Interview: Danielle Bisutti of ‘True Jackson VP’

Posted on February 18, 2010 at 3:59 pm

On the Nickelodeon series True Jackson VP, Danielle Bisutti plays Amanda, the fashion company executive who is jealous of — and always outsmarted by — the teenage title character played by Keke Palmer. She also stars in the popular Christian film No Greater Love as a young mother who leaves her family and devotes her life to Christ. I spoke to her about fashion, co-starring with young performers, and what inspires her.

Is it fun to wear high fashion clothes as Amanda?

When I was two years old, I would pick out clothes. My mom would stand me up in my crib and pull out dresses and I would point to what I wanted to wear. So it was an inevitable thing that one day I would end up playing a role where I was a vice president of a fashion company. My mom and my aunt did a great deal of modeling and both my grandmother and my great-grandmother on my mom’s side worked for Gucci. So I have all these amazing vintage Gucci pieces. So when I was cast as Amanda in “True Jackson VP” and saw that it was a kind of “Devil Wears Prada”/”Ugly Betty” setting I knew exactly what I was going to wear. It was a total dream come true. And our wardrobe stylist, Alison Freer, is phenomenal. She totally gets me, my body type, the character. Amanda has a bit of little girl in her and a lot of sass, a lot of edge. She’s a New York executive and she always wants to be a little sleek and sophisticated. We’re totally on the same page and I couldn’t be happier. I love her; she’s amazing.

Is there one outfit you especially loved wearing?

I seem to get a lot of great dresses from Karen Millen and some pieces from Alice & Olivia. Alison Freer let me borrow and Alice & Olivia dress on the red carpet, and a Karen Millen one that fit like a total glove I wore on the red carpet as well. She gives them to me on loan and I rock them on the red carpet and bring them back.

You’re working with one of my favorite young performers, Keke Palmer of Akeelah and the Bee.

She is a consummate professional and she’s just 16 years old. There’s a side to Keke where you feel like you are dealing with a sophisticated 40-year-old woman who has been doing this forever and then there’s side that is this 16-year-old girl who is bouncing off the walls. What I love about her is that she is always open to playing, always open to new ideas. Sometimes I’ll come to her and say, “Hey, why don’t we try the scene this way, or in this scene why don’t you look at me and I’ll look and you and then we’ll go in this direction. We come to each other with different ideas and there’s a real collaboration with a lot of love and respect for each other and playfulness. It’s a total joy.

What is it like interacting with kid actors all day long?

That’s like the clash between the two worlds in the show — dealing with kids in a very adult, high-fashion, high-pressure situation. I kind of see myself as like the mama bear on the set. If the kids are getting rowdy before a take, honing everybody in and getting everybody focused. You have to watch your language. You have to watch what you talk about. I feel like it has made me a little bit more PG-rated, which is totally fine for me! It’s refreshing. The writers come up with clever, interesting jokes without it being anything risque. It’s a total family show.

Tell me about meeting fans of the show — they must get very enthusiastic!

I play the nemesis of the show. And there are kids who love the hero but there are also kids who love the villain! A lot of kids love Amanda! They love how she takes herself so seriously. They love how she dresses. One girl sends me pictures of how she dresses like Amanda at school! That’s been fun. We have a lot of parent fans, too.

I think it is great for families to watch a show that is set in the workplace. Most shows featuring kids are set at home or school.

You nailed it right on the head.

How was your experience filming No Greater Love?

Filming NGL was a completely organic and collaborative process. Russ, Brandon and Brad all set the tone for a family feeling environment which allowed me as an actor (and I believe the other actors as well) feel safe to really discover the truthful unfurling of each moment. Yes we were on a budget, yes we had a time limit, yes this was the first film for this production company but you’d never be able to tell by looking at the finished product that any of these factors weighed in on the over-all quality of the project.

What was it like being a part of a faith-based film?

Being in a faith-based film felt like being back at home, growing up in Simi Valley. Everyone was kind and supportive. There were a lot of prayers to get through stressful moments or non-stressful moments such as before each meal and no one ever used “bad words” on set. Much like being on set for my Nickelodeon show “True Jackson V.P.”

Did you identify with your character “Heather” in any way?

Since I am not a mother nor have I ever been married nor have I ever had a problem with drugs and alcohol, I do not directly relate to Heather’s outward circumstances and life choices.

However I can certainly relate to making a selfish choice as an act of desperation from a time in my life where I was feeling absolutely helpless and hopeless. Even regardless of having a relationship with God there have been those moments of total doubt and loneliness where I have felt like I need to do something drastic to take control of my life and inevitably my choice doesn’t help so much as lead me to a BIG lesson that God was trying to teach me all along. Then comes humility, surrender and supreme forgiveness and those are experiential attributes that I can certainly relate too.

Anything you want to add about the film, its importance in the industry, what people can learn from it, etc.?

NGL is a film that I believe transcends all “genres” or limits to “specific audiences” simply because its themes are so central and universal: Forgiveness, Redemption, Family, Love and Second Chances. Since it is a faith-based film the moral code is up to par to fit any families standards and regardless of what “Religion” you are, there is most definitely a need for more films of this caliber, upholding the highest integrity.

For people who want to check out the film, what is the one thing you would say about it to spark their interest?

First love that gets lost along the way is given a second chance to make it work for the better. I mean how romantic is that?!

The show has a classic “I Love Lucy” tone to it, with the over-the-top situations and humor. Who are the performers you look up to?

Well of course Lucille Ball is like the queen of comedy, and maybe the goddess is Madeline Kahn, who had a little more of an edge to her. I grew up watching a lot of “I Love Lucy,” a lot of “Saturday Night Live” in the Gilda Radner/Jane Curtin era. And a lot of Mel Brooks. I really resonated with her because she had that darker, edgier side, totally ridiculous. When I was 21 and graduating from college I had to do a one-woman show and I did “I’m Tired” from “Blazing Saddles.”

Is there a role you would really love to play?

I’ve always loved the role of Guinevere in “Camelot.” I’ve always been drawn to the Arthurian legends. My mom and I used to watch that movie all the time. I love rock operas like “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I admire performers like Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett because they are so chameleon-like; they do comedy and drama and music. Cate Blanchett can do anything — she even played Bob Dylan! I just love to continually change it up.

And you sing and write songs as well.

I’ve been singing and song-writing since I was 21 or 22. I have not released an album but I have done songs for movies. I hope to do an album very soon, that’s one of the things I’m working on during my hiatus time. The “True Jackson” fans have been downloading my songs and two of them even performed one in the talent show! To think that two 13-year-old girls would love a song of mine so much that they would sing it in a talent show is really a compliment and very touching.

Do you have a favorite romantic movie?

The Notebook is so good. It has that retro feel. “Casablanca” is also very romantic. Anything that has a love triangle sucks me right in. And “Camelot.” I get so tortured trying to decide who should be with who.

What inspires you?

To continually feel authentic in my work. And in my authenticity to be able to touch people is the ultimate gift. There’s a sense of being of service when you can get yourself out of the way and let the art come through. Surrender to the process and allow it to be fun, allow it to happen. Knowing that my work is inspiring other people to be authentic to who they are is my inspiration.

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Interview: Columbus Short

Posted on December 2, 2009 at 9:13 pm

NM: You have not made many films but each one has been a real departure from what you’ve done before. Is that important to you?
CS: It is. The point of acting is to hide yourself and get lost in character. To play the same character in eighteen movies would be defeating the purpose I believe so I try to keep a little bit of diversity.
NM: Is this your first full-on action movie?
CS: This is the first I hope of many. It was fun to do but it wasn’t about the action. I don’t want to do action that doesn’t mean anything. Everything I do I want to have character development and three-dimensional characters, fallible humans, and this is definitely one of them.
NM: Have you worked with weapons before?
CS: I have! But in this movie my character doesn’t use weapons at all. He’s like McGuyver. I use my brain, no iron.

NM: Do you remember when you first decided that this was want you wanted to do?
CS: I don’t know if it was a defining moment. I knew it as soon as I could comprehend the possibility of having a career. I knew very young I wanted to be a movie star. As much as I grew into love of the craft. As soon as I could speak I was auditioning and going to classes every day. It was my life.
NM: Did you work with the costume designer to create this role?
CS: Every movie I work with the costume designer to see what feels like the character, not what Columbus would wear but what is right for the character. Outside of the armored truck standard issue security guard uniform, this guy is trying to make ends meet. He might have one pair of jeans, the same boot, maybe changes his shirt but he doesn’t have a walk-in closet full of things, so I wanted something comfortable that felt like the character.
NM: Who is the director who has taught you the most?
CS: I take bits and pieces from every director. I’d say Sylvain and Nimrod . They were more about teaching me lens sizes and depth of field and how to move the camera and lighting. I do want to direct and I didn’t go to film school, so having a director that are very much hands on that way and looking to let me learn, that is a key factor.
NM: Are there actors who inspire you?
CS: Absolutely. I just saw “Inglourious Basterds” and that actor Christoph Waltz, he was phenomenal, Daniel Day-Lewis, the work that these guys do is amazing. But I try to carve my own way so the actors who come after me will say, “I want to do it like Columbus did it.”
NM: Are you the kind of actor who writes out pages and pages of background for the character?
CS: Not at all. I’m the complete antithesis of that guy. I want it to be as organic as possible, as least thought out as possible. I want to be there on the day and be present and listen and respond in a true way as the character. “Cadillac Records” was the most work that I did. Not just the physical aspect but learning the dialect and delving into the blues and learning how to play harmonica — those were all tools I wanted to have in the bag that I could pull from at any point as the character. But as far as pre-thinking out — you never know what is going to happen with that other actor in front of you. I just want to be a vessel to receive whatever is happening.
NM: So do you deliberately try a range of ideas in different takes?
CS: Absolutely! You stay with the foundation and then you just try different things because you don’t know how the director will cut it and you want to give him, what will work, and you want to give him some options, give yourself some options, discover some things when you start to play. That’s what we do; we get paid to play.
NM: I heard you get paid to wait; you act for free.
CS: That’s exactly true. Tom Hanks said that. You get paid to wait. But the job is to have fun, to play.
NM: Do you develop your own projects?
CS: As we speak, that is what we are doing. Projects that come to you are not written for you. We have to take a lesson from Will Smith, who develops projects he can shine in. We’re trying to develop things from the ground up.
NM: Do you have a dream project?
CS: I want to play Martin Luther King. I want to tell the real story, his demons, his struggles as a man, not just as a hero but fallible, I want to show that side.
NM: What makes you laugh?
I’m a silly guy, I love wit and cynicism and sarcasm.
NM: You are such a gifted musical performer. Do you think dancers and singers are naturally good actors?
CS: No, absolutely not true. What dancing has helped me with is blocking; it makes me comfortable with my body. You know how to hit your mark, you know how to embody a swagger. But sitting down and looking across the table at another actor and being able to go to battle on screen is nothing to do with singing or dancing.
NM: What inspires you?
CS: First of all, God inspires me, where he’s brought me, it blows my mind. To know that He brought me this far, it could not have been an accident, to go forward, I’m excited to leap into the void, I’m excited about tomorrow, the unknown, excited to see what else He has for me.

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Actors Interview

Interview: Lone Scherfig of ‘An Education’

Posted on October 29, 2009 at 3:59 pm

Danish director Lone Scherfig (“Italian for Beginners”) has garnered a lot of attention for her first English language film, “An Education.” It is the story of a young woman impatient to be independent and sophisticated, and what happens when she meets an older man. It is set in 1961 London, on the brink of a shift from post-war deprivation to the wild and audacious era of Carnaby Street and the Beatles.
NM: I related to the film as a former young girl and as a parent — I identified with everyone.
LS: That’s good!
NM: The period detail is so exact. That era, on the brink of so much change, and you get that in the production design.
LS: It is a period that hasn’t been depicted much. The period itself is bursting with appetite for the future but doesn’t know what it will be.
NM: Like the main character!
LS: A lot of her frustration is because she is heading for a future that is better than she can imagine. She wonders why she should get an education just to have a life she did not want, the few options that were available to her. She does not know what she wants. She says she does not want to feel anything and the first thing she does is jump straight into the arms of this man. She is bright but still completely innocent.
My main task as a director was to trust the script, not to be over-inventive, just to tell the story. We don’t have soldiers getting killed; we have a girl who loses her trust in other people.
NM: The book was written by a woman based on her own life, but the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, better known for writing about men and boys.
LS: This is the first time I’ve had a female main character. You are just interested in that other species. But now I am so far from being 17 — of course I can remember and I have a daughter who is 15, but I could not have done it 10 years ago. I have a warmth for a girl at that age now that I don’t identify with her any more.
Tell me about working with the lovely and elegant Rosamund Pike, who plays the not very bright girlfriend of a slightly shady character.
LS: She’s never done comedy before. I love casting against type. To have her inventing herself as a comedian as you go was very exciting. She combines some comedy and something melancholic. You can have very stylistically different characters but not stick out. We did a lot of variations. And it is wonderful to see her realize, “I can do this.” She does research and she does eight different takes trying out the mechanics of comedy. And she was the only person in the cast who had been to Oxford, so she helped us understand that environment.
NM: Is there a theme that you keep coming back to in the stories you like to tell?
LS: Insecurity, people who can’t speak for themselves, people who are slightly invisible, odd couples, men in their late 30’s. The more I do, the more I identify my own footprint as a director. Now I can look back and see where I’ve been. When the world has been in a bad way, I’ve felt “I must do comedy.” But now, I think I can do something darker.
NM: Will you make more films in English?
LS: Yes! There are so many wonderful English-speaking actors, a great acting tradition. And it’s a very rich language, more expressive and precise than my own language.
NM: There has been a lot of focus on your young star, Carey Mulligan, who is luminous in this movie. What was it about her that sang to you?
LS: Singing is a good word. She hit the right emotional notes. You feel for her. She was believable as someone who was a virgin. She has a good sense of taste in her acting, very versatile. I started working with her, even acted with her. The costume and hairstyle department were very important in helping her develop the character. That dress she wears the first night she goes out, much too warm, carrying her mom’s handbag, was perfect. The costume designer got a lot of personal photo albums instead of relying on magazines and reference books, we trusted in reality.

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Directors Interview

Interview: Tinker Bell (Part 1)

Posted on October 26, 2009 at 3:59 pm

Continuing this week’s celebration of all things Tinker Bell, I spoke to Ellen Jin Over, Art Director for the new DVD, Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure. I was really lucky that Tinker Bell historian Mindy Johnson was there, too. Don’t forget to enter my contest for the new Tinker Bell DVD and wings!

NM: Tell me what it is like to dress a fairy!

EJO: Dressing Tinker Bell is real exciting because that’s one of the major Disney characters, and to dress her in something else than what she was wearing is very exciting. They are fairies and their dwelling is Pixie Hollow, made of all natural stuff, so we begin with found objects made from nature, influenced by Victorian styles. She wears a green leaf dress. We wanted to continue that color scheme and nature, be inspired by nature, bring different texture of the leafs, different color variations, made out of flowers, leaf, and feather. Of course she is wearing leggings because it is fall, a shawl, boots with pom poms made of cotton ball.

NM: How do you suggest not just her environment but her personality?

EJO: Different fairies have a different personality. Silvermist is a really feminine personality and a water fairy; Irdidessa is really organized and she is also a light fairy, so depending on what their talents are, we give them some costumes that match. Silvermist will always have a long dress. And Tinker Bell, she’s really active, she’s really curious, very adventurous. Because in this movie she travels far out of Pixie Hollow into some other unknown land, we wanted to give her a really active, kind of sportly look. So she has a visor, a shawl for the cold weather, a pair of boots so she can run around and jump and hop and protect her little delicate feet. In this outfit she can do whatever she wants, climb up.

NM: It’s been about a hundred years since Tinker Bell first appeared — and she was just a little spot of light on stage in productions of “Peter Pan.” And then Disney was the first to personify her in the animated version of the story (which was also the first to have the title character played by a boy instead of a woman). How has Tink changed over the years?

Mindy Johnson (author of a forthcoming book about Tinker Bell): She did begin as a flash of light with James M. Barrie. He explored many different avenues on how to portray this character and she took the imagination of many including a very young Walt Disney as a boy, having seen the play as a child. She was always in the back of his mind as he built the animation studios and he had his version in development for 16 years, beginning before WWII, in the late 1930’s. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that it came back into development. The character was designed by a Disney artist named Mark Davis, a legendary animator, something of a ladies man — he worked on Cinderella, Snow White, and Princess Aurora. It was a challenge to portray a realistic, humanistic, character, especially because she was largely portrayed via pantomime. There were quite extensive explorations of her as redhead, brunette, a little powder puff, a whole variety of things which is the crux of this book I am working on about her history. But all of that is part of what left her so implanted in everyone’s mind as the embodiment of magic, and wonderment and fantasy and fun and a little mischief. There have been a number of things since the 1952 debut in the film. She was brought into the early television show to open each program. And now she has her own stories.

NM: How do you introduce her new evolved persona to the audience?

EJO: By giving her an adventure of her own. It was really the director’s choice to send her to a place where she was going to have a really great experience exploring this fantasy world. She was really given a great task, to make a fall scepter. It was such a great task that she wanted to be really good about it. But she made a mistake, the moonstone broke. She got the idea from the story-telling fairy that there is a far away place where you can find the moonstone so she decided to go on a trip. We see that she is not afraid to explore new territory to complete her responsibility. And boys like her, too, because she is not your typical princess, she is a tomboy and not afraid to do things, more of a character that could appeal to both audiences.

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Behind the Scenes Interview

Interview: Joe Berlinger of ‘Crude’

Posted on October 15, 2009 at 3:59 pm

Crude is the latest documentary from Joe Berlinger, whose last film was the award-winning “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.” This movie explores a large, complex, international environmental lawsuit over damage allegedly inflicted by an oil company on a community in Ecuador. He also does the television show Iconoclasts, pairing interesting high-profile people with the people who inspire them. I spoke with him by phone about this new film.

NM: How did you gain the confidence of the people you were filming? Unlike your last subjects, Metallica, you were dealing with subjects who were not familiar with media.

JB: I would not necessarily distinguish them that way — getting the trust of a media figure like Metallica or James Hetfield is no easier than getting the trust of these people. One of the amazing things about this experience was how unguarded and open people were and how easy it was to gain their trust. Metallica are not just any rock stars, they are all about male testosterone-fueled rage and not showing any weakness and to allow that to be put on screen was even more difficult.

When I made “Paradise Lost,” a film about three teenagers falsely accused of devil-worshiping murders because of the clothes they wore and the music they listened to, and it was shot in 1993, just as the 24-hour news cycle as we know it today was kicking in and it was a very different mindset. It was the last time I felt in my career that we got that kind of access, total access to the families of the defendants, three families of the victims, the judge, the prosecutor, we filmed the trial. If we made the film today, it would not have been possible. There would be 50 satellite trucks, five Hollywood agents, book deals, that kind of thing has happened in the last five or ten years, who likes to dig in and tell a story over the long haul — not what the media does — it makes my job that much more difficult.

So one of the unexpected pleasures of “Crude” was I once again felt that freedom that I could take my camera anywhere in this country. The people involved were — in a refreshing way — un-media savvy, un-tainted, un-jaded. And these are people who have been wronged for a long time. I was surprised a little bit that a white person and an outsider had such ease. But what motivated me was not the lawsuit per se but I had an epiphany as I walked around the villages and saw the level of disregard that these people have suffered at the hands of others. For the first time I viewed this injustice toward them as part of the long continuum for the last 600-700 years. As I see people eating canned tuna instead because there are no longer fish from the nearby water, getting diseases they never got before, poisoned drinking water. Their lives have been devastated, first by missionaries and then by the oil companies. What made me want to see the film was seeing it in a larger context of displacement and mistreatment of indigenous people. I didn’t want an “oh, we have to win the lawsuit,” one-sided agitprop kind of film-making. That is not consistent with my style of film-making and it is actually less persuasive than my style which is kind of warts and all.

NM: That brings me to my next question. You make a real effort to be even-handed here. The movie certainly has a point of view but you let all sides make their own case. How do you make your point, stay even-handed, preserve your credibility, and still show what you have learned?

JB: Some filmmakers in the category of human rights and expose are afraid of a contrarian point of view, but I think it creates a viewing experience that is active instead of than passive. When a film has a singular point of view — first of all, stylistically I don’t believe in narration because I am a cinema verite film-maker. I want the audience to make up their own minds about what they are seeing. I believe the emotional truth of a situation rises clearly to the top. But a lot of film-makers start a film with a thesis and bang it over your head and have all their points adhere to that thesis. I embrace a contrarian point of view because that way the audience weighs the pros and cons and comes to their own conclusion. If you treat an audience member like a member of a jury they will make up their own minds and that is much more persuasive experience than telling them what you think they should think. Only people who already agree with you will see it. Any film where you want to affect social change you have to bring other people into the fold. You have a better chance of having people walk out of the movie and take action if they have been actively engaged. There hasn’t been a screening of this film where I haven’t had 40 people come up to me afterward and ask me what they could do. If people come to their own conclusion they will want to become more involved.

NM: How do you frame the story then?

The other thing that allowed me to be even-handed, and this was to the consternation of some of the activists and certainly to the plaintiff’s lawyers, who were surprised that it was not more overtly in favor of the lawsuit, is that the film to me is not really about the lawsuit. It is an excuse to tell a larger story. The lawsuit, while I think it’s important that there is a lawsuit and it is an historic one because it is the first time indigenous people have brought a foreign company into their own courts to hold them accountable, and it was important to deflate the issue of the for-profit lawsuit right up front instead of hiding from it, but a lawsuit is an inadequate vehicle for addressing humanitarian and environmental issues. We’re in year 17 with no end in sight. Even if there is a ruling this winter, as we expect, it will be appealed for another decade. And then try to make them pay. Look at the Exxon Valdez. Everyone agreed that they were in the wrong but it took almost two decades to pay those fines and at the last minute they got a judge to reduce the amount by 80 percent.

The other larger observation of the film is that I am not smart enough to tell you whether Chevron has wrapped itself up in enough legalities, all the legal issues and claims and counter-claims. The jurisdictional issue is interesting, the initial release from the government is an interesting issue. I’m not trained in the law. To me, there’s a much larger issue here, and that is the utter immorality about what is done. The law is not about seeking the truth; it is about presenting the best argument. For me, there is no justification for what they did originally. They came into a place where there were six indigenous tribes, and yes, the government had a hand in it, and they set up a system that was designed to pollute. There is no moral justification for that, to use methods that were not permissible in our country. Unlike everyone else, after the arguments are over, they have to go back there to God knows what existence, to that poisoned environment. Another generation will suffer because the lawsuit is taking so long.

Another reason for the stylistic approach is that it is an advocacy film but it is also a portrait of advocacy. The camera pulls back a bit in a self-reflective way and looks at the advocacy movement, what each side has to do to push their agendas forward. Some people asked, “Are you sure you want to show the coaching of the witnesses?” It wasn’t about gotcha.

NM: It was about teaching them you have to speak their language.

JB: There’s an honesty in that that I think the audience feels and it helps in their engagement to weigh the issues, including to weigh the media and celebrities. It asks why in this country unless there is celebrity attention on a social or humanitarian issue it does not get any media attention? I have enormous regard for Sting and Trudie Styler for what they did for this region long before the celebrity photo-op was fashionable, they walk the walk, but the film is critiquing why we need that.

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Directors Documentary Interview