With new feature film ‘Innuendo’ making it’s premiere at the Made In Melbourne Film Festival on the 8th December Buzz Magazine’s Dave Griffiths caught up with the producer and composer of ‘Innuendo’ Charly Harrison. Charly chats to Dave about how he became involved with the film and what are the steps a composer takes when putting together the soundtrack for a feature film.
You can listen to or download our Charly Harrison interview right here.
With Innuendo having its cameo screening at Cinema Nova on the 3rd November Dave G caught up with the director and star of the film Saara Lamberg. Saara chats to us about how she came up with the idea of Innuendo and what it was like starring in a movie that she was also directing.
You can listen to or download our Saara Lamberg interview right here.
Director Paul Hamburg is no stranger to making hit comedies. He is the man behind films such as Meet The Parents and Meet The Fockers and this holiday season sees him return to that tried and true meet-the-in-laws formula with Why Him?, a film that essentially pits Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston against Oscar-nominated actor James Franco.
A quick look at the trailer for Why Him? may leave the audience thinking that Franco’s character, Laird Mayhew, may well be one of the rudest and most disgusting people to have ever graced the screen but Franco laughs as he admits that there is more to Laird then meets the eye. “I play a guy who is dating Bryan Cranston’s daughter. I’m a video game designer. I’m very successful, but I’m also a bit unpolished, rude and I have tattoos, and I use crude language. So I’m everything that Bryan Cranston’s character wouldn’t want in a son. So, I ask him for his blessing because I want to ask his daughter to marry me and he refuses, so I spend our Christmas holiday trying to win him over. Essentially Laird is not a bad guy he’s actually a really nice guy! So I just said to John that initially we need this guy to be very frightening to a father and one of the ways to do that is to make his exterior frightening because actually inside he’s actually everything that you probably want in a son-in-law. So there was this gag that we had been wrestling with from the beginning about Laird trying to do something when he initially meets the family that he thinks is a gesture of solidarity and a welcome and they read it completely differently and so there were a lot of different incarnations of that and finally we settled on the idea that he would get a tattoo of the family on his back and then John added on that that he only had a Holiday Card photo of the family and that’s the photo that he used, and the tattoo artist also included the Happy Holidays on it.”
So was it the fact that Laird Mayhew that is comedy gold that drew Franco to the role? “I think the first thing that drew me to the movie was John Hamburg,” explains Franco. “He was actually my teacher at NYU when I was there for the Graduate Film Media program. He was actually my teacher there when I was doing 127 Hours, so I wasn’t there a lot but we talked a lot and I got to know him on the phone but yeah he was the initial thing that drew me to this, and I’ve always liked his writing. And then I heard, and he told me that he was thinking about Bryan Cranston for the father role, and I didn’t know Bryan, but I saw him backstage on the last episode of The Colbert Report, and he said ‘hey I heard you might do this and I might do this. What do you think?’ so we started talking, and Bryan Cranston is just the greatest human being ever.
Of course playing alongside Franco in Why Him? is Bryan Cranston who aside from playing Walter in Breaking Bad had a long stretch playing a frustrated father in hit comedy Malcolm In The Middle, so what was it like for Franco to co-star alongside a comedy legend. “I think he had a blast,” says Franco laughing out loud. “ He hasn’t really done comedy since Malcolm In The Middle, and what was that over ten years ago now, so I think he had a great time actually and you wouldn’t expect that Bryan is sort of the one to push the envelope, but he would always make a suggestion for a scene that was just too far, not only for his character but for everybody and I love that. I mean that I love that in Bryan.
Franco also admits that like on most of Paul Hamburg’s sets the actors did have a little bit of ‘free reign.’ “John works in a way that is similar to a lot of the movies I’ve done before, where there is always room for improvisation. You know you start with a script and then kind of role from there and see what you find. And I guess what you always want in that situation is that you want somebody that can give good suggestions. I mean if you are riffing and then they can sort of build on that. You want somebody like that behind the camera that can help support you.”
For Bryan Cranston though he says that he had an instant personal connection to the film and to the role of Ned. “You know there is the truth about the Dads,” he says with a huge smile on his face. “You know I can remember when I was dating the Dads didn’t like me very much and I didn’t know why. I NOW KNOW WHY! I think Ned wants to be open, although it is tough enough as a Dad myself to see your child grow up and become an adult. And for us to have to be responsible for them for all of their lives and then just voluntary let go of that grip and away they go, and the choices they make you are just like sheesh, and you are a little fearful about how all of that is going to play out. Of course these two guys, Ned and Laird, are different in every way. Different level of education, in the way that they were raised, who they were raised by, the principals by the way they were raised, everything, the way they live, their taste in music, their generation, everything about them is a complete opposite to each other. So naturally you would think that there is going to be friction because they just can’t relate to each other in any way. Laird just doesn’t have a filter, but what is great about the Laird character though, and we really talked about this a lot before we got into production, is that he is not capable of lying, he is clumsy, he is socially crude, and he hurts feelings sometimes because he just says what is real, what is honest and what is true, and we know that that isn’t always the best policy. He can’t help it; he just doesn’t have that gear to be able to control himself. But on the other side, he also doesn’t have the gear to be dishonest or purposely hurtful. He just can’t do it.”
It doesn’t take listening to Bryan for long to learn that he really enjoyed his time working on Why Him? and he is only too happy to explain why. “Being able to play with these actors has been a blast. They were all fabulous. I love doing dramatic roles and doing things like Trumbo and All The Way, and doing stage and doing film and Breaking Bad was fantastic but you don’t have as much fun as you do when you do comedy because the whole idea is to be thinking of different approaches of how to make something funny and when your job is to go to work, and you laugh and you make other people laugh then that is a good day. When I first read the script, the script was funny, and I said ‘can we work on this’, and they said ‘oh yeah we are going to work and work on this until you are sick of it’ and I loved that, I loved the all in nature. John brings a sensibility that is very inviting. He allows the actor room to fail and I don’t mean that in an ‘oh he’s going to fail here’ way it’s more of an ‘okay, yeah try that, try it, try it’… that is really his motto. And it is has been so much fun; we’re like children. We do the scene as written and then we are not only allowed to change it but are encouraged just to go crazy and add whatever is appropriate to your character.”
The fact that the cast had so much fun making the film is not a surprise when you walk out of a theatre still laughing after viewing Why Him? – a film that has turned into a surprise comedy hit this summer.
Why Him? is showing in cinemas right now.
Based on the experiences of comic and lead actor Osamah Sami, an Iraqi refugee who arrived in Australia as a boy after several years in Iran, it begins with the title card: “A true story. Unfortunately.” This really doesn’t prepare you for what follows.
A warm, sentimental comedy, cast almost entirely with Muslim Australians (1 Vietnamese guy and 1 Australian guy) this is a purely myopic look at one section of Australian society, where the rest of us don’t exist. And this is a good thing, because it provides a lovely look into misunderstood section of our population, whilst at the same time serving up a big chuck of middle class Australian values.
Ali is the son of a Muslim cleric (Don Hany), he hopes to become a doctor but after failing to get into medical school, he lies massively to his family and friends that he got a 94.4% pass and acceptance into Melbourne Uni.
He starts attending classes anyway, the lie grows and grows. Ali is trapped. But worse is to come. At Uni, he pursues a young woman from the mosque, but wait, this is not the same woman he’s been pressured into engaging. And as the sayi9ng goes “It all goes pear shaped.”
This is an ideal world and that makes it so entertaining. I loved the scenes in the3 Mosque with musicals performed by overenthusiastic worshipers. Women behind mirrored glass windows and complete with eccentric but loveable locals.
In reality many Australian comedies about migrants have been riddled with the tension between the migrant and Aussie culture. In Ali’s Wedding, Australia is a relatively simnple adopted country. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, maybe it’s a sign of our culture maturing but in Ali’s world, things seem OK here.
n fact, the film suggests that whatever trials and tribulations await recently arrived communities, none are as bad as back home, and many troubles are self-inflicted.
Australian racism? It barely registers. Where there is cultural tension, it’s within Ali’s community. Two religious leaders polls apart. His progressive father, who offers free counseling services from the back room of his modest brick and tile house and directs an annual satirical play about Saddam Hussein, faces a humourless rival. Ali, meanwhile, is at loggerheads with his mother,(a lively Frances Duca,) who disapproves of the girl he loves because she’s from the wrong part of the Middle East and, worse still, born in Australia.
This is a sign of loose morals, she says, and in one of the film’s more successful moments, Ali’s younger sister calls out her reverse snobbery with the bitter observation that she too was “born here”.
Where there is cultural tension, it’s within Ali’s community
This is a feel good view of Muslim society in Australia. Everything fits, good music, tight editing and strong acting from a group of relatively unknown support actors. It’s good movie. Go see it.
Nine years after directing the well-received The Great Debators legendary actor Denzel Washington decided to once again sit in the director’s chair to bring award-winning theatre production Fences to the big screen. The result was a film that received a Best Picture Academy Award nomination. It also saw Washington nominated for Best Leading Actor while it picked up a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Viola Davis who plays Washington’s embattled wife in the film.
For Washington this was a passion project and it obvious listening to him talk about the film that he fell in love with this story way back in 2010 when he appeared in the play the film is based on on Broadway. He begins by recounting what it was like to meet with the play’s author – the late August Wilson – for the first time. “I spent a lovely day with him. I flew up to Seattle. It rained all day and he just smoked cigarette after cigarette and he was writing… I don’t know who set it up… but he was writing Gem Of The Ocean and it might have been my agent who suggested that I go up there, but I went up to see him and we just talked all day. He talked about how he writes plays, how he locks the doors, shuts the windows and he basically writes what the characters tell him to write so I guess he was telling me ‘I’m not just writing for you I’m writing what I’m compelled to write’ which was just fine with me. I just remember that day was a lovely day.”
Not many actors get to reprise their role from a theatre production up on the big screen and Washington is only too happy to talk about what the differences were playing Troy on the stage to what it was like bringing the character to film. “I think it only helped that I was able to, I couldn’t imagine trying to do this having not done it on stage first. There was no time to try and figure out who Troy was when we were shooting the movie so to number one know the character and to know that we did a production that worked, you know we got the response from the audience and the accolades and that kind of stuff, so I knew it worked but that also added more pressure because it was like ‘don’t screw it up now.’ But I just knew I had to get the camera in front of the actors and just let them do what they had been doing all along.”
So what did he focus on capturing as director? “The truth!” he exclaims. “The truth. That was it – period. The camera is always going to capture what you are doing so if you are lying and you’re not supposed to be then it is going to catch you doing that. The universal stems from the specific, so everything down to the last button. If it says 2.30 on the clock on the wall then it should say 2.30 on the watch – whether you see it or not.”
As we saw on Oscar night it was the stars around Washington in the cast that also made Fences such an enjoyable film and Washington is not only full of praise for all of them but tells us what it was like to direct them. “You never want to crush an actor,” he explains. “I’ve been on the other side where a director has been like ‘well I think he would do this’ and I’m always like ‘well why don’t you get up here and do it then if that’s what you think?’ There are all kinds of truth, just because I’m the director that doesn’t mean that I know THE truth, I’m there to discover just like everybody else. You know what they say – eighty percent of it is about casting, so get the best and let them do what they do then just see what happens. With Jovan Adepo (who plays Washington’s son) I remember him coming in and I wasn’t hard on the young actors but I wanted to push them around to really see if they could handle it because Jovan and Saniyya Sidney (who plays Washington’s daughter) they had to catch up to the rest of us, especially Jovan, and he was just head-and-shoulder above the rest. He just had this naturalness and honesty in him. He was actually up for a role with Antoine Fuqua (who directed Washington in Training Day) and he said he was the best kid going around and I said ‘well why aren’t you hiring him?’ and he said ‘well I want somebody edgy in my film’ but he was the best actor who had come in and read. Needless to say that gave him a leg up on everybody else.”
While Denzel Washington himself didn’t walk away with an Academy Award for Fences it is a film that is a highlight amongst his acting career, it is a film that reminds audiences that he is also a fine director in his own right as well.
Fences is in cinemas right now.
The tide has turned and it’s a whole new “Ocean’s” when eight women plan and execute a heist in New York. Oscar winner Sandra Bullock stars in the title role, alongside Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Awkwafina, with Rihanna and Oscar nominee Helena Bonham Carter. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gary Ross is directing.
Ross directs from a screenplay he wrote with Olivia Milch (upcoming “Dude”), with Steven Soderbergh and Jon Kilik producing, Michael Tadross, Susan Ekins, Sandra Bullock, Diana Alvarez and Bruce Berman executive producing, and Milch co-producing. Filming is taking place in and around New York City.
Collaborating with Ross behind the scenes are director of photography Eigil Bryld (“In Bruges,” “Not Fade Away”), production designer Alex DiGerlando (“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” HBO’s “True Detective”), editor Juliette Welfling (“Free State of Jones,” “The Hunger Games”), costume designer Sarah Edwards (“Tower Heist,” Showtime’s “Billions”), and composer Nicholas Britell (“The Big Short,” “Free State of Jones”).
Ocean’s Eight is set for release in Summer 2018 and will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.
Rising young Australian star Xavier Samuel moves between independent features from Australia and big budget Hollywood fare such as The Twilight Saga. He is currently starring in Love & Friendship, an amusing adaptation of Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan, and he has a handful of other projects on the go. Greg caught up with Xavier to chat about the period costume comedy Love & Friendship, which hits cinemas on July 21.
You can listen to our Xavier Samuel interview right here.
Embrace is a new Australian documentary that looks at the issue of body image. It is the debut film for former photographer Taryn Brumfitt, who has spent two years working on the film. Greg caught up with Taryn to learn about some of the challenges in putting the film together.
You can listen to or download our Taryn Brumfitt interview right here.
The name Keith Arem might not spring straight to people’s minds as a household name, but chances are if you are a music or video game lover than you have come across Arem’s work at some stage. Arem started out as a musician with heavy outfit Contagion before his work as a video game music composer resulted in him becoming a voice director that has worked on famous games including most of the Call Of Duty franchise, Bioshock and some of the Tony Hawke games just to name a few. Yes Arem is a man of many talents and now he has just branched out his career even further as he sits in the directing seat of a brand new feature film called The Phoenix Incident – a film that looks at one of America’s most baffling UFO incidents.
If you’ve played any of Arem’s games over the years you would know that he has already worked with some of Hollywood’s elite. Of the 600-700 actors he has worked with over the years names such as Gary Oldman, Ed Harris, Idris Elba and Sam Worthington are instantly standouts for film fans, but where did Keith first get his love for cinema and was it working with people like this that sparked his interest in making a feature film?
‘I have always had a love for cinema and motion pictures,’ explains Arem. ‘I was largely inspired by early Ridley Scott films like Alien and Blade Runner and early Stanley Kubrick films like The Shining and I have always loved the suspension of disbelief as you go into a theatre and immersing myself in that world and think that was what drew me to work in video games because you are immersed in this enormous world so after working in video games for the past 20 years I have developed these spectacular relationships with the production teams, the cinematographers, the people that work in both high end games and now in cinema. So we took a lot of the technology and production techniques that we use with games and brought into my feature which was good because as first time director I knew we wouldn’t be able to compete with something like The Avengers which has a much larger budget. So what I wanted to do was take a very creative approach to this first feature and bring very strong performances and base it in real events so I could marry the reality of what happened during this UFO/military encounter with all the history and documentation that we were collecting.’
Do a quick search on Youtube and you will find that a lot of people have had theories over the years about the UFO incident that Arem has based The Phoenix Incident on, so what made him want to write a script about this events in the first place? ‘I actually grew up in Arizona and this was a fascinating part of my history because I was so inspired by so many of the sightings that happened in Arizona, some being the largest in the country and I had always wanted to go back and I had always wanted to go back and look at the possibility of contact during this event and the mysteries surrounding that. We ended up discovering amazing footage and stories on what really happened that night.’
One of the first questions that springs to mind while talking to Keith is just how different was it to turn up on a film set for the first day of directing compared to the many times he has gone the same thing for a video game. ‘The amount of content generated for a game is much higher than what we generate for film, but the focus of what we are trying to create for a film is so specific that you can stand in awe of that high level of crafting one moment and I was absolutely in heaven on my first day on set. I got to work with very talented actors, an amazing crew and had incredible content to work with so for me it was the most natural transition into another part of the entertainment industry and I felt like I was at home. I had just an excited energy going in, I was surrounded by such amazing people and I loved the content and loved the script and I think we were excited to do it. Even when we wrapped up shooting everyone wanted to stay and keep going. So for me this was an inspiring first step in what I hope is a very long career in creating films, television shows, my own games and graphic novels.’
It seems that Hollywood has certainly sat up and taken notice of Keith’s work on The Phoenix Incident because while he couldn’t talk to me too much about it he said he is currently in talks for some projects that will further see him help the ‘cross-pollination’ of the video games and film worlds.
As my discussion with Keith goes on it becomes very obvious that Keith is fascinated by the subject matter of UFO contact so I asked him just how personal The Phoenix Incident is to him. ‘I personally have seen lights in the sky that were very interesting to see, now whether they were atmospheric phenomena or military craft or unidentified flying objects has yet to be determined, but I was very inspired by the things that I had seen and stories I had heard from people growing up so I think that area in the country (United States) have a very common belief that we are not alone on the universe and that the inspiration of actually seeing something is very motivating especially for a storyteller who wants to explore what really happened.’
The Phoenix Incident is out now on digital download and the DVD is released on the 7th September through Signature Entertainment.
They shot part of the new action thriller Atomic Blonde in Germany, no doubt filming in some of the same locations that were there during the Cold War. Some money and effort has gone towards featuring retro technology of the time, the actors wear clothes that are suitably stylish for today’s tastes but impossibly evocative of the late 80s, the film’s lighting shows the colours of heroin chic and the soundtrack boasts the songs that were on the radio at the time.
However Atomic Blonde looks like it is set in the 1980s rather than being evocative of the 1980s in the same way that it is like a good spy thriller but it isn’t one. It is all style and no substance but my oh my-what style! A spy film that honours all the tropes, with agents who keep the local bottle-os afloat with their penchant for one particular spirit that always has its logo facing camera, debriefs with staid imperious bureaucrats, and double heck even triple or quadruple crosses. Because why the hell would a double cross be enough?
Ultimately the film is elevated by one Charlize Theron who is at the height of her powers at the moment. Playing Lorraine Broughton of British Intelligence she is sent to Berlin during the dying days of the Cold War following the murder of a Western spy in the city. Her contact in country is David Percivall (James McAvoy) who immediately strikes her as untrustworthy and definitely operating outside of regulations. She also attracts the attention of French agent Delphine Lasalle (Sophia Boutella) and Stasi officer Aleksander Bremovych (Roland Moller) as she attempts to retrieve important information that maybe only Eddie Marsan’s character Spyglass knows enough about. The plot is no Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Broughton’s plight is also all about mood and looks. She’s on a mission to unearth a killer and retrieve something but it quickly matters little.
That’s not to say that all the meandering is meaningless, the cast takes the film seriously enthusing their roles with personalities and contradictions. Theron who trained for months before shooting is at the forefront of some sensational fight scenes, I don’t care what cheating techniques were used if any, this is a physical role and Theron is one of the most physically adept actresses working today. She cuts a powerful figure but not without limitations and vulnerabilities. When the fighting begins we’re with her all the way feeling every hit that forces her to the ground and delighting in every killer move that hand her triumph until the next opponent.
The fact that Theron can give us this as a physical performer and then also speak volumes with a gaze at a dead body is an embarrassment of riches. See if there’s a role for her in a Tinker, Tailor sequel. The rest of the cast is all as good as their reputations would lead you to expect, Jones in particular plays his listening superior Eric Gray as the least poker faced and is all the more effective because of it. Boutella has the right amount of naivety and fire and McAvoy called upon to be many things might have the hardest time but remains committed throughout. It might have been nicer to have him play off Theron more with an emotional connection of questionable authenticity.
Directed by one half of the team that brought you the original John Wick, former stuntman David Leitch has made an action film with flair, long tracking shots that travel through whole buildings following melees that involve meticulous fight choreography that make you feel the blows. Working off a limited budget the film looks very sleek with some great lighting and attention paid to replicating that time period.
This is a lively film that never bores owing perhaps its heightened look and sensibilities to its comic book origins but it is hard to lock onto caring much about the characters who remain mysterious and aloof for the most part. That at times can mean what is happening onscreen is not of much interest until the next fight scene starts. Yet it is fun and it is one more thing too, it is further proof that Charlize Theron is one of the great movie stars of today.