Category: Film

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The Best Picture Contenders, Part 3

The last in a three-part series in which AwardsLine breaks down all nine of the best picture contenders.

Django Unchained didn't screen for the SAG nominating committee, which meant it was left off of one of the most respected Oscar-forecasting nomination lists.
Django Unchained didn’t screen for the SAG nominating committee, which meant it was left off of one of the most respected Oscar-forecasting nomination lists.

Django Unchained

What the Academy says:  5 nominations (Picture: Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin, Pilar Savone; Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz; Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino; Cinematography: Robert Richardson; Sound Editing: Wylie Stateman)

What the public says: $147.5M domestic boxoffice; $111.5M international (as of Feb. 1)

What Pete Hammond says: Quentin Tarantino’s spaghetti-western homage was a Christmas Day release and struggled just to meet its late-year release date. That means its five nominations including best picture are an impressive feat considering many members probably didn’t get a chance to see it because of the earlier voting schedule. It just shows the love for all things Tarantino, as this is the third film for which the director has seen a best picture nom. Although unlike Inglourious Basterds and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino didn’t earn a best director nomination this year. However, along with Michael Haneke for Amour, he’s a frontrunner for original screenplay for this wild and somewhat controversial mashup of cowboys and slaves. It has little chance to prevail as best picture, but because it’s now certified as Tarantino’s biggest boxoffice hit to date, that probably doesn’t matter.

What other awards say: 2 Golden Globes for supporting actor Christoph Waltz and Tarantino’s screenplay, 1 CCMA win for original screenplay, 5 BAFTA noms, and a PGA nom.

What the critics say: “What Tarantino has is an appreciation for gut-level exploitation film appeal, combined with an artist’s desire to transform that gut element with something higher, better, more daring. His films challenge taboos in our society in the most direct possible way, and at the same time, add an element of parody or satire… The film is often beautiful to regard. Tarantino’s Southern plantations are flatlands in spring, cloud-covered, with groups of slaves standing as figures in a landscape.”—Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times

What the producer says: “When Quentin made Reservoir Dogs, he realized that some people didn’t know they were allowed to laugh. When he made Pulp Fiction, Quentin said he needed to let the audience in on the joke,” explains Stacey Sher. “That’s the reason why humor is a part of his work, because that’s how you can take the dramatic underpinnings of everything that he’s doing that are profound and emotional and that take you on the journey. There’s always romance in Quentin’s films, whether it’s unrequited like Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega or even cartoony like Pumpkin and Honey Bunny in Pulp Fiction, and ultimately all of the stuff that has been subtexted in his movies, in these great love stories, is text in Django’s quest to find his Broomhilda. So he mixes these things. These are the colors in his tool kit. They’re sophisticated, they’re surprising and allow you to go on his journey that includes things that are rough.”

What the filmmaker says: “I was never stirred by how much I put the N-word in my script,” Tarantino said at this year’s Golden Globes. “If someone out there is saying I use it more in my movie than it was used in the Antebellum South, well, feel free to make that case. But no one is making that case. They’re saying I should lie, whitewash and massage (my script), and I don’t do that when it comes to my characters. I’m more concerned about the slavery in America: The drug laws that put more blacks in jail than they did in the ’70s, the prisoners that are traded back and forth between public and private prisons — that’s straight-up slavery.”

Jessica Chastain stars as a relentless CIA agent pursuing bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty.
Jessica Chastain stars as a relentless CIA agent pursuing bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty.

Zero Dark Thirty

What the Academy says:  5 nominations (Picture: Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow, Megan Ellison; Lead Actress: Jessica Chastain; Original screenplay: Mark Boal; Film Editing: William Goldenberg, Dylan Tichenor; Sound Editing: Paul N.J. Ottosson)

What the public says: $71.8M domestic boxoffice; $7.7M international (as of Feb. 1)

What Pete Hammond says: When Zero Dark Thirty started the season off by winning one major critics award after another, it appeared that it could have unstoppable momentum all the way to the Academy Awards. After all, this film was the followup project for the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker team of director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal. And Sony Pictures had a strong release plan, opening it slowly, building awards and word of mouth, and then going wide the day after Oscar nominations. Unfortunately, controversy reared its ugly head with a trio of powerful U.S. senators and the acting head of the CIA all criticizing the film for its depiction of torture as a device used to ultimately capture and kill Osama bin Laden. The studio and the filmmakers were slow to respond and defend their film, although they eventually did come out swinging. Then the Academy’s director’s branch, as they did with Ben Affleck and Tom Hooper, surprisingly snubbed Bigelow, who was thought to be a certain nominee for her remarkable work. Although the film got five key nominations, its momentum from the critics awards slowed. Though star Jessica Chastain won at the Globes and Critics Choice, and the boxoffice was extremely strong when it finally went wide, its inevitability as a major best picture threat seemed questionable. But it is a crazy year, and another chapter might still be written for Zero Dark Thirty, especially if voters feel big government is trying to roll over artists.

What other awards say: 5 BAFTA noms, 2 CCMAs for best actress Chastain and film editing, 1 Golden Globe win for Chastain, , as well as DGA, and WGA noms.

What the critics say: “Zero Dark Thirty is a puzzle that keeps changing and re-forming; we’re held by fleeting references, by the workings of Maya’s calculations. Bigelow and the cinematographer, Greig Fraser, make fluid but firm use of a handheld camera, without excessive agitation, so that you feel pitched into the middle of things but also see clearly what you need to see. A sequence in which a Jordanian who may provide access to bin Laden approaches an American military installation is drawn out to a level of almost unendurable suspense. Two unexpected bomb explosions throw you back in your seat; they have a ferocious power that makes most movie explosions feel like a mere perturbation of digits.”—David Denby, The New Yorker

What the producer says: “I didn’t want to play fast and loose with history,” says Boal, “and I wanted to track as closely as I could with what was known of the intelligence hunt and hopefully bring together all these disparate pieces of information. But you’re compressing 10 years into two hours, so that’s where all the normal things that movies do to compress time were things that I did, and you’re also trying to dramatize events to tell a story most effectively. That doesn’t mean the events aren’t true, it just means you’re making them as dramatic as you possibly can.”

What the filmmaker says: “It’s not just the modern military genre (I’m attracted to), but also it’s the topicality that I find really riveting and galvanizing,” Bigelow says. “(Boal) was certainly reporting this story as it was unfolding, and there’s a kind of urgency and timeliness to that. And at the same time, I think we both felt a responsibility to tell it in a certain way, to tell it responsibly and to be faithful to the research.”

Beasts of the Southern Wild went against all of the rules of filmmaking, but the risks paid off for first-time feature director Benh Zeitlin.
Beasts of the Southern Wild went against all of the rules of filmmaking, but the risks paid off for first-time feature director Benh Zeitlin.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

What the Academy says: 4 nominations (Picture: Dan Janvey, Josh Penn, Michael Gottwald; Directing: Benh Zeitlin; Lead Actress: Quvenzhané Wallis; Adapted Screenplay: Lucy Alibar, Behn Zeitlin)

What the public says: $11.7M domestic boxoffice

What Pete Hammond says: This is definitely the little indie movie that could. Debuting only a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize, few would have guessed that it would become such a major Oscar player just one year later with nominations for best picture, adapted screenplay, director, and lead actress for its 9-year-old star, Quvenzhané Wallis. It is clearly a Cinderella story for this unusual film and a feather in the cap for Sundance as well as Fox Searchlight, which picked up the film and ran with it. As the only best picture nominee to come from the first nine months of the year, it also stands out as the beneficiary of a passionate support base in the Academy. However, like last year’s Searchlight nominee, The Tree of Life, the love probably stops with the nomination, but it could triumph the day before at the Independent Spirit Awards.

What other awards say: 4 Cannes Film Festival awards (FIPRESCI Prize, Golden Camera, Prix Regards Jeune, and Ecumenical Jury), 2 Sundance Film Festival wins (cinematography, Grand Jury Prize), 4 Indie Spirit noms, 1 CCMA win for Wallis as best young actor/actress, and 1 BAFTA nom for adapted screenplay.

What the critics say: “Played by Quvenzhané Wallis, an untrained sprite who holds the camera’s attention with a charismatic poise that might make grownup movie stars weep in envy, Hushpuppy is an American original, a rambunctious blend of individualism and fellow feeling. In other words, she is the inheritor of a proud literary and artistic tradition, following along a crooked path traveled by Huckleberry Finn, Scout Finch, Eloise (of the Plaza), Elliott (from E.T.), and other brave, wild, imaginary children. These young heroes allow us, vicariously, to assert our innocence and to accept our inevitable disillusionment when the world falls short of our ideals and expectations.”—A.O. Scott, The New York Times

What the producer says: “The premise was a challenge from the get-go, and we weren’t backed by a major studio. We made it with Cinereach, a nonprofit that is challenging the world with the movies they’re putting out. We went in saying, ‘We want to make a movie with a 6-year-old who’s never acted before and put her opposite someone who’s never acted before.’ And Cinereach said, ‘Yes, that’s the miracle of the movie,’ ” says Gottwald.

What the filmmaker says: “When we shot the last scene between Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry,” says Zeitlin, “when both actors had to cry—they were first-time actors, so they didn’t have years of training to know how to just switch on the waterworks, so we all had to work together at that moment to make it happen. And then I was crying, the cameraman was crying, the boom operator was crying, the producers were crying—we all put ourselves in the mindset of losing a parent, and when I got the take, it was that moment where I knew we had gotten the film.”

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The Best Picture Contenders, Part 2

The second in a three-part series in which AwardsLine breaks down all nine of the best picture contenders. This article appeared in the Jan. 30 issue of AwardsLine.

Silver Linings Playbook: David O. Russell’s funny and moving character study of two broken people who use each other to mend was perhaps the critical and audience consensus winner at Toronto and the one to beat come Oscars.
Silver Linings Playbook: David O. Russell’s funny and moving character study of two broken people who use each other to mend was perhaps the critical and audience consensus winner at Toronto and the one to beat come Oscars.

Silver Linings Playbook

What the Academy says:  8 nominations (Picture: Donna Gigliotti, Bruce Cohen, Jonathan Gordon; Directing: David O. Russell; Lead Actor: Bradley Cooper; Lead Actress: Jennifer Lawrence; Supporting Actor: Robert De Niro; Supporting Actress: Jacki Weaver; Film Editing: Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers; Adapted Screenplay: David O. Russell)

What the public says: $71.4M domestic boxoffice; $19.8M international (as of Feb. 1)

What Pete Hammond says: Because it is a comedy, albeit one laced with drama, Silver Linings Playbook is at a disadvantage right out of the starting gate because comedies don’t traditionally win best picture Oscars. But this critically acclaimed story about two broken people who are trying to get their lives back together benefits from a passionate base of admirers, and that’s key in building a best picture campaign. Plus, it has the Oscar campaign know-how of the Weinstein Co., which has won the best picture Academy Award for two years running. And now it has achieved a landmark in Oscar nominations, becoming the first film since Warren Beatty’s 1981 film Reds to win nods for picture, screenplay, director (for David O. Russell who was overlooked by the DGA), and all four acting categories. Additionally, it even got an editing nomination, which every best picture winner has had since 1980. The pundits say it is an underdog, but the tea leaves are starting to say it could really happen.

What other awards say: 3 BAFTA noms, 4 CCMA wins for acting ensemble, best comedy, best actor in a comedy for Bradley Cooper, and best actress in a comedy for Jennifer Lawrence; 1 best actress in a musical/comedy Golden Globe for Lawrence; 5 Spirit Award noms; 1 SAG Award for lead actress Lawrence; plus a WGA nom for Russell.

What the critics say: “Lawrence and Cooper face off in the most convincing way, matching each other stride for crazed stride. It would spoil the fun to even hint at all what goes down between two people equally possessed by partners who are not coming back, but you can be sure it won’t be dull. That’s also true for Silver Linings Playbook as a whole. Russell’s gift for smart, honest, and unexpected dialogue and situations keeps you off-balance in an almost addictive way. He’s brought a reality to the world’s damaged, uncertain strivers that makes them next door to irresistible, and that can’t have been an easy thing to do.”—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

What the producer says: “I don’t want to speak for (Russell), but he does say this all the time, that having had the experience on The Fighter in dealing with the creative core of that movie, he felt as though he could extend what he was exploring in that film,” Donna Gigliotti explains. “He really does think about these two films as companion pieces. And you can see why he thinks that. They’re dealing with similar themes. So while it wasn’t easy—I don’t want to undersell this idea that it was like, ‘Oh, great, he made The Fighter. Fine, let him make Silver Linings’—there were a lot of issues going on in terms of how I got him the budget that he needed, putting together textiles in Philadelphia, shooting it on a schedule that made sense for the budget. After The Fighter, he wanted to go back to work; there were other projects out there. But I never doubted that this was the one that he was most attached to emotionally.”

What the filmmaker says: “I needed to work, I needed to write something and I needed to make a living,” Russell says. “And I also really, really responded to the material. So it was a matter of having the tone right. You had to not stop working on the tone all the way through the editing process. The key to the whole thing is to keep it real, is to keep the people’s emotions committed and real.”

John Goodman, left, and Alan Arkin play Hollywood insiders who collaborate with the CIA in Argo.
John Goodman, left, and Alan Arkin play Hollywood insiders who collaborate with the CIA in Argo.

Argo

What the Academy says:  7 nominations (Picture: Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck, George Clooney; Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin; Film Editing: William Goldenberg; Original Score: Alexandre Desplat; Sound Editing: Erik Aadahl, Ethan Van der Ryn; Sound Mixing: John T. Reitz, Gregg Rudloff, José Antonio García; Adapted Screenplay: Chris Terrio)

What the public says: $118.2M domestic boxoffice; $71.5M international (as of Feb. 1)

What Pete Hammond says: With its director Ben Affleck famously dissed by the directors branch, this extremely well-liked (if not loved) movie managed to land seven nominations overall, a good showing that keeps it in the race—and remember Affleck still got one of those noms as a producer of the film with Oscar veteran George Clooney and Grant Heslov. But can it become the first film since 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy to win best picture without a director nomination? Time will tell if it can and also if, oddly, it only wins best picture, considering the film is not really thought of as a frontrunner in any of the other six categories in which it is nominated. Now wouldn’t that be an Oscar twist for the ages?

What other awards say: 7 BAFTA noms, 2 Golden Globe Awards for best director and best drama, 2 CCMA wins for best picture and director, 1 SAG Award win for ensemble, PGA Zanuck Award, plus DGA and WGA noms.

What the critics say: “Mr. Affleck handles his own roles, on camera and behind it, with a noticeable lack of self-aggrandizement. He doesn’t show off with his direction or the performances, going for detail instead of bombast with eerie silences, traded glances, trembling gestures, and beaded sweat. (It’s a good guess that he’s committed the unnerving opening of Three Days of the Condor to memory.)”—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

What the producer says: “We thought it would be a tricky film to market because it’s got an odd title, and it’s a very hard film to sell,” says Heslov. “On one hand, it’s a real nail-biter thriller, and on the other hand, there’s a lot of comedic moments. But it’s not a comedy. If you sell it as a comedy, people are going to be disappointed. So it was tricky, but I think the studio did a great job. We’re really happy with what they did with it.”

What the filmmaker says: “L.A. turned out to be our saving grace. Had we just stayed in Turkey, we would have been completely screwed because we couldn’t get any Farsi speakers,” Affleck says. “Then I was told there’s a huge population of Iranians here—they call it ‘Tehrangeles,’ and there are half a million Persians here. It was like realizing that you’re sitting on a gold mine. Not only that, but there’s this very robust theater tradition and acting history, and all these bilingual people. They really understood what you wanted in English, and they could do it well in Farsi. So we switched the airport scene (to L.A.), and we had 500 Persians in Ontario, CA, pretending to be stopping our houseguests from leaving Tehran. We had so much enthusiasm. For them it was like someone was telling their story. They knew the airport. They knew that the tile in the bathrooms was teal, to the point where I would go, ‘That’s good. We don’t need all that, we don’t have any scenes in the bathroom.’”

The French-language Amour follows a husband who must care for his ailing wife.
The French-language Amour follows a husband who must care for his ailing wife.

Amour

What the Academy says:  5 nominations (Picture: Margaret Ménégoz, Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, Michael Katz; Directing: Michael Haneke; Actress: Emmanuelle Riva ; Original Screenplay: Michael Haneke; Foreign Language Film: Michael Haneke [Austria])

What the public says: $1.8M domestic boxoffice; $13.1M international (as of Feb. 1)

What Pete Hammond says: One of the rare films to win both best picture and best foreign language film nominations (Z, The Emigrants, Life Is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were the others), Amour looks very strong with directing, writing, and lead actress bids as well. However, no foreign language movie has ever won best picture, and it is a long shot to think the Academy will award it both picture prizes since it is a foregone conclusion it wins in the foreign film category. An original screenplay win for writer-director Michael Haneke is probably most likely to be the only other Oscar category it could take, matching the feat of another film that starred Amour’s leading man, Jean-Louis Trintignant, when A Man and a Woman won both in 1966. But in a year with so many genuine contenders and the possibility of a widely split vote among as many as six films, could this one sneak in? It has a passionate fan base in the Academy, and anything is possible in this topsy-turvy year.

What other awards say: Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner, 4 European Film Awards (best actor, actress, director, film), 1 Golden Globe win for foreign language film, 4 BAFTA noms, 1 CCMA win for best foreign language film, and an Indie Spirit nom for best international film.

What the critics say: “Considering Haneke’s confrontational past, this poignantly acted, uncommonly tender two-hander makes a doubly powerful statement about man’s capacity for dignity and sensitivity when confronted with the inevitable cruelty of nature. Acquired by Sony Pictures Classics before Cannes, this autumnal heartbreaker should serve arthouse-goers well—not for first dates, but for those who’ve long since lost count.”—Peter Debruge, Variety

What the producer says: “When I first met Michael Haneke, it was during the sound mixing of The Piano Teacher, and he said to me, ‘Perhaps we can do something together?’ I said, ‘I’m not sure I can spend two years of my life with cruelty and blood!’ And he let out this big Austrian laugh,” exclaims Margaret Ménégoz who has worked with him since 2003’s Time of the Wolf. But did she have any sway in terms of convincing Haneke to take on more humane films like Amour? “I don’t think so,” says Ménégoz. “He decided that.”

What the filmmaker says: “I don’t think I made a film about aging or dying, but rather in my personal life, I was confronted with the case of someone who I loved very deeply, someone in my family who was suffering very deeply, and I had to look on helplessly at the suffering. That led me to think about making the film. I could just as easily have made a film about a 40-year-old couple who is coping with a child dying of cancer, but however tragic that story would have been, it would have remained an individual case, whereas old age is something all of us are going to have to cope with at some point,” Haneke explains.

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The Best Picture Contenders, Part 1

The first in a three-part series in which AwardsLine breaks down all nine of the best picture contenders. This article appeared in the Jan. 30 issue of AwardsLine.

LINCOLN
Lincoln leads in Oscar nominations among every other film in contention with 12.

Lincoln

What the Academy says: 12 nominations (Picture: Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg; Directing: Steven Spielberg; Lead Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis; Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones; Supporting Actress: Sally Field; Adapted Screenplay: Tony Kushner; Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski; Original Score: John Williams; Film Editing: Michael Kahn; Production Design: Rick Carter, Jim Erickson; Costume Design: Joanna Johnston; Sound Mixing: Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom, Ronald Judkins)

What the public says: $168.0M domestic boxoffice; $14.5M international (as of Feb. 1)

What Pete Hammond says: From the announcement that Steven Spielberg was going to direct Lincoln, this one had the hallmarks of a film that defines what the Oscars are all about. The fact that it was not an easy road for the iconic director and his screenwriter, Tony Kushner, only adds to the gravitas of the whole project. And with Daniel Day-Lewis scooping up best actor awards left and right—plus a sterling cast of supporting players led by nominees Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field—this one smells like a winner. With a leading 12 nominations, Lincoln is also in a good place statistically because usually it is a positive sign when a film lands the most nominations. In terms of ambition, scope, and achievement, Lincoln has been the one to beat all season long. Unfortunately, expected victories at some of the earlier awards shows, like the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Movie Awards, didn’t happen (although Bill Clinton’s ringing endorsement at the Globes couldn’t have hurt). Nevertheless, the guilds might bring it back full force. Or not. Still, if you had to design an Oscar movie from scratch, it would probably be this one.

What other awards say: 1 best dramatic actor Golden Globe for Daniel Day-Lewis; 3 CCMA wins for actor, adapted screenplay, and score; 10 BAFTA noms, including film, lead actor, supporting actor, and supporting actress; 2 SAG wins for lead actor Day-Lewis and supporting Tommy Lee Jones; and other guild noms from the DGA and WGA.

What the critics say: “This is politics as it is really played, yet few writers have found a way to make it as compelling as Kushner does here. That success owes in part to the extensive character-actor ensemble Spielberg and casting director Avy Kaufman have enlisted, repaying them with dramatic roles for not only Lincoln’s entire cabinet, but more than a dozen key allies and opponents of the 13th amendment.”—Peter Debruge, Variety

What the producer says: “What’s wonderful about Lincoln is that it’s a reflection of the political process, and it’s not an attempt to show which political party is better, rather recognize the scene of the political process,” Kathleen Kennedy says. “Nowadays, ‘politician’ has become a bad word, and politicians should be lauded because our political process works. You can see that the process is working. (In Lincoln), you recognize what the founding principles are behind this political process and how it defines us and how we get things done or shouldn’t get things done. That’s why politicians on either side, Democrats and Republicans, are going to see themselves in this—by talking to one another, stepping across the party lines and identifying what’s good for the country. That’s why they’re engaged in what this movie is about.”

What the filmmaker says: “I never saw it as a biopic. I sometimes refer to it as a Lincoln portrait, meaning that it was one painting out of many that could have been drawn over the years of the president’s life, but had I done the entire presidency, had I done his entire life, that would have qualified as a biopic. I don’t believe this is a biopic,” Spielberg explains.

Life of Pi deals with issues of faith and existence.
Life of Pi deals with issues of faith and existence.

Life of Pi

What the Academy says: 11 nominations (Picture: Gil Netter, Ang Lee, David Womark; Directing: Ang Lee; Adapted Screenplay: David Magee; Cinematography: Claudio Miranda; Film Editing: Tim Squyres; Sound Editing: Eugene Gearty, Philip Stockton; Sound Mixing: Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill, Drew Kunin; Visual Effects: Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik De Boer, Donald Elliott; Original Score: Mychael Danna; Original Song: “Pi’s Lullaby,” music by Mychael Danna, lyrics by Bombay Jayashri; Production Design: David Gropman, Anna Pinnock)

What the public says: $104.0M domestic boxoffice; $421.3M international (as of Feb. 1)

What Pete Hammond says: Ang Lee’s ambitious adaptation of Yann Martel’s bestseller Life of Pi certainly seemed to resonate with the Academy. The book—an extraordinary story of a boy and a tiger fighting for survival while stranded at sea—was once thought unfilmable and went through several directors in the process until Lee finally cracked the code of how to bring to the screen. Even more impressive is the fact that none of the film’s 11 noms were for acting, making this, along with 2003’s big winner Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the most nominated film to do it without the help of the actors branch. This triumph immediately took Pi from the outer fringes of leading contenders and put it in a position to really go for it. “Slow and steady” is how one Fox publicist put it, and, just for the technical achievement alone, it can’t be counted out of the running, although its best chances are in the below-the-line area and possibly for Lee.

What other awards say: 9 BAFTA noms, including film, screenplay, and director; 2 CCMA wins for visual effects and cinematography; 1 Golden Globe for Mychael Danna’s score; plus guild nominations from DGA and WGA.

What the critics say: “The movie does for water and the sea what Lawrence of Arabia did for sand and desert, and one thinks of what Alfred Hitchcock, who used 3D so imaginatively in his 1954 film of Dial M for Murder, might have done on his wartime Lifeboat had he been given such technical facilities.”—Philip French, The Observer

What the producer says: “It’s in keeping with the kinds of movies that I personally am interested in making,” says Gil Netter. “Most of my movies are all positive, they hopefully are putting something good into the world, they’re about something, there is a spirituality available to people if they want to read that into the material. These are all important things in the films that I want to make. This movie stoked all those things in strong terms.”

What the filmmaker says: “3D is very daunting. You cannot trust anything people tell you, because it could be wrong, because it’s so new,” Lee explains. “And the audience hasn’t had a relationship with that yet. There’s no regulation, there’s no set of mind to watch it yet. People think, ‘Ah, it’s like tricks.’ I think it’s time that people show respect to the medium as an artistic form.”

Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Misérables.
Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Misérables.

Les Misérables

What the Academy says:  8 nominations (Picture: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, Cameron Mackintosh; Lead Actor: Hugh Jackman; Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway; Production Design: Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson; Costume Design: Paco Delgado; Sound Mixing: Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson,  Simon Hayes; Makeup & Hairstyling: Lisa Westcott, Julie Dartnell; Original Song: “Suddenly,” music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, Alain Boublil)

What the public says: $138.7M domestic boxoffice; $175.7M international (as of Feb. 1)

What Pete Hammond says: Many thought this movie-musical adaptation of the long-running stage phenomenon would be the one to take it all based on the early ecstatic response to screenings over the Thanksgiving weekend and the fact that the cast sings live in the film. It is the kind of big-scale movie-musical that has won throughout Oscar history (though not in at least a decade), which added to the inevitability of a possible Les Mis triumph. But despite a nod from the DGA, the lack of a best director Oscar nomination for Tom Hooper and nothing from his native BAFTA dampened the film’s overall chances. Include the lack of a writing and editing nomination, and you have to go all the way back to 1931’s Grand Hotel to find a best picture winner that didn’t have at least one of those nominations. Its triumph at the Golden Globes certainly kept it in the race to fight another day, and its strong presence at PGA, SAG, and DGA was nothing to sneeze at, but a best picture win at this point has to be considered a long shot by conventional wisdom standards.

What other awards say: 3 Golden Globes for best musical/comedy film, best musical/comedy actor for Hugh Jackman, and a supporting actress trophy for Anne Hathaway; 4 SAG noms for ensemble, actor, supporting actress, and stunt ensemble; 1 CCMA for Hathaway; 9 BAFTA noms, including best film, best British film, plus noms for Jackman and Hathaway; and a supporting actress SAG Award for Hathaway.

What the critics say: “What helps make Les Misérables so vibrant and thrilling onscreen is Hooper’s daring decision to have his actors sing live. No mouthing the words to prerecorded songs. The actors wore earpieces to hear a piano give them tempo. A 70-piece orchestra was added later to bring out the beauty and thunder in the score, by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, and Herbert Kretzmer. The risk pays off. The singing isn’t slick. It sometimes sounds raw and roughed-up, which is all to the good. It sure as hell brings out the best in the actors.”—Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

What the producer says: “This was one of the hardest films we’ve done,” says Eric Fellner. “It’s a genre that’s challenging by its very nature—people aren’t used to going to see a musical in a movie theater. Also, no one has ever done a live musical from beginning to end with no prerecorded music. We also had to make sure that in adapting Les Misérables, we didn’t alienate fans, and (in) having the original team, we were able to keep all the original DNA intact.”

What the filmmaker says: “There’s a moment where Jean Valjean achieves a kind of happiness where he sees that he’s done his only job in this life, which is to look after his girl, Cosette,” Hooper told Deadline Hollywood’s Mike Fleming Jr. “The moment offers us this feeling that one can transcend death, that there’s a way of coping with it that makes it meaningful. There’s a way of dealing with that moment that we’re all going to face and that will actually be a beautiful end. There’s something in that which is the secret as to why the musical’s been such a phenomenon. And we’re lucky that this film is tapping into that old-fashioned word, catharsis. It takes you to that place of suffering in your life, in your head, whether it’s the suffering of yourself, or the suffering of others, or suffering to come, and it has a way of processing it, so that you actually feel better about it by the end of the story.”

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Anything Goes In This Year’s Oscar Race

Pete Hammond is Deadline’s awards columnist. This article appeared in the Jan. 30 issue of AwardsLine.

With less than a month to go, the stage is set for one of the strangest Oscar showdowns in memory. Certainly the season started with some clear favorites emerging, like Argo at Telluride, Silver Linings Playbook at Toronto, then Lincoln just after the election, followed by Life Of Pi. I thought Paramount’s Flight also might emerge as a major best picture contender around this time, but when critics awards and early nominations for Globes and CCMAs started coming in, it was clear this was mainly just a play for Denzel Washington and John Gatins’ original screenplay. At Christmas time, we got Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, and the hotly anticipated Les Misérables to complete our seven-pack of best picture contenders. What many weren’t anticipating was that two small indie films that made a splash earlier in the year were also going to come in. Beasts Of The Southern Wild managed to hold on to all that momentum from its Sundance debut a year ago, and then Amour took Cannes by storm, winning the Palme d’Or and later travelling on the fall film circuit to Telluride and Toronto. That both were able to cash in that early 2012 awards goodwill and still make Oscar’s list was impressive, especially in the face of one of the most competitive and rich races for the ultimate prize in many years.

So what do we have? It’s as free-wheelin’ a race for Oscar as it can possibly be. Usually at this point, there are one or two strong contenders left in the hunt. Not this year. An argument can be made that, depending where the momentum shifts in the next month, it is almost anyone’s race, at least for best picture. But that also extends to some of the acting races (well, maybe not for you, Daniel Day-Lewis and Anne Hathaway) and even director, which has been turned on its head by the directors branch, who went their own way in snubbing DGA nominees Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow, and Tom Hooper in favor of smaller films from Michael Haneke, Benh Zeitlin, and David O. Russell. At the very least, the directors have upended the race and made it a lot more interesting and less conventional. It is entirely conceivable that the guilds, which most closely reflect the Academy’s sensibilities, will further upend the race. In a year when so many movies are top quality and have their own unique constituencies supporting them, a split vote could produce some very nervous moments on Oscar night and some very unexpected results. Could a popular movie like Argo actually emerge as the best picture champ without winning any other Oscars?

It’s possible—not likely, but possible. Will the directing and picture categories split? Possible. Could Argo win DGA, Life Of Pi win best director at the Oscars, and Lincoln take home best picture? Who knows? It is a year where anything, and I mean anything, can happen.

And then there is the question of the earlier nominating period and online voting. The Academy assured me, perhaps because of all the publicity about snafus in the new voting system, that more members voted this time around than ever before. Will that continue through to the finals, especially now that there is a longer period, six weeks instead of four, between nominations and the Oscar show? Will the method of voting continue to be the story and could it affect the outcome in a razor-thin margin race like this one promises to be?

It has indeed been a rollercoaster ride for Oscar in his 85th year, and I have a feeling he’s got a few more surprises in store for us before this is all over.

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Behind The Scenes On Les Miserables

Cari Lynn is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Jan. 2 issue of AwardsLine.

When producers Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan of Working Title Films became guardians of the longest-running musical in history, they knew they were dealing with precious—and risky—material. Les Misérables, after all, has played in more than 40 countries and has been seen by more than 60 million theatergoers. But Fellner and Bevan were well aware that musicals adapted for the screen are tough sells at the boxoffice.

Anne Hathaway is the doomed Fantine in Les Misérables.
Anne Hathaway is the doomed Fantine in Les Misérables.

Over the decades, there had been numerous failed attempts at a Les Mis film adaptation, with Oscar-nominated director Alan Parker (Fame) coming close in the 1980s (he went on to direct the film adaptation Evita in 1996). “No one could unlock the key of how to do it,” explains lyricist Alain Boublil, who cowrote Les Misérables the musical with composer Claude-Michel Schönberg. But it was a series of fortuitous events that caused Working Title to think now might be the right time to make a film work: On Britain’s Got Talent, Susan Boyle breathed new life into the Les Mis song “I Dreamed a Dream,” not only creating a chart-topping hit from the musical for the first time, but also sparking a resurgence at the theater boxoffice. Plus, the original producer and musical-theater legend Cameron Mackintosh was planning Les Mis’ 25th anniversary concert at London’s 02 Arena, casting Nick Jonas as Marius, which would broaden the appeal to a whole new generation. “The collision of these events reopened the possibility of, yes, we could do the film,” Mackintosh says.
The Hollywood Foreign Press and Screen Actors Guild wholeheartedly agreed that the gamble paid off, bestowing four Golden Globe nominations (including best comedy or musical, Hugh Jackman for best actor, Anne Hathaway for supporting actress, and best original song), and four SAG Award nominations (including the coveted ensemble award, Hugh Jackman for best actor, Anne Hathaway for supporting actress, and stunt ensemble).

The original composers of Les Misérables wrote a new original song, "Suddenly," for Hugh Jackman to perform in the film.
Jean Valjean reinvents himself as a businessman, but still is pursued relentlessly.

Nevertheless, the phenomenon of Les Mis began humbly in 1978 when Boublil and Schönberg, two pop-song writers living in France, decided to collaborate on a story based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 tome. “We were caught by the virus of musicals, and in France there were no musicals, so we invented how one should be,” explains Schönberg. “I wanted to write a proper operatic score with a big subject and not songs that were linked.” Their stage production wasn’t long-lived, but a concept album made its way to Mackintosh, who was then producing Cats, and who immediately recognized the potential. With English translation by James Fenton and completed by Herbert Kretzmer, Mackintosh premiered Les Mis on the London stage in 1985, where it’s continuously run ever since.
When Working Title Films (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Big Lebowski, Elizabeth: The Golden Age), which has a production deal with Universal, approached Mackintosh, everyone hoped this collaboration would stick. Working Title agreed that the original team of Schönberg, Boublil, and Kretzmer would remain intact, but screenwriter William Nicholson (Gladiator, Elizabeth: The Golden Age) was brought in to do an adaptation.
It was Nicholson who happened to mention the topic to director Tom Hooper while they were working together on another project, and Hooper rallied for a meeting with Mackintosh. Hooper at the helm didn’t seem the most logical choice—The King’s Speech hadn’t yet been released, and Hooper admits lacking musical credits. “I had not even directed a pop video,” he says. Although, he maintains he did have some musical experience. “At 10 years old, I was cast in two musicals, and through that, I discovered a love of musicals. I also learned I wasn’t a good actor, so I was glad to get that out of way.”
Just as Hooper had no musical experience, Mackintosh had no film experience, but they soon discovered they were on the same page. “When Tom and I first met, he spoke passionately about how he would do a film, and he felt it should be recorded live,” says Mackintosh. “I felt passionately about that, too. This was the clincher because Tom wanted to take what was a big leap in the dark.” In his musicals, Mackintosh had a penchant for bringing in directors with limited musical experience, such as Sam Mendes and Trevor Nunn. Moreover, Hooper had directed the HBO miniseries John Adams, which Mackintosh had admired for its large scale and gritty realism. “I’d been looking for directors over the years, and Tom came to me with a point of view, and I thought, This is the man to do it.” Working Title agreed and didn’t bother showing the script to any other director.

"Suddenly" was written specifically for the big-screen adaptation of Les Misérables.
“Suddenly” was written specifically for the big-screen adaptation of Les Misérables.

Over a year passed since the first meeting, and by this time, Hooper had won the Oscar for The King’s Speech. “I felt mightily relieved when Tom still wanted to do Les Misérables,” says Mackintosh. “We all met in New York, and Tom saw the chemistry between Alain, Claude-Michel, and myself—we go back 30 years.” This meeting inspired Hooper to pull the dialogue from the film, even though Nicholson’s adaptation had moved him to tears, and instead, do a complete version of the musical.
“Everyone was quite excited to go the braver route of honoring the way the musical was created,” says Hooper. “Musicals are a great game of consequence, of cause and effect, and so much would have to be thrown away to do it in a split form—you might risk losing the very thing that made it a success.”
Hooper put the original team to work modifying the score and composing a new song, “Suddenly.” “I don’t think Claude-Michel and Alain expected to be so involved,” says Hooper. “It was so exciting to realize I was literally re-creating the conditions under which the original creators are reunited. Fans would see that any changes had been done with the original creators’ input.”
The entire team was involved in all casting decisions as well, which included rigorous auditions for every actor. “Almost everyone cast was from the theater,” explains Mackintosh. “I had seen Sacha (Baron Cohen) and Helena (Bonham Carter) in Sweeney Todd, Hugh (Jackman) and I did Oklahoma!, and Russell (Crowe) I knew from when he left grammar school, and I saw him in musicals in Australia. I’d known Anne (Hathaway) personally for many years, and knew she was born into Les Mis [Ed. note: Her mother had performed the role of Fantine]. What Tom needed were people who were so comfortable in singing that they could reinterpret the songs with acting. This wouldn’t have worked with just straight actors.”

A sketch of the factory where Fantine (Anne Hathaway) works for Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) in Les Misérables.
A sketch of the factory where Fantine (Anne Hathaway) works for Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) in Les Misérables.

For Mackintosh, the most challenging aspect was finding the balance between heightened drama, while still preserving authenticity. “It needed to seem real but with an element of style,” he says. “The style had to be similar to that of the musical, where we’re gliding in and out of spoken word and singing so seamlessly that you don’t realize they’re singing most of the time. Cinema is a medium of realism, and we had to find our brand of realism.” At one point, it was suggested to do the film in 3D, but Mackintosh vetoed that. “I felt it was already in 3D—we didn’t have to impose it.”
The live singing posed significant technical challenges, and each department had to work carefully together, creating, for example, costumes that didn’t rustle and floorboards that didn’t make any sound. “Nobody had done this before,” explains Schönberg, “and each department had to have the best people to make it work: The best musicians, the best conductor, to put music on the voices, it must be perfectly in sync.”
After several weeks of rehearsals, the 12-week shoot commenced, filming in historical locations throughout France and England and at Pinewood Studios outside of London.
The entire cast went through the ringer—almost literally in some scenes, with water from the cold Portsmouth channel pouring in over them. “The actors I chose were the kind who come unbelievably prepared,” says Hooper. “By the time we got to the shoot, they had already done more than I’d asked them to. They were conscientious, incredibly sensible, and lived like monks, or at least like opera singers. I promise you, it’s not anywhere near easy what they’ve done.”
The cast also benefitted by having the original team on set. “It was such a treat for us because Alain and Claude-Michel were there every day,” says Eddie Redmayne, who plays Marius, “and you got to ask them where something came from, or, if you did a reinterpretation of something, ‘Do you think that holds?’ ” Colm Wilkinson, who originated the role of Valjean both in London and on Broadway, had a cameo playing the kindly bishop, and many of the smaller roles went to actors from various companies of the musical.
“It was an amazing amalgam of brilliant people I was exposed to on Tom’s team, and my rehearsal team from the theater was there, and we worked in tandem,” says Mackintosh, who had joint final cut with Hooper and Fellner on the $61 million film. “It was a collaboration and couldn’t have been any other way. It was the best way.”

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A Look Back At SAG Awards ‘I’m An Actor’ Speeches

This article published in the Jan. 2 issue of AwardsLine.

Here’s some of our favorite “I’m an Actor” speeches from SAG Awards shows over the years.

2006

“My first memory of wanting to be an actor came when I saw my mother play the title role in Evita. I watched her die on stage and come back to life in time for the applause, and I thought, Hi-diddly-dee. My name is Anne Hathaway, and I’m an actor.”

2008
“I performed my first scene ever when I was 12 years old in the 7th grade at Birmingham High School. I was very shy, and I had no idea what I was doing, so I just flung myself off the cliff and felt like I was falling. I’ve been falling ever since. I think that’s kind of what it is, informed falling. I’m Sally Field, and I’m an actor.”

“My favorite thing about acting is that it truly allows you to transform yourself into another person. I’m Johnny Depp, and I’m an actor.” [as delivered by Jane Krakowski]

2009
“I’ve talked my way out of 11 fights. I’ve cried more this year than most women do in a lifetime. Wherever I go, I seek out a mirror, and when one’s not available, I’ll make due with a car window or a dark picture. I’m Will Arnett, and I’m an alcoholic [quickly corrects himself], actor!”

“On Jan. 15, 2009, a US Airways pilot named Chesley Sullenberger performed an exacting, perfect emergency landing into the icy cold waters of Hudson River. It’s a good thing I was not behind the controls of that plane, because I’m Steve Carell, and I’m an actor.”

2011
“When I was waitressing right out of college, I went on my first television audition. The casting director told me to move to Europe because my looks would never make it on TV in America. I’m Julianna Margulies, and I’m proud to be an actor.”

2012
“When I was a kid, I agonized about whether I wanted to be an actor when I grew up or an astronaut. And both of them have their advantages. Actors get to meet and work with the most beautiful women in the world, and astronauts get to spend long-duration space flights in pressure suits filled with their own urine. I’m Jon Cryer, and I’m an actor.”

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SAG Awards’ ‘Actors Stories’ Remain Enduring Tradition

Diane Haithman is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Jan. 2 issue of AwardsLine.

And the winner was: Angela Lansbury.

When the Screen Actors Guild Awards first came on the scene in 1995, Lansbury was nominated for her role as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote. She lost to Kathy Baker of Picket Fences.

But even though she did not go home with the Actor statuette, Lansbury’s introductory speech at the ceremony was such a hit that it launched a tradition that has become a highlight of the annual SAG Awards: the Actors Stories—unofficially known as the “I Am an Actor” speeches.

Lansbury gave the audience some background information on the new awards, but she also added a personal touch via a list of some of her more memorable roles: “I’ve been Elizabeth Taylor’s sister, Spencer Tracy’s mistress, Elvis’ mother, and a singing teapot.” She added: “Tonight is dedicated to the art and craft of acting by the people who should know about it: Actors. And remember, you’re one too!”

Then, as now, SAG Award winners have plenty of time to thank their agents, parents, partners, pets, and assorted deities for their success when they take the stage. But in an industry overwhelmed with awards ceremonies and endless opportunities for self-congratulation, the Actors Stories mark a refreshing change of pace, a chance for the TV audience to learn more about the craft of acting and the often-rocky road to stardom. And, for the all-actor crowd at the live awards, it was a chance to learn little-known facts about each other.

For the first eight years, the SAG Awards appointed one actor to make such a speech, says Kathy Connell, producer of the awards since their inception. That list includes such distinguished stars as John Lithgow, Ian McKellen, James Woods, Kathy Bates, and Whoopi Goldberg. Borrowing from Lansbury’s speech—or maybe Alcoholics Anonymous?—remarks have always included some variation on the phrase: “I am (name here), and I’m an actor.”

Goldberg’s 2000 speech illustrates the typical actor’s blend of pride and insecurity: “I’m an actor. I strut and fret my hour upon the stage, and I’ve done a lot of strutting because I am an actor. Am I the right age to play a mother? OK, I don’t sweat that one so much. Am I the right sex to play a Roman slave? Am I the right color to play a maid? Ha, ha. Is anybody going to believe that I could pass for a nun? Am I going to eat next week?”

For the ninth annual SAG Awards in 2003, Connell says supervising producer Gloria Fujita-O’Brien suggested replacing a single one- to two-minute speech with multiple Actor Stories of 15 to 30 seconds. The 2003 speakers included Alfred Molina, Kathy Bates (who confessed to starting her career as a singing waitress in the Catskills), Kristin Davis, Keith Williams, Halle Berry (who once dreamed of being an Olympic gymnast but “wasn’t quite good enough”), and David Hyde Pierce, who joked: “I’m still looking for a movie to do this summer. My name is David Hyde Pierce, and I’m an actor.”

At the awards ceremony, attended only by actors and closed to the press, the actors sit at tables rather than in rows. Those chosen to speak deliver their Actors Stories from their seats. Executive producer and director Jeff Margolis says the actors who will speak are miked in the green room, and nobody, including their tablemates, knows in advance who will tell a personal story to the roving Steadicam.

“I think it’s sort of become our signature—we’re the only show that does it,” Margolis says. “It gives the actors a chance to do something other than thank 40 people that nobody knows. The people at home, as well as some of the other actors, don’t know how these people got started.”

In the years of the longer speeches, Writers Guild members wrote the comments with the actors’ input. Now actors provide their own material, giving the producers an advance copy. But that doesn’t mean there are no surprises, Connell observes. “They have thought about it, but it is also live television. Sometimes (the speech) gets tweaked, so we are all having a live moment.”

Some speeches are comic. Some are heartfelt. And some, like this 2004 Actor Story, are just plain bemused: “In 1978, I got my SAG card and since then I’ve been asked to give it back on six separate occasions. I’m Brad Garrett, and I don’t belong here.”

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Q&A: Jodie Foster On Her Cecil B. DeMille Honor

David Mermelstein is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Jan. 2 issue of AwardsLine.

Few stars can rival Jodie Foster’s durability. One has to go back to Hollywood’s golden age—to the likes of Judy Garland—to find those who even approach her successful transition from childhood roles to adult parts. And what other child actor started directing after accomplishing that transition? None. Which is why it’s fitting that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is bestowing on Foster its highest honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award.

Foster has been with us so long, it’s almost impossible to believe she’s just 50. Amazingly, it’s been 20 years since she won her second best-actress Oscar (for Silence of the Lambs). Her first came three years earlier (for The Accused). But her first Academy Award nomination dates back to 1977, for Taxi Driver, in which she played a young teen prostitute, opposite Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Foster says with typical understatement during a recent phone interview. “And it feels like a long time, but it also feels great. I don’t remember ever starting. My earliest memories are doing commercials and TV. And here comes this celebration of my whole life. So now what? Hopefully there’s more to come.”

There no doubt will be for Foster, who continues to eye both acting and directing projects with an eagerness tempered by discernment. Yet she acknowledges a certain ambivalence regarding her career. “I don’t know if I have the personality for it,” she says. “I’m not sure if I’d not fallen into it, it’s what I’d have done. I mean this mostly as an actor rather than as a director, but I’m one for entirely different reasons from most people. It’s become a psychological evolution. I chose movies based on what I had to learn about myself, not because I had to act. There’s lots of things I’m not interested in, and I don’t want to play parts in those movies.”

Despite the wide range of roles Foster has undertaken and the very different plots of the three films she’s directed, she sees a throughline in her work. “I always feel like I’m making the same movie over and over again,” she says. “Nobody else seems to notice, but I do.” The perspective, though, is markedly different depending on whether Foster is acting or directing. “As an actor, I’m always playing solitary characters,” she says. “But as a director, I’m always making ensemble movies, which focus on lots of people’s lives and how they intertwine. Similar things interest me both as an actor and as a director but in totally different ways. As an actor, I’m attracted to drama; as a director, it’s humor—because it’s the story of my life, and I can’t be that serious about it. Being alone is a big theme in all my movies, both as a director and as an actress.”

Jodie Foster's first major film role was at age 12 opposite Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.
Jodie Foster’s first major film role was at age 12 opposite Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.

The actress credits her mother, Brandy, with laying the groundwork for her transition from family-friendly roles to more serious work, and Taxi Driver (1976) was the turning point. The film’s producer, Michael Phillips, remembers director Martin Scorsese’s determination to cast Foster, an instinct that really paid off. “She was only 12 and kind of shy,” Phillips recalls. “But she was very intelligent and quite mature. She just had the acting chops. She was very natural in the character and seemed unthreatened and undaunted by the sexuality. That was one of the big issues—how comfortable she would be with that material. She was doubled for the sexual material; some of it her sister did. But she was exposed to blood and violence. It was just her politeness that gave away her age. She was impossible not to like and respect, and it was amazing how much self-possession she had at that age.”

By the time Foster appeared in The Accused (1988), there was no denying that a major actress had arrived. Yet she insists that even after she made that film, she had doubts about spending the rest of her life in pictures. “Right after The Accused, I was heading to grad school and thought that was the last of those. Part of me was disappointed in my performance. Then I saw the movie and realized that a lot of it was about fear and a lot was unconscious. And also I thought, Literature doesn’t wake me up at 5 in the morning. So grad school wasn’t going to do that.”

Foster won her second best actress Oscar for Silence of the Lambs.
Foster won her second best actress Oscar for Silence of the Lambs.

Her perseverance in Hollywood was rewarded with The Silence of the Lambs (1991), which won five Academy Awards, including best picture. Jonathan Demme directed Foster to her second best actress Oscar, yet he credits her with helping him shape his conception of the film. “The first time I met Jodie,” Demme says, “we hadn’t started casting yet. But she reached out to express her deep regard for the book. She described it as the story of one young woman desperately trying to save the life of another young woman, with these roadblocks put up by all these men. And something really clicked for me when she said that, and that became the theme that guided me in making the movie, and it impacted endless decisions. I was so moved by what she said that I named my production company Strong Heart in honor of Jodie’s thematic inspiration. I treasure how she oriented me as how best to tell this story.”

Though modest about her two Oscars, Foster willingly acknowledges their impact on her career. “It’s like winning the lottery,” she says. “It doesn’t mean you’re a better person. At the same time, after my first Oscar, I was able to say, ‘OK, I’m doing this incredibly risky thing. I’m going to try and direct.’ It gave me some kind of passport that I might not have had. But I also think the reason you were given the honor is because you played from the heart, not because you followed a rulebook. And you learn you have this great saber, which allows you to make decisions against the tide. Silence of the Lambs was not something people expected me to do. But I loved this book and this character, and the film operates at such a high level. And by the way, I just won an Oscar, so too bad. It was really the best decision I could have made.”

The impact of those wins resonates even now, for the avenues they opened offered Foster a way to remain fulfilled in Hollywood. “I think it’s something I’ll probably do my whole life and also something I need a break from a lot,” she says. “But there’s lots of different ways to tell stories and lots of different ways to make films. I’ve only directed three movies, and I’ve got a lot to learn, and there’s a lot ahead for me there. It’s hard getting movies off the ground—harder and harder every year. My goals are humble as a director. They’re really about having the films as an expression of who I am. As an actor, you can’t really do that. You do it and move on. But directing, well, that’s me. It requires a real 100 percent investment in all levels of the storytelling.”

Foster isn’t shy about owning up to missed opportunities, even if she isn’t eager to mention specific projects. Yet she remains optimistic. “I’ve had a weird career, and I get a lot of grief for it,” she says. “What I choose is just really personal, especially as a director. I can’t just go, ‘I like scuba diving, so let’s do a scuba diving movie.’ It has to be something I would die for. And because it’s the story of your life, there are the popular parts and the parts nobody likes and the parts people don’t understand. But I have to make those movies, too.”

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Q&A: Anthony Hopkins On Hitchcock

David Mermelstein is an AwardsLine contributor

When we think of Anthony Hopkins, psychopaths naturally spring to mind. After all, the Welsh actor won an Oscar in 1992 for playing Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, a career-defining role. But, of course, there’s much more to Sir Anthony than just playing brilliant fictional villains. He’s also displayed a knack for portraying complicated historical figures. In addition to playing Hitler (on TV) and William Bligh, the actor has earned Oscar nominations for playing the lead in Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995) and John Quincy Adams in Steven Spielberg’s Amistad (1997). Now, Hopkins has assumed the role of Alfred Hitchcock in Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock, which chronicles the development and making of Psycho.

AWARDSLINE: What attracted you to playing Hitchcock?

ANTHONY HOPKINS: The project originally came to me eight years. I met the two producers and thought, Yes, it’s interesting. But who wants to see a film about Alfred Hitchcock? Plus, I didn’t want to put on weight, having just gotten fit. So it never happened. But then it came back around. Sacha Gervasi now had it, and he had such passion and blatant enthusiasm for it. He had no experience directing actors, and I thought that would be a challenge. So I decided to just jump in.

AWARDSLINE: Was it difficult acting in a fat suit?

HOPKINS: Hitchcock wasn’t as heavy when he directed Psycho as he was later. We did some tests to get it right. No one wanted me to disappear behind a lot of makeup. They did it from the chin. My jawbone is completely different from his, so it went from my chin to my neck, and then I had the costume. I spent about an hour and half in makeup each day. I also shaved my head, because I’m quite gray, and Hitchcock used dye—that awful red dye. And then, once you get into the mask, I’m not Alfred Hitchcock; I’m Anthony Hopkins playing the guy. So I used what I could. I wouldn’t go on the set till I was completely dressed. I wouldn’t go on in jeans, even in rehearsal. If you’re going to rehearse a scene, become the character. I wanted to feel the illusion of what I was trying to do, and that’s what I did.

AWARDSLINE: You did an enormous amount with your eyes in this role. Was that a conscious choice?

HOPKINS: Yes, it was. I have blue eyes, so I wore contact lenses, because Hitchcock had hazel eyes. The camera has to see behind the lens. I can’t really describe it. Acting is about listening to the other person. You get a great actor like Helen Mirren, and they do the work, and you listen. So when Richard Portnow as Barney Balaban talks harshly to me, it’s just glaring back that I do. Acting is about listening and reacting. John Wayne was right: Acting is just reacting. You don’t have to do much—as long as you stay out of the way of others. That’s why it works.

AWARDSLINE: Hitchcock is a revered figure in cinema, but this film clearly explores his dark side. Why did that appeal to you?

HOPKINS: It’s not so much dark as it’s the complex side of any personality. Hitchcock was such a master of putting on screen things that made you uneasy. Somebody once asked him what frightened him most, and he said the police. He came from a poor background. I think he understood those fears. He hated the thought of sudden violence. He was always wanting to be in control. And his films reflect that at any moment it can happen—your life is in control and then bam. He had such simpatico with the audience. And he was such a romantic, trapped in that obese body but appreciating beautiful women. We gather from biographies that he and his wife had a business arrangement, but we don’t know. He wasn’t an easy man. Janet Leigh said she had fun going to his house because he was such a practical joker. Once an actress told him that this was her best side, and he responded by saying, “My dear, you’re sitting on your best side.” He told Tony Perkins, “Don’t worry about motivation, my camera will tell you what to do.” Tony Perkins asked if he could chew candy on set, and Hitchcock said, “You can do whatever you like, my boy.” Everyone liked working with him. He didn’t say much as a director, but he was clear and supportive.

AWARDSLINE: You also portrayed Richard Nixon. Is there a thrill to playing someone historically important—and how do you refrain from dipping into caricature?

HOPKINS: Nixon is very much like Hitchcock. Both suffered from insecurities, and I know about insecurities and fears. So I understood Hitchcock at an instinctual level. He felt like an outsider, and so do I. I have a little bit of insight into that, so I like playing those characters.

AWARDSLINE: You won an Oscar more than 20 years ago. How did that change your career?

HOPKINS: It didn’t change anything at all. I remember the night I won the Oscar. I thought, Now I don’t have to do anymore. But then you wake up the next morning, and the Oscar is there, and you have to ask, “Now what do I do?” It can be a curse—some actors never work again after winning—but I don’t think about it. I just continue to do my job and get on with it.

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Q&A: Walter Parkes On Flight

This article appeared in the Dec. 19 issue of AwardsLine.

When Walter Parkes and his wife and partner Laurie MacDonald read the first 40 pages of John Gatins’ script for Flight in 2006, the adult drama about a substance-abusing airline pilot piqued their interest. The dark, character-driven story hearkened back to the type of films the major studios used to make on a regular basis. Neither Parkes nor MacDonald envisioned a high-wattage actor like Denzel Washington taking on the role—not only was Washington way out of the price range of a film that needed to be made on a modest budget, their main character worked in a field with few African-American pilots. Nevertheless, once the script made its way to Washington’s agent, the late Ed Limato, the actor read it and was hooked, according to Parkes. “The excellence of a project is no longer enough to get it made: It’s a combination of the quality of the material, the quality of the people making it, and, honestly, the financial circumstance under which the movie is made,” says Parkes, who points out that Washington’s enthusiasm (and, well, severe price cut) helped push Flight to the finish line. Parkes recently spoke with AwardsLine about how it all came together.

AWARDSLINE: Hindsight says that Flight was a great project to take on, but did doing a midrange-budget adult drama give you pause when it first came across your desk?

PARKES: It’s been so long that the business was slightly different then. We first got involved with the project in 2006. John Gatins sent us 40 pages, the only 40 pages he’d written of the project, which only really took us to the crash and the immediate aftermath. While it wasn’t exactly clear where the movie was going, the quality of the writing and the strength of that premise were enticing enough that we felt that, if the script was completed correctly, it would attract terrific elements. And at the end of the day, that is necessary to get a movie like that made. We’re talking 2006, before the (financial crisis) and the way it affected Hollywood. You know, there were many independent labels then—Paramount Vantage would have been a good place for this—but over the course of the development, they pretty much stopped being in business, as did many of the specialty labels of other studios. All that meant was that it was less of a sure bet that the project would get made, regardless of the quality of the script. It really put it upon us to meet certain other criteria—mainly, get really amazing people to do it for very little money. (Laughs.)

AWARDSLINE: So how did you get those amazing people to participate?

PARKES: I wish we could take credit for a lot of it, and we really can’t. Sometimes your job is to keep a project afloat and in the consciousness of the studio, long enough for the right elements to become attached. We worked with John for the better part of 2006 and 2007, and there was a draft, a good draft. There had been conversations with different actors and certain actors chasing it, but there wasn’t the kind of explosive combination that would ignite it as a movie to be made. That really happened because Denzel Washington’s agent, (the late) Ed Limato, had read it and took it upon himself to call me and Laurie and say, “This would be extraordinary for Denzel.” We said, “Great, if he’d be interested…” And about six weeks later, I got another call from Ed saying Denzel read it and he loves it, and he’d love to sit down and talk. So Laurie and I flew to New York, and we had lunch with Denzel. We sat down and Denzel said, “Well, I’m in.” And I said, “Denzel, we don’t really have a director yet.” And he said, “We’ll get a great director.” And I said, “The studio hasn’t said that they’re making the movie,” and he said, “I understand.” And I said, “Denzel, it’s not that kind of movie where everybody’s going to get paid their full rate,” and he said, “It’s a great role, though; it’s a great movie. Let’s see if it can get done.” But still we went through probably a good year having different conversations with different directors. There was a moment there where John Gatins himself was being considered as the director, and Denzel was open to it, but I think for that role he felt that he needed a more experienced hand behind the camera. But it was all done in the very positive way of, “How can we make this work?” I had never thought that Bob would do this small of a movie, (but) it suddenly began to make sense because he’s a pilot, and he was inspired by the screenplay. Once that happened, it felt like we were finally going to make the movie. Even so, there were still fairly stringent financial circumstances that had to be met in order for the movie to be officially greenlit. But, luckily, a director as masterful and experienced as Bob can make a movie like Flight for the price that we made it for.

AWARDSLINE: Did you go in knowing that this needed to be in that $30 million dollar range long before anybody was attached?

PARKES: It’s not our first time at the rodeo. It was not a conventionally commercial project, so the studio would only feel comfortable if we spent “x” on it. It’s not a bad way of approaching interesting and unique material, which was an approach we used at DreamWorks: Use your professional experience to make a best guess (about) a break-even scenario and see if the movie could be made properly under this financial circumstance. Then if you exceed (expectations), the movie is wildly profitable and successful for everybody involved.

AWARDSLINE: The film also walks a careful line in tone with having a somewhat unlikable protagonist. Did you have a lot of discussions with John Gatins about maintaining that balance?

PARKES: There’s an aspect of the character of Whip as portrayed by Denzel that was absolutely on the page: He was charming; he was high functioning; and he had, even on the page, the kind of competence and swagger that we look to in our heroes. So the fact that all of that in a person that was self-destructive, selfish, and teetering out of control just made it more interesting. We were even less concerned once Denzel was cast, because Denzel has pure charisma—no matter how dark he goes, as proven by Training Day, somehow the audience never loses connection with him. I also don’t think I have ever seen him portray fear like this, portray a man who is much smaller than his circumstances. There’s a scene where we’re inside the big meeting with Carr, the owner of the airline, and they’re all talking about, “Is he going to jail?” Through the glass, you can see Denzel, and his knees are together, and he’s in this suit, and his head is frozen down on a magazine that he’s turning the pages of. It’s what you do when just don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing. That kind of vulnerability is just extraordinary.

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Q&A: Kathleen Kennedy On Lincoln

This article appeared in the Dec. 19 issue of AwardsLine.

Kathleen Kennedy has worked with Steven Spielberg for more than 30 years, producing boxoffice successes and critical hits in equal measure. But she says that in all that time, one biographical topic came up consistently in their development discussions: “The subject of Lincoln was something that always fascinated both of us,” she says, noting that their current release took 13 years and multiple iterations to make it to theaters. “We were both really surprised that there hadn’t been more done in cinema (on Lincoln) over the years.” With a script from Tony Kushner, their complex—and occasionally humorous—portrayal of the 16th president’s efforts to pass the 13th amendment in the months before his assassination has already hit $100 million domestically and earned seven Golden Globe nominations. Kennedy recently spoke with AwardsLine about Lincoln’s languid path to production and her new role as president of LucasFilm.

AWARDSLINE: Every film has its own set of rules, but what consistently surprises you or keeps you interested when you’re starting a new project?

KATHLEEN KENNEDY: My tastes tend to be eclectic, so if I’m working on something that’s a small budget where the challenge is in all the nuances of trying to literally get it made, that presents its own set of challenges; if I’m making a big effects-driven studio picture, then it’s really more of managing all the moving parts. For something like Lincoln, we knew that this was going to be a difficult movie to get made, even if Steven Spielberg was directing it. And as you can see on the screen, we had many different partners just in trying to get the movie financed.

AWARDSLINE: Can you explain how that all came together?

KENNEDY: In this day and age, you say that you’re doing a movie about Abraham Lincoln, and nobody necessarily sees the opportunity for making lots of money—it’s not like doing Jurassic Park. So that’s something we knew going in, and we began to explore the options of who might step in and share the risk of making the film. It ended up taking almost a year before we put together the necessary partners. Stacey Snider was very involved at DreamWorks in really pulling most of that together while we were making War Horse. And when we came back, we went immediately into prepping Lincoln. I had already had many conversations with everybody in Virginia about being able to use the government buildings in Richmond while they were out of session. That, I knew early on, was going to dictate our shooting schedule. That gave us a goal in terms of knowing when we had to have the financial partners in place.

AWARDSLINE: Was there ever any other actor during this 13-year process of getting Lincoln made that you considered for the title role?

KENNEDY: It’s been in the press that we had conversations with Liam Neeson—this is after Daniel (Day-Lewis) had turned the movie down the first time. And once Tony (Kushner) wrote the script, and Daniel had a chance to read that draft, that’s when he turned around and committed to the project. But the only serious conversation we had with any other actor was with Liam.

AWARDSLINE: A lot has been written about Steven’s almost Method approach to working with the actors on set. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect?

KENNEDY: What was really going on was that Steven recognized very early that this was going to be a movie where it was all about what was going on in front of the camera. It was a movie that was focused predominantly on performances. He didn’t want an environment where there was a lot of chit-chat and conversations going on about what was happening behind the camera or just the kind of socializing that tends to go on when you’ve got a lot of down time. And this was a movie where there was virtually no downtime. There was always focused discussion on what was going on within the scene and within the performances, and conversations with the actors because we have in excess of 149 speaking parts (with) fairly complicated wardrobe and hair and makeup. Steven wanted to know as soon as the actors were ready and on the set, (so) he would be ready to start shooting and take full advantage of the time he had. What’s really interesting about any movie I’ve done with Steven (is) we usually adopt a kind of attitude depending on what the movie is. The closest experience I’ve had was working with Clint Eastwood. I’ve made a couple of movies with Clint, and he runs a set in a similar way. In large part, that comes from the fact that he is an actor, and it’s always the most important thing to Clint that when the actor arrives on the set, things are immediately quiet, and the focus turns to those performances. And that’s exactly what Steven did on this set.

AWARDSLINE: You’re stepping into the role of president of LucasFilm at a time when it’s being acquired by Disney. How will that affect your producing duties? You have a lot of work on your plate.

KENNEDY: (Laughs.) Yeah, it’s a lot on my plate, but it’s been fantastic. I consider it such an honor that George (Lucas) came to me after all these years and asked me if I would take over the company and ensure that his legacy continued. There’s going to be a lot that looks really fun and interesting, and it will still utilize many of the skills that I use as a producer. I don’t envision that a lot will change that dramatically. Many of the movies that I did with Steven over the years involved carrying through a lot of other areas of the business of making movies, and that’s something that I’ll probably end up doing more of. But I’m finding out what the job is right now.

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Live Singing Challenged Les Mis Production Designers

Cari Lynn is an AwardsLine contributor. This article appeared in the Dec. 19 issue of AwardsLine.

It’s not likely that any of the 60 million theatergoers who saw the musical Les Misérables would have thought the stage production limiting, but they weren’t charged with taking the longest-running musical, set in 1800s France, and blowing it out to larger-than-life size. In what was described by Working Title producers as a “deceptively difficult” adaptation, director Tom Hooper assembled a team that included his longtime production designer Eve Stewart and veteran costume designer Paco Delgado to create a factually accurate world, sprinkled with the magic and fantasy of the beloved musical.

Fantine was dressed in pink to contrast the other factory workers in drab blue.
Fantine was dressed in pink to contrast the other factory workers in drab blue.

But what no one on the team knew going in was that all singing (and the film is 99% singing) would be shot live. This posed interesting challenges for determining locations, given sound considerations and the desire to use very little CGI. “But,” says Stewart, who was nominated for an Oscar for Hooper’s The King’s Speech, as well as 1999’s Topsy-Turvy, “new ideas are usually the best ones,” so the constraints didn’t narrow her scope as she scouted locations for 20 weeks. She eventually settled on a pristine mountain range in the south of France; the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in England (where the HMS Victory is moored); an 18th-century rope factory in Kent (the timbers of which were so old that the crew was barred from lighting candles, so imitation flickering lights had to be used); the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich; the River Avon in Bath; as well as a set crafted at Pinewood Studios in London. In each location, Stewart’s crew had to eliminate squeaky floorboards and door hinges, and horses had to be fitted with rubberized hooves. The only location Stewart didn’t have to adapt was Boughton House in Northamptonshire, which dates back to the 17th century and is dubbed the “English Versailles,” where the wedding scene was filmed.

As their inspiration, both Stewart and Delgado went “by the book”—as in, Victor Hugo’s 1862 tome, Les Misérables. “The novel is a recording of how people lived,” Delgado says, “what they ate, what kind of china they ate the food on, what kind of clothes they wore, what color the clothes were.” Both he and Stewart scoured flea markets and secondhand stores in France and Spain to purchase authentic clothing and furnishings.

While both studied the artwork of the period—Stewart cites the French artist Gustave Doré, while Delgado drew from Delcroix, Goya, and Ingres—the goal was far from creating a rose-colored world. “Tom has an amazing level of detail, and he wanted to show the levels of poverty and degradation in Paris at that time,” Delgado explains.

Cold water and an epic scale made shooting the shipyard scene difficult.
Cold water and an epic scale made shooting the shipyard scene difficult.

For the set, Stewart incorporated elements of a shipyard, bringing in nine tons of seaweed along with sacks of mackerel and hake that arrived straight from the wharf at 2 a.m. every day so that even the smell was authentic. “Everything with Tom is factual realism,” Stewart says, “and then, after that’s established, we can amplify and tweak upward.”

While the team tried to use as many authentic pieces and landmarks as possible, Stewart spent nearly a month re-creating the 40-foot-tall Elephant of the Bastille (Napoleon’s monument that no longer stands but was immortalized in Hugo’s book), carved from polystyrene.

Because a portion of the team came from a theater background, the set was initially outlined by building theatrical models, which is not commonly done on film. “You never know where Tom is going to film,” Stewart says, “so the buildings had to be (functional) with 360-degree stairs so the cast could run around.” Stewart also took care to craft the buildings with crooked, warped lines, evoking the age and an element of destruction.

Delgado—who had previously worked with Tom Hooper on a Captain Morgan TV ad, and was the costume designer for the Oscar-nominated Biutiful and Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education and The Skin I Live In—had to “mar” his designs, creating 1,500 new costumes (out of a total of more than 2,000), which he then set about destroying with mud, grease, and blowtorches. “Paris was so poverty-stricken at that time,” Delgado explains, “and there was an amazing secondhand market where clothes were sold and resold and resold again until they were rags. It shocked me to learn that most poor people didn’t have any shoes.”

Delgado also wanted to tap into what he calls “the psychological atmosphere” of the time. “This is about the history of France, but also about the history of the Western world, and it was a big responsibility to create this world, but I also had to remember I was doing a musical with drama, and I needed to have color and fantasy.” One of the most poignant examples was the factory scene, where Delgado dressed Fantine (Anne Hathaway) in pink to contrast against all the other workers in drab blue. “In the book, Fantine is coquettish and beautiful and had some views of the petty-minded society, so I wanted this dress to belong to her lost past. It was all embroidered and had a level of craftsmanship that would make Fantine appear as an outsider among the rest of the women.”

Hooper and Delgado discussed a leitmotif, so Delgado evoked the colors of the French flag throughout, using blue costumes in the early factory scene, then red for the revolution, and then moving to white for the wedding and nunnery scenes. Delgado also altered the clothes to reflect the characters’ states, airbrushing shadows onto Fantine’s dress to enhance her wasted frame as she grew close to death, and then moving to the opposite extreme of padding Jean Valjean’s (Hugh Jackman) suits as his wealth and standing grew.

“This is our job,” says Delgado, “to try to interpret personalities and characters.”