Interview: Emma Thompson of ‘Nanny McPhee’

Posted on August 18, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Emma Thompson has won Oscars for both writing (“Sense and Sensibility”) and acting (“Howard’s End”). She has played a character based on Hillary Clinton (“Primary Colors”), a Hogwarts faculty member in two Harry Potter films, and last year alone, Dustin Hoffman’s love interest in “Last Chance Harvey,” a stern headmistress in “An Education,” and a former hippie in “Pirate Radio.”
This week, she plays the title character in “Nanny McPhee Returns,” the sequel to the 2005 film she wrote and starred in about a nanny who has a special — you might say magical — knack with naughty children.
Nanny McPhee says that when she is not wanted but needed she must stay but when she is wanted but not needed she must go. Is it a challenge to teach children the difference between wanting and needing?
Of course but you must understand I don’t make these films to teach people lessons — that would be awful. I make films to delight them and make them laugh and have a really wonderful time and then they’ll think about stuff if that’s what they want to do. Internally, some of the stuff that goes on in those movies is that it’s very true that when need people but don’t particularly want them that’s when they have to stay and help out, but when you are desperate for them to stay but don’t need them, that is when you have to let them go. So, yes, that’s very true but the message is carried very subtly. More importantly, she’s there to say to children, “You can solve your own problems. You don’t need an adult to solve them for you.” That’s even more important.
One of the pleasures of a movie like this one is the vicarious enjoyment of being naughty like the children in the film. Were you a naughty child?
I was profoundly obedient. I was brought up in a rather austere London by a Scottish Presbyterian. You weren’t very naughty. I do remember drawing on the bathroom walls with pencil and having to rub it all off, which took hours, sobbing gently. But I wasn’t naughty.
Is it fun for you to put on a false nose and teeth and make yourself look ugly?
Yes it is good fun and a relief from that rather fascistic insistence on glamor and you’ve got to look this way and be this shape and so there’s a small rebellion in the act itself.
How does the costume help create the character?
The costume was designed in the first instance by Nick Ede, a wonderful designer. We worked very hard on how big she was going to be, whether we would trim it with jet which is how she is described in the book, what her silhouette is like, when to introduce a waist. It was great fun and the costume and make-up is everything really. It does so much work for you. Actors often say they don’t feel like the character until they have the costume on.
Is this movie based on the books?
The first movie has a lot of story that isn’t in the books. They’re really based on a character rather than adaptations of the books. They’re wonderful books but there’s a lot of repeat behavior and the second film is an entirely new story.
Why did you decide on a WWII setting?
I was wanting the father to be absent for some reason or other. I was in Berlin when I was thinking about the story, and I thought maybe I can have this father absent because of war. I already knew I wanted it to be about two sets of children who came from different backgrounds and hated each other and fought.
Will you do another one?
I hope so. It all depends on how this one goes. Market forces will decide that for us, but I am thinking about a third one, certainly.

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Interview: Ben Sherwood of ‘Charlie St. Cloud’

Posted on August 1, 2010 at 3:34 pm

Ben Sherwood is the author of the novel Charlie St. Cloud, the basis for the new movie starring Zaz Efron in the title role as a young man devastated by the loss of his brother. Ben, a journalist, and I spoke about switching from non-fiction to fiction and from a novel to a movie.
I want you to start by telling me about the geese! The title character spends a lot of time trying to shoo off a flock of geese who are occupying the cemetery where he is a caretaker. Where did that come from?
While researching the book, I spent a week as a grave-digger working in the Bronx, New York at Woodlawn Cemetery. I volunteered for the job and they were a little surprised but they put me to work. And I very quickly discovered that if you work in a cemetery, geese are your sworn enemy. When they fly through and land on the ponds or lakes and when they come and go, they make the place very dirty, and so they are the bane of the caretaker’s existence.
There’s very little that one can do that is legal to the geese. One just has to deal with it and live with it.
Charlie’s non-violent method for dealing with them says something about him. He bangs trash can lids to frighten them off.
He wouldn’t want to hurt even a goose.
Tell me about moving from non-fiction and writing as a journalist to writing fiction.
I’ve always been interested in story-telling, whether in journalism, television news, over the last 25 years or the last 15 years in fiction, it’s always been about telling a compelling story. So the shift or transition is pretty straightforward. I just have moved back and for and in and out of journalism a couple of times. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able go back and forth. But it’s all about finding different ways to tell different kinds of stories.
Have you ever seen a ghost?
I have never seen a ghost but in working in that cemetery in the Bronx and in some of my travels to cemeteries around the world and thinking about the way the world works, I’ve often wondered about what happens when those cemetery gates close at night about about the unseen world around us. While I have not had any direct or personal experience with that other world I am fascinated by it and I wonder what surrounds us, what is that unseen world and how does it work, how does it interact with the world in front of us.
The movie lets you make up your mind about whether what we see is happening or whether it is just a manifestation of Charlie’s internal journey through grief and loss.
In the book, it’s a very real world, this unseen world, and it’s very detailed. In the film, they film-makers chose to make it more ambiguous and leave open the possibility that it is happening entirely inside Charlie’s head. For me, I was interested in trying to describe it in as much detail as possible, trying to make it as realistic as possible. It’s all imaginary, of course. If I really knew how it worked I’d be in a different business.
I liked the contrast in the movie between the dynamism and vigor of the opening scene at the sailboat race and the more static scenes set in the graveyard.
The screenwriters came up with a lot of those idea. I give credit to them for introducing the idea of a lot of sailing at the beginning as a very dynamic and engaged way to show us the very active world Charlie was living in. The book starts off with one of the later scenes in the movie that takes you into the central tragedy, the death of Sam. But film is a visual medium and they want to make the screen come alive and pull you into an exciting world. They did a wonderful job of taking you into those sailing sequences so you feel like you are on the boat. Even if you’ve never sailed before you feel like you are right there leaning out over the water and getting splashed.
Did you work with the film-makers?
I had a variety of different conversations with the screenwriters over five years. I was not involved directly but I was regularly in touch with the producers. I feel like one of the luckiest writers around because the producer and writers really cared about the story and the source material while making a movie which is not a literal translation but an interpretation. Every step of the way I was in great hands and they took great care to include me.
Do you have a favorite ghost movie?
I have a very vivid memory of “Ghost,” not just for its dramatic impact but also its humor. One of the Universal executives who was a champion of this project from the start likened it to “Truly Madly Deeply,” which is one of her favorite films. I always welcome that comparison.
What are you working on now?
I wrote a non-fiction book called The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life, the secrets of the world’s most effective survivors, people who have survived all kinds of calamities and challenges, unemployment, foreclosure, mountain lion attacks, cancer, plane crashes. What have they got the rest of us don’t have and how can we get it? I am writing a new book that builds on some of those themes, and am planning a new novel, too.

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Interview: David Nixon of ‘Letters to God’

Posted on April 8, 2010 at 8:00 am

If you were desperately ill, what would you say to God? What would you ask for?
A boy named Tyler had some things he wanted to ask God when he became ill with cancer, and now his story has become a movie, Letters to God. I spoke to the film’s director, David Nixon, who has made a career out of faith-based films that, to the astonishment of Hollywood cynics, have been very successful with audiences. “Letters to God” opens tomorrow.
Tell me about the movie.
It’s the true story of a little boy in Nashville, Tennessee who went through brain cancer. While he was going through the chemo and all the horrible parts of that disease he was writing letters to his best friend, God. And he would put a stamp on it and put it in the mail. And the mailman, knowing that the little boy was a cancer boy, couldn’t bring himself to put those letters in the undeliverable bin — you know, that’s what happens in the post office, and it sits there for about six months and if nobody claims them, they shred them. But the mailman knew the little boy, so he kept the letters and he began to open them. And he discovered that the little boy wasn’t asking for anything for himself. He was asking for help for everyone else in his family, for the people in his neighborhood, for the people that the cancer was affecting, his mother and his grandmother, his brother, the little boy in school who was bullying him, saying things about his shaved head, about his best friend.
So the mailman started giving all those letters to the people the little boy was writing about. And you can imagine how they felt, how they responded. It did not only change the lives of the people in the community but it changed the mailman’s life. He was an alcoholic. His life was turned around because of the faith of the little cancer boy.
An extraordinary story. How did you find out about it?
We were putting together a film deal and looking for scripts and a friend who is a writer, Art D’Alessandro, had just polished the script for a guy up in Nashville, the father of the real boy. He’d never written a screenplay before so he asked Art for help. As soon as I read it, it just connected with me and I got on a plane to Nashville and met with Patrick and his wife and said, “We’ve got to make this movie.” Not just because it was a cancer story — though cancer is a universal theme that touches everyone because we are only about one degree of separation from somebody we know who is going through or has had cancer. But I thought, what a wonderful way to tell the story with the little sweet letters, a great way to get across the message.
I’d like to hear about your commitment to making faith-based films in an industry that does not seem to have as much interest in them as audiences do.
I’ve had this dream for about 30 years. I’ve had a secular production business but always wanted to make these kinds of films. You could never get distribution until something radical happened: “The Passion of the Christ” made $600 million. That opened the eyes of Hollywood. They saw that there was an under-served audience. Christians are going to movies! We’d better make a God film. And we were there with “Facing the Giants.” And that made $35 million. And then the church asked us to do “Fireproof.” And now every studio in LA has a faith-based arm. They are not quite sure what it is, but they know they can make money on it! We’re making as many of these as we can. We’re shooting two more this summer and we’ve got plans for number ten and number 100. We have to make money. But we can certainly use that pipeline to get our message out.
I think films are the greatest evangelical tool of our time. How else do you get to people who would never darken the door of a church. Or to your neighbor over the back yard that would never talk about faith. But they go to movies all the time, so why not use that to deliver your message.
What makes a movie a Christian movie?
You’ve got to have a message. We don’t want to be preachy or overbearing but you’ve got to get the gospel out. You’ve got to come up with a way to tell a true life story or a story that could be true of an average Joe, going through life like anyone else, maybe going through adversity, and how they react to that. Maybe they turn to the Bible instead of the bottle. Or they turn to God instead of the darkness.
That’s all our movies do. They’re telling true stories that people can connect with. It has to be real, or people aren’t going to get it. When people go and sit in that dark room for 90 minutes, and they drop their guard and empathize with those characters they see up on screen, it sears through your heart like nothing else can. People come out of these movies physically and emotionally changed.
And what’s next for you?
We’re making a Christian comedy called “Saving Livingston” and a true story about a girl here in Orlando called “To Write Love on Her Arms.”
What are some of your favorite movies?
“Chariots of Fire” and “The Mission.” Billy Graham’s Worldwide Pictures, the Cecil B. DeMille movies like “The Robe” and “The Ten Commandments. Then Hollywood went away from that and now here we are with a chance to tell these stories again. It’s heartening to me that we’re seeing more of these movies coming out.

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Interview: Conor McPherson and Ciarán Hinds of ‘The Eclipse’

Posted on March 25, 2010 at 7:00 am

“The Eclipse” is a ghost story for grown-ups, which means that it is story first, ghost second. It is an Irish film about Michael (Ciarán Hinds) a recent widower with two children, who is volunteering at a local literary festival. Two of the festival guests are the arrogant, self-centered Nicholas (Aidan Quinn), a novelist, and the sensitive Lena (Iben Hjejle), author of a popular non-fiction book about ghosts.
I spoke to Hinds and writer/director Conor McPherson about the film.
What do people ask you most about the film?
CM: They want to know exactly what was going on, to answer the questions the movie leaves unanswered.
Yes, Americans are very concrete, very literal. We want everything explained.
CM: When people are out of their comfort zone, it’s more dramatic, more prone to have more entertaining experiences, get into fights. That’s the dramatic instinct, to move people out of what they know and make them deal with it. In theater it’s all through dialogue in traditional plays. In movies, it’s so lovely, you can show him putting dishes in the dishwasher and everybody just knows what’s going on, that his wife is gone and he has to do everything. You still tell some things with dialogue in scenes but we’ve taken some away…
CH: Pared it away, really.
CM: And that’s enough. Film has that magic.
You play a quiet person in this film. How do you as an actor convey all you have to about what he is thinking and experiencing?
CH: He’s just a guy like anybody. We’re all ordinary in a way. We can all be hurt. We can all be unbalanced. We all have feelings. Life can treat us harshly, even shockingly sometimes. He has minor pretensions but he is a woodwork teacher. He works with his hands. He is a practical man. But though he is doing his best with his wife gone he is out of his depth a bit apart from the grief. He’s a real person but you bring elements of emotion to a heightened situation. He just wants to survive and take care.
I loved his interaction with his kids. It felt very real. The frustration and the need to convey a sense that he is in control.
CH: When Lena says she is sorry to hear about his wife he responds, “It was terrible for the kids.” He knows he hasn’t grieved enough but he has to keep a lid on it for the kids. In the end, in the story, he is allowed to let it all out and properly to grieve.
Do you find that now, like Lena in the film, people want to come and tell you their own ghost stories?
CM: At the first screening last April in New York, it turned into a sort of heavy session with people talking about how they lost people and the film made that feeling come back. It’s probably the last thing you think about when you’re making a film is other people’s problems. You’re thinking about your problem, which is making the movie. But you do have a responsibility. You can’t mess around with people’s emotions.
CH: You find people genuinely relating to something or a truth they felt, and that is what you aspire to.
Do you believe in ghosts?
CM: Yes I do, but I don’t know what they are. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. But if someone said to me, “Last night I saw the ghost of my sibling” or whatever, I wouldn’t say, “That’s impossible,” I’d say, “What was that like?”
CH: I don’t disbelieve.
CM: There’s a very old tradition in Ireland, and as an island at the edge of Europe, for thousands of years with no one knowing what was beyond there, I wonder if a sense of the beyond was internalized into the Irish psyche. We’re very quick to accept the supernatural. And I think Catholicism took root very quickly in Ireland because it’s a very superstitious religion, the holy ghost, the holy spirit, it has a goddess, very visual, the music. For me, philosophically, we don’t know anything anyway. We have this short little life we have to somehow try to get a grip on without understanding anything about the nature of time or existence or the universe or God or infinity. We’re just here for a brief moment and we open up these little eyes and go “What is this?” and then we’re gone! I love stories that frame that: This is what life is about — you don’t have a clue.

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Interview: Alice Eve and Krysten Ritter of ‘She’s Out of My League’

Posted on March 10, 2010 at 3:59 pm

It’s impossible to meet the gloriously beautiful, smart, and funny Alice Eve and Krysten Ritter without feeling that they are completely out of the league of any mere mortals. In “She’s out of My League,” Eve very believably plays a woman of such beauty and accomplishment that the main character, played by Jay Baruchel (“Knocked Up,” “Tropic Thunder”) is too insecure to handle the relationship. Ritter plays her cynical best friend. But they are also gloriously nice and made the interview a real pleasure.

Have you ever dated anyone you thought was out of your league?

Ritter: I’ve dated someone that other people thought was out of my league. But if you’re with somebody, you think they’re a 10.

Eve: I’m stealing that line. It’s true, if you’re with somebody you think they’re a 10. I always think that if I’m with somebody, they’re better than me. That’s why I love them. They’re amazing.

Do you think that men and women rate each other differently?

Eve: Women are less aesthetic than men.

Ritter: Men are more visual creatures and rate women based on looks. We like to laugh and be shown a good time. I’ve never rated anyone on looks.

You seem like real friends on screen. Did you know each other before?

Ritter: We are real friends now but didn’t know each other before. Alice was cast in the movie and I came in to chemistry read. It just worked.

The wisecracking best friend is always a great role, isn’t it?

Ritter: It is always a lot of fun. It’s a good time. You don’t feel like you’re under any pressure except to be funny. I think there was even more outrageous language in the original script but then the studio didn’t want quote unquote pretty girls saying awful things. But we got them in there. The “plane doctor” joke was cut from the script. The script had the character as unattractive, plain, frumpy best friend. But then I read and got the part and then they started to change it and get away from the really foul-mouthed and sarcastic lines. But then when we were shooting we decided to try it and it made it into the movie and the trailer.

You wear some beautiful clothes in the movie.

Ritter: You had standard, conventional fabulous, stuff. I had cooler, edgier, weirder stuff. The costume designer didn’t have the right sizes for me so we literally got in the car and went to all these boutiques in Pittsburgh and got all these great pieces. I wanted to keep everything especially the green one from the Andy Warhol party scene.

Eve: We had a lot of fittings I had to go back to New York for and the producers at Dreamworks were really involved in the look and what was right. I put a lot of work, sweat, and tears in those fittings and it has been so rewarding to have it pay off because we’ve had such great responses to the costumes. They clothes show that she is very successful, she’s got taste, she’s got money. It’s an inch by inch process, do you like this, maybe we’ll try this one for now, it can be a very long process.

Tell me about working with Jay.

Eve: He’s so great! The dramatic stuff, the comedic stuff, a lot of intimate stuff, we put work into it. it’s about building the right kind of relationship together and knowing that the energy you have together keeps that alive for the duration of the film.

You’re playing a character who is supposed to be just about perfect. And a lot of what you are doing is reacting in the middle of some outrageous behavior. How do you make that work?

Eve: I felt like she was an honest, straight, calm, nice, person. So you have a whole plethora of choices, and it was incredibly refreshing to me because you don’t have to be the bitch or the slut or the clumsy one. It was a lovely thing to have that role. At the time I was outraged when they cut out all the swearing in the original script but in retrospect I think it was the right choice.

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