Breakthrough Performer: Laura Breckenridge

Posted on July 30, 2010 at 8:00 am

LB Color Headshot 2.jpg I make no pretense of objectivity. But even if she was not my friend I would appreciate Laura Breckenridge as one of the most talented young actresses working today. She has appeared on television (“Gossip Girl,” “Related”), in movies (“Loving Annabelle,” “Southern Belles”), and on- and off-Broadway (“The Crucible” and “The Cherry Orchard”). Because I know her, I can appreciate her professionalism, judgment, and dedication. And because I have seen her on stage, on television, and in films playing a wide variety of characters, I can appreciate her talent and her ability to captivate an audience.
I was thrilled to hear that Laura will appear on “Drop Dead Diva,” this weekend, co-starring with Cybill Shepherd in a plot she describes as “‘Devil Wears Prada’ with a twist.” First, I can’t wait to see it. Second, it gave me an excuse to catch up with her and congratulate her on her graduation this spring from Princeton. We chatted a bit about the movies we’ve enjoyed lately and then I asked her about her latest role.
Tell me about “Drop Dead Diva!” People love that show.
It’s a really good show! It’s very well done and very smart. They handle the fantastical element very well and make it very real, and at the same time it’s a lot of fun to watch. I watched a bunch of episodes to understand the tone of the show when I was preparing, and loved them. I now watch the show whenever I can. The cast is very talented and I can see why it is a big hit.
I’m in an episode called “Queen of Mean,” airing August 1. It stars Cybill Shepherd. She plays Ellie Tannen, head of a fashion line, and I’m her former assistant who has written a tell-all book, and she’s suing me now. Then you see there’s a few other things that happen and I may not be as innocent as I seem. The character is a lot of fun, and one of the things I am most thrilled about is that I got to sit on a witness stand. I don’t know if I’d ever want to do that in real life, but I’d never done it in a show and there’s something about sitting in that box! They have built most of their sets on a soundstage and they replicated a courthouse that they used in the first season, down to the last detail, so it felt very much like a courtroom.
What did it feel like to be cross-examined?
It was fun but not so fun at the same time. She is good! What I think Brooke does so well is that she will be the smart lawyer Jane and then have a flash of Deb, the model. She balances it so well and I think she lights up the screen. She’s just like that in the room. So she looks at me and I think, “Oh, no, she’s got me!” It was easy to play rattled in the scene. She is a great scene partner because she has a theater background so she is always very present, very there. She’s so talented.
Another thing that was fun was the scene where we all enter. Because Cybill Shepherd’s character is such a famous person we are surrounded by paparazzi, all these photographers. There were a lot of people involved, and a lot of components to the scene, so everyone had to coordinate and work together. It was the first scene I shot, and it gave me a chance to meet everyone and get into the flow. There was so much happening it was exciting, and I felt so lucky to be there. It reminded me how much I love being on set, where all the various parts of a show come together.
How long did it take to shoot the episode?
It took eight days. After I got the job I found out that shooting began on the day before my last exam. They were really accommodating and worked out the schedule so I could go to Atlanta, where they film, right after my last exam. It was nice to finish my exam and go right to work. We were in Peachtree City, Georgia, which is about 40 minutes outside of Atlanta. It is a planned community with 90 miles of golf cart trails. There are cars on the main road but everything in the city is attached by golf cart paths. So there was something relaxing about traveling around the town in the golf carts.
Did you have to go to Atlanta to audition?
I did it in New York. Most agencies have tape rooms, a teeny room with a camera, where you can do an audition on tape. The benefit is that you can do it over if you want to, but the drawback is that the casting director is not there to give you feedback. I did an audition for an earlier episode, and then they asked me to come back and do another one for this one.
Tell me about working with Cybill Shepherd.
Cybill is so knowledgeable. It’s not just that she’s been doing it for a long time. She is very observant. She knows eye-lines as well as any director of photography. She understands camera angles, knows where she needs to be, she just knows it all, so just watching her was amazing. And she is very sweet and very lovely to work with. When she was doing her scene on the witness stand it was amazing to watch; she was just so good.
I know the schedule for shooting television is very fast. How do you coordinate with the other actors?
With TV, there’s no overall rehearsal. You have a blocking rehearsal and then back in hair and make-up or on the set after the wide shot is when you have a chance to talk. There’s definitely a collaborative aspect, but it’s more on the moment.
You had quite a contrast this summer because you did a big budget scripted television series and you also did a microscopic budget 24 Hour Plays in New York. What was that like?
A friend told me it was the most amazing, thrilling, frightening experience of her life — and it’s true. You meet at 9 pm and everyone brings a costume and a prop and contribute it to a pile. There are six writers and they pick the actors, costumes, and props they want. They write until 6 or 7 am. The directors show up and pick their plays. And then the actors show up and you have 12 hours to rehearse and memorize. You’re going on instinct so sometimes things happen on stage and you just go with it. It’s a wonderful experience, very collaborative, all of us just holding hands and diving in and hoping for the best.
I did it last year, and was so happy to be invited back, because I loved the experience. This year I did a play called “Hero Dad,” about three different dads. I played three different versions of the same type of girl, to come into these dads’ lives and remind them of their responsibility, going from kind of funny to very serious. It was an intense and challenging play to learn in twelve hours, but that type of experience is always the most thrilling and enjoyable. 24 Hour Plays really re-awakens your instincts and helps remind you to rely on your fellow actors, use their energy and act off of it.
It sounds like theater is your favorite.
I really do love all three. I like the challenge of different ways of working. I value rehearsal time and the energy of live theater, where it’s different every night. Sometimes the audience does not know it, but they are a part of the performance. They bring the final piece to it, and every audience is different. I will always love theater, but it is hard to pick a favorite. With film and TV you are able to capture things that happen in one specific moment, and because they are filmed, they are captured forever. The challenge in film and TV is to find the precise moments right there and then, with only the energy of your fellow actors to help you. Once the scene is done, it’s done; it won’t change as it can in theater. What I love about TV is it’s constantly evolving and you’re evolving with it. TV characters feel like they’re in our lives, not just because they are in our living rooms every week but because we get to see them grow and develop and you get to see how the same character takes on new challenges and new perspectives. I feel fortunate to have had experiences in theater, film and TV, and I hope that I will have a career that balances all three.

Drop Dead Diva

Comic-Con: Etc. and Misc.

Posted on July 26, 2010 at 1:06 am

I saw Gamer Grub, a specially designed “performance” snack for gamers that won’t leave crumbs on the keyboard or make their fingers sticky.

A lot of people were walking around with dripping wounds on their faces. It turned out to be a promotional temporary tattoo from the “Dexter” people. There was real blood, however, at the Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive, an annual tradition at Comic-Con.

Among the highlights of Comic-Con for me each year are the presentations from the Comic Arts Conference, an association of academics who conduct serious scholarly analysis of comics, graphic novels, and sequential art. I truly enjoy their serious, thoughtful engagement and especially their vocabulary, using terms like “meta-panels,” “panopticonism,” “historiographic meta-fiction,” “inexpungable relativity,” “multivocality,” and “ret-con.” And I like to think about the way that comic book stories, carrying the same characters through decades of real time, provide an opportunity for scholars to think about the power and possibilities of endless narratives carried forward by many different people through many different eras.

A group of superheroes took on a group of virulent haters when Comic-Con attendees staged a protest against Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church.

You can buy tribbles at Comic-Con, and these are guaranteed not to reproduce.

One of my favorite promotions this year was for the forthcoming “Skyline,” about a strange light that sucks people up into the sky. They had a truck that launched small, ghostly white “bodies” made of soap bubbles that floated up past a huge sign for the movie.

No staples, no need for Mylar bags, and your mother can’t throw them away — there are now digital comics for you to read on your iPad or computer. But what will happen to all of the meticulous grading and how do you buy and sell vintage digital comics?

At the huge “Tron” session, the film-makers recorded the audience and promised to include their cheers in the movie.

Movie stars like Harrison Ford, Angelina Jolie, Sylvester Stallone, and Robert Downey, Jr. get a big reception from the crowd at Comic-Con. But they also go wild for Janet Waldo, Stan Freberg, and Tom Kenny. If you know who they are and want to hear a funny story told by Janet Waldo, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com

The biggest announcement of this years Con was the cast for “The Avengers” movie, to be directed by Con favorite, Joss Whedon.

Everything is mutli-platform and omnimedia. TV shows spin off games. Games spin off movies. Both spin off comics and graphic novels and they spin off movies, television shows, and apps. I played Glee karaoke for the Wii and it was a blast.

Most popular questions at the panels: What are the DVD extras? How do I get your job?
You are AWESOME! (Yes, I know that’s not a question, but apparently, some people do not.)

No one really was stabbed here, despite news reports. A guy poked another guy in the face with a pen. Everyone is fine.

I spoke to Neil Kaplan, a voice-over actor (he once voiced Optimus Prime) who has created a non-profit group called Audio Theater for Our Troops. He hopes to build a library of audio materials to send to military forces for entertainment and support.

A guy standing at the microphone to ask a question was wearing a black hood and long cloak. The moderator called on him, “Uh, the next question is from, uh, Death?” The guy in the cloak responded with as much dignity as he could muster: “I am a Sith Lord.”

I was captivated by a book called Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel and got a chance to speak to the co-author, Anina Bennett. She told me her husband is a graphic designer and history buff who originally wanted to write straightforward historical adventure stories that evolved into a graphic novel and then evolved into a book that took a fictional inventor and his fictional invention, a robot, and put them into real, historical events. “People get turned off by the way history is taught,” she told me. Inspired by Gore Vidal and the Flashman books, the two of them worked together to tell true stories through the adventures of the robot, illustrated with astonishingly authentic-looking historical artifacts. The book is simply gorgeous and very inviting, and there is a brief but excellent teachers guide available. J.J. Abrams has announced he will make the movie.

There are enormous displays on the Exhibition floor, some costing a quarter of a million dollars. We could have our photo taken on the throne of Asgard, in the zombie house from “The Waking Dead,” or lifting a car like the superhero members of “No Ordinary Family.” But what I found most moving and inspiring was the rows of displays from people with their own comics and graphic novels. It isn’t the marketing blitz; it’s the power of imagination and the need to tell stories that is the real energy behind Comic-Con. And I cannot express how impressed I was with the talent, dedication, and professionalism of everyone I spoke to.

Can’t wait for next year!

And yes, there are two more Comic-Con posts coming, one on movies and one on television. Stay tuned. And if you’ve read this far, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Comic-Con in the subject line. First one will win a Comic-Con souvenir.

Comic-Con — Production Design, Effects, and Writing

Posted on July 25, 2010 at 2:11 am

It is fun to see the stars, but one of the things I love best at Comic-Con is the chance to hear from the people behind the scenes about how entertainment gets produced and how creative people develop their careers and do their jobs. I attended panels on production design, women who write “genre,” and — always one of the highlights — “The Black Panel,” with African-Americans who work in the industry, and I spoke one-on-one with Greg Broadmore, the “lead concept designer” of “District 9,” who works at the legendary Weta special effects group (“Lord of the Rings”).
At The Black Panel, moderator Michael Davis talked with entertainment attorney Darrel Miller, novelist Nnedi Okorafor, artist Denys Cowan, and writer/producer/director Reggie Hudlin, about making your own opportunities and how “there’s nothing to fear except Mel Gibson.” There was a special tribute to actor/director Bill Duke, who answered questions and gave advice to audience members trying to get their stories told. Davis spoke about his efforts to create a program for reluctant readers based on comic books, called The Action Files and the panel recommended resources like CarlBrandon.org for finding stories about characters of color in speculative fiction.
Greg Broadmore told me about creating the fabulous alien creatures for “District 9,” which involved literally hundreds of different ideas. At one point, they were going to be based on a sort of walrus-elephant design for a while before they became the iconic insect-crustacean we saw in the film. One reason is the simpler movements. He called them the “robots of the animal world.” Insects and crustaceans bend only at the joints and you do not have to animate all of the complex and subtle muscle tensing and vein effects. The insect-crustacean also had the advantage of being inherently repelling to us, but they also wanted the creatures to be sympathetic over the course of the movie. So they worked on the eyes, making them big, “quite childlike,” evoking a conflicting inherent emotion in the audience. Broadmore’s current project is the amazing world of Dr. Grordbort’s Infallible Aether Oscillators, an amazing alternate universe story of Earth’s colonizing the rest of the solar system in the 1930’s, as he says, “that era of what could be.”
I always love hearing from the production designers, the people responsible for the overall look of a film, everything from the grandest galaxy to the tiniest buttonhole. This year’s panel was sensational. They described how they read a script and then “re-write it visually.” They talked about the pros and cons of constructing real sets versus working with CGI, what it is like to oversee hundreds of designers and the people who bring those designs to life versus working as an art department of one, creating an entirely imaginative fantasy world versus meticulously re-creating an historic era. They spoke about the importance of the things they have to design so that we don’t notice them — we would be distracted by them if they stood out, but because they are so seamlessly integrated into what we see on screen we don’t get distracted from the story. And we got to see samples of their work, including some breathtaking glimpses of the new Narnia “Dawn Treader” movie.
Mimi Gramatky told the audience that she studied architecture in school and still works on real-life building projects. But when she found out that if she worked in film she could design two hundred buildings a year, and not one of them had to meet safety code requirements, she was hooked. John Muto (“Terminator”) said that to succeed, designers need more than imagination; you need the ability to understand what is practical. And all of them agreed that production designers need to speak the language of everyone else who works on the movie, from the people who are actually responsible for construction to the director of photography and the people who oversee the budgets. Management and relationship skills are as important as creative talent, and the goal is to do such a good job that everyone you work with wants to work with you again.
The panel of women writers was titled “Girls Gone Genre,” because it featured women writing something other than romantic comedies. Actress Felicia Day was frustrated with the roles she was considered for and the pressure to look the way Hollywood thinks actresses should look — “you have to be either glam or quirky.” So she began to write The Guild, a popular web series about a group of friends who play massively multi-player role-playing games, now entering its fourth season. Other panelists included the scriptwriter for the “Twilight” series, Melissa Rosenberg, Laeta Kalogridis (“Shutter Island”), and Marti Noxon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Mad Men”) (pictured). They did compare shoes (Kalogridis hates to dress up and wear make-up, which she says works for her because people think she is tortured and serious, but Noxon enjoys fashion). But they talked candidly and with insight about the challenges and opportunities they face in not being “the chick who wrote the chick” (Gail Simone, writer Wonder Woman and Birds of Prey). It is not just about getting the chance to write. Even when you have the job, you have to be careful about how you express your views. Noxon said, “When you try to improve it, they hear their wife.” Their frustration was less based on gender than on the tension between the business side and the creative side. “Huge electricity companies own story-telling companies,” said Kalogridis.

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Who Inspired Lucas and Spielberg?

Posted on July 11, 2010 at 1:53 pm

Two of the greatest story-tellers of the 20th century say that they both learned how to tell a story from the illustrations of Norman Rockwell. George Lucas (“Star Wars”) and Steven Spielberg (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Jurassic Park,” “Jaws”), close friends and sometime collaborators (the Indiana Jones movies) both collect the work of America’s foremost illustrator because they love the way he packs an entire story into just one frame.

For the first time, their collections are being made available to the public at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in Washington D.C. until January 2, 2011 in an exhibit called Telling Stories. In a movie accompanying the exhibit, the film-makers talk about how as children they scrutinized every detail of the pictures to understand the story behind each one and how that inspired their visual styles. Spielberg talks about two paintings in particular that continue to inspire him — one of an author at his typewriter dreaming up a story about Daniel Boone and one of a boy holding on for dear life to the end of a high dive board, peering down at the endless space below. He says the first inspires him to tell stories and the second is how he feels every single time just before he signs on to do another film.

Rockwell has been taken for granted, marginalized, and dismissed as corny by those who think that art has to be anguished and the era of representation is over. But shows like this one are recognizing that he deserves to be seen as an artist of the first rank in ability and importance. He is not unaware of despair, squalor, and pain. Indeed, it is all there in his pictures, if you look. But his images are aspirational, inspiring us to live up to the values and dreams of our forefathers and, when we fail and fail again, to start over.

The Smithsonian has an online slide show of the highlights of the exhibit. And visitors to Stockbridge, Massachusetts should be sure to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum. The images are always powerful, but the chance to see the brushstrokes and the work that went into all of the preliminary sketches will deepen your appreciation for Rockwell as an illustrator and an artist of the first rank. I highly recommend his autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator: Norman Rockwell, the DVD NORMAN ROCKWELL: An American Portrait, and the catalog of the show, Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. But most of all, I recommend seeing Rockwell’s pictures, masterful in technique and in spirit.

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“Twilight: Eclipse” Poem and Music

Posted on June 30, 2010 at 10:40 pm

“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” begins with a famous poem, recited by Bella, “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

It’s a good poem to set the stage for this story, as Bella is torn between two people who are more than human, Edward, a vampire, whose physical temperature is cooler than the average human’s 98.6 degrees, and Jacob, a shape-shifter who is part of a wolf pack, whose temperature is so warm he never has to wear a shirt (and who is only half-joking when he refers to himself as “hot”). At one point in the movie, Bella is so cold she is shivering, and Edward has to accept that only Jacob can give her the heat she needs — by holding her in his arms.

The poem’s themes of the warmth and heat of desire versus the iciness of hatred are also explored in the movie. Bella loves both Edward and Jacob and they are both passionately devoted to her. They must protect her from enemies who are fueled by frozen emotions like revenge and the need for power.

And listen to this beautiful Debussy piece, “Clair de Lune” (Moonlight), played in the film. It is the third and most famous movement of his Suite Bergamasque. It also inspired the movie “Frankie and Johnny” with Michele Pfeiffer and Al Pacino.

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