Rome."' -
Michel Gondry—Be Kind Rewind—01/07/08
Michel Gondry: 'Keep your money for yourself. Be creative and meet friends. And have a better life.' -
Tim Roth—Youth Without Youth—12/05/07
Tim Roth: 'Most of what you're trying to do as an actor--I'd say ninety percent--is convince the audience that the dialogue is better than it is. So...you're running a con job on the audience.' -
Noah Baumbach—Margot at the Wedding—10/13/07
Noah Baumbach: 'Margot doesn't come there to wreck anything. She comes there because she loves her sister and wants to support her. She just can't help herself once she sees what the situation is.' -
Jennifer Jason Leigh—Margot at the Wedding—10/13/07
Jennifer Jason Leigh: 'One of the big ones was Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon...it made a huge impression on me.' -
Ang Lee & Tang Wei—Lust, Caution—10/05/07
Ang Lee & Tang Wei: "[Lee:] They say, 'No pain, no gain.'...Sometimes I'll have a sleepless night, and in the morning I'll start to cry and I feel like I was in Mr. Yee's torture chamber." -
Emile Hirsch—Into the Wild—09/14/07
Emile Hirsch's films include The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, The Emperor's Club, The Mudge Boy, The Girl Next Door, Imaginary Heroes, Lords of Dogtown, and Alpha Dog. Writer-director Sean Penn chose Hirsch to play Chris McCandless in the screen adaptation of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, which eventually led the young actor to face the press at... -
David Cronenberg & Viggo Mortensen—Eastern Promises—08/24/07
David Cronenberg & Viggo Mortensen: [Mortensen:] That's a puzzle...if you look at Schopenhauer, he talks about compassion. And why does someone, when it does him no good whatsoever, go and assist someone? -
Dave Goelz—The Muppet Movie—08/17/07
Dave Goelz has performed with the Muppets for over thirty years, on shows like The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock and in films such as The Muppet Movie and The Muppet Christmas Carol. His cast of characters includes Gonzo the Great, Boober, Bunsen Honeydew, Zoot, Philo, Beauregard and many others. He was also Fizzgig and one of the Skeksis in The Dar... -
Julie Delpy—2 Days in Paris—08/08/07
As an actress, Julie Delpy's credits include Europa, Europa, White, Broken Flowers, The Hoax, Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear and Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Waking Life. Now she's the star, writer, director, editor, and composer of 2 Days in Paris. We chatted at San Francisco's Four Seasons Hotel.
Groucho: Alright. This i... -
Leila Conners Petersen & Nadia Conners—The 11th Hour—08/06/07
Environmental short-film collaborations with Leonardo DiCaprio led Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners to co-write and co-direct a feature-length examination of Earth's environmental crisis: The 11th Hour. During their press stop at San Francisco's Ritz-Carlton Hotel, the filmmakers told me about their approach to overwhelming material.
Gro... -
Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, & Christopher Mintz-Plasse—Superbad—07/30/07
Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, & Christopher Mintz-Plasse: [Hill:] 'The only reaction we've had with Lindsay Lohan was that impression we were doing of the newspaper...I was doing an impression of her s#$tting her pants in jail.' -
Danny Boyle—Sunshine—07/16/07
Danny Boyle: 'Cillian at the end of the film, when he touches the sun...it was like 40 feet high and like 60 feet wide of lamps...it was like a U2 concert.' -
Laurent Tirard—Molière—07/10/07
Laurent Tirard: 'If you were an actor, you weren't allowed to be buried in a cemetery. You had to die in a ditch...what happened when Molière died was that the church refused to bury him. But because the king liked him very much, he found a way.'