The stars speak up at Film Fest

TIFF press conferences feature Hoffman, Bloom, Linney, Neeson and Nolte

This is not a film about drugs, it is about what happens afterwards, how you rebuild your life once the bubble bursts," said writer-director Olivier Assayas about his film Clean. "The character, Emily, lives the archetypal lifestyle and has to reconstruct her life, to start from scratch," he said. Assayas wrote the part for Maggie Cheung, his ex-wife, and said that he is more interested in allowing actors the freedom to draw from within and enrich their characters, often letting the camera roll and rarely calling the word "action."
When her faded rock-star partner dies in a dingy motel, Emily (Cheung) finds herself abandoned by family and friends. Her son is in the custody of his grandparents (Nick Nolte), and Emily must transform herself from a drug addict to become the mother her son deserves. The film tells the tale of forgiveness, of redemption, and starting over. Cheung won the Best Actress Award at this year's Cannes film festival for her performance.
"I've been wanting to do a French film for a long time, to be able to work in that kind of reality," Nolte said, adding that his experience was everything he had hoped it to be, both spontaneous and unpretentious. "Olivier has the forethought of the actors in mind. An actor is trying to create as full a life as possible, and needs the space to do that. Trust is vital. All that is about the French sensibility of film."
Cheung, who has received critical acclaim for her work in Chinese, English and French films, drew on her own multicultural background when approaching her work on the film. "When it came to Clean, it became part of the character, that she is a bit of everything, that she would cross these three continents, which I relate to myself," adding that speaking French in the film was "far more difficult that flying," referring to her recent role in Hero.
Assayas first sent the script to Canadian Don McKellar (who is also cast in the film), to insure that there was sufficient Canadian content to pass regulations. Nolte humorously called Canada the "most civilized country in North America" citing how, after two referendums, Canadians still haven't revolted.
Nolte surprised those attending the press conference with his candor, touching upon his own personal struggles. "Instant gratification doesn't solve a problem...if...if...I have a problem, like my drinking, it gets into self-destruction. Instant gratification would be more drinking, but it doesn't solve anything. The only thing that is going to solve the problem is to know myself. So instant gratification doesn't work.
"My psyche knows I'm going to die and how I'm going to die. But my ego doesn't know that. And the funny thing is, success gives you nothing, teaches you nothing. Failure gives you a lot because you learn things. Maggie's character is going through so much, that the beauty of her, the recognition of what she has gone through and the quality of life is realized after she is clean."

I Heart Huckabees
The press conference for David O. Russell's I Heart Huckabees was a who's who of Hollywood stars. Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Jason Shwartzman and Mark Wahlberg were present to comment on the director's unique approach as one of the main factors in taking on this film. "I don't think there's ever been a script like this. Not even close," said Hoffman.
Noting that the director has made four films in 10 years, Hoffman said, "He's not an easy lay... he only makes films he can make love to. Rather than the traditional 'Lights, camera, action... cut' that most directors employ for each take, with Russell the camera starts rolling and it doesn't stop - and he talks to you during the take... it's very liberating, very freeing.
Sitting in the middle of the four actors, Russell said that many of the film's existential questions came to him after 9/11, the kind of crisis that prompts people to look more closely at their lives and the world in general. While working on a script, he had a dream about being followed by a woman.
Russell confessed that Hoffman's role in The Graduate "changed my life" and Schwartzman, who first came to the attention of film audiences with his breakthrough performance in Rushmore, gave a touching tribute to his older co-stars. "They're the greatest, and they're the greatest for a reason. It's undeniable."
Wahlberg was asked what it was like to branch out as an actor, and joked his performance might "propel me into the action comedy; I can blow s--t up and beat people up." This prompted Hoffman to say about Walhberg, "For a guy who has such spectacular pecs and biceps, he's a very bright man." Laughed Wahlberg, "Maybe me and Dustin would have connected more if he'd gone to jail at some point in his life."
The Merchant of Venice
"At bottom, it's about two cultures that don't understand each other," said director Michael Radford of his movie version of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. "It's also about people who make very hasty and committed decisions about things and then live to regret them. It's about a 19-year-old girl who's pissed off with living with your stuffy old father and wants to get out. It's about people who love each other but don't understand who the person they're in love with is, and their discovery of that. And it's a play in which you're left wondering what's going to happen to these people. On a human level," he continues, "that's the most important thing."
The film stars Al Pacino as Shylock, the wealthy moneylender who dares to wander outside of Venice's Jewish quarter; Jeremy Irons as Antonio, a Christian merchant; Joseph Fiennes as Bassanio, Antonio's best friend; and Lynn Collins, who portrays Portia, the woman with whom Bassanio falls in love. With the exception of Pacino, all were on hand for the film's festival press conference. "Al would love to be here, but he's working and can't get away," explained Radford at the start of the conference.
The director admitted that Pacino was the first actor he approached for the film, and he helped to get the production off the ground. The rest of the cast, he says, were simply perfect for the parts. The only surprise was Collins. "I was expected to cast a big movie star in the role of Portia, which is effectively the biggest part in the play, and I was certainly expecting to cast an English actress," recalled Radford. "Then this young girl from Texas shows up for a small role in the film and she literally blows us all away."
The cast applauded the film's mix of British and American actors. Americans tend not to rely on the words in the way a British actor is trained to do, which is helpful," said Irons, who's at TIFF supporting two films, Merchant and Being Julia. "An American will look at a scene and say, "'What do I know about the emotional moment here? How can I find it?' An English actor will say, 'How can I use this language to create the emotion?'
The film's style helps to highlight the emotional drama of the story, which is still relevant today. Said Irons, "I think the strongest element in the picture is that it's against fundamentalism. Shakespeare shows what happens if you carry the law to the nth degree - it always backfires on you. We seem to be living in a world that's more and more fundamentalist. If we have any hope for the future, we have to respect one another's differences and not polarize ourselves as Shylock, the Christians and Antonio does in this play."
Added Fiennes, "It's all about the human condition, which over 400 years or more doesn't change. We like to think we're sophisticated, but we're subject to the same conditions as Shakespeare's characters were when he was writing at that time. That's what's fascinating to me and why it's so prevalent for us today to draw those parallels."

Crash
A look at the interwoven lives of a multitude of characters living in Los Angeles, Crash is a film that director Paul Haggis is afraid would be loved by all hate groups.
"Every scene was pushed too far. In every scene we said to ourselves, 'we can't do this, we can't say this'. But if you want to get to the truth you have to hit hard," said Haggis, who based the various plot lines on many of his own experiences.
The idea for Crash came to him in the middle of the night and wrote the entire script in only two weeks. "I started with the carjacker, and then I thought, what happens to the people who got carjacked, then what happens to the locksmith... when you have characters that speak to you, the way these characters did, it is great."
Members of the cast, including Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Larenz Tate and Jennifer Esposito, joined Haggis to promote a film and their characters that clearly spoke volumes to them as well.
"I found the film to be very beautiful," said Esposito. "But it is also very human. It shows why people feel the way they feel, why they do the things they do. There is a beautiful message."
"This move reflects what people want to say," said Tate. "Paul created a script with characters that are unapologetic about things. Often at times you don't want to be apologetic, and you often judge a book by its cover. It was refreshing to step up and to give it your all."
"It is easy to draw good actors when you have well developed characters," said Dillon, whose character, a racist LAPD officer, does things that the actor had a tough time watching. However, he was committed to the project the moment he read the script, which he described as "balanced."
"I appreciated the script," said Cheadle, who also served as a co-producer. "It is the L.A. you haven't seen in a movie yet, where people say what's on their mind.
"It is about our society as we are developing it," noted Haggis, "how afraid we are, how we are building higher fences, bigger hedges. Our kids don't place in the street anymore - they have play dates. L.A. epitomizes all that. In L.A., everything is just below the surface."

Head in the Clouds
Irish-born actor Stuart Townsend said he and actress Charlize Theron, who are dating off screen, were able to draw on their familiarity with one another to create conflict on John Duigan's Head in the Clouds. "We did one scene where the camera is on me," explained Townsend during the film's press conference, "It's a scene where she's telling me to leave and get out, and I don't quite understand. I was searching for [an emotion] and couldn't quite find it, and Charlize saw that. So, in one take, she went off dialog because she wasn't on camera. She said something very personal, which she knew would push my buttons, and it did."
The plot begins in 1933 London and ends in Paris shortly before D-Day. Guy (Townsend), falls in love with Gilda Bessé (Theron), a French/American aristocrat, after she bursts into his life when he's still a student at Cambridge. Hardly a happily-ever-after affair, events in their lives constantly pull them apart and bring them together. Also in the picture is Mia (Penélope Cruz), who leaves her life as a model in Paris to become a nurse in the Spanish Civil War.
"I remember that very well, because I was startled when Charlize suddenly left my script and said these quite volatile few words," said Duigan. "Of course, Stuart completely stayed in character, but in subtle ways that moment was altered in a way that was marvelous for that particular scene."
Cruz, whose character Mia is intertwined with Guy and Gilda but still feels like an outsider, said it helped that a similar dynamic naturally existed on the set as well. "They were so sweet to me, but I wanted to feel a little bit like an outsider, because my character feels like that - it's very painful for her," explained Cruz. "For me, the reality of the situation - of me wanting Charlize and Stuart to have their space - I could use that for my character."
The part also gave her a different perspective of her home country.
"When I heard stories from my grandparents [about the Spanish Civil War], it sounded so far away," said Cruz. "I realized doing the movie how much closer it was - it wasn't that long ago. My parents had me when they were very young, they had me when they were 20, so it effected more the parents of my grandparents. But, this place that you considered safe was total chaos not so long ago. It's interesting when a character gives you an opportunity to explore your history and things that might have effected your own family."
Charlize Thereon was unable to attend The Toronto International Film Festival having suffered an injury while shooting another film in Germany. "She was doing a stunt when she slipped on her costume shoes and landed on her neck," explained Duigan. "She's undergoing physiotherapy in L.A., and that film has now stopped shooting for six weeks. Charlize is trying to do as much press as she can from L.A."

Haven
During the press conference for Frank E. Flowers's film Haven, British actor Orlando Bloom took advantage of the set's more intimate environment by contributing more than just his acting to the film. "I added little details to my costume," he explained. "Those were the little touches that were part of making a small movie that I hadn't really had before. Whether it was a hat or a headscarf or a bright coloured belt, it was little things that helped give this character other dimensions for me."
Haven is set in the Caymen Islands, where Carl Ridley (Bill Paxton) has fled to escape charges of tax evasion and money laundering. Held up in a hotel room for the weekend with his daughter Pippa and a bag containing all the money he has in the world, he nervously waits for the banks to reopen Monday morning. Angry at her father for disrupting her life, Pippa sneaks off with Fritz, a lecherous local (Victor Rasuk). Her adventures lead the plot to the film's various characters, such as Shy (Orlando Boom), who's struggling to save his relationship with Andrea (Zoe Saldana).
Flower says the actor was one of the first aboard the project. "He got the script early on and really responded to the material," recalled Flowers, who was 24 years old when filming began. "He read the script twice and then asked to meet with me. We did, and when he walked into the room he said, 'Listen kid, I'm going to do your movie, so let's talk about something else.'"
Bloom himself asked to play Shy, as he was initially offered the part of Fritz. "The role I most responded to was the character of Shy, who at the time was written as a young Caymanian kid who was about 15 and had kind of the same track as my character, but obviously slightly different." Though Bloom was reticent to mess with the integrity of the script, he accepted Flowers's offer to rework the character to better suit Bloom - partly because he was curious about how the director would do it, and partly because that was the part that really spoke to him. "In literally 48 hours, he came back with another script with the character of Shy, who had developed in different areas but had been written as a character I could play. I knew right then that if this kid could to do that, we wouldn't have a problem when filming."

Ray
When auditioning for his film Ray, the story of music legend Ray Charles, director Taylor Hackford wasn't sure that Jamie Foxx would be the right person for the role.
"With many actors, they say they'll do something... but with Jamie, he says he'll do it, and he does it. He agreed to go blind for the role, because I felt that he needed to feel it. Ray Charles was an incredibly dynamic and invincible person, but he also had to develop the vulnerabilities," said Hackford during a press conference. "Ray Charles was a man who was alone in the dark. Jamie went blind for over a month, with prosthetics on his eyes. Jamie lost 30 pounds for the role. And Jamie worked harder than anyone else on that set."
Although the music throughout the film is Ray Charles original, some of it from rare live recordings in the 50s and 60s, Foxx had to embody Charles' every nuance, and he gave the press gathering a private viewing when he imitated how Charles would move his shoulders, telling the drummer to keep time to his body. "Drummers would go crazy watching him, trying to find his beat," said Foxx. "I have to say this: Mr. Taylor Hackford has done a wonderful job on this movie. He took a chance in how he cast it, he fought for it... but he also listened to us. We know our black experience, and he listened. He makes the movie come alive."
Ray Charles, who died this past June, was attached to the project from its early beginnings: he had the script translated into Braille so he could make a few suggestions on plot points - telling Hackford that certain things "didn't happen" and shouldn't be in the film, and - though it was a daunting yet exhilarating experience for the actor - jammed with Foxx.
"That was... amazing," Foxx said. According to the tale, Foxx went to Ray Charles' house, and the two started playing piano together. Foxx, an accomplished musician in his own right, was able to keep up with the jazz and the blues. Until the legendary Charles decided to throw Thelonius Monk into the mix. "I hit a note, and Ray looked at me, quite seriously, and said, 'why did you hit that note?' And I didn't know. And he shook his head and said, 'the notes are underneath your fingers.' And that was his metaphor for life."

Hotel Rwanda
"One good man can defeat indescribable evil," said director Terry George at the press conference for Hotel Rwanda. The man he was referring to is Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in Kigali, Rwanda when the tensions between Hutu and Tutsi erupted into slaughter in 1994. Rusesabagina successfully harboured hundreds of Tutsis in the Hotel Milles Collines for 100 days, barricaded against Hutu extremists intent on murder. His heroic stand is the central story of Hotel Rwanda.
Also in attendance at the press conference were Don Cheadle (who plays Rusesabagina in the film) and Sophie Okonedo, who plays his wife Tatiana.
Rusesabagina confessed that it is exciting to see his story on film. At times in 1994, "I didn't think I would survive... and today I can see myself on a big screen."
The need to film Rusesabagina's tale was brought home to George when he first went to Rwanda. Visiting a site where 40,000 people were murdered, he found himself writing the words, "I promise to tell this story." One of the goals of Hotel Rwanda, he said, is "to show that human beings are a much more important commodity than oil or diamonds or silver or nuclear fission material - and if we're going to mobilise huge armies, they should be mobilised for the salvation of people rather than the rescue of product."
Asked if his life has changed since 1994, Rusesabagina replied, "I'm pretty certain I've changed a lot." He now spends his time in Zambia and Belgium, but did return to Rwanda to see what had become of his country since 1994. It was disheartening. "Everyone was bad. I never trusted anyone, not even my own friends." Though a tenuous peace currently exists, Rusesabagina is uncertain that the time of hate and violence is over. "Whenever days are quiet," he said, "I fear that."

Childstar
Director and actor Don McKellar is proud to be Canadian. "I always wanted this to be a Toronto film. My feeling is if you are specific to your locale, you can be universal," McKellar said about his latest project Childstar. "When you are specific, you can be authentic. My U.S friends have seen this film, and they tell me that it is universal."
Childstar tells the story of Taylor Brandon Burns (Mark Rendall), a child actor who arrives in Toronto to shoot an American action flick. McKellar stars as the child's personal driver who becomes his mother's lover, as well as a father figure for the troubled boy. The film explores various styles, including shooting a film within a film, and takes certain pop shots at celebrity.
"One of my concerns was that people, seeing the title and seeing the subject matter will think it is some kind of farcical thing, some Saturday Night Live farce, and that was never what I wanted to do," said McKellar. "I always wanted to do a straight film within a structure that subverts various styles. There is a bit of comedy and a bit of film noir. I wanted it to be poppy and have media references but never fall into the trap of being a pure verity."
Gil Bellows, who plays Taylor's slimy agent, paid tribute to McKellar. "What impressed me most about him was that before a scene you could see him preparing, and you wouldn't know if he was going over his lines or preparing a scene. But when he was there, he was there, and he gave everyone the permission to relax. It was a lovely experience on the set."

Red Dust
Considering the spotlight at the Toronto film festival this year is on South Africa, it's not surprising that a handful of films deal with Apartheid. One of them is Red Dust, which takes place during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa that seek to bring justice and healing to the country after Apartheid ended.
"I always felt I had the responsibility of the weight of the story we were trying to tell," said Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank who stars in the film.
Swank said she read reams of documentary material and followed around a DA for a couple of days (she plays a lawyer) to soak in the role, but pointed to director Tom Hooper for the responsibility of managing the script and directing with a light touch.
"I didn't want to do too much. In one of the first scripts there was a number of dead bodies and we reduced it to one," said Hooper. "I knew we could tell the story by showing what the death of one son means to just one mother and one father. You can get to the heart of the fact by telling the story simply, and it has more depth."
The film centres around the Amnesty trial of Dirk Henricks (Jamie Bartlett) who admits to torturing members of the military wing of the African National Congress to obtain information for the government. In this case, Henricks wants forgiveness for torturing Alex Mpondo, now a Member of Parliament for the ANC. But it turns out Henricks is also partly responsible for the disappearance of Steve Sizela, another ANC member.

Sideways
Alexander Payne's fourth feature, Sideways, is set in Southern California and uses the process of winemaking as a metaphor for life and relationships so the natural question was bound to crop up during the press conference: What did they learn about wine during the film?
"The thing that I took away, in meeting a lot of winemakers, is that it's a science and an art form," said Sandra Oh, who plays the part of Stephanie, a single mom who is wooed by the engaged and much older, Jack, played by Thomas Haden Church.
"Actually it was going to be about beer to start with. But they changed it," said Haden Church.
But on set came the horrible truth. They had to drink a lot of non-alcoholic wine, and cherry juice. The set substitute gave Paul Giamatti a headache and gritty teeth, and apparently everyone else the runs.
The film's central story is about Miles (Giamatti), and his recovery from a divorce. The context is a getaway the weekend before Jack's marriage, a sort of mini-stag that involves them going to wineries and playing a few rounds of golf. Of course they each get more than they bargained for.

The Motorcycle Diaries
Ernesto (Che) Guevera is probably one of world's most prolific icons, and the actors and director of The Motorcycle Diaries spoke during a press conference about the life-altering experience in bringing the film to life.
What began as a road trip for Ernesto Guevara (Gael García Bernal) and his friend Alberto Granada (Rodrigo de la Serna) became a voyage of self-discovery that ultimately transformed the shy young medical student into a revolutionary.The script is based on both Guevera and Granada's diaries that they kept throughout the trip across South America.
"I wanted to be faithful to the books, but also to the spirit of the journey. I wanted the adventure to mirror what they had lived 50 years earlier," said director Walter Salles. "It really is about discovery and self-discovery, about feeling a continent that is foreign to them, getting in touch with a social and political reality, about two personalities that were crystallizing, and about the Latin American identity."
"We approached this with a lot of respect for the work of Che," said de la Serna, who ended up bruised during the shoot, from riding the 1939 Norton Motorcycle.
To remain true to the vision, the cast and crew spent four months on the road, making the same Latin American journey three times. Alberto Granada, now 83 years old, served as a consultant, and also came on set, reliving his and Ernesto's experiences for the cast. The actors spent months preparing, listening to tapes, watching footage, studying the social and political history, reading not only the diaries but also literature Guevera and Granada were reading at the time to fully immerse themselves in the space the young men were in when they took the journey.
"I felt scared. I didn't have the grasp, for me, to tell the story," García Bernal said. But a pivotal moment came to him on the set one day. Granada was there, and he pulled the young actor aside to talk to him about the voice over throughout the film. "He said to me, 'why are you trying to sound like my friend? Ernesto was a 23-year old Latin American; you are a 23-year old Latin American.' That was a liberating moment for me, and allowed me to tell the story."

Kinsey
Bill Condon's Kinsey about the controversial scientist Alfred Kinsey was the quiet hit at the festival this year. A Harvard educated zoologist, Kinsey began a study of human sexual behaviour, the Male results of which were first published in 1948. His findings sparked an intense national debate and threw Kinsey into the spotlight. But, when the Female study was published in the buttoned-up cultural environment of the 1950s, the findings were seen as an attack on American values, earning Kinsey scorn and outrage. He died in 1956, struggling to secure funding to continue his research.
"It's flattering," said Laura Linney of talk the film may win an Oscar. Linney plays Kinsey's wife Clara McMillen.
The script's sexual content had the director worried about how the film would be rated, and he was relieved when it was handed an acceptable 'R' standing. "It's a movie about sex, but it's not meant to be salacious in any way," the director explained.
However, Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Kinsey's research assistant Clyde Martin, was disappointed the movie didn't earn an NC-17 rating, "My penis' ears were burning," he deadpanned.
Liam Neeson's, who plays Alfred Kinsey, dogged determination most influenced the actor. "I got off on the man's energy," said the actor. "He was a workaholic who worked himself to death. I'm a lazy slob myself, so I admire people that burn the candle at both ends and use the day. That inspired and energized me." Added Sarsgaard, "One of my favourite questions asked in the movie is: When did you stop thinking of your parents home as your own home? Those questions are about sex and sexuality, but they're in ways that you wouldn't have dreamed up of asking yourself."

Publication Date: 2004-09-19
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=4408