It’s a House of Crouse extra! Here is the raw and unedited audio from a press conference Richard hosted with ‘Gimme Danger” director Jim Jarmusch and his subject, Iggy Pop. By 1973 Iggy and the Stooges had imploded, leaving behind three commercially unsuccessful records and a slug trail of decadence and unfulfilled expectations across two continents. “Gimme Danger” is Jarmusch’s grotty documentary about the life, death and influence of The Stooges. It’s a first hand account of what the director calls “the greatest rock and roll band ever.” Cover photo by Elizabeth Beddall.
“If it bleeds it leads,” is an accepted mantra around newsrooms these days but back in 1974 it was a new, controversial idea. In the based-on-true-events film Christine Rebecca Hall plays Christine Chubbuck, an investigative reporter at a local ABC affiliate in Sarasota, Florida. She was particularly disdainful of the idea until she became the poster child for news sensationalism by announcing to her viewers, “In keeping with WZRB’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, you are going to see complete coverage of an attempted suicide,” before putting a gun to her head and pulling the trigger.
“There are a lot of films that portray misfits and odd the people as cool,” says Hall during a stop at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I don’t want to say it fetishizes it but sometimes it makes it seem aspirational or trendy. The access [to Christine] for me personally was feeling like you are different and not excepted. That can be excruciating. Especially if you are a woman, especially at that time when you were operating it in un-meritocratic system. She had integrity. She wanted to serve your community. That was her driving force but she was not rewarded for that. [People around her] thought, ‘Well, you’re a lady in a bit weird.’ They didn’t know how to deal with that.”
Chubbuck’s progression to larger markets was stymied by illness and depression—“My life is a cesspool,” she says in the film.—and culminated with the news reporter becoming the news.
“To me Christine is someone who went through her life every day thinking, ‘OK what does it look like to be normal?’ What she perceives to be normal. She looks to everyone for affirmation. Am I doing OK? Did I get away with it today? Am I like you? Am I accepted? Sometimes she’s really good at it and sometime she’s really bad at it but regardless her community accepts her. The tragedy of the film is that she doesn’t see that. It is a compassionate film. It is a cautiously optimistic film about people.”
REBECCA HALL SIDEBAR:
“I don’t think I have given [a role] like it before and I probably won’t again because it is one of those jobs that if you are incredibly lucky you get maybe three of them in a career. And that’s only if you are incredibly successful and lucky and often only if you were a man.”
At it’s very core, Snowden is about privacy and how much of it you can expect to enjoy every time you turn on your computer or pick up your mobile phone.
The story of Edward Snowden — an American computer whiz who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency to The Guardian — has been reimagined for the big screen and premiered at TIFF on Friday.
“Unfortunately,” says controversial director Oliver Stone, “Edward Snowden has warned us, more than once, about privacy and he says in the movie the next generation won’t know what privacy is.”
Snowden uncovered widespread snooping by the U.S. government that may have violated the civil liberties of millions of people. Zachary Quinto, who plays journalist Glenn Greenwald in the film, says working on Snowden made him think differently about even simple Internet searches.
“I became more aware of our vulnerability while working on this film and took specific measures to protect myself in ways I hadn’t before,” he said.
“I had this experience the other night. I was shopping for a washer and dryer online. I was Googling the consumer ratings. I left that search and went to another website and immediately the pop up ads on this other website, which had nothing to do with consumer reports or shopping, were about washers and dryers. What we are willing to sacrifice in our privacy without even thinking about it for convenience sake, what we’re willing to give up in our own freedoms and interests just in sitting down at our computers is shocking.
“You can take precautions. You can take steps to enact two-step verifications and put tape over your laptop (camera) and strengthen your passwords but all you need to do is shop for appliances and you are exposing yourself to some kind of tracking, a collection of data.”
Co-star Shailene Woodley, who plays the whistleblowing title character’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills, takes simple precautions to ensure privacy. “I have a Band Aid over my computer (camera),” she says. “Privacy is a privilege now and it is only a privilege if you are privy to the fact that it is a privilege because it is not something you inherently have as a human being in 2016.”
What Joseph Gordon-Levitt has to say about ‘Band-Aids’
“Working on this movie made me much more thoughtful about how the whole internet works. Everyone has asked me about the Band-Aid over the webcam. I think that is a weird metaphor, an unintentional metaphor. ‘Oh yeah, this will fix it,’ but I don’t think it will,” said star Joseph Gordon-Levitt about people putting Band-Aids over their web cams to ensure privacy.
In American Honey, a road trip movie now playing at the Toronto International Film Festival before it heads to a national release later this year, Riley Keough plays a Fagin-like character, tough-as-nails with a glare that could peel the paint off the walls.
She is Krystal, the leader of a travelling band of door-to-door magazine sellers who picks up new recruits along the way with one simple job interview question: “Do you got anyone who’s going to miss you?”
It is a bravura performance in a movie that, once and for all, proves she’s not just Elvis Presley’s granddaughter; she can really act.
Making the free-form drama with British director Andrea Arnold and a cast of mostly newcomers was an unconventional occurrence for the Girlfriend Experience star.
“I didn’t know what the (bleep) anybody else was doing,” she says.
“I wasn’t on set for anything except for my own stuff. Nobody knew what the movie was about until we watched it. I literally had no idea.”
Keough, who has appeared in Magic Mike, Mad Max: Fury Road and will soon be seen in the Netflix film The Discovery and Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, says the lack of traditional structure did “all the right things” for her performance.
“It makes you able to do anything,” she says.
“You don’t want to get into the habit of only doing things that are structured and safe. Hit your mark and look that way.
“You have nothing, so you actually have to do something. You’re not going off a whole script and character arc and knowing all these blah, blah, blah things. You’re just existing as this person. You are forced to exist as this person. You don’t get a chance to think about anything at all.”
Hitting marks and finding the light “is just (bleeping) annoying,” she says. “Excuse my French. This was a nice break from it.”
Set in a world where regular folks still open the door for rattily dressed kids selling magazines, it’s a story about families lost and families found, about poverty, disenfranchised youth and finding freedom on the road.
“I think Krystal had been doing this for a long time so that’s all she knew,” Keough says of her tough-talking character.
“This world does exist. I think she grew up ‘on crew’ and she knows the most. We ran into another mag crew. In the movie you see us shaking hands with another mag crew.”
At well over two-and-a-half hours American Honey has an emphasis on naturalism and all that entails: the mundane and the pulse racing in equal measure.
It’s not a traditional road flick. Here, the destination isn’t as important as the journey.
Life on the road taught Keough a thing or two. “I learned not to drink too much,” she says.
“I really think I learned it. Legitimately.”
She laughs, perhaps remembering some long nights while making this movie, then adds in a more serious tone, “I learned a lot of really profound things but I don’t know how comfortable I am talking about them.”
Richard hosted the press conference for the TIFF 2016 film “Snowden.” From left to right, Richard, Melissa Leo, Shailene Woodley, Oliver Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zachary Quinto.
Oliver Stone: “This is really a secret underworld and no one in the NSA has come forward in its 70-year history,” Stone said.
“We only saw a sliver until Ed Snowden. No one saw into that thing, so it’s really an undercover detective story. And for me it’s exciting because it’s like JFK, it goes into something that we don’t know. Americans don’t know anything about it and they still don’t because it’s tricky.
“The government lies about it all the time and what they’re doing is illegal and they keep doing it. And it gets better and better, what they do, so this a very upsetting story.”
On January 15, 2009 Sully Sullenberger was an airplane captain with forty-two years experience piloting a plane on a routine run from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to a stopover at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The next day he was a worldwide hero, an instant celebrity.
Shortly after take-off his plane was disabled by a flock of Canadian Geese who flew into the engines, knocking out the plane’s navigating system. In just under four minutes Sullenberger assessed the situation and, realizing there was no time to turn back, made the decision to land the craft on the Hudson River. The risky landing was successful and all 155 passengers and crew survived with only minor injuries.
To this day the now-retired pilot says when he flies “other passengers often tell me, ‘I feel so much safer now that you’re on the airplane with us.’ I’m not quite sure why they do, but I’m just glad they do.”
The Miracle on the Hudson, as the New York press dubbed it, is now the subject of Sully, a biopic from director Clint Eastwood and star Tom Hanks.
The pilot says, “Watching the film, especially in the IMAX format makes you feel like you’re on that flight with us,” but doesn’t bring back the anxiety of the day for him.
“Enough time has passed,” he says, “and I’ve had enough time to process this and make it a part of me and not something that just happened to me. I don’t have quite the same emotions I had during that day, that flight, but the very first time I saw this film with my family it was a very emotional experience for all of us. The second time I watched the film I was able to take it in as more of a usual movie going experience and see some of the things I wasn’t able to see the first time.”
As for having Oscar winner Hanks portraying him Sullenberger says, “We talked in some detail about the script and the obligation he felt to get it right because after the film was completed I would be going back to living my life and would have to live with however he portrayed me on screen.”
Now that the movie is finished he laughs, “It is a weird experience to see someone else onscreen portraying you and speaking words you actually spoke.”
Sullenberger’s story doesn’t end with the landing. In the years since he has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential Heroes and Icons, written bestselling books and become a spokesman for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It’s a whirlwind that changed his life forever.
“My family and I think of this story in two phases. There was the trauma of that flight itself and then the trauma of suddenly becoming a world recognized public figure. Once my name had been discovered by the press an onslaught, a tsunami of attention happened very quickly. Within a few months we had received 50,000 communications. Emails, letters, requests. The press was camped outside our house for ten days. It was just overwhelming. It very quickly required finding a new way of living this life as public figures. We had to become more complete versions of ourselves to be able to do that.”
Richard hosts the “Magnificent Seven” TIFF press conference with (from left to right) Richard, Peter Sarsgaard, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Haley Bennett, Chris Pratt, Denzel Washington, Antoine Fuqua, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Lee Byung-hun and Martin Sensmeier.
“Life is easier in the air,” sighs First Officer Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart). Easy? Not when the plane you are piloting is subject to a bird strike that disables two of the engines. That’s the story told in “Sully,” Clint Eastwood’s real-life account of ‘Sully’ Sullenberger’s miraculous landing of a disabled plane on New York’s Hudson River.
Tom Hanks plays the title character, a pilot with 42 years experience. “It’s been my life,” he says of aviation, “my whole life.” January 15, 2009 started off as a routine day for the seasoned pilot. As the captain of US Airways Flight 1549 he left New York’s LaGuardia Airport for a stopover at Charlotte Douglas International Airport when his plane was disabled by a flock of birds who flew into the engines, knocking out the plane’s navigating system. In just under four minutes Sully assessed the situation and, realizing there was no time to turn back, made the decision to land the craft on the Hudson River. “I’ve delivered one million passengers over 40 years,” he says later, “but will be charged on 208 seconds.” The risky landing was successful and all 155 passengers and crew survived with only minor injuries. “It’s been a while since New York had news this good,” says one airline official, “particularly with an airplane in it.”
The film dramatizes the landing but spends most of its time in the aftermath, the resultant onslaught of publicity and some very difficult questions from a National Transport Safety Board investigative panel.
“Sully” is a slight but entertaining movie. Because we know how it ends Eastwood’s attempts to create tension by and large don’t work. Its you-are-there recreation of the landing is exciting when it places the viewer in the plummeting metal tube—the mantra “Brace for impact” will forever be branded on your brain—melodramatic when it hits the water. It’s the centerpiece of an otherwise movie talky movie.
The ditching of the plane may get your pulse racing but it is the personal story that will stay with you. As Sully Hanks is dignity personified. Questions gnaw at him in the days leading up to the inquiry, causing sleepless nights and mild friction with his wife Lorraine (Laura Linney) but he remains steadfast. It’s old school heroism and it looks good on Hanks.
As a function of the story, but also, I suspect, as a preference of the filmmaker, technology is downplayed throughout. When the NTSB uses computer simulations to attack Sully, Skiles, who has most of the good lines in the film, says, “They’re playing Pac-Man while we’re the ones flying the plane.” The point being made is that computers lack the human touch but it does feel a bit like Grandpa complaining that the new fangled television remote is too complicated.
“Sully” is a well-constructed, occasionally exciting old-fashioned story of heroism in the face of modern cynicism.
A riff on Daniel Defoe’s classic tale of survival “Robinson Crusoe,” a new animated film, “The Wild Life,” tells the story from a different point of view. Instead of the human perspective this 3D action adventure tells the tale from the point of view of the animals who play host to their ship wrecked visitor.
The film’s narrator is a bright red parrot named Mak (voice of David Howard). He let’s us know that life B.C.—Before Crusoe—was boring. His little island is a paradise but everyday was essentially the same until the shipwreck. When the dorky Crusoe (Matthias Schweighöfer) washes up on shore it changes everything for the chatty Mak, a tapir named Rosie (Ilka Bessin), Kiki the kingfisher (Melanie Hinze) and all their friends. “The New World was finally here,” says Mak,” and I had no Idea if I was ready for it or not.” After a rocky start—at the first the animals think the man is a sea monster—they becomes friends, bonded in their efforts to save their home from an invasion by some savage felines.
No animals were harmed during the filming of this movie, it’s an animated film after all, but there is some cruelty to the audience. If Mak found life on the island boring I wonder what he might have thought about this movie. The animation will entertain the eye of the six-and-under set but lacklustre characters and story may not grab their attention. There are some good messages here about the benefits of co-operation and loyalty but the story feels padded with needless action and, worse, pointless exposition. This is the kind of movie where characters helpfully describe everything you’ve just seen, treating kids like they are too stupid to process the action on the screen for themselves.
As for the characters, there isn’t much to say. They are standard direct-to-DVD animal cuties with nothing much to differentiate them from one another except their accents, which brings up another question. Closed off from the rest of civilization—they think Robinson Crusoe comes from another world—these creatures have grown up together and yet they all have different accents as if they hailed from different parts of the planet. It’s a small thing, but it’s also the kind of character detail more careful creators would have noticed.
“The Wild Life” isn’t a travesty, some small ones may find delight with the cute hedgehogs and company, but it is lazy. Like NWave Pictures’s previous pictures, “Fly Me to the Moon” and “The House of Magic,” “The Wild Life” lacks the narrative richness of similar work by Pixar and Dreamworks.
It’s a House of Crouse extra! Here is the raw and unedited audio from a press conference Richard hosted with ‘Gimme Danger” director Jim Jarmusch and his subject, Iggy Pop. By 1973 Iggy and the Stooges had imploded, leaving behind three commercially unsuccessful records and a slug trail of decadence and unfulfilled expectations across two continents. “Gimme Danger” is Jarmusch’s grotty documentary about the life, death and influence of The Stooges. It’s a first hand account of what the director calls “the greatest rock and roll band ever.” Cover photo by Elizabeth Beddall.
