In 'Paterson', Jarmusch Shows the Lyricism in Life Americana
The light-hearted surreality throughout the movie offers much to unpack, making Paterson more a poetically enrichening experience than a traditional film would offer.
The thing about daily life, since it's typically lived in such a familiar, repetitive and track-like fashion, is that we often miss the subtle, magical coincidences that are going on around us all the time. In his latest movie, Paterson, writer and director Jim Jarmusch sprinkles in these subtle surrealities that often go unnoticed into a week in the life of a bus driver who quietly drives his routes and more quietly writes his original poetry, all while coincidence washes over him and his community, making a film that speaks to the beauty of everyday life and the role of an artist in it.
In this tone poem of a movie, which also plays more accessible than Jarmusch's other films, Paterson is a film that operates more from the invisible structures of poetic stanzas than the freeform swirl that his last released film, the rock and roll-soaked vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive, did. Like Lovers, which showed centuries-undead vampires suck up culture in arts music and history only to live alone in their same unfulfilled lives, there's a similarity here that Jarmusch explores, following as equally an emotionless man who similarly takes in the pleasures of poetry without entertaining the thought of dreaming of publishing his own or even the very poetry in motion around him. It's this failure to dream in which Jarmusch sets up his main character, Paterson (Adam Driver), the humble bus driver who coincidentally shares his name with the city where he drives his routes in Paterson, New Jersey, to show and study this noble pursuit of the artist: as one that is only valid when it's realized rather than romanticized.
Following a day in the life from one Monday through the next in chapter-like fashion, Paterson is tuned to the rhythms of the day from sun-up to sun-down, waking up every day to face a wristwatch that reads around six-fifteen, hunching over a bowl of cereal at home, and scribbling some lines of poetry before setting off on his daily route, and before returning back home that he shares with girlfriend and bulldog who he walks to the local bar for a late-night nightcap – a process that more or less repeats daily. But it's in the moments in between the mundane where Jarmusch hones in on, and where Paterson makes its message.
The rich tapestry of the city of Paterson hides its coincidences and meanings in plain sight – a young girl approaches Paterson with her original poetry about rain, a theme we see Paterson earlier write about in his poem about moving through trillions of molecule of water – showing the playful inter-connected themes that link the things between the days.
Although he's a poet that scribbles things like how love is like his favorite matchbook brand, he doesn't tie together the coincidence that his bohemian girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) shares with him about her dream about twins, failing to see the many varied sets of twins that then populate throughout the rest of the film. The rich tapestry of the city of Paterson hides its coincidences and meanings in plain sight – a young girl approaches Paterson with her original poetry about rain, a theme we see Paterson earlier write about in his poem about moving through trillions of molecule of water – showing the playful inter-connected themes that link the things between the days. Instead, Paterson, the reluctant artist whose humility leads him to follow his same life's track of driving the bus and writing his poems in his secret notebook, goes about his day meekly while larger life meanings play out around him.
Driver in the driver's seat (pun intended) continues to shine in auteur-driven movies – of which this is the latest – delivering a finely controlled and nuanced performance. The quiet depth Driver brings forth in Paterson the man shows a man pondering the serious artistry of a mind stirring. It's not that he's not an insecure artist – he's just an egoless one, more content living his hum-drum life than writing his poems for an audience of one then the restless activities of all those around him. His quiet but commanding performance anchors a film that is also as measured and patient, and within Jarmusch's playfully dreamy movie, it's not out of reason to think that Paterson himself is a physical embodiment, read tour guide or ghost of the blue-collar city.
The light-hearted surreality throughout the movie offers much to unpack, making "Paterson" more a poetically enrichening experience than a traditional film would offer. "Paterson" will be most loved by those willing to experience the movie much like they would a literary work, and actively working to unpack the movie for symbolism and themes like they would a poem itself. The role of the artist as poet is explored by Jarmusch, who in fact self-identifies as a poet over filmmaker, Jarmusch's ode to the quiet American artist proves that there's magic in the mundanities of real life, if only you choose to see it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8pGJBgiiDU
'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' Review: This Story Should've Gone More Rogue
Yes, we knew there was going to be a victorious rebellion, but it could have been more of a triumphant win.
It's a risky – and dare it be said, roguish – move, to release a stand-alone Star Wars movie outside of the classic saga series that fans know and love so well. Riskier still would be hiring a director with only three feature films to his name (including just one blockbuster) to pilot and land that Millennium Falcon-sized ship. But in theaters everywhere this Friday is "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," directed by Gareth Edwards ("Godzilla"). Following the efforts of a rag-tag team of Resistance fighters to steal secrets from the mighty Empire, Edwards successfully steps in to the world that George Lucas created and assembles an action-packed and entertaining, if not conforming, addition to the Star Wars universe that gets a passing grade.
Although "Rogue One," which qualifies its title with the further “A Star Wars Story,” is the first companion movie to be released outside of the Star Wars saga, it still tangentially ties into the series, taking place directly before the events of the movie that started them all, "Episode IV: A New Hope," which ended with Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star by way of blasting into a critically-exposed opening. "Rogue One" explains the origin of how Skywalker and his Rebel alliance friends received the Death Star's blueprints in the first place, as we follow a new cast of characters – who are certainly the most diversely-cast of any Star Wars film – as the unsung rebel heroes that infiltrate and retrieve the plans from right under the Empire's nose. Here, then, it’s a different kind of warring that takes place between good and evil, where boots on the ground combat and aerial dogfights put more emphasis on the "war" in the franchise's name.
"Rogue One" nests out what little room for originality it can, Edwards adding many more textures to these Star Wars worlds like stormy hard-rock mountain regions and a battle on the beach finale that harkens to the Invasion of Normany, while also introducing a fun new cast of characters.
"Rogue One" may open with its infamous "Long Time Ago" title card, but the absence of the traditional serial title crawl doesn’t give us any precursory backstory into where we’ve just been or where we’re headed next. After an opening that sees the kidnapping of scientist Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) by the high-ranking Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and a crew of Deathtroopers for the purpose of building a secret weapon for the Empire (it’s no moon…), we flash-forward to some years later where Galen's orphaned daughter (a trait that links many Star Wars characters), Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), has grown up to live the life of a criminal and thief, seemingly bored to be locked up for the current moment. That is, until the Rebel alliance, led by the dashing leader Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his wise-cracking maintenance droid sidekick K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), rescue Jyn so that she can both help locate legendary Rebel fighter Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) as well as her father, who, being the leading architect of the weapon that's rumored to be the most destructive weapon in existence – the Death Star – can offer further intel. Together, with a group of rebels including Imperial defector Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), Force-channeling Chirrut Îmwet (Donnie Yen), and blaster-blazing Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang), the group formulate a plan to find Galen and steal the Death Star's plans to bring back to their base in order to stop their imminent destruction.
I'm hesitant to caution of any further spoilers to follow (although a few familiar faces do pop up, including one heavy-breathing baddie in black), mostly because there aren’t that many spoilers that "Rogue One" can really offer up that would truly surprise audiences, since its more or less locked from deviating from the series of events in the films that follow. With these restraints, "Rogue One" nests out what little room for originality it can, Edwards adding many more textures to these Star Wars worlds like stormy hard-rock mountain regions and a battle on the beach finale that harkens to the Invasion of Normandy, while also introducing a fun new cast of characters like Alan Tudyk's comic relief K-2SO (who feel much more human than Felicity Jones' woefully underdeveloped Jyn Erso), but it doesn’t have the luxury of being able to think outside of the box in terms of plot beyond that.
"Rogue One" will most likely satisfy fans who like their Star Wars heavy on the nostalgia with a heaping side of homage. But in terms of offering anything new, it’s more imitative than inventive, recycling what made the original movies so great rather than further develop or explore what else could be introduced and enter the pop culture for a new generation. For better or for worse, it's connective tissue entertainment that deserves a nod for Edwards and company for even navigating the terrains as they did while steering this gigantic ship holding anxious Disney Studio execs rolling the dice on this first stand-alone movie outing. So it shouldn't come as too big a surprise that this movie that plays rebellion actually sacrifices its real rogue streak (the rumors of the extent to which re-shoots were needed imply as much) and ends up conforming in all the ways it has to in order to bridge the gap between the rest of the saga’s series in motion. Yes, we knew there was going to be a victorious rebellion, but it could have been more of a triumphant win.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frdj1zb9sMY
133 min. 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' is rated PG-13 for extended sequences of sci-fi violence and action. In theaters everywhere this Friday.
'The Squid and the Whale' Comes to the Criterion Collection
New to the Criterion Collection and part of this November's releases is "The Squid and the Whale," the third feature film from writer and director Noah Baumbach. The story of a Brooklyn family and the divorce that fractures the family, which Baumbach took from his own personal life, is one of the director's finest films and an all-around achievement, a fantastic addition to the Criterion Collection.
The Director-approved Blu-ray special edition features a new, restored 4K digital transfer from the Super 16 mm original (thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, and warps were manually removed, supervised by cinematographer Robert Yeoman and Baumbach). Also included are the special features below, including new interviews, new conversation about the score, a documentary with on-set footage, audition footage, trailers and more.
Read below for a brief list of features included on the DVD:
Noah Baumbach on The Squid and the Whale
"It was almost like the only time I've ever felt – at least up until that point – the only time I felt like writing was a physical thing. That my whole body was in it. It was anger, and it was emotion, and humor, and all these things, but it was also, there was a kind of way of like, in this little way, I'm seizing this time, and I'm going to make sense of it, and I'm going to make it work for me."
Baumbach talks about his writing process for the movie based on his own experience after his first two films ("Kicking and Screaming," "Mr. Jealousy"), and how the time it took to write and make his movie, his producer Wes Anderson wrote and directed two movies ("The Royal Tenenbaums," "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou").
"There's definitely an aspect of revenge in that. You know, I think, in going back and writing about childhood."
Revisiting The Squid and the Whale
Interviews with Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, and Owen Kline, as well as on-set footage. The actors talk about how they each came to the project, Linney discussing how she knew Baumbach before the movie, and that Kline was essentially a family friend.
Linney recounts her love for the title: "I love that it's called 'The Squid and the Whale.' I have tape recordings of me as a three year old seeing the whale and my father asking me 'What's that, is that a whale?' and remembering what that felt like as a child, to walk into that room and see that whale.
Kline states that "It's a mood ring movie. It changes however you feel when you're watching it."
Jesse Eisenberg talks about how this one of the earlier movies he had done. "This movie had a script that, I wouldn't call it rare, I think it's more than rare. Rare implies that there's others like it. I really have never read anything like it."
Jeff Daniels on The Squid and the Whale
My dad said something to me, that turned out to be true... he goes, 'You know, I think you're going to grow into your face. And probably the best, most rewarding decade has been the last ten years. And it started with 'Squid,' it really started with 'Squid.'" Daniels talks about flying to New York to get the part after the lead choice was stalling (Bill Murrary), modeling Bernard after his own failures to win Awards and garner giant paychecks compared to his own contemporaries, working with fellow stage actor Laura Linney and how 'Squid got him back into the "serious actor" game.
Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips (Original Score by)
The Wareham and Phillips talk to Baumbauch in a conversation conducted for the Criterion Collection about scoring the original music for the film. Having met Baumbach in 1996 when scoring the music for his film "Mr. Jealousy," the trio recount old memories of working together then, and then waiting seven years "for the funding to come in" to make "Squid." Baumbach remembers wanting to share music that he listened to as a kid with the musicians as inspiration for the film, including Pink Floyd's seminal classic album "The Wall" (which serves as a minor plot point in the film), and Wareham remembers learning "Hey You" to teach to Eisenberg. It's a feature well worth watching to learn more about the songs and original music that serves the movie so wonderfully.
Behind The Squid and the Whale (On-set interviews and footage)
On-set interviews photographed by Nico Baumbach (Noah's brother) of Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, and director Noah Baumbach. In a moment of downtime, Linney and Daniels talk to Nico about constructing their characters and serving the script, and Daniels talks about what his own playwriting in Michigan. Baumbach expands on the "articulate, cultured" characters that he finds himself writing, and a funnier moment sees Baumbach realizing on one shooting day just how many more scenes they have to finish shooting that day. It's a lighthearted and fun behind-the-scenes look that's well worth a watch.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Robert Yeoman and director Noah Baumbach, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interviews with Baumbach and actors Jeff Daniels, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, and Laura Linney
- New conversation about the score and other music in the film between Baumbach and composers Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips
- Behind “The Squid and the Whale,” a 2005 documentary featuring on-set footage and cast interviews
- Audition footage
- Trailers
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kent Jones and a 2005 interview of Baumbach by novelist Jonathan LethemNew cover based on lettering by Leanne Shapton
'Hands of Stone' Director Jonathan Jakubowicz on His Roberto Duran Biopic
"And I have to tell you, what I’m seeing in the United States right now is frightening to me, because I am seeing a complete division of two sides of a society," Jonathan Jakubowicz, the Venezuelan-born writer and director of the Roberto Duran biography "Hands of Stone," tells me over the phone during our interview.
As the Duran boxing movie, starring Edgar Ramírez and Robert De Niro, makes its way to DVD and Blu-ray November 22nd, I spoke with Jakubowicz about the frightening similarities he sees between the political unrest he lived through in Venezuela as a child and the current state of US politics, the success of his first film "Secuestro Express," (the top grossing movie in Venezuela's box office history, defeating former champions "Titanic" and "The Passion of the Christ") and having salsa music play on the red carpet for the "Hands of Stone" world premiere at Cannes for the first time in the festival's history.
It’s been a few months since “Hands of Stone" was released in theaters domestically. How have you been spending your time since then, up until the film’s DVD and Blu-ray release on November 22nd?
Well I mean, part of it has been releasing the movie in other territories. Cause you know, since it’s not a big Studio simultaneous release, there’s a delay between territories. I went to the Morelia film festival in Mexico and have been promoting it. The movie actually just opened in most of Latin America in theaters. So, in a way, it’s actually been and extended (laughs), campaign.
But I have been also writing what I anticipate is my next production, and I’m also about to publish my first book. It’s in Spanish, and it’s gonna start in Venezuela where I’m from. So it’s been a mix of promoting and finishing the editing of my book and writing the next movie that I’m directing.
"But what really destroyed [Venezuela] was our inability to communicate, and our inability to listen to the other side."
You mentioned you grew up in Venezuela. What was it like growing up there, and how did that influence how you made your first movie, "Secuestro Express," which was a huge hit internationally and put you on the map?
It was trippy, because when I was a child,Venezuela was a nation that felt like the best place in the world. We had an oil boom and everybody was doing business, and we were known as the richest place on Earth with the most beautiful women. And the problem is that it started going down from there (laughs). Because there was a lot of corruption and every time the place became a little more dangerous, a little more divided, by the time I was a teenager you could feel a lot of resentment between the poor and the middle class and the rich. By the time I went to University, I went to a public university which is free, so you have every part of society in the same classroom, and you really start to understand the complete division that exists around society, and that’s part of where “Secuestro Express” was born. A movie that shows a society that is extremely divided –
And I have to tell you, what I’m seeing in the United States right now is frightening to me, because I am seeing a complete division of two sides of a society–
I was going to ask you if you currently see any similarity between the political unrest in Venezuela that you lived through and the current climate of US politics...
It’s extremely similar – it’s frighteningly similar. Because you see, there are two sides that are not even interested in understanding the other side because they are so convinced that they are right. There is a complete rejection of the other side. And we’re talking – just like in Venezuela – halves of a nation. It’s not even a group. We’re talking about one-half of a nation.
And if you ask me what destroyed Venezuela, the country has been completely destroyed… yes, it was corruption, yes, (Hugo) Chávez was a terrible person. But what really destroyed us was our inability to communicate, and our inability to listen to the other side. And I am alarmed by a different reason most people are alarmed here in the states, because everyone’s alarmed by whose appointment, the new appointment that (President-Elect Trump) made, or this or that, or is he a good person or a psychopath – I’m alarmed by the division, and I don’t see anybody working in the direction of uniting the country for real, and not just pretending that that’s what your discourse is. And I can tell you from experience, nothing destroys a country more than division in its population.
And I tried to communicate that side with “Secuestro Express,” and that movie was extremely successful in Venezuela, but I don’t think anybody listened to it (laughs), because we kept going in the wrong direction. It’s a very tough situation for us right now, and part of what my book is about in Venezuela is that, and it’s sort of another message that I’m trying to send to our society so that we’ll try to rebuild the nation after this disaster.
"And when you start realizing that there’s no black and white, that there are shades of gray in every reality, and you start understanding the other side... I think that is always more fulfilling than rooting for the good guy against the villain."
Do you currently live in the US or still in Venezuela?
I live mostly in LA right now. I live between LA and Panama City where I spent most of the last three years. But this year I’ve been mostly in LA, and I’m probably going to stay here for a while. The book was written in Spanish, and it’s, to tell you the truth, was written specifically for Venezuela. It’s actually already available on Amazon.
So that’s why I wrote it. Sometimes you do something for the whole world, sometimes you do something for a specific group of people, and I don’t think because I’m making a big movie right now I shouldn’t make something specifically for my country which I feel needs to hear a few things more than anybody else needs to hear from me (Laughs). So I made it for my country and if it’s successful somewhere else, then we’ll see. But that’s not the intention.
The political unrest is certainly a big part of “Hands of Stone,” showing the US-Panamanian conflict of the 80s. Was that something you were looking forward to bringing to the big screen along with the story of Roberto Duran?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Duran's story is inevitably linked to the States and his relationship with the Americans and the canal zone that was next door to the neighborhood where he grew up. His father was an American marine who was stationed in Panama. So yes, you can say he had American blood in him. And he felt the American father who abandoned his mother was sort of an occupation of his life, you know? So he was the son of an occupier. So those things are a big part of who he is, and a big part of why he captures so much of the sense of Panama when he was fighting. I think that is something that doesn’t only relate to Panama, but to most of Latin America and many other countries in the world that have that love and hate relationship with the United States, a country that we all feel gives us so much, but also takes away so much.
And there has been so many boxing movies that celebrate American fighters, I thought it was an exciting opportunity to tell the story of a boxing hero who is fighting American fighters, and obviously it was a risky move, and a lot of people react, in America, with a short circuit (Laughs), cause it’s like, “Wait a minute, am I supposed to root against Sugar Ray Leonard?” (Laughs)
But that’s part of what I like to do, and it was sort of the same with “Secuestro.” A lot of people started identifying with the kidnappers in the movie. And when you start realizing that there’s no black and white, that there are shades of gray in every reality, and you start understanding the other side... I think that is always more fulfilling than rooting for the good guy against the villain. And it’s obviously more challenging sometimes because we’re used to being given these stories are clearly the good guy and he has nothing bad about him, and the bad guy has nothing good about him – but I think that is part of what creates these divisions in society. That we’re used to not hearing any other sides, and I always like to put that in the movies and the stuff that I write. Always try to give you the other perspective as well.
"There was salsa music on the red carpet of Cannes for the first time in history."
What was the experience of bringing “Hands of Stone” to this year's Cannes film festival? I understand it had standing ovations.
It was incredible, because even though the movie is you know, as such a big scope and so many big stars, it was really made by me and my wife. She produced it, I wrote it and directed it, raised the money for it, cut it in my home. There was nothing that we didn’t do in this movie. And to go there, in the biggest festival in the world… there was salsa music on the red carpet of Cannes for the first time in history.
Oh, wow!
We took our own culture, about our own hero, with our own actors, half in Spanish, and we were able to get to the biggest place you can premiere a movie in the world. And then for it to be received with such an emotional reaction by the French audience, it was mind-blowing. And Duran was there watching the movie for the first time, which was a risk that I took, and could have cost me my life (laughs) if he didn’t like the movie. But he starts crying, and obviously when he started crying De Niro started crying then I started crying. It was crazy. It was an incredible moment, you know. Completely nerve-racking. I still can’t really see the videos because I get too nervous. But it was a dream come true beyond a dream.
When you’re a film student, you laugh at the notion that one day you may premiere a movie at Cannes, you know? Cause it’s beyond your dreams. And the fact that it happened with this specific movie that we’re so passionate about, it’s just something that will make me happy forever.
Congratulations again. You were talking about how you made this movie with your wife, who is also your producing partner. Did you develop the movie, and when did that process begin?
Well, I first heard of Duran when I was a kid. Growing up in Venezuela, Duran is some sort of a superhero that you hear stories about. And I decided to develop it – and yes, I did develop it and wrote it, and chased Duran for his life rights and everything.
I moved here and I started getting offers to do movies in which Latinos were drug traffickers, rapists, or criminals, and I felt that you know, there’s nothing wrong with telling those stories, but there may be space to tell different stories about Latinos and start changing the stereotypes that have been so embedded in American culture, and that’s how I got to Duran. He’s a positive Latino figure and when I started digging into his story I found Ray Arcel, his Jewish trainer, and I’m Venezuelan and I’m Jewish so I felt like there was something about this story perhaps that I could tell better than anybody (laughs). And I fell in love with it, and never stopped until it got made.
What was it like putting the cast together – specifically getting Edgar Ramírez and Robert De Niro, such commanding actors. How did you direct them on set?
Well, De Niro… I knew, when I was doing the research, I knew Duran had met De Niro when De Niro was preparing for “Raging Bull” and Duran was a World Champ. So I knew there was a narrow possibility that I could get into De Niro’s head with the notion of telling the Roberto Duran story. And I sent him my first movie “Secuestro Express,” and the script, and he really liked my first movie and he liked a lot about the script, but he had some issues with Ray Arcel’s voice, he wanted to hear more of Ray Arcel’s voice, he felt that if he doesn’t hear his voice he doesn’t know how to play him. And it was a process in which I actually found Arcel’s widow, and she happened to have a notebook where she wrote what she called “Ray-ism’s,” which are things only Ray used to say, and I incorporated that into the script and then brought De Niro to meet with her, and we spent a lot of time working on the script. It was about six months before De Niro decided to commit to the movie because he felt that the script was ready.
It was a tough and exciting and nerve-racking process in itself – but it was good because by the time De Niro came to set, I already had a relationship with him, so I wasn’t as nervous as I would’ve been if I had just met the guy. It was a very good thing that we went through all that process.
"When you’re a film student, you laugh at the notion that one day you may premiere a movie at Cannes, you know? Cause it’s beyond your dreams. And the fact that it happened with this specific movie that we’re so passionate about, it’s just something that will make me happy forever."
And Edgar I had known for a decade because he’s Venezuelan too, so I’ve known his career and I’ve known him personally. We always wanted to work together, and he’s such a nice guy, I couldn’t believe he could play Duran! But I met with him and he was so in love with the project and the character, and he promised me that he wasn’t that nice of a guy (laughs). And he committed, he moved to Panama, he trained for eight months in Panama, in some of the poorest gyms in the ghetto, and completely changed and transformed his body, and the way he talks and the way he acts, was basically starving during the shoot. That gave him an edge I don’t think that I’ve seen in any of his movies. And it was a joy to work with him and to work with Bob together, we developed an incredible relationship and we are extremely close right now and very good friends. We’re discussing doing something together again, and Bob has become a little bit of a mentor for both of us. I don’t make any big decisions without asking him his advice. He has been around more than anybody else and has been on top for so long, and he’s a nice man. He’s a very loving family man, so I feel it’s a treasure to have developed such an incredible relationship with him.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
I think "Hands of Stone" a movie that speaks to a very specific moment that we’re living right now in which half of this nation have been either even glory or defeat in unprecedented dimensions. And I think this movie is about rising when you fall, it’s about following your dreams, but it’s also about forgiveness and understanding of the people who hurt you, and the people who even with their strategy, and without bad intentions, completely destroy your life. I think that the movie can resonate with a lot of what I feel is happening in the United States right now, and hopefully invite people to communicate a little further, because there’s nothing good about the path of division that we have all taken in the last few days.
And finally – where can audiences see your first movie, “Secuestro Express”?
It’s everywhere. It’s on iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, it’s everywhere. Just make sure it’s not “dubbed” (laughs). Sometimes, there’s a dubbed version around that I hate. But if you can handle subtitles…. it’s a movie that I’m very proud of. And sometimes it plays on HBO Latino!
'Dreamland' Review: Stylish Directorial Debut is Quirky Fun
It seems that Schwartzman the filmmaker, a rocker who has spent nearly his whole professional career playing feel-good pop/indie-rock to screaming fans in huge venues, wishes to make a movie that's immediately accessible and whose fun also comes from not taking itself too seriously.
The Coppola-Schwartzman family counts among their clan some of Hollywood's most famous and talented filmmakers. Patriarch Francis Ford Coppola ("The Godfather") and daughter Sofia ("Lost in Translation") have created some of the most classic and critically-acclaimed movies of our time. On the other side of the family, Jason Schwartzman ("Rushmore") has also contributed to making some of the most beautiful and important movies of cinema to date with pal Wes Anderson.
Now, we have Jason's brother Robert Schwartzman (you might remember him as Anne Hathaway's prince charming in "The Princess Diaries") entering the family business with his first feature film "Dreamland," the story of a young male whose moonlighting as a Hotel lounge piano player brings on the advances of a wealthy socialite and upends his life. While it might not be the next introduction of as artfully-minded a filmmaker as the rest of his family, "Dreamland" is light-hearted fun in the vein of a young male coming-of-age.
With a name like Monty Fagan (Johnny Simmons), it might be fate that he's supposed to be a suave, famous lounge piano player. Instead, young Monty is an aloof guy in a declining relationship with girlfriend Lizzie (Frankie Shaw), whose boring love life has all but stalled out due to living with Lizzie's wino and wig-wearing mother (Beverly D'Angelo). Monty drives to teach piano classes on his sputtering motor scooter to pay the bills, a pit-stop on the road to his true dream of playing jazz at his own nightclub, which seems like pie-in-the-sky dream when he learns of Lizzie's momentary weakness with another man. So when Monty is offered a primo piano-playing gig at a swanky Hotel and catches the eye of one wealthy cougar Olivia (Amy Landecker), who pursues him as a young boy-toy, Monty's head is left spinning to make sense of his new affair and the checks she gives him for his someday night club: Dreamland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGLfBfp8NfM
Robert Schwartzman's directorial debut is a charming, light-hearted coming of age story whose strengths come from the fun performances and a well-layered indie soundtrack (the Rooney frontman has composed original music for film before, lastly in Gia Coppola's "Palo Alto" based on the James Franco memoir). However, a movie about a young male's passion for making music takes too much of a backseat to the Mrs. Robinson story happening, and we wish we could see more of Monty jazzing it up on the piano, or even hearing those jazz standards fill more of the movie's sonic space.
Typically playing more bit parts like in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and "The Stanford Prison Experiment," Johnny Simmons has a chance to take the lead role here, dialing in his trademark boyish young charms to a fun degree while also playing more conflicted shades in the movie's climax. Amy Landecker as Olivia plays the seductress in full-tilt commitment, steaming up the screen when showing her skin, and showing the frustrations in her life as well. Beverly D'Angelo makes good fun out of her wine-pouring weirdo character, and further bit roles filled by stand-up comedian Nick Thune as a homewrecker plumber and Noel Wells ("Master of None") as the Hotel's receptionist extend the fun. And of course, Robert cuts his own family in, having Jason Schwartzman cameo as Monty's dooshy but hilarious bank loaner Peter and Talia Shire making it in for a hear-to-hear phone conversation as Monty's mother.
"Dreamland" may lean more towards bargain-barrel entertainment, but it's still a fun pop riff to catch if you don't mind the fluff. It seems that Schwartzman the filmmaker, a rocker who has spent nearly his whole professional career playing feel-good pop/indie-rock to screaming fans in huge venues, wishes to make a movie that's immediately accessible and whose fun also comes from not taking itself too seriously. In this vein (and like Monty), the most rewarding part of this piece is the achievment that Schwartzman has created his very own Dreamland.
84 minutes. "Dreamland" is now playing in select theaters including Laemmle's Santa Monica Film Center and available to stream on VOD including Amazon Video.
Ben Younger on His Crash-and-Comeback Movie, 'Bleed For This'
Ben Younger knows how to take a punch. After directing his last movie more than twelve years ago (2005's "Prime"), the New York-born filmmaker suffered defeat trying to get a movie about the world's fastest motor racing competition off the ground, which ultimately stalled out. But Younger didn't stay down for long, pursuing other casual hobbies such as becoming a pilot, competing in motor-cross races, and working in a Costa Rican kitchen. But Ben Younger steps back into the ring – his true ring – in "Bleed For This," his latest writing-directing movie about boxer Vinny Pazienza, who suffered a devastating spinal injury and who trained his way to get back into the ring.
It'd be easy to see why Ben Younger might find a connection with the crash and comeback story ("I didn’t make a movie for twelve years, which is kind of like having a broken neck in Hollywood."), admitting that he had a lot riding on the movie's outcome as well ("the movie had to be good."). In a roundtable interview at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, Younger talked working with Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart, putting his paycheck back into the movie to gain two extra shooting days, and finally getting his passion project motocross movie ("Isle of Man") off the ground.
Why did you want to tell this story?
I wanted to tell this story because... simply because of the comeback. Vinny won fifty fights, I don’t know if you guys knew that. And I’m sure to real boxing aficionados that would be an exciting thing. I’m not one of them...
For me, it was all about the crash and the comeback. I just felt like… the real reason I stayed in, I mean... I started this as a writing assignment. I wasn’t supposed to direct this. I didn’t think I wanted to direct it. But once I realized there was a parallel between his story and mine – you guys know that I took a long time off. I didn’t make a movie for twelve years, which is kind of like having a broken neck (as Vinny Pazienza suffers in the movie) in Hollywood.
You didn’t make a film for twelve years. Why?
There’s a bunch of reasons. One, the primary reason is that the movie that I wanted to make, I couldn’t get off the ground, and I was used to getting movies made so easily. And I wrote this Isle of Man racing movie… do you guys know about the TT? It’s the oldest motor race on earth? Takes place in Ireland? None of you know that? Well, this is why the movie didn’t get made.
(Laughter)
So I couldn’t get it off the ground. I was so used to getting movies made like no problem.
So you were stubborn–
I got upset. And then I just kind of withdrew for a while.
To Switzerland?
Yeah! No, to Costa Rica.
So that’s why this is a perfect project for you then...
Yeah. And then for some reason, even when I took the job I didn’t make that parallel. And then in the middle of writing it I was like, “Oh wait, I understand this guy. Everyone’s saying it’s not gonna happen... .” So then I was like “Oh, I’m gonna stay on.”
Also, the other idea was that I have a lot of passions. During those ten years I became a pilot, I was cooking at a restaurant in Costa Rica, I raced bikes professionally for a year… so I did these interesting things–
Like motorcycle bikes?
Yeah, full-on road-racing.
Wow. That’s crazy. You’re crazy.
I’m not crazy, I just, I like trying different things.
But the point is, as much as I loved all those things, I wouldn’t... if you told me there was a chance I’d never walk again if I did one of them, the same question that was composed to Vinny, I would just say, “Well, then I won’t direct.” Or anything. I don’t have anything in my life that I love to risk paralysis, that’s what I’m trying to say.
A twenty-four-day shoot – your actors said it was OK, but being the director, how was it for you?
I was fairly prepared… also, there was too much on the – in a good way – on the line, meaning like there was… if you make a movie every two years, and some of them are fairly successful, either commercially or critically, you get a few, like, “You can screw this one up,” – like free-passes. You know what I mean? You go to director jail for like six months, or whatever they say, like that, I don’t know. But if you don’t make a movie for twelve years, you don’t have a choice. Like, if I didn’t nail this one, it’s game over.
Why Miles and why Aaron?
Miles, it was the combination of... I mean, “Whiplash” hadn’t come out, so I hired him pre-“Whiplash.” I just loved him in “(The) Spectacular Now.” Even like his other more sort-of mainstream commercial stuff, you could see, you know sometimes? You do a movie that’s either a little soft. like even in “Footloose.” There’s still moments where you just go, “Wait a second, what was that?”
Combined with the fact that he’s just not a pretty boy. Good looking kid, but not in like a “Fill in the blank.” He’s not so stereotypically, or typically, beautiful. I like that. He was in that (car) crash, I’m sure you guys all know. He’s scarred up, he looks like he could be a boxer.
And Aaron?
Aaron was about finding someone who… I feel like in each movie (I do), I take somebody and show you something you haven’t seen. So whether it’s Vin (Diesel) in “Boiler Room,” or Uma (Thurman) in “Prime,” I wanted to take somebody who was respected and, known as a great actor, but just make them, show you something different. In this case, make them unrecognizable.
I showed the movie to Steven Soderbergh, and it took him ten minutes to realize that that was (Aaron).
And he directed him in “Erin Brockovich!”
I didn’t tell him he was in the movie, and then he goes… you probably can’t use this, but ten minutes in he goes, “Is that fucking Aaron Eckhart?”
(Laughter)
So when you talked to Aaron about the movie, did you say it would be nice if we didn’t put a fat suit on you, and actually gain the forty pounds?
I mean, it wasn’t even a discussion. Ted Levine wore a fat suit – and not that he’s any less committed – but Aaron was like, he wouldn’t even hear it. He was putting the weight on, as miserable as it made him. He’s a very fit person.
We heard that when Vinny saw the movie, with you, that he cried during the family scenes.
Totally true.
Could you talk about that, and filming those scenes?
Yeah. I mean he, I didn’t know… when we finished shooting, I didn’t think it through, I just thought, “I’ll show Vinny the movie.” We were locked, and I’ll just sit next to him. And it was much more intense then I imagined. I don’t know, it seems obvious now. I just didn’t think it through. I mean, he’s seeing a movie about his life. The interesting thing is where he got emotional. It wasn’t like the big fights or the car crash, or like the moments you think. It was like these really small, tender, familial moments. Like his mother praying for him at the shrine, or his father just like putting his hand on his shoulder. And then you realize, he could look up all those other moments. Like, he can, you can see any one of those fights on YouTube, tons of Halo footage of him, even training with it on. But we created what you’re saying. We created his family life in a way that moved him. So, I knew we got it, I was pretty sure we did a decent job. But when he started crying, that’s when I was like, “OK, that’s it.”
What was the choice behind – when Vinny comes back finally from having the Halo on for three months, you have him fighting Roberto Duran right away. He actually did fight quite a few others–
Bunch of other people.
Is that because people are going to know Duran?
I’d say that was the only concession I made, as far as, embellishment. In every other way, we had to actually do reverse-embellishment. So, for example, Vinny started training, that scene with the bar lifting – that happened five days after the halo went on, in real life. I couldn’t present that, because no one would believe it.
(Laughter)
Same with like, for Ciarán Hinds' performance of Angelo. Angelo was such a colorful character that he bordered on like, a caricature of an Italian-American in New England. If I showed him as he was, you would say I was racist or we would have made a comedy.
East coast people have a surface-specific view that might seem cliché when presented on screen. How did you manage to keep it to where it felt like natural no cliché in terms of the acting and the accents?
Compared to – oh, not boxing movies, you mean just specifically that, regionally? Yeah. That was a fear. Boxing-wise, there’s so many clichés. Those I was like, “We’re going to avoid those, those are easier to avoid.” But yeah, this was tougher because the actual accents can, themselves, sound caricature-like.
So, we had a great dialect coach, Tom Jones… not the singer. He works at Brown, really talented guy. And we prayed. And we were just careful and like, you really listen. I wasn’t looking on the monitors, I just stood next to camera and just stared and just, you know when someone’s bull-shitting, and when they’re not. And you just can tell when they’re getting it. Even if you don’t know the world, there’s just something, if you really pay attention.
The family dinners were really key, because it set a realistic tone. It looked like it was a real house, you know, not a movie house.
Real food too!
Real food?
Real food, like, real local cook, yeah.
How did it go in terms of “The Fighter.” Was that an inspiration? One of the trade reviews noted the similarity with the energy and the family dynamics.
Well, that’s a comparison I’d love to get. Yeah, David’s movie is one of my favorite boxing movies, it’s up there with, top three. I mean, “Raging Bull” is obviously a cut above everything, but I’d say “The Fighter” is top three boxing movies of all time. So yeah, most of the boxing movies that I watched, to be fair, were cautionary tales for me, less than they were influencers. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t get it wrong, I had enough faith in myself to know that when I did start rolling camera I’d start paving my own way, but there were things I didn’t want to do, and that’s when I started watching other boxing movies.
What are the other two top three boxing movies?
Um… “Rocky,” the first “Rocky.” You know Vinny saw Rocky when he was sixteen and decided he was going to be a fighter? There’s a scene that didn’t make the final cut, it was a great scene, but it was just, we were pressed on time, we had to be ruthless. But it’s Angelo and Kevin (Rooney) sitting in the hospital while Vinny’s getting the surgery. And this is something Angelo actually said to Kevin, at one point he just said, “You know Vinny went and saw ‘Rocky’ when he was sixteen, came home, rode his bike home, and said, ‘I’m going to be a fighter, I’m going to be a world-champ.’” And he went on to say, “How many kids you think came home from that movie and said that? How many kids do you think went on to win three world championships… five world championships?”
There’s a story that you told at Toronto Film Festival, about how hard it was to finance this movie…
Yeah, I’ll give you the short version, it’s a long story...
But basically we had a horrible day on set, and the scene that I wrote wasn’t working, I had to re-write it, there wasn’t time… my parents were there the one day out of twenty-four they came to visit set. And at lunch the producers came to me and said, I gave my whole salary up for this movie. Literally. I just, I gave it back to this movie because I wanted two extra shooting days. The Guild doesn’t want you to do that, the Director’s Guild, they won’t let you defer your salary, cause if they did, then you would just get it straight away, just get it right back. So what they make you do to discourage you is, if you want to put your salary in the movie, you have to get paid, pay taxes on that movie, and then invest that back in, just like any… So I did that, because I wanted these two days, cause I wanted to make, I had, the movie had to be good. And then halfway through on an already miserable day when my parents were there the producers came to me and said we gotta take one of those days away. And it was no fault of anyone’s, the tax incentives from Rhode Island didn’t come in the way we had thought, no one to point a finger at, but just, this is the reality. And so that was it, I was just like, defeated.
And I left, we left, I think we might’ve even wrapped early that day cause the scene wasn’t even working that we were shooting. And then I went to a restaurant and met my parents for dinner. I’d sent them home after we had got that news because it was too much. So they had gone home, and then we had got to dinner and they sat across the table from me and slid a check for one-hundred thousand dollars over so that I could get the day back. But my mom is a social worker, my step-dad is a math teacher, they are middle-class at highest, and it was from like from my mom’s 401k.
Did you cash it?
No, I started crying. I was done, that was the final, I couldn’t even help it. I was just openly weeping in a restaurant.
You mentioned how Vinny was inspired after watching “Rocky,” was there a movie that inspired you when you were young that inspired you to say I have to do this job?
No-one’s ever asked me this question, strangely, and I’ve been avoiding it for sixteen years, because I have to tell the truth. But it is Steven Segal’s “Above the Law.” It was his first movie, I was sixteen years old, I cut school, I was going to Yeshiva, like a Jewish seminary school, and I cut and I went and saw it, and it was the first time I realized that someone made movies, like that there were people behind it, some thought had gone into it. It was mostly that opening, they used – actually, that’s actually an amazing tie-in, I just realized this, to this movie, because there’s archival footage for the first thirty seconds. It’s footage of Segal as like a nineteen or twenty-year old studying martial arts in the far East, cut together with the narrative they were doing, it was about him being a CIA operative... the movie holds up, I see it probably once a year. It’s completely watchable.
We all have our guilty pleasures.
I wouldn’t even call this one.
(Laughter)
So that’s when you decided, that’s when you said, “I’m going to do this”?
Not that moment, but that was, that was the, it took a few more years. I mean, the background I come from, there’s not a huge emphasis on the arts and pursuing your dreams. More about learning a profession, keeping your head down, and, you know, not having what happened to my grandparents, if you know what I mean. So I didn’t quite get that far. But that really was, I’m just glad you asked because that’s kind of what I’ve secretly always wanted to say–
(Laughter)
There are a lot of other moving pieces in this movie apart from the boxing, with the family dynamics and relationships. What was the thing that you had to keep reminding yourself was the center of the movie?
He’s an unusual character, I don’t mean for the obvious reasons, I mean from like a, I don’t know how interested you are in like the minutia of screenwriting, but he doesn’t have an arc, Vinny. He’s all-in when you meet him, he’s all-in at the mid-point when he crashes, he’s all-in at the end. So, like, the reason that it works is because his desire is so strong. And I felt like that was the thing that I had to see, that was the thing that centered the movie in me and every scene with Miles. So like, even that shot of him, when he comes home from the Halo surgery, and he’s looking in the mirror at himself, and then he just like, you just barely see that he’s making a muscle… the guy’s, his spirit, it was and is indomitable, and like that’s, I think that was the center-line.
Having finished this two years ago, do you want to make another one or do you want to go back –
Costa Rica?
Or riding motor-bikes.
You do look back on it with, I mean look – it was a great experience, but the hardships? Yeah, you… the fact that I’m sitting at this table now makes it hard, it’s very difficult to remember how hard it was. Like I could tell the stories, but like the sense memory of it is gone, which is great, I mean human beings possess that, that’s how you like, move past like bear attacks and all the things we probably used to…
(Laughter)
So yeah, we acclimate quick. Cause yeah, like, I don’t really remember the, I know it was hard, but like, no, it’s all about, “Let’s just keep going, this is too fun.”
So you’re going to get back on track with the movie that you want to get made?
So, "Aisle of Man," it’s fully financed. We got thirty million, we’re going with Bold Films.
And what’s your time frame on that?
Well the TT itself, the race is the first two weeks of June, so the idea would be to shoot the race almost as like a documentary film. We already hired a professional Cameron Donald, he’s easily Google-able, and Honda is our partner, so they’re going to provide full-on superbikes. And then we’re going to shoot the race with him as the rider, and then afterwards, three months with the actor–
Who is...?
We’re not sure yet.
Somebody under twenty-five?
No no, he’s thirty-five. He’s a retired American racer who goes to the Aisle of Win as a spectator, sees what’s there, realizes he’s got something left in the tank, stays on for a year, and works on a farm, then competes the following year.
So it could be Miles even?
Could be.
'Bleed For This' is now playing in select cities. For our review, click here.
Aaron Eckhart Talks Physical Transformation in 'Bleed For This'
"Bleed For This" is now playing in select cities. For our review, click here.
Aaron Eckhart walks into the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel looking about as athletic and toned as a middle-weight boxer – you'd think it was he who had to get in fighting shape for "Bleed For This," the new boxing biopic about Vinny Pazienza, the boxer who trained his way back from devastating spinal surgery to defend his World Champion title.
But here, Eckhart plays Kevin Rooney, Vinny's trainer who was suffering from drinking and gambling, which Eckhart had to gain forty pounds to embody. Even at this stage of his career, he proves he's full of surprises. Which is why when he walks in holding a tiny white dog and says he's going to do the full interview as the canine (he doesn't), it should also come as no surprise.
In our round table interview, Eckhart talks about the difficulty of gaining weight, working with Clint Eastwood in "Sully," and what's next – directing.
“Bleed For This” is such a contrast from your last movie, “Sully,” because we could recognize you in “Sully.” In this movie, people will watch for fifteen, thirty minutes before they realize it’s you.
Well, I mean, if you go and look at [boxing trainer] Kevin Rooney… at this time, he had just been fired by [Mike] Tyson- and he was once a good fighter himself- and he sort of lost himself. Gained weight, psychologically he was damaged, felt betrayed, started drinking and gambling, let himself go, and that’s where we first meet him. So, I tried to look like him – I gained forty pounds, I shaved my head and tried to tackle that accent.
Were there any facial prosthetics you used?
I stuffed some stuff up my nose. We had plastic tubes that we had in our noses all the time that would just give you a little bump right here.
(points to nose)
Which helped.
When did you start gaining weight? This movie was shot two years ago.
Yeah. I circled a date on the calendar about two and a half months, three months before, and said, “OK, this is the day I’m going to stop roping, biking, lifting, and all that sort of stuff, and I’m going to start eating pepperoni pizzas."
(Laughter)
And that day came way too soon! You know, most people think it’s a dream. But you know, to just stop working out has a psychological and metaphysical, or metabolic effect on you. I obviously got bigger jeans, and I never buttoned the top button, and I would walk around the mall… you know, we were in Rhode Island, and my hotel, or apartment, was connected to a mall, and I would just walk around with my pants unbuttoned, my belt, a big shirt, and I would just walk around going–
(imitating Kevin Rooney)
“No, Vinny Pazienza, pound for pound’s the best fighter in the world.”
(Laughter)
And I would just walk around this mall all day long until I had to go to the set or whatever... it was that kind of a thing. But you know, everybody in this movie, from Ted Levine, to Ciarán Hinds, to Miles [Teller]... obviously, Katey [Sagal]… you couldn’t look anywhere and not see people’s passion for this movie. You could see it in Ben [Younger, the director]. Everybody was on fire. We had very little time to do it.
"I gained forty pounds, I shaved my head, and tried to tackle that accent."
Twenty-four days – to do a boxing movie!
Yeah. But in retrospect, it didn’t seem... maybe to Ben it seemed rushed. To us... to me, anyways, I felt like – you know, in independent film you’re not getting all the coverage. That’s fine by me, doing everything in two shots and master shots. That means you get to communicate, everybody’s working at the same time.
That’s better for an actor because now your response is going to be in the movie! It’s not like I have to now go cover you, so we can overlap each other... we can be more natural. I think it’s better for a movie. And that’s why, I think oddly enough, independent film is a better experience overall for audiences in terms of cinema verité, or reality.
But “Sully” was so great. And that was a Warner Brothers movie?
“Sully” was a lot of the same way. Clint–
Doesn’t overthink things.
Yeah, oh my gosh, Clint does not. In fact, I remember the first day we were there on the Harbor, on the Hudson. We had all of the first responders, it was the actual drivers of the boats, the captains that were actually there on the day, and they said, “OK, we’re ready to roll.” There are hundreds of people around, and nobody had told us one word about what we were doing. And I said to Tom [Hanks], “Tom... we’re ready to roll...” and Tom’s like, “…OK.”
(Laughter)
So Tom said, “I’m going to go down here,” I said, “OK, I’m going to follow you there,” you know, as actors will do, because you know, survival at that point. And, boom – we worked it out. Clint never said a word to us, and –
And that was the only take you did?
We did it a few times. I think it’s Clint’s reputation that he doesn’t do takes… I will tell you a story…
We’re in the hotel room and it was just me, so Tom wasn’t in the picture. And so, I did the take on the bed once, and I was where you are, and Clint was back here with the camera, so he’s pretty far away from me... and so it’s just a whole shot of the room. And I did [the take], and Clint goes, “OK, that’s enough of that crap."
(Laugher)
And literally was like, "OK, let’s move on." And the DP’s like, “Clint... Boss… let’s just move it a little closer, change the lens, and we’ll just do it one more time.” I didn’t say anything, I was perfectly happy with that. And so Clint’s like, “Yeah, yeah, let’s do that.” So we did it a few more times. But that certainly does happen!
But you know, it doesn’t exhaust your actors, which is great. And there were times where I asked Clint, I’d say, “Hey, can I do it again?”
"[In 'Sully,'] Clint was back here with the camera, pretty far away from me... and so it’s just a whole shot of the room. And I did [the take], and Clint goes, 'OK, that’s enough of that crap.'"
And he would do it?
Yeah, but he’d let you know too, that he trusted you. I remember in rehearsal one time, we were around the table, the first time we meet the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board], and we went through it in rehearsal – which Clint didn’t really like to do too much – and Clint just kind of looked at us and said, “Well, that’s why I hire great actors.” And then just shot the scene. Which tells you that you’re doing a good job. He’s happy you’re there, and so we don’t ask too many questions.
I remember the first day we were shooting, the first day I was on set – I’m climbing up the ladder, and then the camera’s here, and I walk up past the camera there. And, for some reason, I had a question. You know, like, "What are we doing?" And Clint was here, and so I get up and start walking toward Clint – Clint just turned around and walked away. And I said right there, I said, "OK, that’s how Clint works."
(Laughter)
You and Miles had done “Rabbit Hole” together, but you didn’t have too many scenes together. What was it like building the chemistry for this movie?
It was good to know Miles a little bit. Any time that you’re on a movie, and you have a previous experience with somebody, it just makes everything so much easier going into it, because you can relax a little bit. And Miles and I have the same agent as well, it was good.
As a supporting actor, your job is to define your star, the protagonist of the piece – you’re there to move around him. If you look at Tom, if you look at Miles, whoever it is. You suss them out with the tone, how they’re going to lead their pitch, what they’re going to do, and then you find your way around them. It’s all about defining your hero.
And so, very early on, Miles would be in the gym with his trainer, choreographing fights and going through doing the mitts and that, and I would come and I would just sit there. And then all of a sudden, I’d just pick up the water bottle, and I'd start watering Miles. Then I’d start toweling him off. Then I would start telling him what to do. Meanwhile, his trainer’s looking at me going, “Uhhh…”
(Laughter)
But as an actor, I create my job right off the bat. So, nobody gives Miles water but me. Nobody towels Miles off but me. Nobody massages Miles but me. Nobody does anything psychologically, but me. That way when we’re in the movie, it’s just so natural that he expects me to give him water, and when I come to him he opens his mouth. It’s not like, “OK, I’m going to come to you and then you’re going to open your mouth,” – that’s too late. We’ve ruined the reality.
So, that’s my job. And plus, the trainer-fighter relationship is sacred. There’s so much trust. It’s so dangerous, it’s so vulnerable, that you have to have total trust there. And the stakes are at the highest level, so that’s another thing we have to create. I have to make Miles look at me like I have the keys to the kingdom. Like the holy grail is right in here.
Did meeting Rooney help you get into that mentality?
I never met him.
Has he passed?
No, he’s in the hospital with dementia. And I never got to meet him. I met his son. My preparation for this film was with Freddy Roach at Wild Card boxing gym. [He] let me be a fly on the wall during the Pacquiao-Bradley fight. So the months before they were in camp, I would come every day, and I would just sit on the wall and watch Freddy train Manny. How he did the mitts with him, how he talked to him, how he watered him, how he dealt with him when he came to the gym, how he did, everything.
Then I went to the fight, and I was there behind the scenes, so I was in Manny’s hotel room. I was in the locker room before and after watching how Freddy manipulated the other team, how he manipulated the ref – and it’s a huge, huge deal. Freddy would tell me things, subtle things, that he would do to psyche out the other fighter. Even if he was just passing him in the hall. And he said every little thing counts. Which was great for me, because I could then incorporate that into the film.
"I have to make Miles look at me like I have the keys to the kingdom. Like the holy grail is right in here."
And while you were doing that, that’s when you were doing your pepperoni pizza dinners?
Well no, I wasn’t. In fact, I was this weight or lighter than I am now. And, look – Kevin Rooney’s a big deal in the boxing world. He trained Tyson, he was with Cus (D'Amato), he was with Vinny. So people know him. So when I went to Freddy at first, he had absolutely no belief in me whatsoever, because here I am, looking like I look with this California accent, and I didn’t have much belief in myself either at that point.
And when I went to Vegas. I met all the promoters, from (Larry) Merchant to the old promoters, and I said, “I’m playing Kevin Rooney.” And they go, “Well I know Kevin, and you look and sound nothing like him.” But I knew in the back of the mind what I was gonna do for this part.
What do you think of the Oscar buzz surrounding your performance?
(Pause) I don’t know anything about it.
Really?
No... I don’t know anything about what you’re talking about.
(Laugher).
I think that there are good performances in this movie, and so, we’ll leave it at that. I mean, I was happy to do the part.
What’s next?
I’m going to direct a movie. That’s what I’m going to do. I feel like I’ve worked with such great directors and writers and actors, I really want to go see if I can go tell a story from beginning to end, and get outside of myself. I really want to work with great actors and push them like Ben pushed us, and that’s the most exciting thing, is to work with actors. I’m gonna give that one a shot.
"Bleed For This" is now playing in select cities.
Miles Teller on Appreciating the Nuances of Boxing in 'Bleed For This'
'Bleed for This' is now playing in theaters everywhere. For our review, click here.
It's early on a Saturday morning – if you want to call nine thirty early in the morning – when Miles Teller, with leather jacket cool, walks into the Beverly Hills Four Seasons hotel room for our roundtable interview.
Looking ever the Movie Star part, one wonders how the twenty-nine year old actor might have spent his Friday night just the night before: whether working, traveling, promoting, or partying (or all of the above), he's all focus this morning as he discusses his latest movie "Bleed For This," the Vinny Pazienza biopic in which he stars as the boxer who trained his way back into the ring after suffering a spinal injury that nearly paralyzed him.
In our interview, Teller discusses the grueling process of getting into boxing shape, wearing the Halo head device ("highly uncomfortable"), and embracing the unknown future ("This is like, the first time in probably four or five years where I don’t know the next thing I’m doing and that I think for me right now that’s probably a good thing.")
Growing up in South Jersey, did that help at all with the Rhode Island accent that you have for the movie? It’s near, but far away…
The Jersey accent is different. Like, it’s just impossible to sound… intelligent, honestly.
(Laugher)
Especially with South Jersey. But I was thinking about that. I do think... I mean, I moved to Florida when I was twelve, I moved to a really small kind of country town. The North-East has a very specific kind of energy, and even though Rhode Island is totally different from New Jersey, I’ve just been around those guys. Yeah, so I think it probably added something to the relation that I found to Vinny.
What was the most difficult thing that Vinny had as a person for you to “get” for the movie?
I mean, the physicality was very tough, to have the conditioning to be able to shoot a boxing fight for… that last fight, it was the only day we went overtime, and that was like a sixteen hour day. The last two fights, back to back days, each fight took one day, which is almost unheard of. We shot the movie in twenty-four days.
But to even just look like a boxer, that was eight months. I had to shoot two movies in between... but that was eight months of just very strict diet and working out, and I lost twenty pounds, then got down to six percent body fat, for the first fight.
But Vinny also moved up in weight, you know, one title in light-weight and junior-middle, and we showed that. That’s also something very unique and special to Vinny’s legacy – he and Roberto Duran were the only two guys to win titles in those two weight classes specifically. So, I started at one-sixty-eight, then had to gain fifteen pounds to get to one-eighty-three, in like, two and a half weeks. But that was fun – once I had to gain weight, that was fun.
(Laughter)
"I had to shoot two movies in between... but that was eight months of just very strict diet and working out, and I lost twenty pounds, then got down to six percent body fat..."
Ice cream and pizza?
It was a lot. It was just like, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Federal Hill – I don’t know if you guys have been to Providence, but Federal Hill has like, amazing Italian food. So, I could find ways.
But you were still in the gym at the same time, though. Even though you’re eating a lot you still have to be boxing…
Oh yeah. I was cast two and a half years ago, we filmed it two years ago, so this was pre-“Whiplash”… I had never done anything where I got to play a man, like, a world-champion boxer. Even when I was on set, if I had any time in between I was always doing something, push-ups or sit-ups, cause I didn’t walk into this movie with like this god-given talent of being in shape – even though that’s not really a talent, you just have to work out. I think I went “anti” that early on in my career, cause I was just like, “I don’t want to be that guy with a six-pack, and a tan…”
(Laughter)
Did doing this project help you appreciate the nuances of boxing–
Yeah.
Or is that something you already had being a sports fan?
I was a big MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fan, and I still am. I started watching it in high school when it was the WEC (World Endurance Championship). I was sixteen years old. And then boxing, I always played the video games, you know. Certain guys like Tyson and Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, the heavyweights back then who were kind of the big draws.
But absolutely – once you start training in it, yeah. They say it’s a sweet science, and you realize it’s highly nuanced. I don’t see it as just two guys, barbaric, bloodsport… no. I see it as technique.
"I don’t see it as just two guys, barbaric, bloodsport… no. I see it as technique."
The mind is very important to be a champion boxer. Strategy…
Yeah, for sure. That’s what they say, it’s like – you have a game plan, until you get hit in the face–
(Laughter)
And then it all goes away. I think I only had five weeks in LA with my boxing trainer, and he was Sugar Ray Leonard’s trainer for eighteen years, and just a high-level guy. The first fight in the movie against Roger Mayweather, I had five days to work with that boxer, the second boxer we had like a day and a half, and the third boxer, Edwin Rodríguez, he was a top-ten guy, and he actually got in a fight – professionally – that he wasn't supposed to. He told Ben (Younger, the director) he wasn’t gonna fight, got in a fight, luckily knocked the dude out, didn’t get messed up, flew down, and I think I had like, honestly maybe a day with him. And so, a lot of the movie is not choreographed.
The first fight is choreographed. Up against the ropes, I come out, they can bring the camera back. The other times the camera kind of has to come in… we didn’t know what we were going to get, so there were a lot of moments of free boxing. And to do free boxing, so much of it is mindset, and that was what Darrell (Foster) really taught me.
On top of the physical transformation of getting into shape, you also had to wear the Halo brace that keeps your head and spine immobile. What’s the difference between reading that in the script, and then actually putting that on and shooting with it?
Yeah so, the beginning physical transformation, it was eight months of just all that stuff that you hear – you can’t eat any bread or drink for that time, and you’re just eating like a rabbit – and you know, hoping that it all pays off. (Vinny) dedicated everything and his life to this, so it would’ve been very immature of me to like, slack off and mess with that.
As far as the halo goes, that was highly uncomfortable. Again, you don’t like to complain because Vinny, you know, it was screwed in his head. But for me, it wasn’t actually screwed in my head…
(Laughter)
So we really had to make it as tight as possible, cause if the thing moves at all, then it doesn’t matter what you just did in that take – and you only get so many takes – it’s not usable. Because as soon as that thing moves, people understand it’s not real, and it sucks. But yeah, if this was like a big budget studio film I would’ve had like, a ton of fittings with it. Like, I just did a firefighting movie (“Granite Mountain") – I had more fittings for my boots then I did for this thing.
(Laughter)
Like, a girl just went to a hospital in Providence and got (a halo brace) from them. And then we put little rubber pieces on the end and just put it so far in my head that I used to be able to... I could tell when it was in the right spot because I just had like, indentations in my head.
"As far as the halo goes, that was highly uncomfortable. Again, you don’t like to complain because Vinny, you know, it was screwed in his head..."
Did you get headaches from it?
No… I didn’t really get any headaches. I guess I was pretty durable.
Vinny himself – was he around?
He was on set a little bit. I think he was a really good resource for Aaron [Eckhart] and Ben. For me, certain things I absolutely wanted to talk to Vinny about. Other things, you know, he’s a little older now, making a movie about his life, I had a lot of material to build my character of Vinny, twenty-five years ago, so that was important.
But the time that I absolutely needed Vinny to be on set was when I try and bench press for the first time (wearing the halo brace). Because I just didn’t know how to get underneath the bench, honestly, with this thing on, and so I had to ask him like, “How did you do that?” And he was like [impersonating Vinny] “Well, you know, I get down here, and then I kind of shimmy down there, and then I start pumping 'em out bro.”
(Laughter)
How was working with the director, Ben? Did he give you freedom on set?
He did. I think that a lot of directors feel like they have to mess with it all the time, cause there’s other people on set and they want, maybe all the credit for it, or they need to feel validated. But what I would say about Ben is he's confident enough to just sit back, and when he feels like it’s working, he doesn’t have to mess with it. And then when Ben would come in and give a note, it was very succinct. And Ben wrote the script. , In my experience of working with a writer/director, they’re usually the best resource that you have in terms of character and material.
Boxing is obviously, one of the most featured sports in movies.
Yeah.
When you go into such a project, do you think to yourself, what stands out about this?
MT: I mean, my job on this was just to, you know, play Vinny. I know the producers and the director obviously had the ghosts of all the boxing movies present when they were working on this one and trying to make it different. But also, I finished this movie before Mike (Michael B. Jordan) shot “Creed.” I remember that because we were just doing “Fantastic Four” reshoots, and his got pushed back, and we didn’t know “Hands of Stone,” and “Southpaw,” and “Creed,” we didn’t know all those, like I said we shot this two years ago so you know, at the time you don’t really know. It is interesting, everybody kind of gets the same idea at the same time. But for me personally, yeah, I was very excited to play a boxer. I didn’t know I would get that opportunity at that point, at twenty-seven or whatever it was. But yeah, for sure, I wanted to play a boxer, I wanted to play a soldier. I like blue-collar guys, those are guys I can relate to. I was very nervous about it but at the same time it’s, you get to play the boxer on screen, a guy like Vinny who’s always just covered in blood, broke his nose every fight, and was just the biggest warrior and had more heart I think than anybody – you have to risk paralysis because you love this thing so much. That faith is going to be tested, how much you love the sport truly is going to be tested when you’re risking literally never being able to walk again.
Did he watch it, did you get his reaction?
He watched it with Ben the first time, and he – Ben will give you a better response but yeah, he was crying, and not at the parts that you would think. Like, he was crying like at the dinner scenes, around the table, cause his parents aren’t around. But yeah, it was very touching for Vinny, and I got to talk to him about it, and that means everything.
When you play a real life guy, like the firefighter – the only survivor in this terrible fire in the movie that you just did with Jeff Bridges. When you do something like that, is it a whole different thing because he’s not really well known the way playing real life Vinny is?
It’s different in terms of that, there’s nothing less important about the prep and the process for me. There was a little added, not pressure, but expectations, because I knew that afterwards… you know, I’ve seen biopics and stuff, and you know that at the end of the movie they’re going to play archival footage, or people are going to be able to look it up. And yeah, you’re damn right, you kind of want to have the voice down and you want people to see how close you can get.
There are similarities between your character in “Whiplash” and Vinny here, are you drawn to these determined characters with that risk of self-destruction with their determination?
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s nice to, if you can explore that on a movie set, it’s a lot easier than I think going through that in real life, but there’s going to be certain parallels there. Yeah, I don’t know. I think Vinny’s story is really inspiring, truly. I mean, when someone’s telling you it’s impossible, it’s never been done, and just to have that sense of self to say well I’m going to be the first one to do it – yeah, I do like that, and I think obsession and passion and focus and drive, yeah those are, if I had the physicality to be a baseball player, like, I would’ve. That was something that I would’ve given everything to. I’ve been lucky to be put in a nice position, as far as acting goes where I’m able to get some good scripts and yeah, I’m more than willing to give everything to them and I think they’re just cool stories. I like intense stuff. Like, when I was in college, I wasn’t doing scenes of me sitting at a coffee table talking to the girl and flirting. I was like, “No, let’s do the scene where it’s like, shit is just happening and flying and everyone’s just into it.”
So what’s on your blue-collar bucket list?
Um… I want to do a baseball movie, but it can be anything. Honestly, it could be the guy who, he’s a garbage man, or he’s a construction worker, anything. Vinny obviously is a bit of a historical figure, but I’m just inspired by like, everyday people – the guy who’s working three jobs to pay for his kids, to do any of that stuff, that’s inspiring. Some of my closest friends are construction workers and military guys.
What’s next?
Next, I’m taking some time off. I did two movies this year, and I’m going to do an animated film, and this is like, the first time in probably four or five years where I don’t know the next thing I’m doing and that I think for me right now that’s probably a good thing.
Is that scary?
What?
Not knowing?
No, I don’t feel like I’m done working.
(Laughter).