Interview: Jon Gries of “Endgame” (and “Get Shorty” and “Napoleon Dynamite”)

Posted on October 9, 2015 at 3:27 pm

I’m a big fan of actor Jon Gries, who always brings something very specific and interesting to his roles. In “Endgame,” the story of a championship chess team from a school in a poor community from writer/director Carmen Marron, it would have been easy to make the school principal just the usual clueless or bureaucratic obstacle, but in just a few scenes Gries created a character who was vivid and real. I was delighted to get a chance to talk to him.

“One of the things when I approached the role I tried to avoid is, obviously being so many different characters that have been regurgitated time and time again and they’ve become almost cliché. And I think I just try to find some bit of humanity. You know, I think it helps, I know somebody who is a principal and she would always talk to me about how difficult it is being a principal. Not so much because of the students but because of all the pressures that came from the Board of Education, and she had teachers that were underperforming, and that she could not fire them and that she had so many problems with just the way the structures were set up with just the teacher’s union. It totally shined a different light on that experience for me. And so I think that was the beginning, I think that started my quest for this role and probably how to play it. And it has its trappings and pitfalls and all you can try and do is cleave onto a little bit of sanity and a little bit of the right thing.” He admired Marron’s work in bringing it all together. “We shot of my stuff relatively quickly and she was always just very open. I think that’s very important for a director to be just open and trust that your performers are going to legitimately get you what you want or surprise you. And if they’re wrong or they’re not going the right way the you know, you just talk about it but until then the good thing about Carmen is that she is just not the kind of director who feels like they have to direct but that just kind of lets it happen. Those are the best directors because there is a sense of trust and a sense of allowing for the collaboration to really take hold. We talked about it. It’s not like I wanted to surprise her. We talked about where we were going with this and we were in agreement so it is good in that regard. Really there were days when she was under incredible stress because there was such a tight schedule. She really had to get it done. And it’s not an easy thing when you’re working with a lot of children. There’s a lot of kids who are non-actors in the movie so you have to educate them and at the same time not remove them from being kids because you want them to be able to be who they are. That’s what you really are trying to have in your film so I thought she did a really good job.”

He was brought into the film by his “Napoleon Dynamite” costar Efren Ramirez, who plays the chess team’s coach. “He contacted me and said, ‘Hey come on we’re doing this movie and there’s this part in it. I’d love to have you come down and do it.’ And you know honestly, normally I might have not even played the role because I’m always looking for more to do I’m just too greedy. I want to chew the furniture and whatever I can do and this guy was just kind of tapestry of the whole film. But once I got down there and I was getting involved and I was very pleased that I was a part of it and I was really happy to be there to support Efren as well because I think he’s so good.”

Gries also appeared in one of my favorite films, “Get Shorty,” where his character is a low-level hood who gets shot by both Dennis Farina and Gene Hackman. “That was a lot of fun to do and it was a lucky experience in the sense that when I got that job I was probably the 200th person who read for the part. My agent, she is now deceased, a woman named Suzanne Smith was quite an amazing agent. When she called me up she said ‘I don’t want you to ever forget this because this doesn’t happen. They’ve read Matthew McConaughey, Steve Buscemi, they’ve read a lot of people for that same role, and the fact that you got this part – it’s nothing short of a miracle.’ So I did. I felt lucky to be a part of that. I really was. To work with the amazing Dennis Farina and Gene Hackman, how lucky is that and the amazing incredible Delroy Lindo and John Travolta. With people like that, it’s just ‘Okay I have to really rise to occasion or shut up.'”

The best advice he ever got about acting: “Simply just tell the truth and just know who you are in the scene. Know your relationships and know who you are.”

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Actors Interview

Meryl Streep Calls for More Women Film Critics

Posted on October 9, 2015 at 8:00 am

The Hollywood Reporter quotes Meryl Streep on the disproportionate number of male film critics on Rotten Tomatoes: “The word isn’t ‘disheartening,’ it’s ‘infuriating,’” she said. “I submit to you that men and women are not the same. They like different things. Sometimes they like the same things, but their tastes diverge. If the Tomatometer is slided so completely to one set of tastes, that drives box office in the U.S., absolutely.”

Streep made these comments in London, where she is appearing at the premiere of her new film, “Suffragette,” about the women who fought for the vote in the UK.

In a related story, The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has launched an investigation of gender disparities in the film and television industry, following a request made by the American Civil Liberties Union in May.

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Big Stone Gap

Posted on October 8, 2015 at 5:51 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for brief suggestive material
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkeness
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense confrontations, sad death
Diversity Issues:	Ethnic diversity
Date Released to Theaters:	October 9, 2015

Even in small towns, big things can happen. Sometimes the most famous movie star in the world stops by and makes international headlines. And even bigger things happen, too — they just don’t get into the newspapers. Adriana Trigiani’s best-selling novels about her home town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia are loving tributes to the down-home values and adorably quirky characters she grew up with. Big things happen. There are sad losses and disappointments. But there is love and honor and generosity, too. In her first feature film as a director, Trigiani has assembled a superb cast, mixing top Hollywood and Broadway talent with some locals. Ashley Judd is at the center as a woman whose discovery of a secret about her past makes her think differently about her future.

It takes place in 1978. The woman is Ave Maria Mulligan, the owner of the local pharmacy. With a name like that, there has to be a story. When her beloved mother dies, she learns for the first time that her mother’s husband was not her father, as she thought. Her mother has left her a letter explaining that her father was a man she loved in Italy. Ave is determined to find her real father, though she has never traveled anywhere. She has great friends with colorful names and personalities, especially wisecracking Fleeta Mullins (Whoopi Goldberg) and starry-eyed bookmobile librarian Iva Lou Wade (Jenna Elfman). Then there’s Theodore Tipton (John Benjamin Hickey), the high school band and choral director who works with her on the town’s legendary annual “Trail of the Lonesome Pine” pageant and is Ave’s sort-of boyfriend and a handsome coal miner with the rare ordinary name of Jack (Patrick Wilson), who has a very possessive girlfriend (Jane Krakowski as Sweet Sue Tinsley).

It takes place in an eternally cozy past where coal mining is romantic because it creates electricity and there’s no mention of black lung disease. It’s corny cornpone, but unpretentious and it goes down easy, like sweet tea brewed by sunshine.

Parents should know that this film has some sexual references including potency, paternity, and a closeted gay character and non-explicit situations, drinking and drunkenness.

Family discussion: How is Ave Maria different from the people around her? Why did her mother keep the secret so long?

If you like this, try: the book series by Adriana Trigiani and the film “Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!”

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Comedy Movies -- format Romance

Freeheld

Posted on October 8, 2015 at 5:50 pm

Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore), a 23-year veteran of the police force, learns that she has terminal cancer. And then she learns something even more devastating — that her registered domestic partner, Stacie Andree (Ellen Page) is not eligible for the pension benefits that she would be entitled to if they had been a heterosexual married couple.

It is hard to believe that was only ten years ago. But in 2006, marriage equality seemed very far in the future. And that was not Laurel Hester’s concern. As shown in the Oscar-winning documentary short, also called “Freeheld,” she did not want her fight for death benefits to be used to promote marriage equality. Hester was a very private person who did not even tell her longtime detective partner (Michael Shannon) that she was gay. She just wanted what she believed she had earned, and she wanted the woman she loved to be able to stay in the home they created together.

The term “Freehold,” by the way, is unique to New Jersey, and it goes back to the state’s earliest history. New Jersey’s first constitution, written in 1776, declared a county representative must be worth “fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate in the same and have resided in the county in which they claim a vote for twelve months immediately preceding the election.” “Clear estate” means owning a property outright, and is also called a “freehold,” so only those who owned land could vote or be elected to office. While that restriction no longer applies, the position most localities call “representative,” “supervisor,” or “councilman” is referred to in New Jersey as “Freehold.” In the case of this movie, “freeheld” refers to the property shared by Hester and Andree and their love for each other as well.

There are really two stories here, both familiar to moviegoers, but not combined in this way. There is the story of the fight for justice against the barriers of bureaucracy, bigotry, and bullies. And there is the story of a reserved loner opening up to love. The combination is at times uneasy. The love story is the stronger part of the film, but gets less attention. Moore is superb as Hester, with her Farrah Fawcett hair wings, utter dedication to her job, and resolve built up into isolation after more than two decades of mostly good-natured but sexist and homophobic humor from her fellow cops. She crosses state lines to play in on a lesbian volleyball team in Pennsylvania so no one in New Jersey will see her.

And then she meets Stacie, tiny, much younger, but confident in who she is and who she loves. The scene where Andree proves herself to the manager of a car repair shop is a highlight. And so is their date, where we see Hester’s conflicting feelings. She is very attracted to Andree, she cannot quite believe Andree is attracted to her, she wants love in her life, she does not want to be exposed or vulnerable. When the two of them walk away from the bar to talk quietly, they are approached by thugs, and Hester pulls out her gun and identifies herself as a police officer. It is, in a way, a supremely romantic gesture. Later, she introduces Andree as her “roommate” and barks at her for answering the phone. But when she gets sick, she understands quickly what her priorities need to be.

She remains clear, even after Steven Goldstein (Steve Carell), a flamboyant activist for gay rights, shows up. Hester reluctantly allows him to create some political theater to support her cause. There is a loophole in the law. Domestic partners of state employees are covered, but local Freeholders decide whether city and county-level employees will qualify. Hester’s Freeholders have already turned her down and she does not have much time.

As often happens in re-telling a recent true story, the movie trips over the proportions in trying to get the facts straight. The interactions between the various Freeholders, including Josh Charles as the most inclined to support Hester’s rights, are no more interesting than municipal-level politics usually are. But the deep love between Hester and Andree and their quiet insistence on simple justice give the story sincerity, sweetness, and conviction.

Parents should know that this film includes very sad scenes of a terminal cancer patient, and death, themes of LGBTQ rights including homophobic and bigoted characters, some sexual references and situations, some strong language, smoking, drinking, and some law enforcement-related violence.

Family discussion: Why did Laurel insist that she was not an advocate of marriage equality? Should she have told her partner the truth?

If you like this, try: the Oscar-winning documentary that inspired the film

Mr. Peabody to Appear on Jeopardy!

Posted on October 8, 2015 at 4:35 pm

Everyone’s favorite educated canine appears tonight on Jeopardy to match his matchless historical knowledge against the contestants. He will be the first dog to host an entire category.

“The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show” premieres on October 9th, 2015 exclusively on Netflix. Set in their swanky penthouse apartment atop beautiful Templeton Tower, Mr. Peabody and Sherman take late night television to a hilarious new level in the first animated talk show for kids! Complete with a “live” studio audience, special guests, and plenty of lights, camera, action, music and laughs.