You'd expect a host of eccentric and colorful characters in an indie movie about the folks behind a traveling carnival, and the quirky comedy Splinterheads nails them all like darts in a balloon. But it's the film's grounded sense of realism that gives it a heart, thanks in part to a supporting performance from Lea Thompson. The actress tells AMCtv.com this return to big screen is just the beginning.

Q: You're probably the most normal character in Splinterheads...

A: I usually get all these weird characters, and they're all different and fun for me, but you're right, Susan is relatively normal. It wasn't the part that attracted me, just that Splinterheads was such a lovely script. I think the movie turned out to be quite funny, and not in a way that comes naturally to me, that dry humor. My comedy instincts tend to be bigger. It was a lot of fun to shoot. We had a carnival set up right outside our dressing rooms, and since they didn't have a lot of money for extras, they kept the carnival running. I love really crappy carnivals, where you think the ride is going to break. There's something so seedy about them.

Q: You have a lot of independent films that you're about to release -- such as I Was A Seventh Grade Dragon Slayer. Are you orchestrating a comeback?

Continue reading "Q&A - Lea Thompson Admits She Likes the Seedy Side of Splinterheads" »

When The Boondock Saints was first released in 2000, it played for one week in five theaters, died, and went straight to video. Somehow, over the course of ten years, a cult following has turned The Boondock Saints into a success story, and now there's a sequel - The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. Original Boondock-er and comedian Billy Connolly revisits the scene of the crime...

Q: You used to joke that you, or your character, always died on film, preventing you from ever doing a sequel. But here you are...

A: Most of the stuff I'm proud of, I died in. In Lemony Snicket, I die. In Mrs. Brown, I die. Even in The Muppets, I die. So for most movies, the only way for me to possibly be in the sequel is to become a ghost and haunt everyone. It's a huge plot so they can stop giving me more money. They all got together and decided killing me off would mean I'd only get the one paycheck. In this one, in Boondock Saints, I was supposed to die originally, and now I'm not. They let me live.

Q: If only the same could be said of the people he encounters...

Continue reading "Q&A - Billy Connolly Glad He Made It Back to the Boondocks" »

Anthony Edwards plays Uma Thurman's absent-minded husband in the comedy Motherhood, a movie which takes place over the course of a hectic 24-hour period in New York. Edwards, who himself is the father of four, definitely relates, but it was the movie's realistic take on the subject matter that got him back to work, as he tells AMCtv.com.

Q: I actually live in the West Village, where this film was shot. I can see you were true to the neighborhood.

A: It's a great neighborhood. But yeah, it's not like in some movies where you go out the door and then suddenly you're at Barneys uptown: "Wait a second, how did they get there in a block and a half?" This felt more realistic, and that kind of authentic storytelling is what a good character-driven comedy needs, because you've got to hang it on something. And not just authentic with New York -- it's more what life is like for all parents.

Q: Parents, especially mothers, often become stereotypes in movies. The earth mother, the wicked stepmother, etc. Why do you think that is?

Continue reading "Q&A - Motherhood's Anthony Edwards Has a "Great Day" With Uma Thurman" »

Sela Ward isn't a scream queen, but she takes a stab at it in The Stepfather. A remake of the 1987 movie, which itself was based on the real-life story of John List, the story is based on a man convicted of murdering his family, but only after he established a new identity and life with a different family. Ward explains why the remake is a cautionary tale.

Q: Are you a fan of horror flicks and did you watch the original movie to prep for this role?  

A: Well, I didn't see the original movie that this is a remake of, but this is not truly a horror movie or a slasher movie like a Freddy Kruger kind of thing. This is more of a psychological thriller, more like a Hitchcock or a Fatal Attraction, and that's more my kind of movie. I don't go see the horror flicks, but suspense thrillers are really fun, because they're kind of a roller coaster, where you're on the edge of your chair. I like that. But this was a challenge for me, because I've never done one. It was a challenge to stand there and scream at a rubber knife or a rubber saw. That's not really my forte -- Southern women just don't scream in public!

Q: Dangerous infiltrators that break up suburban families -- from the nanny you hire (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) to the orphan you adopt (The Orphan) -- always make for popular movies. Why do you think we keep reverting back to these stories?

Continue reading "Q&A - Sela Ward Insists The Stepfather Is More Hitchcock Than Horror" »

These days, it seems like Michael Sheen is the king of the biopic, having played Tony Blair in The Queen, David Frost in Frost/Nixon, and now in The Damned United, Brian Clough, the dynamic but doomed soccer manager of the Leeds United. Sheen talks to AMCtv.com about tackling real life personas and how YouTube helps.

Q: How much prep did you do in advance to play real people?

A: I knew I was going to be doing this film about two, two-and-a-half years before we actually shot it, so I had a long time to think about it. I started doing bits of work beforehand, but more in earnest about three or four months beforehand. The day after I finished Frost/Nixon, that was my first day of research on Clough. So I pop his name into a search engine on YouTube, and the first thing that pops up is a Frost interview with Clough! It was a nice segue.

But I always do a lot of work, whether it's a real-life person or not. I did a film called Dirty Filthy Love, about a man with OCD and Tourette's Syndrome, and that required as much research as something like The Damned United. I always want to get to the stage where I don't have to think about how much like this person I am or not; I want to be able to get there and be me. There's this whole transformation process that happens, and it's too late to do it once you've started filming.

Q: What does all that research enable you to do?

Continue reading "Q&A - Michael Sheen Geeks Out in Preparation for The Damned United" »

Drew Barrymore is part of a motley crew of actresses (including Ellen Page, Eve, Juliette Lewis, Kristen Wiig and Zoe Bell) who are hell on wheels in Whip It. But this is no bit part. The roller derby movie also marks Barrymore's first time in the director's chair -- not that she got to sit down in it very much, as she explains to AMCtv.com.

Q: It's one thing to direct for the first time, it's quite another to direct on skates.

A: It definitely poses a challenge! I had never roller-skated before, so I had to train with the girls. We had a roller skate training camp, because I had learned on Charlie's Angels the value of doing your own stunts. As an audience member, you just believe it more, you enjoy it more. There's nothing worse than a bad cut of a waist-high shot, then the back of a really bad wig, and then back to the actor. You're like, "Wait, did they really think I was fooled by that?" And that's how I got the actors I wanted. I was like, "We're going to train, we're going to do this, this is the tone of film."

There was a point where we talked about doing wire work or how to figure out a jump scene where Ellen would clear the girls by four feet, knock into a wall and go down. Derby's a dangerous sport, so I wanted to take a moment and show that, show how fearless you have to be to play it. But instead of wire work or trickery, we trained for it. But training with the girls meant 19-hour days for me. I had to come in early and prep, then I would train with the girls, and then when they went to dinner, I would do late work, figuring out stunts with our choreographer.

Q: Did you watch a lot of sports films to figure out how you wanted to set this one apart? 

Continue reading "Q&A - Whip It's Drew Barrymore on Roller Skate Camp and Her Inner 13-Year-Old Boy" »

If it weren't for David Foster Wallace, John Krasinski might not be an actor -- he credits a stage reading of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men for giving him the acting bug. And if it weren't for The Office, there might not be a big screen adaptation of Wallace's story. The actor -- and now director -- talks about the process of turning a book he loves into a movie.

Q: When you first read David Foster Wallace's original stories, what about them made you think, "There's a movie here"?

A: You're right, on the page, there's nothing that ties them together. Except, after you read them a bunch of times, you start having this assumption that it's the same person doing the interviews, and then you wonder, "Who is it and why is she doing that?" So I thought maybe she was trying to find some sort of answer about the male condition, the male psyche, to understand the male thought process a little better. When I created Sara Quinn as the interviewer [played by Julianne Nicholson], the biggest thing I did in changing the book was to make her personally related to one of the guys. That was the big unlocking factor, that she was mixing an academic pursuit and a personal journey at the same time. This way, she's allowed to ask these questions, and you see why she's going for so much personal stuff.

Q: There are hints in the story, that she knows one guy -- subject #20, the one you play -- when he keeps breaking his monologue about the hippie chick who was raped.

Continue reading "Q&A - The Office's John Krasinski on His Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" »

Juliette Binoche is the central figure in Paris -- and not just because she's France's premiere leading lady. In her latest movie, it's Binoche's character whose story ties everyone else's together in a way that reveals not only her own personality, but that of the title city. Binoche explains why she seeks an international resume, and how that works with her recent extracurricular activities in painting and dance.

Q: With Paris and Summer Hours, it seems like you're focusing on making movies about France again... versus the period were you seemed to be more interested in global issues?

A: I take it as life gives me, you know? It just happened that during that year, I did five films in a row, but they were short, because I was not always doing the big parts. I think that I was not very happy in my personal life, so I thought, "I want to do something positive that makes me feel creative and happy, and to meet different minds and visions and to be alive." And of course I was happy to stay at home because of my kids, so it just happened that it was the right thing for me to do then. But I always have this desire to work with foreigners and not stay within my boundaries, open up to something else and other minds and stories.

Q: What do you get from different directors from different countries?

Continue reading "Q&A - Juliette Binoche Likes to Keep Her Resume International, Beyond Paris" »

Between the debut of his latest directorial effort, Up in the Air, which stars George Clooney as a business executive in crisis, and his role as a producer of the Midnight Madness opening night movie Jennifer's Body, writer-director-producer Jason Reitman is having a very good festival. Toronto is where Reitman debuted Thank You for Smoking and Juno, and as the son of Canadian director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Dave), he's got more than enough Canuck "cred" to merit hometown success-story status, despite growing up in L.A. 

Q: When the headlines started to turn towards our current economic status, did you feel a mixture of dread and satisfaction, feeling bad that the worsening economic news was going to make Up in the Air work even better?

A: I certainly never felt good about the fact that the world economy was crumbling. In fact, I had to re-write my screenplay because when I started writing it, the corporate firings were handled more as satire, I was right in the middle of an economic boom. And as things became more real, I had to take a more dramatic approach to the scenes.

Q: You found people who had recently been fired to perform on-camera?

Continue reading "TIFF 2009 - Writer-Director Jason Reitman on Being Festival Royalty" »

Although 9 isn't a Tim Burton movie, the animated film does bear his thumbprint. Burton served as a producer on the project to help out Shane Acker after spotting Acker's stunning short film about rag dolls trying to survive a post-apocalyptic world. The full-length version took five years to realize. Burton explains why the first time is always special, and what it's like to go down the rabbit hole.

Q: What made you want to step aboard 9, considering you were in the middle of Sweeney Todd at the time?

A: When I first saw the short, I felt really close to Shane's design sensibility and the kind of characters he had. The short felt like a piece of a larger picture, and I felt I could offer him an environment, some support, so he could just concentrate on making his film.

You see a lot of personal films, but you rarely see personalized animated films. That's what I like about it. We've all seen post-apocalyptic imagery a thousand times, but I was surprised with the poetry of this one, the sort of quietness, and the things between the lines, with the style of the performances going for the more naturalistic. It just felt like it was in new category of animation.

Q: What advice did you give him?

Continue reading "Q&A - Tim Burton Recounts His Time With 9 and His Upcoming Alice" »