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.
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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: '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: '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.' Steve Buscemi: 'I have been asked to do Letterman. And the first time, I could not get past the pre-interview, you know, when the producers ask you for four stories...I could only come up with three.' Tea Leoni & John Dahl: [Leoni:] 'So then, of course, the second I stick the knife in the watermelon, I almost vomited. It was just disgusting.' Michael Winterbottom: 'I think, um, someone staged it. But it wasn't us...he did say all this on camera in front of the biggest possible audience you could have...maybe he could have found a quieter moment.' Kasi Lemmons: 'I saw [Hughes] get up like "I can't, I can't watch this." It's either too close or it's bringing back some old emotions. But he would walk into the DJ booth, and you could tell he just felt nostalgic for it.' Frank Oz: 'There are actors I've worked with who hate my guts. Uh, three. As a matter of fact. One who's passed away, sadly: Brando. The other two are Cher and Wilford Brimley.' Eli Roth: 'Let's do that psychology. Let's see these guys in their home lives. And how does the bidding work? And what happens when they get there? Let's go through the minutiae.' Writer-director Francis Veber wrote the screenplay for La Cage Aux Folles, and directed such films as The Dinner Game and The Closet. His latest is The Valet—we discussed the film, and his august career, at San Francisco's Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Groucho:Well, people always talk about how your films are distinctively French, and I won't disagr... Mike White: 'It's the blend of comedy and pathos or protagonists who can be both sympathetic and then transgressive and have a complicated relationship with the audience.' I think it's hard to have a good, healthy image about yourself, sexually...I'd love to see more things out there that are empowering to women. Ioan Gruffudd: 'You can justify anything in times of war. And I think we see that happening today certainly.' She not only kept coded diaries; she invented the code the code they were written in, which had to be broken and wasn't broken until something like twenty years ago or so. Guillermo del Toro: 'I see the world like a room where a toddler, a baby, has been surrounded by the most expensive glassware. And those are laws and morality. And then you let him walk.' Derek Luke on Glory Road: "I had to retrack every step that Bobby took. And it was almost like I was playing against him." Nick Cassavetes: 'I was diligent in trying not to glamorize these kids. I think that they are portrayed as pretenders...But, you know, with money comes beautiful girls and ennui.' Kal Penn's film credits include Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (he was Kumar, and will be again in the soon-to-film sequel), Superman Returns, Sueño, American Desi, and the upcoming The Namesake. Penn also originated the role of Taj Badalamanabad in National Lampoon's Van Wilder; Taj has been promoted to star in National Lampoon's Van... Aghdashloo: 'The minute I realized that the two women are so similar to one another, I just simply asked Grandma to take me to Elizabeth. And I said it out loud. I said, "Grandma, please take me to Elizabeth." And she did.' Yes, I think there is--we took that idea quite serious: that there is an artist in a very difficult, let's say, in kind of an exaggerated obsessive mode. Children are amazingly adaptable. I remember the barbed-wire fence. That was a part of the landscape I grew up in. I remember the sentry towers and machine guns pointed at us...as I said, 'With liberty and justice for all...' I didn't relate the two. [Guest:] 'I could tell, her head was exploding. And I said, "What's going on?" She said, "Everyone wants a wig."' My grandma was ninety-three, and she had a heart attack and they tried to resuscitate her three times. They broke her ribs; they shoved pipes down her throat...It's just--it's butchery. So I think you can go too far. Eric Schlosser: 'Rick and I both really structure our works before we sit down to write them. So it was actually a really easy and natural collaboration.' Todd Field on Eyes Wide Shut: 'Probably the polite thing I would say is "no comment," but the truth is...you've never seen two actors more completely subservient, and prostate themselves at the feet of a director.' Rupert Grint: 'Suddenly the car starts to roll. Roll towards the crew. And I had to dive in there and pull the handbrake. It was quite close, actually.' Augusten Burroughs: 'We didn't have sex because we had to find a way to show each other how much we loved each other. We had sex as a way to operate with each other, and that just warped me, you know, for years.' Tim Robbins, Phillip Noyce, and Shawn and Robyn Slovo: [Robbins:] 'That Afrikaaner policeman...was made out to be the bad guy when in fact the people that set the policy wound up in mansions with very large pensions.' Forest Whitaker: 'I'm always talking about it in such a technical way, but I have to be honest: it's really much more of a spiritual experience for me...working as an actor.' John Cameron Mitchell: 'Why not just use all the connections that sex has? You know, sex is certainly the spinal cord that connects to all these different organs in our life...' Alex Pettyfer: 'He's a normal guy, you know? An average Joe who has capabilities that are just far out like a little mini--not mini-Bond, but a mini-Jason Bourne, shall we say.' Jet Li: 'If you play a cop, or the tough guy, Mafia, whatever, you need to think first. You need to understand the character, the personality. Then you put a different move for the character.' Motion-picture dysfunctionalism trumps development every time. I would be insane to think that any original screenplay that I'm commissioned to write would ever end up as a movie. Tony Jaa: 'You can either change your movements from being a trunk grabbing a person's leg or arms, you can always change it to make it into the elephant's tusk, you know?' Neil Burger: 'He gets arrested at the end of the short story...for blurring the distinction between art and reality...it's an abstract, intellectual idea and not kind of emotional or impactful enough to hang the climax of a movie on...' Steve Lemme and Erik Stolhanske: [Lemme:] I'll issue this challenge now. I am the best Robotron player...on the planet. I dare anybody to come and beat me at Robotron. That's a game from like 1952.' Armistead Maupin & Patrick Stettner: '[Maupin:] I'm aware that my best material comes from the truth of my own life, so I try to use it as much as possible. And I have confidence in those emotions.' Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris: '[Dayton:] We took all the actors out to lunch and asked that they stay in character.' Elisha Cuthbert: 'And here I am playing a seventeen-year-old. Not just physically, but mentally getting into that place. It was really difficult. And I don't know if I could ever do it again.' 