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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, October 14th, 2011 - 9 Comments »

DP/30: The Ides of March, actor Evan Rachel Wood

Other Ides:
Paul Giamatti

9 Comments »

9 Responses to “DP/30: The Ides of March, actor Evan Rachel Wood”

  1. LexG says:
    October 14, 2011 at 5:48 pm

    LOOOOOOK AT HER!!!!

    Best DP/30 opener ever.

  2. Gus says:
    October 14, 2011 at 6:59 pm

    Serious question: did you do that for Lex?

  3. anghus says:
    October 14, 2011 at 7:55 pm

    the best compliment i can pay her for her work in Ides of March was not realizing it was Evan Rachel Wood until the credits. I had no idea.

  4. sanj says:
    October 15, 2011 at 2:42 am

    DP sure went crazy with the amount of questions – more than most dp/30′s

    last 5 minutes she talks about singing

    Evan Rachel Wood sings Justin Bieber

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M-uiUj-VfA

  5. The Pope says:
    October 15, 2011 at 1:01 pm

    Is that “shoe shot” a first for a DP/30? I mean, it’s the first time I can recall there ever having been a cut in the interview. And it’s in continuity.

  6. David Poland says:
    October 15, 2011 at 1:28 pm

    As you know, I am always looking for something interesting and off-beat as the opening tag. I’d noticed the shoes and the showstopping outfit before we shot and mentioned it. It was a look that made putting her behind a table seem like a sin against beauty. (you can see the whole ensemble on Chelsea Lately… not sure when it aired/airs)

    This clip is actually pulled from after we stopped shooting. I don’t think the cameraman was behind the camera at that moment, so the shot was static. And when I pulled the clip, I just felt you couldn’t see how cool the shoes were. So I make the cut to the push-in. Truth be told, you still can’t see how cool the shoes were. Shinier in person.

    And that’s the story. (Thought of Lex while I was doing it… but didn’t do it for him at all.)

    The other possible clip for the opening was one in which she made a charming, funny face. But it felt like it was floating between sentences… and it was… and I wasn’t going to include the off-record sentences… so I decided to look for something else and found the shoe moment.

  7. David Poland says:
    October 15, 2011 at 1:30 pm

    And there are a few cuts over the last few years. If it takes too long to recover from something that happened in the room, I’ll make an edit. Natalie Portman has two, for instance, for fire alarms.

    If something, like a phone or a noise or whatever, is quick, I’ll leave it it. It’s part of the viewer’s experience with that person.

  8. LexG says:
    October 15, 2011 at 4:19 pm

    I like how comfortable with herself she is and how obviously smart and awesome… Just based on “coolness,” she might even be cooler than Kristen Stewart.

    And not just because I think she’s smoking and whatnot, but IS Sony considering an FYC campaign for her for Supporting for IDES? I think it’s one of the year’s best female performances (and movies)… They need to push her for it a little bit, see if it gains some momentum.

    And, yeah, her chemistry with Gosling is DELIGHTFUL in the early going.

  9. Rob says:
    October 16, 2011 at 7:04 am

    Gosling has ridiculous chemistry with everybody – Wood, Stone, Williams, Mulligan, and Dunst in the last year alone. In fact, I’m not sure who in his age range is left for him to gaze at longingly.

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“I’m in Locarno, my movie is premiering for 1,000 people, which is nuts. A huge-ass screening, second day of the festival, 7:30pm in the sidebar competition. It’s comparable to Un Certain Regard or Director’s Fortnight. Every movie I saw in that section was fun, brilliant movies from around the world. The main competition was like Aza Jacobs and Mia Hansen-Løve, people who have been around. And I was like, “This is crazy. What am I doing inside the bloodstream of this establishment? I’m 27. I don’t belong here.” Every person I talked to there couldn’t believe what the movie cost, and then couldn’t believe when I told them what other American movies cost. We were the cheapest movie there by 65%. The next cheapest movie cost I think three times as much as we did. And they were just like, “You can’t make movies for what you’re telling us your movie cost.” And I told them, “Well, I can, I’m here, I’m in the same section as you are, so you are wrong. People think I’m lying when I tell them my budget. And also everyone likes it. I’m having a great time and people are being very responsive. Maurice Pialat’s widow was like, “I heard your movie’s good, I want a copy of it.” I’m like, “Well this is f**kin’ crazy.” Pedro Costa saw it there and really liked it and I’m like, What am I doing? I had gone in two months from screening at BAM for a lot of friends to Pedro Costa? This is the exact sentence: “Pedro Costa saw your movie. He’s a huge Jerry Lewis fan. He wants to talk to you about your movie and also Jerry Lewis.” And I thought, “I’m out of my element. I cannot have that conversation because that’s ridiculous.” Because his retrospective was happening at Anthology when I worked at Kim’s, and his Criterion box set came out when I was working at Kim’s. He can’t want to talk to me. That’s not possible. That’s not allowed. There is no world where that makes any sense!”  Or like when you wrote me to say that David Gordon Green wrote you to say, “I’m watching The Color Wheel and then I’m going to see Tree of Life.” There is no world where this is allowed! Again, somebody whose DVDs I was putting on the shelf, as, like, a hero. And it’s just like, “Oh, I’ll watch this movie.” There’s just a very fuzzy area in the middle there and it happened very quickly and I don’t understand why.  I still have a voice-mail from Sean [Price Williams, cinematographer]. I wish he was here to talk about it, but the voice-mail is a long pause and he’s just like, “I don’t want to tell you this, because it’s gonna make you so insufferable. I hate having to tell you this, but Leos Carax watched your movie and he really loves it, and he wants to meet you when he comes to New York.” I can’t live in a world where Leos Carax knows who I am, watches my movie, likes it, and thinks, “I wanna meet that guy.”
~ It’s Alex Ross Perry’s World

“I don’t know. It’s been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to make the films I really dream of making. I was in Italy a few years ago scouting for this very beautiful film I wanted to make with Richard Linklater. We worked really hard on the script for a couple of years and couldn’t get the money together. It was an expensive idea. It’s heartbreaking when that happens over and over again and then the movies that do get made are ones that have lots of women being beaten up or zombies being killed. It’s all fine, it’s all okay, but it’s hard. I remember when River Phoenix died, he was ahead of me on this curve. He kind of realized how hard it was to make serious movies. People like Sidney Lumet figured out how to walk that line, but it’s hard. And it requires patience. It’s a life’s work and I wonder if I’m up to the task.”
~ Weary, Wary Ethan Hawke

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