Interviews

A Conversation with Tamara Drewe Director Stephen Frears

Interview by Andrea Gronvall – We shot it late in the year–in September, not in mid-summer. By September the sun was starting to get low in the sky, so that’s when it looks especially beautiful. And this [the story] had to cover all of the seasons, so you wanted a time of the year that gave you the most possibilities.

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Digital Nation: Down Terrace

One of the knocks against portrayals of organized crime in American movies and television is that they tend to make criminality look like a reasonable career choice, until the bullets and subpoenas start flying, anyway. The same applies for the use of drugs, alcohol, tobacco and firearms. It’s fun until it isn’t. There’s nothing even…

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Digital Nation: Barry Munday

As red herrings go, it’s tough to beat castration. The title character of Chris D’Arienzo’s truly offbeat comedy, Barry Munday, undergoes just such an operation. It’s required after the father of a promiscuous teenager slams a trumpet into crotch of the two-bit, happy-hour lothario in a movie theater. Poor Barry didn’t even have time to…

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Catfish directors Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman, star Nev Schulman

DP/30 – The dynamic trio of filmmaker/subjects from the Sundance sensation Catfish talk with David Poland about how and why they made the film.

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Interview: The Savory Sound of Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen

Music is both architecture and pulse in Fatih Akin’s tasty, generous farcical food-com, “Soul Kitchen.” Music’s there from the start of writing the script, he tells me, as well as confessing a nasty addiction to something called “vinyl.”

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Bright Star, director Jane Campion, actor Ben Whishaw (TIFF ’09)

The complete version of this interview got lost in the shuffle. Apologies. Never too late, I guess.

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The Gronvall Files:Going the Distance from Fact to Fiction with Director Nanette Burstein

Change is good, although it’s not always easy to reinvent oneself. But New York filmmaker Nanette Burstein, a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nominee for On the Ropes (which she co-directed with Brett Morgen), doesn’t miss a step in her transition from nonfiction film to narrative features.

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The Gronvall Files, An Interview with Lisa Cholodenko, Director of The Kids Are All Right

Family Matters : An Interview with Lisa Cholodenko, Director of The Kids Are All Right We may only be halfway through the year, but one thing you can bet on: come the end of December, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right will score among many 2010 Top Ten lists. The director made a huge…

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Mark Hopkins Director of Living in Emergency

In this podcast, Noah interviews Mark Hopkins, director of the documentary Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors without Borders. They talk about real-life heroes, The Hurt Locker, Apocalypse Now, and the shocking reality of many non-Westerners’ lives. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Mark Hopkins

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Interview with Juan Jose Campanella: The Eyes Have It

This year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film went to an Argentine romantic crime thriller that few people beyond Academy voters and film festival goers were lucky enough to have seen: The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de sus ojos), directed by Juan Jose Campanella, a filmmaker who calls both New York and Argentina home….

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James Gray Director of Two Lovers

Noah has a far-ranging conversation with Two Lovers director James Gray about Francis Ford Coppola, Italian neo-realism vs French New Wave, The 400 Blows, and his potential next film: The Lost City of Z starring Brad Pitt. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with James Gray

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Scott Z. Burns Screenwriter of The Informant

In this podcast, Noah talks to Scott Z. Burns, the screenwriter of The Informant! about working with Sodebergh and Damon, unreliable narrators, and Dog Day Afternoon. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Scott Z. Burns

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Lukas Moodysson Director of Mammoth

This week Noah talks to one of his favorite filmmakers, Lukas Moodysson, about his new film Mammoth, working with Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams, globalization, and Margot at the Wedding. Listent to Noah Forest Podcast with Lukas Moodysson

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Michael Sucsy Director of Grey Gardens

This week Noah talks with Grey Gardens director Michael Sucsy about the Maysles Brothers original film, how silly it is to doubt Drew Barrymore and his next project, The Goree Girls. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Michael Sucsy

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John Malkovich Star of Disgrace

This week Noah chats with the legendary John Malkovich about his new film Disgrace, working with the Coen Brothers and his affection for Napoleon Dynamite. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with John Malkovich

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Judi Krant Director of Made in China

This week Noah talks with Judi Krant, director of the film Made in China which won the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW. They talk about the difficulty of shooting in Shanghai, the relationship between art and commerce, the greatness of Sidney Lumet and the whimsy of Michel Gondry. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Director…

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Elisabeth Shue and Thomas Haden Church

This week Noah talks to Elisabeth Shue and Thomas Haden Church about their new film Don McKay, working together and working apart, the wonder of Meryl Streep and Shue’s great work in Cocktail! Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Elisabeth Shue and Thomas Haden Church

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Wiley Wiggins Star of Sorry, Thanks

This week Noah talks to Wiley Wiggins about his new film, Sorry, Thanks, being in the cast of Dazed and Confused, mumblecore films, and great sci-fi films. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Wiley Wiggins

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Mark Webber Director of Explicit Ills

This week Noah talks to actor turned writer/director Mark Webber about his new film Explicit Ills, working with Jim Jarmusch and Ethan Hawke, and starring in Nickelodeon’s Snow Day. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Director Mark Webber

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Andy Fickman Director of Race to Witch Mountain

This week Noah talks to Race to Witch Mountain director Andy Fickman about action movies, the making of Anaconda and beating up The Rock. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Director Andy Fickman

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Interviews

Quote Unquotesee all »

“I don’t really think, Sean, that you need to know about my various sexual liaisons. Or that anyone else needs to. I did write about them. I filled a hundred pages of Moleskine notebooks with my one-night stands, my affairs. But I decided they didn’t belong in a professional memoir. First of all, these are real people we’re talking about. Many of them were enjoyable. Some were abject failures. My wife said to me when she read the pages, ‘Of what purpose is this in a memoir? Of what purpose is this other than to titillate?’ The point is, I never see them. It’s because I have nothing in common with them, frankly. And probably didn’t at the time. I could not provide a sensible reason why I married these women. The thing is, in the case of my marriages, it takes two people to fuck up a marriage. It wasn’t simply the fault of these women that I lost interest in them and realised they were insignificant relationships. Which is how I look at them right now–as being insignificant. I see them as blips.”
~ William Friedkin On Cutting Interviewers Off At The Sass

“I have to imagine from Mr. Spielberg’s point of view, the paradigm shift in the 1970s was just the new “normal,” a “halcyon era” from which we are straying in the 21st century–because theatrical exhibition is tenuous (as it has been since the 1940s), the home video market has dried up and people are watching pirated movies on their phone. Spielberg’s coming-of-age era was for him the halcyon period that the 21st century “implosion” will cause to go “crashing into the ground.” But he is wrong. The market for movies is actually diverse and highly segmented–although from the top-down movie industry vantage point and media punditry you would not think this to be true.  Would we really mourn for Mr. Spielberg or ourselves if Lincoln would have been made for cable or had played on public television?  Is it bad for humanity that cable television is creating wonderful, resonant stories in long-form series that people want to watch at home on TV (or streamed onto their computer)? I don’t think so, but it is a paradigm shift and it might affect people’s theatrical moviegoing habits. Televisions in people’s homes have had that effect for seven decades–it is not a new phenomenon. As Art House cinema impresarios we need to focus on what WE can do at our theaters and in our communities. It is not productive for us to fret over what pundits say or about what well-meaning filmmakers like the Stevens–Spielberg and Soderbergh–say. We should fret about what we can do in our communities. What we can do to support filmmakers.”
~ From A Response By Russ Collins, CEO, Michigan Theater–Ann Arbor And Director, Art House Convergence, To Mr. Spielberg